Jack of Harts 2: Angel Flight (6 page)

Roberts chuckled again and took Jack’s outstretched hand.  “Challenge accepted.”

“Oh good,” Gabrielle said as her holoform appeared next to them.  “Are you done spraying testosterone all over my deck?  If so, can we come to the bridge now?  The captain’s waiting on you,” she finished with a pointed look at Jack.

Jack looked over to Roberts with an amused look and the man just smiled back at him.  It was almost like the man was daring him to be smart with her, while at the same time declaring his utter refusal to do the same.  Well. 
Los Angeles was
his home so Jack supposed it made sense for the man to take the stance he did.

“Well, never let it be said I kept a lady waiting,” Jack said with a smile and turned to Gabrielle, gesturing towards her to lead the way.

Gabrielle rolled her eyes and turned to lead him out of the hangar bay.  Jack followed her out through the hatch that opened before her, Betty, Roberts, and Mercedes on his heels.  The room on the other side was small enough to feel cramped when the hatch closed behind them.  Then the floor beneath them began to vibrate and the lift took them away from the hangar bay like a shot.

The main bridge was less than a hundred meters from the hangar, deep in the heart of the warship, and the lift came to a stop in seconds, hatch opening onto the bridge.  They filed out and Jack looked around, the contacts swimming with names and positions for each of the men and women on the bridge.  He stopped when his eyes lit on the captain and smiled at her.  The brunette looked strong, and grey eyes betrayed a determination to match the rest of her.  She stared at him for several seconds, obviously taking his measure.

“Major Hart,” Captain Wyatt finally said, giving him the courtesy promotion required when any captain other than The Captain was onboard a ship.

“Captain Wyatt,” Jack agreed with a smile.

“You’re Ageless,” Wyatt declared.

“Guilty as charged,” Jack answered, wondering what had betrayed him.

“I’ve never met one of your kind before,” she continued, her mouth sketching a doubtful thought.

“I’m not surprised,” Jack said with an easy smile.  Many people didn’t like the Ageless and he’d learned to downplay the advantages his genetics gave him long ago.  Except of course for times like when the car ran over that girl back home.  The people of International Falls hadn’t quite questioned him on his “adrenalin rush” and continued to treat him as they always had.  Of course he’d been a bit of a rogue, so that wasn’t always good.  Fathers of attractive young ladies had been more than happy to continue racking shotguns in his general direction, but they’d never actually shot him.  Winged him maybe but Jack didn’t count those misunderstandings.  Jacked looked directly into Captain Wyatt’s grey eyes.  “There’s not many of us,” he said.  He did
not
say that there were perhaps as many as five thousand Ageless in all the United States of America.

“I’ve heard that Ageless grow up lazy,” Wyatt challenged.  “Never take things seriously because it all comes so easy to you.”

Jack pursed his lips, wondering if she was truly distrustful of Ageless or just testing him.  He chose to assume a mix of the two and stepped into the verbal minefield with care.  “We don’t grow up Ageless,” he said.  “It’s sorta something that slides up on us without warning after we grow up.”

She nodded very slowly.  “But did
you
grow up?”

Jack cleared his throat and glanced at Betty.  She just smiled as if thinking it was a very good question.  Well.  There wouldn’t be any help from that peanut gallery.    “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

Wyatt’s expressive face frowned at him.  “Because I want to know if I can trust you onboard my ship.”

Jack felt Betty bristle beside him this time and he lowered an open hand to hush her.  He kept his eyes on Captain Wyatt though and forced his voice to sound as sincere as possible.  “You can trust me to the ends of the worlds.”

Wyatt sighed.  “That’s easy to say.”

“Aneerin trusts me,” Jack said, and instantly hid a wince.  It wasn’t one of the best arguments he’d ever given for why someone should trust him.

Wyatt cocked her head to the side, the questions on her face even more evident.  The questions and the doubt.  “But can
we
trust
him
?”  And that was why it wasn’t the best argument.

