Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (54 page)

The British admiral sighed.  “Very well.  Please hold our flanks while we recall our fighters and clear for surface action.”

“Roger that,” Jack answered and nodded to Betty.  She cut the transmission with a smile and Jack returned his eyes to the displays.  “Mischief, did you hear that?”

“Listening in, Boss,” Katy said as her face appeared on a display.

“Good,” Jack nodded towards the display.  “Time to get off my six and do some
real
work.”

She aimed an affronted look at him.  “What?  Keeping up with you isn’t enough?”

“I’m afraid not,” Jack returned with a chuckle.  “We
all
have to work for our living today.”

Katy sniffed.  “Actually, I rather hope all we have to do is sit around and watch today.”

“A woman after my own heart,” Jack said, covering it with a hand.

Katy winked.  “Don’t you know it?”

“I’ll cover starboard,” Jack said with a chuckle.

“Guess that leaves port for me then?”  She raised both eyebrows at him.

“Got it in one,” Jack answered.  “Now let’s move,” he ordered and brought the Avenger around to
Vanguard’s
starboard flank.  Betty’s drones spread out to cover the approaches to the British battleships, grav drives holding them in formation despite the buffeting of the gravitic waves.  His eyes flicked over to see Katy’s Hellcat and drones disappearing behind the massive
Dreadnought
.

He scanned his sensors, watching the British fighters power up and begin to move.  This was the most contentious part of any hyperspace assault, when the fighters that could not surface into normalspace either remained deployed to screen the fleet or slipped into their mothership to be carried up.  Fleet commanders had to choose how many fighters to leave behind or take with them, and if they brought them all home before surfacing, a well-timed counterattack from their targets could devastate the fleet.

Jack smiled as Aneerin’s plan sunk in.  He’d sent the Cowboys so the British could recall all of their fighters, giving them that much more firepower in system once they entered normalspace.  Jack had to hand it to the old man.  He never showed his cards to the table and always looked for an advantage.  Jack nodded very slowly as he considered that he would have to watch the old man.  He would have to learn from the old man.

“Jack?” Betty asked and he turned to see her staring at him with a curious expression.

He shrugged in response.  “Just realizing that I’m going to have to pay attention to the sneaky old bastard more than I thought.”

Betty gave him an amused smile.  “
Just
realizing?”

“So sometimes I’m a bit slow,” he returned with a snort.

“A
bit
?”  Her smile turned impish.

Jack raised an eyebrow at her.  “Hush, you.”

Betty jerked her head to the side and Jack shifted his gaze to look at the display she pointed out.  The British grav drives had come to life, and the fleet began to drive forward, crashing through the grav waves on their way to the Chinese world of Xin Shi.  Jack smiled as the Avenger kept pace with the
Vanguard
, riding the shockwave spreading out from the
Dreadnought
-class warship’s prow.  All around them over a hundred battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and frigates plowed through hyperspace, shredding the natural currents of the grav waves in their passage.  It was like nothing Jack had ever seen before.

He let out a long breath, relaxed back into his seat, and kept an eye on the map display.  It showed the fleet in all its glory, spread throughout all three dimensions, and the Cowboys’ drones interspersed between the ships, watching and waiting for any approaching enemies.  No red blips appeared.  Either they were catching the Chinese by surprise, or it was a trap.  Jack blinked at the thought and glanced over at Betty.

She returned a questioning look, wondering what his shift meant.

And then the comm. display began to flash, showing the order to surface and it was past time to consider anything.  Jack nodded, closed his eyes, and the universe flashed.  He opened his eyes to see the British fleet all around him, fighters boiling out of the motherships at maximum acceleration.  Sensor drones deployed with them, stretching out to scan normalspace for enemies.

The displays filled with Chinese forts and warships inside the Lunar Treaty Limit.  Nearly twenty forts held the approaches to the planet, with up to twenty warships supporting each.  They were smaller warships though, mostly destroyers designed with point defense in mind to support the forts.  Against the British fleet arrayed outside the limit, they would be little more than a speed bump.  Deep inside the limit, the remains of the Shang and Chinese fleets that attacked New Washington licked their wounds.  Less than one hundred warships, many of them could barely move, let alone fight.  Those capable of fighting would only delay the inevitable if the balloon went up.

Everybody had to know that any conflict would prove disastrous for the Chinese.  But a niggling concern wiggled its way into Jack’s brain, and he frowned as the British fleet did not move.  Something wasn’t right and he didn’t want to be here any longer than necessary.  “Why aren’t we moving?” he finally asked.

Betty aimed an odd look at him.  “They’re
talking
.  Demanding the Chinese stop harboring the Shang. 
According to plan
.  Do you want to listen?”

