Jack of Harts 2: Angel Flight (3 page)

BOOK: Jack of Harts 2: Angel Flight
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“Open fire at two lightseconds, spread across the entire front.”

Amparo frowned.  “You’re not going to get many hits like that.”

Jack nodded.  It would take the sunlight reflected from the surface of the missiles two seconds to arrive at his fighters and his laser attacks would take another two seconds to return.  His cybers needed to guess where the missiles would be four seconds in their future, over one hundred thousand kilometers from where they looked like they were, to have a hope of hitting them.  It was, in a nutshell, impossible to expect any reliable hits at that range.

“I’m not looking for hits,” Jack replied with a smile.

Amparo raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

Jack chuckled.  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind some, but I won’t demand the impossible.”

“Then why are you wasting the ammo?” Amaro asked.

“Not wasting.  Paying for time.  The more time we buy, the more time the wall’s point defenses have to shoot them,” he explained with a wave of his hand behind them.

Amparo frowned at him.  “So how do we buy time?”

Jack shrugged.  “I’m hoping that when the AIs on those missiles detect our incoming fire they’ll start up some serious evasion routines.”

“Which will slow down their forward progress and buy us time,” Amparo finished for him with a nod.  “We wouldn’t fall for it.”

“It’s a bit of a shot in the dark,” Jack said with a wink.

Amparo groaned.  “You have a horrible sense of humor.”

“I know.”  Jack opened his hands, palms up, and gave her an urchin’s grin.  “But it was funny.”

“No.”  Amparo let the word drag out and crossed her arms.  He was getting used to that response.

“Well, I thought it was,” Betty interrupted.

“See?” Jack smiled at Amparo.  “
She
thinks I’m funny.”

“Not really,” Betty corrected with a smirk.  “But a broken clock is right at least
once
a day.”

Jack winced and opened his mouth to say something pithy when he felt the fighter shudder.  All three gravitic cannons opened up, shooting a twisting cone of gravity towards the incoming salvo.  Both missile banks began firing continuously and their laser arrays pulsed at maximum rate.  A glance at one display showed their capacitors actually dipping down from the energy drain, and he held on tight.

The other Avengers and the entire American task force around him opened fire as well.  Jack aimed a raised eyebrow at Amparo.

“So?  Just because I mock you doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas,” Amparo answered his silent question.

“What was that?”  Jack waggled his eyebrows at her.  “I didn’t quite hear you.”

Amparo cleared her throat and gave him The Look that meant he was treading on thing ice.  And if anybody knew the dangers of thin ice it was a native born son of northern Minnesota.  “Don’t be fishing for compliments in waters deep enough to drown you when you find out you’ve hooked a whale.”

Jack chuckled and waved a hand towards the wall.  “
They
are whales. 
You
on the other hand are a graceful and deadly shark.”

Amparo measured him up one said and down the other.  “Doesn’t that make me
more
dangerous?” she finally asked.

“I
laugh
at danger,” Jack answered and punctuated it with a laugh.

Amparo just rolled her eyes and looked at Betty.  “Tell me you didn’t pick him for his sense of humor.”

“Hey!” Jack protested.

“I would never be that stupid,” Betty answered innocently.

“You wound me,” he said with an indignant sniff, but relaxed back in his seat to watch the engagement.

“You’ll heal,” Betty whispered as their missiles disengaged engines within seconds of launching.  They didn’t have the fuel to maintain a burn over two lightseconds of space, but if they drifted on momentum they could wait until they reached attack range to light their drives up again.  It was a cheater’s way of getting more range out of the missiles.  And as Jack had always maintained, if you weren’t cheating you weren’t trying to win.

He saw the slight puff that accompanied a handful of Shang missiles dying and smiled.  The race was on.  Then the displays began to flash and he saw thousands of incoming Shang missiles begin to swerve.  “Yippie ki-yay!” Jack crowed and didn’t care one bit that every direct-fire weapon they had was now missing by tens of thousands of kilometers, if not more.

“It really worked,” Amparo said in a shocked tone.

“Hey,” Jack protested.  “I thought you said it was a good idea.”

“I most certainly did
not
say that,” Amparo returned, both eyebrows raised this time.  “I just implied that sometimes you might have them.”

“Oh,” Jack answered and chewed his lip for a bit.  “So.  Is this one of them?”

Amparo gave him another measuring look before answering.  “Maybe,” she finally whispered.  “But we’re burning through a lot of ammo.”

Another missile puffed out of life as they passed under one lightsecond away, but the vast majority of their weapons were still going wild.

“It does no good in the bins,” Jack answered the battleship.

