by Medron Pryde
Somebody was about to get a major pasting. They just had to wait a few minutes for everybody to come out and get ready to fight.
Jack smiled for a moment, and then the smile died as the plot continued to propagate out beyond the mammoth fleet to show the gigantic wave of missiles swarming towards the fleet’s starboard flank. Angry red dots filled the displays as the wavefront of destruction approached and Jack’s mind refused to accept the numbers they displayed. No one could fire that many missiles at once. No one.
But the displays refused to reset to more rational numbers and Jack swallowed. “Ah, frak,” he muttered, realizing that someone really was going to get a pasting. And it might just not be the people he wanted.
“All Cowboys, form up and…frak,” he licked his lips as he failed to come up with a good idea.
“Yeah,” Betty whispered. “I cut the transmission off before you ran out of words, by the way.”
“Thanks.” He swiveled his head to see the five other Avengers taking up position off his wings and let out a low whistle. The sight of nearly six-dozen more drone Avengers swooping in from above filled him with more relief than he cared to admit at the moment. They hadn’t used drones when The War started. There’d been a bias against giving cybers or AIs total command of any weapon platform. There still was, but necessity as they said was the mother of invention. Fighters were easy to build and pilots took a long time to train. The Cowboys were first to start using drones to multiply their effective firepower and the rest of the Alliance was in the process of echoing them.
A holoform wearing blue jeans and a white tank top flickered into being next to Betty and Jack smiled at the brown eyes of the new arrival. Standard procedure called for each pilot to be paired with a single cybernetic or artificial intelligence who would stay with him or her until death. It was a partnership closer than most marriages Jack had ever seen and after nearly three years he understood the meaning behind Betty’s every raised eyebrow, cocked head, or pursed lip. He might play stupid on the subject but she’d used them on him enough that he understood her as well as almost anybody he’d ever known.
They could literally predict what the other would want to do before they did it. That synergy made a dedicated pilot and cyber team into the deadliest combatants to take fighter craft into battle in the known history of the human race. Cat and Blaze killed six Shang fighters at the Battle of Fort Wichita in the old Hellcat they’d flown at the time. Jack and Betty had accounted for far more Shang lives, but they’d had an Avenger, so it wasn’t a fair comparison. Drew and Jasmine had fought beside him in another Avenger, and the dozen fighters of Cowboy squadron had torn apart entire Shang warships with their concentrated fire.
Now that they augmented their numbers with drones, the cybers simply expanded the number of fighters they flew and gave each pilot and cyber team control of twelve fighters. It was a truly amazing amount of firepower for a single pilot to be in command of. He watched the drones slotting in around the piloted fighters with approval and turned to examine the new arrival on his console. She was brunette to Betty’s blonde, wore faded blue jeans and a grey tank top to Betty’s yellow sundress, and her feet wore nothing at all compared to Betty’s white sandals.
When Drew died at Alpha Centauri, Jasmine’s commission to the Republic of Texas had ended. Jasmine had been literally born to fly with Drew and the pain of losing such a partner had nearly ended her. It drove most fighter cybers to shutting down permanently rather than live without their partner. But Jasmine was made of far sterner stuff than most cybers. She’d chosen to take a new partner and gave Jack a relationship he thought was unique. He had two cybernetic partners.
“Jasmine,” Jack said with a smile as her eleven drone fighters slotted into position around the single fighter he and Betty commanded.
“Jack,” the cyber returned, wry lips quirked under her long brown hair.
“Status?”
Jasmine’s smile turned predatory. “Oh, we’re so green.”
“Good.” He looked at Betty and she nodded back. “Well then, let’s rock and roll.” He placed his hands on the controls and spun seventy-two Avenger-class fighters and drones to face the oncoming wavefront of incoming enemy missiles. “This is Captain Jack of Hart squadron, Marine Fighter Attack Wing 112, to fleet command,” he intoned with a nod towards Betty. She nodded, indicating that she was transmitting. “The Cowboys are ready for action. Where do you need us?”
A fourth cyber appeared on his console, and Jack had to suppress an amused smile at just how crowded it was getting in the cockpit. She was brown haired, brown skinned, and looked like an extra from a Zorro movie. That wasn’t a surprise. She was after all the brain of the Santa Isabel, flagship of the Spanish Armada and the entirety of Third Fleet. “Cover the carriers,” she ordered in Spanish-accented English. Not Spanish-accented American which sounded entirely different, but Spanish-accented English. It was an odd mingling of foreign accents that almost confused his ears. But by God he could listen to her read the dictionary all day long and never grow tired of it. “We need to protect them while the rest of the fighters launch,” Santa Isabel continued and Jack nodded.
“Will do,” he answered and turned back to Betty. “Cowboys, did you hear the lady?” Betty smiled as his squadron-mates answered in the affirmative in rapid succession. “Assume defensive formation delta,” Jack ordered and returned his gaze to Santa Isabel’s cyber. “Good luck.”
Santa Isabel smiled back. “God be with you, Captain Hart,” she returned in a far more formal tone before fading away.
Jack turned back to Christine. “Slot us into your defense grid, please?” he asked with raised eyebrows.
