Reardon grimaced. He’d been saving the electronics countermeasures package for a special occasion. A special occasion like fighters with radar-guided missiles getting ready to blow them up. “Why the hell not,” he said, grinding his teeth together. “If we get blown up by those fighters, how am I going to get to try out all the other things I’ve been saving for a rainy day?”
Smith snorted. “You really are something,” he said.
A volley of ship-to-ship missiles flew past the Aerostar, jerking and turning wildly as they chased phantom RCS returns. The ECM package had not been cheap, but evidently it was worth every little penny he’d paid for it. Still, though….
“Hey Reardon,” Smith said, his voice annoying. “How come you don’t have money to fix the airlocks and make them work reliably, but you have money for all the illegal toys in the world?”
“Never question a man about his toys,” said Reardon, pointing his turret toward the incoming red dots. “They’ll be coming in for gun-runs now, and despite what you might believe, I don’t exactly have a nice little trick stored away for that scenario.”
“Apart from the 75-calibre guns,” said Smith, pointedly.
Reardon whined and squeezed the trigger, sending twin streaks of gunfire toward the incoming craft. “Apart from the 75-calibre guns,” he confirmed, watching eagerly as the rounds splashed against the lead fighter, blasting it into fragments.
“Nice shot,” said Sammy.
“Damn right it was,” he said. “Pay attention kid, you might learn something.” He squeezed off another burst, but it flew wide.
“Nice shot,” said Sammy, this time sarcastically.
Smith hadn’t fired yet. “You okay down there?” asked Reardon, as the fighters broke around them, swarming like a host of predatory hyenas.
“I’m fine,” said Smith. “Just … gathering information about them.”
A fighter flew in front of his arc of fire. Reardon’s turret tracked it, gun chattering as it sprayed death after the bothersome little creature, but he barely scratched it. “How about you shoot first, record later?”
“Fine,” said Smith. A faint rumble from below signaled him shooting, and one of the fighters vaporized. “That’s one for me, and one for you.”
“Great. To quote an old favorite: don’t get cocky,” said Reardon, grumbling loudly as he tried to line up another shot. A line of gunfire zoomed past the turret, one round bounced off the transparent material, cracking it ominously. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Nobody asked,” said Smith, his own turret chattering angrily. His chair shook with each shot.
One of the fighters looped around, bearing down on them once more. Reardon lined his gun up with the thing. It was so close he could see the insignia overlaid on the cockpit. Like a hydra, with ten or twelve tentacles coming out, enveloping the composite shell of the cockpit. Where the hell had he seen that before…? No time to think. He squeezed the trigger.
The drone fired as well, twin streams of fire overlapping as they crossed over, his high velocity rounds blasting the thing into debris.
But then the spray of gunfire splashed over the Aerostar, and the ship’s metal screamed as the stutter of fire raked across the top side.
“Sorry,” said Sammy. “I tried to dodge.”
Yeah, well … try harder. Reardon grit his teeth as the spiderweb cracks on the turret glass got thicker, wider, spreading out like angry fingers.
He leaped out of his seat and hopped out of the turret, sealing it. Right as the door hissed closed, the turret blew out, spraying gas and glass into space.
“You okay?” asked Smith, voice nervous.
Reardon deliberately said nothing for a second, then, “Yeah.”
“Okay.” Smith’s gun fired two short bursts, and then, “All targets destroyed.”
“Z-space translation complete,” said Sammy, relief painting his voice. “We’re safe.”
Not that it mattered, since all the fighters were destroyed. Reardon wandered back to the main living area of the ship, whistling playfully. “All in a day’s work,” he said. “Hey Sammy, did you grab any shots of those things?”
“What, like pictures?”
“Yeah.”
“The combat computer took video. I can grab a few stills.”
Reardon nodded. “Ok, zoom in on the cockpit and take a good look at that insignia. And run it against records. I swear I’ve seen that thing before.”
