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

by Tom Jordan

  She had to fire now. She’d be unable to line up the ship if it got any higher or further away.

  She centered the little dot on the gun’s sight on Stormwulf and fired until the gun depleted its ammunition and the trigger locked. Some of her shots found their target—the thruster sputtered, its shimmering emissions of air switching off and on erratically. Within moments the thruster housing blew apart into a cascade of fragments, and the ship began to wobble and list. Stormwulf crashed back to the moon’s surface with a slam Jade felt rumble through the flats beneath her.

  Tommy slumped to the ground, and Jade lowered the weapon with a sigh.

  “Henning. The ship is down. Tommy’s…I’m not sure if he’s going to make it. We need you right now!” She’d been yelling, but Stormwulf’s thrusters had quieted, though running lights still dotted the ship. The wind was a soft whoosh across the moon’s surface. The sudden calm was a jarring contrast.

  Jade startled as Bakhti’s body heaved beneath her. It racked with sputtering coughs, and blood bubbled from Bakhti’s mouth as she regained consciousness. Jade clambered away on all fours, then grabbed Tommy under the arms and shuffled backward, pulling him away from Bakhti.

  Crimson spittle sprayed from Bakhti’s mouth as she convulsed with coughs. She slapped one hand on the ground and rolled to the side, spitting out strands of blood. Jade pulled Tommy farther back. He was pale and motionless. Jade made a quick scan of the sky to check for the still-absent Rebel Star, wishing Henning were there to help.

  Bakhti pulled her knees under her, wiping her arm across her mouth and leaving a red stain. She seemed dizzy, but made a slow sweep of her hands across the flats, locking eyes with Jade while searching for something.

  Jade, in one swift motion, lowered the point of the rifle, pressed the ammunition selector, and said, “Incendiary.” Bakhti’s eyes went wide and she froze. Jade swapped her good hand back to the weapon’s grip and again pointed it at Bakhti.

  “Right there,” Jade said. “Move and you die.” Jade delivered her commands in the most even tone she could muster. She needed confidence. She had to hold things together until Henning arrived. Even dizzy and bloodied, Bakhti could still probably take her in a fight. The gun was out of rounds—but Bakhti didn’t know that.

  “On your knees.”

  The other pilot looked down at Tommy, then around the battlefield. She took in Stormwulf and the ship that she’d called in for reinforcement. Her eyes appraised each element in turn, then locked on Jade. Her gaze spewed venom as she sank to her knees.

  “I’m the only one with the crate’s location,” Bakhti said in a drawl through her bloody mouth. “Kill me and you’ll never find it.” Blood had matted some hair to her cheek.

  Jade scanned the sky again. No Rebel Star. But just then, a crackle came through her earpiece. “Jade,” Henning said, “I’m inbound, mate. I shook those missiles. Hold tight.”

  “Understood. Hurry,” she uttered softly enough for Henning, but not Bakhti, to hear. She then spoke to the other pilot. “Do you know the difference between us? Do you?”

  Bakhti only glared, her lips pressed tight.

  Jade continued, “I killed your friends to protect my own. Even though it was what I had to do at the time, I regret it. And I think I always will. Tommy…” She let out a shuddering breath. “Tommy is dying. He might already be gone. Do you feel regret? Do you?” Jade shouted the last words, which echoed off the damaged and destroyed ships.

  Bakhti seethed, her breath hissing. “I’ll give you the coordinates right now. We can split the money.”

  “You had a deal with Marco and you just killed him. You…blew him apart. Do you think I’m a moron?” Jade shook her head. “No. I’ve had enough of this.” She spared a fast glance at Tommy, taking in his pale face, his parted lips. “Look what’s happened here. There’s no amount of money worth what this has cost me.”

  Landing thrusters from Rebel Star flooded the area with wind and noise. Dust sandblasted Jade’s skin, and bits of Stormwulf’s hull tumbled across the flats. Bakhti’s hair blew with the breeze, but she stayed where she was. Tommy lay motionless, one hand limp on the ground, the other brushing the leg of Jade’s flight suit.

  “It’s all yours!” Bakhti yelled. “You can have the coordinates. Have the other guy land that red fighter. You leave with him and your boyfriend there, and take the Sakharov.” Bakhti planted a foot and started to rise.

