Rebel Hell (Hell's Jesters, #3), page 6
“Eat this!”
Jerry flicked the selector switch to missiles, watched the targeting halos go red over the onrushing hull, and pulled the trigger. Even as the hull thunked with the release of the salvos he was tearing back on the stick to pull them free. The twelve missile spread boiled down on the ship without bothering to wind through evasion paths, slashing straight in. Already struggling shields fluttered and crashed white.
The Hog groaned free, shivering as the blast rived at its own shields. The Valkyrie on their tail was gone, caught in the conflagration or peeled off Jerry couldn’t say. But a howl of release burst from his chest as he viewed the damage done. Secondary explosions walked over the spine of the planet-buster, shields dying as projectors blew out and lesser blasts ripped through hull.
A soul-slamming shaft of white fire killed any triumph he felt.
Despite the fighting around it, despite the damage done, the mass-driver had fired again.
GREER COULDN’T HELP a wince as the second asteroid station dissolved in a blast like miniature star. But he turned it to a scowl as horrified whispers passed amongst the bridge crew of his flagship, the heavy carrier Concordia. The expression was enough to silence even the most shaken.
“The web is beginning to unravel, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Arrian said with steely calm from the tactical station.
He nodded as a shimmer went through the tractor fields woven across the hologram before him. The Number Six Station had held a series of junctions together that’d nearly broken when Number Four blew earlier in the fight. Without Six, the tractor beam anchors had too far to project and a quadrant of the web came down.
“All craft are to fall back to the next marker,” he ordered with calm he most certainly didn’t feel. “Signal Station Number Eleven: we will reestablish the web with them as the focal point.”
“Yes, Grand Admiral.”
Geiger’s host began to surge into the gap as the Union fleet retreated. The Jesters—bless the ravening jackals!—had ripped the Alliance’s ass off and now ran pell-mell through the heart of their formation, scrambling any attempt at an organized pursuit. But those Alliance commanders were good and chasing fire tore into Greer’s people. He lost half a dozen ships in as many minutes, had to hide another wince.
He’d hoped to hold them longer at the outer layer of the web. But Geiger, the single-minded bastard, shared none of his predecessor’s concern for casualties, had flung his full weight straight into the meat grinder. It’d been insane and Greer had taken the bait when it looked like that damned planet-slayer exposed itself at the fore, flung a full sortie through the web right at it, to horrendous cost. Barely a quarter of the fighters and fast attack ships he’d sent in had returned.
Goddamn Geiger.
He had more of everything and what he had was better. Greer’s poor devils went in with last-gen Firestorm fighters and starships two decades out of prime service. Pluck and grit only made up for so much. The fight had already grown so desperate Greer wondered how much longer he could keep the precious nucleus of his modern warships out of it, how long before his three squadrons of rebel Valkyries would have to go in.
We’re not played-out yet, though, he thought, forcing calm into his nerves. Got a couple more tricks ole’ Hal Geiger isn’t going to like, at all!
“How long till everyone’s within the new perimeter?” he asked.
“Less than five minutes,” Arrian replied. “Alliance ships are pressing the chase.”
“Is the Revelation with them?”
“She just passed through the gap, yes, sir. She appears to be staying close to the Immolator.”
Be a hell of a thing to bag ‘em both, Greer thought with a slowly-spreading smile. “Any sign that they’ve spotted the mines?”
“None, sir.”
Greer turned to the Concordia’s commander, Flag Captain Mina Hayabusa, a woman as combative as she was tiny. “We’re sure they’re all active?”
She smiled coldly from her chair and touched an armrest control. Fresh blips sprinkled the tactical display, dozens of them, some already in the midst of the advancing Alliance juggernaut. “At your command, they went dark right after we spread them, no data link and passive sensors only. But our sensors remember where to look. They’re ready, Admiral.”
“Thank you, Captain. Stand by to activate.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Admiral,” Arrian piped up, “the Jesters!”
