The Jupiter War Read online

  There was a pause. Then, “It’s a r-r-real mess in here. A strut holed us like a bullet. In one side and out the other. Went right through O’Riley. Missed Graham but nicked her suit, so we lost her to vacuum. Nelson and I are on suit air, and he’s pretty shaken up. Me too. I keep fading in and out.” Another pause. “I don’t think we’re gonna make it.”

  “Jackson, listen. You’re still on course, still in formation. You’re doing fine.”

  “Luck and instinct.”

  “How’re your boards?”

  “A lot of red lights. Some secondaries are working. Most of the ones I really need are. But Nelson’s out cold now and I’m not much better. I can run, but I can’t shoot too. Not much. I’ve got no rear shooters. I’d better sit this out.”

  Williams reached over and gripped Emerson’s arm. Gave him a look. Emerson read it and understood. Bev Jackson and he spent their off-duty time together. They were close. She was hurt. He wanted her back. Not in some stinking Fed cell.

  Emerson gave Williams a nod. “Jackson? You stay with us. That’s an order! You just follow me and The Valkyrie will guard your tail. Right, Kees?”

  “You got it, Brant. Jackson, honey, you just trust your backside to ol’ Kees.” That was Kees van Derventer in The Valkyrie.

  “Okay, guys. Get me home and the drinks are on me.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  Williams traded Emerson a look of gratitude and patted him on the shoulder. Emerson had a warm glow inside. Maybe he had just made a friend.

  While all that had been going on on their way back down to reform, another channel on Emerson’s com had been buzzing with Varick filling in the sub-wing leaders with rapid-fire updates. “Form up Big D on meet; V45N line 240E to base, okay Babydoll? We lost two. Texas Miss cut too close and caught scrap. Criptkicker caught a snake on the rollover. Anybody else elected?”

  Emerson spoke up, a sub-wing leader now, and entitled. “Bad Mac tagged scrap but can fly. Only Jackson is functional, but we will cover for her.”

  “Thanks, Banshee. Anyone else? Okay. Watch your screens. We scratched about twenty-eight from the race, but the rest got through and are on their own loop back to us.”

  I know all that from my screen, thought Emerson.

  “What you can’t see on your screen, unless you are on broad range, is that Bolivar’s fighters are on their way back too. They either got a recall or had second thoughts about taking on our forces near Triumphant.”

  Emerson switched to broad scan.

  By then Babydoll had reformed and found itself at a strength of fourteen, with two enemy carriers behind them, nearly sixty Fed fighters between them and home base, and no element of surprise left.

  “Where the deuce is the rest of our team?” asked Williams.

  Emerson had been wondering the same thing. So had all of Babydoll. He broadened scan again. There they were, only thirty-two of them, just crossing back over Triumphant in pursuit of the Bolivar fighters. They must have overshot Triumphant in an attempt to get Bolivar’s forces to follow them to its far side for some reason—probably some little trap Triumphant’s commander was waiting to spring—and then been surprised when Bolivar’s ships pulled up short. Caught unawares, it had taken them this long to shed velocity and angle back. They were going to be too late. Babydoll was in the meat-grinder.

  By now the rest of Babydoll had figured that out too. “Well, the cat’s really out of the bag now.” That was Davenport from Dirtbag on all-channels.

  “You said it, Dav,” replied Varick. “Okay, everybody, listen up. If we are ever going to make it back to base we have to make it through to our people. We can shotgun it, try a tight formation, or split to subwings. Any preferences?”

  Emerson was shocked. No wing leader, especially Varick, would ask for advice on a call like that unless he had given up—or was treating it as a courtesy, akin to a last request.

  “I call shotgun. Every man for himself.” Davenport again.

  “Shotgun,” was the terse reply from Deitrick in Leaping Eyegouger, another sub-wing leader.

  Except for Varick, that left Emerson. “Splitting to sub-wings’ll give us our best chance. But you guys do what you want. Van Derventer and I have to stay with Jackson even if you call shotgun.”

