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

by Tom Jordan

  Everything blurred and wavered, and Jade wiped the tears from her eyes so she could see. It had the effect of smearing Tommy’s blood across her face, so she found a clean spot on the arm of her flight suit and used it instead.

  She raised her head. Marco had his hands raised as Bakhti pointed her rifle at him. Neither Bakhti nor Marco made a move or said anything.

  Jade withdrew the emergency medical kit and rifled through its contents. She found a tiny bottle labeled Trauma Spray, pulled off the plastic top with her teeth, and spat it onto the ground.

  “I should use this, right? Trauma spray?” Tommy moaned in agony, and his face was turning a sickly, pale white, but he was aware enough to nod. Jade aimed the small bottle and sprayed mist into Tommy’s open wound. She had no idea how much to use, never having needed to use it before, so she applied a generous coating. It coagulated into a gel that clung to his torn muscle and skin.

  “These two have to go,” Bakhti said. “It's non-negotiable.”

  “God damnit, Bakhti, I said that’s enough!” Marco yelled. Why was Marco growing a conscience now, after all he’d done to them?

  Jade shook the trauma-spray bottle, trying to coax any last liquid she could out of the container. She fumbled and dropped it onto the ground, then turned her head up at the sound of an approaching ship. It descended rapidly, adding to the rushing sound from the other two vessels. This ship was a similar size to Stormwulf, and descended until it hovered a short distance away. Its cannons and launchers gave the impression someone preferred the look of weaponry over that of the hull itself.

  Marco nodded toward the ship. “You said you were the last of your crew.”

  Bakhti stared and flexed her fingers on the rifle.

  “This thing doesn’t work without trust,” Marco said.

  “You broke the trust, pretty boy. Enough bullshit. Give me the location of the crate right now or all of you are gonna die.” She nodded toward Jade and Tommy. “Starting with them.” She spat out some of her hair that blew into her mouth. “Or, if you cooperate, you can all stay here with your ship, so long as you don’t follow.”

  Jade noticed Tommy’s writhing and groans had subsided. She hoped it was because of the trauma spray, but feared it was due to his life draining away. She slipped her legs under him, resting his head in her lap. She smoothed his hair and spoke to him with the most reassurance she could summon.

  Marco seemed to think about Bakhti’s proposal for a minute. “The deal was we wait together until the buyer arrives, verify their payment, then give them the location. You’re changing the deal and demanding I put all my trust in you,” he said.

  Bakhti said nothing.

  “Listen. I’ll get these two back to my ship,” Marco said, gesturing to Jade and Tommy, “and I’ll give you the crate’s location.”

  “No way. Crate. Right now.”

  Marco held up his hands. “There’s no—”

  “Do you think I’m bullshitting you?” Bakhti shouted. She liften the rifle and sighted. “Five seconds, or I’ll put a round through Jade.”

  Marco sighed and looked defeated. It was shocking to see; it simply wasn’t part of his persona.

  “Fine. Okay, okay.” Marco pulled a thin metal rod from the sleeve of his flight suit. Bakhti firmed her stance, swinging the gun back to Marco. The metal rod he held expanded into a rectangular frame, and a screen fizzed to life within. “I’m sending the location.”

  “Jade. Have to…”

  She looked down. Tommy stared back up into her eyes. She sniffed and attempted her best smile for his sake. “I’m here,” she said.

  Tommy’s eyelids kept dropping. He was fighting to stay awake, and attempted to say something Jade couldn’t hear over the sound of the newly arrived ship.

  She put her ear down to his lips. “I’m here, Tommy. I’m here. It’s gonna be okay.”

  Tommy put his fingers on her cheek. They were disturbingly cold.

  “I love you,” Tommy said. “I always wa…be with you.” He tried to wet his mouth and clutched her arm with feeble fingers. “Ja…Jade. Keep…”

  His hand loosened its grip on her flight suit, and then fell away.

  Jade bolted up and stared at Tommy’s face. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t focusing on her.

  “Tommy!” she yelled. She shook him. “Tommy!”

  Chapter 24

  The indifferent sun burned on the horizon.

  Jade ransacked the shore-leave bag. Her hands were slick with Tommy’s blood, and she pawed her way through layers of clothing and keepsakes to find something to use.