Greer scowled as icons color-coded blue for friendly swept into the web gap after the Alliance vessels. It looked like a mixed group, not all of them, maybe one fighter wing. They swarmed into the heart of the fleet, the Revelation clearly their target. A terrible, fiery garden of explosions spread with them.
Those Hellhounds are mean pieces of work, Greer thought, folding his arms as he watched what would be a futile fight. He’d love to get a hold of one of them. After the Battle of Junction, when the Jesters abandoned that world as a hideout, Greer had had his engineers comb the ruins of their base. They’d found a lot of weird things, but scant evidence of how they made those nasty flitters work. Apparently, the Jesters hadn’t trusted the Alliance enough to leave anything.
Greer grinned to himself. The feeling’s mutual. He didn’t trust them, their indiscipline and the mess they were making of his battle being the least of his reasons.
“They’re going to get caught in the middle of the mines, sir,” Hayabusa pointed out. “Should we warn them?”
“They wouldn’t listen, even if we did,” he growled. But the ripple of pain at the corners of the captain’s eyes forced a softening of his tone. “All right, package and transmit an encrypted signal on the direct channel they gave us. Don’t give a reason; just tell them to get out!”
“Aye, sir.”
Greer watched the battle rage on. Hateful strobes flicked across the tactical, marking the demise of asteroid stations left exposed when the Union pulled the web back. Mostly automated, they’d still required tiny crews. Greer could only imagine the desperation as those men and women scrambled to escape pods with Alliance Valkyries swooping in to strafe them from the face of existence. He could only imagine the despair they’d know when they found themselves crammed into craft with only rudimentary thruster packages, trapped millions of kilometers in enemy-controlled space.
More sacrifices. Greer resisted the urge to rub his brow, give any sign of distress or the damnable headache blooming behind his eyeballs. He thought of that last talk with Levine, tried not to let the President’s gloom infect him now. But it all felt like one tradeoff after another. And still the Alliance advanced.
“Sir, we have all ships in the markers now!” Arrian announced.
Greer nodded and squared his shoulders as though sloughing off a great weight. “Signal the Number Eleven Station to energize. Bring the web back up!”
“Yes sir!”
He glanced at Hayabusa. “That signal got sent?”
“It did.”
“Then they’re on their own,” he rumbled. “Activate the mines!”
The captain touched another of her armrest controls and a shimmer went through the tactical display, mine icons yellowing to indicate they’d received the activation signal and were powering up. As Greer watched, each drew a dotted line from itself to a vessel in the Alliance fleet, in several cases multiple lines converging on single ships. That done, the mines began to move, a slow lumber at first, but gaining speed as they traced the projected paths to their end points.
Gravity mines weren’t a new concept, essentially overpowered generators left in space to simulate gravity wells and draw ships out of hyperspace. They could also pin a vessel in a location, if their field was powerful enough, at least until someone blasted them.
But with these, the Loudon engineers had shown a particularly sadistic flair for innovation. Rather than use their gravity projectors to draw vessels to them, these variants had been built to invert their gravity, and draw themselves to the vessels. And each one mounted a huge antimatter charge.
Greer couldn’t help a savage smile as he watched obvious panic in the scrambling of the Alliance ships, the sudden shift of their fire and attention as their commanders recognized the trap. The mines converged in what looked like horrid slow-motion on the hologram, but would actually be terrible speeds, each accelerated has they drew closer and the gravity bond to their targets intensified. Some would strike with such kinetic force their explosives would hardly add to the damage.
A chain of flashes lit up an Alliance cruiser and its shields died with a dazzle. Cheers erupted from the bridge crew as a larger flash rent the ship, fusion core breached by damage and blowing the vessel apart. The same drama repeated from another corner. And another. Each blast drove louder, more ferocious cheers from Greer’s people.
They’d taken a lot on the chin; time someone else felt it.
A pair of strobes punished the Immolator. Greer held his breath a moment, released with resignation as Geiger’s flagship rode through them, shields aflutter, but still intact. The battlecruiser was throwing out a ferocious volume of fire, as were its escorts and Greer tightened with realization as three and then four mines drew their lines towards the Revelation.
