Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (56 page)

Jack nodded to Betty and he felt the Avenger swing onto course, engines flaring to swing them around the handful of warships able to fire at them with anything more than token missiles.  Grav beams and missiles reached out to smash one Russian ship, and then all he could see was wreckage.  Pieces of Russian and Peloran warships drifted through each other, some still firing scattered point defense lasers at each other in fitful spurts.  It was otherworldly.  They accelerated through the wreckage, trusting their deflection grids to deflect anything too small to dodge, and trusting Betty to avoid anything too large to deflect.

“We have incoming fighters,” Betty reported, pulling his attention away from wreckage.

Jack glanced at the displays to see nearly a hundred Russian fighters approaching them.  In the distance, what remained of their fighters continued to duel with the British fighters, but they were losing badly now.

“Ignore them,” Jack ordered.  “Stay on target.”

Betty nodded and they shot out of the wreckage field, gravitic cannons and missiles ripping out to smash the flank of a Russian battleship.  It shuddered but continued firing on the British fleet, the massive spinal gravitic cannon shredding a destroyer completely.  Another salvo of missiles shot past him from behind, rippling into the battleship’s flank, and Jack glanced at the displays to see Katy’s Hellcat and drones right behind him.  Another display flashed and Jack watched Jessie’s and Ken’s flights bank in from the flanks to send the gravitic beams and missiles of nearly thirty fighters and drones into the battleship as well.

The Russian battleship shuddered again and again as the Cowboy weapons ripped into it.  Armor and weapons flew off, atmosphere and wreckage belched out of dozens of deep wounds, and the battleship tried to maneuver to escape its tiny foes.  And that was when a full broadside of British gravitic cannons smashed into it, ripping the warship open from stem to stern.  When the bombardment finally ended, it was little more than some more wreckage to fly through.

Behind them, a gravitic ripple sent the displays screaming and Jack frowned as space itself began to…bubble.  It was the only thing it reminded him of.  Of course, space couldn’t actually bubble.  It just didn’t.  Space was…space.  It didn’t ripple like that.  A ship faded into normalspace, twisting and bubbling with the space around it.  He recognized it as a Roderan cruiser, its engines at maximum power as it tried to get away from whatever had caught it.  But it simply remained in place, rippling along with the fabric of space until the ripples themselves washed it away.  The twisting and bubbling faded away after a few seconds, leaving behind clear space as if nothing had happened.

“Way to go, Hal!” Betty shouted.

Jack licked his lips again, a shiver going through his spine.  He’d hoped he was just seeing things, but her outburst told him he hadn’t.  It also told him she knew what it was.  “
What
the hell was
that
?” he demanded as he swung them to port, lining them up on their next target.

“Hyperspace bomb,” Betty said in a proud tone, firing gravitic cannons at a Russian cruiser.  “We’re gonna want to avoid that spot for…oh…a few centuries.”

Jack gulped as he tried to grasp her words.    “What’s
that
suppose to mean?”

Betty’s drones joined in on the cruiser, ripping its deflection grid wide open before firing a salvo of missiles.  She shrugged.  “It’ll be a bit…unstable for a while.”  She nodded towards where the ship had rippled.  “You don’t want to go there.”

Jack licked his lips and let out a long breath as their lasers stitched across the cruiser, boiling armor, weapons, and other fiddly bits off their target’s hull.  “I’ve…never even heard of something that does that.”

Betty actually paused to look a little bit worried.  “Yeah.  They’re kinda illegal.”

Jack blinked, considered her demeanor, and finally bit the bullet.  “Define…kinda illegal.”

“Oh God, Oh God, we’re all gonna die if they catch us using this crap?” she answered without a pause.”

“Oh,” Jack whispered, his mind racing.  “So…you expect me to believe that Aneerin just
happened
to have some of these bombs lying around?

Betty gave him a very serious stare and crossed her arms.  “Oh Jack, no one
ever
just
happens
to leave hyperspace bombs lying around.”

Jack returned her stare.  “You know you scare me sometimes?”

“Good,” she returned with a smile and shifted her gaze back to their next target.  The gravitic cannons opened up again, smashing into a Russian destroyer on the edge of their formation.  It shuddered under their attack, trying to twist away and escape.  A Russian frigate swung around and a salvo of missiles swept towards them.  Jack pushed forward on the stick, trying to dive under the missiles.  They tracked him though, arcing to keep on target.  He slammed the throttle forward and the Avenger’s engines flared behind him, driving them forward as their lasers pulsed away, picking off missile after missile.  The lasers and acceleration weren’t enough though, and the missiles continued to arc towards him.