  Bakhti made a quick check of a device she was apparently wearing on her wrist. Seemingly satisfied, she tapped a finger to a button on the rifle’s stock.

  “Incendiary, semiauto,” she said. The gun chirped an acknowledgment. Marco held up his hands.

  Bakhti squeezed the trigger and the air was filled with a trio of gunshots. The left half of Marco’s torso, from breastbone to shoulder, exploded in a red, flaming cavity. A cloud of blood, fine as mist, sprayed into the air. Marco’s left arm spun away and plopped onto the hard-packed dirt. The rest of his body collapsed backward, oozing blood across the dry ground.

  Jade recoiled in horror. Bits of flame licked at the edges of Marco’s flesh and clothing. Tendrils of smoke curled, carried away by the hot wind.

  A cold sweat broke out inside Jade’s flight suit, both from the imminent threat to her own life and the sickening violence before her. She clutched Tommy’s body as though she could protect him somehow from this madness.

  Bakhti turned the rifle again, aiming at Jade. She froze as Bakhti glared through the gun’s sight. A curious static crackled in Jade’s earpiece.

  This is it.

  Nothing else to do. Bakhti had the rifle, and her ally’s ship hovered behind her, its guns aimed toward Tommy and Jade.

  She’d lost. Everything she’d worked for…gone. And at the moment, she couldn’t say she cared. What did it matter, with Tommy gone?

  “For Gajdusek,” Bakhti said.

  Jade waited for the shot.

  The static in Jade’s earpiece took on a form, a pattern, and resolved into speech. “Jade. Tommy. If you can hear me, get the fuck down!”

  From her right, the distinct shriek of a missile rose in volume and pitch. Bakhti looked away and cocked her head, listening.

  Jade threw herself over Tommy’s body, shielding him with her torso and covering her head with her arms, tightening every muscle in anticipation of whatever was to come. She shut her eyes as tight as she could.

  The air around her was punched by a concussive blast. The blackness behind her eyelids brightened to a noonday glare, and a hot wind snapped her hair away from her face. She opened her eyes when the light faded. One hand still clutched Tommy’s flight suit and the other held clothes from her shore-leave bag. The duffel itself tumbled end over end, flying away across the flats. She saw Mosso tip out onto the hard dirt and roll away, pushed by the wind.

  Jade looked in the direction of the blast. The ship that Bakhti had called for backup was barely recognizable. It rested on the ground, listing at a crazy angle with a crater punched into its hull. The superheated edges of the shattered fuselage glowed hot orange. The gash from Henning’s missile was easily three meters across, and consumed the cockpit. Shards of the canopy littered the ground. One of the flight seats lay in two pieces outside the ship.

  Fragments of hull began to rain down, and Jade lay forward over Tommy, then folded her arms over her head.

  “I see you, Jade. Can you hear me, mate?”

  Jade sat up, straddling Tommy but keeping her weight off of him and on her knees. She pushed her earpiece in deeper so she could hear over the aftermath of the missile Henning had fired.

  “Henning, where are you?”

  Jade looked up, craning her neck. She flinched as a ship cut the air close overhead, trailing wind and the roar of its thrusters. It was Rebel Star, a crimson streak that shrunk away acro
ss the flats.

  “Jade, I’m swinging back around, mate! Take the bitch down!”

  Jade spotted Bakhti crab-crawling backward on her hands and knees, her boots slipping as she scrambled away from the destroyed ship. She patted at tiny bits of flaming debris that had landed on her armored flight suit.

  Jade got off of Tommy and crouched. She looked to Bakhti, who was occupied with smothering the last of the flames on her body armor. She rolled over to grab her helmet and said something into its comm unit without taking the time to put it on.

  “Do it now, Jade,” Henning said. “Stormwulf is powering up!”

  Bakhti dropped the helmet. She scrambled ahead on hands and knees and snatched up the rifle. She coughed, then raised it in Jade’s direction.

  Jade’s thoughts were of Tommy. Was there any chance he was still alive? There was no time to check. If she had a shot at breaking out of this nightmare, she had to stop Bakhti right now. She clambered, slipping on blood and tripping over her scattered belongings, when her fingers clasped a smooth cylinder with a contoured grip.

  A flare gun! Tommy must have taken all the emergency supplies from her cabin, not just the medical kit.