  “Don’t you fucking move!” Jade screamed. Her vision blurred through misty eyes, but she kept the gun as still as she could, though it was beginning to droop with the mounting fatigue of her one useful arm.

  Bakhti’s offer tempted her. The crate was worth an enormous amount of money. But Jade had chased the crate far enough down a path of sacrifice and pain. Bakhti and Marco were examples of the kind of person she’d become by going further, compromising her values—and the welfare of those around her—for money.

  Every decision Jade had made to try and get paid had backfired, so it was time to take a different path. Perhaps it was better to bring Bakhti to justice now, get help for Tommy, if he was even alive, and then worry about money later.

  The sun shimmered on the horizon. Rebel Star’s landing lights added illumination to the deepening darkness. Henning dropped the ship dangerously close, landing nearly over Jade’s head. The cockpit hinged upward and Henning swung out as the ship was touching down on its landing struts. Wearing only his underwear—still lacking any other clothing since he’d departed Keillor—he landed on the balls of his feet, then ran to Tommy and Jade.

  “Shit,” he said, taking in Tommy. He jogged over to Bakhti, jabbing a finger at her face. “Don’t fucking move.” Bakhti shot an angry sneer at Henning, who slipped behind her, pulled Marco’s stun gun out of his waistband, and jabbed it into her neck. She convulsed, her muscles gave out, and she collapsed onto the flats.

  Jade dropped the gun and fell to her knees. Henning sprinted over and crouched, patting down Tommy. He grimaced and probed around the trauma spray covering the younger man’s his leg wound. Tommy didn’t react to anything Henning did.

  Jade no longer noticed the pain of her dislocated elbow or injuries from grappling with Bakhti. Her palms pushed against the dirt, and once the first tear broke the rest followed, dropping from her chin. Her chest heaved, and she looked on as Tommy lay motionless, his mouth ajar, with two of Henning’s fingers against his neck. “Okay. He’s alive. Shit. Stay with him. Stay right here.” Henning ran to Audacity and jumped up into its open airlock.

  Jade pawed at Tommy’s flight suit. “Tommy, did you hear that?” she said. She smoothed his hair, trying to wipe away blood with her sleeve. “Henning’s here.” She sniffed and leaned down to press her face against his cheek.

  “Please.” Sorrow tore apart everything inside her, like gossamer threads carried away on the wind. “Be strong. Please. I need you with me. We’ll fly the ship together. I mean, we’ll find one. We’ll figure something out. We’ll…”

  Henning’s feet appeared in Jade’s vision. “Come on, mate,” he said. “We need to get Tommy to my ship. Help me—”

  A rising roar pulled their attention upward. A trio of ships descended. Each was similar in size to Audacity, though of an entirely different make, flatter with a wide cockpit at the bow. They were painted a uniform gray with a diagonal blue slash across the hull. A loudspeaker cut the air.

  “System security. Stay where you are.”

  Chapter 25

  Jade sat on the portable generator and clutched the sides of the blanket together at her neck. Night had fallen. The trio of security ships lit the area with their bright floodlights, along with the mobile lamps hooked to the generator upon which Jade rested. Seven uniformed security officers combed the area, assembling a report of what’d happened. They’d taken testimony from Jade and Henning, as well as Bakhti, who was now in their custody.

  Mostly importantly, Tommy was stable.

  Each ship had a medic, and all three
had worked in unison to examine and treat Tommy. Jade had tried to follow as they took him into one of the security ships on a stretcher, but they’d asked her to stay out of the way while they worked. They later informed her that anticoagulants, a shock suppressor, and morphine had done the heavy lifting and that Tommy would be fine in time, though he’d require follow-up examinations and dermal reconstruction. One of the medics had said that without Jade’s application of trauma spray Tommy would have lost too much blood to survive, and that he’d been minutes away from the loss of his life.

  While the medics stabilized Tommy, Henning had returned with a medical scanner to examine Jade. He’d refused to wait on the other medics, saying, “I can handle it, mate.” The worst of Jade’s injuries was the dislocated elbow and a nasal fracture from when Bakhti smashed the rifle into the bridge of Jade’s nose. Blood had run from her nose to cover her chest and neck, and she hadn’t even noticed.