Jack pulled in a deep breath, clamped a grip on the controls, gritted his teeth, and pulled the throttle up, hoping to get inside the missiles’ ability to turn.  The fighter rose on flames of maneuvering thrusters, but the missiles just kept tracking.  Then another salvo of missiles streaked in and exploded, ripping gravity apart all around the Russian salvo, shredding the missiles.

“You should be more careful, Boss,” Katy’s voice said over the comm. as her Hellcat and drones, much reduced in number, flew up into formation around what was left of his force.

Jack took a second to swallow, before putting a big smile on his face.  “With you watching my back, who
needs
to be careful?” he returned in a far more nonchalant tone than he felt as they left the Russian formation behind.

“You say the nicest things,” Katy purred, and in that instant a British battleship flashed and disappeared.  For a moment, Jack thought the Russians had hit it, but then another followed and he realized they were diving into hyperspace.  He looked at the display showing the countdown and it was flashing zeros.  They’d held the line long enough.

“It’s time to bug out!” Charles shouted.  Jack smiled at Betty and she nodded as they corkscrewed away from the Russian fleet.  A quick look at the displays showed the rest of the Cowboys doing the same and Jack nodded.  They’d made it.  “Dive in three…two…one…
dive
! 
Dive
! 
Dive
!”

Jack shut his eyes, the world flashed, and he opened them to see all the colors of hyperspace swirling around them, only the wakes of the other fighters and drones disturbing the natural gravity waves.  A beam of light appeared on the displays, and they quickly fell to accelerating along it, getting away from their entry point and any potential pursuit.  Jack leaned back in his seat, wondering what came next.  They’d been ready to leave, ready to sail out to the Hyades Cluster.  Now…now the Russians were involved.  And the Roderan.

Several smashed and ruined hulks came into view, and it took almost five seconds for Jack to recognize them as the Peloran squadron.  Their weapons were gone, their outer hulls torn apart, and he was pretty certain he could see Cowboy Country open to hyperspace when he focused just right.  Only the wakes cutting through hyperspace told him that they were still under power.  He shook his head in amazement at the punishment those ships could take and still survive.

“This is going to be a long War, isn’t it?”  He turned to look at Betty, his jaw set real firm.

Betty sighed and pursed her lips.  She didn’t like what she was about to say.  “The last time the great interstellar powers went to war with each other, it lasted over a century, and the Ennead, the Albion, and many, many more races never saw the light of the stars again.”

Jack nodded slowly, taking time to process what she said, and what she didn’t.  “So what?  We’re some kind of pawn in an ancient interstellar grudge match?”

Betty shrugged.  “To some.”  She cocked her head to the side, furrowed her brow, and just looked at him for a long moment.  “Do you think that’s the case with
us
?”

Jack blinked at her unexpected question, and looked away as he considered it very carefully.  He sighed at the realization that only one answer felt right.  “No,” he said as he returned his eyes to her.

She smiled.  “Good.  Because we need to get back to the ship.”  Her face turned worried.  “Hal’s not doing too well.”

Jack followed her gaze to the smashed up
Guardian Light
and shook his head.  Not doing too well was an understatement.  And the Roderan had done all of that damage in the few seconds it took the battleship to dive out of the battle.  At least they’d managed to get away, and if that cruiser was any indication, the Roderan had suffered casualties of their own.  The Russians were smashed up too.  They wouldn’t be leading an assault on anyone soon after the pasting they’d taken.

He glanced at the displays to see the British fleet limping along behind him. 
Vanguard
still lived, like the other
Dreadnoughts
.  They’d lost some battleships though, and every surviving ship looked like they’d been through hell, with atmosphere still leaking from rents in their hulls.  They’d lost at least half of their cruisers and destroyers though, and many of those that remained would probably have to go to the breakers.  Jack shook his head slowly.  The British fleet couldn’t push an assault either.

