Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (49 page)

Betty nodded with a wink and they accelerated towards where their new target waited in normalspace.

“Keep on my six, Mischief,” Jack ordered.

“On it like glue,” she answered and her Hellcats slipped into formation behind him.

“Promises, promises,” he returned with a smirk and flexed his fingers, preparing for the next stage.

“Surfacing,” Betty reported in a grim tone.

Jack shut his eyes as they rose back up into normalspace and opened his eyes to see an intact flank of the Shang fleet before them.  Gravity twisted around him and reached out to tear at one of the Shang ships.  Betty’s drones joined opened up as well and the deflection grid covering the Shang’s starboard flank opened wide.  Focused gravity ripped deep into the armor, and tore the atmosphere out of the warship.  Behind him, Katy’s Hellcats flashed into existence, rising up out of hyperspace like sharks on the hunt.

“Now, Mischief!” Jack ordered.

The fighter and drones fired another salvo of missiles that spread out and attacked the Shang cruiser from multiple vectors as it desperately tried to avoid the gravitic cannons tracking it.  Ready for the second assault, the Shang cruiser fired counter missiles that spread out to avoid the main gravitic assault and swept towards the Cowboys.  Point defense lasers brought Cowboy missiles down by the scores, and the Avenger and Hellcat laser arrays switched to point defense mode, tearing at the incoming Shang missiles.  But the point defense systems were no match for the missile swarms crisscrossing space.

“Oh, Lord, for what we are about to receive,” Jack whispered and held on to the controls with a tight grip.  And then it was time to just go anywhere that wasn’t where he was.  Betty and Jasmine’s drones moved ahead, lasers firing in full point defense pattern, as he moved them from side to side and up and down without thinking, whenever he felt the urge to be somewhere else.

Missiles cartwheeled in, some ripped apart when they hit gravity beams, others burned away by lasers, and some broke through everything to charge in at Jack’s flight.  The fighters and drones maneuvered wildly, a mix of cybernetic and genetic reflexes guiding the random movements that tried desperately to avoid any place a missile was about to be.  A drone lost a nose to a grazing hit, another lost a wing.  Two exploded nearby.  Another almost directly in front of him took another missile that had to have been meant for him, and Jack closed his eyes to protect them from the flash.

“Next target!” Charles shouted and the displays flashed, shifting to an undamaged Shang heavy cruiser.

Jack swallowed and nodded at Betty and Jasmine.

They smiled and their remaining drones turned away from the tumbling, air-spewing wreckage that had been a Shang cruiser, and aimed at their new target.  Gravitic cannons lanced out and smashed into another set of deflection grids.  They didn’t go completely down this time.  The ship had better grids than her smaller cousins, and they didn’t have enough drones left to rip them open.

“Mischief,” Jack ordered with a grunt.  Her missiles boiled in from behind, some exploding just short of the remaining deflection grid, miniature black holes shredding it with gravitic interference.  The rest tore deep into armor and weapons systems, ruining the heavy cruiser’s flank.

The displays flashed in warning and he flicked his eyes over to see hundreds of Shang fighters pulling up and away from New Washington, their engines burning long trails in the atmosphere below them.  They shot up out of the atmosphere, closing in on the Cowboys, and Jack swallowed.  This was going to hurt.

A flick of his eyes to other displays showed the Chinese turning towards the gravity well, looking like they were about to accelerate in.  Jack swallowed again, wondering if they were going to break the treaties.  If so, this battle was about to get ugly.

Then new arrivals flashed into existence on the displays and Jack recognized the icons of the Peloran task force, finally revealing its existence.  Gravitic cannons, missiles, lasers, and even the kinetic rounds of mass drivers smashed into the Chinese fleet’s collective ass.  In seconds, over ten percent of the Chinese fleet began to tumble out of formation, spewing armor, weapons, atmosphere, and even crewmembers into the void.  The Chinese fleet turned frantically to bring their weapons to bear on the Peloran, all thoughts of moving inward gone.

Jack shook his head with a smile.  The old man was doing it again.