  Henning had provided painkillers, but had to manually pop Jade’s elbow back together. He’d told her he’d done it before. She’d been in too much pain to wonder why, and his claim hadn’t brought her any comfort.

  Jade was confident she’d have nightmares about the way Henning had held her arm still with his knee and reset the joint. It had been excruciating, but felt surprisingly better once the job was complete, and the painkillers helped dull the throbbing soreness. Jade had asked him to recover her shore-leave bag and possessions—especially Mosso—and he’d obliged, though some of her clothing had blown far away across the flats and was unlikely to be found again.

  Henning now appeared at the top of Audacity’s ramp wearing cargo pants, sneakers, and a form-fitting T-shirt. He put a hand on the lip of the ramp opening, stuck his chin out toward Jade, and called down to her atop the generator, “Think that’s safe?”

  “I’m too tired to give a shit.”

  Henning smirked.

  A blue-uniformed officer wearing an armored vest stomped down the ramp of one of the security ships. He approached Jade and waved Henning over with two fingers.

  “Okay. Investigation’s done.” He looked at each of them in turn and rubbed a hand over the stubble covering his cheek. He looked weary, as though worry had etched permanent lines into his face. “Confirmed your story about the bounty. I can’t say any good came of this, but you haven’t broken any laws out here that we can tell, so you’re free to go. Did you know that pilot you were dealing with is a rogue STAR-CAP? That’s SOL-SEC special forces.”

  “Yeah,” Jade said.

  “Yup,” was Henning’s reply.

  The officer—Barnatt, according to the patch on his vest—bunched his eyebrows together quizzically. “Well, okay. You bounty hunters really get into some weird stuff. Speaking of which, the pilot of that other ship you destroyed—not Stormwulf here, but the other one? The pilot’s name is Frederick Maller-Bergen. He’s critical, but will live. We’re taking him in. He’s a known gun for hire in this region. He’s racked up a considerable bounty and you’re entitled to it.”

  “Say again?” Jade said.

  “Sure,” Barnatt said. “Three bounties, actually. He’s wanted in several systems near here. Comes to two hundred thousand, seven hundred twenty-two SCU altogether. This is technically at our discretion, but since you lost your ship and all, we’ll let you have it. It’s a shame seeing such a nice vessel like that go down. Not a lot of those Matsumoto Mark IVs around.” He handed Jade a small tablet. “This has a copy of our report, which will let you collect on his bounties. You can keep that.”

  So there’s some small bright spot in all this, Jade thought.

  Barnatt shook their hands. “Good luck. You should stay out of this kind of trouble in the future.”

  “I think I will,” Jade said.

  He nodded and departed toward one of the security ships, sweeping a finger in a circle over his head as he whistled for the security teams to pack up.

  “You could have taken out Bakhti, mate,” Henning said, watching the security teams load their equipment up their ship ramps.

  Jade shook her head. “What if I killed Bakhti and then someone else stood in our way? How many people have to die so I can get paid? This was a constant trial of death and loss, and I chose to end it here. Now no one else has to die or lose their livelihood because of this stupid crate. If this is the wrong choice, at least it's once I can live with.”

  Henning’s answer was a noncommittal grunt. A pair of officers nodded politely to Jade and retrieved the generator. Jade slid off as they grabbed handles to either side and hauled it up the ramp to one of the ships.

  Henning leaned in and shared a conspiratorial whisper. “Mate, I couldn’t say this with the security guys around, but we didn’t lose the crate.”

  Jade frowned and looked up into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I took your wrist computer off Tommy when I was examining him, before the security guys took him. Marco sent Tommy the coordinates. It’s on the other side of this moon.”

  Tommy blinked awake, awash in a cottony haze. Everything was blurred. He seemed to be on a bed in one of Henning’s cabins. He felt the subtle vibration and play of forces that told him they were in-atmosphere, still.

  He felt great. Warm, euphoric. After recent events in his life he’d become familiar with the effects of painkillers. He was definitely on some kind of drugs.

  Yet the feeling was nothing next to the joy he felt seeing Jade resting beside him.

