“The interrogation of a Biozi prisoner revealed valuable intel,” the captain started. “We knew the TGS kept hundreds of human prisoners, but we didn’t know where. Now we have the info. They’re detained on a prison ship constantly traveling from one system to another. We call it the hulk. We don’t know its exact itinerary, but we do know the itineraries of the ships resupplying it.”
The captain zoomed on a cluster of stars located far from major interstellar routes. Purple lines indicated the itineraries. The extrapolated trajectory of the hulk lit up in red.
“How do we know it’s not another trap?” O’Neil asked. “Last time we trusted the intel provided by this prisoner, the op was a disaster. We could’ve lost the entire battlegroup.”
Hunt glared at O’Neil. Jason sensed there was a bit of a rivalry between the two captains.
“But we didn’t,” Hunt replied coldly. “This time, the situation is different. The prisoner talked under the influence of a truth serum, and we also have corroboration from an independent source. We do have reliable sources inside the TGS. The intel is as solid as it gets.”
He aimed his pointer at a stellar system located at the edge of the star cluster. “We’ll have only one shot at this. Even if we locate the hulk, we can’t just assault it. The Biozi could vent the atmosphere and kill all the prisoners. We need to get a company of marines inside the hulk, discretely, and the only way to do that is to capture a supply ship and use it as a Trojan horse. That’s our next mission.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Captain O’Neil said. “But how are we going to prevent the supply ship from alerting all the Biozi forces in the sector?”
“We know their comms frequencies,” Hunt explained. “We’ll ambush the supply ship and its escort in an uninhabited system and jam their interstellar comms.”
“That’s risky,” another officer said. “What if they change their frequencies?”
“Our leaders consider the risks acceptable given the importance of this op,” Hunt said. “Liberating the prisoners is priority.”
After the briefing, Battlegroup Vega left the main fleet and started its journey.
20
Fraternization rules
Jason entered the crowded mess hall. The bittersweet smell of burned spice tickled his nostrils. Six pilots were sitting around a table playing star poker. A crowd had gathered around them, following the game.
“Commander!” Porto called Jason, raising his hand in an informal salute. “Care to join us? Red Jack was just leaving, right, Jack?”
“The hell I am,” the pilot nicknamed Red Jack barked. He had a drawn face with angular features and a short dark-red beard. “I want a rematch.”
“C’mon, ya lost ya shirt, Jackie.” A dark-skinned female said to him. “Whatta ya gonna put on the table next, ya panties?”
The pilots chuckled.
“Let him play, I wonna see that!” another female shouted. “Maybe he’s gonna do a little dance for us? Hmm?”
Red Jack mumbled a vulgarity and threw his cards on the table. “Not my day. I’m foldin’. You know the saying—unlucky at cards, lucky in love.”
He rose from his chair, holding an inhaler filled with spice in the other hand.
“I’m out too,” the dark-skinned female said, putting down her cards and glancing at Red Jack.
“Good night, love birds,” one of the female pilots shouted, triggering a chorus of exclamations. “I’ve heard he’s a good stick not only in the cockpit!”
Jason eased himself into the chair Red Jack had just left. “Well, so much for fraternization rules,” he said to Porto in low voice.
Porto shrugged. “ASF rules are worth zilch nowadays. We all blow off steam in our own way. Some do boxing or martial arts, some drink or smoke, some have sex, others find escape in sims. We all find our own way to deal with loss. What’s yours?”
Jason grinned. “All of the above.”
Porto served the cards. A holo-screen above the table showed the scores. They were all at zero for now, as the players started a new game.
“We need a sixth,” one of the players said.
“I’m in.” Radge walked to the table and hopped into an empty chair, snapping a lazy salute to Jason. “Commander.”
Jason sighed and was about to leave, but realized that would be unwise. “We’re off duty. Call me Jason, everyone.”
“Wanna spice up the party, Jason?” Radge said with a sly smile, offering him an inhaler filled with spice.
Jason grabbed it casually, mumbled a “thanks,” and took a whiff. The spice acted quickly, and he felt a warm sensation spreading throughout his body.
