Rhapsody For The Tempest (The Braintrust Book 3)

by Marc Stiegler

  Jam stood next to Ping by the hatch, holding onto a stanchion for dear life. The takeoff had been low gee, quite gentle as Jam understood rocket launches to be, and now Jam’s feet were floating off the deck; she was weightless.

  Ping was laughing her fool head off. “I just love this stuff!” She looked around at the people squashed into the capsule. “Even if it does feel like the Chicago El at five in the evening. They say the BrainTrust is a sardine can. Ha! Try the El.”

  Jam looked around. To her, the BrainTrust did indeed seem packed with people, and the crush here in the capsule seemed insane. Waziristan was a land of vast spaces filled with rock. This was a whole new experience, even without the zero-g.

  It did not last long. She felt the capsule rotate, a distant rumble reached her, and her feet floated gently to the deck again.

  Ping sighed. “Well, fun while it lasted. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

  Gravity returned to normal. Jam let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  Ping chattered on, “Assuming this landing is like the last one, we don’t have long to—”

  A terrible explosion reverberated through the ship and another sudden acceleration struck them, much stronger but shorter than the one that had lifted them from Baotong.

  Ping guessed the cause. “I think the main boosters just blew up, and the emergency booster just beneath us ejected our capsule from the rocket.” A short popping sound came from overhead, followed by a jerk, then gravity steadied once more. “That would be the parasail deploying.”

  Jam still clung to the stanchion. “Are we safe yet?”

  “Look on the bright side. Not much left to go wrong,” Ping chirped.

  Air Force Captain Gao carefully restrained his glee. His squadron would get to shoot down an enemy! An invader! China had had far too much peace in the last decades, so this was an extraordinary opportunity.

  And it could be a challenge since the enemy target was stealthed. And half his squadron was down for maintenance, though the description of the target suggested this would be no problem at all. Mostly, he expected this to be fun target practice. And to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever shot down a landing rocket ship before. He’d be first!

  His fighters came into the battlespace at a low cruising speed. They needed to find the enemy before kicking it up.

  Being unable to get a good radar lock slowed down his squadron only moderately, since the search coordinates were tight. Soon enough one of his fighters called, “Two o’clock high.”

  Gao looked, and sure enough, a three-booster rocket was plummeting down. Its long thin black body was easy to see against the blue sky. Even better were the brilliant fires of the engines braking her descent. No radar, but the choice of weapon was obvious. “Infrared homing missiles.” He flipped the safety guards off his weapons toggles. “I’ll just get this, and we can go home.”

  He fired. The missile scooted off at Mach 3 and struck the exhaust nozzle of a side booster. The entire thing blew up.

  A rousing chorus of congratulations filled the radio waves, but as the squadron veered away, a smallish part on the top, the capsule, cleared the fire and debris. It popped a parasail. The chute spun, then held steady as it brought the capsule gently down.

  Glancing down, Gao could see the BrainTrust fleet, clearly the capsule’s target. “Hold on, men. We’re not done yet.”

  Gao led his squadron in a circle and pondered the situation. Radar was not working adequately: it could see the parasail, but could he get enough damage to make a difference shooting up that enormous surface? Meanwhile, the capsule seemed to have no heat signature—that black skin must have radiated the heat from reentry with incredible efficiency. He could have used vidcam-guided missiles, but none had been included in his loadout. Perhaps he was just rationalizing, but he thought he had a compelling justification to fulfill a fantasy. “Use the rapid-fire cannons, everyone! We’ll chew it up.”

  Jam heard, just dimly, surging engines. “Are there planes nearby?”

  A staccato sound accompanied the roar, a sound she recognized. “Cannons!”

  A dozen holes appeared in the fuselage of the capsule, and shouts of alarm went up. Jam couldn’t tell if anyone was seriously injured.

  Ping grunted. “Ow. They’re shooting at us.” She ran to the hatch, threw open the door, and unhitched her Big Gun.

  Jam’s eyes widened in alarm. “Ping, you shoot that thing from here, the backblast will kill everyone.”