“I don’t know,” Jack answered in a low tone.  The tips of his fingers began to vibrate, drumming the edge of his seat with a worried rhythm.  He scanned the displays, looking for anything that could be causing him so much unease, as he tried to act like nothing was wrong.  “Is it interesting?”

Betty followed his actions, her face beginning to betray worry as well.  But she kept up the act.  “Well, that depends on what you consider interesting.  The legal arguments pertaining to why the Chinese cannot harbor the Shang due to their repeated violations of the Lunar Treaties, despite the fact that the Shang did not sign them, are actually very fascinating.”

“Great.”  Jack rolled his eyes.  “The
bureaucrats
are going to war.  I think I’ll pass on listening in.”

“Your loss,” Betty returned, momentarily brightening in reaction to his jocular tone.  “The Chinese counterarguments are very inspired.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed as he focused on a region of space outside the British formation.  “Can we get a focused scan out there?”

“On the way,” Betty answered without pause, and he saw one of her drones rocket out in that direction.

“And get the drones into a tight formation please.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but her drones responded instantly, coming back towards the
Vanguard’s
flank.  “I don’t see anything out there.”

Jack frowned and let out a long breath.  “Neither do I.  But if I were planning a trap, that’s where I’d come in.  Catch us between the proverbial rock and hard place.”

“There’s more to it than that,” she said in a low voice, demanding an explanation.

Jack growled as his fingers continued to twitch.  He had to fight to keep his hands off the controls.  “I feel like a missile’s headed our way.  I don’t want to be here.”

Betty nodded and one of their drones flashed and disappeared.  A second later, a display began relaying sensor images of hyperspace, showing it empty of all threats.  Of course, with sensor range in hyperspace being so pitifully short, someone could be a few thousand klicks away and be effectively invisible.  More drones throughout the fleet began to flash out, and the hyperspace display expanded.  Jack gave her a questioning look.

“You’re not the only one with bad vibes,” she explained with a shrug.  Then she shook her head.  “But there’s just nothing out there that we can
find
,” she added with a growl of her own.

Then the displays lit up with alarms and Jack stared at them as ship after ship after ship flashed into existence.  They appeared by the scores and fighters swarmed out of carriers and other larger warships by the hundreds as the unknown fleet recovered from the shock of surfacing into normalspace.  Jack frowned, wondering who could have a fleet that large after the destruction of the last few months.  He glanced over to see Betty’s drone not yet close enough to get a good scan.  And then it clicked.

“Oh frak,” he whispered as ships continued to flash into existence, filling out the incoming formation.  There was only one other major nation that could field a fleet that size.

“Jack?” Betty asked.

“The Russians are coming,” he said in a grim voice.

The British fleet spread out around Jack’s Avenger starfighter, battleships and dreadnoughts forming a wall of battle in the heart of the fleet.  Cruisers, destroyers, and frigates deployed in a defensive spherical formation around them.  The entire fleet of one hundred warships held position less than four lightseconds away from the Chinese world of Xin Shi, the second Chinese colony in the Alpha Centauri trinary star system.  Hundreds of fighters flew through and outside the fleet formation, slotting into point defense grids to protect the fleet against incoming missile swarms.

Scores of other ships filled the Avenger’s displays at a point nearly two lightseconds further out from Xin Shi, some ships still rising out of hyperspace on the flanks of the massive fleet.  Hundreds of fighters boiled out of the warships, painting the plot a lurid red.  One of Betty’s drones approached the new arrivals, and the displays began to fill with information, ship classes flashing by almost faster than Jack could read.  Almost.

On top of his console, above the main displays, the twenty-centimeter tall holoforms of Jasmine and Betty did their best to act casual as the information flowed.  “You’re right.  The Russians are coming,” Betty said with a sad smile.

There were some things that Jack needed explaining.  But watching the information propagate across the displays, filling them with information about the entire Russian fleet, he knew this was one instance that he really didn’t need help with.

“I rather gathered that,” he said in a wry tone.  “Do you have any
other
helpful information?”  He licked his lips then, really hoping they weren’t here to fight.  Of course this wasn’t really a good time for a vodka drinking game.  And then there was just the feeling he had that it was inevitable now.

Betty and Jasmine shared a quick glance.  “Well, at least they’re blind,” Jasmine finally said with a shrug.

“Ah, yes.  Blind.” Jack returned.  The transition from hyperspace to normalspace tended to do Bad Things to improperly shielded electronics.  Or wide open organic eyeballs for that matter.  When he’d traveled to Luna as a child, he’d been curious enough to override the safety glass and watch them arrive.  Five hours later, he’d still been seeing reflections of…whatever it was that a ship went through.  That had been…a long time ago…and he still could not accurately describe what exactly it was he’d seen in that moment.  It had been amazing and terrible at the same time though.

