Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (4 page)

“You were busy preparing to meet
me
, and you gave the dogs your time,” the cyber said, each word deliberate.

“Yes,” Jack answered with a thoughtful frown, still trying to find the best words to explain his feelings.  “Yes, if we all gave each other time, maybe the worlds would be better places,” saying the one thing that almost seemed more stupid than the rest of the story put together.  He just couldn’t help himself.

“Indeed,” the cyber said very, very carefully.  “Your turn.  One question.”

Jack licked his lips, bringing himself back under control.  He would
not
sound desperate.  He breathed in, he breathed out, he calmed himself, and he asked the first thing that came to his mind.  “Would you join me for dinner?”

The cyber laughed, long and heartily, at the request.  “Be careful,” she said after her laughter trailed away.  “You don’t want God to think you are blaspheming I think.”

“I think He’d understand,” Jack answered with a shrewd smile.

“Perhaps He
would
,” the cyber intoned thoughtfully.  “You impress me.”

Jack’s smile grew, along with his confidence.  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

The cyber chuckled again.  “It means I have one more question for you.  It will either be easy or impossible to answer.  Ready?”

Jack swallowed his nerves down.  “Go fish,” he said, forcing the smile to his face.

The cyber chuckled.  “Jack.  If there were no Shang, no war, what is the one thing you would want to do above all others?”

Jack felt his breath go out.  That was real hard to imagine.  Without the Shang, his parents would still be alive.  “We always used to fish,” he finally said, his jaw set hard to keep his emotions in check.  “I’d want to do that again.  Ride around in a boat.  Stop and let the wind and waves take me…wherever they want to take me.  Party with friends.  Play music.”  He blinked and took in a deep breath.  “I never realized how…” he let himself trail off rather than finish that sentence.  It wouldn’t do to remind her how much he hated the Shang for taking that away from him.  He shook his head and let out a long breath, calming himself again.

“It was paradise you know.  Now…looking back on it.”  He shrugged, blinking what were definitely
not
tears away.  “I’d want that back.”  He blinked again and let out another long breath.  “You know I lived most of my life up there, on the water?  The wonderful thing about the Boundary Waters is just how damn
big
it is.  You can be on it every day, and see something new, go someplace you’ve never been.  See some species of bird or fish you’ve never seen before.  It’s…
amazing
up there.  It’s paradise.  What more could a man want?”  Jack stared at her speaker and gave her a sad smile.  “But…that’s gone now…and it’s not coming back, is it?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” the voice said with a smile.  “The universe is a grand and amazing place and it is far more resilient than we give it credit for.  So what do you want more, Jack?  Do you want to kill the Shang for taking that world away from you, or do you want to
build
a new world
like
it?”

Jack looked away, considering the question very carefully.  He could make the easy answer that of course he wanted to build a better world, but it wouldn’t mean anything in the end if he was just mouthing the words.  He sighed and looked at the speaker again.  “I want to kill Shang real bad,” he said in a sad tone.  “You’re right about that.  But that’s a long grueling fight.  It’ll be Hell out there and I know that.  And I’ll do it.  And I know I might not come back.  That’s the oath I took when I signed up.  I’ll kill ’em, and I’ll keep killin’ ’em until there’s no more to kill.”  He pulled in a deep breath.  “But for all that I want ’em dead, I don’t want to spend my whole life killin’ ’em either.”  He smiled at the speaker.  “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“For what?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Jack let out a long, cleansing breath.  “For reminding me about the things worth fighting
for
.”

“You are welcome, Jack,” the speaker said in a joyful voice.  “And you will not be fighting alone,” she added as a hologram appeared in the middle of the room.  It started as a genderless human figure and began to take on a female form in seconds.  As the figure began to come into focus, a yellow sundress appeared around her.  Her feet came into focus and white sandals appeared on them.  Long blonde hair puffed into being, framing a very cute face with blue eyes.  She wasn’t beautiful, not the kind that would get his attention in that way.  But she reminded him of something…of someone.  And then it clicked.

“Damn,” he whispered.  She looked like she could be one of his cousins.  Not any
one
cousin, but an amalgam of all of them and yet not really any of them.  Someone had done her homework.  He smiled.

