Mercenary's Star

by William H. Keith

  "Sue! I got one!" Jeff's voice over the microwave channel was ragged with excitement.

  "He's still kicking," she replied. Her heads-up display pinpointed the damaged Slayer, tumbling out of control but struggling to regain flight attitude with its control thrusters. She locked onto the target and triggered her fighter's heavy, wing-mounted lasers in rapid succession. Spectroscopic scanners told of metal vapor boiling into space. She fired her own thrusters again to align her craft for another shot.

  "Sue! More company! Planetward, three-five-five, mark two!"

  She cursed as she glanced from doppler radar to computer ID, then caught her lower lip between her teeth. There were two more SL-15s climbing out of Verthandi's atmosphere. They must have been waiting for just such an opportunity to catch the Legion's fighter screen between the two halves of their forces. It was a trap!

  "They’re boxing us, Jeff! We'll have to bull past the first two and close with the Phobosl"

  "Affirmative! Punch it!"

  The Chippewas had drifted apart by several hundred kilometers in the brief fight. They swung now to align with the distance-dimmed flare of the Phobos's drive just above the baleful orange eye of Norn, then boosted hard. One Slayer drew across Klein's HUD sights, lasers scoring hits along her starboard wing. Flakes of paint and metal glittered in the sunlight, streaming aft in a metallic cascade as she continued to accelerate.

  She checked Jeff's position quickly. He was under drive, slipping past the dead hulk of the Slayer they'd already killed, angling for a deflection shot at the Slayer that was attacking her. She triggered another salvo of missiles and another burst of laser fire. The heat in the cockpit was already beginning to penetrate her suit, and she was slick with sweat. A fighter's biggest problem in combat was excess heat, and every thruster burn, every discharge of laser or missile, added to the problem. Sue Ellen ignored the growing discomfort, held stock-still as her Chippewa closed on the target with agonizing slowness, then shrieked victory as her lasers scored multiple hits on the enemy's charred and scored armor plate.

  The Slayer's thrusters fired frantically, knocking the damaged ship onto a new course. Seconds later, Sue's Chippewa plowed through the expanding cloud of paint chips and solidified droplets of recently vaporized metal from the enemy ship hit a moment before. Thousands of tiny, high-speed impacts sounded against her hull, like flung handsful of gravel. The target was aft now, boosting planet-ward at high-G.

  Where was Jeff? She ignored the fireworks cascade across her HUD scanner display. Her instruments were temporarily blinded by the cloud of debris and would not be reliable for several seconds. Instead, she craned her neck, searching the black sky until she saw a. moving glitter of light reflected from what might have been Jeffs wing surface.

  If it weren't Jeffs Chippewa, then it was the first enemy Slayer, now dead and drifting in the sunlight.

  * * * *

  That first Slayer was not dead, only damaged. Alive and cunning, its pilot watched Jeffrie Sherman's Chippewa drift across his own HUD at point-blank range. The Slayer's main drive was out, and his life support was failing. He still had a positive power feed to his lasers, and his autocannon was loaded and ready.

  The pilot's name was Raoul da Silva, and he'd long dreamed of being a great AeroSpace Fighter ace among House Kurita's legions. The fact that he hadn't yet scored his first kill had never dimmed that dream. Now, though, the possibility that he might die over Verthandi without ever knowing victory in ship-to-ship combat filled him with an infinite sense of loss and loneliness. He had killed before, but somehow the helpless rebel vehicles, the village buildings, the streaming rabble fleeing from burning Verthandian towns had never seemed more than impersonal targets, like holographic shadows in a flight combat simulator. What Raoul had dreamed of was the glory of fighter pilot facing fighter pilot, two keen minds in deadly contest

  His ship was ruined and would not make atmosphere again, of that Raoul was certain. If the intruders could be destroyed, there was still a good chance his comrades could rescue him. Once the intruder DropShip was dead, the nearby Xao would mount a search for survivors. Unless Raoul could take the enemy out now, he would drift forever in a metal tomb, growing colder and colder. His last hours would become a contest between cold and suffocation for the privilege of ending Raoul's short life.

  Providence had arranged that he could still strike back. If luck was with him, he might yet kill one of the intruder fighters, and might even survive to fight again another day.... If luck was not with him, he would die, but knowing he had scored at least one kill, man-to-man.