The mines rushed towards their fatal coupling. One flashed apart, a victim of the covering fire, followed almost instantly by a second. A torrent of missiles claimed a third. The last sailed through the crossfire, its icon rushing, rushing, and merging with that of the planet-buster. A smear of light enveloped both.
Every breath on the bridge held.
The Revelation limped clear, intact. But—
“We’re detecting ionized particles! Debris! She’s hit!” Arrian read something from his console. “She’s crippled, Admiral!”
The bridge crew roared.
Greer bared his teeth like a predator sighting red flesh. Blue coded icons were sweeping across the hologram after the hobbled planet-buster.
The Jesters had come for the kill.
TIM DODGED A TORRENT of fire to port and instantly had to juke again to avoid the spinning wreckage of what looked to have been an Alliance corvette. “Li,” he called into his communicator, “you still with me?”
A globular flashed up to Tim’s left, showed a sweat-drenched face and crooked, gritting teeth. “Barely,” his Second Squad Leader replied. “You’ve given us a hot ride!”
“It’s about to get hotter!”
Tim banked into a tearing arch that would carry his Hellhound away from the firestorm around Geiger’s flagship and use the mass of the planter-buster to actually shield them from its fire. The rest of his Jesters followed in a ragged formation. He didn’t let himself see the roster hologram, swiped off to one corner. He didn’t want to know the cost so far.
Loudon loomed ahead.
The fight had rushed by him in a flood of adrenaline and hell-filled impressions. Yellow lights blinking on the systems display showed him damage he didn’t remember the starfighter taking. Something rattled in the aft fuselage and the cockpit stank of burnt things. And he hurt, his body pounded, pain slivering along muscles tensed too long, and jaw sore from clenching
He ignored it, had to keep going.
Red had ordered them to regroup, but he’d silenced her channel to him, would claim malfunction or interference later. When he’d told Jeanie he was done with her he hadn’t actually meant the words. But somehow they’d become reality. That chilly, calculating witch had been pulling his strings for years and it had been disaster after disaster. Now the greatest nightmare of all hung before him and he was through with her games.
Blaster fire thinned and Tim wrenched the Hellhound back to port, looping towards the planet-killer with the pack of his wing—what remained of it—howling after him. The surprise of the Union mine field had scattered the core of the Alliance fleet, ships stricken or destroyed, others pulled apart by different crises. The carefully-knit tapestry of their data-linked defenses had unraveled in the confusion, leaving every craft for itself.
Leaving the Revelation isolated.
“What have we got left, Jeanie?”
“Number Three and Four scatter packs,” the AI replied. A red pip pulsed on the systems display. “But it looks like we’ve got a jam with Four.”
“Again?” The word came out a squeak as he strained to dodge point defense fire flicking out from the planet-killer. “That thing’s been completely replaced twice!”
“Working on it.”
“You have ten seconds!”
Alarms warbled from the tactical. Red icons swept across the tail of Watkins Wing, streaks of their fire already chasing Hellhounds.
“Li!”
“I see ‘em,” the squad leader replied.
Flights of his group broke off at insane angles to mix with the suddenly churning swarm of Valkyries. Death spread with fire flicks and screams over the tactical network.
Tim pinched his lips together. Li had gone with the spoilers, was in that scrum now. But he couldn’t let it matter.
Only Loudon mattered.
Fire from the Revelation intensified. Tim dove between will-the-wisp streams of plasma bolts and ground his teeth as acceleration weighed him back into the flight couch. Pulse hammered in his temples, down to fingers clenching the control stick. Triple targeting halos went red over the image of the planet-killer, particle beams, plasma blasters, and missiles systems all locking on. He keyed the first two and squeezed the trigger.
Azure and cyan fire rained down on the Revelation, Tim’s fire joined by other Jesters’. A faint nimbus of deflector screen energy shimmered to life to meet it, but died with a crazed flutter. Damage from the mine explosion had crippled more than its propulsion, had stripped its shield capabilities, it seemed. Energy fired slashed through to savage hull plate, birthed explosions that flared with hellish life before the airlessness of the void snuffed it out.
