Rich Man's War (21 page)

Casey glanced up at the gangway camera as men and women in combat jackets and helmets rushed out with Hawkins in charge.

He turned his attention to other matters. The tactical station involved more than weapons control. He tied in to numerous comms channels and looked over the display showing the presence of ships overhead. Casey set to immersing himself in the data.

Then he heard the voice.

“
Argent
, this is
Joan of Arc’s
landing party!” said the voice over the local ground comms net. “We are inbound to your location with tanks in pursuit! We can’t get back to our ship, so we need to extract with you! Do you copy?”

“We read you, landing party,” responded a woman not four meters away from Casey on
Argent’s
bridge. “What’s your location?”

Casey’s eyes widened as he heard the voice relay a frantic, shaking answer. He heard something explode in the background. He saw the comms officer turn to him with a questioning look. Casey merely nodded
to her.

He would recognize that voice for the rest of his life.

Coming to this ship
, he thought with a mix of awe and fury.
He’s coming to my goddamn ship again.

His eyes flicked around the compartment, seeing only a bridge crew of mostly strangers.
No. Not my ship. Not yet, anyway. Maybe never. I don’t have their loyalty. Might never have it.
Regardless of the lack of objection to the way he ejected his tactical officer, he couldn’t expect these people to help him deal with this… and the moment Hawkins knew that fucking kid was on the ship, he’d lock the “captain” in his own quarters for the duration of the trip.

But Hawkins didn’t know about this yet. He had too much to deal with. And it wasn’t like the kid identified himself to the ship’s comms officer.

Trembling from shoulder to fist, Casey looked over the tactical station and weighed his options.
Argent
had launched several overhead monitor drones upon landing in the spaceport to maintain a bird’s eye view of the area. He watched as the drones used info from the comms officer to locate the landing party and their pursuers.

For the first time in his life, Casey found his survival instincts outweighed by an even greater need.

* * *

“Take a breath or three if you need it, Ordoñez,” counseled Lt. Kelly. On the canopy screens, she
saw a beautiful skyline contrasted with the rain of debris from the violence in Scheherazade’s inner orbit. Her personal display screens, however, showed
Joan of Arc’s
position as she hovered at a level just above the consulate’s rooftop. Another of the holographic displays floating in front of her relayed the feed from the corvette’s main cannon as the gunner’s mate programmed in a short, sustained blast on a tight plane.

“I’ve got this, ma’am,” Ordoñez replied over the ship’s net. “Just a couple more seconds to confirm.”

“If you have any doubts, say so. Don’t feel like you have to go along with this just because I suggested it. This isn’t a ‘whatever the captain wants’ kind of thing.”

“No
no no, ma’am, it’s fine. I can do it. This is a great plan.” She paused. “I’ve always wanted to do something like this.”

“You’re sharing too much again, Ordoñez.”

“Can’t talk now, ma’am. Aiming a big gun.” Again she paused. “Hey, if I fuck this up, they’re gonna court martial
both
of us, right? I mean, it’s not just gonna be me?”

Kelly groaned, but didn’t answer. Her eyes flicked over toward the two men who shared the bridge with her. Though he’d relinquished much of his manual control to the ship’s computers for this, Chief Romita still had plenty to do in keeping
Joan of Arc
steady. With the astrogation table now converted to display tactical info, Stan had his back to the captain. “Stan? How are we doing?” she asked.

“No trouble in sight for us. I’m worried about the XO and Sanjay. I keep hearing the blasts over the net,” he explained, tapping his helmet at his ear.

“We’ll get ‘em,” Kelly assured him. “First things first.”

“Captain,” spoke up Ordoñez on the net, “I’m ready to go.”

“Fire at will, Guns.”

The bright red blast from
Joan of Arc’s
chin-mounted main cannon lasted only two seconds as it swept from left to right across the roof of the consulate, disintegrating concrete, steel and everything else it touched. With most of the material reduced to dust, there was little debris, and that which fell inside the building landed in small bits of rubble. Simple civilian buildings were rarely built to hold up to the sort of punishment dished out by starship weaponry. The consulate now stood with a gap of several meters cut through the center of its roof.

“Consulate, we have our rooftop opening,” Kelly announced over the external comms net. She gave Romita a single nod
. The chief spun
Joan of Arc
one hundred and eighty degrees around. “We’re pulling clear. Your turn.”

“Acknowledged,
Joan of Arc
,” answered Lt. Adams. “Just a second.”

Kelly watched the rear view video feed. Within
seconds, a small explosion inside the consulate blasted a hole through the exterior wall in line with the gap in its roof. Large blocks of masonry crashed down to the street below.
Joan of Arc’s
cameras filtered out the dust to reveal a pair of marines, who quickly kicked and shoved some remaining debris out of the way to clear the path.

“Looks good, Lieutenant. Get everyone up to the stairwells. We’re backing in with the ramp now.” Again, she gave Romita only a slight gesture to get the process going.

Kelly thought at first that her crew or the consulate staff would object to her plan. Given the situation in the immediate area, though, a ground-level pick-up was too risky. Taking everyone out through the roof meant bringing people up one by one through the rooftop access hatch, a slow down the process that would still leave people exposed in at least one hundred and eighty degrees. Yet by blasting off the roof and creating a single hole,
Joan of Arc
could hover in backward with her ramp extended, granting a much wider and flatter pathway for her passengers while offering protection from—“Sniper!” cried out one of the marines.

Kelly saw both men jerk away from the hole to hide behind the consulate’s remaining walls. She couldn’t tell if one of them was hurt or not, but she saw the small burst of concrete dust as the sniper’s second bullet hit.

