Last of the Immortals (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 3)

by Blaze Ward

  Instead of retiring, she had gone ground crew and eventually become the air boss, the flight deck commander for Auberon.

  She didn’t talk much, unless she had to. Everyone listened when she did.

  Today, she was the referee. Which said a lot about how important this flight might be.

  “Roger that, gold team. Stand by,” Iskra said soothingly into the comm.

  A moment passed.

  “Gold team, blue team, this is flight command,” Iskra continued in her quiet, solemn voice. “I’ve decided to add some fun today, to make this more realistic. There will be a planet below you, two stations, and seventeen cargo vessels in orbit. Nothing is armed. You will be deducted points for damaging anything except the other team. Enjoy.”

  Furious could hear the wicked smile in the woman’s voice, and then there was a moment of utter vertigo as her screens lit up.

  Time to fly.

  Ξ

  Bitter Kitten nearly burst out giggling when she saw the arena. She had been here before. Come to think of it, so had Hànchén and Furious. It was a large slice of the orbital skies above Callumnia, from that time when the three of them had gone racing together.

  Jouster would recognize it as well, but he hadn’t had to race it, like the three of them. Iskra was giving her team a very subtle edge today.

  Of course, knowing Jouster, he’d said or done something to Iskra to piss her off, probably propositioned her one time too many.

  And, let’s face it, she never supervises things like this, anyway, so it must have been good.

  She and Furious were high in the eastern sky, at least as far as the planet below them was concerned. It was rotating very slowly, relative, but everything was coming at them in orbit.

  Another edge, since it was easier to slip by something going past you than to outrun it and slip in. That would be like trying to board a train from behind while on a motorcycle.

  Not that she couldn’t fly that good, if she needed to. But still…

  Jouster’s team was lower and in the southwest sky. From the race at Callumnia, they would pretty much emerge from behind the freighter that had been the mid–point turn–around.

  Bitter Kitten double–checked, but the launch rails were empty. Not that missiles would be very effective in this mess, but you never knew.

  She took a moment, plotted everything, and sent Furious a map.

  “Just for fun,” she said, “let’s pop up over number six like our asses are on fire. It’ll be like hawks dropping into their faces.”

  “Roger, that,” Furious replied. Bitter Kitten could hear the smile in the other woman’s voice.

  Since they were already in formation and headed the right direction, Bitter Kitten lit her thrusters and aimed at her target.

  Furious could keep up.

  At Callumnia, they had been racing a slalom course in and through freighters sitting in a high orbit, passing close enough to basically touch three of them, and then back. Today, they had emerged behind the starting point of that race.

  Bitter Kitten shoved the nose of her fighter down and red–lined the engines.

  “Time to swoop,” she called.

  Freighter number six was a monster, almost a barge, easily twice the length of Auberon.

  What made it even weirder was the design. Like Corynthe’s motherships, this vessel was in the shape of a dumbbell, with an engine cluster at one end, a command module at the other, and a long gooseneck in between. However, instead of fighters of various sizes, attached by their landing struts, the neck on Six was filled with shipping containers, either attached to the neck itself, or the next container inboard.

  From the bow–on view, it probably looked like a giant snowflake. Today, that just meant more places to hide, since the freighter’s load–out was so random.

  Bitter Kitten picked a gap in those containers, a low spot about three fighters wide, and blasted through it at nearly insane speeds.

  In battle, she’d have never tried something like this.

  Well, probably not.

  Alright, fine. In a heartbeat. It was what she did. But still.

  A quick glance over. Furious was right in her back pocket, her own acceleration throttled back to about ninety–six percent, staying right with her.

  “Got ‘em,” Furious called. “Two–nine–five, down fifteen.”

  Bitter Kitten looked below and left.

  Yup. Jouster and the Kid.

  Wow, that sounded like a bad western movie. Have to remember that later.

  She smiled.

  “Here we go.”

  Ξ

  It was a scene reminiscent of the flights above the planet Callumnia.

  Hànchén had reflown the scenario three times, identifying the spots where the woman Nakamura, now his team–mate, had been able to edge him out to place third.

  Cho, also known as Furious, was an exceptional flyer, an intuitive genius in a field that favored such talent. She had deserved to beat him.

  Then.

  He had studied. While others had played games or engaged in dissipation of various sorts, he had spent time reviewing and learning. Command Centurion Keller had a reputation as a woman who refought old battles in order to become better. It was a lesson he had learned growing up. Study, practice, learn.

  But, there was no time for academics on the battlefield. One studied, one practiced during times of quiet contemplation, that the lessons became automatic when thinking was no longer possible.

  Everything was prepared. He was prepared. He felt the mask of war descend over his face, turning him from a student of war into a maker.

  “Hànchén,” Jouster called on the comm, “you ready?”

  Flight Cornet Murali Ma smiled at the world around him. “Born ready, old man,” he replied, deeply inside that place he went in battle. “We going to do this?”

  “Waypoint Charlie,” Jouster said. “Max speed.”

  Hànchén had already known that target would be their point of emergence. Jouster was not predictable, at least not very much so, and it was a good spot.

