Hell or highwater hells.., p.31
Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 31
To the left, the tactical station was a tangle of rent metal and shards of flesh that Buto forced himself not to look at. Deck plates buckled upward by the blast that had ripped through the bridge left the forward fifth of the compartment a blackened crater. Wrenched, broken power conduits hissed and popped within it. Above, the tactical hologram struggled, finally succeeded to reform.
“Heavy damage to lower decks,” Mitson recited from his chair, remarkably unscathed in the midst of the carnage. “Shields destroyed. Propulsion at eighty percent. Life support stabilizing.”
“Get medical teams to the bridge,” Buto ordered unsteadily, glancing again at his crimsoned fingers before wiping them off on his pant leg. “And get tactical functions back up. We need to know what’s happening.”
The huge hologram before him steadied. The details were clear, and horrid. The last of the phantom attackers were phantoms no more, painted by the scanners as they rushed by. A globular blinked into existence, showed a lean, lethal hull, highlighted strange dorsal modules. Some kind of cloaking package? They’d been practically invisible till they unleashed their volleys.
But the condition they’d left the fleet in was far more appalling. In the confusing tatter that remained of the Rimward’s formation, it was hard to say anything for certain, but that they’d had at least a dozen ships—a third of their number—destroyed seemed undeniable, and more crippled or badly damaged. Buto swallowed down a rush of bile. A dozen...gone in five minutes...less! His head spun. He had trouble calculating the sheer ignominy of it.
“Signals coming in from unit commanders,” Camilla wheezed from the communications station. A glance showed her sagging at her instruments, rents in the fabric across the back of her seat, a pool of blood forming at its base. “They’re requesting orders, Admiral.”
“Switch tactical operations to the systems station,” Mitson ordered. “XO, take over.” When no one answered, he added sharply, “Commander Henkle?” When there was still no answer, Mitson pivoted his chair—then winced. Buto followed his gaze, saw the tangle of rags that had been the ship’s executive officer, flung into the rear corner of the bridge by the blast.
“I’ve got it,” the officer already at systems announced. Holograms swam on the man’s displays, changed perspectives. His voice ratcheted up an octave. “Sir, we’re still together, still on course.”
The main tactical display winked as each ship’s icon pinged back. But more, color-coded hostile yellow, were closing on them, beginning to swing into their path. And the whole time, beyond them, the titanic clash between Harrison and Greer reached a new level of savagery.
“That blocking force will be in extreme weapons range in three minutes,” the officer who’d taken over tactical said.
“Where are those damned starfighters?”
“Scattering, sir, pulling away.”
“The blocking force has superior position,” Mitson said, turning his seat to face Buto to meet his gaze. “And we are damaged and disorganized, with no element of surprise left in our favor.”
“What are you saying?” Buto squeaked.
Mitson visibly swallowed. “I’m suggesting that the fleet change course to preserve our options, Admiral.”
Buto shook his head slowly. He means run. The thought birthed more nausea. Suddenly the cut on his head itched, hurt more. His guts felt like liquid fire and his legs went rubbery. He wished desperately for a chair. But they couldn’t see that. He had to be in command, now.
“The fight is there,” he replied, pointing at the huge hologram, the mockingly-festive glitter of battle closer to Surigao.
“We can draw a wider course,” Mitson said, “go around, perhaps even put us in position to rendezvous with Severson’s arrival, combine our forces.”
“But the fight is there, now, Captain!” He stared into the hologram, not really seeing. “Nehemiah needs us now,” he muttered.
An ugly alarm blatted.
“Long-range hostile targeting,” the officer now at tactical said. “Two minutes to extreme weapons range.”
“Admiral,” Mitson said in a soft, yet firm voice, and stood to face him. “Staying on this course assures us heavy losses. Even if we break through, it’s not clear we’ll be in any shape to do any good.”
“We will break through,” Buto insisted. He gulped back the last of the wooziness and fear, thoughts crystallizing. “Those are my orders.”