  Bakhti had controlled this encounter since the beginning. She had bested Jade in the air, destroyed her ship on the ground, and had pointed a weapon at her since. She’d killed Marco and probably Tommy. She was without mercy or compassion.

  Jade had one chance to end this, and she had to take it.

  She pointed the flare gun at Bakhti. Jade didn’t know what’d happen, never having fired a flare before, so she shielded her face with her other hand and squeezed the trigger. The flare fired with a distinct whup.

  Jade didn’t even spare the time to see whether the flare hit Bakhti before she sprinted toward her foe. Bakhti raised her hands to protect herself as the flare sizzled brightly toward her. It flew wide, landing on the flats and sparking, incandescent like a supercharged ember.

  Bakhti rose to one knee and scooped up her rifle. She raised it toward Jade, who rushed toward her with everything she had.

  Jade’s feet left the ground. She slammed into Bakhti and bowled her over backward. She landed atop the other pilot, grabbing at the rifle with both hands, trying to gain control of the weapon. Bakhti grunted and pushed the rifle toward Jade in an attempt to throw her off-balance, but Jade had more leverage thanks to her position on top, and to her greater height.

  Jade twisted, competing to tear the rifle free from Bakhti’s gloved grip. Bakhti bucked her hips, compromising Jade’s balance, and swung her leg around and over Jade’s chest, then smashed the rifle upward into Jade’s chin. Her teeth bit into her tongue, and her lips and jaw stung.

  Dazed, Jade had only a dim awareness of the struggle for the gun as her head swam. Bakhti executed a dizzying series of motions, and Jade was twisted onto her back. Bakhti’s thighs clamped down, locking Jade in place on the ground. The other pilot controlled the rifle as well as one of Jade’s hands, which was locked tight against Bakhti’s chest with the gun digging painfully into her wrist. The pressure increased and the rifle cut off sensation to Jade’s hand, and she was held fast in Bakhti’s leg lock. The side of Jade’s head was forced against the ground. All she could see was Bakhti’s leg in her face as she lay helpless.

  Jade grunted, pressing the ground with her shoulders and legs as she struggled to get free. She wiggled and turned, looking for any inch of movement she could get. In response, Bakhti increased the pressure she was putting on Jade’s arm. Impulses of ripping pain fired as its muscles and ligaments stretched to their limits.

  Bakhti levered her arm ever further, wrenching it the opposite way the joint should have gone. Jade’s elbow dislocated. She kicked her legs and thrashed her one free arm as searing agony washed through her. She cried out and twisted, attempting to find relief from the fiery pain.

  Jade’s free hand smacked the hard ground repeatedly, and her boots kicked out. Her fingers touched something sleek and contoured. She stretched, flexing her fingers for each additional centimeter she could find, and her fingers curled around the edge of Bakhti’s discarded helmet. She gripped it like a lifeline.

  Putting the full force of her desperation behind the act, Jade swung the helmet. It impacted Bakhti’s face with a crunch. The other woman’s arms slackened and the pressure of Bakhti’s hold on Jade ceased.

  The nearby engine roar intensified—Stormwulf was increasing power to its thrusters. Jade rolled away to avoid the torrent of air and dirt particles. Focusing through the haze of pain, she caught a glimpse of a wavering, duplicate image of someone crawling toward her.

  Tommy!

  He struggled ahead using one leg and two arms. He stopped his crawl and pointed one finger behind her, insistently thrusting his finger over and over.

  Jade rolled back over and squinted at Stormwulf’s cockpit—there was a pilot inside it. Could it be the pilot Bakhti had called down, whose ship Henning had destroyed? Whoever he was, he reached overhead, flipping switches, and the thruster roar intensified. Henning would stand no chance one-on-one against the mighty vessel, especially since he wasn’t familiar with Rebel Star.

  “Jade,” Henning called in her ear. It was hard to hear over Stormwulf’s engines. “Can you get to my ship? Can you get to Audacity?”

  “I’ll try!” she yelled. “Wait, hold on!”

  Jade looked back at Tommy, who tried to make a shooting motion with his hands. Jade racked her pain-addled mind to try to understand what he meant.

  The gun.

  Jade twisted into a sitting position and snatched the weapon from Bakhti’s hand. Her wrist was tender where Bakhti had used the gun to pin it, but the feeling was eclipsed by the agony of her dislocated elbow. Every motion, every twist or swing that affected the joint, shot a lance of pain through it. She didn’t know whether she could even move it. It felt as though her lower arm had torn in two.

