The Terran Gambit (Episode #1: The Pax Humana Saga) (7 page)

She bit her lip, then nodded.

Jake thumbed open the comm to a wide spectrum bandwidth, hoping something would make it past the jamming. “Viper group. We’re making a quick pit stop in Dallas before we patrol lower Earth orbit. Make a hard ascent to the upper atmosphere, then gun to Texas and take out the Charlie there. Hornet squad, do the same for Miami. Everyone else, head to your previous assignments and whoop some ass.” He wondered about whether the Hornet squad leader was hearing him and wondering why a lieutenant was ordering him around, but he didn’t stop to find out.

“Ready?” He looked over at Po.

“When you are.” She inclined her head once, maintaining the same steely, grim expression that graced her face since they climbed into the fighter. He gunned the gravitic drive, and they accelerated upward as fast as wind resistance would let them. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could see the edges of the fighter start to glow a dull red from the compression of the wavefront in front of the leading edges, and so he accelerated until they glowed bright red.

Soon, the glow disappeared, signaling to Jake that the atmosphere was rarified enough to hightail it to Dallas. Reorienting the nose towards the west, the fighter shot away like a bullet, followed by thirteen other Viper squad birds.

Jake glanced at the ETA readout. Five minutes to Dallas. Plenty of time to get to know his gunner. He knew he would feel more comfortable with her if they talked to each other a little, and he wanted to help take her mind off the harrowing experience in the hangar bay.

“So,” he began, looking at the ring on her hand, “married?”

“Was,” she replied, without elaboration.

“Was? So you’re divorced?”

“I’d rather not talk about that now, if it’s all the same to you.” She studied her sensor readout and punched a few buttons. “We’re past the jamming. Orbital listening posts are reporting the arrival of the fleet in Sol orbit as of half an hour ago. The Helios science observatory is reporting the direct visual contact of sixteen capital-sized ships and a swarm of smaller ships, but resolution is limited at this range. The sun is eight light-minutes away, and the Sol to Earth gravitic shift requires the average capital ship to charge its cap banks for around thirty to forty minutes, so they could be here any second.” She paused to think. “They could already be here, for that matter.”

“Understood. We’re four minutes away from Dallas. As soon as we mop up there, we’ll come back up to orbit.”

He held the controls steady, and she didn’t say anything else. In spite of his adrenaline, he understood her need for silence. He still could not bring himself to think about Kit. Or the bloody corpse of her former pilot. Or the charred remains littering the cratered Eglin base courtyard.

She breathed in deep, as if preparing to plunge into frigid water. “My husband was killed when the imperials struck a Resistance base in California two years ago. After he was gone, I had nothing left, so I joined the service. Was decent with sensors and console readouts, and I don’t mind flying, so I became a space jock.”

“Sorry,” he said. Still, he thought it was strange she kept the ring on, until it dawned on him—she probably didn’t want some drunk schmuck in a bar hitting on her, and keeping the ring on was the easiest way to avoid that, short of carrying a loaded pistol and pointing it at the drunk schmucks who tried. “How long were you married?”

“Eight years.”

“Kids?”

He knew as the words came out of his mouth that he shouldn’t have said them. Her jaw tightened.

“I told you I’d rather not talk about that right now if it’s all the same to you,” she repeated, almost robotically.

“I’m sorry.” He glanced at the ETA readout. “Thirty seconds. You ready?”

She nodded once, her lips tightly pursed. Her voice was cold. “Let’s go give these bastards a fucking they’ll never forget.”

And that’s when Jake decided to never, ever cross Megan Po. The grizzly. The cold grizzly.

“Contacts. Multiple bogeys swarming downtown Dallas,” she said.

“How’s Resistance HQ?”

“Looks mostly undamaged, but the battlegroup is struggling to break free from dock.”

The massive city started to come into view below them, and Jake could just make out the jumbled forest of skyscrapers and the ten block square section that comprised Resistance headquarters. The ten tallest skyscrapers in this section served as the city’s spaceport, and about a dozen frigates remained moored to the tops of the towers with hundreds of smaller ones moored farther down.

Dallas had burgeoned into one of the world’s supercities, a vast cosmopolitan financial and defense powerhouse that eclipsed even New York City, London, and Buenos Aires—the gargantuan capital of the South American Republic. The mile-high skyscrapers stretched out to the distant horizon, not giving way to suburbs until well past thirty klicks from the city center.

