Jolo second guessed himself all morning. There were too many variables, too many people. He wasn’t even sure if all of the Fed women would be able to pull the trigger when the time came. They were trained, but only a few had been on a boat during the war.
……
Katy followed George through the dark tunnels at a fast clip. She had the bulky M-16 Jolo had given her, but at some point she put it over her shoulder and pulled out a small blaster she got from Riley. She was a pilot and preferred a pilot’s weapon. Let the ground pounders like Greeley play with grenade launchers. Though her weapon of choice was the rail gun on the Argossy.
“Never woulda guessed in a million years we’d get saved by the pirate, Jolo Vargas,” said the Fed pilot Risa. “You his girl, huh?”
“Yeah. If you knew him you’d know this is what he does. Always helping people.”
“When he ain’t stealing from the merchant ships,” came a voice from a plump merch pilot three months’ pregnant.
George allowed them a moment’s rest while he ran ahead to make sure the next intersection was clear. “I know he came all this way to get weapons to save the Fed and he didn’t leave us,” said Risa.
After a moment, George came back, scolded them for making noise and set off at a blistery pace for the ship yard. It was at the end of a side corridor of the mall. The ground turned from brick to hard pack to soft earth, then opened up into a large empty space. The giant ground hauler that took the Argossy away was there right at the edge, each wheel as tall as they were. Above them was a layer of ice a meter or so thick, the orange light filtering down, illuminating a huge pile of ships.
They all stood at the edge of a giant hole cut deep into the earth. It went down farther than they could see. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff. New boats, old boats, ships from Katy’s youth, Federation military, merchant class, some that looked alien, were all tossed in like they were toys thrown into the trash. They were piled up high and deep.
Hurley wanted to get a close look at an old single-manned ship he hadn’t see in fifty years so he jumped out into the pile, on top of a freighter.
“It’s a Stingray!” he yelled, like a child finding a lost toy. “They are priceless and fearsome. If that little baby runs I bet it could tear into a BG boat.” He was standing on a Fed commuter boat and reached up to touch the hull of the Stingray and then he started to slip. George jumped down and grabbed him before he fell into the snarl of broken ships.
It took a moment to fully digest the magnitude of the stack of ships. “There must be thirty or so levels, maybe a kilometer down,” said Risa.
Katy walked along the outside of the giant hole searching for her boat. It had to be near the top, but the hole was a hundred meters across and it took awhile to get around the thing. Risa called out from the other side, “I found the Alexxus!” It was perched atop an old Inverness Freight hauler and the remains of a Fed frigate.
“Any damage?” Katy yelled.
“Yeah,” she said. “It don’t look good. Last thing I remember was taking a lot of heat from several BG boats. I think she’s gone.”
Hurley yelled from the other side of the hole. “Risa, you could use this merch fighter here. They call ‘em Greenbacks ‘cause they gotta green stripe along the top. It looks to be in good shape.”
The boat was a little older, and made to defend merchant ships from pirates. “I’ve run into these before, back when we were, uh…”
“Pirates?” said Risa.
“Yeah,” said Hurley. “Those are sturdy little boats with some firepower. We wouldn’t hit a freighter if we thought those little boats were around.”
“Well,” said Risa, “one rear stabilizer looks bent but she’ll fly. Guns look okay.”
Katy made it to the backside of the hole where the earth rose up twenty meters or so to the ice roof above them. George was right behind her.
She stared at the mess of alacyte hulls and thruster cowling and random bits of ancient ships. But no Argossy. She could see Hurley and Risa coming her way from the other direction, and then she saw movement not far in front of them.
Katy and George started running in their direction. Sure enough, there was a man who’d just come out of a hole in the wall. Katy made it there first and pulled out the blaster. She’d seen the man before, delivering supplies to the hotel for the old lady. He had only a few teeth left and his tongue was dark. By the looks of him he’d been sleeping.
Suddenly he was cornered between Katy and Risa. He yelled something that no one understood. Then reached for something in his ragged jacket. But Katy shot him before he could get it out. The pulse shocked him and he fell to the ground though still alive, a small blaster in his hand.