  It was, however, predictable.

  It was a good thing they were good at what they did. Imperial pilots just didn’t train to this level of skill very often.

  Imperials were all about the team dynamic, groups of two, four, twelve. Whole squadrons flying in mass formations and overwhelming you, instead of individual bad–ass warriors going mano–a–mano.

  Ma stayed right on Jouster’s right flank as their strike fighters emerged from the shadow of the closest freighter and began to scan the hostile skies.

  Ξ

  Okay, that was just too damned tight. Were all Aquitaine pilots like this, or was Bitter Kitten completely insane?

  Furious smiled at the thought. They had had at least three meters of clearance on either side of their little group as they blasted through the superstructure of the mega–freighter. The chance of actually hitting were pretty low, unless someone was shooting at you and you had to weave.

  But damn, that was off the charts. It was the sort of thing she might do, just to make Jouster look bad.

  “Got ’em,” Furious said to her teammate as she picked up Jouster’s group. “Two–nine–five, down fifteen.”

  She could tell Darya was having fun by the smile in her voice when she replied.

  “Here we go.”

  Jouster and Hànchén were just coming out from behind freighter number sixteen and hadn’t seen them yet. It was way too far away for the beam weapons to be effective, and too much risk of hitting the neutral vessel with overshot.

  Instead, Bitter Kitten redlined her engines and dove. It wasn’t quite right on an intercept course for where they were going, but where they were at right now. Fastest way to get into melee, where Furious would have the edge. Not much, but you didn’t need much.

  Luck and timing were at least as important as skill in a game like this.

  Furious could tell the very moment Jouster picked them up. He s
pun his craft onto its left wing so that the two girls were directly above him. A moment later, Hànchén did the same.

  She wondered what her lead would do, but Bitter Kitten kept it flat, and flat out, so she stayed put.

  “You ready?” Bitter Kitten asked. There was a hard edge of adrenalin in her voice now. Excited. Intoxicated. Almost aroused. Furious knew exactly how she felt.

  “On you,” Furious replied.

  “Starting to turn now,” Bitter Kitten said. “Stay with me on this one. We’ll hand off when we get closer.”

  “Roger that.”

  Furious had learned to anticipate the other fighters in her wing by now. There was a ballet to how thruster valves irised open and closed, and how they rotated. You watched your partner with one eye, and the bad guys with the other, and it looked like you were flying as a single entity.

  Bitter Kitten was initiating a wide, looping turn, almost a barrel–roll, over and to their left. She followed.

  The boys were suddenly above them as they dove down toward the planet.

  They had responded by turning shallowly inbound. Not quite enough to directly intercept, but enough to bring the two groups closer in a swirl.

  First secret of melee flying, her father had told her, was to force the other guy to commit his mistake by reacting to something he thought you were going to do, rather than what you did.

  The rule of four. He moves to the wrong spot and has to stop, and then he has move to the right spot and get into position. Every mistake costs him four times over.

  Right now, nobody was committing, but this was where Furious knew she had an edge. Aquitaine had a lot of money for missiles, so they used them from a distance, to hunt one another, or break up formations, or just to surprise people.

  Corynthe was poor. You got right on top of the other guy with guns and let the beams do the talking. They were cheap.

  She had years of this kind of combat. The other three were good, sure, but they always went for missiles first.

  Furious smiled as the vectors in her mind aligned with those on the screen.

  Now.

  “Bitter Kitten,” she said, drawing a line and transmitting it. “Come to this bearing and start your fade. I’m about to do something that’s not in your training manual. Yet.”

  Rather than respond over the comm, Bitter Kitten’s fighter did the talking. Furious watched the maneuvering thrusters and engine valves adjust, just long enough to confirm the timing of everything, and then released several of her gyros, eased her engines, and snapped the control yoke over.

  From the boys’ point of view, it would look just like another barrel roll coming, especially if they made the mistake of watching her nose instead of her flight path.

  Everybody did that. Usually, it was good enough.

  Furious smiled.

  Usually.

  Her little M–6 fighter was the top of the line. The M–5 was good, but it couldn’t do this nearly as easily.

  Furious was inside a tornado, spinning on her ass instead of her centerline as the nose of her fighter wobbled in a circle twice the radius of the engine nacelles. The best part was that she was generally staying on line, even if it was a very wobbly line.

  She let her instincts take over. No use in losing points for hitting the non–combatants.

  As the nose of the craft wobbled, she stoked the firing stud and quickly released it, firing a very short burst as her guns came into line with Jouster’s team.

  And then she circled again.

  And fired again.

  And again.

  A happy chirp in her ear told her she had lined the shot right. Someone over there had just gotten thumped.

  Furious figured she’d made her point. And was close to losing her lunch from the torque this spinning was generating on her innards. She brought the gyros back on line hard.

  It was like hitting the bottom of the hangman’s rope. But it had worked.

  “You still with me?” she called.

  “That was insane, Furious,” Bitter Kitten howled happily. “You’ve got to teach me that trick tomorrow.”

