Last of the Immortals (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 3) (16 page)

From the bow–on view, it probably looked like a giant snowflake. Today, that just meant more places to hide, since the freighter’s load–out was so random.

Bitter Kitten
picked a gap in those containers, a low spot about three fighters wide, and blasted through it at nearly insane speeds.

In battle, she’d have never tried something like this.

Well, probably not.

Alright, fine. In a heartbeat. It was what she did. But still.

A quick glance over.
Furious
was right in her back pocket, her own acceleration throttled back to about ninety–six percent, staying right with her.

“Got ‘em,”
Furious
called. “Two–nine–five, down fifteen.”

Bitter Kitten
looked below and left.

Yup.
Jouster
and the Kid.

Wow, that sounded like a bad western movie. Have to remember that later
.

She smiled.

“Here we go.”

Ξ

It was a scene reminiscent of the flights above the planet
Callumnia
.

Hànchén
had reflown the scenario three times, identifying the spots where the woman Nakamura, now his team–mate, had been able to edge him out to place third.

Cho, also known as
Furious
, was an exceptional flyer, an intuitive genius in a field that favored such talent. She had deserved to beat him.

Then.

He had studied. While others had played games or engaged in dissipation of various sorts, he had spent time reviewing and learning. Command Centurion Keller had a reputation as a woman who refought old battles in order to become better. It was a lesson he had learned growing up. Study, practice, learn.

But, there was no time for academics on the battlefield. One studied, one practiced during times of quiet contemplation, that the lessons became automatic when thinking was no longer possible.

Everything was prepared. He was prepared. He felt the mask of war descend over his face, turning him from a student of war into a maker.

“
Hànchén
,”
Jouster
called on the comm, “you ready?”

Flight Cornet Murali Ma smiled at the world around him. “Born ready, old man,” he replied, deeply inside that place he went in battle. “We going to do this?”

“Waypoint Charlie,”
Jouster
said. “Max speed.”

Hànchén
had already known that target would be their point of emergence.
Jouster
was not predictable, at least not very much so, and it was a good spot.

It was, however, predictable.

It was a good thing they were good at what they did. Imperial pilots just didn’t train to this level of skill very often.

Imperials were all about the team dynamic, groups of two, four, twelve. Whole squadrons flying in mass formations and overwhelming you, instead of individual bad–ass warriors going mano–a–mano.

Ma stayed right on
Jouster
’s right flank as their strike fighters emerged from the shadow of the closest freighter and began to scan the hostile skies.

Ξ

Okay, that was just too damned tight. Were all
Aquitaine
pilots like this, or was
Bitter Kitten
completely insane
?

Furious
smiled at the thought. They had had at least three meters of clearance on either side of their little group as they blasted through the superstructure of the mega–freighter. The chance of actually hitting were pretty low, unless someone was shooting at you and you had to weave.

But damn, that was off the charts. It was the sort of thing she might do, just to make
Jouster
look bad.

“Got ’em,”
Furious
said to her teammate as she picked up
Jouster
’s group. “Two–nine–five, down fifteen.”

She could tell Darya was having fun by the smile in her voice when she replied.

“Here we go.”

Jouster
and
Hànchén
were just coming out from behind freighter number sixteen and hadn’t seen them yet. It was way too far away for the beam weapons to be effective, and too much risk of hitting the neutral vessel with overshot.

Instead,
Bitter Kitten
redlined her engines and dove. It wasn’t quite right on an intercept course for where they were going, but where they were at right now. Fastest way to get into melee, where
Furious
would have the edge. Not much, but you didn’t need much.

Luck and timing were at least as important as skill in a game like this.

Furious
could tell the very moment
Jouster
picked them up. He spun his craft onto its left wing so that the two girls were directly above him. A moment later,
Hànchén
did the same.

She wondered what her lead would do, but
Bitter Kitten
kept it flat, and flat out, so she stayed put.

“You ready?”
Bitter Kitten
asked. There was a hard edge of adrenalin in her voice now. Excited. Intoxicated. Almost aroused.
Furious
knew exactly how she felt.

“On you,”
Furious
replied.

“Starting to turn now,”
Bitter Kitten
said. “Stay with me on this one. We’ll hand off when we get closer.”

“Roger that.”

Furious
had learned to anticipate the other fighters in her wing by now. There was a ballet to how thruster valves irised open and closed, and how they rotated. You watched your partner with one eye, and the bad guys with the other, and it looked like you were flying as a single entity.

Bitter Kitten
was initiating a wide, looping turn, almost a barrel–roll, over and to their left. She followed.

The boys were suddenly above them as they dove down toward the planet.

They had responded by turning shallowly inbound. Not quite enough to directly intercept, but enough to bring the two groups closer in a swirl.

First secret of melee flying, her father had told her, was to force the other guy to commit his mistake by reacting to something he thought you were going to do, rather than what you did.

The rule of four. He moves to the wrong spot and has to stop, and then he has move to the right spot and get into position. Every mistake costs him four times over.

Right now, nobody was committing, but this was where
Furious
knew she had an edge.
Aquitaine
had a lot of money for missiles, so they used them from a distance, to hunt one another, or break up formations, or just to surprise people.

Corynthe
was poor. You got right on top of the other guy with guns and let the beams do the talking. They were cheap.

She had years of this kind of combat. The other three were good, sure, but they always went for missiles first.

Furious
smiled as the vectors in her mind aligned with those on the screen.

Now.

“
Bitter Kitten
,” she said, drawing a line and transmitting it. “Come to this bearing and start your fade. I’m about to do something that’s not in your training manual. Yet.”

