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

by Tom Jordan

  “Pardon?” Tommy said.

  “Right here,” she said, pointing down at a glowing, green blip on her holomap. “It says this moon here, Obos, is an industrial center and shipping hub for the surrounding systems. It’s in an early terraforming stage with a breathable atmosphere. He wouldn’t have flown into the gas giant, so this looks like it could be the place.”

  “That’s gotta be it!” Tommy said, sitting up a bit straighter. “There’s still another thirty-four minutes until it updates again, but I’ll bet when the update comes in, it’s going to point there.”

  “Agreed. I’m not waiting.”

  Jade began a turn, bringing the tiny moon into view in the distance. Neither of them had anything to say. Their futures depended on getting back the cargo, and there were no further plans to be made.

  Obos grew steadily larger. It was initially a pale, tan sphere, but details began to resolve as Ghost drew nearer and the moon filled more of the canopy. A few small strips of green slashed across the landscape, and seas dotted the surface, but a tan, featureless expanse covered most of the moon.

  “What can you tell me about it?” Jade asked Tommy.

  “Yeah…” he said, checking hovering information screens in front of him. “Scattered industrial settlements, automated terraforming sites, let’s see…nothing we haven’t already talked about, really. Those green spots are conservation zones, enough to sustain breathable air moon-wide. Seas naturally occurring, but toxic. Drinking water is synthesized in local facilities and kept in a closed system at each site.”

  “Any recommendations on where to go?” Jade maintained her course, approaching in anticipation of a landing. She craned her neck and looked upward and to both sides, checking out the landscape of the moon as it grew ever larger.

  “Scanning now. It looks like Emmerich Interstellar Ventures has rights to most of the moon and leases parcels to other corporations. Because of the system we’re in, it’s a target for groups that want a presence somewhere out of the way, legally speaking. The system has a security force but nothing stationed on Obos.”

  “Any trade ports, cargo hubs, things like that?”

  “Yeah, a number of…wait! A crate update just came in ahead of schedule. That means we’re close!” He thrust a finger toward Obos. “It’s down there!” He looked into Jade’s eyes and leaned toward her. “It’s there, Jade! We found it!”

  Jade squinted toward the moon. “Let’s not pop the bottles just yet. We don’t know what’s there. We need to do some recon. How do I reach landing control?”

  “There isn’t any. Every person for themselves. There’s no oversight to speak of.”

  “Okay.” Jade rubbed her hands together. “I’m gonna take an oblique angle so it doesn’t look like we’re headed where we’re headed. Does that sound sneaky enough?”

  Tommy shifted back in his chair. “I suppose so. That’s your call, Captain. Tactics aren’t so much my thing, but I’ll get you every piece of info I can while you’re flying over.”

  “Fair enough, Flight Commander,” she said, working the controls and squinting at the moon ahead.

  Tommy calculated an entry path for Jade and set it to display in front of her. Jade smiled at his having anticipated her needs. She drew comfort from their teamwork, since she could count on Tommy’s goals aligning with her well-being and their joint success, rather than being secret and exploitative like Marco’s had been.

  “Check your straps. I’m taking us in.” Jade flexed her fingers on the flight stick and followed the curved holographic line representing Tommy’s orbital course. She continued to pursue the line until she reached the moon’s upper atmosphere. They entered on Obos’s bright side, the system’s yellowish-white star behind them. Daylight illuminated the surface, and Obos grew huge, filling nearly all of the canopy. Swaths of clouds cast faint shadows across the featureless expanse below. It reminded her of salt flats, or a smooth, arid desert.

  Jade was about to ask for a waypoint showing the crate’s location when Tommy put one up on her display. A tiny square hovered in front of her, indicating the crate’s position—or last-known position, anyway. The square floated and adjusted as she piloted the ship, ensuring the location marker was always accurate, and it included its distance in kilometers.

  As Ghost of Jupiter curved along its atmospheric entry, the sun shone through the canopy, illuminating the pilots and all the metal and synthetic surfaces of the cockpit. Jade wasn’t used to seeing it lit so brightly with natural light since she was generally flying in space or parked in hangar bays.

