Back into the fire, p.10
Back Into the Fire, page 10
“So,” Teller was saying, “I have three priorities for you and your people, Captain.” He manipulated the hologram, caused it to shift perspectives again, zooming in on an island just off the southwest coast of the continent. “This rock is Queen’s Point. It was apparently a vacation spot of sorts for the miners and their families before the war, complete with amusement park.”
“Sounds fun,” Red remarked drolly.
“Wouldn’t know; never been,” Teller said. “But the Alliance has and has converted the whole place into a fortress and aerodrome. This is where much of what was being shuttled down to them landed. It also happens to be where what little starfighter support they have is stationed.”
Kelly eyed the hologram, noting landing pads, anti-air batteries, bunkers, and a shallow harbor hosting gantries for ships and spacecraft seaborne landings. “These readouts look pretty detailed, sir,” she said. “You’ve managed a scan of the place?”
Teller nodded. “A fly-by, actually, with one of our Firestorms.”
“You still have fighters?” Red asked.
“A handful,” he replied. “We lost most of what remained trying to fend off the landings, before you arrived. So, I guess it’s damned lucky you’re here.”
“It is.”
Teller puffed the cigar. “We’re going to need Queen’s Point knocked out. They’ll have Valkyries there, and whatever shuttles that survived. Any of those can still cause trouble. And the Point’s also serving as their major supply and communications hub. It’s over the horizon, you see, out of range of our particle cannon. They land stuff there and ferry it over to the mainland for the long march up to the fight.”
Red nodded. “When?”
Teller grinned through smoke. “As soon as you Jesters can get yourselves sorted out.”
She smiled back, grimly. “Of course. I didn’t get the chance to ask before, sir. Do you have anyplace we can set up shop?”
“When old United Industries still had the mining franchise, here, before the war, they started sinking a shaft just north of the aerodrome,” Teller said. “They gave up on it, moved operations further north, but there are still tunnels and an abandoned landing pad. None of it’s in great shape. But I figure you can make the best of it.”
Red nodded again, her smile broadening. The Jesters were longtime masters of converting caves and ruins into hideaways. “We will. Thank you, sir. And your second priority?”
The general skimmed the hologram across hundreds of kilometers with dizzying speed, refocused upon the immediate region around the aerodrome. Blue and yellow icons were flickering—still exchanging fire, Kelly realized. Vaguely, she could sense the distant rumble of the ongoing fight they’d flown in through, receding stubbornly.
The yellow icons were falling back, likewise, to the south, some of them scattered badly, and Teller’s ugly face wrinkled fully into a smile. “You certainly rattled ‘em, I’ll give you that, Captain!”
“It was our pleasure, General,” Red answered.
“It was more my pleasure!” he chortled. Pointing the smoldering stub of cigar, he went on, “But that’s the old First Division, out there, the Black Eyes, and they’ll be back. And, next time, they’ll be reinforced with whatever got down.” The little green eyes squinted through the hologram at Red. “Did you get any kind of look at them, during the fight?”
Red glanced Kelly’s way. She’d gotten closest, and shrugged as all eyes in the room turned to her. “I didn’t recognize the markings,” she said, “not that any of us had a lot of time to look. There were heavy transports, so vehicles and armor, at least.”
“Well, whatever they are, it’s more than I’ve got.” Teller paused and glanced almost uncomfortably at one of his subordinates. “The Thirteenth can field, perhaps, seven thousand effectives, still.”
Red kept her practiced unreadable expression in place, but Kelly was certain she didn’t, and Tim swore quietly under his breath.
“That’s backed by the local pro-Union militia, for sure,” Teller hurried to add, but smiled lopsidedly, “and they’re not completely useless, holding a defensive position.” He clenched the cigar in his teeth, made his gritting smile smoke. “But, from that I’m sure you can guess your second priority: when the Shiny come back in force, I’m gonna need full Jester commitment to breaking ‘em up.”