“Ok, there they are,” he said, eyeing the flurry of fighters swarming their frigates. “Ready?”

“Do you have to ask?” she said, with a straight face.

“Engaging. Be ready for some quick stops and starts,” he warned.

“Show me what you got, Shotgun.”

And with that, he pushed the ship forward into a lightning-fast dive, then changed directions upward so fast it was as if they bounced on a pocket of air. He twisted the ship around one-eighty towards an enemy bogey, which Po dispatched with ease. “Next,” she murmured. Jake was starting to like the cold grizzly.

Out of his peripheral vision he saw other Viper birds swoop down on the targets swarming the tops of the skyscrapers, raking them with streaking red fire. Jake winced as he saw one of their own burst into flame and crash into the side of a building.

“There goes Viper three,” he said, before murmuring under his breath, “Sorry, Birdseye.”

“Shotgun, orbital sensors indicate the arrival of the imperial fleet. They’re in high Earth orbit and closing. Estimated arrival to low Earth orbit in one minute.” She scanned the console, picking at sensor readouts while simultaneously targeting stray bogeys. “Our boys heading out to intercept.
Fury
,
Washington
, and the
SAS Bolivar
are engaging, with the
Odierno
, the
Havoc
, the
Excalibur
and the
AAS Kumasi
all close behind—I didn’t know the African Republic joined up. The smaller battlegroups also moving to engage. That’s going to be one hell of a battle.”

“Yeah,” Jake nodded. “I sure hope Pritchard’s got something else up his sleeve.”

“Watch our right flank,” she said, pointing out an enemy bird racing towards them. He stopped the ship in midair and plunged straight down, re-engaging forward motion while flipping the ship to point up. Po’s deadly-accurate fingers took care of the rest.

“How we doing down here? What’s left?” he said, as he pushed the controls to dive towards another fighter.

“Over half-done here. We’ve lost Vipers three and eight. And the frigates are starting to pull away,” she glanced at her console. “Looks like the bastards hit our ion beam cannon towers down here. That’s probably the first thing they hit so they could have free run of the place. Railgun installations are down too. They were thorough. Just a handful of gigawatt laser cannons left for regional defense. Let’s hope none of those heavy cruisers comes and parks over Dallas.”

Indeed.

“Ok, last few bogeys. They’re not falling back—looks like they knew it was a one-way trip. Crash, you got that piecer on your port?” he said.

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Let me know if you need—”

Po’s shouting caught him by surprise. She hadn’t yet raised her voice the entire time. “Nuclear contact!”

“Where?” He scanned his console, but couldn’t make out where it was coming from.

“Multiple targets, six hundred klicks up and falling fast.”

“How many?”

The blood drained from her face.

“How many, Po?”

“Thirty-six,” she said. “Looks like one of our battlegroups is moving to intercept and neutralize. They’re laying down a defensive screen.”

Jake thumbed the comm. “All Viper squad. Move immediately to intercept incoming nuclear signals.” He pulled the nose up and rammed hard on the accelerator.

The comm crackled back an answer. “This is Commander Roberts in NA South Command. Belay that order, Viper squad. Concentrate all defense capabilities on the remaining laser cannons and railguns. Let ground defense take them out.”

Jake yelled into his headset. “But sir, there’s thirty-six warheads headed straight for Dallas! We can each take out at least five or six—”

“Negative. Reinforce ground defense, Viper squad. Those are your orders.”

An explosion rocked the cabin as the strafing fire from an enemy fighter connected with them. Jake breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the other bird explode in a shower of debris, and Viper two plunge through the dissipating fireball.

“Thanks, Crash. What’s that, two beers I owe you now?”

“Three. Meet you at the laser cannons.”

“Jake,” Po began. “Thirteen warheads made it past the battlegroup. They’re targeting downtown Dallas.”

“We’re going up there,” he said, and without waiting to ask her, they shot upward, accelerating until the hard edges of the craft glowed red again.

“But Shotgun, that last hit took out our weapons. We’ve got no teeth.”

“All weapons? Torpedoes too?”

“We’ve still got the torpedoes, but our launching mechanism is shot.”

He pressed on the accelerator.

“Mercer?”

