Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (55 page)

“You OK?” Charles asked, his voice betraying concern.

Jack winced as he glanced at a display that showed some stress fractures on the port wing.  “Yeah.  They singed me a bit but we’re still flying.”

“Then keep it up.  We are about to get busy.”

“Got it, Chief,” Jack finished, paused for a bit and pulled up on the throttle, sending the Avenger straight up.  Missiles came screaming by as the Avenger’s lasers chattered at them.  The gravitic cannons spoke again, playing across the Russian cruiser again with two beams this time.  It shrugged them off with ease, though when several British cannons hit it a second later the Russian’s deflection grid flickered.  It held, but Jack knew it was only a matter of time before casualties began to mount.

As if on queue with his thoughts, three Russian destroyers bracketed a British cruiser, ripping her nose off with one lucky hit.  Jack winced.  Those Russian gravitic cannons were powerful, possibly even more powerful than the Peloran cannons.  The British deflection grids didn’t seem capable of stopping them.  That was going to lead to serious troubles once the Russians found the range.

“Here they come,” Betty said and Jack shifted his eyes back to the display showing the fighters.

The British fighters had finally broken and were falling back en masse.  The Russians accelerated to follow, but the British were simply faster and they quickly escaped the deadly knife-fighting range the engagement had begun in.  They streamed back towards the British formation, and the Russian fighters reformed their scattered squadrons as they led the main Russian fleet into a more decisive firing range.

“Still going according to plan, Chief?” Jack asked as the Russian gravitic cannons and missiles scored hits on several British ships, ripping another destroyer apart.  The Russians had yet to lose a single warship, and the fighter formation was doing its job well.  And then there were the Chinese and Shang approaching firing range from the planet.

“Yes, Jester,” came the patient response.

Jack chewed his lip for a moment as he studied the displays.  “Is it too early to say the plan sucks?”

“Yes,” Charles answered, a hint of grim amusement in his tone.  “It is.”

The displays showed a situation going from bad to worse, with three minutes left on the countdown before they could even consider diving out of the battle.  They needed to do something quick if they were going to stop this from turning into a disaster.  He could feel it in his bones.

“Great.  Tell me when it’ll stop sucking, please.”

“Real quick, actually,” Charles returned.

Betty shifted, unfolding and then crossing her legs the other way to get his attention.  “We’re getting priority targets now,” she announced, nodding towards the appropriate display.

Jack followed her motion and smiled as he saw the lights propagate across the display.  “Nice,” he muttered.

“So glad you approve,” Charles said with a chuckle.

Jack looked at Betty and she gave him an innocent smile.  He hadn’t meant for her to transmit that bit.  She shrugged.

He sighed and held his gaze on Betty.  “Just tell me when.”

Betty relaxed and looked at Jasmine.  They shared a quick smile and a nod before Jasmine faded out.  It was time to get serious.

“Cowboy One to all Cowboys,” Charles said in a clear tone as the British fighters continued to retreat from the Russians, returning to the fleet.  “Break in three…two…one…
break
!” he finished with a shout and Jack slammed the throttle forward.

Around him the displays showed every Cowboy, fighter and drone, exploding away from the British battleships and dreadnoughts they were protecting to accelerate past the fleeing fighters.  Jack licked his lips as British missiles arced around their formation and accelerated towards the Russians.  The plots cleared, and for the first time absolutely nothing flew between Jack and the enemy.  He swallowed, flicked the stick to the right as several Russian missiles tried to track him, and saw the drones boiling past the Cowboy fighters like a plague.

And then the British fighters stopped running.  They spun around as if on queue, paused a second to finalize their firing solutions, and a salvo of missiles shot out from them that caused Jack to wince as they passed his fighter in a torrent of fusion-powered flames.

“Fire!” Charles shouted and Jack’s Avenger shook as their new missile batteries spoke in anger for the first time.  All three gravitic cannons erupted, twisting the very fabric of space between them and their targets.  Even their lasers switched to constant fire, strobing their targets as quickly as they could cycle without overheating the systems.  Every Cowboy fighter and drone opened up with every weapon they had, filling space between them and the Russians with missiles, roiling gravity waves, and a steady stream of lasers.

