by Ilsa J. Bick
Wonderful gadgets, and the armor! He inspected the bright, neon green suit spread on his bed: helmet, segmented chest plates, bulky vambraces with their arcane shape, gauntlets, upper leg armor and cylindrical boots. Relics, every article already a piece of history when, over a century ago, Michi Noketsuna appeared on Deber City and nearly killed heir-apparent Theodore Kurita. Michi was dead now, of course, but the Bounty Hunter had existed before him, and lived on after: a moniker assumed by anyone with a grudge and the gumption to assassinate his predecessor. So who, exactly, had this incarnation of the Hunter, this Michi Fraser, if that was really the man’s name, been? Well, water under the bridge, or down the river: the secret had died with the man. A pity he’d never find out now, but Jonathan had his own accounts to balance in the universe’s Grand Cosmic Ledger: with one Katana Tormark to be exact. Only, lately, setting his sights just on Katana was feeling somehow, well, limiting, and Jonathan didn’t like limits.
He retracted the blades, tucked and rolled to a computer. Riffling through an assortment of data crystals, he popped one into his holovid and pressed
Sounds. A door opening, closing. The whimpering of an animal, a dog perhaps, muffled by cloth. A faint ripping sound—and then quick, breathless moans.
Spellbound, Jonathan listened as the woman’s cries became wave upon wave of screams, then shrieks, then gabbled pleas for mercy and God—and then for death that couldn’t come quickly enough. How good it was, the terror in their eyes and then the way they heaved and bucked as he strangled the life out of them, or slowly carved out small chunks of meat while Shu watched… Jonathan shivered again with a growing excitement that sent heat licking into his loins. He’d told Shu: The trick was to make the women last so the pleasure could go on and on, like pulling a fly’s wings and legs off, one at a time.
Would Katana Tormark scream? Would she beg? He liked to think that she wouldn’t at first because then, well, he’d make her. Then he’d be like a god.
Jonathan listened, his skin prickling with pleasure, his lungs pulling in air in huge, sobbing pants, and then he thought: No, no, not like a god because… I am God.
3
Orange Flight, 5th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 276th Tactical Fighter Wing
Ogawa City, Tsukude
Prefecture I, Republic of the Sphere
28 November 3134
Two undeniable facts: The universe could kill a guy a thousand ways to Sunday, and what the universe couldn’t do, the Dracs were pleased as punch to finish.
Now, his onboard sensors shrilled a warning about five milliseconds before Lieutenant Adrian Penn’s Lucifer hit another pocket of turbulence. Oh, yeah, baby, bring it on; peg that old fun meter one more time. Penn’s altitude dropped, and his stomach balled in his throat. Penn wrestled his bird, angled off fifty degrees, and then let out a slow exhalation when he felt the fighter lift.
Static sizzled in his headset: “Whoa, shake and bake.”
Penn grinned past the acid taste in his mouth. “A chance to excel, Menace.”
“Uh-huh,” said Menace, aka Brad Dennis, Penn’s Dash Two for what seemed like a million years and was closer to seven. “Punches my ticket.”
Penn grunted. A week ago, Central Command’s systems’ boards had lit up like a Christmas tree when the Drac JumpShip winked in at the nadir jump point. Count ’em, boys and girls, numero uno JumpShiperino. That mother coughed out a DropShip, the sphere blowing free like a spit wad shot out from a straw, and Command got all kinds of beaded up. To top it all, the sun burped, big time, and with all that superheated plasma gumming up the works, all Command could figure was that the DropShip had closed on the planet, then deployed four aerospace fighters. Going where? Who knew? Some brainiac crunched numbers, figured that fighters (plural) would hit Tsukude’s ionosphere roundabout twelve hundred over Ogawa City—he guessed.
The preflight briefing came at oh-nine-thirty. A dour commander reminded them of everything they didn’t know. “But whatever happens, one thing’s crystal, boys and girls. You will not fire unless fired upon.”
