Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 6
He flinched at the mention of her name, the way it instantly drew an image of auburn hair, flashing green eyes, and a smile so rare only he got to see it. That he and Kelly Harrison had come together, at all, was the most improbable thing that had happened to him amongst a list of improbable things; the Academy-brat, Admiral’s daughter, Alliance starfighter pilot joining the rebellion with the Jesters...and falling in love with him.
Being torn away from him had been the only probable part.
“What’s there to say?” he replied with a sigh. “She’s gone, on the other side of the galaxy, probably dead.”
“Not dead,” Cory said with a flash of smile. “I meant to tell you but...sounds like I lost track of time.”
“Tell me what?”
She turned back to the Overmind consoles, fingers fluttering over keyboards and crystal controls. “In searching for Ghost in the Machine, I’ve been scanning ether-tenna channels, like I said, but also recordings intercepted during the Fury fight. After all, the rogue AI commandeered one of our Jumper-class transports to make good its escape.”
“And forced Kelly to fly it out,” Tim said hurriedly. When the AI that had been a copy of Overmind reverted to its earlier, murderous personality, it had taken Kelly’s brother—himself, a war prisoner of the Jesters’—hostage and used him as leverage. “But we lost track of the ship in the rush of the fighting.”
“I’ve been able to piece together a little since,” Cory said. “By combing through the Union Fleet’s transmissions and decrypting what I could, I discovered that they intercepted a Jester transport, and then released it just before the last battle.”
Tim’s heartbeat accelerated. “The Union had the ship in its hands and let it go?” He blinked. “Kelly must’ve talked them through the blockade.”
“She did more than that,” Cory said.
A globular materialized. Within it, icons rushed and flashed. Tim recognized a slice of the last battle in the Fury System. But it wasn’t a part the Jesters had played. Schemata flickered, identified an Alliance carrier group, ambushed by a pack of Valkyrie starfighters—flown by pilots who’d defected to the Union. The replay froze at Cory’s command and of one of the icons that had plunged into the maelstrom of battle and emerged intact blinked.
“That did it!” a familiar voice crackled. “Get clear Slashers!”
Tim felt as though dumped into ice water and then dragged out and flung into a bonfire. He didn’t breathe, wasn’t sure his heart pumped for a full minute. “You’re...sure that’s her?”
“I have analyzed the signals,” Overmind spoke up, “at Director Xiang’s insistence. And there are more than just these. From those, I can confirm the voice is Commander Harrison’s.”
Tim put hand on the console beside Cory to steady himself. “So that goddamned machine didn’t drag her with It...” He gulped once and looked up at the contraption that was Overmind. “Sorry, no offense.”
“None taken. I do not consider what the copy of me became as being in the same species as myself.”
“She must have negotiated the Copy’s release with the Union when they intercepted them,” Cory said. “And then joined them, herself.”
Tim snorted. “Of course, she did. And, of course, she ended up in one of their fighters. She’s a Jester. But before that, she flew a Valkyrie.” He shook his head. “Almost like some kind of homecoming for her.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t a whole lot more than that,” Cory said. “I scraped this together from fragments our own sensors were picking up during lulls in the fighting, during the battle, itself. I only found it because I was searching for Ghost’s escape route.” She smiled for the first time. “I stumbled upon another needle in a haystack, if you will.”
“I’m going to get her back, Cory,” Tim proclaimed. “I don’t know how, yet, but I am going to get Kelly back.”
“And I’ll help you,” Cory said softly and reached out to take his hand, turn him to face her. “In exchange for a little favor.”
Tim chortled. “Resorting to extortion?”
“Whatever works.” With her free hand, Cory touched the console.
A fresh globular appeared, showed a diagram of a Hellhound, but different somehow. The vulpine silhouette was leaner, shedding some of the ablative armor plate. But the stooped, forward-swept wings were the same, the fearsome outline of vengeance that had captured a galaxy’s imagination and come to symbolize the fight for freedom.