“Sir, with respect, I—”
“Those are my orders, Captain!” Buto snapped with command in his voice he could finally be proud of. He turned to the wounded woman at the comm station. “Confirm to all ships, we are continuing on course! We are going through!”
“Aye, sir,” she responded feebly.
Mitson’s jaw worked. “A reminder, sir, that our shields are destroyed. We will be vulnerable.”
“Then we will hang back,” Buto replied. “Our escort ships will cover for us.”
“Aye, sir,” Mitson rasped and turned back to his chair, sat, and turned forward again.
A weird silence gripped the bridge. All eyes settled on the tactical display as the battered column rushed for the widening concave of the blocking force, its vertex away from them, the formation seeming to beckon them to rush into it.
Calvin Buto had never backed down from anything in his life.
He’d kept at his studies, even as his Academy grades faltered. He’d hadn’t been the last in his class, though a little part of him always wondered if his mother’s connections had helped. Nevertheless, he kept bulldozing through, to ship assignments where he struggled to earn the respect of his sections, then to staff assignments, where flag officers often granted him latitude because of his family’s history. Didn’t matter that it wasn’t earned. He plowed on. Command of the old Regalia, outdated and consigned to Foundation World patrols, but his. Part of the Grand Review over Nova Terra. Elevation to cruiser squadron commander. Elevation to Rimward Fleet commander.
Nothing had ever stopped him.
Nothing was going to stop him now.
“Extreme weapons range in fifteen seconds,” the kid at tactical announced.
“Here we go,” Mitson’s voice seemed to come from very far away.
The Immolator shuddered as her still-functional missile tubes began launching, as the main guns joined them. On the tactical, the other survivors of the Rimward Fleet unleashed torrents of hell into the void before them. The waiting Union ships fluttering in answer, missiles streaking forth. Energy blasts clawed into the Rimward’s salvos. Those blasts would walk on, would reach the ships in moments.
A flash to port showed an escort cruiser blowing apart as already-stricken shields failed and a flurry of Union missiles got through. Another flash buckled the battlecruiser, Behemoth, knocked it out of formation in a spreading cloud of flaming gases and shrapnel. More hits registered. More ships flamed.
Buto clenched his jaw to molar-splintering intensity. Sweat burned in the cut at his brow. He wondered where the hell the medical teams were. He blinked away a mix of blood and perspiration at the corner of his eye. The cold determination of before soured as doubt entered his mind. The bile returned to the back of his throat.
The Rimward Fleet plunged into the blocking force’s concave, taking fire from every direction, blazing out wildly in response. Ships slowed, bleeding atmosphere, trails of debris. Union fire concentrated with clinical precision on these, rending them apart. But at the closing ranges, Alliance guns were finding hits, too. What looked like a Union heavy cruiser flinched out of formation in a fiery smear.
“We’re doing it!” Buto shrieked with a near-insane surge of hope. “We’re punching through!”
Deck plates shuddered beneath his feet. He had a moment to feel the artificial gravity fail, his guts flop within, and to open his mouth to demand what the hell had just happened.
Then white fire seared Calvin Buto from existence.
“CONFIRMED,” WOODRUF said into the sickened quiet clenching the crew on the Obliterator’s bridge. “The Immolator is destroyed.”
Harrison pinched his lips together till they tingled, refused to let a single word, a single breath escape him until he was master of his emotions. Damn it, Cal! He saw the other man in his mind’s eye, florid-faced with drink at that last dinner. What were you thinking?
It was the most one-sided slaughter Harrison had ever witnessed. It still wasn’t clear what had bull-dozed through the Rimward Fleet at first, blasting ships at suicidally close ranges and streaking by. But the following bull-headed stampede right into the Union blocking force—after that hideous blooding—had been on a level of insanity Harrison couldn’t comprehend.
And it had just thrown away over twenty ships.
Harrison turned his gaze to the bloodbath just beyond Surigao’s outer orbits. He didn’t need to see the tallies to know his resumed attack wasn’t even putting a dent. With the Rimward Fleet mauled, there’d be no digging Greer out now. He swallowed once, grimaced at the familiar ashy taste of sheer, exhausted horror. He remembered it from Junction, from Fury...now this. Damn.
