Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (17 page)

With that, the Peloran squadron turned away and the fighters returned to their landing bays.  A dozen German heavy cruisers and destroyers pulled out of the British formation and accelerated towards the Peloran squadron.  A face that could have been the base for an artist’s stereotypical painting of a highborn German officer appeared on the comm. screen.

“I am Flottillenadmiral Axel Aarne,” the man said in a thick German accent that heavy metal singers
wished
they could copy.  “Ve vill fly vith you.”

Not to be outdone, the French light cruisers and destroyers accelerated past the German ships.  Jack rolled his eyes as the French commander appeared.  “Better get out the white flags,” Jack said with a chuckle.

He felt something smack his arm and he looked at Betty in surprise.

“Jack, that’s mean,” she said in a stern voice.  “The French have a long and illustrious military history!”

“Tell that to the Germans,” Jack answered with a smirk.

“Napoleon,” Betty said with an answering smile.

“A short man with delusions of grandeur,” Jack returned.

Betty sighed.  “Actually, Jack, he was taller than the average person of his day.  And do you remember it was the
Russians
who defeated him?”

“See?” Jack said as if that settled everything.  “He lost.”

Betty pointed at the German fleet.  “Who did he have to roll over to
get
to the Russians?”

Jack frowned and brought a hand up to rub his jaw.  “Ah.  Right.  Good point.”  He gave her an impish smile then.  “Can we still have the white flags ready though?”

Betty shook her head.  “You are impossible sometimes.”

Jack gave her a disappointed look.  “Well, obviously I have to work on the times when I’m
not
then.  I can’t have people spreading about rumors after all.”

Betty sighed in an exasperated way.  “No white flags, Jack.”

Jack pouted and she crossed her arms with a stern look.  “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Better.”

The comm. panel blinked and Charles’ voice came over the speakers.  “All Cowboys, form on me.  We have been ordered to support the German task force in this hunt.”

“Roger that,” Jack answered and nodded to Betty.

She smiled and sent them flying towards Charles fighter, which was moving towards the Germans.

Jack smiled again.  “The Germans.  So can we-.”

“No.”  Betty arched an eyebrow at him.

Jack blinked.  “But you didn’t even let me finish!”

Betty sighed and placed both hands on her hips.  “I didn’t have to.”

Jack affected an outraged expression.  “Why?  It might have been something important!”

Betty gave him a shrewd smile.  “You smiled.”

Jack returned her smile with a raised eyebrow.  “Hey.  I smile just fine when it’s important.”

Betty crossed her arms.  “Not
that
smile.”  She cocked her head to the side, daring him to contradict her.

Jack’s expression fell.  “Oh.”  She was getting too smart for him.

Charles’ voice returned to the comm. panel.  “And no practical jokes, Jester.”

Jack glared at Betty.

Betty answered him with a smile of pure angelic innocence that he did not believe for a microsecond.

“I’ll get you for that,” he mouthed.  She waggled her eyebrows.  “Of course, Chief,” he said out loud.  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Chief.”

“Right,” Charles said in a disbelieving tone.  Then his transmission shifted to cover the squadron.  “Let’s move people!” Charles ordered and Jack watched the screens as the squadron came together.  At maximum acceleration, it didn’t take long for the fighters to match course with Charles.  A minute later, they came around with a final burst of acceleration and slipped in beside the German squadron.

Jack scanned the ships and pursed his lips.  They were painted various shades of dark grey from stem to stern, making it hard for his eyes to focus on them.  What he
could
see though told him that these ships were
not
designed to be beautiful or graceful.  They were
war
ships.

The comm. panel flashed and the German commander appeared.  “Ve are happy to fight vith you,” the man said in a voice that ground the words out like a cheese grater.  Jack couldn’t tell if the man was mad or if that was just his normal way of speaking.  “You may land on der
Brandenburg
and ve vill proceed to follow them.”