Terrific; an aerial quick draw. But Penn didn’t say anything, just suited up with his flight—Menace; red-haired Pattie “Red” McAllister; and Samantha “Power” Will—and blasted out of there. The upside: They had Lucifers and could take on a medium-size DropShip, push came to shove. The downside? Lucifers packed muscle, but they were slower than molasses in an atmosphere; hence, the decision to engage the enemy in the upper reaches of the atmosphere where gravity didn’t count as much, and there was enough ionized crap to hide their signatures. (And, oh, yes, had Penn mentioned that, in a Lucifer, a guy couldn’t eject? Well, he couldn’t eject. Sweet.)
Penn’s Lucifer knifed through shimmering curtains of multicolored auroras that were shet-mah-mouth beautiful, and a bitch to maneuver through. Orange Flight was way up high: angels fourteen-hundred-and-change above the floor. They flew a classic box: Penn and Dennis in front of McAllister and Will by six kilometers; Dennis two-point-seven-four klicks behind and point-three-oh-four-eight klicks above Penn’s right side; Will the same for McAllister. It was Penn’s job to search and report, Dennis’ to watch his tail, and as Dash Four, Will’s to make like her neck was on ball bearings and cover all their collective butts.
Suddenly, his computer blatted. Penn snapped to, felt his heart kick up, said, “Tangerine One has two, repeat two contacts, forty right, angels sixteen-four.”
An instant later, Red McAllister’s voice filtered in a wash of static. “Tangerine Three confirms same. Read two bogies, forty degrees right, altitude now sixteen-three.” A pause. “Confirm two, green for go.”
Menace: “So where the hell are the other two?”
Good question. Penn chewed the inside of his right cheek. Two unidentified fighters, angling down from sixteen-thousand klicks and change—and green : not acquiring, not even hot. And two Dracs missing. Headed somewhere else? Or hiding in all that plasma soup, waiting for a chance to slip in at their six o’clock?
Evidently the strike controller ticked through the same calculus because there was a squall of interference, and the words: “…change… eading… atch… and speed… do… engage… conflict.”
Lord, help me. “Control, this is Tangerine One, say again.” More fuzz and urps, though Penn caught deconflict.
“Ho, boy,” said Menace. “I don’t frigging like that.”
Penn didn’t either. Deconflict. Translation: Wait until Command decided these were the bad guys. But he said, “Roger, Control, Penn Thirty-seventy.”
Penn watched as the bogies remained to his right, forty degrees off the horizontal, but shedding altitude: fifteen-six… fifteen-one… fourteen-nine. Then he made a decision. And screw Command. “Tangerine One flight, check forty right.”
No one pointed out that Penn’s order turned them toward the Dracs instead of away. But they were too far away to answer that old bogie-bandit question, so, by God, they’d get closer. They executed hard rights, Menace’s turn putting him five hundred klicks ahead of Penn. Throttling down, Menace angled up to cover Penn’s rear. Penn stayed glued to his HUD as the bogies squiggled, resolved, metamorphosed into… Oh, hell. Just to be sure, he blinked, double-checked his IFF, said, “Tangerine One is tallyho two, repeat two bandits, zero, nine-point-six klicks.”
“Two?” Menace again. And then: “Uh-oh.”
Now Penn saw it, too. First there were two Sholagars. And then there were four. Fanning out from their flight-mates’ electromagnetic shadows, two additional Sholagars fell into a diamond formation—coming right for them and closing fast.
A second later, Red: “Tangerine Three is tallyho four bandits, nine-point-two klicks and closing. ID Friend or Foe confirms Sholagars. Confirm, Control.”
Red was cool; he had to give her that. Penn watched as the pings streaked right for them. Suckers got the speed of heat and can turn on a dime, so it’d be like a knife fight in a phone booth, and, yeah, we outgun them, but they can evad
e, so where’s the sense in that…
Three seconds went by, then ten. Penn rekeyed for Control: “Tangerine One is tallyho four bandits, eight-point-six klicks. Request confirmation.”
His answer was a hiss followed by a pop, and something that sounded like a man gargling underwater. And that was the extent of his contact with strike control. Then his HUD flared, and Penn looked. Looked again. Cursed.
Menace: “Tangerine Two, read bandits, coming in hot!”
Hot. The Sholagars were targeting, and Penn’d bet his bottom stone note the Dracs wouldn’t wait around for them to take their shots. Unless we shoot first. Penn’s thumb searched out his laser override switch, one o’clock on his throttle… and hesitated as a new thought bubbled to the surface: But what if… “Red, Power, throttle up, assume four at forty-five, two-point-seven klicks, go hot.”