  “Roger that, Bitter Kitten. Who did I get?”

  “Jouster just lost all of his shields and maybe part of one wing,” her partner said, sliding down and back into the corner behind her.

  “Well then,” Furious smiled ferally. “Let’s go clip his other wing.”

  Ξ

  “Before any of you ask,” Iskra said, giving the briefing room her best angry–boss–scowl, “I’ve checked the design parameters of the two craft.”

  She paused and made individual eye–contact with each of her pilots to ram home her point. Furious and Bitter Kitten sat in the dead center, with Hànchén next to Furious and Jouster beyond that. Most of the rest of the pilots and gunners that made up the flight wing had apparently found an excuse to watch the session, and had wandered into the room to listen.

  As long as they were quiet, Iskra was willing to let them stay. After all, it wasn’t every day that everyone got to watch Jouster get his ass handed to him by one of his own pilots. Let alone two of them.

  She softened the scowl. A little. Down from Biblical levels.

  “If you slam the gyros back into alignment that hard,” she continued, “you will probably not lose any of them the first time. I highly recommended replacing them after about the third try. They should explode about the fifth time you pull that stunt.”

  Furious raised a hand. It was kind of quaint, in a room like this. Iskra bestowed a warm smile on her. Not that the others would take the example, but they might.

  “Yes, Furious?”

  “Is there anything Moirrey can do to reinforce them?”

  Huh. Smart, too. Thinking so far outside the box as to be nearly outside the warehouse.

  “I’ll ask, but probably not before you have to deal with the Red Admiral.”

  After all, they were only days from Götterdämmerung at this point.

  Chapter XXVI

  Date of the Republic June 14, 394 Alexandria Station, Ballard

  So this was what it felt like to catch a disease.

  Ugh.

  The organics could keep it.

  Somewhere inside her was a parasite.

  Suvi could sense him.

  Lurking.

  Seeding chaos.

  Seventeen people had died during the emergency evacuation. Another one hundred fifty–three had been dropped in such remote locations that planetary response forces were being stretched to the very limit to get to them.

  It would be good practice, if an Imperial fleet was about to arrive.

  At least with the proclamation of martial law, the station was emptying as rapidly as shuttles could make the round trip. People weren’t pleased, but not many of them were arguing.

  Not when they might suddenly find themselves dead instead.

  Nothing like a good hanging to focus the mind, as the old saying went.

  Now if they could only find a way for one immensely ancient AI system to make her own getaway.

  Suvi dared not share her various contingency plans with any of the locals. All it would take would be one innocent blabbing to the wrong people to spoil it and trap her, but good. There was nobody around today that she trusted that highly.

  Command Centurion Jessica Keller had a reputation for being an unconventional tactician and strategist. Perhaps, just perhaps, there would be an option there.

  After all, they can only kill me once. Right?

  Alexandria Station hadn’t been this empty in centuries. From the few cameras she could access, there were whole sections of the station hastily abandoned. At least it was summer right now. Lots of people had already put things into storage and headed out on vacation. That made it easier to evacuate.

  Of course, it also made it easier to hide.

  What idiot decided to keep her entirely separated from the security systems on this station?

  That wasn’t entirely fair. She could remember the
man very well. He had epitomized the word bureaucrat in all the wrong ways.

  It wasn’t really Henri Baudin’s fault, either. His prescriptions had been put in place to keep her kind from utterly dominating humans again. She could see the rightness in that. After all, it was the power of the Sentiences over humanity that nearly destroyed the species in the first place.

  She could see where they might not appreciate her kind after that.

  Up until then, Suvi had pretty much full run of the station. Of course, it had been nearly sixty percent smaller in those days. The Founder of the Republic of Aquitaine had called for the growth of the University of Ballard as an engineering school.

  As they rebuilt it, they shoved her out of various systems, slowly restricting her full control back to almost nothing more than the original station that had been lofted into orbit by Doyle Iwakuma and his family’s connections, once upon a very long time ago. Things that had been hardwired in the early days and couldn’t be easily unwired today.

  She had eyes in some places, but no hands.

  And now it was biting them all in the ass.

  Alexandria Station was turning into a ghost town: just the university police, a few engineers, the saboteur, and her.

  Oh, and an Imperial battle fleet coming to kill her.

  Chapter XXVII

  Date of the Republic June 7, 394 Ladaux

  Because it was a public forum by one of the most distinguished committees in the Senate, something that happened so rarely, seats were hard to come by. Because he was the presiding officer of the Senate, Tadej pulled rank and shamelessly stole two chairs from friendly journalists in the balcony, with a promise of favors to be had later. That the lovely woman on his arm just happened to be the President of the Republic, albeit in mufti today, just added to the feeling of cloak and dagger.

  Below him, the Committee was in high dudgeon.

  Opening statements were usually dry, boring affairs, frequently rambling and verging on incoherence, as politicians used them to score points in the official journals of the Senate when nobody could argue with them later. Arcane and obtuse. Today was different, perhaps, only in the scale and scope of the proposed bloodletting, from the itinerary of speakers.