“Permission to speak frankly, Ma’am?” Jack asked.

Wyatt smiled and spread both arms out wide.  “I would expect nothing less.”

“I’m here because Admiral Aneerin smelled a trap.”  Jack shook his head.  “Well, we
found
a trap, and one he never saw coming.  I lost a Cowboy getting you out.  I lost half of my fighters.  The last time we took casualties like that, his Peloran Battle Squadron got ripped apart beside us.  And I think this trap was meant to finish him.  We both know how he fights.”  He waited for her to nod again before going on.  “That jammer was designed to neutralize his tactics.  I think it would have succeeded.  And I think you only got out because Aneerin sent us to help you.  Because he trusted
my
people to help
you
out of a situation he
told
your entire fleet to avoid.”

Wyatt met his gaze for several seconds.  “I see,” she finally replied in a cryptic manner.

Jack wasn’t sure how to respond, but he listened to his instincts and smiled.  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said with a tip of his hat.

Wyatt pursed her lips and nodded very slowly.  “Would you care to join me in the briefing room?” she asked, the question not disguising the iron-bound order in the voice at all.

“At your leisure, Ma’am,” Jack answered, glancing to the side to see what the cybers thought.  Betty gave him a proud smile, while Mercedes and Gabrielle had more measuring looks in their eyes.  They hadn’t yet come to a verdict on him.  Well, that was fair.  He hadn’t come to a verdict on them either. 

They entered the briefing room to see some twenty people waiting for them.  The holoforms represented the commanders of the warships and fighter squadrons that had survived Epsilon Reticuli.  They were a motley lot.

“Thank you for making this meeting,” Captain Wyatt said to the others and a shaky ripple of laughter moved through the room.  “We need to make for Serenity immediately.  I called you here to find out if your ships are ready.  I don’t want readiness reports, but your actual on-the-bridge feelings.  Are your ships and crews ready for the trip?”

“My crew’s ready for
anything
that gets us away from this system,”
Hammond’s
captain said and another ripple of nervous laughter filled the room.  “I almost had a mutiny on my hands after giving the order to hold formation on you in fact,” he added, far less humorously.  The laughter ended, and Wyatt nodded very carefully.

“Does that go for the rest of you?” she asked and Jack leaned back against the wall to listen to the ship captains give their reports.  None of them were good.  The task force had lost two-thirds of her ships in a few short minutes, and nearly all of their cruisers were expanding fields of wreckage in Epsilon Reticuli.  The various destroyer and frigate commanders knew they would have been dead if the Shang weren’t gunning for the more powerful ships, and that had them frightened.  But they were holding on.  That had to count for something.

“Very well,” Captain Wyatt finally cut through his inner thoughts with her command voice.  “Set your courses for Serenity and prepare to leave within ten minutes.”

“Hang on,” the captain of
Eclipse
protested and all eyes in the room turned to the man.  Jack frowned, something about the man rubbing him wrong.  “We need to determine the commander of this task force,” the man continued in a clipped tone and Jack saw several raised eyebrows.  “I suggest-”

“I suggest that no suggestions are needed,” Captain Wyatt cut him off.  Silence reigned in the briefing room until she opened her lips again.  “I am the senior commanding officer,” she finished in a tone that brooked no argument.

The man’s eyes blazed.  “With all due respect,” he bit out.

“Is that what you are giving me?” Wyatt asked.  “Respect?”  The unvoiced part of that question cut through the briefing room like a chainsaw.

Eclipse’
captain saw the danger and shook his head.  “Captain,” he began again, this time far more careful of his tone.  “Admiral Bainsworth is on
Recovery
at this time.”

That captured every eye again.  “Excuse me?” Wyatt asked.  “Did you just say that Admiral Bainsworth, commander of the entire British task force of Third Fleet, is here, right now, without the rest of his fleet?”  The question hung in the air like the sword of Damocles and Jack knew the question going through every mind in the briefing room.