Rather than respond over the comm,
Bitter Kitten
’s fighter did the talking.
Furious
watched the maneuvering thrusters and engine valves adjust, just long enough to confirm the timing of everything, and then released several of her gyros, eased her engines, and snapped the control yoke over.

From the boys’ point of view, it would look just like another barrel roll coming, especially if they made the mistake of watching her nose instead of her flight path.

Everybody did that. Usually, it was good enough.

Furious
smiled.

Usually
.

Her little M–6 fighter was the top of the line. The M–5 was good, but it couldn’t do this nearly as easily.

Furious
was inside a tornado, spinning on her ass instead of her centerline as the nose of her fighter wobbled in a circle twice the radius of the engine nacelles. The best part was that she was generally staying on line, even if it was a very wobbly line.

She let her instincts take over. No use in losing points for hitting the non–combatants.

As the nose of the craft wobbled, she stoked the firing stud and quickly released it, firing a very short burst as her guns came into line with
Jouster
’s team.

And then she circled again.

And fired again.

And again.

A happy chirp in her ear told her she had lined the shot right. Someone over there had just gotten thumped.

Furious
figured she’d made her point. And was close to losing her lunch from the torque this spinning was generating on her innards. She brought the gyros back on line hard.

It was like hitting the bottom of the hangman’s rope. But it had worked.

“You still with me?” she called.

“That was insane,
Furious
,”
Bitter Kitten
howled happily. “You’ve got to teach me that trick tomorrow.”

“Roger that,
Bitter Kitten
. Who did I get?”

“
Jouster
just lost all of his shields and maybe part of one wing,” her partner said, sliding down and back into the corner behind her.

“Well then,”
Furious
smiled ferally. “Let’s go clip his other wing.”

Ξ

“Before any of you ask,” Iskra said, giving the briefing room her best angry–boss–scowl, “I’ve checked the design parameters of the two craft.”

She paused and made individual eye–contact with each of her pilots to ram home her point.
Furious
and
Bitter Kitten
sat in the dead center, with
Hànchén
next to
Furious
and
Jouster
beyond that. Most of the rest of the pilots and gunners that made up the flight wing had apparently found an excuse to watch the session, and had wandered into the room to listen.

As long as they were quiet, Iskra was willing to let them stay. After all, it wasn’t every day that everyone got to watch
Jouster
get his ass handed to him by one of his own pilots. Let alone two of them.

She softened the scowl. A little. Down from Biblical levels.

“If you slam the gyros back into alignment that hard,” she continued, “you will probably not lose any of them the first time. I highly recommended replacing them after about the third try. They should explode about the fifth time you pull that stunt.”

Furious
raised a hand. It was kind of quaint, in a room like this. Iskra bestowed a warm smile on her. Not that the others would take the example, but they might.

“Yes,
Furious
?”

“Is there anything Moirrey can do to reinforce them?”

Huh. Smart, too. Thinking so far outside the box as to be nearly outside the warehouse.

“I’ll ask, but probably not before you have to deal with the Red Admiral.”

After all, they were only days from
Götterdämmerung
at this point.

Chapter XXVI

Date of the Republic June 14, 394 Alexandria Station, Ballard

So this was what it felt like to catch a disease.

Ugh
.

The organics could keep it
.

Somewhere inside her was a parasite.

Suvi could sense him.

Lurking.

Seeding chaos.

Seventeen people had died during the emergency evacuation. Another one hundred fifty–three had been dropped in such remote locations that planetary response forces were being stretched to the very limit to get to them.

It would be good practice, if an Imperial fleet was about to arrive.

At least with the proclamation of martial law, the station was emptying as rapidly as shuttles could make the round trip. People weren’t pleased, but not many of them were arguing.

Not when they might suddenly find themselves dead instead.

Nothing like a good hanging to focus the mind, as the old saying went.

Now if they could only find a way for one immensely ancient AI system to make her own getaway.

Suvi dared not share her various contingency plans with any of the locals. All it would take would be one innocent blabbing to the wrong people to spoil it and trap her, but good. There was nobody around today that she trusted that highly.

Command Centurion Jessica Keller had a reputation for being an unconventional tactician and strategist. Perhaps, just perhaps, there would be an option there.

After all, they can only kill me once. Right
?

Alexandria Station
hadn’t been this empty in centuries. From the few cameras she could access, there were whole sections of the station hastily abandoned. At least it was summer right now. Lots of people had already put things into storage and headed out on vacation. That made it easier to evacuate.

Of course, it also made it easier to hide.

What idiot decided to keep her entirely separated from the security systems on this station?

That wasn’t entirely fair. She could remember the man very well. He had epitomized the word
bureaucrat
in all the wrong ways.

It wasn’t really Henri Baudin’s fault, either. His prescriptions had been put in place to keep her kind from utterly dominating humans again. She could see the rightness in that. After all, it was the power of the
Sentiences
over humanity that nearly destroyed the species in the first place.

She could see where they might not appreciate her kind after that.

Up until then, Suvi had pretty much full run of the station. Of course, it had been nearly sixty percent smaller in those days. The Founder of the
Republic of Aquitaine
had called for the growth of the University of Ballard as an engineering school.

As they rebuilt it, they shoved her out of various systems, slowly restricting her full control back to almost nothing more than the original station that had been lofted into orbit by Doyle Iwakuma and his family’s connections, once upon a very long time ago. Things that had been hardwired in the early days and couldn’t be easily unwired today.