“Whatta the stakes?” he asked.
“Credits,” Porto boomed.
Jason looked at his cards. He had two constellations of five, one red, the other blue. Not much to go on. “Okay, I’m in. Two credits.”
Radge scoffed. “With your salary, you could do better, commander. But you wanna spare our feelings, I get it. Two creds it is.”
The screen displayed the bets in red numbers.
“So, Jason, tell us how you’ve managed to earn that many stars,” Radge said while they were playing. “I heard you served as a navigator on the Remembrance.”
“Our zorus carried a squadron of fighters for certain missions, and I led the birds every time I’d a chance to do so,” Jason replied. Zorus was a slang term for bioship.
“The spiders used to be easy kills,” Radge said. “The bugs flew them as if they were still fighting in atmosphere. Now they’ve learned proper space combat tactics.”
Originally, the Taar’kuun had designed the Arachnids for atmospheric combat. As the war against the Alliance progressed, the TGS realized they needed dedicated space interceptors to counter the growing threat of human fighter-bombers. So they launched production of a new breed of Arachnids designed to operate in space. That also involved a complete rethinking of dogfight tactics.
“Spiders are no match for you, guys,” Porto said, shaking his head. “I’ve seen how you handle them, and, honestly, it took all my skill to dodge their broken bits and pieces while you were having fun.”
“You’re still far behind Blue Baron, Jase,” Radge teased him. “Your forty stars pale before his 185.”
Jason pointed his finger at the young pilot. “Hey, birdie, you don’t get to talk to me like that, capeesh? Blue Baron earned his stars in atmospheric fights. He spanks a dropship or some other flying bucket, he claims a kill. I’m a space pilot; I earn my stars the hard way. Call me Black Baron. I’m second to no one.”
“That’s about to change,” Radge muttered with a smirk.
Porto won the first round, and his score was displayed in green characters on the holo-screen. Everyone else was in the red.
He sniggered. “If I continue like that, I’ll have to buy a drink for the entire crew.” He served the cards for the next round.
Jason had a decent hand this time; a pair of nines, a pair of pulsars, and a black hole. “Five creds.”
“I’m in,” Radge said. “Two cards for me, Porto.”
Jason leaned back in his seat. “I’m staying.”
Radge grabbed the two cards Porto had served him. “You’re bluffing, or you’ve got a good hand, Jase. You’re good at poker, I can tell. You’re good at keepin’ secrets.”
Jason tensed, but didn’t react. Radge was obviously trying to provoke him.
“I raise by ten,” Jason said casually.
“Double,” Radge snapped.
Porto and the others folded.
“You wanna play, Radge?” Jason glared at the young pilot. “You like risks? All right, let’s make it interesting. I double.”
The screen displayed sixty for Jason and thirty for Radge. The audience reacted with excited whispering.
Radge grinned. “Yeah, you got it right, mate. I match your sixty, and I raise.”
The number on the screen increased to a hundred.
The audience oohed and aahed. All ey
es in the mess hall were set on the two players. A hundred credits wasn’t a negligible sum for a pilot. It could buy a dozen pints of good beer.
Jason rubbed his neck. Common sense was telling him to fold and let Radge win this one. Sixty credits wouldn’t ruin him. But Radge had challenged him publicly, and he couldn’t admit defeat. It simply wasn’t in his nature.
“You asked for it,” he said. “I match and double.”
“Wow!” someone in the audience exclaimed, as the number reached two hundred.
“I raise to three hundred,” Radge announced. “And I think you’re gonna fold, ‘cuz you don’t wanna go to three. Three isn’t your lucky number, right? Like three friends, you see what I mean?”
Jason felt blood humming in his ears. He could explain to his subordinates what happened on that fateful day, when his three friends were killed in action, but his pride wouldn’t allow him such displays of weakness. Also, if Radge brought up the subject of Jason’s criminal past, he feared that would damage his reputation even further.
He clenched his teeth and forced himself to stay calm. “You win.” He threw his cards into the pile and stood up. “Later, everyone.”