Kelly couldn’t say she knew much about Teller. But she’d known a few marines, way back, before the war when she was still an Alliance pilot. The general could’ve been the standard issue for the type, grizzled, fierce, and utterly unflappable. Only the cigar was an oddity, non-regulation and likely hideously expensive, judging by the smell, which could only come from genuine, hybridized tobacco. She wondered where he kept the rest.
But she knew the Thirteenth Division. The Lucky Thirteenth, who’d somehow always drawn the worst assignments in the pre-war Alliance, deploying out to the Rim to protect colonists on deadly, new worlds, decried—or sensationalized—by the HoloMedia when putting down rebellions with shattering force. The treasonous Thirteenth, who’d joined one of those rebellions, after the Alliance started grinding down the Outregion worlds, suspending liberties—paying no mind to the fact that the vast majority of the Thirteenth’s marines came from those very worlds. They’d been in the thick of the Union’s worst, most desperate stands, ever since.
And this fight on Fury sure as hell sounded like that.
Red was nodding again. “And the third priority?”
Teller exhaled twin plumes of smoke from his nostrils, looked like a bull bracing for a charge. “I’ve got almost no topside cover, Captain. To be honest, when that Shiny task force parked in orbit, I thought we were looking at the end. I’ve got a couple shot-up Firestorms, decent sky side deflector shields, and our anti-orbital installations. We can stand off a blockade for a little bit, but not forever.”
He took another drag on the cigar. “So, until the Union Fleet decides they’re willing to risk some of their pretty capital ships on a fight, the Jesters are Fury’s fleet!”
GRAND ADMIRAL NEHEMIAH K. Harrison leaned back in his chair at the small conference table in the ready room of his flagship, the super-heavy battlecruiser, AGNS Obliterator. Icons darted through the hologram projected over his desk like plasma-spouting minnows, their courses going erratic as competing schools raced into one another and mixed. Harrison crossed his arms as they did, hiding a scowl as disaster played out.
The officer across the table from him lurched forward and slapped the projector control, killed the holographic drama as it reached its climax.
Harrison blinked at the other man, shocked. His visitor’s crimson and black uniform was crumpled and smelled vaguely of smoke. Pasty patches of first aid bio-sealant spray flecked off his left ear and peeked out from beneath his high collar. A flake of this settled upon one the man’s ruby stars of rank.
Rear Admiral Sobieski glowered at Harrison. “It’s not my fault. Dammit!”
“We’re not here to discuss faults, Pavel,” Harrison replied as smoothly as his surprise at the other man’s break in decorum would permit. “We’re here to review.”
Sobieski withdrew his hand from the tabletop with a flinch—realization of what he’d done. He was as small and wiry a man as Harrison was tall and—regrettably—tending towards meatiness. With a claw-like hand he swiped a sheen of sweat from his high forehead. “I was set up, you see!”
“I see that you that you were following the plan we discussed,” Harrison said evenly.
“I was,” the other man agreed with a twitchy nod. “I held back our carriers in case the traitor fleet made a showing, running at low power for stealth. We were perfectly-positioned for the Jesters’ arrival. Between our force defending the transports and the fighters of the Impervious and the Warhawk, it should’ve been a classic pincer.”
“Except for the third force that arrived,” the other man in the compartment with them spoke up.
Captain Terry Omura, Harrison’s Intelligence Chief, was only slightly larger than the Rear Admiral, a fit and motionless figure to whom shadows seemed to naturally gather. Harrison had originally decided against having him present, but changed his mind when hearing confirmation that the ambushers were, indeed, the Hell’s Jesters.
Like Harrison, Omura had much experience with them.
Sobieski shot the man a venomous look. “That’s something none of you spooks predicted!” he snarled and looked back at Harrison with a fluttering, almost beseeching light. “The Jesters had to know we were coming!”
“It appears, rather, that they stumbled into you,” Harrison suggested. “I think both sides were surprised.”
Sobieski’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not pinning this on me, Nehemiah.”
Harrison glowered back at the officer. Unfortunate, he thought. He’d believed Pavel a solid sort. But like a lot of officers who risen to command pre-war, the realities of galactic conflict had outstripped his imagination. More, they’d exceeded his mettle.