  Ping growled as she set the gun, still folded up, on the deck. “I know, I know.” She whipped off her batpack, wrenched open a zipper, and started pulling stuff out.

  Jam shook her head. “Rope? You brought rope?”

  “Aside from duct tape and WD-40, what else is more useful in emergencies?” Ping whipped the rope around one ankle, then the other, in an intricate knot. “I just wish the rope were longer. I have to hang down far enough to clear the emergency engines, so I’m going to have to hang upside down and use the length of my body as part of my rope.” As she dogged off the knot, she muttered to herself, “Upside-down, he says. Practice upside-down. He should know. But do I listen?”

  Wind noise made hearing difficult. Jam yelled, “What?”

  “Nothing.” Ping threw the other end of the rope to Jam. “Tie this down someplace close to the hatch. Really close.”

  Jam looked up at the stanchion to which she clung, which was too far away to be ideal. After scanning the area nearer the hatch, she sighed, grabbed the rope, and struggled with her elegant gown to wind the rope around her thighs, between her legs, and around her waist, as they’d taught her in the commandos for making a quick and dirty climbing harness.

  At last she was ready. The gown had not been damaged irreparably, she hoped.

  Ping grinned. “Hold me. Don’t let go.”

  Jam finished tying off, grabbed both sides of the hatch, and nodded to her friend. Ping slid backward over the side, holding the Big Gun in one hand, paying out rope with the other. She grunted once as her feet went over the side, and she bounced against the side of the capsule several times as she unreeled the rope. Jam heard her shout something which was no doubt pithy, but the words were lost.

  The fighters were coming back for another pass. Ping was still assembling her gun as the fighters started their run. Jam groaned. “Too late,” she shouted futilely.

  Then three of the fighters exploded in midair, and the other three veered off in all directions.

  Toni had kept up a running chatter over the onboard intercom with Dash when they first lifted off from the helipad on the Chiron. But even at fighter speeds the trip was long, and repeated midair refueling slowed them more. Toni had to grin at the thought of the American tankers helping them. If they knew that the fighter they were refueling carried the woman the Chief Advisor desperately wanted to kidnap, they’d have apoplexy.

  But finally they came into visual range of the BrainTrust Fuxing. “Dash, we’re almost there.”

  “I know I need to stop thanking you for this, but I cannot help thanking you one more time. Thank you.”

  Toni laughed. “Like I said, I’ve been looking for an excuse to take her for a spin.” Warning lights started going off; she looked more closely at her instruments. “We have company. Half a dozen Chinese fighter planes—ha! Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters, the most visible stealth fighters ever built—are vectoring in…” She studied her sensors in surprise. She couldn’t see the Chinese fighters’ target on radar, but…she looked where her infrared was tracking an enormous signature. “Those shmucks! They’re gonna to shoot down the spaceship!”

  Dash shouted. “What? Can they do that?”

  Toni heard new warning tones and watched on her zoom viewer as a missile plowed into the firing engines. The whole rocket disappeared in a ball of flame. “Dammit!” Then she saw the parasail pop open; soon the capsule swayed gently beneath it. Toni spoke with relief. “It’s ok, Dash, they survived.”


  Next she saw that the fighters circling around for another pass. She glanced down at her instruments. She whooped. “My dad is the greatest! He gave me a full weapons load!” She flipped on the afterburners as she yelled at Dash, “Don’t worry! We’re going to save them!”

  The afterburners drove them into their seats as they accelerated, pushing past Mach 1 and climbing to 1.6. As they drove full-bore into the battlespace, Toni fired all four of her AMRAAM missiles at different targets. Three of the enemy fighters disappeared in small fireballs of their own. “Missed one,” she announced more cheerfully than probably made sense. “And now we’re in a knife fight. This is going to be interesting.” She shouted to Dash, “Hang on! Try to scream as little as possible!”

  Gao was happily leading his fighters into the next firing pass when three of his planes disappeared from the radar display. Someone yelled, “We’re under attack!” Gao stared at his screens and ordered, “Stealth fighters! Scatter! Find targets!”