Risa walked up to him, kicked him with her boot, then took the little black weapon. “Yeah, I remember that piece of shite.” She grabbed him by the pants leg and started pulling him towards the edge of the hole. Riley grabbed the other one and they watched him slide down into the pit. He landed on an old boat, slid off that one onto the underside of a old non-military transport, then continued to fall.
The small hole he’d come out of was a control room. There was a small battery powered light and a joystick to control a winch that was hidden in the darkness along the rear earth wall.
“We’ll need the winch to get the boats out,” said George. “Katy, can you handle it from here?”
“Yeah. Be safe.” He nodded, and then he stopped, and went cold still like a statue.
“You love me, right?” he said, finally. “In a good way, but not like Jolo.”
“Yeah, George. I love you, and Koba and Hurley, and Greeley. And Barth. You guys are my family. Is that important to you?”
“I want it to be,” he said. “I think it is. There is a difficult time to come and I will remember you always. I have to go now.”
“George, we’ll be okay. We always are.” He gave her a stiff hug and ran back down through the tunnel to meet the ground team.
“Well there’s a first,” said Risa. “A synth with feelings.”
“He’s special,” said Katy.
Hurley started up the winch and it retracted from the back wall, a giant arm reaching out over the giant pit. Hurley, Risa and Riley busied themselves pulling the Greenback fighter off the top of the pile while Katy circled around the hole again searching for the Argossy.
Thirty minutes later the sleek, old Greenback was sitting on the ground near the ship hauler. It had a bent stabilizer a big dent along the underside near the nose, but other than that it looked okay. It had seen some action but was faster and had better armor and weapons than the Alexxus. Risa immediately started doing diagnostic checks.
Risa climbed into the small fighter through a round hatch under the cockpit. A few minutes later she came out smiling. “The computer says the engines are fine,” she said. “Fuel cell levels are an issue, though.”
“Naw,” said Hurley. “All we gotta do is find a few merch class freighters that ain’t too old. They’ll have fuel cells and I’m willing to bet we’ll find some that still have a little juice in ‘em.”
Katy stood there kicking the dirt. She’d been all the way around the big pit and looked at a hundred ships in various states of repair: some nearly ruined, some, like Risa’s Greenback, nearly perfect.
Hurley wanted to get the Stingray out next, so Riley got everyone to clear out of the way and moved the big ship hauler back. Katy stood on the edge of the hole where the hauler had been. It had been blocking the light on that end a little and now Katy stared straight down into the hole.
She stared down at a big freighter that’d been nearly torn in half. The designers didn’t think the ship would one day be tossed into a hole. The main storage areas were light and the thing was so long that it was prone to breaking if it was stressed. She threw a clod of dirt on it.
And then she saw something familiar. Through a hole in the freighter’s torn storage bay, she saw the end of a Martin-Huxley upgraded thruster
. The only reason she knew it was an MH is because they would use a special type of alacyte that would turn a red color after a few years. But the Argossy had Bently Mark IIs. She threw a clod of dirt at the thruster, but missed.
“Hey Hurley, we got Bently thrusters on the Argossy, right?”
Hurley was trying to get a cable around one of the Stingray’s forward cleats. He stood up and scratched his stomach. “We had Bentley’s but Marco put in the Huxley’s before we left.”
Katy grabbed a cable hanging off the big ship hauler and jumped down into the hole onto the freighter. The whole thing shifted to one side. A loud metal scraping on metal noise reverberated up and Katy had to cling to the cable so she didn’t fall into the freighter’s dark, musty smelling cargo hold. She gingerly stepped over the broken ship a few meters and peered into the hole where she saw the Huxley thruster.
She got down on all fours, one arm holding the cable, and there, nose down, sandwiched between a snarl of broken merchant and Fed military ships, was the Argossy.
“I found it,” she yelled. And Riley, who’d been designated the unofficial guard, shushed her immediately.