He quickly walked to the exit, while the crowd exploded into a hubbub of excited conversations.
* * *
Captain O’Neil called Jason to his office first thing in the morning.
“Commander, sit down,” the captain told him with a frown.
Jason gave him a salute and hopped into the visitor’s seat. The captain activated a screen and displayed the feed from a security cam showing the mess hall. Jason’s face drained of blood as he realized where this was going.
“I don’t mind when my people turn the mess hall into a bar, because I know they need to unwind,” O’Neil said. “I also don’t mind if they play cards, smoke spice, or have sex after the party. After the loss of our worlds, people reacted very differently; some shut down completely and remained mute for weeks, others tried to cope by engaging in wild parties, as if there were no tomorrow. But my tolerance has limits, and you crossed them.”
“Captain, I—”
“I’m not finished,” O’Neil snapped. “Maybe Captain Hunt was a light touch and turned a blind eye to such things on his ship, but I’m not him. We may have lost our worlds, but we’re still ASF, and I expect all my officers to conduct themselves as such. You know that ASF regulations forbid gambling. If you lose five bucks to one of your subordinates, I can live with that, but two hundred credits?”
Jason raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I plead guilty, sir. I just wanted to build a rapport with my people, socialize a bit, get to know them. What happened yesterday will never happen again, I swear.”
O’Neil wagged a finger at him. “That’s my first and last warning, Blaze. I’ll let that slip, ‘cuz I’m quite pleased with how you handled your first mission as wing’com, and the debriefing you led. I still think you’re exactly the kind of officer I need to lead my flyboys, but break the code of conduct again, and I won’t hesitate to strip you of rank. Understood? Dismissed.”
Jason returned to his quarters, rage burning inside him. But instead of going in, he strode straight to Radge’s quarters. The pilot shared his cabin with three airmen.
“Out,” he ordered them, glowering at Radge.
They snapped a salute and dashed out of the cabin. Jason punched the button that locked the door from the inside.
“You putrid piece of filth,” he spit. “You said you wouldn’t blackmail me.”
Radge grinned in response and handed a stack of credit chips to Jason. “Here’re your two hundred, commander. Take your money back, I don’t want it.”
Jason hit his hand, throwing the chips against a wall. “You think I care about those fraggin’ credits?” he yelled, stepping closer to Radge. “You made me look like a fool in front of the crew, you made me break the code of conduct, and you almost cost me my career.”
Radge shook his head. “I did nothing of that sort. I didn’t force you to play. Don’t blame me for your own flaws.”
Jason grabbed him by the collar of his jumpsuit and shoved him against a wall. “Is that so? Why did you mention my three friends then? What was that, if not blackmail?”
The young pilot kept on grinning. “All I did was give you a humility lesson, Mr. Hotshot. You needed one.”
Jason threw a punch into Radge’s stomach. The latter collapsed on the floor, gasping.
“You need a humility lesson, lying piece of trash,” Jason yelled.
Radge threw himself forward with a vigor that belied his light build. He rammed into Jason’s abdomen, sending him flying into the wall across the cabin, then punched him in the mouth.
The taste of his own blood made Jason wince. He grabbed Radge’s arm, twisted it, and punched him in the face. The young pilot landed on his bunk, blood trickling from his nose. This time, he didn’t get up.
“You think you’re so tough, Blaze,” Radge said, wiping blood from his face with the sleeve of his jumpsuit. “But I know better. I saw you on that day, when you returned alone from the mission you fragged up. When your three wing mates died.”
Jason wanted to get out of the cabin, get far away from Radge and never see him again. But he was paralyzed.
“I remember that day as if it were yesterday,” Radge continued. “You landed, opened the cockpit, took off your helmet, and just stayed in your seat, staring at the hangar. The wind threw cold rain into your face; you didn’t care. Then you wept like a kid. Man, I’ll never forget that picture. Hands on your face, your shoulders shuddering, you just sat there and cried.”