  “Such a view. Mosso would have loved this,” Jade said.

  “We’ll have to fill him in later,” Tommy said.

  As Jade continued her insertion path, she passed the terminator—the line dividing night from day. The moon became dark beneath her, the thin arc of its atmosphere illuminated from behind. The crate marker was now in the daylight of the opposite hemisphere. She reduced her velocity to match the course Tommy had set up and dropped closer to the moon, breaking through the upper atmosphere after a short, turbulent passage. She sailed the ship through the night sky and back into the daylight, flying a gentle arc. She passed nothing of interest other than a small ocean, and she flew parallel to the course that would take her to the crate.

  Jade looked over when she heard a crinkle. Tommy was unwrapping a bag of dried fruit. “Here, man. I bought you some apricots on Keillor. Thought you’d like them. Natural sugars will keep you sharp.” She held a hand up to catch the bag, which he tossed.

  “Thanks, Tommy. That’s so kind. Mosso never bought me any food.”

  Jade maintained a sensible altitude. The crate marker’s location slowly crested the horizon. It was far off, and Jade approached obliquely. As she closed the distance, Tommy noted a dark structure. Their heads turned in unison as it glided past.

  “I’m getting scans,” Tommy said. “Multiple buildings over there. Registration info is private but if you want to fly over I could get some images. How are your exterior cameras?”

  “I don’t have any,” Jade said.

  “Okay, then. Eyeballs it is!”

  Jade turned toward their destination. “Dim the canopy a little, please? The holos are hard to see in this bright daylight.”

  “Absolutely.” The canopy faded to a darker, more opaque hue as Tommy made the adjustment.

  She popped a dried apricot into her mouth and checked that her hair was tied securely. She’d have known if it wasn’t, since it would have been a nuisance before the moon’s gravity took hold, but she wanted to make sure she had no distractions.

  She released the controls and rolled her shoulders in a few slow circles. “I’ll take us a little closer.” She pressed a foot pedal and pulled back on the stick, sending the horizon sideways and curving toward the cluster of buildings.

  Jade drew near, and the structures were revealed to be a set of dark-gray prefab buildings huddled close together. None were more than two stories, judging by the few windows Jade could see. A utilitarian eight-story tower rose behind the prefabs.

  “Can you tell me anything about this?” she asked Tommy. She chewed a lip and watched the crate marker sail behind them on her map. “We just passed the crate’s last position. Any sign?”

  “I can’t see the crate but I found some public satellite maps that show some landing pads on the other side of this complex, if you wanna swing around.”

  Jade circled as Tommy suggested. A trio of bare-bones landing pads came into view, connected by raised walkways to the central tower.

  “A small starport?” Jade asked.

  “Seems so. But is that—”

  Jade straightened and gasped. Audacity rested on one pad. Stormwulf, the ship that they’d fought and followed to Balenos A, sat on another. She looked at Tommy, her brows high. His gaze stayed on Audacity. He punched the air and let out a whoop.

  “We found them! I can’t believe it. I mean, I can, but you know. This is crazy!”

 
Jade felt rage simmering within. She squeezed the controls harder.

  Marco was down there.

  “What are we gonna do?” Tommy asked.

  Jade chewed her lip. Her impulse was to say that she had no idea what she was doing and was making it up as she went, but she thought it might be better for both of them if she left that unspoken and instead said something that sounded more…confident.

  “I’ve got an idea but I’m open to feedback. Any thoughts?”

  “Not seeing any defenses,” Tommy said, “like a ground-to-air missile system, and they’re not launching any ships or threatening us, which means this is a civilian starport. And we have the advantage of surprise. Whatever that’s worth. But, Stormwulf…”

  “Mmm.” Jade absorbed his words and formulated a plan based on the observations. “What if we lock weapons and then radio them? We have them drop the crate out farther in the flats and then leave Henning’s ship. Then we can pick up his ship and the crate, and be on our way?”

  Tommy nodded the whole time she spoke. “I think that will work. Catch them with their pants down. We can set the terms, and get in and out before they have any clever ideas. Though Stormwulf would probably follow us to try to take it back.”