  “I agree with Banshee,” said Varick, “and I’ll make my vote count twice, so we go with the split. Tight pattern’d just get us enveloped. Man for man’d get us picked off piecemeal. We go in Big D, tight diamond, right down their throats. On the mark, we starburst left, right, over, and under. Eyegouger? Trade rear guard with Banshee III. That’ll give Bad Mac the most cover ‘til the split.”

  “Good,” said Deitrick. “I want a front-row seat for this anyway.”

  They were already in Big D formation and on course. As they closed, Varick gave the call to fire at will. Babydoll opened up, and so did the Feds. Fireball, the ship to Varick’s left, lived up to its name and came apart in shards, but it had been flying slightly above the pattern, so they were spared any chain reaction from that. Long Arm was not so lucky. Davenport’s Dirtbag took a snake right in front of it, and the two collided. But Babydoll was taking its toll of Feds as well. Instead of firing dead ahead, they had first fired on the enemy’s flanks, left and right, and caught a few napping. Then they turned their attention to the center.

  When they were so close they could have read the markings on the Fed ships, Varick called, “Mark!” And the split was on.

  The Feds had learned their lesson for the day about flying close formations so they had spread out, wide and deep, giving Babydoll a horrible gauntlet of fire to thread.

  As rear guard on the split, it was Banshee Ill’s job to break low and under the enemy formation, but it was so deeply spread that she was still threading through them as she angled down, fighting to break out below.

  They were taking hits as often as they were avoiding them. Boards were smoking and flashing red. Secondaries began to wink out. The Bad Mac overshot them on a climb back up through the thick of the enemy pack. The Valkyrie was still on her tail.

  Williams, who couldn’t look any more panicked as he frantically manned his failing forward armament, did. And Emerson was already angling back up toward her as he hit the ship-to-ship. “Jackson! What’s going on?” The Feds had their EM jams going, so it took him several tries to reach her.

  Finally, her static-filled reply came back, weakened with more than the jams, “Lost something, Banshee. Can’t dive or go left. Have to—Oops! Almost caught one. Have to climb. Nelson’s dead. Tell Kees to join up with you. Tell Mark . . . I love him.”

  Williams was firing like a man possessed, every shot counting, ripping his way through the Feds. Tears streamed down his cheeks, but he kept his focus locked desperately upon the screen. Emerson heard his moaned “No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!’ rise to a maddened scream.

  “Stay with her, Kees,” Emerson called. “We’re on our way.”

  Emerson flew like Williams fired: possessed. He slammed in full power and shot so fast down a corridor between two Feds that they couldn’t train on him, but Williams raked them. Then he hit the attitude jets and angled up, actually clipping the antenna on another Fed as he flashed by.

  Valkyrie had moved up and was riding just above Bad Mac by the time Banshee III came in below her, taking a hit that would have been hers.

  “Banshee, you idiot!” It was Varick, off to the left and above them, still with the remaining two ships of his sub-wing. They had broken out above the main body of the enemy pack, and Emerson’s sub-wing was not too far from doing the same. From Varick’s point of view, it looked as though Emerson had chosen their course, taking the crippled Bad Mac through the grinder with him. “Send her up to me!” Varick called. And then on all-channels, “Jackson, leave that fool and make your way to us. We’ll cover you.”

  “Stay put!” Emerson called.
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  “Banshee, I gave an order!”

  Just then Kees and The Valkyrie fireballed and were gone. Banshee III moved up in front of Bad Mac, but their course, while taking them up, was angling away from Varick.

  “Banshee, execute that order!”

  “Do it!” yelled Williams, and he spared one hand from the firing controls to slam back at Emerson for emphasis. Before he could get it back to the board a missile snaked past, just missing them. But it blew Bad Mac to atoms.

  Williams sat frozen. Emerson slapped control of forward-screen arms to Prock and yelled for him to take over. They were almost out and could see their reinforcements streaking in behind the few Fed fighters still in their way, but in that maze of fire it was too late. Numbing concussion rocked Banshee III, and she spun away into the darkness.