It still had the particle beam cannon on the wingtips and the chin-mounted plasma blaster. But the underwing hardpoints had been reduced from four to two, and these featuring eight-missile scatter-packs, instead of the old sixes. In place of the second, inner set of hardpoints bulged a second pair of gravity drive nacelles, twins to the pair mounted on its hunched back.
“This is the Hellhound Mark IV,” Cory said. “I’ve been showing it to Red and I think I’ve got her convinced. We’re going to start switching out for these.”
Tim eyeballed the specs. “You’re reducing the firepower.”
“In exchange for more speed and maneuverability,” Cory replied. “I’ve been analyzing our combat footage. The Hellhounds are still getting outrun by the Valkyrie one-to-one. Alliance pilots use their superior speed to break off when cornered and then reengage from another angle, using that speed. It’s nullifying the Hellhound’s edge in dogfighting.”
He scowled at her. “We were eating them alive at Fury.”
“The numbers don’t lie,” Cory retorted. “My analysis shows the extra scatter-packs won’t be missed, either. They’re inefficient. Jesters waste at least a six-missile spread, on average. The eight-packs can handle the same tasks.”
“You tell that to a Hellhound jock when they’re eye-to-eye with a heavy cruiser and looking for that last scatter-pack to fling in its face.”
“I would, but I’m not one.” She paused. “Not yet.”
Tim looked at her sharply. “What?”
“That’s the favor,” Cory replied, not holding his hand, now; gripping it. “Tim, it’s time I put my credits where my mouth is.”
He yanked his hand free. “It’s a war out there, kid.”
“And you think I don’t know that?” she near-shrieked, rising from her seat to glower at him. “I’ve flown co-pilot on every crazy mission the Jesters have come up with the last two years! I’ve manned a tail-gun on a Hog, been a sensor specialist on a combat shuttle, a code-slicer, and crewmember on a transport! I have done everything!” She jabbed a finger at the holographic schematic. “Except that!”
Tim fumbled for a response in the face of her intensity. But all attempts failed, as they had to. She was right. More than right. If he was counting the really close scrapes, like the big transport heist off Cerelon, she arguably had more experience with danger than even many Hellhound pilots. Hell, she’s probably seen more on the ground, in-your-face firefights than me, he thought.
“When people think of the Hell’s Jesters,” she was saying, “they think of Hellhounds. They think of the men and women flying them. I’ve earned the right to be one of them! I’ve had it with all those other roles, with the administrative minutiae, the ‘techno-witchery’, all of it! I just want to be a Jester.”
“But you already are,” Tim tried lamely.
She crossed her arms and glared. “You’re going to do this for me, Tim Watkins. You owe it to me.”
And that was true. He didn’t even bother to counter now.
“It’s not like you don’t need the pilots.”
Again, true.
“There’s a war on, like you said. But there’s also a killer AI out there that I had a hand in accidently resurrecting, that’s going to remember us, and not in a friendly way. If It comes looking, I don’t want to be stuck on the ground or on the bridge on some transport slug-tug. I want to be riding the fastest, deadliest thing in the galaxy—the thing I helped invent.
“I want to be riding a Hellhound.”
GRAND ADMIRAL NEHEMIAH K. Harrison, commander of the Alliance’s Fringe World Fleet, took a deep breath and tried not to notice the vague odor of scorched metal and—faintly—flesh that still tinged the air of his flagship, Obliterator.
It’d been nearly two months since the fighting around Fury that had left the Retribution-class super-heavy battlecruiser holed and burning. Nearly two months of rest and repair in orbit over Coronado still hadn’t fully bolted over all its scars, nor scrubbed out the horrid effluvium.
He figured he deserved the reminders, for his failure there.
The other occupant of his ready room cleared his throat at the prolonged silence between them. Harrison pivoted his chair away from the half-globe of blastisteel allowing him a view of the cerulean-splattered reddish face of the planet far below and faced his superior officer across the compartment’s single, tiny desk.
Severson—Grand Admiral of the Navy Severson—met his gaze with an enigmatic not-quite smile. He’d gotten a little meatier since the last time Harrison had seen him. Probably too many High Council planning sessions and banquets with the Fleet Appropriations Committee and its lobbyist hangers-on. Harrison couldn’t say he’d ever liked the man, who’d climbed on connections and glad-handing more than any particular achievement.
