Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (10 page)

“How long ago is this?” Jack asked, trying to get a feeling for how things might have changed since their last update.

“This is a live signal,” Hal answered with a smile.

Jack blinked.  “What?  How?”  It was impossible to send a message between normal and hyperspace.  They had to be physically transported by a ship or drone.  There was no way to have a live signal.

Hal shrugged.  “It’s complicated.”  He chuckled.  “I’ll show you later if you wish, but for now you can rest assured that this is live.  Now prepare to transit in three…two…one.”

Jack closed his eyes against the flash, opened them and saw the battle laid out before him.  Explosions wreathed Fort London and its mighty multi-layered deflection grid flickered in and out a section at a time.  The destroyers and cruisers around it spewed weapons fire in all directions, supporting the main cannons on the fort.

The Shang surrounded them, firing broadside after broadside of missiles and lasers towards the fort.  British point defense networks shot the missiles down by the scores and the deflection grids twisted the lasers away while the fort’s gravitic cannons played across the Shang ships.  Four British destroyers drifted away from the fight, lights flickering and massive wounds in their flanks.  The fort had obviously not been able to stop all of the missiles.

“Fire,” Hal ordered and a hundred gravitic cannons from the fighters escorting the capital ships opened up, twisting gravity between the two fleets.  Across the Shang flank, deflection grids with most of their energy devoted to holding off the fort’s weapons crumpled when five or more beams focused on one target.  They ripped armor and weapons alike into space, leaving deep scars in the Shang ships.  It was the sixteen heavy cannons mounted outside the Peloran warships’ hulls that did most of the damage though, punching through every deflection grid they hit with thousands of gravities of gravitic sheer.  Sixteen Shang ships belched atmosphere and debris and fell out of formation.  No single ship exploded, but an entire flank of the Shang englobing force faltered.  They shifted power to their deflection grids to protect their wounded flanks from the Peloran and most of the next salvo of grav beams twisted away, spraying in all directions until they faded away.

Missiles and lasers exploded from the Shang ships, charging the Peloran Battle Squadron, and the point defense lasers reached out to shoot them down.  Most of the lasers missed the wildly maneuvering warships and fighters, and the few that hit twisted off into space.  Explosions from incoming missiles wreathed the Peloran squadron, each succeeding wave closer to the deflection grid until the rolling front of explosions filled Jack’s view.

“Transit in three,” Hal transmitted.  Jack saw the deflection grids of the squadron flickering under the assault.

“Two.”  Jack swallowed as their fighter’s grav cannons finished powering up for another shot.

“One.”

The cannons fired one more time as Jack closed his eyes and the world flashed around him.  He opened his eyes to see hyperspace in all its colors around him again.  He licked his lips and checked the sensors to make certain everybody made it.  They had.

“Congratulations,” Hal transmitted.  “We have completed our first strike.  To those who have never done it before, you have drawn first blood.  May you bleed our enemies well in the future.”  A beam appeared on the displays to another location and the squadron accelerated towards it.  “The good news is that we have badly mauled them and received negligible damage in return.  The bad news is that they know we are here now and they will be prepared for our next assault.  Be ready.  The rest of the battle will not be so easy.”

“Oh joy,” Jack muttered.

Hal raised an eyebrow on the comm. panel but didn’t say anything.

“How are we?” Jack asked, looking to Betty.

She smiled back.  “We’re good.  No issues at all.  I’m rerouting power for the next surfacing now.”

“Good,” Jack said and flicked his eyes over to the sensor screen to see they were almost at the next location.  He checked the panel showing the battle and noted that the Shang had modified their englobement pattern.  The damaged ships were spreading out into the rest of the formation, while undamaged ships took over their area.  All of the ships had spread their deflection grids out to all sides.  They were still good enough to twist most attacks away, but he saw a grav beam from Fort London spear through one of them and the ship jerked, atmosphere and debris spewing from its flank.