Then another display blinked and Jack examined it to the see a formation of British, French, German, and American warships fade into sight out of the waves of hyperspace.  Aneerin’s flanking force had made it back out with the Brits.  Forty ships in all, they cut through hyperspace like sharks on the hunt.  He saw wounds on their flanks and bows, but they were far less grievous than those the British carried.  It was a small force for sure, but after the devastation visited on the major fleets in the last few months, those forty warships were probably the largest concentration of firepower remaining in all the Core Worlds.  At least they were the largest formation capable of doing something.  Which meant they were probably going to be doing something soon.

“Well, so much for this being a short, victorious war,” Jack muttered.

Betty nodded as Jasmine flickered back into view.  The two cybers shared a glance and turned to Jack.  “We’re liable to have a busy time of it,” Jasmine said with a wry smile that had very little humor in it.

“Yeah,” Jack whispered, eyes examining Betty for any second thoughts.  She just smiled and nodded to him.  None to speak of.  He placed a hand next to her and felt the reassuring feathery touch of her holoform’s hand.  For the first time in a long time, he felt…at peace.  Truly at peace.  He was where he was supposed to be, with the people he needed to be with, doing what needed doing.  Betty patted his hand and he saw the agreement in her eyes.

“Well then,” Jack said in a stronger tone and sucked in a long breath.  But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.  Actually, he could think of lots of things to say.  None of them felt right though.  He should be saying something big, something powerful, something that he could remember back on from the future and know it had been important.  But he had nothing.  So he snorted the breath away, relaxed back into his pilot’s seat, and smiled at the two cybernetic souls who shared the fighter with him.  Their answering smiles told him that it was enough.

The dream was back.  He hadn’t seen it in so long he’d almost forgotten it.  He’d moved beyond it.  But it was back.  Everything was different though.  The bonfire was gone.  There was no one here to party with either.  It was just a lonely stretch of beach, touching a still lake.  It barely felt alive.

He supposed that made sense.

“So, are you going to wake up or take a swim?” a voice asked from his left.

He wasn’t entirely alone in the dream.  He’d thought he was the first time he saw it, but she’d disabused him of that notion quickly.  He turned to see Lila standing next to him, black hair so dark that it almost shone in the moonlight spilling over her shoulders.  She was beautiful.  Of course, he’d known a lot of beautiful women in his life.  Some of them still lived.  He forced himself to smile at her.

“Don’t know.  Haven’t decided yet.”  It was almost a joke, but not quite.  He was simply being truthful.  He didn’t know
what
he wanted to do.  Which was probably why the dream was back.

“We could go for a walk you know,” Lila returned with an inviting smile.

“I wouldn’t do that,” another voice said from his right.  He turned to see Gabby aiming a far softer smile at him.  “There’s no coming back from that walk,” the redhead added with a shake of her curly hair.

Jack nodded in reluctant agreement.  He knew any walk with Lila would be all she wrote.  It was tantamount to giving up.  It
was
giving up.  He had no idea how he knew that, and even less of an idea why he still trusted Lila.  He just knew she really wanted the best for him.  He just wasn’t sure she was right.

Of course, he wasn’t sure Gabby was right either.  “It’d be so much easier though,” he said with a shrug.

“You shouldn’t take a walk like that because it’s easy.”

“I know.”  Jack shook his, feeling the fatigue in his bones.  “I’m just so tired of fighting.”

“Well, that’s good, because the fighting is almost done.”

“Yeah.  It just might be.”  Jack snorted.  “And what then?  It’s not like I can go back to my old life.”

Gabby shook her head.  “Going back was
never
your plan.”

Jack turned back to Lila.  “You’re pretty quiet over there.  Not going to try to convince me you’re right?”

Lila just shook her head.  “I’ll take you for a walk if you decide to.  But not because you’re giving up.”

“Wow.”  Jack snorted.  “Rejected by the person that wants me dead.  That’s a new low.”  The last time he’d been here, it had been because he couldn’t live without all the friends he’d lost.  He’d realized that in time.  The dream had been his way of coping.  But now it was empty, except for these two, and he didn’t know what that meant.  He didn’t even know if they were real, or just figments of his imagination, talking to him in the only way he could understand.  The one thing he
did
know was that following Lila meant death.  And following Gabby meant living.

“You don’t have to take it as a rejection, you know,” Gabby returned with a wry smile.  “Look on the bright side.  It might just be your own conscience telling you that you’re not ready to give up yet.”

Jack sighed and looked out onto the still water.  “Maybe I’m not.  It seems awful selfish though.”

“How?”

Jack snorted.  “You know exactly why.”