No one argued; everyone did as the lead pilot said and in ten seconds McAllister and Will had caught up to assume positions right and left of his wing as Menace dropped back and shed altitude. Penn nudged his speed to put on some distance until they were configured in a flat, elongated diamond, Penn in the lead. And they were hot.
Now it was a test of nerves and speed. Yes, the Sholagars’ turn radius was tighter. Only his guys had superior weaponry, so one of two things would happen. Either each would break off and start turning, hard, cutting their turns and threading their fighters across ever-narrowing loops until one slid in to their opponent’s rear and took his shot. Or they’d get a knife fight in the cold, hard, darkness of space: Dueling fighters scissoring nose-to-nose, back and forth in sheer, fast vertical or horizontal turns, like knitting needles crossing, uncrossing, crossing, until one fighter got inside the other’s turn, slid in behind, and let ’er rip. And gravity didn’t count for a damn in space because a fighter never ran out of vertical velocity. Problem was the Sholagars could run circles around them, and the last thing Penn’d see would be a laser chewing its way up his ass. Unless… he got very, very lucky.
“Penn!” Red, her voice ratcheted way up tight. “VID bandits, closing!”
And now Penn had visual ID, too: four black specks that grew from the size of mites to ball bearings, and then resolved into stippled disks, and now he could see their contrails. Come on, come on. Penn watched as his HUD tracked the incoming Sholagars, responding with automatic targeting information continuously updated for course and speed. His throat was dry, the stuffy air in his mask smelled like mildewed rubber and sweat slithered down the knobs of his spine. Come on, you gotta know I’m hot, you gotta see it; so come on, you bad boys, show me what you got. The disks growing larger and larger, Tsukude’s crazy sun dancing bright sparkles that bounced off the Sholagars’ hulls, turning their canopies a molten orange… larger and larger, and the four Sholagars screaming full-bore. A game of chicken: Penn had to break at the last possible second, praying like hell that the lead Drac would break first so he’d catch which way the lead Sholagar’s nose went, up or down. And that would work to Penn’s advantage because then he’d know where the sonuvabitch was headed and match him turn for turn until he maneuvered into the Drac’s killing zone.
Except… the Sholagars weren’t breaking. Would you look at how tight they are; they’re practically on top of each other; they’ve got to be inside each other’s wakes and in all that plasma that would… Penn gasped. Plasma in their wake! Oh, shit, shit! “Break, break, break!” Penn screamed—too late.
His collision alarms shrilled as the Sholagars rocketed through, cracking Penn’s flight wide open and dragging their real and best weapon: a roiling, churning cone of supercharged, ionized plasma.
Penn caught one brief glimpse of the lead Sholagar–a flash of red and black—before his Lucifer slammed into the vortex of plasma. His fighter lurched and bucked, skipping like a flat stone on a pond. He ricocheted off an instrument panel hard enough to send pain lancing into his skull. The taste of wet pennies filled his mouth, and he gagged against hot blood.
Then, a woman screaming, a long rope of sound abruptly cut as Red’s Lucifer, out of control, burst in an orange fireball. Penn barely had time to register that when his collision alarms shrilled again. Menace’s Lucifer closing too damn fast. Screaming, Penn yanked back on his stick, forcing his nose up, up, up ; his mind racing: Maybe I’ve outrun it, maybe the worst is over, maybe it’s still okay, maybe…
Then there were no more maybes. Turbulence roared in like a tidal wave, smacking his fighter’s belly, forcing him not up but over in an arcing loop, and then Penn was barreling straight down, nose-first, with the speed of a fighter kicked into overdrive. Out of control; he was out of control! Penn registered Menace dead ahead, the way Menace’s wings waggled, knew that Menace was battling his craft; saw the Republic blue of Menace’s helmet, then Menace’s black visor as he looked up and saw Penn.
“No!” Penn screamed, and then he went against all that was holy. Instead of easing off, he pushed his speed, kick-jumping and throttling up before jerking his fighter in a hard left, splitting air and breaking wide of Menace’s fighter by a hair’s breadth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Menace careering past, Menace’s Lucifer twirling along its horizontal axis, out of control.