“Maintain pressure until they break,” Charles ordered, his tone calm, and Jack returned his attention to the job at hand.  Hurting the Shang.  He flexed his fingers, shifted them to the side to avoid a missile swarm, and held on tight as the Shang fighters began to close the range.

Jack licked his lips and smiled.  “Break in three…two…one…now.”

Jack let out a long breath, watching the warm air from his lungs crystallize in the cold front washing over the ruins of New Washington’s capital.  He sucked air in through the clear filter masking his face against the dust in the air.  He looked up, barely making out the dim glow of Alpha Centauri A in the dust-shrouded sky.  He shook his head and returned to examining the capital.  The Shang’s sustained orbital bombardment had left nothing standing.

A cold wind howled and Jack shivered despite himself.  He zipped the leather flight jacket up to his neck and stuck his hands in its pockets.  Betty and Jasmine echoed his motions at his sides, even though they didn’t really need to.  It was just their way of fitting in, and he had to admit it felt a lot better standing out here with them than alone.  Dirty snow swirled in the wind, wrapping around him or driving through their holoforms to dust the ground at their feet.  Jack sighed as the temperature continued to drop.  It was dark as night at midday and a long winter was coming to New Washington.

Jack shivered again, wondering how many innocent people had died today, under the Shang bombardment.  Once again, Shang weapons heralded the coming of winter to an entire world.  The sound of footsteps on the rubble came to his ears and Jack turned to see Tom and Juliet leaning into the wind as they trekked up to the hilltop.

“Aren’t you going to come in?” Tom shouted over the wind.  “It’s getting colder!”

Jack shook his head.  “This isn’t cold yet,” he returned, making a show of not noticing what actually
was
beginning to be a bit chilly.

“Oh.  Right,” Tom said with a dark chuckle.  “You know you Minnesotans are crazy, right?”

Jack forced a smile against the gloom ahead of them.  “Everybody knows it ain’t cold until it’s thirty below.”  Tom shivered and Jack shook his head slowly.  “Can’t tell you how many times I snow shoveled in shorts and a tank top at fifteen below.”

Tom answered with an exaggerated shudder as he and Juliet reached the top of the hill.  “You shoveled
snow
?”

Jack shrugged at Tom’s attempt to make him laugh.  “My parents wanted me to develop a good work ethic.”

“That must have been some con,” Tom said with a wink.

Jack finally snorted despite the destruction around them.  “One of my best,” He answered with a shake of his head.  Then he sighed and nodded at the destruction.  “What do you think?”

Tom’s playful act disappeared immediately and he followed Jack’s gaze towards the ruins.  “The Shang should read more Sun Tzu,” Tom said in a low tone.

Jack blinked at the odd answer, trying to fit it into this.  He’d never read Sun Tzu though.  Ancient Chinese generals were simply outside his interests.  “What?” he asked in complete confusion.

Tom sighed.  “You should read his works.  One thing he said was to ‘Never do your enemy a small injury,’” he said with a nod towards the ruins of the capital.

Jack turned with a shocked look and waved a hand at the destruction.  “This is
small
?” he spat out.

Tom met his gaze and nodded.  “On an absolute level, yes. 
Anything
that does not kill you is a small injury.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed as the slow anger that had been building in him finally flashed to the top.  “Well, there’s a lot of dead people there,” Jack growled, finger pointing at where the capital once ruled the river valley.

“Tom is right,” another voice said and Jack turned to see Charles and Dorothy walking up to their observation point, waving his hands towards the north and the rest of the colony.  “Aneerin miscalculated.  The Shang fleet was larger than he expected and New Washington’s defenses fell too soon.  By the time we got here it was too late to stop all of this.  Still, for a colony that spans an entire world, this is a small injury.  Much like Yosemite and Washington.”

Jack’s anger turned into a cold rage he hadn’t felt in months.  “They dropped Yosemite all over the American West,” he said in a cold, calm tone.  “Maybe you don’t-”

“Jack!” Betty interrupted, stepping in between them.  She glared at him, telling him not to say another word with her expression.