  Jade held the gun with what she figured was the proper grip. Her fingers tingling, she tried to use her left hand to prop it against her shoulder so that she could look through the sight at the top, but she couldn’t even raise it. She strained, trying once more to raise the gun toward the ship, but dropped it just as fast. Her useless arm wiggled and refused to support the weapon’s weight.

  Making a decision born of desperation, Jade lay down on Bakhti’s unconscious body. She planted an elbow in the woman’s pelvis and sighted the rifle up her torso, resting the tip on the body armor covering Bakhti’s shoulder.

  Jade lined up Stormwulf and prepared to shoot. She wasn’t sure what Tommy expected the rifle to do to the ship’s hull, but saw no other choice.

  She pulled the trigger and a loud crack split the air. It was shocking at this close range, even over the noise of Stormwulf’s thrusters. Jade couldn’t tell if anything had happened to the ship, or if her shot had hit. Stormwulf continued to lift off.

  Jade pressed a small button on the stock, as Bakhti had done. “Incendiary.”

  A trio of incandescent rounds leapt from the end of the rifle, each leaving a thin trail of smoke. They impacted Stormwulf’s hull with tiny bursts of flame. Jade squeezed the metal trigger over and over. The gun spewed out rounds. The ringing in Jade’s ears blended with the roar of Stormwulf’s thrusters.

  A tiny red LED flashed, and the trigger locked as the ammo ran dry. The rounds had no effect. Jade slumped, resting her head, then jerked it back up after forgetting she’d beed laying atop Bakhti. Fatigue, pain, and failed hopes crushed in on her.

  Jade jolted as a hand clamped over her ankle. She turned and saw, to her relief, that Tommy was the one who had grabbed her.

  How was he even awake? Or alive?

  “Jade,” Henning pleaded in her ear. “If you can do something, now’s the time. He’s got me locked. Fuck!”

  Stormwulf’s thrusters continued to intensify in sound and power. The pressure on the joints of its landing gear eased—it was beginning to lift off. Despite the ship being grounded, Storm
wulf’s missile launcher extended from the dorsal hull and fired a trio of rockets, each zipping over Jade’s head with a flaming roar and a punch of hot wind.

  “God dammit, I have missiles inbound. Where are the ECMs? Jade, I’ll be back. I have to shake these things. Get to my ship! Get to Audacity, mate!”

  “Okay, I hear you!” Jade said. Her hair whipped in the thruster emissions. “Henning, I hear you!”

  Tommy mouthed something she couldn’t hear through the whine in her ears. The gunshots at close range and Stormwulf’s thrusters had ruined her hearing. Tommy continued to repeat whatever it was, pointing at the gun. Jade raised her good hand in a questioning gesture, then tried to shuffle away to get to Audacity. Tommy clutched her ankle harder and shook his head. He stabbed a finger at the gun, pointing.

  Audacity, Jade mouthed. Tommy again shook his head. A lump closed Jade’s throat—his face was so pale, and his crawling had left a trail of blood behind him that was wide as his body. He pulled himself forward and slumped across Bakhti’s legs. He grabbed the rifle and pulled it toward him, then pressed the button Jade—and Bakhti—had used to change ammunition types. Tommy spoke a command to the gun.

  Stormwulf hovered a few meters off the ground. Its landing gear retracted into the ship’s underside, and it turned to prepare to boost away and intercept Rebel Star. Tommy’s hands shook as he pushed the gun back toward Jade, and he pointed insistently back to Stormwulf.

  Jade nodded, understanding Tommy’s meaning—he wanted her to fire the gun again. She lined up the weapon once more on Bakhti’s torso and squinted through the rifle’s sight, then gritted her teeth against the pain in her shoulder and squeezed the trigger. A round leapt from the gun’s barrel with a loud crack, and this time she heard the bullet impact the ship’s hull and punch a small, neat hole.

  Her heart jumped. She closed one eye and focused through the sight, sweeping the rifle over the ship, looking for whatever might cause the most damage. It was hard to concentrate between the torrent of pain in her elbow and the electric sensation of panic, and she settled on the first useful-looking target she could find: the vertical thruster on the starboard side of the ship.