Amparo just snorted and shook her head.  “True.  Sometimes I wonder if you’re truly as stupid as you act.”

“As long as they underestimate me, I’m happy,” Jack said with a wink.

Then the first of his missiles came to life, spewing blue fusion flames into space.  All around them across the front, hundreds of missiles rocketed into action and streaked into the teeth of the nearest enemy missiles.  Jack winced at the timer counting down the very few seconds left but watched the Shang missiles die by the hundreds to his counter-fire.  They were moving slower now, arcing through grander and more evasive maneuvers impossible for the cybers to project with their lasers, but more and more missiles began to track them.

Balls of light signaled the end of gravitic power plants torn apart, a roiling wave that rushed towards them like surf against the beach.  Jack winced again at the thought.  Sand after all tended to do rather badly on an individual basis when it came to ocean waves.  And one Captain Jack Hart did not intend to be washed away like one of them.

He watched the wavefront bare down on the far too thin line of fighters and warships guarding the fleet’s rear.  At least his tactic had slowed the missiles’ approach and given them some time to adjust.  The Cowboys were beginning to put an appreciable dent into the number of missiles but there were simply too many of them.  He began to feel more like that grain of sand than he wanted to as he watched more and more missiles get within half a lightsecond of their formation.

Then the wall of British dreadnoughts and Spanish battleships opened up with the point defense on their near flanks and it felt like the end of the world.  Lasers and beams of twisted gravity passed by, and sometimes through, the American formation.  Missiles streaked by, filling space with a thin mist of dissipating exhaust gases.

“Give me countdown on those missiles,” Jack ordered and flexed his fingers.

“For us or the fleet?” Betty asked.

“Us.”

“Got it,” Betty answered and one of the displays filled with a number.  Five.  Well, that was just lovely.  He’d really been hoping for more time.  Not expecting, but hoping.

“Cowboys, break on my signal.”  Jack glanced at Betty and she nodded in understanding.  This was going to get hairy in a very bad way.

Four.

“They’re gettin’ awful close, boss,” Cat transmitted, her voice filled with concern.  Explosions filled the space before them and hundreds more Shang missiles died.  But the firestorm continued to move closer and Jack knew that no amount of point defense was going to get them all.

Three.

“They’re gonna get closer,” Jack returned as the gravitic cannons thrummed again, stabbing into the missile swarm.  He thought he saw them rip apart dozens of missiles but there were still thousands more.  He felt like he was trying to a plug a leak in the Hoover Dam with a tube of superglue and it just wasn’t going well.

Two. 

“I don’t
like
them getting closer,” Cat announced and Jack chuckled.  He placed his fingers back on the stick and throttle as their missiles and lasers went to continuous fire, laying down a stream of death that sent scores of missiles into oblivion.  It was nowhere near enough.

One.

“Break,” Jack ordered and pulled the controls to the left.  Thrusters flared and the formation of Avengers exploded into a chaotic mess of individually maneuvering fighters.  Or so the complicated maneuver was designed to look to outside eyes.  In reality it was a complex plan designed by the collective intellect of seven cybernetic intelligences, randomized by six Marine fighter pilots, and thrown into the teeth of the enemy missiles by seventy-two Avenger-class starfighters.  The Shang AIs never saw it coming.

The Avengers scattered, spinning to sweep over two hundred gravitic cannons across the missile swarm.  Over a hundred missile batteries spat their vengeance as fast as they could reload and over five hundred lasers sent coherent beams of deadly light through the exhaust gases filling space.  Missiles died by the scores, by the hundreds, but nothing could stop the missile swarm from engulfing them.

Everywhere Jack looked he saw and felt missiles, exhaust, explosions, and death.  There was no safe place to be but he let his mind go blank and just moved whenever he got the urge to move.  He had a lot of urges to move and his hands twitched on the stick and throttle.  Missiles exploded all around them and a warning light told him their deflection grid was failing.  Another display came up, showing armor damage on the port wing.  An Avenger ahead of him exploded and another missile flew by close enough he could have stepped onto it if he’d wanted to.

And then they were through the storm, scattered Avengers spinning to keep firing on the missiles.  Jack let out a shaky breath, glancing at the displays to see several Avenger drones missing.  All piloted Avengers still lived though and he licked his lips in relief.

“Bad touch!” Cat shouted.  “That was a
bad touch
!” she repeated, and Jack examined her fighter on one of the displays.  Her armor was riddled with holes and it looked like her main laser turret had been completely stripped off.  The displays showed very few of his Cowboys had avoided damage and nearly all of their deflection grids were fluctuating or completely gone.