  Jade frowned. “We’d still have to deal with Stormwulf then. We’ve tried that already, and we had four pilots. We need to disable it before it can launch.” She stared at the ship sitting on its landing pad, exuding threat like a coiled snake waiting to strike. It was a fearful vessel which Jade had no desire to face again.

  She looked to Tommy, who made a single, resolute nod. “Stormwulf’s gotta go if we’re gonna have any chance. Its tech and its pilot are beyond what we can handle.”

  They stared down at the cluster of buildings rotating beneath them, rectangular shapes like chips on a circuit board. The endless, parched landscape stretched out in all directions. Jade could make out additional details as they circled around the complex: solar arrays, some with panels missing, were laid out in sun-tracking grids around the perimeters of some buildings. A few prefab outbuildings spotted the facility, with tire tracks stretching like string between them. The color of the sun and the dry flats looked like videos of Earth she and every other colony kid had seen in school.

  Jade knew she couldn’t analyze the scenery all day. With no better plan, and no time to make one without losing their advantage, she committed herself to act.

  “Okay,” she said. “Raise them. I’m firing on Stormwulf.” She deployed her weapons and steeled herself to assault the other ship, and to face a difficult conversation when someone answered their hail. She figured she’d either be speaking with Marco, who had inflicted wounds that were still fresh in her mind, or the pilot of Stormwulf, and either way she needed to be prepared for a confrontation as she stated her terms.

  “Getting nothing on all channels,” Tommy said. “No one is responding to requests down there. I’m going to—”

  Tommy was interrupted by shrill beeping. A warning message popped up right over Jade’s display. It read MISSILE INBOUND.

  Tommy gripped the arms of his chair and shot forward. “They launched at us!” he barked.

  “Where is it?” Jade asked, scanning her map.

  Tommy craned his neck and lifted in the seat, squinting out the canopy. “Stormwulf! It was Stormwulf!” He thrust a finger straight toward the predatory ship parked on the landing pad.

  Jade made a hard turn so she could look directly out of the port side of the canopy and spied a wispy smoke trail coming from a raised missile launcher atop Stormwulf. White plumes bloomed from the launch tubes as more projectiles rocketed away and climbed into the sky, trailing streamers of white smoke.

  She had only seconds before the missiles would make impact.

  “We have to deal with these missiles. Will the lasers or the rails take them out?” she asked. She turned hard and pulled back on the stick, going vertical to boost away from the threat.

  Tommy groaned and shut his eyes. His nails gouged the armrests. “Yes, but no way that you’d ever line those up with enough precision to hit them.”

  “Then we’re gonna have to burn our missiles. How many have we got?”

  “Six.”

  “Target the closest for me.”

  Tommy sucked in a breath and opened his eyes so he could work the controls. “Done.”

  A rectangle popped up over the nearest of the blips on her map, highlighting it as her current target. Jade cycled to her missiles and squeezed the trigger.

  “Missile away,” said Jade. “I see a total of three coming at us. Can you confirm that?” She scanned her map and information window, checking distances and velocities. She maintained awareness of her hands and feet on her stick, throttle, and pedals, and kept an iron grip on her emotions. She wouldn’t allow herself to lose focus or begin piloting carelessly. Everything was at stake.

  The ship vibrated, fighting gravity and winds as it shot away from the ground. Jade watched the map as her missile tracked its target. She continued to climb, pressed into the back of her seat by the force of the ascent. She couldn’t turn yet; she had to ensure that she kept flying a straight line to give her own missile a chance to intercept. She made gradual adjustments and breathed slow and shallow.

  “Got it!” Tommy said. “It’s gone! Target is gone. Two missiles remaining.”

  “Hang on,” she said. With one last check of her map, Jade worked all her controls in unison, slowing and turning off her flight compensator. She executed a rolling turn that flipped her ship over to face the ground directly. Ghost’s front-facing maneuvering thrusters fired against gravity as she restored the flight compensator to keep the ship hovering in place, facing groundward toward the oncoming missiles. Since they were approaching head-on, she viewed them from the front. From this distance they were tiny, like the head of a pin.