  * * *

  When Emerson came to, the ship was in a slow tumble and had been holed in too many places for them to patch. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt, and their suits had held, but the bad news made them wish they hadn’t.

  The main boards were out. Most secondaries had failed. Some battery power was left, but its duration was suspect. A cobbled-together secondary nay computer told them that they had been out a long time. The battle had been long ago and far, far away, along with anyone who might have been looking for them, assuming anyone on their side had survived to make the attempt. They had traveled from just outside Ganymede’s gravity well to near Europa’s orbit and were picking up considerable velocity from Jupiter’s pull.

  Major propulsion systems were fritzed, so there was no way to shed velocity. They were on a one-way ride to Jupiter, the hard way.

  Communications were a problem. Their tumble kept placing their ship between the antennae and what they were aiming at, until Prock jury-rigged a couple of attitude jets and smoothed it out. Even then their failing batteries could barely cut through the chatter of the magnetosphere, but a chance encounter with a passing Jovian weather satellite enabled them to boost signal and patch through briefly to Yoshitsune station on Europa.

  The news, while it lasted, was still bad. If they could hold orbit around Jupiter for a while at Europa’s distance out, Europa would swing around enough for a Northern Hemisphere tanker, currently groundside at the station, to launch, slingshot around Europa, and attempt to pick them up. Other than that they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, at the wrong speed. No one else, civilian or military, would be able to reach them before they spiraled in toward temperatures of fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of over three million atmospheres.

  Just before communications had faded, Emerson had told Yoshitsune to launch that tanker and come get them. Thompson had just shaken his head and said sadly, “It’s not going to work, Emerson. We have enough reserve air to last that long, but we’ll be well past Europa’s orbit by the time they show up. We’ve got no power. We’re fried.”

  It was the most anyone had said to him since they had come to. Williams was not speaking to him at all, and mostly had sat in silent gloom while he and the others had mechanically gone about trying to rectify their situation. Now it looked as though the other two were ready to join him, sit down and wait for oblivion. Emerson was just about out of patience with the lot of them.

  “We’ve got meth, don’t we?” he asked.

  Prock looked up. “Yeah, the fight didn’t last that long. We still have a couple of full tanks of methane.”

  “And a lot of good they are, too,” reminded Thompson. “The propulsion secondaries are out and no way to fix them. I tried.”

  “That’s true,” Emerson said, brightening with an idea, “but maybe if we—”

  “Can it, Emerson!” Williams shouted, breaking his long silence. “Give it a rest. Your boy-scout optimism is making me sick. You’re not the den leader here anymore. Death has a way of evening out rank, and I don’t expect to be having to answer to command after today, so I’ll be hanged if I’m going to die listening to puke from you about how we’re still going to make it.” He glanced around at Thompson and Prock for support. “We are going to die, Emerson. And it’s your fault. You got Jackson killed—and now us, too.”

  Emerson was stunned. “Jackson killed? I was trying to save her. Risked all our necks to do it.”

  “Then why didn’t you acknowledge Varick and send her to him when you had the chance?”

  “Simple. Varick had been up from us but to the left. Jackson couldn’t go left. And besides, things were happening pretty fast. While Varick was calling us, most of the Fed ships between us and our reinforcements were rising to engage Varick’s sub-wing, leaving us what I hoped would be a comparatively free corridor of movement. Even if I could have taken her Varick’s way, it would have been into heavier fire.”

  Williams seemed to crumble as he relived those final moments, but he was unrelenting. “You could have acknowledged and executed the order as best you could. Varick would have moved right to cover us.”

  Emerson was mystified. “That is just what I did, stayed with Jackson, climbing up and right.”

  Williams’s fury with him was unabated. “No it wasn’t!” he screamed. “You never acknowledged the order!”