If the Shang missiles had been focused on killing his fighters, they would have been in some serious trouble.  No.  They probably would have been dead.  Jack was honest enough with himself to recognize that fact.  Then he put the thought aside and turned to examine the results of the rest of the Shang barrage.

Atmosphere and wreckage wreathed the American task force, radiating from almost every ship.  The displays showed that every ship had taken at least one major hit and some appeared heavily damaged.  Flames spewed from
Durango’s
flank, the very oxygen in her air burning from the assault.  The air ran out as he watched, the supply either cut off or exhausted, and the flames sputtered away so he could continue looking at the task force.  They hadn’t lost any ships.  He frowned at the realization.  That many missiles should have killed ships.

And then his mind caught up to his eyes.  The wave of missiles still lived, whittled down to a quarter of its original size.  But the thousand remaining missiles bore down on the four British dreadnoughts anchoring Third Fleet’s center.

“Ah, hell,” Jack muttered as the British point defenses laid down a final wall of death that swept missiles away as if slapped by the hand of God.

But there were too many missiles, too few point defense batteries even on those behemoths, and too little time for them to kill more than a few hundred.  The remaining Shang missiles entered attack range, the first hundred or so rending deflection grids in their last act of existence.  Another hundred poured in through the open grids to rip armor apart.  The final hundred or so missiles smashed into the heavy warships one last time, seeking any weakness their brothers or sisters had generated.

Flames wreathed the wall of battle and Jack held his breath, hoping he’d done enough.  He almost prayed but doubted the man his parents believed in would have much time for someone suddenly asking for favors out of the blue.  He knew he wouldn’t and settled for licking his lips as he watched the dreadnoughts writhe in the grip of the Shang assault.

There are easy times in life.  There are hard times in life.  There are times of peace, and times to make war.  I like peace myself.  Always have.  But there’s no use in going halfway when it comes to war.  Win or lose, live or die, they’re just sides of the same coin.  And I will never toss that coin randomly.  I will stack the deck, I will use loaded dice, and I will do everything else it takes to make certain that the odds are ever in my favor.  Cause if you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.

 

 

Los Angeles

 

The explosions faded, the wreckage of shattered missiles drifted away, and Jack’s displays cleared to show him the British dreadnoughts anchoring the heart of Third Fleet’s wall of battle.  They weren’t the largest ships he’d ever seen, or even the most powerful.  That honor went to
Columbia
.  She was a true jewel of a starship, but the British built their dreadnoughts real tough.

Jack knew
Vanguard
well.  He’d escorted her in battle multiple times during the Alpha Centauri campaigns and it hurt to see her torn armor.  Air and wreckage streamed from her flank, but the displays confirmed she was already beginning to stabilize her deflection grid again.  She had power, her point defense grid continued to fire at the main Shang attack, and she continued to maneuver.  Jack let out a long breath in relief.

He didn’t know
Valiant
but still winced at
the pair of dead engines and the open wound that had been her flank.  She’d taken the lion’s share of the missiles and she must have lost multiple reactors.  The displays showed her deflection grid beginning to lose cohesion.  If it kept up like that the grid would fail completely in less than a minute, leaving the behemoth hideously vulnerable to attack.

Victorious
and
Victory
were damaged too but their deflection grids began reforming as he watched, hazy shells of twisted gravity on his displays.  They moved to interpose themselves between
Valiant
and the Shang missiles getting far too close for comfort, and he saw their point defense batteries going to rapid fire.  They would do their duty, giving their wounded sister time to repair her shattered systems or die trying.  Jack nodded his head in respect towards the two ships before looking back to
Vanguard
.  The displays showed she was moving the wall of battle forward into a wedge formation, taking the point position herself.  That took serious courage.

The punishment those leviathans could absorb and keep fighting was truly amazing but even they were not indestructible.  Their smaller escorts were far more fragile.  Five destroyers and eight frigates were dead, including all of
Valiant’s
dedicated escorts.  Several dozen close-in fighters were done too, though only two pilots had died with them.

He shook his head and scanned the displays concerned with matters a bit closer to home.  He was down two Avenger drones.  The Cowboys in total had lost eleven fighters, but all of his pilots remained.  Thank God for that.  It could have been worse.  Much, much worse.

He tore his eyes away from the displays to look at Amparo.  “How are you?”

Durango’s
cyber winced.  “I’ve been better but I’m alive.”  Her smile took on a forced appearance and a quick glance at the display showed the torn armor down the American battleship’s flanks.

“I like you alive,” Jack said.  “It beats the frak out of the alternative.”