  Jade cycled to her micro-rail guns and exhaled as she squeezed the trigger. She kept it pressed, and a rhythmic thumping boom rocked the ship as the twin guns fired their rounds. Jade saw the thin shards of metal, glowing and superheated from the friction of being shaved from their metallic block. They fired in an alternating pattern. She leaned forward and squinted, fighting the tension stiffening her body, then nudged the ship’s nose to angle her stream of projectiles ever closer to the incoming missiles.

  “What are you doing?” Tommy yelled. “Fire the missiles!”

  “We have a second,” Jade countered, her voice calm. “Let me concentra—”

  A flash appeared as one of the rail-gun rounds connected with a missile. It didn’t explode like Jade had anticipated, but instead cracked apart and fell away. Jade spared a glance down and noticed it had vanished from the radar.

  “I can’t believe you did that!” Tommy said.

  Jade was too focused to make a reply. The third missile was alarmingly close and was rushing straight toward them—probably even too close to fire a missile to intercept. She maxed her throttle and shot away, the sudden acceleration smashing her into her flight seat.

  Tommy leaned over—as much as his straps would allow—and looked out the rearmost bit of canopy to his right.

  “It’s still in pursuit,” he said. “I can’t see it!”

  Jade pressed her lips together in a tight line. She raced the ship downward, using gravity to pick up all the speed she could in order to secure an escape.

  “Is the d-field up?” she asked, not wanting to spare a glance at whatever holo would tell her that information.

  “Yes, but who knows what kind of missiles these are. We shouldn’t count—”

  “How much distance do I need to make sure my own missile will hit?”

  “It depends on how fast the other missile is moving,” Tommy said, staring at the map.

  Jade targeted the remaining missile, then fired off another missile of her own when she felt she was at a safe distance. Four seconds later, her missile’s blip merged with the pursuing missile, and they both disappeared.

 
“It’s gone,” Tommy said, letting out a huge breath. “We’re clear. No more missiles tracking us.”

  Jade didn’t allow herself a moment to celebrate. She frowned at the map and noticed something else. “Stormwulf won’t stop there. What’s that other blip I see on the map? Is that it?” she said.

  “Oh, shit,” Tommy said. “Oh, shit. Yeah, that’s Stormwulf. It’s coming our way.”

  Jade turned so she could see the ship out the starboard side—Tommy’s side—of the canopy. Stormwulf was skimming the ground and picking up speed, leaving its launch pad behind, when it made a sharp turn upward and blasted away from the ground. It flew with shocking speed, rising and going supersonic as a circular puff of air rippled off of its hull. Stormwulf leveled off and angled directly toward Ghost.

  “Oh, shit,” Tommy repeated.

  “Yeah,” Jade said. The memory of her last engagement against this ship was fresh. The pilot, whoever it was, was skillful and had had no trouble holding their own and escaping from Jade, Marco, Henning, and Tommy.

  Not this time.

  “Receiving a message,” Tommy said. “Should I answer?”

  Jade nodded. “Put it on.” She exhaled, wiped her palms on her thighs, and attempted to breathe through her nose and hang on to a calm state of mind, though the rush of high-g atmospheric flight made it difficult.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t see you coming?” The female voice was a curious mix of husky and youthful in Jade’s ear.

  Jade was put on guard, but didn’t answer. The voice continued.

  “You’re wasting your time. But it’s fine with me if you struggle. I’ve been waiting for this since you killed my people on Balenos A.”

  Jade didn’t know what to say. Tommy looked to her expectantly. She doubted she could stop Stormwulf, but she had to try. She summoned some bluster. “Hand over the crate. It’s mine.”

  “Wow.” Stormwulf’s pilot laughed. “Wow. So you kill two of my team and steal the crate, and you think that makes it yours?”

  Jade was thrown off for a moment but regained her clarity. “Killing your friends wasn’t my first choice. We tried to take you in because you were wanted, and then we defended ourselves when you resisted. You broke the law. You chose to engage us. Not the other way around.”