But everything, Harrison’s whole career, everything he’d built and bled for, depended on that not being obvious about at this moment.
“Relax, Nehemiah,” Severson said. “I’m not here to replace you.”
Harrison blinked to hide his shock. The blow he’d expected since the retreat from the Fury System would never fall. He almost didn’t know how to react, had been expecting ruin for so long. He leaned forward in his chair, set elbows upon the desktop. “I, ah...confess to being surprised.”
Severson’s smile broadened with satisfaction. He’d been enjoying this, enjoying Harrison’s torment, the bastard. “I’m not sure why.”
“The Fury battles, of course,” Harrison replied. “I’ve heard the rumors swirling, as well as the accusations about my performance. You had me dress-down poor Sobieski for less.”
“Demote and remove the Fleet’s most-experienced theater commander now?” Severson chuckled. “Especially with what we’ve got coming up?”
“You’re serious?” Harrison asked, feeling a weight leave him—suddenly, irrationally, pitifully thankful. “I’m being retained?”
“Yes, of course,” Severson replied. “You will remain in command of the Fringe World Fleet, Nehemiah.” He paused to leaned over the desk, himself. “But changes are coming.”
Harrison nodded, still trying to digest it all. I’m keeping the Fringe World! The Fleet he’d re-made, after its disastrous mis-handlings by that megalomaniac Geiger and the non-entities that had preceded him. His Fleet, in so many ways!
“I understand the Council has approved a new campaign,” he managed.
“I’ve brought the details with me and will leave a complete, encrypted packet for you and your staff to familiarize yourselves with. The timetable’s very speedy, I’m afraid. The situation in the Alliance is deteriorating. The High Council is frantic for a change in the war.”
“They’re frantic to re-open the transuranic trade,” Harrison growled.
“Soon we’ll all be frantic, I fear,” Severson muttered, then shook himself, seemed to feel like he’d given away something and quickly moved on. “Never mind the politics, though. Just know you won’t have a lot of time to prepare. What can you spare from the Fringe for offensive operations?”
Harrison touched a crystal on his desktop controls, brought up a globular holographic map showing the region of the galaxy known as Galactic South. “Other than a patrol screen, we’ve completed our withdrawals from the environs around Fury.” The icon of a star system blinked at his words, hatefully, a tiny speck of light that’d come to represent so much destruction. “We still have forces standing at short hyper-jump from Bolingbroke and Saipan and those continue to harass Union forces there.” More icons pulsed as he spoke. “But I’d say I can spare several task forces.”
“How about carrier groups?”
Harrison couldn’t hide a wince. Nothing stung more about the defeats before Fury than the brutal losses amongst his star carriers. Two Nebula-class heavies lost, one badly damaged, two light carriers gone, two damaged. But, “I can promise you two heavies, a strike carrier, and three lights, with all attendant escorts, and eleven Valkyrie squadrons. That’s if I strip the forces in front of Bolingbroke.”
“Not Saipan?”
Harrison shook his head. “Don’t think it’s wise. Our reconnaissance has spotted reinforcements in the area, and ships we haven’t seen before, some kind of new Union carrier.”
“New?” Severson snorted. “Not the usual recycled rebel junk?”
“Seems they’ve gotten their industry together, at last.” Harrison paused. “I can also commit the Heavy Division” he gestured at their surroundings “the Obliterator, three heavy cruisers, five mediums.”
“That will be more than sufficient,” Severson replied approvingly. “The carriers are the main thing, you see.”
“And, I’ve got to tell you, Timothy, those may be a bit more than they seem on paper.” He hesitated. “The pace of operations in the last six months, especially in the last several weeks, has cost our starfighter wings heavily.” Harrison grimaced, really thought about all those young lives thrown into the void, thrown into the inferno. “The losses amongst our veteran crews have been the worst.”
“But you’ve kept up training and replacements?” Severson tensed for a moment and his gray eyes smoldered, warned Harrison his benefactor’s seemingly forgiving nature was not without its limits, this day.