And he didn’t even know if he accurately remembered it at all, or if it was just his mind trying desperately to recognize something, anything, in something that was inherently unrecognizable.  In all two centuries of star flight, no sensor or camera had ever recorded what happened in that blink, that flash of light between hyperspace and normalspace.  It was like the ship disappeared and reappeared and there was nothing in between the two, nothing to connect them.

AIs had gone insane trying to analyze it.  Which was a pretty trick when they weren’t properly alive to begin with.  The lucky people accidentally exposed to it didn't remember anything at all.  Jack remembered.  At least he thought he did.  He just could never put it to words.  Not even thoughts really.  It was beyond his ability to imagine, and way outside his ability to describe.  It was like colors he could barely hear, or sounds he could almost see.  It was…
wrong
.  He’d never held his eyes open during a transition since.

There were immense energies involved in leaving hyperspace, which usually ran up and down the skin of a ship making the transition.  That was almost certainly part of the flash of light, maybe all of it.   It could overload sensors of any kind if they were not properly shielded, and caused static discharges throughout the ship.  In the early days of star travel, all crewmembers had to wear insulted uniforms during the transition to protect them from the deadly effects.

The Peloran had shown humanity how to shield against those affects better, but they'd never helped the Russians in that way, and so they simply lagged behind the technological curve.  They built powerful ships, strong ships, rugged ships, but ultimately the Russians lacked the technical sophistication the Western Alliance took for granted.  They made up for that with the simplest Russian expedient that had saved them against every invading army outside of the Mongols.  Quantity truly
did
have a quality all its own after all.

As static electricity flowed up and down the Russian warships, blinding every sensor they had, the Russians did what the Russians always did.  They bypassed the problem.  Fighters, insulated inside their hangers during the transition, launched into space to see what was out there.  Their sensors were not as powerful as the Russian warships, but there were a lot of fighters, and they transmitted everything they saw back to their motherships.  AI minds, protected deep inside the cores of the Russian ships, assimilated the data, showed it to their Russian masters, and began to react to what they saw.

They opened fire on Betty’s drone.  She did a very good job of dodging the vast majority of the weapons fire, but when thousands of weapons opened up on a single target, dodging ninety-nine out of a hundred meant that “only” dozens generated solid hits.  They shredded the drone in seconds.

“Fraking Ivans,” Jack growled.

Betty sighed.  “Yeah.  Sorry about that.  But at least now we know whether they are friendly or not.”

Jack grunted.  “The real question is why they’re crazy enough to pick the losing side.”  He nodded towards the displays showing the Russian fleet accelerating towards them.

“I’d guess they think they aren’t on the losing side,” Betty said, her smile turning grim.  She waved at a display that showed fifty of the Shang and Chinese warships beginning to accelerate out of orbit, climbing up out of the gravity well.

“Well, this is going to suck,” Jack whispered.  “
How
long before the Brits can dive again?”

“Five minutes.”  She did not seem happy with that number.  Jack ran the numbers in his head and pursed his lips.  The British couldn’t get back out in time to avoid action.

Jack breathed in and out, focusing his attention on what would come next.  “Then I guess we’ll be shooting some Ivans and Wangs.  Pull the drones back to point defense formation.”

“On it,” Jasmine and Betty said in unison and turned to send out their orders.

Jack watched the British fleet respond to the threat, fighters and destroyers deploying between the capital ships and the Russians.  He glanced at the displays showing the Cowboys maneuvering as well and nodded as he reached for the control stick.  A quick twist spun them around to face the incoming Russians as they continued to maintain course with the British.

“Could you bring everything up please?” Jack asked, glancing at the displays that showed a number of their weapons greyed out.

Betty smiled.  “Well, since you ask so nicely.”  The display showed the laser turret dropping down out of the nose, and the lasers deploying from it.  “Lasers online,” Betty reported in a soft tone as the displays showed all three gravitic cannons extending from the wings and nose.  “Grav cannons online.”  The missile pods extended out of the main fuselage and rotated back and forth to make certain they were operational.  “Missiles online.  All weapons operational,” Betty finished with a satisfied smile.

Jack shivered as the sound of her voice rolled over him.  “Oooh, I like that.”

Betty laughed at him, shaking her head.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” he asked.

She gave him an innocent look.

And then the displays flashed as the Russians began to open fire.  Missiles exploded from their flanks, sweeping around to wash over the British fleet.  Jack grabbed the controls, took a deep breath, and let every conscious thought he had go away.  He became the moment, living on instinct, and felt as much as saw the Russians missiles meet British counter-missiles and lasers defense batteries.  Betty began to move their fighter and drones in a complex random pattern to make them hard to hit, and their lasers strobed out to destroy incoming missiles.