“Transit in three…two…one,” Hal transmitted as the Shang ship struggled to maintain its position in the formation.  Jack closed his eyes, saw the flash of light exploded through his lids, and opened them to see the wounded ship in their sights.

“Fire,” Hal ordered and once again the grav cannons of every fighter in the Peloran squadron came to life.  This time only half of the beams hit their now-wildly maneuvering targets, and the vast majority of
those
twisted off into space, useless.  Not even one of the Cowboys’ shots did more than twist away from the ready prey, but each gravitic beam the deflection grids were forced to turn away weakened the grids a little bit.  A swarm of missiles enveloped the target area, most caught by point defense and their explosions rolled through space.  A few found their range and exploded, causing deflection grids to further fluctuate.

That was when the sixteen main Peloran grav cannons powered up to life and reached out to grab the Shang.  Once again, only half managed a hit, but every single one that
did
hit smashed into an overtaxed deflection grid.  The beams cut through and dug deep into their targets, ripping armor away from the hulls and sucking in atmosphere and pieces of ships.  The beams rotated like drills, ripping and pulling on their targets, twisting back and forth and panning across the ships.

Two of the Shang ships dropped their deflection grids and stopped maneuvering.  That alone caused the grav beams to swing off target, but instead of shifting back to hit the ships again, they faded away.  The two ships were dead in space, their main generators ripped apart.  A third ship, the one speared by Fort London, broke in half under the assault, and the Peloran ceased their assault on it as well to concentrate on true threats.

And of course the true threats had not been idle.  The Shang were prepared for this strike, and even though they couldn’t know where the Peloran would strike from, having sensors on the watch for energy surges, having point defense in position, and more importantly having heavy weapons ready to fire back in all directions turned out to be a useful tactic.  It took pressure off the British, and Jack could tell they were already beginning to push back at the Shang, but it allowed the Shang to pour fire into anything that dared attack them, like a stray Peloran Battle Squadron.

Their first wave of missiles, fired instantly after the Peloran squadron surfaced, washed over the Peloran formation and Jack winced as every deflection grid wavered.  Several Peloran fighters screening the Peloran prows exploded or ripped apart, and the Shang lasers stabbed into the wavering grids, searching for weak spots.  They found them and the lasers slashed into Peloran armor, vaporizing or cutting it off to send it floating away as the Peloran warships slewed away from the assault.  Again and again, the lasers followed the Peloran maneuvers, searching for the weak spots, and Jack closed his eyes as an explosion engulfed one of the Peloran destroyers.  He saw spots of light when it faded away and he blinked before looking at it again.  Its starboard gravitic cannon was simply gone, and its entire starboard side looked like a car door mauled by an angry bear.

“Ouch,” Jack whispered as the wounded destroyer spun its starboard side away from the Shang to take future hits on its fresh port armor.

“Not as bad as it looks,” Betty answered as their gravitic cannon spun up for another salvo into the fleet.  This time one of the beams broke through a weakened grid and ripped into a Shang cruiser.

“Transit in three.” Hal began as more missiles crisscrossed space between the two forces and point defense slashed across the incoming waves.

“Two.”  A massive gravitic cannon ripped through a Shang destroyer and the target exploded.

“One.”  Jack shut his eyes as the Shang missile swarm began to explode all around, flicking his stick and throttle back and forth to make them harder to hit.

A flash of light filled the world, a scream of tearing metal assaulted his ears, Jack opened his eyes, and hyperspace filled his view again.  He sniffed at the smell of burning metal and winced.

“Ow!” Betty said, her hologram recoiling in pain.

“What?” Jack asked, wondering how bad it was.

“Ow!  Ow!  Ow!  That hurt!” Betty repeated, slapping her legs as if putting out a fire.

Jack sniffed at the burning smell again.  “Are…are we supposed to be burning?”

“No!  Ah…no burning.”  Betty looked up at him, froze as if suddenly realizing her hologram was echoing her actions, and gave him a nervous smile.  “Just charring.  We’ll be fine in a few moments.  Just let me nail this down.”

