by Rachel Aukes
“It has,” Throttle added as the image of Al “the Ghost” Hinze filled her mind. The pirate had started as a stowaway on Throttle’s colony ship, haunting the crew for fifteen years, thus earning a nickname. When they reached the Ross system, Hinze joined up with a crew of Jader pirates and had caused trouble for the Black Sheep ever since, not the least of all included setting off a bomb at Finn and Sylvian’s wedding, killing three of the crew. Throttle tried to give up the need for vengeance when Anna East, the crime boss who’d ordered the bombing, was killed. But Throttle found that the desire for vengeance could easily become an addiction.
The proximity alarm sounded. Throttle swerved to avoid clipping another ship by the slimmest margin.
She retrained her focus on flying the Javelin through the fleet until she arrived at their formation group. The four other ships were already lined up, and she recognized each of them: Hank Williams’s Whirlwind, Jack Ames’s Errant, Munny Munson’s Drake, and Detroit Jackson’s Valkyrie, in which Punch now rode.
Their group flew as part of the Strike fleet, which moved at jump speed to the asteroid belt. Salvage ships and tugs had somehow managed to move the large asteroid so that the fleet could directly enter the black hole without risk of a collision on the return trip. The Black Sheep’s group entered the black hole, along with three other groups, in the middle of the fleet.
As the ship began to buffet, Throttle glanced back at the two team members still aboard the Javelin with her. “Get ready for the turbulence.”
“Turbulence, I can handle,” Finn said as he gripped his armrests. “It’s another month in the black soup I’d rather skip.”
One month later, the Black Sheep’s formation group emerged from the black hole. Throttle kept her hands on the controls through the rough transition. The windshield view of black nothingness turned into stars and the Strike fleet in an instant. A ship flew across the Javelin’s bow, and Throttle banked to avoid it, forcing her to break formation. “Hang on!”
“Look out!” Finn pointed. Throttle dove the Javelin under a damaged Swarm probe that seemed determined to take down a ship in a kamikaze maneuver.
Photon beams flashed across space, seemingly from every direction. There was no sense of any formation anymore. Every ship was scrambling to avoid the probes and drones filling the space around them like bubbles below a waterfall.
The Strike fleet had emerged from the black hole to find that hell had already unleashed its hordes.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Cadet Yale Headey hadn’t been in the Peacekeepers long enough to earn his marshal’s badge. He was the Red team leader and unofficial leader of this year’s cadets, earning those titles less from proving himself and more because both his parents had been marshals, and their parents before that. Yale hadn’t considered any other career, not that his parents would’ve even considered it.
Yale wanted to be a marshal more than anything. He’d started flying at fourteen, the minimum age to get a pilot’s license in the Ross system. He’d done everything possible to help him get the badge, including sparring with his parents and their marshal buddies. He’d even snagged a copy of the Galactic Peacekeeper rules and regulations and read it before bedtime every night—which really wasn’t the best time to read that sort of thing, since it put him to sleep faster than a shot of zaleplon-laced whiskey.
Yale had been accepted into the marshal program, but he still had fourteen months of training ahead of him. It came as no wonder that he was more than a bit surprised when he was put on active duty and was assigned to a team with a specialist fresh out of training.
Sitting in the captain’s seat of a small ship named the Hellcat, he familiarized himself with the controls. He really could’ve used a practice run. Instead, he was given ten minutes to acquaint himself with the smallest of the GP gunships, because that was how long it took the dock control team to seal the airlocks and undock the ship.
He glanced over at Parks, the hardware specialist who’d been on Yale’s Red team in the cadet program. As a specialist, she’d finished training in less than half the time Yale needed to earn his marshal’s badge.
“You ready, Parks?” Yale asked.
“Do I have another choice?” she replied.
“Not really.” Yale backed the Hellcat out of the docking bay. He overcorrected and nearly bumped into Free Station before awkwardly leveling out.
“You do know how to fly, right?” she asked.
He scowled. “Of course I do. These controls are really sensitive—they’ll just take a little while to get used to.”
“I hope you get used to them before we reach the Swarm.”
Me too.
Chills—honest to God goose bumps—erupted all over Yale’s skin when he emerged from Free Station’s docks and saw the hundred-plus ships forming up in smaller groups of four rather than in the usual groups of five. They were half of the Iron fleet, called to protect the Ross system against the Swarm when they attacked.
And they attacked. Holy hell, did they attack. Within the past hour, Free Station received word of four mining camps having been destroyed. Those camps hadn’t just been destroyed—they’d been obliterated. First-response teams weren’t even deployed because the decimation was so complete that no one could’ve survived.
The Swarm seemed to have one hell of a chip on its shoulder against people, and Ross especially.
The other half of the Iron fleet had already been deployed across all major colonies. The planet Hiraeth looked like it had fleas with all the ships in its orbit. Marshals (bona fide marshals, not cadets like Yale) and freelance security crews were in the first half of the Iron fleet. They were in position as the primary (and last) defense for the larger colonies, so they weren’t going to break orbit to chase down the Swarm currently terrorizing the outer colonies.