  Dash grabbed the chest straps of her harness and held on. From a physics perspective, she realized this made her no safer, but it felt more secure.

  As the plane started to jink—like Ted’s copter, only more viciously—she heard herself screaming. She wasn’t sure whether she was screaming in excitement or terror.

  Over the intercom, she heard Toni screaming too, but it sounded more like laughter.

  Gao heard one of his men shout, “I see one. Got a radar return.” Silence for a moment, then, “It’s an F-35.” The voice turned puzzled. “Or not. Odd bird.” Now the voice turned to alarm. “Nails! It’s on your tail!”

  Gao finally got a flickering radar return off the bandit. It seemed like an F-35. Good stealth on the approach, but once in a dogfight you could get radar hits off the sides.

  He banked to come to his wingman’s aid but saw he was going to be too late.

  Toni ceased fire with her GAU-12 Gatling gun and whooped. “Score four!” She studied her screen. It took little analysis to reach a grim conclusion. Her fighter, with its modifications to accommodate a Weapons System Officer in the second cockpit, was less maneuverable than a standard fighter. Without missiles or stealth or surprise left, the remaining two enemy craft were swinging slowly but surely behind her. “Dash, there’s a red and yellow striped handle by your right hand. When I yell for you to pull it, you pull it with all your strength. All your strength! You got me?”

  Toni barely heard Dash’s acknowledgment as she banked under the capsule. If she could get the two fighters to spend their remaining munitions on her, perhaps the spaceship would survive. She dipped down, then started to climb. She saw an enemy fighter settle on her tail and braced for the inevitable.

  Then the fighter behind her disintegrated. Moments later its companion disappeared in a fireball, blocking her view of the capsule.

  Ping swung like a pendulum from the rope that was anchored to the capsule, which itself swung like a pendulum from its parasail. Occasionally the rhythms of the two pendulums interfered, causing Ping to twist in a sudden sharp bounce beneath the ship.

  She cursed with speed and fluency. The Big Gun proved harder to unfold into firing position when you were unfolding it upside down, and she realized that she was fighting the gravity. “Dummy,” she muttered, “Use the gravity, don’t fight it.”

  She flipped the gun over so that it was right-side up with respect to the Earth, although it was now upside-down to her. Shaking it vigorously, the tubes smacked her in the face only three times before the final piece locked into place. “Argh. Need to make a note about that in the Big Gun evaluation.” She spun around seeking targets. “Where are they now?” She held the digital scope to her eyes. “Come on, come on, bring me some.”

  She heard the roar of jet engines behind her; a fighter sizzled beneath and started to climb right before her eyes. She zeroed in, then stopped. “Huh? An F-35? No…What the hell?”

  Another plane tore past her, chasing the first. This one was clearly Chinese. “Gotcha,” she muttered as she pulled the trigger twice, launching a pair of missiles up the sucker’s tail exhaust.

  Another plane followed. Ping was in her groove; she popped off two more missiles faster than before. “Ooops. Too close. Shit,” she muttered as the plane exploded in her face.

  Jam stood braced in the hatch, marveling as she watched Ping blast a fighter out of the sky. Ping was going to be absolutely insufferable after this.

  Or not. The last fighter banked as it passed beneath their capsule, and when Ping’s missile struck it was too close. The shockwave threw Jam from the spaceship.

  Jam then realized that there was something far more stupid than jumping from a perfectly fine airplane with a parachute. It was falling from a perfectly fine spacecraft without a parachute. Down she went, screaming curses in Pashtun at the top of her lungs.

  She was still screaming when she became aware that Ping was reeling her in with the rope as fast as she could. Jam then heard Ping’s voice over the rushing wind. “Get down here!” Jam thought she was going down fast enough already, thank-you-very-much, but she did as Ping requested, pulling on the rope with the same frenetic zeal as her partner. They reached each other in moments. Ping shouted, “Hang on!” Only then did Jam notice a ripcord now sticking out of an unsealed compartment in Ping’s batpack. As Ping pulled the cord, Jam clung to her frantically.