The Russian fighter formation never saw it coming.

Jack pulled in a long breath and let it out, breathed in again, let it out, and focused on the now, on being ready to move like a leaf on the wind.  He concentrated on nothing, while being aware of everything.  He felt the bite of a five-point harness on his shoulders and waist.  His hands gripped the control stick and throttle, fingers running over the buttons and triggers that allowed him direct control of the Avenger starfighter.  The Avenger’s nose stretched out twenty meters ahead of him, a lance of grey against the darkness of space.

Four lightseconds behind him, the Chinese world of Xin Shi and its defenses rested in space.  A matter of minutes ago, they’d been the center of his attention.  Now they were nearly forgotten.  Only the fifty Chinese and Shang warships accelerating out of orbit held any interest to him, and at the moment that was simply a passing interest, too far away to be a threat for now.

Directly behind him, over one hundred British warships sailed, their starboard weapons turrets firing gravitic beams and missiles as quickly as they could cycle, filling space around Jack with devastation.  Hundreds of British fighters filled space between him and the warships, adding thousands of small missiles and laser pulses to the destructive energies flowing past him.

Around him, sixteen Cowboy fighters accelerated away from the British fleet, the center of his attention, the center of his world.  Ten Avenger starfighters and six Hellcats fired gravitic cannons and missiles at their targets.  Over a hundred drones joined in as they flew around the Cowboy formation in a complicated pattern of cyber-controlled random evasive maneuvers making them hard for incoming missiles to hit.  Not impossible of course as some were finding, but very difficult.

Directly before him, nearly a thousand Russian fighters bore down on him, the Cowboys, and the hundreds of British fighters that had been running from them mere seconds ago.  They had been firing a steady stream of gravitic cannons, missiles, and lasers at the British, but Jack could see them reorienting to fire on the Cowboys.  It was a pity that it was simply far too late for them.

Less than a lightsecond in front of him, over two hundred Russian warships approached the British fleet, not to mention a certain Captain Jack of Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 112, the Cowboys.  Russian spinal gravitic cannons and heavy missile barrages shot past him, targeted on the much larger and easier to hit British warships.  They were still too far away to be accurate, but their ranging shots were getting better.  This was going to be interesting.

He looked away from the displays, flicking his eyes up to where Betty sat on top of the console, her back to the stars shining beyond the canopy.  She would have been twenty centimeters tall standing, but sitting on the console with her legs hanging over it she was considerably shorter.  Her decidedly non-regulation yellow sundress ended around mid thigh, and long blonde hair framed the vaguely Scandinavian face she’d assumed the day she was born.  She’d picked the sundress that day too.  The day she’d chosen to fight with him in The War against the Shang.  And now the Russians were joining The War.

He sighed, wondering if she thought she was getting more than she bargained for.  Wondering if she was regretting her decision.

She cocked her head and aimed a reassuring smile at him.  There was no regret at all in her face.

Jack smiled at Betty as they went to work.  The Avenger shook as their new missile batteries rippled salvo after salvo of missiles towards the Russians.  All three gravitic cannons continued to fire, twisting the very fabric of space between them and their targets.  The four individual laser turrets and the quad laser turret in the nose fired as quickly as they could cycle, pausing only to cool down.  All around them, the Cowboy fighters and drones fired as well, filling space between them and the Russians with missiles, roiling gravity waves, and a steady stream of lasers.

The British missiles swept in on their own torrent of twisting gravity and engulfed the center of the Russian fighter formation in a mass of roiling explosions.  Even the displays couldn’t accurately count how many Russian fighters died in that single coordinated strike, but they could easily recognize the hole that opened up in their formation.  The Russians scattered, trying to escape the focused fire of an entire fleet, and for the first time since the battle began they left the Russian warships without a solid screen.

“Charge!” Charles ordered.

