Wings of Steele - Flight of Freedom (Book2)

by Burger, Jeffrey

  “He said he was worried about missing his quota.”

  “Oh good,” quipped Reiger, “get us all caught or killed for a motherfucking quota.” He took a deep breath. “Say, where's his ship? Maybe we should pay it a visit and pull a few choice system boards.”

  The young man wiped the sweat off his face, adjusting his hat, “He's got it in a hidden bunker at the Air and Space Port, about twenty miles south of the Capital.”

  Reiger blinked, dumbfounded. “He's on the middle continent and his ship's on the first continent, a third of a planet away..? Bwahahahahaa...” he roared, holding his chest. “I cannot fathom that level of stupidity.”

  “Maybe tonight we should take a ride out to the airport and check our systems and power cells?”

  Reiger Dantos nodded, “Good idea. We'll wait till everyone's asleep.”

  The aide shifted, leaning against the doorway, “What about the fighter pilots?”

  “They've got their own birds, let them do some work for once. They're here to cover our asses. Lords know they haven't done anything except play Ruge and fuck the local girls for months.” He waved the aide out, “Alright, get outta here, I've got work to do.”

  ■ ■ ■

  Sy Setzel was a frenetic little man who never seemed to stop moving. Had he visited a mental health professional on Earth, he would probably have been diagnosed with a Napoleon complex, a bit of attention deficit disorder, some paranoid schizophrenia, intense delusions of grandeur and various nervous twitches and tweaks. Of course, on a rare occasion there was more than one personality presenting itself, but that was just the voices in his head arguing. Today his ADD was driving him to clean his already spotless office. He despised dirt and dust... working in a mine environment was probably not the wisest choice for his wildly erratic condition. It was however, very profitable.

  “Timmian!” shouted the little man, dusting madly. “Timmian! Where are we on tube forty-two?!”

  Timmian limped into the office, leaning through the doorway, not wanting to step on the spotless carpet. “About three-hundred and fifty yards...”

  “Three-fifty!” Sy Setzel stood up behind his desk and paced vigorously. “They have to be farther than that... No they're always slow,” he countered himself. “They need to speed up!” He put his hands on his hips, “You're not going to get any more out of them unless you motivate them...” He banged his hand on the desk, “Then do it, and stop bothering me...”

  Timmian stiffened apprehensively. He was used to seeing this and knew better than to interrupt one of Sy's ongoing conversations. He was limping because one of them shot him in the foot during an argument - with himself. Yeah, it didn't make much sense to him either. He wasn't sure which one did it and truthfully he didn't have the brain power to figure it out. But it sure made his job as mine manager a lot more difficult. As if four thousand angry slave miners and Setzel's impossible dig quotas weren't enough. “Sir, I thought we were going to stop production until we got transportation restored.”

  “And who told you that?”

  “Dantos over at Mine 01 said...”

  “Dantos? Screw Dantos! I run this mine. Mine 02 is my mine!” Timmian dodged a flying ashtray that flew past him, through the doorway. “You get them to four-hundred by the end of the day, we have a transport coming!” His face twitched at the out of place ashtray, “Pick that up!” he pointed.

  Timmian's eyes widened. “The UFW is nosing around; Dantos said we need to be as invisible as possible...” He ducked out of the doorway as the laser shot passed so close to him he could smell the air burn.

  “Say his name again! Go ahead, say it! I'll shoot you in the face! I swear it!” Sy pounded his empty fist on his desk. “When that transport gets here, I want it full, we have a quota!” he screamed. “Get those grunts to four hundred. I don't care what you have to do! Understand? The UFW can't catch these transports, so it doesn't matter.”

  “But we don't have mineral rights or a land lease for this mine,” said Timmian, half-hidden behind the door frame, “only Mine 01 does... Does it matter that they can't catch the transport? They can still catch us...” Timmian flinched when Sy Setzel twitched, his face contorting and his arm jerking. “I mean, what about the damn miners? If we get caught with them, we're screwed. Not to mention all the other stuff...”

