Jack of Harts 2: Angel Flight

by Medron Pryde

  Gabrielle smiled as if following his train of thought. “Jack, I’m giving you a landing beam to Los Angeles. Please follow it.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “Captain Wyatt has ordered a full briefing and she wants her fighter commanders to report in person.”

  Jack shook his head. “You can’t tell me you have enough room in your bays for all my Avengers.”

  Gabrielle laughed. “You’re right. But I can squeeze you in.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “I have five piloted Avengers here, and another twenty-seven cybernetic Avengers that are going to need a place to refuel and rearm. We can’t hoof it all the way to Serenity on our own power.”

  “I know,” Gabrielle growled. “We’re going to have to do some tricky maneuvers to keep all the fighters working. Now will you please come to the briefing?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jack returned, feeling a bit harassed. Gabrielle looked triumphant and Jack turned to Betty who just smiled at him. “Betty?”

  “On it, Jack,” Betty answered, interlaced her fingers, and cracked her virtual knuckles. Then she wiggled her fingers and brought their thrusters to life to move them towards Los Angeles. It was smooth sailing in the cruiser’s wake, the normal chaos of hyperspace suppressed by the generators of the squadron carving their way towards the large gravitic wave linking the massive Epsilon Reticuli system to the much smaller Serenity.

  Betty slowed their fighter as they came up beside Los Angeles and moved them towards the hangar bay opening in her flank. The open doors revealed a hundred meter long maw that he could see through into space on the other side of the ship. Marine tanks, shuttles, and other craft filled the center of the bay, anchored to the deck or upside down to the overhead. There was not a single unused surface in the bay, except for those that were supposed to carry the cruiser’s squadron of Hellcats.

  Jack winced as the vertical dimensions of the hangar bay opening registered. It truly was far too small for his comfort. Betty slowed them to a crawl relative to Los Angeles and turned them broadside to the entrance. He felt the jerk of their engines rotating to lay flush with the fuselage, decreasing their height by several meters. Then she engaged maneuvering thrusters and squeezed them between the two doors and through the energy field holding the atmosphere in. It distorted around the Avenger and he saw it ripple as his cockpit moved inside. The rest of the Avenger followed, making the single Hellcat on that side of the bay look truly miniscule by comparison.

  Jack let out a long breath. The Hellcats had been designed for naval duty nearly half a century ago. Avengers on the other hand were maybe three years old, proof-of-concept craft designed to show that America could build a hyperspace-capable fighter. The powerful generators, massive capacitors, and the penetrators designed to rip through the barrier separating normalspace from hyperspace required an equally massive craft to carry them. No one had expected them to deploy on anything other than the testing ranges, but all that had changed after the Battle of Fort Wichita. In the last two years he’d landed on carriers, battleships, dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, and even a German heavy cruiser almost as large as a battlecruiser, all ships with large enough hangar bays to support his massive fighter. Los Angeles was by far the smallest ship he’d ever tried to land in.

  Not that he was actually doing anything. It was Betty’s job to squeeze herself into the bay and Jack held his breath. They had mere meters of clearance above and below, but Betty held them in place like a champion. The fighter finally came down for a landing that filled nearly the entire space designated for Hellcat parking. Jack looked down and, in a testament to how large the Avenger was, saw the single Hellcat fitting like a glove next to the nose of his fighter.

  “There,” Betty said with a smile. “Fits like a glove,” and Jack wondered if she’d guessed his line of thought well enough to repeat it on purpose. Probably.

  “Yup,” Jack returned, looking at the hangar around them. “Just be careful about flexing yourself. I wouldn’t want you breaking anything.”

  “Oh, it’s sweet of you to worry about me,” Betty said, a twinkle in her eyes.

  “I’m not,” Jack returned with a teasing grin. “Those Marine boats on the other hand…”

  “I heard that,” Gabrielle growled. “Trust me. We can handle anything your puny fighter can dish out.”