Jack held on tight to his controls, shifting them to the side for a moment to avoid a phantom threat he didn’t want to meet, as the Cowboys followed the order without hesitation.  They charged through the hole, gravitic cannons shifting to focus on the Russian cruisers behind a wall of destroyers.  The British joined in, and the Russian deflection grids flickered with the strain of twisting the attack away.  Missiles swept past the destroyers and into the cruisers before exploding, shredding the strained deflection grids.

A dozen Russian cruisers reeled under the focused assault, atmosphere and debris belching out of their shattered noses.  One was less lucky.  A single gravitic cannon achieved a very lucky shot, shooting a beam of focused gravity down the Russian spinal gravitic cannon’s barrel, deep into the warship that housed it.  It was nowhere near powerful enough to destroy the cruiser, especially at over half a lightsecond away.  But it ripped the grav cannon’s internal shielding apart, leaving the powerful gravity generators to lash out in an orgy of self-immolation that broke the cruiser’s back.  One gravity whip caught an escort destroyer holding position near the cruiser, slicing the engine section away from the rest of the ship, and space filled with more atmosphere and debris.

“Ouch,” Jack whispered as the destroyer began to drift out of formation.  “That’s a messy way to go.”

“And
that’s
why the Peloran keep their grav cannons
outside
their big bad battleships,” Betty returned with a disapproving shake of her head.

Jack frowned as the Russian return fire washed over the British fleet.  Most of the gravitic cannons missed, but five more destroyers and a cruiser fell out of formation, their flanks ripped away by the powerful beams.  Then their missiles dove in and exploded all around the British ships, gravity itself ripping holes in many of the deflection grids.  The British were taking a real pasting.  Badly enough that he wondered how many would be left to get out.

“So where
are
they?” Jack asked, raising an eyebrow at Betty as he pulled the throttle up.

“Coming,” she answered as they pulled up and away from a grav beam trying to kill them both.

Jack glanced over at the display showing the Chinese and Shang spinning to bring their massive arrays of weapons to bear on the British.  “Uh oh,” he whispered as they finally began to fire full broadsides of missiles.  Alone, they couldn’t have done much against the British.  But together with the Russians, they were about to make this a very difficult battle.

“
Very
soon now,” Betty said with a grim smile.

Jack swallowed as the Russians grew closer.  “Charles’ plan?”

Betty cleared her throat.  “
Aneerin’s
plan actually.”  She nodded at the Chinese, then at the Russians.  “Never strike an enemy until someone else has their full and undivided attention.”

Jack cleared his throat, watching the British fleet taking fire from both flanks.  Point defense missiles and lasers reached out, taking down hundreds of incoming missiles at a time, but there were simply too many.  As he watched, the explosions wreathed the British deflection grids.  They couldn’t take that punishment much longer.  “I think we’ve got their attention now,” he said, trying to hurry things up with his voice.

As if on queue, a series of flashes filled the displays near the Chinese and Shang fleets.  The displays cleared to show forty ships deployed on the far side of the Chinese fleet, very much in weapons range.  The displays began to show flags and Jack whistled as he recognized them.  German, French, American, and even British, he examined the ship classes and names carefully.  It was Aneerin’s task force, though the Peloran warships weren’t there.  The Alliance ships began launching fighters as they fired missiles and gravitic cannons into their unsuspecting enemy’s flank.  Suddenly it was the Chinese and their allies that were surrounded, and Jack whistled as they began to take fire from both the British and Aneerin’s task force.

The displays flashed again as six more ships emerged on the Russian flank, and Jack flicked his eyes over to see the bone-white Peloran warships charge forward.  Their gravitic cannons opened up, ripping into the Russian flank, and ship after ship simply came apart as the Peloran squadron flew through the Russian formation.  Jack’s jaw fell open as he watched the Russian attack falter.  They began to maneuver, seeking to hit the Peloran with their main cannons, but the Peloran were too quick.  The Russian missiles were much easier to retarget though, and gravitic explosions wreathed the Peloran warships like a halo

“Scatter and attack!” Charles transmitted.