Yale figured that Chief Roux had probably hoped that he wouldn’t need to assemble the second half of the fleet, because—even to Yale’s eyes—it looked like a bunch of hoodlums, and that was putting it mildly. He piloted the Hellcat away from Free Station and to his formation group. He didn’t recognize any of the three ships. Two of the ships bore the jade-green flags displayed by Jader pirates.
He gulped. He thought it was a desperate move by Chief to call in cadets, but to call in pirates? “We’re so screwed.”
“What’s that?” Parks asked.
“We’ve got a great crew,” he replied quickly.
She gave him a funny look, and he focused on his computer panel. His formation group leader, captaining a ship called the Mockingbird, sent flight plan data and a countdown. One minute.
The communication system chimed. “The fleet’s been approved to move out. They’re sending four formation groups to a space station that fits their estimates as the next possible Swarm attack. Hopefully, we get lucky,” Parks said.
“Lucky as in the Swarm don’t show up, or lucky as in the Swarm do show up?” Yale asked.
“Yep.”
Yale opened his mouth to speak, then shook off his partner’s response. “We jump in forty seconds.”
The formation groups were loose and haphazard, and Yale wondered how many captains were actually sticking to the data laid out in their flight plans. He hoped everyone in his group did, because he really didn’t like the idea of hitting another ship at jump speed. Even the smallest tap would cause a non-survivable collision. Yale didn’t turn nineteen until next week. He was too young to die, and he absolutely didn’t want to die a virgin.
He blew out a breath. Think good thoughts, think good thoughts.
He watched the clock. Twenty seconds. He double-checked the numbers and prepped the jump system.
With five seconds left on the timer, the lead ship jumped. “Oh, what the hell,” Yale muttered, and he initiated jump speed.
Yale’s formation group came out of jump speed at the edge of a battle underway. The other three formation groups were already there, fighting against a handful of Swarm probes. The rest
of their formation group raced into the battle.
“I’m on the gun,” Parks said.
“Hold on.” Rather than entering the fray, Yale held back and took in the scene. There couldn’t have been more than six or seven probes, but they moved faster than anything Yale had ever seen. The enemy sped and cut corners like cockroaches. The Iron ships seemed to be in a constant game of catch-up like flies teeming around a carcass. Only one Swarm probe had been hit. Sparks trailed from a hole in its hull as it flew, not in any way handicapped by the blast. Two Iron ships were already down. One was split in half and had spit out its contents and crew. The other was drifting, its engine sparking and coughing every time they tried to restart it. Another ship stood between the Swarm and the disabled ship, firing shots at any probes that came too close.
The Swarm seemed to have little interest in the Iron ships while they made attack runs on the space station. Yale would’ve assumed the station was a derelict, except for the lights. ROD’S REPAIR GARAGE was painted in bright orange. Beneath the name, he could still read UNS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH VESSEL in faded letters along the outside of the white exterior that had been patched so many times, it looked more like a quilt than a space station.
The station wasn’t faring well. It had been breached in several places, and Yale noticed escape pods ejecting from its belly.
He watched the Swarm as they zigzagged through and around the Iron ships, which were firing nonstop, trying to get in a lucky shot. The Swarm only fired when they had a shot lined up for them; otherwise, they exclusively focused on their attack runs.
Yale began to see a rhythm to the Swarm’s movement. It was almost graceful, disguised by the barrage of photon blasts shooting from the cannons protruding from their bows like giant stingers.
“What are you waiting for? Get us in there so I can take a friggin’ shot,” his partner said.
“Just getting my bearings,” he said as he focused on memorizing their rhythm.
Parks blew out a breath. “Come on. Everyone else is in the fight. Get us in there.”
Yale held up his hand as he watched the battle for a few more seconds. “Haven’t you ever heard the phrase ‘work smarter, not harder’?”
“No.”
After several more seconds, Parks started to cuss.
“Got it.” He banked from the concentrated battle and instead flew toward a probe that was flying away.
“For Chrissakes, why are you going after that one? The one to your left is closer,” she grumbled.
“Get ready.” Yale flew straight. The probe swerved to the right, putting more distance between it and the Iron ships. Yale entered a gentle barrel roll. The probe swung around and came screaming back in the direction it’d originally come from, moving so fast that it was below the Hellcat just as Yale had the ship perfectly upside down.
Parks fired a little late, but the first of her shots clipped the probe on its tail, bending its engine. The enemy probe entered a spiral that continued to tighten until the ship became a blur, followed by an explosion. Debris flew out from where the Swarm had been.
Parks let out a whoop. “I disintegrated that Swarm’s ass.”
Yale grinned. “Now, let’s pin the tail on another Swarm.” He turned the Hellcat around to seek out another probe when one nearly crashed through their bow.
“Fu—” Yale didn’t even get the word out before he cranked the ship around to find the enemy. But they were gone. “Where’d they go?”
Parks was scrolling through her screens. “I can’t find the little bastards.” After a few seconds, she turned to face him. “I think we scared them off.”
Yale glanced back at the space station and wondered how many innocents they’d just saved. He smiled. “Yeah.”
Their communication line chimed. Parks glanced down at her screen. “The Mockingbird’s pinging us.”