“Maybe.”  Gabby pulled in a long breath beside him.  “But maybe I’m just trying to get you to voice your reasons so you can make an informed decision.  You know.  Assuming I’m just a figment of your imagination.”  He turned to see her wink at him and sighed again.

“Fine.”  He shook his head and chewed his lip in thought.  “They promised to be my partner.  But I’m not the man I was back then.  How can I hold them to that promise now?”

A derisive note of laughter came from Lila.  “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic!”  He turned to glare at her, but she just laughed it away.  “Face it.  You’re afraid.  Afraid that The War might be over.  Afraid that they’ll find a handsome young starship and leave you.  Alone.”

Jack wanted to tell her she was wrong.  But he just couldn’t.  She was right.  He was afraid.  And that left him…almost unable to decide what to do.  Almost.

“Fear is no weakness,” Gabby corrected with a shake of her head.  “It’s a natural reaction to a threat.  Yes, you’re afraid that the life you know is about to end.  You’re afraid they’ll leave you alone.  You’re also afraid that they
should
leave you and won’t, because of misguided loyalty to a person you
used
to be.”

Jack let out a long breath and nodded.  She was right.

“Well, that’s crap,” Gabby spat out.  Jack jerked back and looked at her with wide eyes.  “If you decide to take that long walk, you’ll be taking the decision from them.”  She pointed out over the lake and glared right back at him.  “And they deserve to have the chance to make their own decisions on what to do after War ends.”  She jabbed in the chest, hard enough to hurt.  “So don’t you dare try to take it from them, you hear?”

Jack swallowed hard, eyes still wide, and then spun to look at Lila.  She just shrugged and walked away, so he returned his eyes to Gabby.  It wasn’t like he could argue her point.  Even the person that wanted him dead couldn’t argue.  Or the part of
him
that wanted him dead.  “Yes, Ma’am,” he whispered, raising both of his hands to signal his defeat against her stellar logic.  Or the victory of his own ability to talk himself back into living.  He was going to be lucky if he got out of all of this double-think with his sanity intact.

“Better.”  Gabby pursed her lips and shook her head.  “Now I really do think you should be waking up soon.  Now that we’ve had this little heart to heart and understand each other at least,” she finished with a raised eyebrow that informed him there was only one answer she would accept.

“Yes, Ma’am.”  She nodded in approval, and Jack pulled in a long, hard breath.  He really
was
afraid after all.  “See you tonight?” he asked, actually realizing he was afraid of that answer too.

“Don’t worry, Jack,” Gabby answer in a voice that calmed his fear.  “I will be here as long as you need me.”  She nodded her head towards where Lila still stomped down the beach.  “She just needs to work off some steam, but she’ll be here too.  Don’t worry.”

He stood still for a moment, wondering if he was crazy.  Imaginary friends gave him advice only he could hear.  And he listened.  Or maybe they
weren’t
imaginary.  He didn’t know which possibility scared him more, but either one raised all kinds of crazy flags.  The real crazy part was that he’d never regretted listening to them yet.

He sucked in one more long breath and shut his eyes.

Jack opened his eyes onto a bright white room that brought tears to his eyes.  A groan moved from his head to his toes and back again and he glanced over to a bulkhead covered in posters of pretty, young singers he’d met over the years on USO tours.  Taylor and Jennifer dominated the center of the display, of course.

Jack smiled at the pictures of the two old friends and carefully flexed his arms and legs, feeling his joints crack from the motion.  He’d been asleep a long time.  He yawned hard enough to bring tears to his eyes and to pop his jaw, and then worked it from side to side to get it used to moving.  He tossed his covers to the side and swung his legs out to plant bare feet on the warm deck.  Leaning forward, he placed his elbows on his knees and rubbed his jaw to get feeling everywhere that mattered before wiping the tears from his eyes.

Betty’s holoform flickered into existence, her bright yellow sundress fading into being around her, and his eyes teared up again in protest against the bright color.  “Welcome to the land of the living!” she pronounced in a bright tone.

Jack rubbed his temple with one hand and tried to say that he was.  All that came out was a horse cough.  He sighed, raised a hand, and cleared his throat.  Then he reached for the cup that was always there and downed the mead in a long draw before slamming it back down with gusto.  He shook his head, blinking away more tears, sniffed once, and cleared his throat one more time.

