Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

Didn’t these people know there was a war on? Hadn’t we hit enough planets along the frontier to get the news out? Was he ever going to get an opportunity like this again?

“
Southbound
, this is
Jouster
,” he smiled like a fox contemplating an unlocked hen house. “Continue on your regular run. Escort the Saturation Wing in and engage targets of opportunity.”

“Affirmative,
Jouster
,” he heard
Southbound
say with a tired, exasperated sound. Was he that predictable? “Couldn’t resist, could you?”

Apparently he was.

“
Uller
and
Vienna
, I am transmitting a new course. Form on me and prepare to make a strafing run on the BattleTug.”

Jouster
felt like a hawk as his group spun up and away. From this distance, it wouldn’t take much to come left of the planet instead of right. The Palace would be chasing them even as they chased the tug.

“Flight Wing, this is
Auberon
,” came the voice of doom. Keller really was listening in, wasn’t she? Kwok would have been having tea somewhere, possibly while being entertained by one of the enlisted crew.

“Your orders were to engage and cripple the station and her defenders,” Keller said succinctly. “Return to your original course.”

“
Auberon
, target is well in hand,” he replied with a smirk. “This is more chaos to sow.”

He expected one more threat. Something like
I’ll have your head
, mister, but she fell silent. Kwok would have blustered some more.

Keller didn’t bluster.

So, he just had to come home a hero and she wouldn’t be able to touch him.

After all, she had done the same, hadn’t she?

Ξ

Jessica stopped before she got really going grinding her teeth. She should have known
Jouster
would do something like this eventually. The man was just too much a cowboy.

Enej looked up from his Flag Centurion station with concern. “Orders for the Flight Wing, sir?”

Jessica got out of her seat and walked around the projections. It was just as easy to spin it in place from her command chair, but this forced her mind into new positions. She often saw things not readily apparent when she did it this way.

Jouster
was about to get into the hornet’s nest, and she had no intention of taking the whole squadron down into melee with a BattleTug, regardless of how off–line the ship claimed to be. She would have been playing possum right now, hoping someone was stupid enough to get into range so they could get bit.

“Private signals, with acknowledgements, Flag,” she said, pacing. “Remind
Southbound
that she’s in command of the Flight with
Jouster
running off and ignoring orders. Tell her to be ready to come to
Jouster’s
rescue if things go bad. Remind
CR–264
to shift sides as they come around the horizon above that tug, so
Rajput
has clear shooting. If that thing gets mobile, they are both outgunned, even if we came in above. Suggest to Jež that
Auberon
drift lower so we can up into the BattleTug’s belly if we have to. We’ll be climbing out of the gravity well, anyway.”

She watched the young man type furiously and then look up at her. “Messages away, Commander.”

“Okay, Enej, Blue Team/Gold Team exercise. You command the BattleTug, in the given scenario. What do you do?”

She watched him bring up a local projection at his station and spin it to put him on the far side.

“If I’m pulling an ambush, I light the engines and come barreling around the planet right about now,” he said. “That puts me right into
Rajput
as she comes clear of the station. Hit her at close range with the Type–2’s, just enough to tickle her. Hold the Type–1’s for point defense and smacking fighters around if they get too close. Ignore
CR–264
as she passes. Hold the Primaries and the Type–3’s for
Auberon
and pull a fencing pass trying to gut us. The Gunship running with the fighters would be an ugly surprise, especially if the S–11’s decide to ignore the station and hit me with everything they have. But I don’t believe you’ll see me coming in time to have the fighters hold back firepower for me.”

Jessica considered the options and the physics of the situation.

“I like it,” she said. “Have Jež launch a probe over the pole and have it transmit the BattleTug’s location when we drop into the planet’s sensor shadow. Tell
da Vinci
to listen for that scenario and prepare to shift targeting accordingly.”

“Aye, sir,” he said. “Not what you expect?”

She considered the young man. Brilliant tactician, but lacked the killer instinct. Good at multi–level chess, needed to learn how to get creative.

“I can’t imagine that a fifty–year old BattleTug orbiting for the party had her primary crew in command. Everyone important would be at the dance. We have the second string people. Younger, and less predictable, but also less likely to take decisive action when surprised like this. The Empire keeps a close reign on command authority.”

“I see. So what would a young Centurion do?”

“They call the rank
Lieutenant
, Enej,” she said quietly, reliving the same conversation with Kasum more than a decade ago. “The book says to bring everything live and wait for the Captain, their equivalent of a Command Centurion. With
Jouster
about to come over their butts, they will concentrate everything on him and be waiting.”

“And the problem?”

“Look at
Jouster’s
course as he plotted it,” she said.

“Orbital insertion on the BattleTug’s plane of motion,” he replied. “Puts him right in place for a good strafing run with maximum exposure before they break out and climb up the gravity well to escape.”

“Yes,” she said. “Tactically sound. What happens if the Flight Commander over there sees it and realizes they can chase
Jouster
down way easier than they can chase us, given our head start and their relative motion in orbit.”

“Oh. Is there anything we can do?”

Jessica returned to her chair and settled in to sip her coffee. “I have no intention of getting
Auberon
into a melee with a BattleTug, especially since
Rajput
and
CR–264
are already committed on their run.
Jouster’s
on his own.”

Ξ

Jouster
was feeling really good about himself.
Uller
and
Vienna
were sitting stacked above and behind him. The BattleTug’s crew had apparently gotten themselves back on line and were trying to make it to the party, if only a little late.
Auberon
had even launched a probe so they could see the whole situation without having any blind spots.

This was how you were supposed to fight a war.