“Actually, we can save time and dive with you,” Charles said in a helpful tone.

“Vas?” the German spat out.

Charles smiled.  “Avengers are fully hyperspace capable.”

The German’s eyes narrowed.  “I have heard reports of these new craft.  I thought they vere just typical American bluster,” he ground out.  “Ve shall see how you do.”  He turned away from his camera.  “
Brandenburg
!  Beginnt countdown!”

The German disappeared from the screen to be replaced by another man who gave them all a stern look.  After what appeared to be a quick scan, the man nodded and began to speak in a tone that matched his commander perfectly.  “Drei…zvei…eins… einführung.”

Jack shut his eyes, the world flashed, and he opened them to see hyperspace again.  He frowned in thought as the screens began to flash with data and the general location of the Chinese fleet slowly appeared.  They were running towards Alpha Centauri B.

“Was that the cyber?” he asked.

Betty smiled.  “Yes.”

“But…he’s a
guy
,” Jack said in wonder.  He’d gotten use to the idea that the Peloran had some male ships, but it just didn’t seem right here.  Ships were
supposed
to be ladies after all.

“He’s German,” Betty said with a chuckle.  “German warships are always male.”

“Oh.  Why?” Jack asked, keeping an eye out and watching the German fighters launching into hyperspace.

Betty shook her head as the Germans accelerated towards the Chinese fleet, cutting a swath through hyperspace that spread out behind them.  Jack felt the engines power up, thrusting them through hyperspace on their own, the knife-edge of their long nose cutting through the gravitic waves with ease.

“There’s a lot of cultural reasons for it,” Betty said with a shrug.  “The best I can tell from old linguistic records, everybody called any ship they planned on living on for a long time by a female name.  The English with their months-long travels around the world are the best example of that.  They made it normal for all ships, even fighting ships, to be ladies in the English-speaking world, which is why I am
me
,” she said and waved her hands down her very female form.  “Germany was never a great naval power though, mostly made up of coastal defense boats, and I think they figured that men should fight.  If I’d been born there, I would have been a much more proper masculine warrior like that Teutonic fellow,” she finished with a wink and a wave of her hand towards the comm. screen.

Jack pursed his lips, looked at her, and nodded.  “I think I like you just the way you are.”

Betty bestowed a pleased smile on him.  “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

Jack looked around in mock confusion.  “OK. 
Who
are you talking to now?”

Betty laughed and patted his hand.  “Of course, I’m still trying to figure out why the French think of their warships as male.”

Jack frowned.  “Weren’t they real big on the oceans back in their day?  You know, before they started manufacturing white flags?”

Betty slapped him again.  “Bad Jack.  I take back the ‘kind sir’ bit.”

“Thank you,” Jack returned with an impish smile.  “I’d hate for people to get the wrong idea about me.”

The comm. panel blinked.  “This is Cowboy One to all Cowboys,” Charles transmitted and a navigation beam appeared on the screens.  “Follow my beam.  We are on forward recon duty,” he said and accelerated.  The rest of the squadron accelerated away from the German squadron with him.  “We will be providing targeting information for the fleet so secure to laser comms and maintain low power levels.  We do not wish to be seen.”

“Roger that,” Jack answered with the rest of the Cowboys.  He frowned at the screen that showed another squadron of fighters keeping pass with them.  “What are they doing?”

“Those fighters on our starboard wing are our German shadows,” Charles answered.  “It seems that the Flottillenadmiral does not think we can do our job and is sending someone he can trust to do it
for
us should we fail as he expects.  I say we show him just what Americans are capable of.  You with me?”

“Oorah!” Jack shouted in chorus with the other Cowboys.

“Good.  Now be careful.  We are approaching our prey.”

