Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1) (11 page)

It would be nice to live someplace where the gender ratio wasn’t three to one against. Even a safe career as an Imperial bureaucrat wasn’t automatically enough to pick up girls.

He sighed again. The board plotted his new arrival deep back in the sensor shadow of
Aeocan
, the larger moon. Right at the edge of the safe range for Jumpspace.

He didn’t have a direct line of sight to it from here either, so the signal was just a vague blob while he waited for the computers to challenge it and register the ship’s identity beacon. If he was lucky, they would spend at least half an hour over there getting their act together, finding their ass, and he could turn them over to Evgeny.

A second beep, lower, made him curse under his breath. The ship was already moving, accelerating even, according to the scanners, so her crew was really on the ball. They would be in direct laser communication range in a few minutes, way too soon for him to ignore them and get an early start on his vacation.

Three rapid beeps, an ascending trill, made him drop his coffee mug.

It bounced off the board, flipped once perfectly in the air, and shattered on the floor. If there had had been anything in it, that would be all over his leg right now.

Over the horizon, back in the shadow of the moon, that one little lost freighter had suddenly turned into three signals. As Tomas watched the board, a dozen more appeared.

He hung with one hand over the emergency alert signal. If he opened the locked–down lid and pushed the button inside, all hell would break loose.

It occasionally happened. Two years ago, a pirate corvette had appeared, seized a freighter, and gotten her away before the fighters could catch up.

But that mess of radar signals over there suggested that the vessel was a carrier. He hadn’t heard of any pirates getting their hands on a carrier. That would be an absolutely chilling thought, if they did.

Then a new sound intruded. A high–low chirp, that would repeat forever until someone turned it off. The traffic computers had finally identified the ship’s identity beacon.

RAN Auberon.

Oh, shit. An Aquitaine fleet raid? Here?

Tomas crossed himself unconsciously as he flipped the switch open and pushed the button. Red emergency lights came on. The two–note emergency tone was being repeated in every room on the station, and being transmitted down to the surface.

Tomas could imagine people skittering like ants with their hill kicked over.

Aquitaine
was here.

Chapter XVII

Date of the Republic November 14, 392 2218 Svati Prime

It was always like this. Pure. Clean.

In many ways, it was better than sex. Or chocolate.

Jessica felt her brain ascend to a higher plane of consciousness as
Auberon
came out of Jumpspace and leapt into battle.

The big board went from the fuzzy edges of prediction to hard lines as sensors began isolating and identifying everything around them.

Ao–shun
below them, a tan and blue marble.
Aeocan
between them and the Imperial Station orbiting geo–synched over Stereihofen. The trailing moon,
Remora
, above and outside them.

“Zupan,” Jessica said, waiting for the Pilot to glance over at her. “Dead center. Nicely done, Centurion.”

She watched the tall blond elf blush as she went back to playing her symphonies on the navigation board.

Jessica sighed internally. She knew Kwok had never taken the time to recognize the everyday excellence of his crew.

It was amazing what the occasional “Good job,” would do for someone’s morale.

“Sir,” a man’s voice came from the opposite side of the bridge, “I have a firing solution.”

Jessica turned to look at the gunner who was Tobias Brewster’s replacement. Aleksander Afolayan was a junior Centurion who had just barely joined the ship before she did. He was a dark–skinned man with bright blue eyes a ready laugh.

“Confirm, please.
Barn owl
under the pole?” she asked.

“Affirmative, sir,” he replied quickly. “From here, we can snap a single stealth missile low, get a gravity slingshot, and most likely catch the station completely blindside.”

“Very good, Afolayan,” she said. “Hold until the other noise will mask us unleashing that bird. And then fire at will.”

“Aye, sir,” he smiled.

Jessica thumbed a button to talk to the whole vessel. “Flight Deck, this is the bridge,” she intoned. “Crash launch the wing now. Jež, take us up and over the top of the moon. Flag Centurion, squadron to conform to our movement as planned,
CR–264
in the lead,
Rajput
trailing. All guns hot, all enemies hostile.”