Then his alarms screamed again, and Penn’s heart banged into his throat. Frantic, he looked right, left, then faced front. There! Another Lucifer whirling right for him: Power.
Later, Penn would wonder why Power wasn’t spared. As Dash Four, her fighter was the farthest away, highest up. Theoretically, Power should’ve escaped the worst. Maybe, in those first few, critical seconds, she’d reversed hard, intending to bleed altitude and, in the confusion, lost sight of Penn. Or she’d gone into a spin and was just recovering, unaware of everyone else’s position. Or maybe it was just bad luck.
They did the only thing they could. They broke: Penn angling up, and Power dropping to a dive. They should’ve missed one another. But, somehow, they didn’t.
There was a violent lurch as Power clipped him, and Penn’s Lucifer porpoised: breaching then falling, smacking air, hard. Tethered in his harness, Penn flopped and bounced like a fly in a spider’s web. His vision swirled, the images zipping one after the other: a blur of aurora, then clouds, then the blackness of space directly ahead and the bright eyes of the distant, impersonal stars, then the orange flames of engines as the Sholagars shot themselves back into heaven.
Bucking, Penn’s Lucifer climbed once more then flipped, belly-up, and now he saw the dizzying curtain of the aurora again, only directly overhead because he was upside down, and Penn had time for one jagged thought: Please, God, don’t let the power cut out, don’t let…
The power cut out. His engines failed, and Penn tumbled out of the sky like an angel fallen from grace.
Now, gravity counted. Penn was accelerating, shedding altitude at breakneck speed, the air sheeting, howling over his canopy. Gravity swelled like a gathering storm, then broke, washing over him like a gigantic wave hammering the shore. Gray ate at the edges of his vision, and he was gasping, pulling for air, vaguely aware of the bladders of his G-suit filling. Then, something took over: a combination of training and instinct and maybe just good old self-preservation because Penn grunted, hard. Bore down with all his might, forcing blood into the empty vessels that nourished his brain. And then he could think again. Not a whole lot. Just a little. But it was enough.
Got to reach the recovery switch. Struggling against unconsciousness, he moved one leaden arm, but it was hard work and his arm was so damn heavy and he’d never been so tired and banged up and beat up in his life. His right arm lifted with agonizing slowness, his finger shoving through air thicker than molasses. For a fraction of a second, maybe less, he couldn’t remember why that stupid spin recovery switch was so damned important. His brain hitched over the problem. Airspeed’s zero… got to roll the ship… angle… down… got to angle down…
There was pressure against his right index finger; now, through his glove, he felt the bite of the switch, a sens
e of something giving. Then, a shudder ripped through the Lucifer’s frame, and there came a loud, throaty rumble.
Then he saw something beyond his canopy, something whizzing in a blue-and-silver blur, then it was gone, then it came again, then gone, then again, and…
“Penn!” A voice lasering his brain: Menace, right beside him, dropping with him, staying with him, trying to talk him back from the dead. “Penn, Penn, you’ve got power! Penn, damn it, answer me! You’ve got starboard engines, but you’ve rolled belly down, you’re spinning! Penn, throttle back, get your nose down, get it down, get it down!”
Control, get control! And now Penn remembered why getting his nose down was so damned important: because his airspeed was zero, his Lucifer spinning counterclockwise, belly to the ground. He wasn’t generating lift; there was no way for him to arrest his descent or break out of his spin unless he managed to cant his Lucifer and slew left into a controlled slide… but only if he went against instinct and notched his power down.
Penn fumbled, searching for the throttle. Got to do this just right, can’t let it cut out again. He forced himself to move slowly and deliberately, throttling back in increments. The Lucifer’s spin let up a little, and he dragged his fighter’s nose down ten degrees. Still not enough, but throttle back more and his engines might just cut out again.
Then he did something that, when he thought about it later on, saved his life and sure as hell wasn’t in any manual. But he did it anyway.
Penn simultaneously throttled back and deployed his Lucifer’s nose and left landing gear—but not his right. Somewhere deep in his brain was this cockamamie plan: create enough drag to cant his errant ship down but left to break the fighter’s horizontal plane enough to grab air.