A ping barely heard over the cacophony of alarms in the cockpit reminded Tim the Number Four still hadn’t come on line. Looks like it’ll just be Three, then. A smile so maniacal it hurt gripped his face. He’d faced one of these before, the Revelation’s twin over New Jefferson, and sent the abomination to its justly-deserved hell. The missile lock halo shimmered intensely crimson, its accompanying target lock alarm reaching drill-bit intensity.
Looks like I’m going to bag the pair!
The planet-buster’s mass spread out before him, suddenly so damned close and rushing for his face that a thrill of terror shot the length of Tim’s body. He spun the Hellhound through a final frenzy of point defense fire and stroked the trigger. The jolt of missile launch went through the starfighter and Tim wrenched it out of its dive, dumping power into thrusters to get clear.
Annihilation washed across his aft view screen. His missile spread hammered across the back of the planet-killer, blistering into half-globes of ant-matter detonations. Fire like superheated metal slashed through hull plate, tore through the ship to erupt out of its belly. Secondary explosions rippled its length and the whole thing began to tumble, aflame, but astonishingly still intact.
Until the missile swarms of the following Jesters converged upon it. For a long moment of crazy flickers, explosions enveloped the planet-buster while Hellhounds sailed by, scattered in every direction. Then a titanic flash rent it down the middle, a blast traveling the length of its mass-driver trench, and split it into first two, and then dozens of fire-wreathed blades of shattered hull spreading with deceptive grace into darkness.
“All right!” Tim roared to a chorus of victory howls across the tactical network. “Get clear!” Blaster fire from the rest of the fleet spattered amongst the Hellhounds. “Get out of here while they’re still in shock!”
He side-skipped to avoid a particle beam and for a moment Loudon hung before him, a marble of blue-green swirl and memory. Her face smiled upon him and he could almost see the way home.
But he couldn’t run to her. Not yet.
SWEAT PRICKLED ACROSS Geiger’s brow as he watched the Revelation dissolve across the tactical hologram. Uncertainty squirmed to life for the first time in his guts, a chill, tentacled thing that latched on to bones and bowels and squeezed.
“We have shields back up to seventy percent,” Harriet’s voice droned on distantly. “They should be at ninety in three minutes.”
“The Jesters are breaking off,” Curry added with an angered note. “They have to be hurting after that.”
We’re the ones hurting, Geiger wanted to snarl. A faint haze hung in the bridge, smoke leaking through the ventilators from damage on the lower decks. And the air stank of hot metal and, faintly, burnt flesh. Uncertainty thrashed again, found new grips in his viscera. He ground his teeth till he thought a molar would split. Got to keep going, though...
The damage the Jesters had done to the supply and support ships had exceeded his fears, but could be surmounted. He knew there would be hearings, later, accusations of neglect. He’d faced it all before, faced worse. But he didn’t need them. This wasn’t going to be some lengthy siege. His fleet was here to destroy.
But the losses were mounting, beginning to spook even his cold-blooded calculations. The math got hard at some point, how many ships lost to slog through these defenses and still fight a fleet engagement over the world, and then invest it afterward—all the while expecting another ambush? And after that, would the Loudon traitors even surrender? Some of these Unionists had shown remarkable, almost suicidal resolve. The planet-killer would’ve reduced both those risks, picking apart Loudon’s defenses and serving as a terrible reminder in the aftermath.
But now...
“They have fully reconstituted their web,” Curry reported from his station.
“Admiral, we’re receiving signals from the unit commanders.” Chandler turned from the communications station to face him, sweat sheen adding a feverish glimmer to his features. “They’re requesting orders. They want to know what we do now.”
“What we do now?” Geiger snarled with enough rage to send a flinch through Chandler’s meaty face. “We keep going, Commander!” He pivoted to Curry. “How much damage did we do to their ability to keep that damned tractor field up?”