Hurley ran over and peered down at Katy. “Can you git back up?”
“Yeah.” He threw down some gloves and she climbed out.
“The Argossy weighs more than any of the typical Fed boats. They dumped her right off the hauler nose down into that mess and she just crushed everything on the way down.”
Pretty soon there were three ships there on the edge of the hole: the Argossy, Hurley’s Stingray and Risa’s Greenback.
“What I don’t get is why aren’t they defending these boats?” said Risa.
“To them they are worthless. They don’t fly. They are just metal. You can’t eat metal,” said Hurley.
“Will they ever fly? That’s the part I ain’t too sure about. I been here a long time and never seen nothing leave this place,” said Riley.
“Jolo said he could get these boats in the air. He’ll make it happen,” said Katy. “Now let’s get them ready. We still gotta find some fuel cells. They’re counting on us.”
Battle Royale
The first black boat appeared out of thin air right above the mall, thirty or so meters from Jolo and his little crew of Federation trained pregnant women. They were armed with the best kinetic weapons Earth had to offer, but now Jolo would find out if they could pull the trigger. It took a certain frame of mind to fire a weapon at another living thing with the intention to kill it, even something as wretched as a BG worm.
Some of the women were admin crew. They’d worked at a computer terminal somewhere in the bowels of some large, Fed military boat. Some had risen up through the ranks, and a few had made it into positions of authority, but only one had been a ground pounder: a large woman three months’ pregnant and starting to show who wanted to be called Mamba. No one knew her real name.
Jolo had sent Risa and anyone else who could fly a ship with Katy.
If it weren’t for the float effect that happened every time the portal opened, they might have all been dead before a single shot was fired. But the black boat, a single-manned fighter designed to do one thing: kill grunts on the ground, fired at the humans and missed low because they all went up about three meters.
It all happened at once. The screaming, the floating, the thick heat and electricity of the energy weapon firing all out right under the fragile human flesh.
Five of ground team, including Greeley, had already gone down the hole to the top of the admin building. The rest came crashing down onto the ice. Jolo landed on his feet and fired a grenade right at the nose of the small fighter. This little boat was deadly against ground forces but there was one worm inside controlling the ship, much like the warrior mechs.
The grenade exploded and the fighter veered off to one side, the worm inside stunned or dead. Mamba followed with several bursts from her M-16, the lead tearing into the alacyte hull making a satisfying sound. The black boat did a flip and skidded across the top upside down, kicking up gray ice, then finally came to a stop fifty meters out.
Jolo looked over at Mamba and she was grinning wildly. The others were still on the ground. Some were crying. “Get up,” yelled Jolo. “More coming. If you can’t fight then run back to the hole and help protect the wild boys.” Jolo was relieved to see Greeley’s green helmet poking up out of the hole. He jumped onto the ice and cursed at the three ground crew running off.
Jolo looked at his force. Twelve guns against the BG. The odds weren’t good. Especially when they were standing on a flat surface with no cover as far as the eye could see.
“Sittin’ ducks, Cap,” said Greeley.
“No time to get everyone down. We gotta fight here,” Jolo said, but he was also thinking about George. This might be the chance they needed. Then he turned to the team, “When we float, try to get a good shot off, then we’ll take cover behind the fallen ship.” Sure enough another black boat popped up and everyone went up again. Luckily, it was just a supply ship. Two grenades and a hundred rounds took it down in a heap. One grenade landed near the team on the ice near Greeley and knocked him on his back. He got up cussing, as everyone ran for the ship. A single BG warrior came out and it, too, went down under heavy fire. Jolo got everyone behind the dead transport.
“Conserve your ammo!” Jolo yelled. The kinetic weapons had done well, but were worthless without bullets. He counted eleven troops, all of them wide eyed and breathing hard, except for Greeley and Mamba.
Now we just need to get George through the portal, thought Jolo. If the boats came one at a time they could hold them off for awhile, or at least until they ran out of lead and grenades.
“You wanna make for the hole again and try for the vault?” said Greeley.