  Sy shrugged and tossed the laser pistol on the desk. Then picked it back up and placed it down again so it lay in a straight line with his e-Pad. “You made the preparations on the tunnels, right? All the charges wired and in place?” Timmian nodded. “Good, then stop worrying about it. They'll never find my ship, they can't catch us, and they won't be able to track us either. We'll be long gone while they're still digging for grunts.”

  ■ ■ ■

  The Commander of the transport vessel didn't like jumping back and forth between the vacuum of space and a heavy atmosphere; it was stressful on the hull and rough on the crew with all the turbulence created by moving from one extreme to another. Flying in or out of atmosphere was a fairly gradual event, but jumping in and out was a violent, risky transition.

  The ship vibrated and bounced, lurching, the view screen a blur, her hull groaning under the strain, crew members clinging to their stations. Warning chimes sounded.

  “We've lost attitude control!” The ship began to roll to one side.

  “Helm!” barked the Commander, “go to manual!”

  “Aye sir, manual control.”

  “Altitude?”

  “Four thousand and dropping...”

  “Stabilize us, helm. ”

  “Working on it, sir.” The helmsman wrestled with the manual control inputs, fighting the lazy responses of the ship, the ground continuing to rush closer.

  “Anytime, helm, I'd rather not become a smoking crater in the ground...”

  “Aye sir...”

  “And somebody silence that damn alarm.” The vibrations and gyrations gradually lessened, slowed and finally smoothed out, the ship finding it's equilibrium at about a thousand feet. There was a collaborative sigh from the bridge crew, their collective white knuckle grips finally relaxing.

  As instructed, they'd come in over the first continent to prevent the storm they'd create, from affecting Mine 02, their destination. Nearly over the coast, the navigator set course.

  “Time to the 02 landing zone?”

  “Present speed, twenty-five minutes.”

  The Commander took a deep breath. Good, right on time. “Communications, notify the mine. Do we have a damage report?”

  “No damage, sir. We're resetting the control systems computer and recharging the jump cells.”

  ■ ■ ■

  Lisa tried to reach forward and slap the back of her brother's helmet, but her restraint harness kept her firmly in place. The ship bucked and bounced as it blew through the outer layers of the atmosphere, headed straight down at the planet. “What the hell are you doing? This thing is going to come apart!”

  “It's fine...” Jack said nonchalantly, “relax.”

  “It's not fine! I see fire!”

  “We're OK, that's the heat from the atmosphere, the shields will protect us...”

  “I don't feel very protected,” she quipped.

  “That's the nature of sitting in a fighter. You feel exposed. Alone. But that's also the beauty of it...”

  With the rear turret active, Lisa played with the controls, watching her video screen, the gun camera sweeping with the turret's movement. “So what are we going to do when we get there?”

  “I'm hoping to catch up and track the ship to the mines. They've gone out of their way to stay dark and anonymous... makes me think they're up to no good.”

  “One of your gut feelings?”

  “They rarely lie to me... I'm not exactly sure how yet, but I'm convinced the mining consortium has something to do with what went on here.” He adjusted his sensors as the planet grew ahead of them, almost filling his entire view. “I don't know how deep they're involved, but
I want to catch them doing it.” Individual trees became distinguishable and he snatched the throttle back and yanked back on the flight stick, the Remora fighter screaming into a thunderous break of direction level with the ground at a little over a thousand feet. It made them both grunt under the momentary G forces before the cockpit's gravity generators balanced the stresses.

  “Wow,” panted Lisa, “a little warning would have been nice...”

  “Sorry bout that.” The fighter's sensors instantly picked up an energy exhaust trail heading east out over the water toward the second continent. “Gotcha,” he breathed, triggering his mic, “Rem One to Freedom, I've picked up a trail. On my mark, on my heading...”

  “Copy, Rem One, your location and heading locked in. Directing Red Flight to rendezvous and assist. ETA to rendezvous - fifteen minutes.” A target marker popped into existence on the edge of Jack's tactical screen as the fighter's sensors swept the curvature of the planet. The blip triggered a schematic on screen two, identifying the transport ship as a Maultier, still in flight, but descending. “You'd better hurry that up, Freedom. I just picked up our target, she's a Maultier transport.”