“What is your situation?” Hal asked, obviously for Jack’s benefit.  He probably already had the full download.

“Oooh, just a bit of burn in the capacitors.  Give me a minute to slap together some repairs before we go back up please.”

“That tearing sound?” Jack asked, eyebrows raised.  “That sounded like more than just capacitor burn.”

Betty winced again, rose up on her tiptoes as if looking back, and pursed her lips.  “Oooh, well nothing deadly or anything,” she said, obviously not wanting to say what happened.  “We just…ah…well…just lost life support.”

Jack froze for a spit second in shock.  “Wait…what?  Life support!”  That was most definitely an important system to keep if he had anything to say about it.

“Oh, don’t burst a blood vein, Jack,” Betty said airily.  “We have canned air that should last just fine.”

Jack’s jaw dropped.  He shook his head and pulled it back up. “Yeah.  Right.  Should?”

Betty shrugged.  “Well, try to breath slowly.  Don’t get excited.”

Jack shook his head again.  His life support, the one thing that kept him alive, was gone and she didn’t want him to get excited about it?  “Right.  That’s like asking a high schooler not to get excited when he sees you in that sundress,” he said, trying to push some humor into his voice.  He really hoped it didn’t sound frantic instead.

Betty smiled and twisted as if modeling for an audience.  “Why, Jack.  This old thing?  I just picked this up off an old crystal I found.”

Jack giggled, and this time he was certain the nerves had gotten through.  He shut his eyes, breathed deeply, let the breath out, and reminded himself to
be calm
.  He opened his eyes again and looked at her.  “Seriously.  We good?” he asked.

“Yeah, Jack,” Betty answered in a calming voice.  “Just let me finish running new power lines and…got it.  OK.  I can start the charging process now.  Ah…ooh…that’s close.  Hal, can I have another minute please?  I had to back off on my charge.  Nearly burned the lines again.  Either I have faulty power lines or the ten second energy transfer tests under combat conditions were hopelessly optimistic.”

“Oh, you might get more than a minute,” Hal answered with a wince.  “The
Swift Wing
is reporting problems recharging.”

Jack looked over at the destroyer missing a starboard side.  “That her?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Hal said, pursing his lips as he obviously got some new data.

Jack frowned as an earlier concern returned to his mind.  “Was that her gravitic cannon exploding?”

“Yes,” Hal said with a shrug.  “And now you know why we mount them
outside
the hull.  You know the Albion used to say we had shiny big gun syndrome.  We…keep them at a controlled overload setting for extra damage projection.  Works great unless they have a catastrophic failure or they take damage at an inopportune moment.  Should that happen, their location means we still have a ship to repair afterwards.”

“Right,” Jack said, thinking about the two grav cannons on either side of him.  He looked down to either side where they rested.  “Um…what about my Avenger here?” he asked, feeling more nervous than he had about them.

“Oh, we wouldn’t design them like that,” Hal answered.

“Gee.  Thanks for making me feel better,” Jack said with a scowl.

“Ouch,” Hal said with a larger wince.  “The
Swift Wing
reports complete core meltdown.  Be ready to translate in a minute.  We’ll be leaving her behind for the next run.”

“I’ll be ready,” Betty answered.

“Just how serious
is
that?” Jack asked, glancing at the destroyer in question as she began to drift away from the formation.

Hal followed his gaze with a frown.  “Oh…long run, not at all.  I’ve come back from worse.  Short run, she’s dead in space.” Hal said.  “We’re going to have to make sure we get back in time to keep her from dropping into your sun or something
real
serious of course.”

“Right,” Jack whispered, clearing his throat.  “Like dropping into a sun isn’t serious.”

“Yeah,” Hal said with a wink.  “I think sunbathing is on Tuesday’s schedule.”

Jack couldn’t help it.  He chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound too manic.