Jason remembered that day in vivid detail. The screams of his friends still haunted him. He saw their “flying coffins” ripped to shreds by enemy flak. Those pilots were his only family, and he watched them die simply because he took an unnecessary risk.
But he couldn’t allow himself to be manipulated emotionally by a subordinate. “I’m not done with you,” he snapped at Radge. “You better watch your back. You picked the wrong guy to get in a fight with.”
He unlocked the door and left Radge’s cabin. Never to return.
21
Wings of glory
Battlegroup Vega was nearing its destination. The supply ship Captain Hunt intended to capture was a jump away. Jason and his pilots were waiting in their starfighters, ready for launch.
“Okay, this is the sensitive part,” Hunt said on the op channel. “Our timing has to be perfect. We can’t send a recon probe after the target; the Biozi would detect the incoming wormhole and alert their sectorial HQ. We must calculate the exact coords of the target and jump close enough to engage it straight away. There’s a space station in that system; Phenix, you take it out.”
“You heard the boss,” O’Neil told Jason on his direct channel. “On my mark, launch squadrons one through four. Blow that supply station to hell.”
“Aye, captain,” Jason acknowledged. “Wing on standby.”
The Remembrance shot a quantum laser to open a wormhole. The bioship flew through the funnel, followed closely by two other ships in the battlegroup, a Hephaestus-class attack destroyer and a Hypnos-class stealthy frigate. The wormhole closed behind them.
The Phenix waited for thirty seconds, then activated its black hole drive and jumped too. The Biozi space station appeared on Jason’s HUD map as a red dot surrounded by brackets.
“Launch fighters,” O’Neil ordered.
Jason’s Rapier thrust through the launch tube into space. Stars were distant and scarce in this part of the galaxy, on the fringe of the Perseus arm. A green nebula spread its tentacles through the darkness, veiling the Milky Way.
A swarm of red dots lit up on the 3D map and set course on the Phenix.
“Expect heavy resistance,” Jason told his wing. “Squadron Bellum, escort Castor to the target. Squadron Draco, you’re the second wave. Atlas, we’re gonna smash through their lines. Remember, our goal is not to score kills, but to
disorganize their defenses, cause chaos and confusion. Let’s give the bugs a hell of a brawl.”
The red dots spread. Jason recognized this tactic; it was known as the 3D defense net.
“Combat speed,” he called. “Atlas, free to engage.”
Space blazed with the trails from missiles. He accelerated, fired defense bots, and sent his interceptor into a complex evasive maneuver. Radge used the same tactic as during the previous battle, and went straight through the missile barrage.
I have to give him that—the kid is a blast of a pilot.
Jason fired two alphas in friend-or-foe mode. He didn’t target any particular Biozi interceptor deliberately to throw the enemy off balance. The Arachnids broke formation.
“Commander, you picked up two bandits,” Porto boomed. “I’ve got your back.”
A warning icon blinked on the HUD, alerting Jason that missiles had locked onto his Rapier. He stopped accelerating and used his lateral thrusters to dodge the missiles. Porto swooped on the pursuing Arachnids and took one of them. The other one broke pursuit.
“Good job, Porto,” Jason said.
“Anytime, boss.”
Meanwhile, Radge took out an Arachnid and engaged in a ferocious dogfight with another one.
“Need help, Radge?” one of the pilots asked.
“Nope, don’t spoil my fun,” he shouted in reply.
“I can’t get a lock!” yelled one of the less experienced pilots nicknamed Mitch.
“Mitch, disengage,” Jason ordered. “You’ve got a spider on your tail.”
The pursuing Arachnid shot two missiles. Mitch fired his afterburner to get away.
“Mitch, don’t panic,” Jason told him in a calm but firm tone. “You can’t bolt from an alpha—it’s faster than your bird. Use your laterals and rely on your bots. Try pattern gamma-eight.”
Mitch obeyed. One of the missiles shot past him, but the other one was still closing in on him. Jason gave his Rapier a short afterburner boost and fired his 12-mm blasters at the missile. It disintegrated in a flash.
Battlegroup Vega Page 14