Enterprise’s cyber nodded in agreement. One of the displays flashed to show the fleet’s collective point defense grid reaching out towards the oncoming threat and zoomed in on Enterprise, oriented bow-on to the enemy. He watched Ken and Swan’s squadrons moving to Enterprise’s port side while Jesse and Snake moved to starboard, spreading out to form an angled wall of fighters guarding their carrier’s flanks. Jack and Cat filled out the forward point of the three-dimensional defensive wedge, lasers and missiles scanning for enemies to shoot. “You’re part of the grid now.”
Jack looked to Betty and she smiled in agreement.
“Good.” Jack reached out to tap one control and his favorite T&J song filled the cockpit. Well, his favorite song for going into battle at least. He had other favorite songs for other times, but this one had driving rhythms and a good screaming melody that merged into the battles that often raged around them. He felt their twin voices suffuse into his bones and for a moment he was a young man, plucking his silly little guitar while Julie and Alex sang their golden chords. Back before anybody heard of T&J.
He opened his eyes again, felt his heart pumping in time to the music, and felt peace radiating out from him. He placed his hands back on the stick and throttle, breathed deeply, and scanned the displays. One showed a squadron of Hellcats leaving Enterprise, shooting out between Jack and Cat’s squadrons on fusion-blue flames. Another showed the incoming wave of missiles. The frigates and destroyers on the edges of the fleet opened fire on another.
Missiles, lasers, and gravitic cannons fired and there were so many missiles in the attack that they couldn’t dodge. Missiles died by the hundreds but kept coming. For a moment Jack was watching the Shang strike on Yosemite Station again, the day his world ended. He watched Yosemite fall, ravaging the western United States, and he watched his father die. He stopped, the past and present colliding so completely he couldn’t find his way out.
“Jack.”
The one word snapped his eyes back into focus on Betty. She smiled her eyes said she knew. She understood. And she would always be here to help. He held onto that knowledge as the music of T&J filled his ears and mind. They sang of roaring thunder, crashing lightning, and the end of innocence. The soundtrack of his life and a cybernetic partner that knew him good enough to make certain it played just
right lifted him back up onto solid mental footing. The missiles came and he flexed his fingers, knowing in his bones that it was time. “Yippie ki-yay,” he said in a voice that was far too shaky for his wishes.
If the cybers heard the quaver they ignored it, and the seventy-two Avengers of Jack’s little half-squadron opened fire with every weapon at their disposal. Missile pods ripple-fired scores of point defense warheads into space, laser turrets pulsed into the teeth of the enemy attack wave, and gravitic cannons stabbed deep into it. Dreadnoughts, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, fighters, and even carriers added their own fire to the point defense grid and he sucked in a deep breath.
It was an amazing sight.
Three hundred warships and the better part of a thousand fighters faced the missile swarm, filling space so completely that outgoing missiles exploded from friendly fire. Normally invisible lasers stabbed through the gases of destroyed or expended missiles, fully visible to human eyes. The roiling wavefront of death filled the sky with light and hundreds of Shang missiles hit the grid.
“Take that,” Jack snarled as the combined point defense grid of the greatest Alliance fleet ever assembled stopped the Shang missile strike cold. There would be no repeat of Yosemite today.
They say the best way to fight is to help someone walk into a trap you set for them. Then you can defeat them on your own timetable. Me, I’ve never liked other people’s timetables. I plan to live forever, so I make it my business to mess with any plans that might go against it. I guess you could say that I’m just not a very obliging trappee. I will always fight to break out of your trap. That is my promise.
Durango
The sky was afire with the blaze of dying missiles. They died in their hundreds, exploding as they reached the line of death drawn by the point defense networks of the Western Alliance’s Third Fleet. Missiles, lasers, and gravitic cannons reached out, blotting the Shang attack from the stars with merciless abandon. Anything less than Third Fleet would be taking damage already, and maybe worse. He frowned at the thought. There really were a lot of missiles here. Too many missiles for this to be some random attack.
“You know what comes to mind when I look at all that?” Jack asked.
Betty sighed and raised one eyebrow at him. She knew him too well. “Don’t say it.”
Jack aimed an impish smile at her. “It’s a trap.”
“You said it,” she returned with an exasperated sigh.
Jack shrugged at her. “I couldn’t resist.”
“Well, you should have.”
Jack chuckled at her and looked back to the wall of death. If there was one thing that spectacular waste of missiles was good for, it was making a real eye-catching example of modern art.
“At least we’re good enough to take it,” Betty continued, dismissing the threat with all the contempt a computer could bring for someone who started a battle they could not win.
“Yeah,” Jack said, his tone doubtful. Eye-catching. Something about that had his subconscious in a whirl. He just didn’t know what.
“What?” Betty asked in a worried town.
“I don’t know.” Jack frowned and tried to nail down the odd feeling. It’s not like they were in danger. With the fleet arrayed for battle, no conceivable missile barrage could possibly break through. Even after he broadened his horizons to the idea of conceivable after seeing the current attack. Third Fleet was the largest collection of warships ever assembled. There was just no way to break them.
From that flank.