He didn’t reply, but kept the nose pointed straight up.

“Mercer, what exactly are you planning to do?”

“I don’t like to lose, Grizzly.”

She pursed her lips, and glanced down at the console. “NA South command is ordering us back. Looks like they’ve taken out two more of them with the laser cannons. Make that three more.”

“But they’re coming in fast. Look, there’s one now.” He decelerated, and as the warhead approached he pressed down hard on the nose, rocketing the ship back towards the ground, keeping pace with the falling missile. A sense of surreal wonder overcame him as he looked up through the top viewport and saw the markings on the narrow shaft of the warhead.

“What the hell do you think you’re—”

“Hey, it worked up at the shipyards,” he said, as he swiveled the ship so the rear thrusters pointed straight at the thing. Pressing two buttons and hitting the override, he fired both forward and aft thrusters simultaneously, baking the missile until it glowed red.

“It’s breaking apart. There. Firing mechanism and electronics are both destroyed,” Po announced.

“Excellent. Then on to the next one, shall we?”

She grinned, the first time she’d smiled since Jake had grabbed her wrist not half an hour ago. “Onward it is. Ground defense has taken out four more. There’s another one a few klicks straight up.”

“On it,” he said, and slowed their descent until the second warhead pulled even with them. Blasting it with their thrusters, Jake let out a war-whoop, and pushed the fighter around in a celebratory loop when the thing exploded.

“There. All taken care of except one. It’s way below us. Ground crews firing at it. Railguns … but no lasers. They must be recharging. Railguns firing ... firing ... they can’t seem nail this one.”

“It’s a lot harder to hit a moving target with a railgun than with a laser,” Jake offered.

She scowled. “You think I don’t know that?” She studied the console. “It’s twenty klicks above the ground, now. Still firing….”

She looked up at him.

The blood drained from her face.

He looked out the window, before suddenly remembering what a foolish thing that was. He clapped his hands over his eyes, and he could hear Po follow suit.

And not too soon.

For the second time in less than twelve hours, Jake saw the red of the blood vessels in his hand filter the piercing, deadly shine of a nuclear blast.

“Get us out of here, Mercer.” Po’s voice croaked. He opened his eyes, and gunned the engine, unable to even look down at the developing mushroom cloud that rapidly swirled upward.

“It was five hundred megatons,” she said, in a near whisper. She studied the readout—she too seemed unable to bring herself to look down. “The wavefront is dissipating. Around the twenty kilometer mark.” She paused. “Downtown is gone.”

The comm crackled to life on the wide-band. “This is United Earth Prime Minister Radovan Hawkins, to all Corsican Empire and United Earth ships. The United Governments of Earth hereby offer our unconditional surrender. All Earth units are ordered to stand down.” The voice paused. “Please … please for God’s sake, have some human decency. Have mercy….”

Jake, still numb inside, looked down, finally. Where the sprawling metropolis once stood was replaced by a blackened, fiery wasteland. The center of the circle was empty of anything recognizable, followed by standing skeletons of skyscrapers a little further out, blazing like gargantuan torches. The outer city and suburbs blazed like a fireball as well, until at the outer edges of the circle, the blast wavefront had flattened some houses, but caught little on fire. But he knew that the thousands of people in that outer zone would eventually succumb to radiation poisoning in a few days, though.

“Are they going to leave us like Belen?” He couldn’t help but think about the world that the Empire had destroyed over a hundred years ago. Nuked it to complete oblivion. Nothing like it had happened since then, as the imperial senate severely chastised the emperor responsible for the genocide, but the example always haunted the thoughts of all worlds that opposed the Empire. No one wanted to be the next Belen.

“Dunno. Shotgun, the
Fury
just shifted away. Destination unknown,” said Po. He glanced over at her. A single tear wet her cheek, which she wiped away with her sleeve. “The rest of the fleet is standing down. We’re receiving instructions from Eglin to return to base.” Her eyes met his. “It’s over, Mercer. The Empire won.”

I always win
.

“No,” he whispered. Thoughts of the decades he could spend in prison flashed through his mind. By all accounts, the Corsicans were not kind to their prisoners, and Jake began contemplating pointing the nose of the fighter away from the Earth and making a gravitic shift to Mars or one of the Jovian moons. He could escape there. Blend in with the population. Hide out until the Resistance rose again.