  “You heard the Skipper, boys, fifteen won't do, let's light 'em up.” Lieutenant Mike Warren hammered the Vulcan's throttle to the far stop, the rumble of his engines intensifying. “Red Leader to Rem One, make that ETA ten-minutes.”

  ■ ■ ■

  “Commander, we have a craft approaching from behind...”

  The Commander of the transport vessel stiffened in his chair. “What kind of craft, tactical?”

  “Information updating now... A two-seat fighter. No ping.”

  The Commander winced mentally, they were low and slow, a bad position. “Yellow alert, gunners to their stations.” An alert horn sounded, the bridge and corridors filling with flashing yellow light. “Communications, contact Mine 02, see if it's one of theirs... Helm, punch us in some exit coordinates, and ready the GOD drive, we're not sticking around for a fight.”

  “From this altitude sir? We're liable to wipe out whatever's beneath us...”

  “I don't give a shit about what's under us, I'm more concerned with what's behind us. Do it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The communications officer turned in his chair, “02 says it's not theirs...”

  “Helm! Get us out of here!”

  “Aye sir, dropping shields, initiating GOD system.”

  “Commander, I'm getting a ping, it's UFW! Uh, oh...”

  The Commander snapped his attention up from his screen. “There's something else?”

  “I have a flight of Gogol fighters coming off the surface

  “Great we're going to be in the middle of a gunfight... HELM?!”

  “Jump bubble at thirty percent...”

  “Comm coming from the UFW fighter, he is ordering us to cease our jump...”

  “Send no response... Helm?”

  “Jump bubble at seventy-five percent...”

  “He's firing...” Hot, searing green streaks passed across their bow, making the crew stiffen.

  “Bubble complete.” A series of hits shook the ship. “Jumping.”

  ■ ■ ■

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” growled Steele, watching the neon tendrils and transparent jump bubble reach around the entire transport. “Here's a little parting gift...” He targeted the engines and squeezed the trigger, the Boron pulse lasers singing loudly, flickers of color dancing through the bubble and marking across the stern. Holding the trigger until the power pods on his guns ran down to zero, the familiar clacking noise reminded him the cells needed to recharge.

  The ship disappeared as the bubble collapsed around itself, a thundering sphere of clouds swelling around the vanishing point like an explosion. It seemed like all the atmospheric moisture for hundreds of miles was instantly drawn to one point. And it wasn't happy about it.

  “Uh, oh...”

  Lisa leaned to one side to look around him, her eyes widening, “Holy crap! What the hell is that?”

  “Trouble... Hold on!”

  A crisscross of phosphorescent white streaks passed by the cockpit on both sides, above and below them. “And what the hell was that?!” shouted Lisa.

  Jack snapped the stick to one side and stood the Remora on a wingtip, pulling it through a tight twelve-G turn, the gravity generators fighting to keep the cockpit at a very bearable, four-Gs. “Cobalt canons... I think,” he grunted. “Bad guys.”

  “I wanna go home,” she breathed, her vision dropping to black and white, a tunnel forming.

  “Stay with me kiddo, turn up you air...”

  “Air...” she repeated, the word having no meaning.

  “The green knob, turn it to the left. Your oxygen, turn it up!”

  “Oxigair...” she slurred, searching for the knob. Her arms felt like they were weighed down with lead, and in her condition she couldn't focus on it or reach it. In a moment, she was out like a light.

  “Dammit,” he grunted, reversing his turn. He squeezed his mic button and broadcast on an open UFW channel, “Rem One is in a five-to-one, I'm in trouble down here...” The Remora lurched as hits pounded across its hull and wings, pulling down most of its shields. With the gun pods mostly recharged, Jack snapped off shots as a form flashed past in front of him, a moment before the visible world vanished. The shock wall of the storm enveloped them with angry black clouds and explosive force, carrying the fighter with it, rolling it, tumbling through the swirls of grayness. Jack could not read the instruments or get the fighter to respond to the controls, the comm systems were dead and he fought to maintain focus. “Lisa! LISA!”