Nothing made it through, but the Russians continued to close and Jack began to move the stick whenever he felt like it, adding his own organic randomness to the evasive maneuvers, as the British responded with a full broadside of missiles.  Russian fighters flew in ahead of another missile salvo and Jack shifted the fighter to port to avoid it as their lasers chattered away at them.  The remaining drones echoed his movements, sweeping missiles out of space with their lasers as the British fighters met their counterparts between the two fleets in flurries of destruction.  Grav cannons opened up from every drone, cutting into the Russian formation.  Five of the Russian fighters exploded or ripped apart under the assault, as the British missiles began to arrive in the Russian fleet.  Like the Russian missiles, nothing broke through the point defense at this range.

The Russians continued to close the range though, and the missiles on both sides drew closer before being shot down.  Finally the displays showed Katy’s fighter and drones pulling up or dipping below the
Vanguard
and more counter-missile fire began to stream out to meet the Russian attack.  The incoming missiles exploded far away from the
Vanguard
and her escorts, though many of the destroyers and smaller warships began to suffer hits that left them streaming wreckage.

“Thanks, Mischief,” Jack said as he kept his concentration on not being where some enemy missile wanted to be.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got your back, Boss,” Katy responded.

As missiles passed back and forth between the two fleets in a never-ending stream of explosions, the Russians closed to within a lightsecond.  Massive spinal gravitic cannons opened up, stabbing into the British fleet.  They missed the wildly evading warships though, unable to accurately track from that distance and time delay.  The British returned fire with larger numbers of broadside-mounted gravitic turrets, but beyond ripping apart some unlucky missiles they achieved similar accuracy as the Russians.  Modern gravtech vessels were too maneuverable to let themselves be hit by a mere lightspeed weapon at such ranges.

Jack flicked the controls to the side because he felt like it and a missile passed by a second later, somehow having passed through all of the anti-missile fire of an entire fleet.  The
Vanguard’s
inner point defense grid picked it off moments later, as Betty locked onto a distant Russian target and opened fire with all three gravitic cannons.  Her drones joined in, sweeping space around the Russian cruiser with lances of twisted gravity.  Maneuvering thrusters kept their target moving in random directions, but one gravitic cannon managed to sweep over the Russian.  At that range, the Russian deflection grid practically ignored the attack, stopping it without so much as a twitch in power levels.

“Good hit,” Jack complimented her.

“Too bad it didn’t hurt them,” she growled back as their lasers flashed, intercepting more incoming missiles.

“Don’t worry, they’ll get closer,” Jack said, his tone more grim than he’d meant it to be.

Betty grimaced.  “Yeah, not worried about that.  They seem rather determined on that matter.”

Jack winced as a Russian gravitic cannon smashed into a British destroyer.  The deflection grid flashed for an instant before failing, and the gravitic beam ripped through the British ship.  A gravitic turret caught by the assault overloaded and exploded, slashing the destroyer from stem to stern, and then another followed it.  Finally the destroyer broke in half and began to drift out of formation, streaming atmosphere and wreckage.

“Yes, it would appear that they are,” Jack said in a grim tone and pulled the throttle to the side, engaging the thrusters that sent them sliding to port.  A second later, a swarm of missiles came flying by, trying desperately to claw their way to him.  Most of them fell to the laser turret and the rest charged towards the
Vanguard
only to be shot down by the warship’s inner defense grid.

Another swarm of missiles flashed past him from behind, boiling out to meet more incoming Russian missiles in a roiling wave of explosions and Jack moved them to the side again.  The Russians were closer now.  A quick glance at the displays showed the Chinese and Shang were closer too, building up a speed that would see them shooting past the battle in less than a minute if they kept accelerating.  Of course, sometimes that was all you needed.

He glanced over at another display showing the British and Russian fighters in between the two fleets.  The Russians were slower and less accurate, but they had heavier armor, weapons, and numbers on their side, an advantage that was telling.  The British fighters were beginning to fall back towards the fleet in disarray, one or two at first, and more as the seconds went by.

“Hey, Chief,” Jack said, nodding to Betty to transmit his words to Charles.  “Should we be doing something about those fighters?”

“Do not worry,” came the response.  “Everything is going according to plan.”

Jack raised an eyebrow as he studied the displays, then swung them around on a whim.  “It looks to me like they’re about to break and run,” he finally said.

“Yes it does,” was all Charles returned with.  He sounded pleased.

“Ah,” Jack whispered as he connected the dots in his mind.  So that was the plan.  “Right.  Got yah.”  He jammed the throttle over and the Avenger shot to starboard as a lance of twisting gravity passed by the fighter.  Jack whistled at how close that had been.