“Admiral,” he began quietly, “I’d like you to take what remains of Task Force Redemption back to Tartan for refit.”
Sobieski swallowed. “I...thought we’d remain. To help here?”
“You don’t have a single undamaged ship,” Harrison replied. “What’s more, two of the three starfighter gantries on the Impervious are wrecked, from the reports I’ve received. This is not so?”
The Rear Admiral grimaced. “It is.”
“And with the Warhawk gone down, you can barely service your own fighter wings, let alone the orphans.” Harrison folded his arms before him. That last part was especially unfortunate. The Warhawk had survived Junction and Loudon without a scratch, the last of the Carlson escort carriers, built pre-war. They’d proven completely inadequate, with poor shields and point defenses, and the ‘Hawk had been due for the yards and a total rebuild. But losing a ship with its perceived luck? The Alliance Fleet was a superstitious tribe.
The Admiralty was absolutely going to pin this on poor Sobieski.
“I want you to transfer your surviving Valkyries to the Powell and Savo,” Harrison went on. The two new light carriers would be packed in cheek-and-jowl. But not for long. “And, as I said, the rest of you are due for Tartan.”
Sobieski slammed his palm down on the desktop again. “Damn you, Nehemiah! I was with you at Junction! I know how this goes!” He pointed one of those ratty, little fingers. “I defended you, when others scattered.” He shot Omura a look. “I took the shit, for you. And this is what I get?”
Harrison refused to react, to even blink an eye. “You will take your command back to Tartan for refit, Admiral. New orders will await you there.”
Sobieski stared into Harrison’s eyes for an unbearable handful of seconds. Finally, shivering with rage, the other man stood. Harrison and Omura did likewise and answered his shaking salute when he offered it. Without another word, Sobieski whirled and stomped from the ready room.
Harrison settled back into his chair with a loud exhalation and touched the hologram control. The replay of the battle around Fury was still going. He killed it and switched to a strategic star map view, showing the swath of the Outregion worlds that encompassing Fury, as well as Bolingbroke and a dozen other worlds where Alliance forces still faced Union ones. The last few weeks of battles had gone less well than hoped. Sobieski’s disaster had been the worst, but not the only one.
“He’s right,” Omura said quietly, sitting down again, himself. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“You no doubt recall the adage from the Academy,” Harrison said, “that sometimes it is better to have lucky commanders than skilled ones.”
“Well, we’ve had damned little luck, of late.”
Harrison sighed. “That’s the truth.”
It was infuriating. The Grand Galactic Alliance had more of everything than the breakaway worlds of the Union. Except one. The transuranic ore that was the only substance capable of powering the massive, reality-altering reaction of hyper-jump. Without it, interstellar travel, commerce, and culture ground down. Worlds would slip back to their post-diaspora, feral states. The very possibility of an intergalactic order would disintegrate.
Centuries of exploitation had fueled expansion across a full arm of the Milky Way, ravenous mining operations that stripped worlds, literally, to the core in order to extract transuranic material. Ecosystems were annihilated. Species eradicated. Whole worlds demolished.
But the Grand Galactic Alliance had spread across all.
Until its exploits strained the very sinews of governance and became—if Harrison was willing to be honest—tyranny. That some folk grew tired of it was inevitable. That others saw no problem with it continuing, the same. And men like Harrison were left sorting it out.
But the Alliance was more desperate than most knew. Harrison knew he was being lied to by the politicians, but men like Terry had gotten word to him that the search for fresh transuranic sources—venturing further down the Arm, as opposed to out along the Union-controlled Rim—was going slow. Too slow. It might be five years before freshly-colonized worlds yielded enough to satisfy even the Fleet’s appetites, let alone the rest of the Alliance.
And they would reach the point of crisis soon. Maybe a standard year. Maybe less.
Bolingbroke. Saipan. Fury. All three worlds had known, but largely-intact veins of the ore, had only been in the early stages of exploitation when the war erupted and they declared for the Union—Saipan most recently, most desperately. All three were far-flung from both the core of the Alliance and the centers of Union power.