But his eyes flicked towards the analog timer, still counting down. Less than three hours. He turned to Woodruf. “Commander, show me Severson’s projected approach route.”
“Yes, sir.”
On the tactical, out beyond the fire- and wreck-littered void of the battle, a dotted line drew itself from the system’s far side, arching around from behind the primary. The line stopped at a point between the star and Surigao and an icon blinked.
“At this point, they will be obvious to Union sensors,” Woodruf said in a tightly-controlled voice.
“We’re not picking up any sign of them yet, though?”
“None, sir.”
He nodded. That means at least part of the plan is still intact. The point was to draw Greer out away from the planet, after us. Harrison let himself see the tally now, hid a grimace at the appalling numbers. Half our starfighters wiped out...my God. He shook it away. Better pull out while there’s still enough left of us to be enticing.
“Has Admiral Nagumo’s task force completed clearing the asteroid belt?” he asked.
“Sporadic fighting continues,” Woodruf reported after a pause to read from a globular. “But the Admiral signals that they have achieved local control.”
“That will have to do,” he said. A pause to clear his throat. “Commander, send to all unit leaders: ‘withdraw to the Galactic East Gap.’”
Someone on the bridge gasped. Harrison visibly clenched his teeth, hoped it’d scare down anymore reactions. “Repeat, ‘withdraw’. Have Murakama’s Heavy Division take up blocking positions and delay.” That was going to be costly as hell. “All other units fall back. Recall all starfighter wings.”
Harrison glanced once more at the catastrophe of the Rimward Fleet’s charge. Fragments of the force were scattering away from the disaster now, a couple ships here, a single there. They might regroup a dozen or more, just out of range. A handful more might limp for safety, if those damned Jesters didn’t reappear to pick over the stragglers. A couple looked dead in space, but still transmitting distress signals. Harrison hid a shudder as he thought of the ordeal that faced those spacers—before they froze or suffocated.
“It’s not over, is it?” Walsh asked—and it wasn’t a question.
“We’ve got to survive the next couple hours, first, Captain,” Harrison replied.
He looked over his shoulder, eyes smoldering. “And after that?”
“We get back to the plan,” Harrison said. “We’re supposed to be bait. Time to start acting like it, again.”
ANTON ROSE FROM HIS chair with a creak of his joints and crossed behind Jerry to a bookshelf behind them. Pivoting in the couch to watch him, Jerry caught a faint breath of the creature’s stink; chemicals and rot—like a funeral home. Glancing at Josie, he saw her wrinkling her nose.
Pausing at the bookshelf, Anton touched the spine of a tome. The motion triggered a crackle of parting wood and creaking hinges and he stepped back to allow what was obvious now as a false panel to swing wide. Harsh lights within set Jerry’s eyes to squinting. Anton stepped into the alcove beyond, gripped something, and turned to draw it out.
“Don’t suppose someone can help an old man?” he rasped.
Jerry was on his feet in a moment, rushing to take the object from Anton. It wasn’t heavy and he wondered if the Methuselah wasn’t playing games with him. Hell, he is. But he took the cool, rectangular device and carried it back over to the coffee table before the fire, set it down. The others were up and helping, as well. Looking over the object, Jerry recognized the cooling vents, gently pulsing status lights, and cyber jack.
“Peta drives,” Anton explained as Red took one of the devices. “Everything I’ve shown you and more is contained in these. I have back-ups, too, should anything happen to you.”
“You mean if we don’t get back,” Jerry said.
“Always prepared for contingencies,” Anton muttered as he handed a third drive to Josie and then touched the spine of the false book to close the secret alcove once more. “That third one has some particularly interesting data within it.”
“Such as?” Josie asked.
Anton didn’t answer right away, took his time settling back into his chair and smiling like a kid with a secret. “Something truly scandalous. Something the Alliance has kept from its peoples—ostensibly to ‘prevent panic’, I suppose.”