A chorus of voices filled the air. Iskra sent a scrolling marquee, as always. Jessica leaned back and tried to relax. With any luck, they had such total surprise that this would almost be a training exercise.

They would certainly never catch the Empire so completely asleep again, so they needed to make the most of it.

Below, the entire vessel shivered with the combined bump as
Auberon
began spewing out fighters and a single gunship.

And a single, sneaky missile.

War had just come to the frontier.

Chapter XVIII

Date of the Republic November 14, 392 2218 Svati Prime

Space was filled with fighters, silently racing downrange.

Jouster
took the lead as the wing organized, his team in the lead. The second wing, under Marta Eka,
Southbound
, took up station above and behind his. Farther back and on the flank, the Saturation & Scouting Wing, two big S–11
Orca
Assault Bombers, and a little P–4
Outrider
probe fighter. And behind them all, one Kartikeya–class gunship,
Necromancer
, ready to wreak utter havoc.

It was a weird mix of craft. Technically,
Jouster
and his group was outgunned by the twelve old Imperial melee fighters over there, right up to the moment that the S–11’s started flinging short–range missiles into the mix.

He couldn’t imagine that the Imperials were going to be on the ball enough to get all the pilots scrambled fast enough to matter against his Flight, let alone what they would be facing when the big ships came over the horizon.

“
da Vinci
,”
Jouster
called out over the Flight comm, “what’s the status over there?”

“Fox in the henhouse,
Jouster
,” came the reply. The probe pilot,
da Vinci
, also known as Senior Flight Centurion Ainsley Barret, had probably hacked into their secure channels by now. She did things like that.

Her little craft was completely outclassed by anything the Imperials could throw up, but having her here with a dedicated sensor pod instead of missiles gave him a tactical edge worth half a squadron, all by herself. “Somebody over there hasn’t even encrypted. Planetary Governor himself is broadcasting orders in the clear on channel fourteen.”

“Roger that. Break. Saturation Wing and
Necromancer
, launch your first wave of missiles now.”

Jouster
smiled as his sensors picked up the first two Imperials fighters finally launching over there, headed the wrong way and furiously trying to accelerate so they could loop around and engage them. “Might as well see if we can score a hit on the launch bay and put them entirely out of action early.”

Ξ

Jouster
looked down at his scanner and tried not to laugh. The Imperials had managed to get six fighters up before a missile had gotten through the defense array and triggered a set of secondary and tertiary explosions, blowing out the module that held the Imperial fighter squadron. Nobody else was coming out to play.

“Team, this is
Jouster
,” he called over the comm, “Six on Six, go to melee.
da Vinci
, keep an eye out for anybody coming to help.”

A chorus of assents and hoots sounded back at him as his Flight began to close.

“Bombardment wing,” he continued, singling out the two S–11’s and the gunship. “
Starfall
,
Damocles
,
Necromancer
, prepare for your strafing run on the enemy station. Remember, badly damaged, but not destroyed. Hold fire if you have any doubts.”

A bright light appeared over the planet, lighting up the horizon. On his scanner, the side of the Imperial base turned to hash as an explosion blew materials and substance into space.

“All teams, cancel previous orders,” he said with a savage joy. “Bombardment wing, the enemy station is down. Repeat, enemy station is down. Go straight at the fighters and get them to run if you can. Fighter Wings, swoop in on them from both sides. Let’s dance, people.”

“Prisoners?”
Uller
called back.

“Negative,
Uller
,”
Jouster
responded. “Boss wants the fear of the Creator today and clear skies for Phase 2. Only survivors are those that go straight down right now and get planetside ahead of us. Let them go. Everyone else gets splattered unless they can outrun us.”

Jouster
looked down at the scanner once, adjusted himself in his seat slightly, and watched a missile track outbound from their formation like a lightning bolt.