  Emerson was confused. Had he acknowledged the order? Maybe not. Things had been happening so fast that there had been no time for long explanations. But he couldn’t imagine why such a minor detail should matter. Then he saw it the way Williams must be seeing it.

  Williams had been frantic to save Jackson. Varick had offered help. Varick was the best wing leader, and Williams’s friend. Williams wanted that help, but couldn’t deal directly with Varick to get it because the “new meat” kid was sitting in the pilot seat that should have gone to Williams. All Williams could do was keep firing, keep the Feds at bay, and listen. He’d kept waiting for the acknowledgment from Emerson that would bring Varick in on the problem, but it never came. In frustration, he had moved his hand from his controls to hit Emerson.

  If he had kept both hands on the boards could he have intercepted that missile, or maybe kept the ship that fired it busy until they were past? There was no knowing, but the thought was a torture to Williams. He blamed himself for not blocking the shot that took Jackson out, but he blamed Emerson for making him miss that one all-important target and for all that had followed after that.

  Emerson looked at Thompson and Prock. They would not meet his gaze. They might not blame him as Williams did, but sides had been drawn and it was obvious that their loyalties would not be with him.

  * * *

  As he clung to the hull of Banshee Ill, Emerson put the finishing touches to his handiwork. They were now inside the orbit of Europa but not, he prayed, too far in for this to work. If his calculations were right, he should still be within his window of opportunity, but it would be close. It had taken him more time than he would have liked.

  Thompson and Prock had finally listened to his plan and, more to pass the time than anything else, agreed to help him. Williams had lapsed back into silence and would not be budged.

  Emerson hated what had happened. He would have given a lot to settle their differences. After so many years of constantly being the odd man out, it was all he really wanted. In all honesty, he did not feel at fault for what had happened. But there had been that one small error, one tiny omission of duty. And now Williams would never forget or forgive.

  So what he thought didn’t matter. It was done, and he had failed. Failed, as a person, to win their respect. Perhaps even failed his duty.

  If he sat back and did nothing, that would be how it would end for him, in failure at every level. That prospect was growing more and more imminent as Jupiter pulled them faster with each passing second. And more and more hateful to him. He could face death. Compared to his loneliness, oblivion might even be a welcome release. But not like this. Not as a failure after a lifetime of struggle to rise from being a miner’s kid in
the boonies to ace pilot in the top fighter wing in the Jovian system. Not while there was a single card left for him to play.

  Emerson figured he had at least that one card. It might not be much, but at this point they all didn’t have a thing to lose by trying it. It wouldn’t salvage things between him and the crew, but his personal life had been a failure as far back as he could remember, and he was used to that. His duty was something else. He had never before failed in that.

  Williams might not acknowledge it but Emerson was still pilot, still responsible for the lives of his crew, and he would do what he could to bring them home safe and sound. If he could manage only that much, it would be enough.

  They didn’t think much of his plan, but he knew it would work. To get back to Europa’s orbit and be in place to meet the tanker, they needed to accelerate. They couldn’t use their fuel the standard way, but he calculated that the force of an explosion of their remaining tanks would give the command cabin, if separated sufficiently from the rest of the ship, adequate boost to make it. The computer had agreed.

  It helped that the rear of the cabin had been designed with shielding to protect the crew from the explosion of their fuel supply, should it take a hit in battle. All that remained was to separate the command module enough from ‘the ship that it would easily tear loose, use the attitude jets again to get it properly aligned, re-rig a detonator from one of the shells, rig that to the methane tanks, and figure how to set the thing off. The latter had proved to be more of a problem than any of them had counted on, but time was running out, so Emerson had insisted on leaving them to puzzle out a solution while he got the mechanics in place.

  Everything was ready now. He floated in place, still holding a plate from the hull that he had had to remove to set the detonator against the fuel tanks. He took a last look at Jupiter and sailed the plate out toward it. An offering, part of his ship, his command: all that he had left. Let Jupiter be satisfied with that if it was hungry. He had other plans for the Banshee and crew, and this time he would not fail. He’d get the job done right, come hell or high water.