  He made a minute adjustment His Slayer rolled slightly, long shadows from torn metal falling across the curved armor of the ship's nose. The Chippewa was less than a kilometer away, large in his HUD crosshairs. Raoul's hand closed on the firing switch. All five forward-mounted lasers triggered in a salvo that sliced through the Chippewa's armor like hot wires through butter. The Combine pilot added his autocannon to the barrage, a steady stream of explosive shells shredding the control and port wing surfaces of the stricken enemy craft.

  Raoul's lips were drawn back from his teeth in a fierce, berserker's grin, his yell of triumph deafening inside the confines of the Slayer's cockpit.

  * * * *

  Sue Ellen Klein's victory shout became a wail of anguish. Her Chippewa's hull creaked protest as she piled on Gs in an attempt to change course, to kill her own velocity and swing into a new intercept vector. Jeff was maneuvering, too, his drive flaring against the trailing cloud of debris from his ship's wounds. The target fell into the crosshairs, still firing, savaging Jeffs Chippewa with repeated hits.

  Missiles lanced across space. One struck the Slayer squarely just behind its cockpit. Transplast melted in star-surface heat. The Slayer began tumbling, broken pieces of instrumentation and armor trailing from the gaping wound of the stricken ship's cockpit. Also tumbling was Jeff's Chippewa, moving outbound, away from Verthandi. It took Sue Ellen a few precious minutes to close with Jeff's ship, matching course and speed.

  What she saw sickened her. The Chippewa's cockpit appeared intact, but the portside wing was nearly torn away. The starboard wing was holed in five places, and most of Jeffs stabilizer had been torn away. A spaghetti tangle of conduit tubing and wiring, hydraulic piping, and shredded armor plate trailed after the fighter, creating a ghastly image of disembowelment. A ring of dust-fine debris, water vapor, and leaking atmosphere condensing and freezing in the vacuum of space expanded outward from the wreckage. She knew that ship would never make a controlled entry into atmosphere again.

  Her maneuver had taken her out of the direct line between the Phobos and the Slayers. All three surviving SL-15s seemed to be ignoring her and were closing on the DropShip instead. Frantic now, but dulled by worry and the sudden dwindling of her battle fever, she tried to raise Jeff ship-to-ship.

  "I'm here," he said. "I'm O.K...Some leakage, but I'm not hurt too badly, The controls are gone, though and so is the power. The old girl has had it, I'm afraid."

  "No! No, Jeff! Blow your hatch! I'll make pick-up!" She began struggling with her harness. The cockpit of the Chippewa was crowded with one. With two, it would be claustrophobic, but at least the two of them would make it back to the Phobos.

  There was a long silence before Sherman replied. "I...don't think so, hon. My legs, they're...hurt. Not bad, but...there's...mere's no pain, but my pressure suit is pretty badly torn up down there." There was another pause, and then a sob came across her com channel. "Oh, God, Sue...it's starting to hurt..."

  * * * *

  "Fire control!" Captain Martinez had to yell to be heard above the roar reverberating through the ship. Her nav screen showed twisted trails of light marking the incoming paths of the Kurita Slayers. Autocannon shells hosed across the Phobos's hull, then-explosions cratering armor and opening savage gashes. "Fire control released to weapons stations! Fire at will!"

  Missiles arced into blackness, seeking the glitter of the DropShip's min
ute attackers. Lasers burned briefly, invisibly, probing those spots where computers linked to the Phobos's scanners predicted that the three SL-ISs should be. Occasionally, those predictions might be correct

  The wing of one Slayer glowed white-hot when the Phobos's heavy laser struck it. Droplets of molten armor streamed into space, a brief-lived contrail of dancing sparks. All three delta fighters streaked by the Phobos at high speed, lasers carving into the DropShip's hull as they passed. The Phobos's weapons replied, tracking the fighters, scoring hits, but none were fatal. All three Slayers end-overed, and their drives burned white hot as they decelerated, lining up for another pass.

  Martinez turned on Grayson. "We're taking too much damage. Major." She gestured toward the main viewscreen, where Verthandi loomed huge. "Another pass or two by those people and we might not survive re-entry. If we accelerate now, we could outdistance them, maybe loop around the planet and make it back to the zenith point."

  Grayson allowed a half smile. "What for? The Invidious jumped out as soon as she recharged."

