Ghost of Jupiter (Jade Saito - Action Sci-Fi Series Book 1)

by Tom Jordan

  The Mark IV was a solid multipurpose ship but wasn’t intended for advanced atmospheric combat maneuvers, and Jade was pressing it to its limits. She was reaching her own physical limits as well, and felt her seat and flight suit compress to compensate for the turn. As a safety measure, flight suits like Jade’s adjusted to prevent pilot blackouts due to blood pooling in the legs, depriving the brain of oxygen. Jade set her will against physics, tightening her muscles against the sensations of the high-g turn. The suit squished her and she felt like a grape about to pop. Her stomach dropped as the planet beyond the canopy swirled.

  The nauseating sensations eased as she came out of the curve. She was forced backward into her seat, approaching the battle from underneath. Constant lightning from the atmosphere lit her cockpit in blue-white flashes. Marco’s ship whizzed out of sight at the corner of her vision, leaving a wake of distortion through the smoggy air. Another ship, in turn, chased Marco out of the battle, spitting a stream of weapons fire.

  Jade targeted the closest enemy ship, not even knowing whether it had a deflection field active, and squeezed her trigger. Her micro-rails fired as fast as they could, sending deep booms through her hull. The guns struggled to load and deliver their projectiles as fast as she fired them.

  The ship behind her targeting reticle was penetrated by the rounds once, twice, three times, and on the fourth puncture it detonated into a cloud of fiery carnage. Ghost of Jupiter shot straight upward and, with no time to adjust her heading, she instinctively threw her hands in front of her face as she streaked through the incendiary cloud.

  Ghost’s computer beeped warning tones and loaded an overlay showing a heat map of impacts—glowing areas where Jade’s deflection field had taken damage. The field seemed to do its job. Jade passed through the flaming debris and explosive aftermath of the enemy ship’s destruction, but the energy field kept her from any harm.

  Jade continued to blast upward through the clouds as her mind analyzed the enormity of what she’d just done. She must have penetrated that ship’s reactor, causing an instant breach. Its pilot would have been vaporized by the explosion. She leveled off and exhaled slowly, her gaze unfocused. She expected some thought or reaction, but there was only a void and the sound of her thrusters.

  Jade flipped back on her comms channel.

  “-ly shit, Jade!” a voice yelled. Jade wasn’t sure which of the guys had said it since the team continued to speak atop one another. The realization that she might be followed pinged into her mind. She decided to angle around for another pass, and turned back toward the battle, cycling through targets until she selected Tommy’s ship. Tommy weaved but was unable to shake his pursuer, who sprayed a constant barrage of some kind of energy rounds. They cut dangerously close to Tommy as he swung back and forth.

  Fear and a protective instinct for her friend inspired a dangerous plan. Jade arced her ship toward Tommy and his pursuer, looking through her canopy until she brought the enemy into her forward sight. She toggled to that target, wishing that she had some kind of computer combat module like Marco had in order to see whether her target had an energy field active, or what kind of hull damage he might have taken.

  Frantic chatter still filled the comm channel as the group attempted to coordinate through the chaos of the battle.

  “Everyone shut it for a second!” Jade said. “Henning, help Marco if you’re not already. He’s got one on his tail. I’m gonna help Tommy. Tommy, are you hearing me?”

  “Yes, yes! Shit, I hear you!” His voice was tight with desperation. An idea kindled in Jade’s mind, an echo of something from playing combat sims with Tommy in the VR Hub.

  “Remember Delta Pattern? From Supremacy?”

  “Which…wait, yes! I do.” His words came in quick, panicked breaths.

  “Okay, we’re gonna do it. Hold your course and fly directly over me.” Silence. “Tommy, acknowledge?”

  “—encrypted channel. Wait. I’m on,” an unknown male voice said.

  “What?” Marco asked.

  “Hey, which one of you pieces of shit just took out Gajdusek?”

  Jade didn’t know what to say, and the voice continued, “She was my friend. You just…just jumped her. She didn’t even know it was coming.” The voice started screaming in hot rage. “So what now? Are you coming to get me too? Suck on this!”