“You broke the turret,” said Smith, grimacing as he sat down. “And your gunners’ seats are super uncomfortable.”
“That one’s made for Sammy.”
Smith raised an eyebrow. “You let him come down here and shoot?”
“Why not?”
“It’s just … I don’t know. You seem so protective of him, and then at the same time you have him do these incredibly dangerous things—”
Reardon cut him off with a raised finger. “Look. We can handle ourselves. He can handle it. He’s handled it since he was fifteen and his mom died and I had to start hauling him all over the galaxy with me so we could feed ourselves and buy his jacked-up-expensive meds. I don’t need a lecture from Mr. C. I. A. Spook about endangering minors.”
Smith shrugged and held up his hands defensively. “Hey. Sorry. I was just saying.”
“Saying what?”
“Nothing. I was saying nothing. Look. I can tell how … I mean … It’s clear how much … aw shit.”
Reardon dropped the finger and started to chuckle. “Spit it out.”
“It’s just, I’m impressed, Reardon. I really am. You put on this badass take-no-prisoners cold-hearted facade, uh, I mean other than the pink ship and the fruity girlie drinks. You’re this hardened criminal smuggler who shoots up thugs who get in his way, and yet at your core, you’re an old softie.”
“Softie?!” Reardon looked incensed.
“I mean … a good guy. A real good guy. Not everyone would be so devoted to someone that depends on him as much as Sammy. Color me impressed. It’s certainly changed my opinion of you.”
“Aw, shucks, Jonny.” He tapped his chest and mocked some emotion. “You make me feel it. Right here. You know.” The smirk returned. “Look. Sammy is brilliant, and competent, and can look out for himself. He don’t need no babysitter. In fact, I’d trust him more than you to pilot a ship and keep me alive.”
Smith smiled. “Exactly. Look how far you’ve brought him. Reflects well on you, Reardon.”
An uncomfortable silence, only interrupted by Sammy’s voice blaring over the speakers. “Look, guys, I hate to interrupt the love-fest, but I found something.”
“What is it, bud?” said Reardon.
“I don’t know—I’d like to tell you, but can you too stop smooching and keep your hands off each other for a few minutes?”
“Cut the shit and tell me, kid.”
“Right. So remember the babes we tore up on Zenith? The ones who pulled the guns on us and tried to take the cargo without paying us?”
That’s where he’d remembered the insignia. The Weird Sisters. It was on their ship. “So. Babe number one and babe number two. They were contracting for … what was it? Jovian Industries, or something?”
“Close. Jovian Logistics and Supply.”
Smith swore. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“What?” both Reardon brothers said at once.
“Jovian. It’s one of Spectre’s companies. Well, it’s not his, but he’s got considerable influence there. Tell me again, what was up with this cargo?”
Reardon shrugged. “The seller didn’t say. I was just supposed to be an untraceable middleman. Seller delivers to me, I deliver to the Weird Sisters, and they transport to the final destination.”
“We need to find out what the destination was. And what the cargo is.”
“I can cut it open…” began Reardon.
“No. Don’t tamper with it yet—we might still want to deliver it and have them think you never peeked, whoever
them is. There’s got to be another way to figure out what’s in there, and where it was headed.”
Sammy cleared his throat, which, over the comm, came across as terribly scratchy. “Well, fellas, I guess I could look it up in the Weird Sisters’ computer.”
Reardon rolled his eyes. “Kid, the Weird Sisters are chunky salsa and their ship has been ground into fine dust along with the rest of Zenith.”
“Well, yeah. Unless if someone … accidentally of course … hacked into their computer and ran a data-dump. If I recall, I did tell you, but in fairness, you were being shot at at the time.”
Smith and Reardon both looked at each other, and Reardon grinned. “Told you he could take care of himself.” He cocked his head up toward the comm. “I thought you told me you were taking a dump. Fine. Out with it, kid. I can tell by your voice you’ve already checked.
“Looks like there were lots of different identical cargos. Ours was just one of them. All headed towards … believe it or not, US military ships.”