“We have,” Harrison hurried to reply. “But it takes time to mold a Valkyrie pilot. More, it takes time for squadrons to reform, to gel.”
Severson waved dismissively. “I just need Valkyries in the sky, Nehemiah. I need a force that looks like it can conquer a star system.”
Harrison frowned. “What...exactly are you talking about?”
The other manned grinned impishly and touched a particular icon in the globular, caused the display to zoom in abruptly, on one world. “Surigao,” Severson said.
Harrison leaned back in his seat. “The rumors are true.”
Severson’s glee diminished at that. “One of these days, Nehemiah, I’m going to understand how it is you always manage to be so informed.” The glimmer in his eyes acquired a razor’s edge. “That little spook pet of yours, Omura?”
Harrison shrugged. “Leaks are a Navy tradition, are they not?”
Severson chortled at that and his glee returned as he gestured at the star system in the hologram. “No matter. Yes, Surigao. I want you to review my plans, submit any modifications you think appropriate, and prepare a full invasion of the system.”
“The Union’s dug in, on the planet and in the asteroid belt,” Harrison said. “I’d considered an attack there, earlier on, but abandoned it when my staff showed me the projections for duration and losses. It would’ve been a lengthy siege and, at the time, there were easier pickings elsewhere.”
“Well, this is now the easiest picking,” Severson said.
“And the riskiest,” Harrison replied. “Tim, that’s cutting deep into Union space, threatening their lines of communications. They’re going to throw everything they’ve got at us in response. Look, I can take that system. But we’ll be badly overextended. I don’t know if I can hold it.”
“Sounds like what you said in your report about Fury.”
Harrison flinched and had to look away. That was a nasty swipe, for all that it was true. “And the Admiral can still have me replaced, if he desires.”
“Easy,” Severson said with a calming gesture of his hand, “easy, Nehemiah. The difference, this time, is that you won’t be expected to win the war all on your own anymore.” His smile spread to brilliant, expensively-maintained proportions. “I’ll be bringing the cavalry this time.”
Harrison’s brows bunched as unease gathered in his gut. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve finally pried reinforcements out of the Foundation Sector,” Severson replied triumphantly. “All those ships that’ve languished in orbit, guarding the fat inner worlds—think of it!” He pointed at the hologram. “Greer is going to come running when you hit, bringing everything he thinks he can spare, thinking he’s finally drawn you into a fatal mistake. But it’s he who will have been drawn in!”
Harrison’s unease intensified. “You mean to use the majority of the Fringe World Fleet’s hitting power as bait.”
“As an anvil,” Severson insisted, “with the Foundation Fleet as the hammer!”
“Tim, respectfully, most of the crews and commanders of the Foundation have hardly seen any action since the war began.”
“Which is why it is well that I will be taking direct command!” Severson proclaimed, his chin held high and his flashing eyes daring any response to it.
And Harrison’s unease sharpened to a point, jabbing through his gut. He governed his expression, his very breath, hid the reaction seething in his mind. Both of them knew Severson hadn’t so much as manned a station on a starship in two decades. If the Foundation Fleet’s experience was sparse, Severson’s was nonexistent.
“And we will be grateful to have you, sir,” Harrison replied with an earnestness so convincing he almost believed it himself. “Where will you have your flag?”
“On the Annihilator” sister ship to Harrison’s own battlecruiser “and we’ll be coming with squadrons from the Central Fleet, as well.”
“Admiral Chongway has been notified I presume?” asked with surprise.
“Chongway objected,” Severson replied, his tone going gruff, “and has thus been relieved of the Central Command.”
“I see,” Harrison said stiffly, suddenly glad to have played his own part so dutifully.
And he saw beyond that news, as well. Severson was consolidating his control over the Navy, just as the High Council was doing with the Alliance government. Perhaps the two moved in concert, or perhaps in competition. It was a deadly, deadly game Severson played, were it the latter. Noovin and his partisans had nationalized industry, increasingly denuded the power of the Assembly, and their legions of Council Guard thugs were popping up everywhere.