Jack looked to his screens to see the Chinese fleet ahead of them.  The Cowboys and the German squadron flew outside detection range, and far back out of their own detection range the German warships continued to close the range at a more sedate pace.  He only knew where they were because of the comm. probes flying behind them, forwarding their messages back and forth through the soup of hyperspace.  Icons showed where the French and Peloran squadrons were, far enough off to the sides that only more comm. probes kept the fleets in contact with each other.  Smaller icons showed where the French and Peloran fighters moved ahead, scouting for the exact locations of the Chinese warships ahead of them.

The comm. panel flashed and Aneerin appeared on it with a grim expression.  “All ships, prepare to move into targeting range.  Remember that these are the ships that killed the
White Swan
, the
Raven of Winds
, and the
Star Raptor
.  We shall give them no mercy.  Fighters.  Acquire targets.”

Jack grabbed the throttle and stick as they accelerated towards the Chinese fleet.  He peered ahead, watching the multicolored hues of hyperspace for any clue of what lay beyond them.  The bands of gravity that rippled through hyperspace were so strong that they bent light itself, making it hard to detect anything more than a few kilometers away even with the Peloran upgrades.

Jack licked his lips as a shadow appeared ahead of them, followed by another and another.  Betty slowed their approach and the shadows clarified, their gravitic engines calming the chaos of hyperspace and showing them the general shapes of Chinese destroyers and heavy cruisers.  On the screens, more cruisers, destroyers, and even frigates appeared as the other fighters sent the results of their recon back through the comm. probes.  They knew what the edge of the Chinese formation looked like.

“Commence bombardment,” Aneerin ordered.  “Now.”

Jack watched the screens where missile tracks shot out of the German, French, and Peloran warships, traveling in a long curve that brought them into attack range from a completely different angle than they’d been fired from.  The missiles streaked in at terminal attack velocity and activated their gravitic generators.  In their last second of life, they generated gravity equivalent to a small black hole, shredding the bands of gravity around them, and then let go as their power ran out, exploding into a wave of gravity and shrapnel.

It was always impressive to see a well-placed missile salvo ripping a deflection grid apart, but Jack’s eyes opened wide as he lifted them from the screen to actually
watch
the Chinese warships.  For a moment, the multicolored hues of hyperspace dimmed around the Chinese, as the missiles’ gravity wells sucked all light into them.  When they released their hold on gravity, he watched hyperspace itself recoil, the bands of color snapping back into place, sometimes ripping right through an unprepared warship.

The edge of the Chinese fleet literally ripped apart under the assault.

“Holy sh-,” Jack whispered.

“Move in!” Charles interrupted in a tone that accepted no delays.  “We need more targets!”

“Roger,” Jack whispered and Betty moved forward, slipping into the wreckage that had once been warships.  They became even more effectively invisible than before in the clutter, and hazy intact warships appeared in the distorted bands of hyperspace.  More missiles streaked in, hyperspace recoiled from the assault, and the ships came apart.

“Closer!” Charles barked.

They inched through the expanding wreckage and more warships came into view, firing missiles blindly in the direction the bombardment came from.  The missiles never even came close to the allied squadrons.  Chinese fighters flew into view as well, looking for any attackers, but most of them had to be focusing on the path of the missiles.  The few over here were probably wishing they were over there and not spending nearly enough attention trying to find the threat that lay right under their noses.  More missiles streaked in and tortured hyperspace whipped through more Chinese warships and some fighters.

Jack swallowed.  Aneerin had been right.  This wasn’t a battle.  It was a massacre, and they truly were showing the Chinese no mercy.

A series of flashes ripped through hyperspace beyond where he could detect anything, and the hazy positioning they had on the Chinese fleet faded away.  They had fled back into normalspace to escape the utter destruction being visited on them here.  A few seconds later, information trickled through the comm. probes to show him what another squadron saw in normal space.  Half of the former Chinese fleet hung in space, scanning desperately for the enemy who had found them in hyperspace.  Jack glanced at the screens showing hyperspace and winced as the Peloran warships accelerated towards the remains of the Chinese fleet.