“Let’s hold for now, in case more ships come. Besides, George is coming.”
“Yeah. More o’ them black boats are comin’ too.”
They didn’t have to wait long.
Two Cruisers came through the portal at the same time, but Jolo and the ground team were ready and hit them with everything they had. The big ships came in out of position with no time to react. Jolo and the crew focused on crippling the big ships. Jolo had Greeley and Mamba attack the closest ship’s port engine. Meanwhile Jolo and his crew fired on the positional thrusters.
Several grenades hit the side of the boat, and even though the explosion was impressive and the force of the blast pushed the ship back, once the smoke cleared there was little damage to the thick alacyte hull. Jolo tried the M-16 and was able to penetrate the hull of the nearest boat, but it wasn’t enough to disable it. So he and the team kept hammering the engine and thrusters until it was throwing smoke. By then it had moved off the portal and was limping back to try and escape.
The second ship had been largely protected from the onslaught by the first ship. It cleared out of the danger zone as the smoking ship fought to get over the jump point. Jolo and the team had moved away from the safety of the downed transport and were killing the first Cruiser. The big smoking ship, covered in dents and bullet holes fired its rail guns, but each burst went wide because the ship couldn’t maneuver.
Through the smoke and noise, Jolo saw George. He was on the other side of the ship and running low to the ground to avoid getting hit by a stray bullet.
Jolo was starting to feel a little more confident. A crippled ship and George just showed up. Good timing.
And then two more Cruisers jumped in.
Jolo pulled everyone back behind the transport. This time one of the ships happened to be in position and fired its ion cannons right at the transport. The blast burned a hole straight through the little ship and took out one of the ground team. There was nothing left. One moment she was there, getting in position to fire her grenade launcher, and the next she was gone. The heat of the cannon ignited the grenade in her launcher and two others were killed.
Another blast came from the big Cruiser, and caught the transport’s fuel cells on fire,
so everyone had to move back.
Jolo ran under the Cruiser, Greeley on his heels, and both of them worked the underside of the black boat. Soon, it, too was trying to limp away. The first crippled boat was just about over the portal and George was running full out to meet it.
“Cap’n! We gone stay in this shitstorm?!” yelled Greeley, firing round after round into the rear positional thruster.
There was no time to explain what George was about to do and why it had to be done. Jolo believed it would work but the whole idea had a tinge of desperation to it so he hadn’t said anything to Katy or Greeley. They wouldn’t have gone for it and he didn’t need the extra weight.
Another Cruiser popped in. And Jolo and Greeley floated right up against the underside of the dying Cruiser. They fell back down and Jolo looked up and saw George scrambling back to his feet in the smoke and pounding of the rail guns and grenades. The first wounded Cruiser was over the jump spot and George was close. Jolo ordered everyone to stop shooting so George could have a clear path.
When he was ten meters out George fell onto the ice and slid face down. He lay there unmoving. The crippled, smoking Cruiser disappeared. And when the dust cleared there stood Hazuki and about twenty men with a mix of kinetic and energy weapons.
Jolo and Greeley ran for cover behind what was left of the transport. Hazuki’s men had Jolo and the crew pinned down, bullets were banging against the transport’s hull and every few seconds a giant blast from the Cruiser’s ion cannon tore another hole in the little ship.
Jolo was right next to Greeley but they couldn’t hear each other over the gunfire and the cannon blasts. So Jolo yelled into his wrist comm to Greeley, “We ain’t gonna last unless we get the Argossy in the air. Wait for that Cruiser to get a little closer then hit it with everything you’ve got. It’s got to go down.”
Everyone loaded their launchers and fired on the big ship at the same time. It backed off immediately, the grenades rocking the big ship, acid from an exploded fuel cell raining down on the ice. It was down, but not out of the fight. Jolo had Greeley and Mamba send the last few grenades they had into Hazuki and his men, who’d been trying to stay behind the Cruiser. Jolo fired his last grenade where the fuel cell leak was and there was a giant explosion.
The Jolo Vargas Space Opera Series Box Set Page 59