  The speaker was presumably the one pursuing Tommy. Jade watched as Tommy’s ship approached, getting slammed by some kind of glowing beams. Her insides turned to ice as she saw hull fragments go spinning away from Gliese Voyager. She stopped breathing.

  Henning spoke up. “You listen to me, you piece of shit—”

  The voice continued over his. “No! No! You listen to me! First you chase Bakhti here, then you jump Gajdusek like that? I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re dealing with STAR-CAP. You’re dead!”

  “God damnit, Nolan,” a gravelly voice said. “Shut your stupid mouth. Get off the channel and pay attention.”

  “Oh, God!” Tommy shouted. “My canopy! Jade, I need help!”

  Jade, filled with compounding emotions, felt like a balloon about to burst. Self-control was a heavy weight slipping out of her fingers.

  Tommy coughed and choked across the line. The unknown voice persisted in its rant. “You hear me? You’re done!”

  Pressure built inside her until she could no longer contain it. “Oh, shut the hell up! Surrender, all of you!” she yelled.

  “Or what?” the stranger asked.

  “Or I’m going to wipe you out of the sky like I did your fucking friend!” Jade muted the channel, slammed her fist into the chair’s arm until her hand throbbed, then screamed a wordless cry of rage until she ran out of breath.

  There was silence across the line. Finally, the voice came back, cold as an interstellar meteorite. “Try it.”

  “Tommy,” she said, unmuting the channel. “Give me Delta Pattern!” Jade switched to her particle cannons and marked Tommy’s pursuer as her active target. The other guy on the line had called him Nolan, but his ship came up as Switchblade.

  Jade flew a collision course toward Gliese Voyager and Switchblade and lined up a shot. She squeezed her trigger once she was sure she wouldn’t hit Tommy by mistake. Her fire bit into Switchblade’s shields as both it and Gliese Voyager screamed past just over Jade’s cockpit. Gliese Voyager smeared a distressing smudge of inky smoke in its wake.

  Switchblade tailed Tommy, staying on his path as both ships flew in the opposite direction from Jade, whose attention was stolen by a blaring alarm. Her particle cannon had overheated faster than expected, and was dissipating its heat at a glacial rate. In space the guns had cooled quickly, but Balenos A’s scorching air was preventing it.

  With a light foot on the roll pedal, Jade turned perpendicular to the ground, making the horizon tilt sideways, and pulled back on the stick. Ghost of Jupiter had an excellent pitch rate while in atmosphere since its hull was—more or less—a giant wing. She clenched her jaw against the force of the turn, and the other ships dropped back into view as she completed pitching.

  “He’s off the channel,” Marco said.

  “Marco, we need to bug out of here right fucking now. These guys are STAR-CAP,” Henning said. “SOL-SEC special forces.”

  “I know what STAR-CAP is. But there’s no way we can bug out right now. They’ll follow and shoot us down if we try,” Marco said.

  “That’s bullsh—”

  “Not now!” Marco said. “Get this guy off me! Get his attention so I can turn on him!”

  Henning growled. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Get some distance. I’m loading proton rounds.”

  Jade tried to come up with a plan, but was out of ideas. Her particle cannons were overheated, and Switchblade’s deflection field still seemed operational. Sooty clouds and particles of ash blew across her canopy as she weighed her options. She was outfitted for the straightforward bounty hunting and intimidation the group had planned, and not for this type of extensiv
e combat. She had nothing she could use effectively with her particle cannons out and Switchblade’s field still in effect.

  Jade finished the turn, fighting the g-forces smashing her into her seat, and switched to the micro-rail as her target drifted back into her targeting reticle. She let loose an optimistic half dozen rounds. A few of them struck and were absorbed by Switchblade’s field, with no useful effect.

  “Tommy, we have to get this guy off you. And I need you to take out his d-field. Can you circle toward me?” she said.

  The seconds passed in chilling silence. Tommy had mentioned his cockpit. Was his life-support system having trouble? She imagined him slumped unconscious in his seat.

  “Tommy!” she yelled.