“It sure does.”  Amparo sighed and shook her head.  “Can I ask you to do something for me?”

“Your wish is my command,” Jack said with an expansive wave of a hand.

Amparo pursed her lips as if worrying about his answer.  “I need you to run away.”

Jack almost growled.  He
did
scowl and his eyes narrowed.  “Like hell,” he objected, his tone belligerent.

Amparo smiled at the response and nodded.  “I hoped you’d see it that way.”

Jack cocked his head to the side in confusion.  She was planning something but he couldn’t even begin to think what it might be.  “What’s up?”

“We’ve localized the center of the gravitic disturbance,” Amparo answered immediately.  “If we can find what is causing it and destroy it the disturbance should go away.”

“Like a deflection grid without generators?” Jack asked.

“Exactly,” Amparo answered in a proud voice.  “In fact, based on how gravity is working around here, we think that’s exactly what it is.  A gravitic generator tuned to destabilize hyperspace.  Now the problem is that it’s on the other side of whatever is firing those God-awful missile barrages at us,” she continued in a more serious tone.

“Ah,” Jack muttered, sobering as he glanced at a display showing that area.  There were a lot of ships there.  “That’ll be a tough nut to crack.”

“Exactly.”  Amparo smiled at him.  “Now in about…sixty seconds, the American task force is going to start running.  One ship at a time.  All of the small ones.  It’s going to look horrible, like the task force is abandoning the wall of battle after taking that barrage on the chin.”

Jack blinked, his mind running over the idea.  It had possibilities.  “And you want us to run with you?”

Amparo smiled encouragingly.  “If you are running towards the outer system, they probably won’t fire on you much.”  She shrugged.  “Hopefully.”

Jack pursed his lips in thought.  “You mean they might want to suggest to other ships that running truly
is
an option?”  He let out a quick breath and rubbed his chin.  “Get us all to break up into little packets they can chew up later?”

“That’s our projection,” Amparo answered.  “No guarantee of course, but if you can flank them while ‘running away’ you might be able to take out the generator.”

Jack frowned, finally catching on to one thing she’d never said.  “I can’t help but notice that you never say ‘we.’”

Amparo sighed.  “I was hoping you wouldn’t catch that until later.”  She shrugged.  “
Durango
,
Arizona
, and
Enterprise
have to remain in the wall of battle.  We didn’t have the acceleration to keep up with the cruisers
before
we ate that missile barrage.  We certainly don’t now.”

Jack turned a questioning look at Christine.

Enterprise’s
brain gave him a sad smile, already resigned to her inability to move as swiftly as her smaller cousins.

“I see,” Jack said, feeling like if he left them here he would never see them again.

“I trust you, Jack,” Amparo said in a soft voice.  “Take out that generator and open a route for us to get home.”

Jack nodded slowly, noting the worry in her voice.  He didn’t like it.

“And don’t wait around for us when the bubble drops.  Just go,” she ordered.

Jack frowned and started to protest.

“No,” Amparo cut him off.  “We’ll be right behind you but we can’t afford to get caught looking for each other in hyperspace.  We’ll rendezvous at Serenity in two weeks real time,” Amparo finished.

“I don’t like this,” Jack whispered.  “It doesn’t feel right.”

Amparo sighed.  “Then ask yourself this.  ‘Is this the best thing you can do right now?”

Jack considered the question, and felt peace fill him again.  He still didn’t like it, but nodded very slowly.

Amparo and Christine shared a quick glance.  He wished he knew what they were telling themselves.  “That’s what we thought,” Amparo said with another shrug.  “So break that generator and get our people out,” she ordered and waited for him to nod in acceptance.  “Thank you, Jack,” she finished and faded out of view.

“Christine,” Jack said before the other cyber could follow and she met his gaze.  There were so many things he wanted to say in that moment.  She was a beautiful ship.  She was his home.  He was about to leave her behind and despite his feelings that this really was the best plan, he still felt that aching feeling towards her.  Like he would never see her again if he left.  “Be careful.”

The cyber’s smile softened.  “I will.”

Jack knew he should say something profound.  Something amazing.  Come up with a grand quotation before going to battle.  Something memorable.  Something school children should learn in the future.  “See yah later,” came out instead.

Christine smiled, her eyes conveying complete and total understanding.  “You too.”  And then she faded away.

Jack punched his chair arm in anger.  “See yah later,” Jack muttered in a self-mocking tone.  “See yah later.  Of all the stupid things to say.  What was I thinking?”

“You weren’t,” Betty answered, her smile matching Christine’s.  “But she knows what you meant.”