Jack met her gaze for several seconds before looking away.  He took in a deep breath, released it, and nodded.  Accusing Charles of not caring wouldn’t be fair.  But he couldn’t stand around and listen to either of them talking about the “small wounds” the Shang inflicted.  Jack turned to walk away from the hilltop.

“Jack,” Charles called after him.  “I need you to keep an open mind and listen to me.”

Jack knew how close he’d been to just giving up in the first few days after Yosemite.  Or how close he’d come to measuring his life in how many Shang he killed.  He didn’t like to remember that.  But the devastation here, the new winter snows falling in the middle of summer, brought it all back.

Jack turned back to Charles, knowing he was showing far more anger than he wanted to.  He held his voice under control and spoke in a quiet tone that he knew they would both pick out of the wind.  “If it means thinking that all these people are just small injuries, I don’t think I can do that.”

Charles’ eyes widened as he obviously recognized Jack’s frayed control and the older man brought both hands up in a placating gesture.  “Fair enough.  All I ask is that you listen.  And then
think
about it.”

Jack set his jaw and held Charles’ gaze.  The feathery weight of a hand touched his shoulder and his jaw twitched.  Betty leaned forward until he could see her face.  A part of him wanted to tell Charles to stuff it, but Betty held position until he sighed and turned to her.  He met her gaze and she smiled.  Then she flicked her eyes towards Tom and Charles and nodded.  Jack gritted his teeth, knowing his face looked far more mulish than he liked.  He just couldn’t help it.  She raised both eyebrows at him and pursed her lips, asking him if he
really
wanted to argue with her at the moment.

A low growl rumbled in his chest, but no matter how much he wanted to walk away from Charles and Tom at the moment, he really
couldn’t
ignore Betty too.  She was his partner.  That meant he had to trust her, even when he didn’t agree with her.  Jack pulled in a deep breath and turned back towards Charles and Tom.  “Betty tells me to listen, so I’ll listen.  But you better have a
fraking
good argument.”

Charles nodded, accepting the challenge.  “First, if the Shang had spread out, englobed New Washington, and fired at it from all sides, they could have done a lot more damage to the colony.  Killed many more people.”

Jack frowned at the other man and shook his head.  “Two problems with that idea.  It would have been harder to overload the capital’s defenses without concentrating their fire.  And spreading like that would have left them vulnerable to a counterattack.  We could have rolled them up.  As is, because they held together, they managed to get half their fleet out.”

Charles nodded in approval.  “You are right there.  Those are definite problems.  Of course, they thought we were gone, no longer a threat.  They might not have considered protection against our counterattack to be a priority.”

“So maybe they were just being careful and it paid off for them this time,” Jack countered with one raised eyebrow.

“Maybe.”  Charles sighed  “But I can not help but notice the similarities between this attack and the one that hit Earth.  They targeted the capital, and the orbital infrastructure, but not the rest of the colony.”

Jack couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice this time.  “They dropped Yosemite all over America.  I’d call that a big target.”

Charles nodded again, very slowly.  “Yosemite dropped.  They question I have is why it dropped all over America.”

Jack snorted at the idiotic question.  “I think it dropped because the Shang blew it apart.”

“Oh, yes,” Charles answered without a pause.  “That is definitely why it dropped.  But you know Yosemite was not actually in orbit, right?  Not a classic orbit at least.”

Jack frowned at the sudden change in subject, but it temporarily disarmed his skeptical side and he nodded after a moment.  Yosemite Yards had been a constant beacon in the sky, day and night, for nearly a century.  Massive gravitic generators anchored it in the sky above California where everyone could see it, a sign of American prosperity and power.  Jack remembered that it wasn’t a true stable orbit.  That was part of its legend.  If had the power to ignore gravity itself.  But that power failed when the Shang blew the Yosemite’s heart away.

“Good.”  Charles measured his expression for a second before continuing.  “If we had anything truly
orbiting
as low as Yosemite Yards, it would be flying across the sky, not staying in one point.”