“What?” Tina grated, clearly running out of patience.
Anton flashed his horrid jigsaw of teeth. “Definitive proof of alien intelligent, non-human life.”
Jerry met Tina’s eyes across the coffee table. Neither needed any real proof of that. The catacombs of the Jesters’ base on Junction had provided plenty of eerie examples. But a creeping dread skittering up Jerry’s insides. “There have always been trinkets and ruins and rumors,” he replied.
“I’m surprise the Ghost didn’t tell you more about this,” Anton said. “It was part of why we began altering its programming, you see. In preparation for conflict.” He winced. “That was perhaps our greatest error.”
“Definitive proof,” Jerry repeated.
“Yes,” Anton purred, “of first contact.”
A shock of ice wind went through Jerry. He felt Josie’s hand upon his arm, heard Tina’s hiss of surprise.
Anton was chuckling, and pointed at the drives. “It’s all in there.”
“Humanity made contact with an alien species?” Tina asked, tone incredulous, but quavering as well.
“You would have thought we would’ve been more” he paused, seemed to be looking for a word “united in our response. But, no, humanity set to its usually scrambling and squabbling, factions seeking advantage and profit.” He sighed. “I fear we made quite the hash of things.”
“They’re...still out there?” Jerry asked.
“Of course. I don’t think they were very impressed” Anton leaned forward and his depthless eyes flickered “or deterred. They’ll be back, someday. Maybe they’re circulating out there, now, watching us tear ourselves to pieces. Maybe that was their scheme, all along, understanding quickly just what we are.”
“And the others,” Josie said, shaking her head as if to dismiss what was just too damned much, “the Methuselahs all know this?”
“They do.”
“Then why continue with all the division?” she near-shrieked. “Why not stop the war?”
Anton leaned back in his seat, smiling his grotesque smile. “That’s the irony, isn’t it? The Long-Lived have succumbed to short-sightedness. Noovin and those who’d support him believe they have the time to secure power, to bring the human-held part of the galaxy under their control, before the Others return.” Anton shook his head. “I fear the hour is far too late, already.”
The ice in Jerry’s veins crystallized, locked him in place. He was barely hearing the words. But a thought cracked through. “Pragmatist,” he rumbled. “This is as much about saving your own ass as it is saving the Alliance or whatever.”
Anton held up his spidery hands. “As I said.”
Tina set a hand upon the stack of drives. “So, you let us leave with these and the idea is that we broadcast them across the galaxy?”
“Something like that,” he replied. “Ghost in the Machine will have some idea what to do with this all, I suspect. It will know where to apply pressure. And It will know that the evidence has to come from without. The Alliance is awash in misinformation. This will have to be information warfare—memetic warfare.” His smile twisted with a hint of regret. “Truth warfare.”
“Truth,” Tina snorted quietly. “Seems there’s been damned little of that.”
“Oh, for certain,” Anton said. “All our lies and schemes have grown and festered and created a boil out of the universe. It’s time we lanced it and let all the disease out.”
“It’s always a mess when you do that,” Jerry pointed out.
He leaned forward fully, put both hands upon the table and glared at him. Finally, there was something there, swirling in his weird, weird eyes—desperation. “But you must take word to the Ghost for me. Like I said. I want It to know this came from me!”
“This is some kind of...olive branch?”
“Yes.” Anton wiped a tendril of drool from the corner of his clenching teeth and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, like I said. A truce between us, the Machine and the Methuselahs.”
“Methuselah,” Josie said with emphasis, “singular. It’s just you pushing this, isn’t it?”
His void-stare flicked towards her and there was no smile now. “Perhaps, it will be,” he whispered. “Perhaps some will see the light, as things begin to come apart.”
“‘Things begin to come apart’,” Josie hissed. “You really don’t care, do you? Millions more will suffer or die because of this.” She nodded at the stack of peta-drives. “It’ll be anarchy and fear before things work themselves out.”