“Why was the admiral not with his command?”

Eclipse’ captain swallowed at the unvoiced question.  “He was injured when
Valiant
took fire,” the captain explained hastily.  “It was deemed necessary to evacuate him and his staff immediately, and this force was the first exit route available.”

“Hang on,” Jack said, unconsciously echoing the Brit as he smelled a rat somewhere and tried to track it down.  “Your people thought this task force was a…
safe
escape route for an injured admiral?”

He could have heard a pin drop in the silence filling the briefing room, and the sound of the British captain’s swallowing came far too clearly.  “It was the…
first
escape route available…” the man said, licking his lips nervously.

“And they didn’t think any
more
would be available?” Jack pressed, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

The other captain cleared his throat awkwardly.  “I…am not privy to fleet command-level decisions,” he finally said, his protest sounding hollow to every ear.

“What in
Hell
did we leave Third Fleet facing, Captain?” Jack spat out, anger flashing through him.

“Major Hart,” Captain Wyatt said in a hard voice.  He throttled his anger, turned back to her, and saw the unbending will behind those eyes.  “I will ask the questions.  Understood?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Jack answered, his teeth gritted in protest.  But he didn’t delay and she didn’t bust him down any harder.

“Good,” she returned with a nod at the swiftness of his response, if not his joyful obedience.  “Now,” she began, turning back to the British captain, “Captain Alexander.”  The British captain’s eyes flicked to hers as quickly as Jack had responded to her iron tone.  “What do you know?”

“Nothing,” Alexander returned with a shake of his head.  “I was ordered to escort the admiral and his staff out.  I was not told why.”

“Did you have any suspicions?”

The British captain let out a long, unwilling breath.  “They seemed…uncertain of the safety of Third Fleet.”

“I see,” Wyatt said, her voice even harder.

“We have to go back,” Jack blurted out, almost without realizing it. 
Enterprise
needed him.  The response was so instinctive he didn’t think twice.  His eyes scanned the other people in the room and saw the same response in the other fighter pilots.  They’d all left people behind and every last one of them was willing to jump right back in without even thinking.  He could have kissed them.  Even the guys.

But the ship captains stared at him with horror in their eyes.  They’d gotten their people out against all odds.  They’d just escaped overwhelming firepower by the skins of their collective teeth.  And he could see in their eyes the outrage, and the fear under it, at the jumped up fighter pilot saying they had to charge back into that Hell.  He wasn’t certain if any if them would follow such an order at the moment.  Jack could have kicked himself.

“Major.  Hart.”  Captain Wyatt uttered the words separately, emphasizing both the rank and the name with an Ice Age’s worth of cold, and Jack met her eyes again.  There was no fear in them at all.  There wasn’t even anger.  That surprised him.  She sounded angry.  Very angry in fact.  But that anger didn’t reach her eyes.  What did was determination to use every opportunity she had.  And she saw an opportunity in his slip.  “Did I stutter, and somehow suggest that I was anything other than in command?” she said, her voice still arctic-cold.  But the eyes added something else.  She had a plan and she needed him to trust her.

“No, Ma’am,” he returned, once again without pause, and watched the ship captains relaxing in the corner of his eyes.  The fighter pilots bristled though.  They were all made of different cloth than the ship captains.  Pilots always were.  Once again, Jack could have kissed them.  And there were a few he would have been happy to kiss more than once.

“Good,” Wyatt said with a curt nod towards him.  Then she turned back to the captains.  “We leave for Serenity, now.”

“This is a joint task force of the Western Alliance,” Alexander protested.  “Command authority clearly falls to the senior military commander.  Admiral Bainsworth---”

“Is not here,” Wyatt interrupted, giving the man a knowing look.  “I suppose you would argue that as long as he continues to not be here, command should devolve to one of his captains?”