Jack’s frown deepened as he considered that.  He didn’t know where Charles was going with the argument, but gave the man a doubtful nod.  “Yeah, I get the theory,” he muttered back.

Charles sucked in a deep breath before continuing.  “When a true orbit degrades, the object spirals down until it hits the atmosphere, and then friction and heat break it apart as it flies across the sky, scattering it all over the place.  A satellite coming down like that over the West Coast would leave pieces at least as far as the Mississippi, perhaps all the way to the East Coast depending on size, trajectory, and many, many other factors.”  Charles paused to make certain that Jack understood.

Jack glanced at Betty and she nodded.  And then she gave him a look that said he really needed to take another step.  She was right of course.  He turned back to Charles and forced a smile onto his face.  “Old school orbital mechanics was never my specialty, but I’ve seen a water skier totally frak up a landing at seventy kays.  I think I get your meaning.”

Charles shook his head, but smiled as he accepted the olive branch.  “Sometimes I forget how hard you work to act like a dumb country hick.”

Jack accepted the sidelong insult in the way it was intended and shrugged.  “More like differently motivated.  The skier in question was a real nice girl.”  Jack actually managed the ghost of a real smile for a moment.  “I fished her out.  She was a real mess, but the docs fixed her up good.”  He shrugged and shook his head, the smile fading again.  “Of course, she died when Yosemite fell.”

Charles let out a long breath.  “I am truly sorry,” Charles said, his voice colored with true sorrow.

Jack looked away and turned to the ruins of the capital, hand rubbing his chin.  “So what doesn’t make sense to you?”

Charles stepped up beside him to follow his gaze.  “That girl of yours.  If she had been hovering above the water rather than flying over it, on a gravboard when it failed, what would she have done?”

Jack shrugged.  “She would have fallen.”

“Straight down?” Charles asked in a
very
pointed tone.

Jack turned to raise an eyebrow at Charles.  “Yes.  Straight down.”

Charles smiled, and Jack was certain he sensed triumph in the man’s expression.  “Well, Yosemite was one giant gravboard that failed.”

Jack blinked as he considered the fall of Yosemite again.  He’d never thought of it like that, and the realization brought a shiver down his spine.  Or maybe that was the cold finally seeping through his flight jacket.  Yosemite hadn’t just fallen.  Once again he saw the wreckage flying east across the sky towards Minnesota.  He shook his head to clear his mind.  Charles couldn’t be right.  “Yosemite didn’t just fail.  It got hit by missiles.  There were explosions.  Lots of them.  Those would push it around a lot.”

Charles tapped his temple.  “You watched it happen with
our
eyes.  Yosemite accelerated to the east after the missiles hit.  Where did the missile fire come from?  Did they come from over the Pacific?  Could they have pushed Yosemite east when they hit?  Or did the missiles that killed Yosemite come from the same ships that leveled Washington D.C., from the
east
?”

Jack brought a hand up to rub his temple, remembering the missile fire coming from the east.  “You know the answer to that.”

Charles nodded.  “And
that
is why I wonder why Yosemite fell like it did.  My family has connections.  I have
seen
the data that was not released on the news.  It was
secondary
explosions that brought Yosemite down like that.  Not the
missiles
.”

Jack chewed his lip.  “The missiles could have set them off.  It was a yard.  There were all kinds of things that could blow up on it.”

Charles smiled.  “Yes.  They could have.  I would like to know if they
did
or if something
else
did.”

Jack shook his head, tired of the run around.  “What are you getting at, Charles?”

Charles sighed and shook his head.  “The facts we have do not make sense, Jack.”  He gained determination as he went along, and Jack knew he was about to do something he rarely did.  Answer a question with full and complete honesty.  No double stepping.  “I do not believe the Shang meant to drop it the way they did.  Yes, they killed it, and everybody on it, and they wiped out Washington too.  But I do not believe they could have foreseen the fall of Yosemite all over western America.  And I do not think that was their plan.  Because it would be a
stupid
plan if it was.”