  “And the trash talk begins,” Jack said with a chuckle, motioning for the cockpit to open. It began to lift away and he tapped the buckle of his five-point harness. The harness retracted into its housing, leaving him free to stand up and vault out of the fighter. Betty’s gravity generator snatched him and dropped him safely to the deck where he landed with a spry step, head turning to scan the hangar bay again.

  His eyes stopped on a square-jawed, blond, young man in a black leather flight jacket walking towards him. The man wore a pair of ancient aviator sunglasses dark enough to keep Jack from reading the age in his eyes. The raven-haired cyber standing next to him wore the same outfit, right down to the shades and the navy blue scarf hanging from their necks. The names Hunter Roberts and Mercedes appeared on his contacts and Jack nodded in approval. The names fit the looks.

  “Damn,” Roberts said, looking way up at the Avenger as he walked towards them. “That is a big bird.”

  “She is beautiful,” Jack answered, projecting just a hint of challenge to the man.

  Roberts shook his head in acknowledgement of the jibe. “So, I gotta ask. Why?”

  “Because she’s the best fraking fighter ever made,” Jack answered, waggling his eyebrows at the man’s Hellcat.

  Roberts snorted. “Hah,” he said and waved towards his smaller fighter. “She can do everything your old hulk can and takes less space doing it,” he added, nodding towards the cyber standing next to him.

  “Old?” Betty growled next to Jack and he raised a hand to touch her shoulder. He felt the slight shift in the air where her holoform gathered air molecules close together and color shifted them to look like a real person standing there. But it was still air and Jack stopped when he felt the barest edge of her holoform. It wasn’t polite to wave hands around inside holoforms. She got the message though and her jaw snapped shut.

  “Now, now,” Jack answered Roberts with a smile. The Hellcat might be able to dive into hyperspace now, but it certainly couldn’t do everything an Avenger could. “We’ve got way more firepower than you do.”

  Roberts chuckled. “You can barely squeeze one Avenger into an area designed to support six Hellcats. I think six Hellcats can outmatch you.”

  Jack cleared his throat and shrugged. He looked at Betty, who was glaring back and forth between the other pilot and his cyber. “Well, you’d definitely outgun me,” Jack said, trying to stave off an argument. He looked back and forth between the two fighters and shook his head. “But I’ll take quality over quantity any day of the week,” he added with a wink. Roberts opened his mouth to call him on it and Jack chuckled. “Wanna shoot it out and see? Simulated of course,” he finished with another wink.

  Roberts chuckled again and took Jack’s outstretched hand. “Challenge accepted.”

  “Oh good,” Gabrielle said as her holoform appeared next to them. “Are you done spraying testosterone all over my deck? If so, can we come to the bridge now? The captain’s waiting on you,” she finished with a pointed look at Jack.

  Jack looked over to Roberts with an amused look and the man just smiled back at him. It was almost like the man was daring him to be smart with her, while at the same time declaring his utter refusal to do the same. Well. Los Angeles was his home so Jack supposed it made sense for the man to take the stance he did.

  “Well, never let it be said I kept a lady waiting,” Jack said with a smile and turned to Gabrielle, gesturing towards her to lead the way.

  Gabrielle rolled her eyes and turned to lead him out of the hangar bay. Jack followed her out through the hatch that opened before her, Betty, Roberts, and Mercedes on his heels. The room on the other side was sm
all enough to feel cramped when the hatch closed behind them. Then the floor beneath them began to vibrate and the lift took them away from the hangar bay like a shot.

  The main bridge was less than a hundred meters from the hangar, deep in the heart of the warship, and the lift came to a stop in seconds, hatch opening onto the bridge. They filed out and Jack looked around, the contacts swimming with names and positions for each of the men and women on the bridge. He stopped when his eyes lit on the captain and smiled at her. The brunette looked strong, and grey eyes betrayed a determination to match the rest of her. She stared at him for several seconds, obviously taking his measure.