“I see it.” Yale accepted the call.
“This is your team leader. Good work, Hell Group—that’s our group name I came up with, in honor of the ship that made the first Swarm kill in this group. Congratulations Hellcat,” a woman’s voice came over the comm line from the Mockingbird.
“Hell Group? I like it. Almost as much as I like looking at your pretty face,” a gruff man’s voice said. The comm system showed that he transmitted from the Cabal, which Yale was willing to bet was one of the pirate ships.
“I bet that’s almost as much as I don’t like looking at your ugly mug,” the Mockingbird captain replied; then she added, “Wait, Hellcat, why can’t I see you?”
Yale bit his lip as he looked around the small bridge. “Uh, because we only have a comm line. No video.”
Several chuckles erupted over the line.
“He probably doesn’t want us to see he’s just a kid,” the captain from the Ender’s Game said. “Seriously, how old are you, kid? You sound like you’re twelve.”
Yale scowled. “I’m eighteen. Almost nineteen.”
“Wow. A whopping eighteen years old. You out of diapers yet, kid?” the Cabal captain said.
More laughs filled the line. Even Parks laughed, and Yale shot her a glare. “You’re the same age as me,” he said, barely above a whisper so the other ship captains wouldn’t hear.
“Enough already. In case you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of an alien invasion,” the Mockingbird captain said. “The smart analysts in Free Station are currently doing their fancy calculations to figure out where the Swarm will show up next.”
“Jade-8,” came the Cabal captain’s voice. “I’d bet both my wives on it. It’s the nearest colony to Rod’s, and it’s in the same sector.”
“Shep’s right. I just got a message from my kid on Jade-8. He works in the control tower. He said they’re picking up a lot of bogeys approaching the station, and they’re moving fast,” said the Ender’s Game captain.
“I’ll relay that to Free Station and to the rest of our grouping. Then we wait for direction from them,” the Mockingbird captain said.
“Screw that. Jade-8’s our people. We’re heading out,” Shep said.
“I’m with Shep. Ender’s also heading out.”
Yale heard a woman curse something about pirates, anal sex, and mangy dogs. “Fine. I’m sending jump data to Hell Group now. We jump in one minute. Oh, and nice shot, Hellcat. Not bad for a kid without a vid screen. You have the only confirmed kill on this run. You’re falling behind, Jaders.”
Parks beamed, and Yale smiled before he spoke. “The Swarm move in patterns. It’s like a mock battle in an airshow. Each probe is performing its own pattern over and over.”
“Thanks for the tip, kid. I’ll relay it to the fleet. Hell Group, see you at Jade-8,” the Mockingbird captain said.
The comm line went dead, and Yale input the new jump data. He turned to Parks. “Ready for another run at the Swarm?”
She grinned. “Hell yeah.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The black hole vomited the Strike fleet. Ships tumbled out of formation groups. One jackknifed across the windshield of the Javelin.
“Whoa!” Throttle frantically worked the controls and dove before the edge of the other ship sliced the hull.
“Think they freaked out rather than rode the wave?” Sylvian asked.
“No idea,” Throttle said. “For all we know, the hole could be messing with us, too. You both ready on the guns?”
“I have the cannon,” Finn said.
“I have the rail gun.” Sylvian blew out a breath. “I can do this,” she said, likely to herself rather than to the crew.
“You can do this,” Finn said. “It’s just like I showed you. Just line up the target on the grid and then tap the trigger.”
“And try not to shoot down any of our own people while I’m at it,” Sylvian added.
“That’d be good,” he said.
“Our group leader just sent a check-in request, and I replied,” Sylvian said, then added, “Looks like everyone in our group made it in one piece.”
“But not everyone in the fleet,” Throttle said, then cussed.
She turned her attention to the grid on her panel. Each ship in her group was flagged so she could monitor their locations. She’d also flagged the Gauntlet, but its icon hadn’t yet appeared on the grid. It had entered the hole behind them, so she reminded herself that it wouldn’t show up for another minute or two.
The grid lit up with more dots as more of the fleet arrived. But then dots appeared near the front of the fleet…so many that the individual dots morphed together into a blanket of lights coming toward them.
She looked up and saw Swarm probes shoot out from Vantage Core. There were far more enemies than they’d anticipated. Chills stiffened her fingers. “Get ready. It looks like we’re going to have company and lots of it.”
She stayed with the formation group as they flew out to greet the enemy with their fully charged armaments. Their group leader fed data and directions regularly to the formation as they flew.
The Strike fleet had planned a massive stacked arrowhead formation, with groupings rotating through the point as ships took damage. The plan was to have the Gauntlet safely protected behind the arrowhead until it reached a critical distance from the planet. The plan was smart and would work…if the Swarm didn’t catch on. If the Swarm realized the danger the Gauntlet posed to their planet, it would be impossible for the Strike fleet to prevent every probe from getting through to the one ship that had to achieve its mission. If the Swarm took control of Rusty again, they could learn details of the plan through his mind. Rusty was both their iron fist and their Achilles’ heel. Eddy believed that they could prevent Vantage Core from claiming Rusty, and Throttle believed in them.