“Huh,” said Reardon. “I don’t suppose it’s just a super-secret-classified piece of military hardware that the top brass can’t trust their regular suppliers to deliver?”
Smith glared at him. “Right. Cause that’s how the US military operates.”
“If you only knew.” Reardon shook his head. “Ok, kid, does it say what’s in the box?”
“Nope. But I’ve got a destination for our box.”
“Am I going to like the news?”
“USS Midway. Mattis’s ship.”
Holy shit.
Smith pulled out his communicator. “I need to warn Mattis.”
Reardon blinked in surprise. “What? At a time like this?” He glared at Smith. “We just nearly got killed; those things had shitty, weak-sauce guns, yeah, but they had a lot of missiles. Where did they come from? Why didn’t we detect them sooner? And if they’re Spectre’s, why the hell is he trying to kill us? We barely know anything, and you want to just call up old Admiral Jack Mattis on the phone and say, hey man, I think there might be a plot to … do … something … bad. That’s your plan?”
“And why,” said Smith, dialing absently on his phone, “does a logistics company have advanced fighters, and the people to pilot those fighters? No. Something big is going down.”
Reardon blew a puff of air. “Well, two planets just exploded because of a maybe-alien ship. Understatement of the year.”
Smith finished the call initiation and started to wait. “It’s all finally starting to come together for me. The specific locations of the attacks. Maxgainz. Spectre. The pattern is undeniable. And we need to figure it out before we’re all dead.”
“Why the hell do aliens want to kill us?”
“Aliens.” said Smith, rolling his eyes at the word. “I have to warn Jack Mattis.” He glanced up. “And if there’s one thing I’m learning from all this: there’s no such thing as aliens.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Pinegar System
Gas Giant Lyx
USS Midway
Bridge
A brief moment of stunned silence stole everything on the bridge, finally broken by Mattis.
“We have to get out of here.”
The simple command galvanized the bridge from controlled offense to steady defense.
“Yes sir,” said Lynch. “Working on it!”
“Order the strike craft to merge with those of the frigates,” said Mattis. “We are pulling back to the rest of the fleet. Regroup with the USS Alexander Hamilton, and link up with the rest of the frigates. Present a united front.”
Lynch muttered something darkly, and then thumped his fist on his console. “Dammit, sir, another ship is emerging from the vortex. Designating Skunk Foxtrot.”
They were eleven to five, possessed the advantage of numbers and of not having to defend a fixed point, but the future-human ships had such great capabilities that Mattis felt outnumbered. A swift glance at his radar readout showed the situation was deteriorating rapidly. The five hostile ships were moving to surround them in a sphere.
The Midway rocked as a barrage of gunfire struck her stern, and the wailing of alarms rang throughout the bridge.
“Decompression in deck six,” said Lynch. “We have a hole in the rear hull.”
Dammit. The enemy was attacking their weakest points … the sides and rear. “Coordinate with the fleet,” he said. “Focus fire on one ship—Skunk Charlie. Cripple that bastard and blow us a hole to escape from.”
“Aye sir,” said Lynch, fingers flying over his console.
“Midway actual to Hamilton actual,” said Mattis. “We could use a hand here.”
“I was wondering when you were going to ask.” Abramova’s voice sounded stressed. “Tell us what you need us to do.”
“Throw everything the fleet has against Skunk Charlie,” he said. “They’re presenting their ass to you, so get in there and nail them.”
“Aye sir,” said Abramova. “Torpedoes away. USS Hancock, move into position and engage.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” said Captain Peter Bowe. Mattis vaguely remembered meeting the CO of the USS Hancock at some formal dinner or something. Good guy. “Standing by!”
The Midway shook as wave after wave of fire rolled over it, the flash of the explosions on her hull drowning out the view from their cameras. Through the blasts, barely visible, the Alexander Hamilton’s torpedoes roared in, spearing into the ship marked Skunk Charlie and—with a bright flare like a miniature sun in front of the gas giant—burst into flaming debris.