  “Major Hart,” Captain Wyatt finally said, giving him the courtesy promotion required when any captain other than The Captain was onboard a ship.

  “Captain Wyatt,” Jack agreed with a smile.

  “You’re Ageless,” Wyatt declared.

  “Guilty as charged,” Jack answered, wondering what had betrayed him.

  “I’ve never met one of your kind before,” she continued, her mouth sketching a doubtful thought.

  “I’m not surprised,” Jack said with an easy smile. Many people didn’t like the Ageless and he’d learned to downplay the advantages his genetics gave him long ago. Except of course for times like when the car ran over that girl back home. The people of International Falls hadn’t quite questioned him on his “adrenalin rush” and continued to treat him as they always had. Of course he’d been a bit of a rogue, so that wasn’t always good. Fathers of attractive young ladies had been more than happy to continue racking shotguns in his general direction, but they’d never actually shot him. Winged him maybe but Jack didn’t count those misunderstandings. Jacked looked directly into Captain Wyatt’s grey eyes. “There’s not many of us,” he said. He did not say that there were perhaps as many as five thousand Ageless in all the United States of America.

  “I’ve heard that Ageless grow up lazy,” Wyatt challenged. “Never take things seriously because it all comes so easy to you.”

  Jack pursed his lips, wondering if she was truly distrustful of Ageless or just testing him. He chose to assume a mix of the two and stepped into the verbal minefield with care. “We don’t grow up Ageless,” he said. “It’s sorta something that slides up on us without warning after we grow up.”

  She nodded very slowly. “But did you grow up?”

  Jack cleared his throat and glanced at Betty. She just smiled as if thinking it was a very good question. Well. There wouldn’t be any help from that peanut gallery. “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

  Wyatt’s expressive face frowned at him. “Because I want to know if I can trust you onboard my ship.”

  Jack felt Betty bristle beside him this time and he lowered an open hand to hush her. He kept his eyes on Captain Wyatt though and forced his voice to sound as sincere as possible. “You can trust me to the ends of the worlds.”

  Wyatt sighed. “That’s easy to say.”

  “Aneerin trusts me,” Jack said, and instantly hid a wince. It wasn’t one of the best arguments he’d ever given for why someone should trust him.

  Wyatt cocked her head to the side, the questions on her face even more evident. The questions and the doubt. “But can we trust him?” And that was why it wasn’t the best argument.

  “Permission to speak frankly, Ma’am?” Jack asked.

  Wyatt smiled and spread both arms out wide. “I would expect nothing less.”

  “I’m here because Admiral Aneerin smelled a trap.” Jack shook his head. “Well, we found a trap, and one he never saw coming. I lost a Cowboy getting you out. I lost half of my fighters. The last time we took casualties like that, his Peloran Battle Squadron got ripped apart beside us. And I think this trap was meant to finish him. We both know how he fights.” He waited for her to nod again before going on. “That jammer was designed to neutralize his tactics. I think it would have succeeded. And I think you only got out because Aneerin sent us to help you. Because he trusted my people to help you out of a situation he told your entire fleet to avoid.”

  Wyatt met his gaze for several seconds. “I see,” she finally replied in a cryptic manner.

  Jack wasn’t sure how to respond, but he listened to his instincts and smiled. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said with a tip of his hat.

  Wyatt pursed her lips and nodded very slowly. “Would you care to join me in the briefing room?” she asked, the question not disguising the iron-bound order in the voice at all.

  “At your leisure, Ma’am,” Jack answered, glancing to the side to see what the cybers thought. Betty gave him a proud smile, while Mercedes and Gabrielle had more measuring looks in their eyes. They hadn’t yet come to a verdict on him. Well, that was fair. He hadn’t come to a verdict on them either.

  They entered the briefing room to see some twenty people waiting for them. The holoforms represented the commanders of the warships and fighter squadrons that had survived Epsilon Reticuli. They were a motley lot.