“Yes,” he finally croaked out, his mouth and throat feeling somewhat closer to alive.  The honey in the mead did an amazing job of rehabilitating vocal chords.  Still, he had to clear his throat again.  “Where are we?”

“Well…” she answered with a wince.

The hatch to his quarters opened at that moment, saving her from a question she obviously didn’t want to answer.  Jasmine’s avatar walked in wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a smile, holding a bundle of clothes in her arms.  “I see Sleeping Not-So-Beauty is finally awake,” she said with a chuckle and dropped the bundle on his bunk before stepping away again.

“Hah,” Jack answered, rubbed his forehead, and eyed the container holding his contacts.  He never wore them while sleeping, and the girls had long since banned displays of any kind in his sleeping cabin.  It seemed they wanted him to sleep while in bed, not play solitaire.  “Seriously, where are we?” he asked and wiped grit out of the corner of each eye.

Jasmine chuckled.  “We arrived in system a few hours ago.  We’ve been prowling ever since, scouting for anyone that might be hiding.”

Jack blinked and yawned again.  “Hours?”  He shook his head to clear it.  “Why didn’t you wake me earlier?”

Jasmine and Betty shared a wry glance.  “Because there was nothing to wake you up
for
,” Jasmine pronounced, as if to suggest that the answer was obvious and that he shouldn’t worry about it.

Jack cleared his throat and rubbed his scruffy jaw.  He’d been asleep a long time.  It took serious work to dust the cobwebs out of his mind.  He looked at the uniform on the bunk next to him with a shake of his head.  “I suppose you want me wearing that?”

“As opposed to what you’re wearing now?” Jasmine asked with a raised eyebrow.

Jack snorted.  “Not like there’s anyone else to see.”

“Jack,” Betty said in a serious tone, pulling his attention back to her.  “Please.”

He met her gaze for a moment before letting out his breath and nodding.  “Yes, Ma’am,” he intoned as he came to his feet and unfolded the uniform.  When he finished donning it, he looked in the mirror and gave a slow nod.  He
did
look better.  He
felt
better too, like pulling on the uniform gave him something he was lacking.  Which he supposed it did.  It reminded him he was a United States Marine.  He pulled in a long breath to steady his nerves and stepped out of his quarters.

The corridor ran down the center of the scout ship’s command section to the bridge.  He’d flown off a different warship every few months for years, during the long Hyades Campaign.  But after that campaign ended and the Shang began to run, The Fleet had been forced to split up to track down the remaining scattered forces.  Jack had been on this scout ship for months, alone with the cybernetic crew that kept her flying.  Jack sighed as he walked down the corridor, passing cybernetic crewmembers bending over exposed wall panels and hatches to perform maintenance work.  He wondered if they would find the same thing they’d found on the previous scouting missions.

Nothing.

The hatch in front of him opened and he walked onto the bridge with Jasmine and Betty in tow.  He scanned the displays spread throughout the bridge that showed all twelve drones in space.  Four surrounded the scout ship and four fanned ahead in hyperspace to search for the enemy.  Four more flew spread ahead of them in normalspace, maintaining a watch of their own.  All of the scopes were empty of bad guys.  Jack didn’t like that.

“So the outer system’s clear?” he asked as he sat down in the captain’s chair and began locking the five-point harness in place.

“Clear as glass,” Jasmine answered.

Jack frowned and considered the displays showing the system around them.  It was supposed to be a major Shang base, but in hours of work his girls hadn’t picked up so much as a peep out of it.  “Let’s check out the inner system then,” he finally ordered in a doubtful tone.

He felt a vibration through the deck as the scout ship began to accelerate.  “On the way,” Betty said.

“Worried that we’ll find too many of them to fight?” Jasmine asked with a cocky smile.

“Or that we won’t find any at all?” Betty asked.

Jack shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I just…what if they’re gone here too?”

Betty smiled in a reassuring manner.  “Then it’ll be time to return to The Fleet and tell them what we found.”

“You mean what we
didn’t
find,” Jack muttered with a scowl.

Betty cocked her head to the side and gave him a concerned look.  “What’s troubling you?”

Jack studied the displays for several seconds in silence, looking for any hint that this wasn’t what it appeared to be.  Then he shook his head.  “That this could be it.  The end.”

Betty turned her head the other way, studying him as closely as he was studying the displays.  “Of what?”

“The War,” he answered without a pause.

Betty pursed her lips.  “Don’t you
want
it over?”