  She spotted his ship through the gloom. He was flying an evasive weave, and managed to angle back toward Jade. Jade looked down at her holos and side to side, checking every window and display. There had to be something.

  Then she saw it.

  Missile.

  How had she forgotten? She prepped her second missile and left it on its default setting of Impact. With Switchblade right in her sights, she pressed the button and launched the projectile. It appeared from underneath Ghost and shot away, propelled by a jet of flame. It chased Switchblade, which in turn chased Tommy’s ship.

  Switchblade dropped a pair of shimmering pods. The missile tracked one of the pods and went wide, until it eventually caught up with and obliterated the decoy in a plume of fire.

  “Shit!” Jade cried.

  Tommy continued to weave to try and escape Switchblade. He turned and avoided streams of fire from the hostile ship, until he pulled wide to starboard and exposed the broad top of his hull.

  Jade watched in horror as Tommy’s pursuer sliced a barrage of superheated rounds through Gliese Voyager.

  The port side of the ship shredded and a thruster went spinning away. The other half of Gliese Voyager’s hull tilted and fell end over end out of the sky, trailing debris and billowing smoke. A fiery detonation blew the ship apart like a balloon just before it was swallowed by a smoky cloud far below.

  “Tommy!”

  Jade’s body clenched like it had been plunged into icy water. Her stomach turned inside out and she stared, mouth agape, unable to work her controls.

  The flash of thruster output drew Jade’s eye back to Switchblade. The ship executed a tight turn and rounded on Ghost, bringing its guns to bear with a spray of glowing rounds. The sight of the munitions flashing by the cockpit brought Jade back to reality, and she stomped a pedal and yanked the stick sideways to evade the fire.

  Time slowed. Jade worked her pedals and sent Ghost of Jupiter into a corkscrew, avoiding Switchblade’s assault while heading straight into it. Ghost’s displays loaded a myriad of shield and safety warnings. Her particle cannons were still overheated and unusable. With no other option, she squeezed her trigger, firing her rail guns, shooting round after round at her enemy. Ghost boomed beneath her with each projectile.

  The rounds wouldn’t penetrate Switchblade’s shield, but she had to try. It would have to be enough, and though she knew it wouldn’t, she was too furious to care.

  Jade noticed lightning flash in the distance, felt the cool sweat within her flight suit, and heard Marco and Henning coordinate their maneuvers over the comm channel. Her mind replayed Tommy’s ship falling away and blasting apart. Tears left cool trails down her face, dropping from her chin.

  Hard particles of compacted ash scattered across Switchblade’s sleek hull as the ship raced directly toward Jade. Twin arrays of yellow energy rounds spat from its forward guns, biting into Jade’s deflection field.

  The hostile ship filled her cockpit. Collision warnings blared. She would not move. Tears flowed, and she opened her mouth in a scream of vengeance.

  Chapter 11

  Jade awoke coughing and wheezing as vile, smoky air filled her lungs, and her panic escalated as her vision returned. Her eye was drawn to cracks in her cockpit—a sight to induce trauma in any star pilot. Smoggy air whirled inward through the wounds in the canopy’s composite shielding.

  As Jade choked on the planet’s toxic air, she rushed to think how to survive. She tried to reach up and squeeze the collar on her flight suit, but pain stabbed into her shoulder as she moved, forcing her to make several attempts before she succeeded in triggering her emergency helmet. It deployed with a series of clacks, unfurling its tiny plates until it covered her head. She hadn’t realized how much noise there’d been in the cockpit until the helmet blocked out the shrieking of alarms and whooshing of air.

  ENGAGE EMERGENCY MODE? read the faceplate display.

  Jade coughed until her throat burned, then managed to choke out a weak “Yes” after several tries. In response, the suit turned on its hidden respirator with a pssshh.

  Jade heard only her breathing within the helmet. Her world narrowed to that single input, and she focused on it as though it were the last, lonely star in the black of space.

  Everything hurt. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed a coal from a live fire. Breathing caused soreness to bloom through her chest. She realized with a jolt that the ship was losing altitude, headed toward the surface. Thanks to a practiced piloting instinct, she wrapped her fingers around the flight stick and leveled out her course, fighting a fit of violent coughs.