  "But another starship might jump in..."

  "Any ships coming insystem are going to be Combine vessels, Captain...or do you want to go ahead and surrender now?"

  "I'm stating options. Major." Martinez dropped her voice so low that Grayson could scarcely hear. "At this point, surrender might not be such a bad idea."

  Grayson shook his head. "Plot your course. Captain. Grounding in the Azure Sea, at the coordinates Citizen Erudin gave you. I prefer to take my chances with your piloting than the Combine's mercy."

  "Yes, sir."

  Martinez had not called him that before. The word sounded strange on her lips.

  "Captain!" The com officer looked up from his console. "Captain Martinez! I've got a distress beacon from one of the Chippewas!"

  She turned from Grayson. "Damn! Where?"

  "Planetward. Close in. I've got voice."

  "Put it on speaker."

  "Phobos! Phobos! This is Chip One!" Klein's voice was faint, distorted by the hash of static and distance. "Come in, Phobos!"

  Martinez picked up a mike from her console. "Phobos here."

  "Phobos! Jeffs been hit! Home on the beacon transmission and pick us up! If you can manage rendezvous, we can save him!"

  Martinez looked at Grayson, eyebrows raised, the skin taunt under the blue wing tatoos.

  Grayson looked from her to the navscreen. The fighters were outbound, but slowing. In hours, Verthandi's gravity would drag them to a halt, would drag them into the long fall back. Pick-up would be possible, of course. It would take long hours more for the crippled Chippewa to fall into Verthandi's atmosphere.

  - But what would be happening in the meantime? The Leopard DropShip was already emerging from behind Verthandi's horizon, closer to the Chippewas man the Chippewas were to Phobos. The Phobos might make it past the enemy DropShip if she could maintain her present speed and course toward the planet, not decelerating until the final plunge into Vermandi's atmosphere. But the Chippewas were on another vector, outbound. To match course and speed with them...

  Grayson balanced the life of one wounded fighter pilot against the lives of all aboard the Phobos. No longer was it a question of mission. This was sheer survival. He gestured toward the microphone, and Martinez handed it to him. He took a deep breath, held the device to his lips, and spoke. "Chip One, this is Carlyle. Phobos cannot rendezvous, do you understand? We cannot make pick-up on Chip Two."

  "He's dying! You can't leave us!"

  "Chip One, this is an order." Grayson had not believed the words would hurt so much. He scarcely knew Klein and Sherman, but the pain was knife-sharp. "Abandon Chip Two and return to Phobos. The enemy DropShip is shaping an intercept orbit and we must meet her. Do you copy?"

  "Carlyle, damn you, you can't do this to us!"

  "Lieutenant Klein! There's nothing you can do for him! Return to Phobos, and take your station!"

  "I'll tell you what you can do with your damn station! I'll see you in hell, Grayson Carlyle! In hell!"

  As if to underscore her words, the Phobos's hull rang anew with the impact and thundering bellow of autocannon rounds. Somewhere, far down the curve of the DropShip's hull, a storage compartment had been breached, its atmosphere erupting explosively into vacuum.

  The deltaform SL- 15s passed again. The Phobos's lasers sought and found. The drive of one stuttered and winked out at the touch of three beams sweeping across its after hull. The craft began a slow tumble into Darkness.

  Now it was the Leopard bearing down, driving toward the Phobos at three Gs. LRMs struck her lower hull, rupturing a ‘Mech storage bay, smashing a starboard laser turret. The bay door blew out into space, winking off and on as it dwindled into the black. The Phobos's missiles swarmed back along the same path. Laser beams, visible only on the bridge combat screens as lances of green and red, stabbed, probed, and struck. From somewhere, an alarm shrilled, but the sound was dull behind the babble of voices of the bridge crew. A computer voice announced pressure loss in Compartment Three.

  Martinez looked up from her console. "Better take your seat, Major," she said. "We're committed, and here's where things get rough!"

  Grayson strapped himself into his observer's chair. Events were beyond his control now, which gave him a moment to spare a thought for the two Chippewa pilots. Could he have done anything differently? If the Phobos had rendezvoused with Jeffrie Sherman's fighter, all of them would have died... or they would have been forced to surrender. Computer imaging showed the Leopard huge on the main screen. A pair of now familiar delta shapes streaked past the larger form, those Slayers closing for another run. Somewhere a voice recited range figures for a fire control station. "Nine-zero-zero, eight zero-zero, seven-zero-zero..." Was the voice a computer, or was it the unnaturally calm voice of a trained professional rising above the surge of emotions, of pain, of fear?