This wasn’t going to take long.

Ξ

Jessica listened to her crew cheer as high–powered optics picked up the Imperial station hit with a flash of light and escaping air.

“Afolayan,” she said as the noise died down, “was that one of ours?”

“Affirmative, sir,” the dark man replied, turning to smile at her across the space. “The stealth bird got right on top of them before they saw it. Barn owl got her mouse.”

“Good shooting,” she smiled.

Around her, the bridge crew was all smiles and cheers. It had been a long time since
Auberon
had been able to take it to the
Fribourg Empire
with this much emphasis.

The logs had shown a few encounters with pirates that ran at the first sign of the
Republic
, plus a few deep space rescues of disabled freighters. Nothing nearly this exciting in years.

In a lower orbit, the two groups of fighters began an elaborate ballet, but one that was a foregone conclusion. A handful of missiles leapt out from her Wing and shattered the enemy’s already–weak formation like a glass pitcher of water dropped off of a counter.
Jouster’s
pilots swooped in on the suddenly–fleeing Imperial craft like sharks chasing tuna.

“Okay, people,” she called across the bridge, “time for us to get to work.”

She waited a moment for things to quiet down.

“Navigation,” she continued, all business. “Bring us into a polar orbit, low enough to avoid moons, high enough to miss satellites. Scanners, who do we have in the neighborhood? Tactical, begin plotting everything within five light seconds and developing firing solutions. Flight Deck, looks like a few of your birds have damage, but everyone is coming home safe. Prepare for retrieval and lockdown.”

Heads went down to boards and fingers danced across controls. The noise dropped down to a low murmur of questions into comm devices and the background noise of the air systems, fighting a losing battle with the rank musk of adrenalin.

The smell of fresh coffee perked up her nose.

Marcelle stood beside Jessica’s station with a mug, lid opened to let the brew breathe.

She grabbed it with a smile and took a sip. “You really do spoil me, Marcelle.”

The tall woman smiled back and nodded, silently withdrawing and exiting the bridge.

Jessica sipped and watched her crew work.

A light came up on her board from the Science/Scanning Officer, sitting well forward in a quiet corner.

“Commander,” Centurion Giroux said, his normally quiet voice alive today with energy, “there is a freighter making a run for Jumpspace that you might find interesting. Her manifest shows the vessel is loaded to the gills with metal bar stock. Mostly steel, but also a variety of fairly rare industrial alloys. Pretty valuable cargo.”

“We’re not pirates, Giroux,” Jessica called across the bridge. She watched his head come up and turn to look at her across the suddenly–silent space between them.

“Aye, sir,” he called back with a smile, “but if we’re going to be out in deep space, well behind enemy lines for a while, we’re going to use up a lot of materials doing maintenance. This and the occasional grain transport would let us run wild over here until we ran out of munitions. Plus, we get to kick an Imperial insurance company in the shins.”

Jessica smiled. This crew was developing a great potential for mischief.

Speaking of…

Jessica clicked on the comm. “Engineering, this is the bridge. What is the status of
the bomb
?”

Even she couldn’t call it anything else these days.

“Ten degrees below freezing, sir,” Moirrey’s burr came back almost immediately. “Background radiation detectable, but not dangerous, unless you slept in the freezer with it for a month. She’s ready to go, any time you want her.”

Jessica looked up and realized that every single face on the bridge was turned, watching her with anticipation, except the marine guard in the corner whose job was professional paranoia. Or utter lack of imagination. Maybe both. Marines were like that.

She scanned back and forth. A few of her people looked down or blushed in embarrassment, but the rest just waited.

Jessica took a deep breath. Her nostrils flared. She smiled a hard, predatory grin back at them.

Up until this moment, this had just been a flamboyant raid, deep into enemy territory. Annoying, but merely a footnote in the overall history of a war that had been going on, spasmodically, for over a century. What she was about to do would guarantee her her own chapter.

Or a hangman’s noose. Maybe both.