She smiled back.  “Hello, Jack,” she said with a voice that made him feel almost homesick.  It wasn’t any of the voices he remembered from the reunions, just like the rest of her wasn’t, but it was all so close.  She was family. 
His
family.  She made a show of looking in a mirror that appeared in the wall and nodded.  “Yes, I think I like this.”  She put a hand to her throat and laughed.  “I like that too.”  Finally she turned to Jack again.  “And now for the name.  I think we will be working with each other for a long time, so I have to make certain it is one I like.  Don’t you agree?”

Jack nodded, as comfortable in her presence as he’d been with anybody in his life.

“Yes.  I think that will work,” she said, her head cocked to the side in thought.  She really did have all of the mannerisms of humanity down perfectly.  Then her hologram seemed to snap into solidity.  She looked real, like flesh and blood; like he could touch her skin and it would be warm, like she could touch him and he would feel it.  She smiled at him again.

“Jack, you can call me Betty.”

Jack studied the fighter in front of him and the other pilots.  It was too big to be a real fighter, twice as long as the Hellcat the United States Marine Corps had been adopting over the last fifteen years.  Unlike the aerodynamic Hellcat, the Avenger was angular, harsh lines showing that the design process was still ongoing.  The long nose, as long as the Hellcat on its own, jutted out of the massive fuselage that housed the cockpit.  Thick wings spread out on either side, carrying what looked like massive gravitic cannons, but Jack wasn’t certain he liked that.  In fact, he was pretty certain he didn’t.  He couldn’t see the missile racks that made the Hellcat such a powerful space superiority fighter.  With gravitic cannons, the Avenger would be more of an attack craft, designed for anti-shipping duties.  Though what looked like an engine tacked on above and below showed that it was designed to maneuver.

Then there was the heavy weapons turret, housing what looked like four heavy laser arrays, hanging below the nose.  That was twice the laser power of a Hellcat’s smaller laser arrays, but the Hellcat had three weapons mounts, including a turret on each wing.  He didn’t like the idea of having all the weapons on a single turret.  It would be too easy for a lucky shot to blow them all off, and then anyone piloting this thing would be in serious trouble.  Jack pursed his lips and turned to the other pilots, wondering if they were as worried about this fighter as he was.  One look was all it took.  They were.

A colonel stepped forward, and every pilot and cyber came to attention, saluting him automatically.  The colonel saluted back and frowned.

“At ease,” he ordered and the pilots and cybers relaxed.  “I am Lieutenant Colonel Mathew Johanson, commander of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys.  For those of you for whom the news blackouts actually worked, the Shang attack destroyed all squadrons in California and near Washington DC.  All regular and reserve squadrons have already been called to duty, protecting what we have left.  The Cowboys have been reinstated and we are recruiting new pilots.  You have not yet been assigned a squadron.  I’m sure you understand your reason for being here.”

“Guinea pigs,” someone whispered under his breath.

Johanson scanned the line of recruits like he’d bitten off a particularly sour grapefruit.  “I understand that many of you have expressed a preference to piloting Hellcats.  The Cowboys are not a Hellcat unit.  We have been assigned the first Avengers off the production line, by the supreme intelligence of the United States Congress and the personal politicking of the Senior Senator of the Great Republic of Texas.  Oorah.”  Johanson waited until he received a ragged series of Oorahs before continuing.  “We are looking for volunteers to fly in this revitalized unit.  Please note that my superiors have informed me that if we do not get enough volunteers, there will be volun
tolds
.  Congress has spent a crapload of money building the Avengers and they want them in space.  Understood?”  The ragged chorus of Oorahs was even more ragged this time.  “Now that we understand each other, Congress has sent us an expert on the Avenger to brief us on its abilities.”

Jack groaned at the last statement.  The rest of the pilots around him groaned as well, realizing with him that they were about to get a speech from a political animal.  Johanson waved a man forward and the pilots groaned again.  Not a political animal.  It was worse.  It was an egghead, and it wielded one of the weapons of their trade like a sword.  A laser pointer.

“I am Doctor Kevin Parrish, from the Office of Naval Research.  Pilots, please refer to your pads for more information.  Cybers, you should be getting the datadump now.”