  Jam was rewarded with a satisfying jerk to her shoulders as the airfoil snapped open. She tried to take control of her limbs, shivering with excess adrenaline.

  Ping grunted. “Crap. Too much weight and I can’t get control. Hang on.”

  Jam had no problem obeying. She held on for dear life. “A parachute? You carry a parachute as part of your general-purpose emergency kit?”

  Ping grunted again, still focused on trying to get control of their descent, albeit with minimal success. “Not usually, but going up in the air on an experimental spacecraft? You betcha. Besides, Batman does it all the time.”

  They spun down to the sea, going too fast, never quite gaining control, and crashing into the water with stunning impact.

  Coming out of a daze, Jam surmised that she was still alive, but concluded it wouldn’t last long because she couldn’t breathe. She looked around, oriented on the bubbles that were presumably headed up, and kicked to the surface.

  Where was Ping? She lay face down in the water. Jam crossed the waves as fast as she could and flipped her friend over.

  Ping coughed. “Thanks.” She looked around. The ships of the Fuxing were out of sight.

  Jam pointed over Ping’s shoulder, “Looks like that may be our best shot over there.”

  Ping rotated, then gurgled when a wave hit her while she laughed in delight. “Oh goody. It’s a Chinese cruiser.”

  Jam spoke sourly. “Well, it’s better than drowning, I suppose, but I was hoping not to be taken prisoner when I got up this morning.”

  Ping looked at her in puzzlement. “Prisoner? What are you talking about?” She pointed at the cruiser, now clearly bearing down on them. “We just capture it and take it back to the BrainTrust.”

  Capture it. Of course, that would be Ping’s plan. Why hadn’t Jam thought of that?

  Jam opened her mouth to start listing the reasons why capturing the cruiser might not be as easy as it sounded, but the list was so long she couldn’t decide where to start. And she could already hear Ping’s counterpoint to each objection. In the end, there was only one thing to say. “Ok.”

  They started swimming toward the cruiser. When Jam realized that Ping was having trouble keeping up, she paused and looked back at her companion. “What’s wrong?”

  Ping grimaced. “Nothing. Just grazed by a piece of shrapnel when those bullets hit the capsule.”

  Jam now saw a slight reddish tint to the water.

  Ping pointed at the cruiser. “You go on. I’ll catch up. Don’t capture the cruiser until I join you.”

  Jam shook her head. “Let me help you.”

  Jam had just
reached Ping when they both saw the shark fin at the same time. “Damn,” they said in unison. A second shark fin joined the first.

  Ping spoke again. “Ok, like I said. You go on. It’s me they want. After I take them out, I’ll be with you in no time.”

  Jam spun till her back was against Ping’s, giving them a full 360 degrees of coverage. “We’ll take them out together,” she replied grimly.

  “Whatever.”

  Jam had one shark in her sights when she felt Ping jerk. Ping shouted, “Score! Kick ‘em in the nose. They don’t like that.”

  Jam kicked and missed, but so did the shark. It ripped a big piece out of Jam’s gown and turned away. Jam screamed. “My dress! The shark took a bite out of my dress!” The shark circled back for another pass; this time Jam hammered it in the nose. “My dress is ruined!”

  Ping shifted against her, kicking again. She turned philosophical. “Well, Jam, if you’re going to wear a beautiful gown to go skydiving and swimming, you have to expect things like this to happen.”

  Jam watched as two more shark fins appeared. “Uh, Ping?”

  “I see ‘em.” Ping continued after a pause, “We’ll have to take care of them faster, or they’ll outnumber us.”

  “We may need a better plan. I confess—”

  A sound similar to the clap of a detonation rose through the water, lifting them both up before dumping them back down. The shark fins disappeared.

  Jam felt herself being lifted on a rubbery surface; it made her think of the skin of the dolphin she had once touched near the BrainTrust, which had felt sort of like a hard-boiled egg. As the surface rose it curved; Jam slid stickily down the side. Pretty soon she was able to see enough of the object to make it out: a very large torpedo or a small submarine, big enough to hold several people.