  Surrender was unthinkable. Possibly, possibly, in a declared war with established sides, the Gray Death Legion might have considered it in hopes of being exchanged or pledged. Mercenaries aiding a rebellion on a world already conquered by the Draconis Combine was a different matter altogether. The Dracos' simplest solution would be to arrange for the entire unit to quietly vanish. Besides, these Combine forces fought under the banner of Duke Hassid Ricol, the Red Duke, mastermind of the plot that had resulted in the death of Grayson's father. How could he ever quietly surrender, knowing there was a chance to strike at Ricol, to attack him, to hurt him...Grayson's will to vengeance was not yet dead, but he'd abandoned Jeffrie Sherman to die. Where was right in all of this?

  The Phobos bucked wildly. The noise of atmosphere rose outside, a distant susurration that built and surged, then built again into an overwhelming roar.

  'Targets, incoming!" Someone's voice rose above the roar, sharp with new fear. "Bearing oh-five-oh, mark ten, high! He's coming in!"

  As the DropShip plunged deeper into thickening atmosphere, it met this new attack with concentrated laser fire. The Slayer's massive nose and belly armor absorbed most of the onslaught, as its own lasers sliced into the pocked and cratered target growing large in its pilot's sights.

  One laser struck the Slayer full in the cockpit, at a range too short to allow polarization of the canopy to rob the beam of more than a fraction of its strength. The fighter's cockpit turned brilliant under the beam's megajoule caress. The canopy fragmented, giving the pilot no time to scream or even comprehend before his body transformed into superheated vapor. Though the Slayer pilot was dead, his fighter bore on at three kilometers per second, a gaping scar now glowing red across its upper hull.

  The impact caught the Phobos a glancing blow, but it was enough to stagger the larger ship and to lay open its fuel tanks in a ragged gash across the ship's flank. The wreckage of the dead Slayer sprayed outward in a final blossoming of destructive brilliance that kicked the Phobos forward and down. The jolt sent the bridge crew reeling against consoles or lurching against the restraining straps of th
eir harnesses as lights failed and damage alarms shrilled. The ionization shell of re-entry flickered wildly about the stricken, helpless Drop-Ship as it plunged and rolled uncontrollably toward the planet below.

  9

  Sue Ellen Klein followed Jeff's crippled Chippewa into atmosphere. Re-entry friction had heated the wildly bucking craft to a cherry glow, and fragments from the damaged ship began flaking off in a glittering stream of fiery particles. Fifty kilometers behind, the larger fragments tapped against Klein's cockpit like the beginnings of a summer's shower. Pit...pat...pit-pit...pitter-pat.:..

  She could no longer use her radio. Her ship-to-ship frequency was jammed by Jeffs soul-searing shrieks as his ruptured cockpit began melting around him. There was one final duty she could perform for Jeffrie, her friend...her lover. Tears wet her face and smeared the inside of her helmet visor as she brought the HUD targeting display up one last time. Crosshairs centered on the other Chippewa, now almost consumed in a billowing fireball, brilliant against Verthandi's cloud cover. Over the radio, the shrill screams continued, more desperate, chopped and broken now by the growing static from the ionization of superheated air.

  "Goodbye, Jeff," she said softly, knowing that he could no longer hear her. "I love you..." Then her thumb came down on the firing button, sending paired Exostar short-range missiles across the gap between her ship and Jeffrie's. The fireball erupted in flaming, hurtling fragments, then Jeff’s screams ended with a suddenness that made her gasp.

  Almost... she almost continued her own death plunge deeper into atmosphere, but her own well-trained pilot's mind took command and brought the ship's nose up. Like a stone skipped across calm water, the Chippewa skimmed across Verthandi's upper atmosphere, hurtling into space once more. In the planet's shadow and with her drive throttled down, Sue Ellen's ship cooled rapidly. She remained frozen in place, aware only that her thumb still pressed the bright red firing button that had released Jeffrie from his agony. Nothing could release hers, though, as she moaned into the cooling silence, "I had to, Jeff...I had to..."