Jack glanced down at the pad on his chair arm and his eyes narrowed.  There were lies, damned lies, and statistics, and he trusted them all equally.  He did not pick up the pad.

“This is the Grumman F-12 Avenger,” Parrish said with a wicked slash of his laser point across the fighter.  He then settled it down by pointing at one of the fighter’s four main engines, on the wings.  “These are gigawatt-class fusion torch drives, the most powerful ever built into a fighter.  They can generate right angle maneuvering while in combat, making the Avenger very hard to hit.”  He aimed the pointer at the main fuselage, behind the cockpit.  “The gravity drive here can accelerate from zero to one percent of light speed in five point three seconds without losing gravity wave cohesion.”  The laser point slashed down the long nose.  “And using the nose as a focus, the drive can also translate into hyperspace on its own.  No capital ship required.”

At that, the pilots and cybers alike shifted around in surprise.  Jack frowned.  Fighters were too small to enter hyperspace.  He scanned the exaggerated nose, seeing the power couplings running up and down it, and began to nod.  With enough energy, it just might be able to do it.  He glanced at Betty and she returned his gaze, mulling something over in her mind, before looking back to the fighter.

The laser pointer moved to the turret under the fighter’s nose.  “She carries a turret with four laser emitters, that can fire in all directions in both anti-ship and anti-missile modes, allowing her to slot into a capital ship’s anti-missile system network seamlessly.  She also has two gravitic cannons designed to penetrate a deflection grid,” he continued, aiming the pointer at a large port just under the cockpit on the forward edge of the fighter’s port wing.  “In squadron strength, when focusing fire, a squadron of Avengers will be able to bring down even a
capital
ship’s deflection grid.  No missiles required,” he noted with emphasis.  “For protection, she is covered with laser reflective armor and can generate a deflection grid more powerful than any other Terran fighter.”

The doctor smiled at them and brought the laser pointer down to the floor with a wicked slash.  “In short, the Avenger is faster than the Hellcat, more maneuverable than the Hellcat, carries twice the firepower of a Hellcat, is harder to kill than the Hellcat, and is capable of destroying capital ships in squadron strength.  This is the ultimate heavy fighter, a new generation of ships that we will use to kick the Shang’s asses across the universe,” the doctor said with what could almost have been a wicked smile, if the man had known how to make one.

Jack glanced at the other pilots to see what they thought.  They seemed to think the same as him.  The Avenger was too big to be a proper fighter.  He couldn’t believe it could actually maneuver the way the doctor said, not with all that mass to move.

Johanson stepped up quickly.  “Does anybody have any questions?”

Jack looked around at the others again before sighing.  “Look, I’m certain there is a really good presentation in here,” he said with a wave towards the pad.  “How many gigawatts the main reactor can dish out and all that stuff.  But she’s just
too big
to be a proper fighter.  And I don’t care what he says, a Hellcat’ll turn circles around this thing.  It’s
designed
to kill anything smaller than a destroyer.  This thing is…just a big target.  How can this turkey fight a Hellcat, let alone a
Shang
fighter?”

“Perhaps
I
can answer those questions,” a calm voice said from the fighter.

Betty smiled and Jack narrowed his eyes at her.  She nodded towards the fighter.  Jack pursed his lips, not wanting to listen.  She lowered her chin and put both hands on her hips.  She was
not
going to take no for an answer.  He sighed and turned to the fighter.  “Yes?”

“Do you come from the Showme State?” the fighter asked.

“Paul Bunyan’s State actually,” Jack returned without missing a beat.

“Ah.  Of course.  You are familiar with tall tales then.”

Jack chuckled.  “I’ve heard a few in my time.”

“Good.  I will not need to explain the concept then.”

Jack smiled at the fighter’s amused tone.  “I think I get it.”

“Then I assume you think my…press agent’s claims are such?”

“I am
not
a press agent!” the doctor shouted in indignation.

“Potato, potato,” the fighter said with a sigh.  “Your presentation works well on politicians, not so well on pilots.”

Jack frowned at the interplay, still considering the fighter’s question.  Something about the fighter made him realize it was waiting for him again.  He smiled at it.  “Yes I do, but perhaps you can show me I’m wrong,” he said, laying the challenge out for the fighter.