  The collision slammed him against his restraints and he watched the right wing fold over the top of the canopy in slow motion, crashing through the canopy before tearing off and fluttering away. His visor snapped shut instantly, his suit producing a flood of cold fresh air, the cockpit awash with blinking warning lights. Birds don't fly well with one wing, and neither does anything else. “Mayday - Mayday! Midair! Punching out!” He realized she was still out like a light. “LISA! LIIISAAA!”

  Her eyes popped open, mind unfocused, thoughts scrambled. “What's going on?”

  “Are you with me?”

  “Yeah I'm here...”

  “Take a deep breath! Are you with me?!”

  She breathed deep and her mind suddenly cleared, sharpening, color returning to her vision. “What happened, what's going on? Where's our wing?” she asked, looking out through the shattered canopy. It felt surreal, like a dream and her mind scrambled to put it in order and make sense of it.

  The anti gravity was still working and Jack had it cranked as far as it would go, but they were still falling, tumbling out of the sky in a lazy, wobbling, flat spin. “We're going down. Are you with me now?”

  “Yeah, yeah, what do we do?”

  “Both hands on the red and yellow striped loop. Pull!”

  She had both hands on the loop between her knees and hesitated, “I don't want to do this...”

  “PUULLL!” he screamed, “EJECT EJECT!”

  She closed her eyes and yanked. The rapid fire of explosive bolts sounded like a machine gun, the canopy disappearing above her. Her seat rocketed out into the atmosphere, the Remora disappearing below, her scream crushed out of her by the instant acceleration. The world turned black and white again, a tunnel forming in her vision. As she became weightless at the apex of the ejection ride, her lungs found themselves once more, gulping air, returning visual clarity. But all around her were the dense gray-black clouds, flashes of blue-white lightning flickered past her... and she was alone. Uh oh, wait, what do I do now? Is there a parachute? “Jack! JAAAK! What do I do now?!”

  His responses sounded far away, broken and full of static, but her best understanding was to stay in the seat. Then there was nothing. No static, no visibility, no Jack, just the driving rain and the sensation of falling. There was no sky, no horizon, no ground, just the howl of the wind and the feeling of
weightlessness. When the seat fired and deployed the parachute, it took her by surprise and she yelped, looking up at the unfurling canopy. She found herself clenching the harness that held her in her seat. She couldn't remember ever feeling so alone. Or terrified.

  ■ ■ ■

  Red flight leveled off over the angry tempest at about ten-thousand feet, their sensors sweeping to the curvature of the planet in all directions. “Red Leader to Tower, we've lost all signals. We're not seeing any pings or signals...” Mike Warren eyed the lightning dancing through the clouds below them.

  “We've got your altitude and position, Red Leader, any chance of surface scans?”

  “Negative, Tower. We can't read a thing though that mess. And judging by the Skipper's last report, we can't drop into this stuff either.”

  “Copy that. How long can you stay on station?”

  Mike checked his fuel status, “An hour, tops.”

  “Copy Red Leader. Return to home plate for refueling, we'll get you back out there as soon as we can.”

  ■ ■ ■

  Timmian stuck his head into the doorway of Sy Setzel's office, “You ready to go sir?”

  Sy was emptying the office safe into his bag and he never looked up, cursing under his breath, “I'll meet you at the shuttle. I can't believe that bastard left without picking up our load...”

  “Well he was under fire...” offered Timmian.

  “Coward,” muttered Sy, “we'll never make our quota now.”

  Timmian shook his head and headed down the corridor, there was no pleasing Setzel when he was in a frenetic episode. He snagged his bag from where he left it and headed out into the pouring rain, running across the concrete apron to the waiting shuttle, a hundred yards out, the pilot already inside.

  “Where's Mr. Setzel?” asked Digger, double-checking his systems.

  Timmian shrugged, “You know Sy, he'll get here when he gets here.”

  The pilot hung his head and sighed. “No fighter cover, the UFW flying around, and he wants to play games.