“Yeah,” he whispered before sucking in a long breath.  It felt like he was leaving their home behind.  But he had no choice.  He breathed out and breathed in, forcing himself to find peace.  Then he smiled and looked at Betty again.  “All Cowboys,” he said, forcing his normal carefree tone back into being.  “Grab a cruiser and hang on tight,” he ordered, eyes running over the American formation on his displays.  As his eyes settled on each one it expanded in his view and detailed vital statistics appeared next to it.  He finished reading the last field of data and raised his hand to point at one of the cruisers.  “That one.”

Betty nodded.  “She’s a good ship.  Good captain too.”

“And the cyber?” Jack asked, detecting the reservation in her tone.

Betty sighed, appearing reluctant to blab on a fellow cyber.  She answered after only a short pause though.  “Well, she’s a bit crazy.”

Jack scratched his chin and considered the possibilities.  “Good crazy or bad crazy?” he asked and Betty raised both eyebrows at him.  “There
is
a difference you know,” Jack added in a defensive tone.  Betty rolled her eyes.  “What?  Crazy axe-murderer,” he said, placing both hands on the left.  “Someone who’s just a little different from the rest of society.”  This time his hands moved to the right and stayed there.

Betty shook her head and sighed.  “Well, she’s different all right.”

“Ooh?” Jack asked with raised eyebrows.

Betty turned a wicked smile on him.  “She chose the name of an angel.”

“Oh,” Jack answered with a frown.  Of course, she was the cybernetic brain of
Los Angeles
, so he supposed it made a certain amount of sense.  “Shiny.  Which one?”

Betty just smiled and stepped to the side.  A new cyber appeared on the console, standing next to Betty and Jasmine in the standard white uniform of the United States Navy.  Long red hair framed a face that would look at home on any college campus, and inquisitive grey eyes gave Jack the feeling he just might end up liking her.

“Captain Jack,” he said, placing one hand on his chest.  “And who might I have the pleasure of meeting?”

An amused smile twisted her lips and he caught the lively sense of humor under that face.  “Gabrielle,” was all she said.

Jack pursed his lips in thought, and cocked his head to the side.  “And here I always thought Gabriel was a he,” he said, feigning confusion.

“The standard presumption of a male-dominated society,” she answered, grey eyes twinkling in amusement.

Jack laughed out loud, slapping the arm of his flight chair.  “Touché,” he finally pronounced, granting her a point in their verbal contest.

“Merci,” she returned with a half bow, accepting his point with humility that must have been feigned.

A display flashed for his attention and Jack pulled his gaze away from her to see the display showing each of his five Cowboys.  Their fighters and drones held three dimensional flying wedge formations around five cruisers, and one more display showed his fighters doing the same for
Los Angeles
.  Jack nodded in approval.  He loved it when a plan came together.

“Well, I do believe we’re about ready to run away to fight another day,” Jack said, forcing a charming smile back on his face as he turned back to her.

“Agreed,” Gabrielle returned and made a show of looking around at the displays on his fighter.

Jack followed her gaze to see a frigate accelerating away from the American task force, engines at maximum burn.  He leaned back and watched as a destroyer followed, another frigate, and then more.  Finally, one of the cruisers broke away.  Jack focused on it and the name
Dallas
came into view.  She was a good ship, one of the Pre-War cruisers, but he’d fought next to some of her sisters and knew she could kill Shang as good as any ship he’d seen.  The destroyers
Harrington
and
Grayson
followed the cruiser out, snuggling up close to the ship they were tasked with protecting.

He looked away from those three ships to see most of the American cruisers and destroyers “fleeing” the wall of battle in a ragged line that looked like the result of perfect panic.  Then
Los Angeles
spewed blue fire from her main engines and began to follow her sister ships.  The frigates
Clark
and
Hammond
, a dozen Hellcats, and Jack’s Avengers held formation around the larger ship with ease.  The wall of battle fell behind, British and Spanish ships screaming a cacophony of orders for the Americans to get back to the wall.

A glance ahead showed another salvo of Shang missiles still moving towards the wall and Jack smiled.  No missiles tracked the ragged task force.  The Shang were playing the game the way they’d thought.  Well, those aliens were not going to enjoy the end game.  He frowned as he noticed several British destroyers and frigates pull away from the wall and begin following them as a more organized force.  He focused on the lead destroyer, but the display zoomed in on one of the frigates instead.  Jack raised an eyebrow in surprise until he recognized the name. 
Recovery
.  The British were sending their medical frigates away, along with their destroyer escorts.  That was an interesting twist.  He wondered what the Shang would think about that.

BOOK: Jack of Harts 2: Angel Flight
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