He watched on his scanners as
Rajput
hammered the living shit out of the Palace as she flew past, taking barely enough counter–fire to even count. The rest of the Flight Wing made a pass on the gunship and a couple of defensive platforms, overloading those poor bastards and blowing them out of the skies.

Seriously, he had the best Flight Wing on the frontier, maybe the top three in the fleet.

“
Jouster
, this is
da Vinci
. Watch your six.”

Jouster watched as she highlighted a new signal on his scanner.

Shit. Who told them they could do that?

Five Imperial fighters had launched late and simply ignored everything else. Now they were on his ecliptic and pouring around the edge of the planet at him from behind. At full speed.

He did some quick math. If he slowed down to engage them, they might miss the rendezvous point.

Would Keller leave him here? She had threatened too.

If he sped up, they would barely get a shot at the tug in passing, hardly enough to even warm up their shields, certainly not enough to do any damage.

Imperials weren’t that good, were they?

Can’t turn and launch missiles at them from here without getting trapped. Nothing I can do now but run with my tail between my legs.

“
Uller
.
Vienna
. Prepare to come to red–line speed. We’ve got to try to outrun them.”

Both pilots acknowledged and kept up as he pushed the throttle to the last stop and locked it there. He considered dumping all of his missiles, just to reduce weight and drag on the wispy tops of the atmosphere.

That would look really good on the after–action report, wouldn’t it?

He watched precious minutes tick by. Ahead, the BattleTug was ignoring them, trying to chase the rest of the squadron. Behind, the Imperials slowly caught up, lighter and faster around the curve, and taking a slingshot trajectory. They would only get one shot, but they would have speed and position when they did.

This was going to suck.

Vienna’s
voice came first. It was just as dark and sultry as she was. Not his type, but she certainly made
Uller’s
motor run, even if she would never give him the time of day. “Missiles inbound,”
Vienna
said calmly. “Initiating defensive measures now.”

Jouster
cursed silently. That would just slow them down more at the very time they needed speed to escape.

He deployed his screamers, hot little boxes broadcasting a loud radio signal. Incoming missiles often locked on those instead of the primary target, but he had to back his engines down to be less of a thermal signature.

He banked, climbing up and away from the screamers, just as his wingmates were doing above him.

This was bad. The five Imperials had slowed as well. They might be able to brake enough to engage, instead of blasting right by. And the BattleTug was coming up under them.

He was about to be caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Flashes of light marked the impact of Imperial missiles on defensive buoys. At least that much had worked.

And then his defensive systems warbled as the Imperials got a targeting lock.

“Team,” he yelled. “Go for broke, straight up. Now.”

“Negative,
Jouster
,” a female voice interrupted. “Hold your line for six more seconds and then climb out.”

That was Lagunov. What the hell was
Bitter Kitten
up to?

Jouster red–lined the engines once more and wobbled his craft back and forth. He could see pulses flash past him as ionized packets of energy missed.

The Imperials were actually close enough to engage with Type–3’s? Crap.

Jouster barrel–rolled to the right, careful to stay flat as he did so, but hopefully catching the Imperials out of position. The scanner showed
Uller
and
Vienna
staying right with him. All those hours in the flight simulator were paying dividends right now, as they moved like a school of fish.

“
Jouster
,”
Bitten Kitten
called out, “Pull up now.”

He pulled back on the yoke and felt inertial forces drive him down into the seat.

He watched two friendly craft slalom right under his formation at full speed, triple cannon firing as fast as the generators could pulse them. He hoped the Imperials were as surprised as he was.

Jouster
pulled a quarter rotation pivot as he climbed, leaving the entire battle field above him out the cockpit window. Five Imperials fighters had suddenly turned into two as
Bitter Kitten
and somebody else shot past.

She got three of them?

The other direction, a wall of fire erupted over the dorsal hull of the BattleTug, secondary explosions feeding on each other.

Just as he cleared the gravity well and pushed his fighter over to make the rendezvous with
Auberon
, a flash of light appeared on his scanner.

One of the two fighters who had just saved his butt disappeared in a cloud of fire as a missile slammed into it.

“
da Vinc
i, this is
Jouster
,” he said quietly. “Who got hit?”

Lagunov answered first. “That was
Ironside
,
Jouster
. They got Gustav.”

So. One of his wasn’t coming home. And had died rescuing him from his own stupidity.

There was going to be hell to pay when he got back to
Auberon
.

Chapter XXVI

Date of the Republic February 6, 393 Jumpspace outbound from C’Xindo system

Only one chair on this side of the table was occupied, to the two over there.

She was not out–numbered.

Jessica sat in the center of the long table and looked across at her two pilots.

It was not a happy look. She was not a happy woman.

She had, however, left the seats on either side of her empty.

If this was going to be a formal Court of Inquiry, she would have installed two other people as judges, probably Denis Jež and Iskra Vlahovic. Having the First Officer and Flight Deck Commander, her second in command and the air boss respectively, would have meant formal charges. Career–ending sorts of inquiries.

She was not that angry.

Quite.

It was a close thing.

She let the silence hang. Hopefully, Milos Pavlovic, commonly known as
Jouster
, and Darya Lagunov,
Bitter Kitten
, would be able to grasp how angry she was and keep very, very quiet while she stewed over the after–action reports.

She looked up at each of them in turn.

Bitter Kitten
had the decency to look embarrassed and sorry, like a school girl who had forgotten to turn in a term paper on time and was waiting for the headmistress to come down on her.

Jouster
sat with a scowl on his face, like he really didn’t believe he had done anything wrong. In his mind, he might not have. There was a reason he was on the frontier, rather than in the war zones. No commander there had been willing to put up with his shenanigans for long. Even if he was one of the best pilots in the fleet.