  “Thank you for making this meeting,” Captain Wyatt said to the others and a shaky ripple of laughter moved through the room. “We need to make for Serenity immediately. I called you here to find out if your ships are ready. I don’t want readiness reports, but your actual on-the-bridge feelings. Are your ships and crews ready for the trip?”

  “My crew’s ready for anything that gets us away from this system,” Hammond’s captain said and another ripple of nervous laughter filled the room. “I almost had a mutiny on my hands after giving the order to hold formation on you in fact,” he added, far less humorously. The laughter ended, and Wyatt nodded very carefully.

  “Does that go for the rest of you?” she asked and Jack leaned back against the wall to listen to the ship captains give their reports. None of them were good. The task force had lost two-thirds of her ships in a few short minutes, and nearly all of their cruisers were expanding fields of wreckage in Epsilon Reticuli. The various destroyer and frigate commanders knew they would have been dead if the Shang weren’t gunning for the more powerful ships, and that had them frightened. But they were holding on. That had to count for something.

  “Very well,” Captain Wyatt finally cut through his inner thoughts with her command voice. “Set your courses for Serenity and prepare to leave within ten minutes.”

  “Hang on,” the captain of Eclipse protested and all eyes in the room turned to the man. Jack frowned, something about the man rubbing him wrong. “We need to determine the commander of this task force,” the man continued in a clipped tone and Jack saw several raised eyebrows. “I suggest-”

  “I suggest that no suggestions are needed,” Captain Wyatt cut him off. Silence reigned in the briefing room until she opened her lips again. “I am the senior commanding officer,” she finished in a tone that brooked no argument.

  The man’s eyes blazed. “With all due respect,” he bit out.

  “Is that what you are giving me?” Wyatt asked. “Respect?” The unvoiced part of that question cut through the briefing room like a chainsaw.

  Eclipse’ captain saw the danger and shook his head. “Captain,” he began again, this time far more careful of his tone. “Admiral Bainsworth is on Recovery at this time.”

  That captured every eye again. “Excuse me?” Wyatt asked. “Did you just say that Admiral Bainsworth, commander of the entire British task force of Third Fleet, is here, right now, without the rest of his fleet?” The question hung in the air like the sword of Damocles and Jack knew the question going through every mind in the briefing room.

  “Why was the admiral not with his command?”

  Eclipse’ captain swallowed at the unvoiced question. “He was injured when Valiant took fire,” the captain explained hastily. “It was deemed necessary to evacuate him and his staff immediately, and this force was the first exit route available.”

  “Hang on,” Jack said, unconsciously echoing the Brit as he smelled a rat somewhere and tried to track it down. “Your people thought this task force was a…safe e
scape route for an injured admiral?”

  He could have heard a pin drop in the silence filling the briefing room, and the sound of the British captain’s swallowing came far too clearly. “It was the…first escape route available…” the man said, licking his lips nervously.

  “And they didn’t think any more would be available?” Jack pressed, a sick feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

  The other captain cleared his throat awkwardly. “I…am not privy to fleet command-level decisions,” he finally said, his protest sounding hollow to every ear.

  “What in Hell did we leave Third Fleet facing, Captain?” Jack spat out, anger flashing through him.

  “Major Hart,” Captain Wyatt said in a hard voice. He throttled his anger, turned back to her, and saw the unbending will behind those eyes. “I will ask the questions. Understood?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Jack answered, his teeth gritted in protest. But he didn’t delay and she didn’t bust him down any harder.

  “Good,” she returned with a nod at the swiftness of his response, if not his joyful obedience. “Now,” she began, turning back to the British captain, “Captain Alexander.” The British captain’s eyes flicked to hers as quickly as Jack had responded to her iron tone. “What do you know?”

  “Nothing,” Alexander returned with a shake of his head. “I was ordered to escort the admiral and his staff out. I was not told why.”

  “Did you have any suspicions?”