  Jade engaged the emergency life-support field that would act as a backup for the shattered canopy. The field of energy fizzled to life, blocking the planet’s vile air from assailing the cockpit any further. After a few moments, the ship’s air system siphoned the smoggy haze.

  Jade surveyed her surroundings. The flickering displays made it obvious that some of her holographic emitters were damaged. Only her leftmost holos were working normally. Her opponent could be circling back to fire on her at any moment, so she hurried to put her most important menus on the working holoemitter. She set up ship-status and communication panels and a miniature map.

  “Come in.” She coughed. “Tommy. Marco. Henning.” She couldn’t say anything further, breaking into another rasping line of coughs. Jade realized that her earpiece was missing. She looked around and discovered the small transceiver had been thrown across the cockpit.

  How was she even alive?

  Jade set her comm to output through the cockpit speakers instead of the earpiece, but realized her emergency helmet would prevent her hearing the sound. After some fiddling, she was able to route the communications to the flight suit’s internal system, and from there send the audio to the helmet. Her silence was breached by frantic chatter from Marco and Henning.

  “Guys?” she asked, the word barely managing to escape her throat.

  “I’m getting you, Jade,” Marco said.

  “Bogey three is bugging out,” Henning said.

  “Wha—”

  “Jade,” Henning continued, “hope you’re okay but we need to deal with what’s left right now before we can check on you and Tommy. The guy that was chasing Marco, we’re still on him.”

  The memory of Tommy came back to Jade with a shock. Her painful awakening had pushed him from her mind, but now guilt and devastation born down on her.

  Marco spoke up. “Missiles away. Not taking any chances on this guy. Impact in thirty.”

  “He’s prepping SFM. In atmo. You’ve got to be kidding me,” Henning said. “Get clear, as in right fucking now!”

  “You’re far enough, Saito,” Marco said. “Just hang for a moment. What’s your status? Are you injured?”

  Jade took stock and patted herself down, checking her limbs. She winced as she touched her torso. “I’m hurt,” she rasped. “Something’s broken.” She winced and fought back the scratch in her throat. “I don’t know. I can fly but I have a cockpit breach.” She coughed. It was difficult to talk. She could only take shallow breaths, and every move brought pain searing into her torso.

  “Hang in there. We’ll help you as soon as it’s safe,” Marco said. Jade’s entire body hurt. Her head swam, and he
r eyes kept drooping shut.

  “This guy’s leaving,” Henning said. “I’m headed to Tommy’s last known.”

  On a heading toward Marco and Henning, Jade spotted the last enemy ship as it punched through the cloud cover. The ship streaked straight upward and drew a charcoal line through the air. Marco’s missile chased it, quickly gaining. Suddenly, the ship and a huge sphere of air around it warped and collapsed into a point, then vanished. The planet’s smoggy haze rushed in to fill the void in the sky, creating a spherical depression. Marco’s missile streaked through the center, trailing a line of exhaust and vapor.

  The jump had been a desperate move. Jade had learned during SFM training in flight school that an in-atmosphere jump could skew your trajectory and cause you to come out in a place you didn’t intend, probably as a cloud of spaceship parts. There were too many variables compared to a jump in the vacuum of deep space. This pilot wouldn’t have executed that jump except as a last resort.

  Marco pulled his sleek fighter alongside Ghost of Jupiter and gave Jade a thumbs-up, which she returned. The simple gesture made her wince. Ghost’s thrusters filled the silence.

  Marco’s voice crackled across the comm channel. “Freeborn, stay on watch for Stormwulf. We don’t know where it went. Saito, descend and find a safe location for landing. We have to assess your condition. And your ship’s.”

  Jade shook her head. “I can land on my own. Shouldn’t you help look for Tommy?”

  “I need to stay with you in case Stormwulf returns. I can’t leave you defenseless. Freeborn can watch his own back while he scouts for Tommy.”

  “But—”

  “Saito, Freeborn can handle it. Me being there won’t speed things up. He’ll find Tommy. I need to make sure you’re okay.”