“Challenge excepted,” the fighter said with what sounded like a smile.  “Now if you will allow me to demonstrate, I will show you why I am far better than any mere
Hellcat
,” the fighter finished with a verbal sneer.

“You don’t like the Hellcats?”

The fighter harrumphed.  “They are too full of themselves.  Stuck up jocks who think they are the best thing since the recycler.”

“Pot?” Jack asked, his eyes shifting to rest on Betty.

Betty smiled back at him.  “Kettle?”

“OK.  Fine.  You got me,” the fighter said in annoyance.  “Maybe we’re just built to know we’re the best, but I’ve
seen
the Hellcats’ stats and I
know
I’m better than they are.

Jack gave the fighter an appraising eye.  “You’re bigger than they are.  You won’t maneuver as good in a fight.”

“I’ve got better maneuvering thrusters than they do.  And my main generator gives me better control over gravity than Hellcats have.  I make up for the bulk.”

“Interesting.  So you think you can match them in combat?”

“Mostly.  I have better deflection grids than they do, though in pure numbers they have
some
maneuvering advantages,” the fighter said, reluctance in its tone.  “I do make up for the bulk, but they have a lower starting point.  They will however never be as good as I am in anti-ship operations.  If all you ever want to do is fight other fighters, the Hellcats are great for you.  If you want to kill big ships, I’m the fighter for you.  Also, I can translate through the hyperspace barrier.  Fighters are real hard to see in hyper.  Do you like sneak attacks?”

Jack gave the fighter an evil smile.  “I love ’em.”

“Well then, imagine all the things you can do with a fighter that can fly through hyper and kill a warship when it arrives, without being detected through the barrier.”

“I’m imagining.  I like what I’m imagining.  How ’bout you?” he asked, turning to Betty.

“Me too,” she said with a smile aimed at the fighter.  “You do a good job selling yourself.”

“
Somebody
has to,” the fighter said with a bit of a growl.

“May I?” Betty asked and stepped forward, her hand held up.

“Of course,” the fighter returned.

Betty walked up to the fighter and put her hand on it.  She stood there for several seconds before turning to glance at each of the other cybers.  She waved them forward and they followed her example.  After a few minutes of low murmurs back and forth, Betty strode back to Jack, confidence in every step.

“The fighter isn’t exaggerating, Jack.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly.  “I just don’t know.”

“I do,” Betty said without hesitation.  “I want to fly that fighter.”

Jack frowned and looked at her for a long time.  She returned his stare without blinking.  Not that she really needed to blink of course, but it was real unnerving when she just stopped it altogether.  “Are you certain?” he finally asked.

“The Hellcat’s a short range fighter, Jack.  Only good for killing things.”  She waved an arm at the Avenger.  “He’s got hyper.  He’s got fuel stores that are amazing.  We can
go
places we’ve never been with him, Jack.”  She finished, her gaze challenging him to dispute her.

He opened his mouth and shut it, remembering what he’d told her.  He looked down at her feet, seeing the white sandals she still wore, a small rebellion against the uniform standards even cybers had to follow when on duty.  The sandals she’d first worn right after he told her about going places he’d never been in the Boundary Waters.  Right after she’d told him she did
not
want to be caught in a never-ending cycle of vengeance with him.  He sighed and looked back up at her with a smile.

“Using my own words against me I see.”

“I’ll take every advantage I can get,” she answered with a wink.

“That’s my girl,” Jack said and patted her on a feathery shoulder.  He turned to the fighter and waved a finger at it.  “I’m not saying yes.  But my partner…well....”

“She’s a smart cyber,” the fighter supplied.

“Yeah.”  Jack turned to take in the other pilot teams and frowned.  “Ah, fighter?  You wouldn’t happen to have enough ships here for everyone to work with would you?”

The fighter laughed.  “Do you really think we would come here without enough for that purpose?”

“We work for the government,” Jack said, deadpan.

“Touché.  Yes there are enough of us.  In the hangar.”

“But they haven’t been
briefed
!” the doctor wailed.

“Shut up,” the fighter ordered and the man stepped back to the wall again.  “Colonel?” the fighter asked.