Jack watched the other Cowboys pull away, then returned his gaze to the rapidly approaching Russian fleet.  He glanced up at Betty and she smiled back.  She was ready.  He flexed his hands, cracked his knuckles, and wiggled his fingers.  He pulled in a deep breath, relaxed, and placed his hands back on the stick and throttle.  This was it.  All that mattered was himself, Betty, their Avenger, and the six remaining drones in formation around them as they penetrated the Russian fleet.  A flash filled the displays and he winced.  Make that
five
drones.

Jack twitched his hands to the side, watching their formation react on the displays, the drones corkscrewing around his fighter to avoid the hail of point defense missiles and plasma cannons reaching out to destroy them.  Gravitic cannons, missiles, and lasers drew a line of destruction between their formation and a single Russian cruiser.  The Russian deflection grids flickered in and out, massive rents opening and closing as the ship’s AI tried desperately to keep up with the seemingly random gravitic assault.  They spun to keep on target as momentum sent them flying past the ship, and gravitic cannons sank deep into its flank.  In the blink of an eye, point defense missiles and plasma filled his vision and he saw the light of an exploding drone before they were past their target.  They fired into its exposed engine section, causing the Russian cruiser to flounder out of formation with at least one engine out of commission.

Jack looked around to see sixteen more Russian ships destroyed or belching debris, victims of the Cowboy assault, and nodded in approval.  It hadn’t been one-sided though.  Nearly twenty drones hadn’t made it back out of the Russian fleet, victims of their point defense batteries, but that was a small price to pay for the damage they’d inflicted.

“Come around for another strike,” Charles voice ordered and beams appeared on the displays, showing Jack where they were about to go.

Jack nodded towards Betty and they turned with the nearly one hundred other Cowboy fighters and drones, sweeping around to come back on the Russians from their rear.  He scanned the displays to see that the Peloran were gone, probably having returned to hyperspace to prepare for another attack.  The Russian fleet was in disarray, trying to recover from the Peloran and Cowboy attack.  Their smaller escorts spun to cover their flanks and rear, but their largest ships continued to fire on the British fleet.  More British warships fell victim to the massive gravitic cannons, but it was a far more equal battle now as the British fire began to take its toll on the Russians as well.

A flash of light heralded the return of the six Peloran warships and they slashed into the Russian fleet again.  Nearly a dozen Russian ships managed to generate good shots on the Peloran, and one of the destroyers shuddered.  Over a dozen Russian ships began to belch atmosphere and debris in return though, and the Russian screen fell apart.  Jack smiled.  Aneerin was doing it again.

Then space flashed, this time behind the Peloran ships, and Jack’s jaw fell as gravitic cannons, missiles, and plasma reached out to rip the Peloran deflection grids apart.  The displays cleared to reveal the identity of the newest arrivals.  The Roderan had come too.  They were
only
forty ships.  Four battleships, eight cruisers, and sixteen destroyers formed a wall of battle facing the Peloran warships.  What looked like two carriers and their frigate escorts held back, behind the wall, obviously watching and waiting for the right time to strike.  But the
mere
twenty-eight warships in the Roderan wall fired a massive salvo into the six Peloran warships, penetrating the deflection grids and ripping armor and weapons off their hulls.  Peloran gravitic cannons exploded in titanic flashes of light and when they faded the Peloran were simply gone.

Jack licked dry lips as he watched the Roderan reorient.  “Did…they?” he asked, trailing off before finishing.

The Roderan flashed back into hyperspace, leaving space empty again.

“They got away,” Betty answered in a strained tone.  “I picked up the dive signatures.  But they took heavy damage.  The Roderan got them good.”

“Crap,” Jack whispered.  “That means we’re alone now.”

“OK, we lost our support,” Charles transmitted.  “But they opened a hole for us.  Let’s take advantage of it while we can,” he ordered and a beam of light appeared on Jack’s display, charting a course through the devastated Russian flank.  “Follow your beam.”