The thought came fully formed in Jack’s mind and he returned Betty’s gaze. She cocked her head to the side, aware of the change in his demeanor. Jack considered the idea for a second and then nodded. “It comes to mind that if I wanted to sucker punch someone, I’d show them a very powerful and slow punch,” he explained, pausing long enough for her to nod in understanding. “Then I’d wait for them to block it and stab them in the back,” Jack finished.
Betty raised an eyebrow at him. “You know you’re mixing metaphors, right?”
“Yeah, but it still tracks, right?”
She sighed. “Yeah, it does. What are you thinking?”
“This isn’t their only play.” Jack looked at the displays for several seconds, trying to figure out what his subconscious was telling him. He had a feeling that he needed to be elsewhere but didn’t know where.
It was one of the many things that gave him an advantage over every normal human born on Earth since the dawn of time. The Peloran Treatments, given free of charge to every child, improved the power and intelligence of the body’s immune system and made sickness a literal thing of the past. The treatments also slowed the aging process through some process Jack didn’t understand. The closest explanation he’d ever figured out was that they somehow maintained a backup set of directions on how each cell in the human body was supposed to look. It kept the cells from degrading over time, and expanded the standard human lifespan into the centuries.
But Jack was another cut above most humans. Like ten, maybe twenty thousand humans on the entire Earth, his body had reacted far outside the norm. He was twenty-five when he took the final treatments, and a decade later he was still exactly twenty-five years old. A century from now, he would be twenty-five, and in a thousand years if nothing got around to killing him his body would still be twenty-five years old. He would never age another day as long as he lived. He was, quite literally, Ageless.
And that wasn’t the only advantage he’d gained. He was stronger and faster than he’d ever been before the final treatments, and he’d been a very fit man in his youth. He couldn’t jump tall buildings in a single bound, bullets hurt real bad, and a train would run him right over, but no natural-born human could ever match him in any athletic contest. He could beat Olympic champions without breaking a sweat, which was why they banned the Ageless from any and all gentlemanly sports.
He could see farther, smell more, and hear sounds no normal human could. And he’d picked up a sixth sense that was hard to explain to people who didn’t share it. It was like he could feel danger before it arrived if he listened. He couldn’t even explain it to himself because no word he’d grown up with covered the idea. But he’d learned to trust that feeling and right now he felt it real strong. He shouldn’t be where he was. Something was coming and something was going to hurt him. Maybe all of them.
“Guys?” he asked, looking towards where the other Avengers spat lasers and missiles at the incoming Shang wave.
“You feeling it too, boss?” Ken asked in a strained voice.
“Same here,” Jesse added, trying hard to maintain his cool outward demeanor.
“Someone’s got us in their crosshairs,” Cat snarled.
“I do not like this,” Swan said in a very calm voice that showed just how hard she was trying to keep from lashing out at something. Anything.
“Might I suggest a change in plans?” Snake noted, every bit the lawyer looking to weasel out of a bad situation. Well right now Jack would happily be a weasel. They didn’t get sucked into jet engines after all.
“On it,” Jack said and began studying the plots around him. And then he saw it. “There,” he said, pointing at a display. “What do you guys see?”
“Nothing,” Betty answered, her tone mystified.
The other Cowboys swore in a variety of very creative ways as they caught it too.
“Exactly.” Jack turned to Christine. “And what do you see?”
Enterprise’s cyber glanced at the display and frowned. “Oh, slag,” she swore as she got it too.
“So we’re not imagining things,” Jack whispered before grabbing the stick and throttle. “All Cowboys, maintain delta formation on my lead,” Jack ordered and spun the stick left. The universe swung around them, stars turning into lines for an instant. And then the Shang missiles were behind him, Enterprise filled his vision, and he slammed the throttle forward. Engines burned to full power and seventy-two Avengers left the wall of fighters supportin
g the fleet defense grid.
Santa Isabel’s cyber appeared on his console with an angry expression. “Why are you abandoning your post?” she growled.
“The Shang are about to stab us in the back,” Jack answered and pushed the stick forward, sending the Cowboys diving under their carrier’s kilometer-long bulk.
“What? Why? How?” the fleet flagship’s cyber asked in confusion, obviously having trouble coming up with any more coherent questions. Or maybe she just wanted it to look that way. Or maybe she just wanted him to answer without waiting for all the pointless long form American language to get out of the way.
“Nothing,” He answered her third question with a grim look. “Just my gut,” he added and pulled the throttle back. The Cowboys came to a stop, their wedge now protecting Enterprise’s rear quarter from an enemy none of them could see but knew had to be out there.
The cyber cocked her head to the side and just looked at him. She obviously wasn’t accustomed to that answer. Then she shared a look with Enterprise’s cyber, followed by another glance towards Betty and Jasmine. The cybers were communicating far faster than any words he could follow and he was pleased when the flagship nodded at him.
“Very well. Proceed as you will,” Santa Isabel’s cyber said in a firm tone. “I will inform the grand admiral.”
Jack winced. “We need to redeploy the entire fleet you know.”
She shook her head. “It’s taking every ship we have to stop those missiles.”