Then, just as she opened her mouth, she saw and heard the wide red beam of
Joan of Arc’s
main cannon as it blasted through the corner of a nearby apartment building, leaving a smoldering black hole three meters tall. “Guns?” Kelly blinked.

“Sorry, ma’am!” Ordoñez replied. “Um. Reflex, ma’am! Think I got him, though!”

The captain bit back her immediate reply. She looked over to the tactical table, expecting to discover missiles or targeting signals raining down on her from above, but saw nothing other than Stan’s shocked expression. Kelly took a quick breath, swallowed hard and nodded. “Next time, wait for my command, Guns,” she said in a deliberately calm voice.

“Yes, ma’am. Aye, aye, ma’am
.”

Kelly looked to the canopy display again at the destruction wrought by her main gun. Ordoñez likely blasted away someone’s whole apartment with that one shot—and cut straight through the next building in line with it across the street, and probably well into whatever lay beyond. “Carry on,”
sighed the captain.

“You know what they say,”
chuckled Chief Romita without taking his eyes or hands off the controls. “If you can pass the psych eval, you’re not qualified to be a gunner’s mate.”

* * *

If nothing else, the chase through the city’s streets distracted Tanner from the pain in his leg.

“Sanjay,
Argent
says we’re heading straight into a neighborhood firefight,” he warned. “We’ve gotta veer left or right at the next corner to avoid it.”

Another building façade exploded as the rover hit the corner, sending debris flying out at the vehicle and directly into its path. Rather than slow down or swerve, Sanjay plowed straight through the cloud of dust and smoke, ignoring the heavy thumps of broken masonry and other rubble against the rover.
Within only a second, he had full visibility again, minus the cracked windows and thin coating of dust now clinging to the windshield.

“Straight ahead?” asked Sanjay. He pointed at the oncoming intersection, where everyone could clearly see the flashes of laser fire that darted between a pair of buildings. Black smoke wafted up from several windows, along with the fires from burning vehicles that lined the street. “Up there?”

“Yes!”

“Good!” Sanjay pressed down harder on the accelerator. Another particle beam flashed by, cutting through a parked car to leave it a charred wreck.

“Aw, Christ,” grunted Vanessa. Like Booker, she promptly ducked as low as she could and covered her head while the rover blew straight through the exchange of gunfire. Lasers and bullets alike struck from both sides, several of them shattering windows as they passed straight through and a few others piercing the rover’s hull and tearing through upholstery.

Like the rush through the cloud of debris, the moment lasted only a few rapid heartbeats. Tanner heard Vanessa yelp and thought he heard much the same from Booker. He, too, rode out the
barrage with his arms reflexively thrown up around his head, but despite his fear Tanner managed to recognize the end to the small arms fire against the rover. He propped his head up and looked out the back.

Though the rover’s approach had been a complete surprise, the pursuing tanks didn’t enjoy the same advantage. Reacting mostly out of reflex, belligerents on both sides of the street turned their guns on the tanks. Tanner saw what had made such a mess of the parked vehicles and the buildings; from one end of the street, a heavy pulse laser open up on the tank with rapid-fire bursts. Someone on the opposite side fired off a small missile. Small arms fire hit the tank from both directions.

Tanner let out a shout of approval as the tank tilted heavily forward, its nose scraping deep into the concrete of the street. The resultant mess of dust and debris blocked the rest of his view. Such damage might not destroy the tank, but any disruption or delay of its pursuit was a good thing.

He turned his attention to Vanessa, who groaned as she shifted and sat up in the leg space between the front and back seats. “You okay
?”

“Fine. Just cut myself on some piece of the window
.” She looked at the blood dripping from her hand. “I’m fine.”

“XO?
You okay?”

“Yeah,” gasped Booker. “Combat jacket stopped it.”

“You sure?” Tanner asked. He turned Vanessa’s wrist to check her wound but found nothing particularly life-threatening. Given two or three minutes, he could easily clean it out and apply sealing gel or at least a bandage. His eyes glanced back up to the front seats.

“I’m good,” said the Booker. Tanner couldn’t see his face, but he could see the black scoring left by the laser deflected by his helmet when the XO turned his head. The young crewman swallowed hard and tried not to think too much about it. Had that blast hit at a different angle, it likely would have gone straight through metal, bone and brain.

“Well, that bought us a little bit more space,” said Tanner.

“Won’t last long,” grunted Booker. “Good job, though, Sanjay.” He paused. “Don’t do that again.”

“No, sir,” agreed Sanjay. “No argument.”

“Landing party, this is
Argent
,” said the voice on Tanner’s holocom. “We have firefights all along the perimeter of the spaceport and within the interior. We’re loading up passengers as we speak, but we’ll hold the door for you. I’ve laid out a path for you to follow into the spaceport. Sending now.”

Tanner saw the small navigational icon appear on the screen projected by his holocom. He passed a finger through it to route it to the team’s holocom net, then specified it to open for Sanjay. At the front of the rover, a new holographic screen winked into existence to provide Sanjay with an overhead map and a three-dimensional image to show him what to expect from his own groundside perspective. “Acknowledged,
Argent
,” he said. “Directions received.”

“Either one of those gates could be a live-fire zone or they could be secured by one side or another by the time you get here,” added
Argent’s
comms officer. “No guarantees. Overwatch drone says you still have tanks in pursuit. You need to open up some space between you.”

“Didn’t think they’d give up,” Tanner muttered.

“Landing party, this is
Joan of Arc
,” spoke up another voice on the comms net. “We’re almost done loading. Be overhead in a flash. Hang tight and stay alive and maybe we can give you some cover.”