But Skunk Foxtrot, the new arrival, pointed its nose toward the Hancock, and with a surge of energy, fired its red lance—using the same gravity pulse that had devastated Zenith, Serendipity, and now the former moon below.
“Midway,” said Bowe, his signal coming through heavy with static. “That weapon … gravity based. Our structural integrity … —ifty-eight perce— … failing. … and we’re pulling back—”
But the USS Hancock and three nearby frigates crumpled like drinking cans in the hand of a giant, their hull plates cracking and buckling, folding as it was collapsed down under an intense gravimetric force, smashed smaller and smaller, until they were too tiny to track.
Just gone.
“Sir,” said Lynch, his tone gilded with horror. “Another ship is emerging from the vortex.”
And then Mattis knew they were in serious trouble.
“Where the hell is Spectre?” he asked, brow furrowing with anger. “I want him up here. Now.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Pinegar System
Gas Giant Lyx
Patricia “Guano” Corrick’s Warbird
Time to kick ass.
The battle fugue washed over her like a high tide and suddenly she was ready. She kicked her foot out and jammed the control stick to the left and back into her gut, squeezing the trigger on her guns in three swift bursts, each one raking along the top of an enemy drone in quick succession, blasting them to oblivion.
“Jesus,” said Flatline. “I forgot how intense this was. Contact left! Contact left!”
She let him take care of that one, alternating feet on the rudders, sliding her ship from side to side in space, keeping the throttle open. Red streaks flew past her, the enemy projectiles barely missing her ship and vanishing off into space, or falling down toward the gas giant below them. There was movement everywhere; the ships from the rest of the fleet joined the merge, dozens of friendlies hurtling through the melee, spraying gunfire everywhere. The drones from ever more hostile cap-ships continued to pour in, heedless of their friends’ destruction, guns spitting fire and death in every direction. Space was criss-crossed with lines of fire, dotted with burning debris and the occasional missile screaming toward its target.
But to Guano, the world was moving in slow motion.
She carefully selected her next target; a gentle tap of the trigger blew it to oblivion. She sensed movement beside her and threw the ship into reverse thrust,
slamming her forward into her restraints, as a hostile drone fighter darted in front of her eyes. She opened the throttle forward again, sliding sideways and spraying the ship in the tail, sending it spiraling toward the gas giant, trailing flame and smoke.
For every one she killed, six more joined the fray.
“I got one on us!” said Frost, Roadie’s gunner. “He’s right behind us! Shit!”
With barely a glance, she saw Roadie’s ship amongst the massive dogfight, a bright blue dot in a sea of green fleet-ships and red hostiles.
“Hold tight, Charlie-1.” Calmly, easily, Guano tilted her ship forward, giving her gunner a perfect shot. “Flatline, waste them.” She took the opportunity to blast the fighter in front of her with gunfire.
Her Warbird’s gun turret chattered, the sound muted as it travelled through the hull of her ship, and then Frost’s voice came through, infinitely relieved.
“Thanks, Flatline! You’re the best!”
As though some other force guided her, Guano navigated the battle like a fish through a bubbling stream; she turned, shot, turned again, making sure to give Flatline a clean shot at their enemies, always keeping the craft steady whenever he needed to shoot. She zipped around debris and incoming gunfire, barely saying a word, as calm as if she were reading the weekly newspaper.
It was a dance amongst the drones, a ballet in the dark, a symphony of flame and gunfire.
And then it all went wrong.
The missile alarm warning screamed in her ears, something she didn’t expect. At all. And it jolted her out of the fugue.
“Look out,” shouted Flatline. “Two of them, right behind us! They’re painting us with their targeting radar!”
And then, right behind them, one of the enemy fighters loosed a missile and her whole cockpit lit up with warnings.
Chapter Fifty
Earth
United States
The Last Dawn: Book 3 of The Last War Series Page 21