All three had become battlegrounds in the last month.
“Bolingbroke could have gone better,” Harrison said, zooming the display in on the world in question. Icons winked into being about it. “But we did finally manage to pin Greer’s fleet in place. He can’t abandon the system without huge political ramifications. He’ll have to defend it. But he’ll also have to make good his government’s promises to the others that have joined their treason.”
“You intend to spread him out?” Omura asked.
“We have the ships, for certain,” Harrison glanced at the other man, “and the fuel?”
“As far as my contacts in the Assembly know,” he replied. “The High Council has approved a quiet rationing-out from the Strategic Reserve. I’m told the Fleet can expect nominal levels to continue for the next six months, at least.” He leaned over the table, a slight quiver to his eyes. “But the nervousness is palpable, sir.”
Harrison snorted. “For all of us.” He waved it off. “Six months will be enough.”
“Friends of mine at the Admiralty have told me you don’t have that many,” Omura said hesitantly. “In fact, the word is Admiral Severson is being pressured to replace you.”
“Again?” Harrison chortled. “And with who? Buto? Smythe? The former lost Fury in the first place to surprise attack. And the latter hasn’t led anything more than a Grand Review over Nova Terra since the war began!”
“It’s just a warning, Admiral.”
He fixed Omura with a glower. After the defeat at Junction and Harrison’s subsequent disgrace—his “time in the wilderness”—the little intelligence officer had all but vanished. There’d been hints, signs that Omura had still been working angles for his former boss, from the shadows, but also the obviousness of his absence. A great many had left Harrison to the political wolves, then. Only Terry had returned.
Still, it was hard to trust him again—or, really, anyone.
“Warning received,” Harrison replied at last. “But unnecessary. The Fringe World Fleet will be on the move again in a week.” He shifted the star map perspective to take in only the galactic region around Bolingbroke, Saipan, and Fury. “Murakama is massing her Task Force Maelstrom equidistant between the three. I’m hoping Greer’s scouts see her, for confusion’s sake, but she’s due for Saipan.” He touched the hologram and a cluster of icons broke off for the most distant of the three systems. He gestured at the large armada just outside Bolingbroke System. “We’re going to leave the battleships and their support squadrons perched here, keep Greer sweating, but I’m taking the heavy carrier division to Fury.”
“You’re taking command there?”
“Personally,” he replied. “That should calm the nerves, assure Severson and his clique I’m taking Sobieski’s mess seriously.” He offered Omura a wicked smile. “And I have other reasons, as you well know.”
“The Jesters.”
Harrison’s expression smoothed as he consciously governed his emotions. There was nothing but business to his tone when he spoke. “Have we any new information?”
Omura’s face was as controlled as his superior’s. “About your daughter? Nothing definitive. My sources do believe she survived the Battles of Loudon. Is she there, now, at Fury?” He shrugged. “I believe we should assume so.”
Kelly. Harrison nodded slowly. My first-born—my greatest failure. He’d tried getting her back, pulling her out of the treasonous web she’d gotten emmeshed in. But she’d decided, and she’d stayed. He grimaced, couldn’t help it. He knew there was nothing left to do about it. But he was still a father.
“I am...sorry, sir.”
“Don’t be,” Harrison said, falsely bright and through gritting teeth. “We’ve all chosen sides, haven’t we? If she’s there, with the Jesters, then she’ll face their fate with them. Because that’s what we’re going to do, Terry. If Greer’s thrown the Jesters at defending Fury, it means he’s desperate, strung-out. It means they’re on their own.” He grinned ferociously. “It means we’ve got an opportunity to rid the galaxy of the Hell’s Jesters once and for all!”
“Yes sir.” Omura hesitated. “There is the little matter of the, ah, asset we’ve discussed before. We could insert her into this situation.”
Harrison considered it, but shook his head. “Too obvious, at least at this point.”
“She knows much of their inner-workings.”
He shook his head again. “Not yet.” Two communicator crystals had been pulsing slowly, patiently throughout the meeting. Harrison had ignored them till now, but touched one of them. “What do you think of this?”