  “Jade,” he mumbled. His mouth was so dry that her name barely came out right. She rested on her forearm, watching him, her black hair spilling all over like silk. He grinned when he noticed that some of it had fallen on his arm.

  “Hey,” she said, flashing her beautiful smile. “How are you feeling?”

  Tommy frowned. “I got shot, right? But I don’t know, I feel…good. Just really very nice and great. Um, Captain.”

  Jade laughed. It was the most beautiful sound he could think of. He tightened, surprised, as she cupped his cheek with her hand. It was a more intimate gesture from her than any he could remember.“That’s the drugs Dr. Freeborn has you on.”

  He nuzzled his face into her hand, reveling in the feel of her fingers and palm. His smile melted as he noticed a lonely tear roll across Jade’s cheek.

  “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

  She wiped it away. “No. But I think I will be.”

  Epilogue

  Henning maneuvered Audacity over the crate, positioning the ship with the alignment squares on his control monitor. He deployed the landing struts and set down just ahead of the container, then set the robotic cargo arm to load the crate into the bay.

  Damn, it felt great to be back in his own ship.

  Sakharov had known what they were doing when they made this thing. Any other vessel would require manual control of cargo-loading equipment, door openings and closings, and cargo stowing, but the Sakharov could automatically load and optimize placement of cargo. Just press a button. There was nothing this ship wouldn’t do and make a pleasure of, which was why he’d worked so hard for it. It’d bring Lex and the girls a lot of enjoyment, and his eagerness to head home was building now that it was almost time to sell the crate. He’d had enough trouble to last him a long time.

  He wasn’t sure yet how he felt about Marco biting it. Henning had resisted the urge, a million times, to punch Marco right in his smug, grinning face. Well, all but that one time, anyway. He’d never have wished death on Marco, but the kid had dug his own grave. Sometimes you were light-years from help, and laws changed from system to system. You could get into some rough spots out here. That was when trust and connections were valuable resources. But Marco had never seen that. He’d thought he was smarter than everyone else, and above everything.

  Henning locked the ship’s controls and walked back to the stairwell. He rushed up to the cargo bay, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Selling this crate was going to set him up for life. Tommy and Jade, too. Woul
d those two stick together after he retired? He hoped so. They were great as a team. And maybe more, if Tommy could get the balls to do something about it.

  Too bad about Ghost of Jupiter, though. It had been a fine ship with all those aftermarket upgrades, and he knew Jade had loved it. She’d flown it with talent like he’d never seen. She could probably qualify for STAR-CAP if she wanted. After Jade had rested and the crate was aboard, Henning would circle back around so Jade could fly Rebel Star off this moon. It only sat one, so she’d need to fly something else if Tommy was sticking around with her, but it was one bad-ass ship. She would love it, if she could get over its connection to Marco.

  Maybe she could buy herself a Sakharov someday. She seemed interested in Audacity. Tommy certainly was. Selling Rebel Star would give them a good chunk of money toward a Sakharov they could co-own, and there'd be plenty of work the ship would enable them to pursue.

  Henning crested the stairs and entered the cargo bay as the doors were closing, the tail end of a hot breeze from the dayside of the moon swishing through as they shut. For the second time, two of the robotic cargo-loading arms balanced the crate as they traveled along the ceiling rails and set it down in the corner of the bay. As always, they detected Henning’s gym equipment and avoided crushing it all.

  Even setting the crate down gently produced a deep metal boom that reverberated through the cargo bay.

  He jogged over to the crate. It was still intact.

  Payday.

  He had just turned around to head back to the cockpit when a series of beeps began sounding. One second or so apart, they alerted him to what seemed like a countdown. He ran back over and checked the timer mounted in the crate’s control panel.

  Seventeen seconds.

  Sixteen seconds.

  Fifteen seconds.

  Henning had looked through the bounty records to find how to get in touch with the buyer. He’d spoken with some gruff-sounding guy named Rueger who’d said they’d meet him on Obos and would pay for the crate, even if it had already opened. That was in direct contrast to what Marco had said, that the buyer was only interested so long as the crate was unopened. Had Marco been lying, or had the buyer changed his mind?