Читать книгу PROTECTED - Marcus Calvert - Страница 6

My half-time mid-air refueling was almost complete. The monstrous YR-1 refueling/armaments plane was linked to my fighter via three hoses. One refueled me. Another refilled my coolant tank, which had taken shrapnel damage and was still leaking. The third one refilled the chin turret, which I had all but fired dry.

Twelve high-altitude repair drones kept pace with us. The ladybug-shaped constructs refitted me with missiles and made repairs to the ship’s hull and engine. My internal systems were at 83% capacity and climbing. That was a good thing, considering the way Ugasu’s Blade of Osiris half-nailed me with that EMP surge. Erika’s Afrikan Phoenix wasn’t quite so lucky. The surge fried her systems and turned her sleek little plane into a multi-ton paperweight. She barely managed to bail out before her bird crashed into the Indian Ocean (today’s pre-designated “battleground”).

I took care of Ugasu with my minigun. Then I got lucky and dumped my last spread of missiles into Thomas’ Queen and Country, turning him into a fond memory. Just before intermission, Gregor’s Iron Sickle fell to Assad’s Scimitar of Allah. But, as Gregor attempted to water-land his bird, Assad decided to follow his hated rival downward and finish him off. For some reason, Gregor didn’t eject, which would’ve been the equivalent of yielding. Per the rules, he would’ve been safe. Instead, he let Assad get in close. Then the Russian blew up his missile payload out of spite. The resulting explosion took both planes out of the air.

Five of us remained.

My tac-link chimed once. Command was calling to give me a sitrep on the other four fighters.

“Nice flying up there, Mendez,” Colonel Zint declared as his face appeared on one of my many monitors.

The gaunt, white-haired ex-aviator was one of the best dueling pilots that House America ever produced. He taught me everything I knew about aerial combat. Were he not pushing fifty, Zint would be in this cockpit right now. Behind him was a massive control room full of personnel and fancy computers, all tasked to this mission. This duel was my twelfth and probably most important.

“Thank you, sir,” I said with a casual salute.

He returned the gesture with a proud grin.

“Any injuries to report?”

“No sir,” I replied. “What’s the word on the weather? That morning sky’s getting pretty dark.”

“There’s a major storm front coming in from the south.”

“So this aerial massacre might be called on account of rain?” I jokingly asked.

Zint gave me a reassuring smile.

“That’s the sweet advantage of being able to fly at MACH, Mendez. Uploading coordinates for a secondary dueling site.”

I looked down and watched the coordinates appear. It looked like we were taking this little brawl to the Adriatic. Fair enough. We once had to duel through any kind of weather conditions. But then one of the planes got knocked out of the sky while trying to maneuver through a hurricane. Since then, the Secretary General updated the rules.

“You’ll be done and ready to disembark in five minutes.”

“Confirmed,” I replied. “Any footage I need to see?”

“Oh yeah,” Zint replied, suddenly all business. “You’ve got a real dogfight on your hands, son.”

“Show me.”

My monitor flashed once. A tiny holo-camera to my left shined out a larger image of aerial combat footage, taken about six minutes ago. Two sleek fighters were engaging each other with the standard missiles and minigun rounds. Based on the House emblems on their wings, the planes were from India and Brazil. Ghanendra, the House India pilot, had the upper hand at first. He slipped in behind Lenore’s Rio’s Light and cut loose with the minigun. Just as he was about to take her out, a plasma surge erupted from the Brazilian fighter like an expanding bubble.

It hit the Shiva’s Hammer like, well … a hammer. The fighter’s armor was shredded as it fell from the sky. The Rio’s Light broke off to engage another fighter. I couldn’t blame Lenore for making the mistake. The Shiva’s Hammer was on fire and heading for the drink. That should’ve been the end of it.

Then, all of a sudden, it disappeared!

“Where’d it go?” I asked, kind of mystified.

“Satellites spotted it a few seconds later,” Zint replied as he hit a few buttons on his end. “Check this out.”

The Shiva’s Hammer reappeared miles above his previous position then continued to fall like a wounded animal. From the angle, it looked like Ghanendra teleported upwards to buy himself some time. House India should not have teleportation tech that fucking small!

“The sneaky little bastard popped up in sub-orbital range,” Zint continued, “allowing himself more time to work his engines. But that’s not all. Look at the zoom-in.”

The satellite image fast-forwarded as it zoomed in on Shiva’s Hammer. Its armor was regenerating.

“How long did it take?”

“About a minute,” Zint replied with evident astonishment. “The fires were doused and the damned fighter’s hull looks nearly good-as-new. But this was the slick part.”

I watched the fighter teleport again. A few seconds later, an adjusted satellite feed showed the Shiva’s Hammer as it reappeared behind the Rio’s Light and just cut loose with its forward wing turrets.

“Guess Ghanendra lost his cool,” I muttered.

“Fine by me,” Zint replied. “It spooked Lenore enough to make her tip her hand.”

The Rio’s Light, reeling under minigun fire, suddenly sprouted an extra layer of nose-to-tail armor.

“Nanite-based?” I asked.

“Probably,” Zint replied. “It shrugged off his rounds like nothing.”

The footage ceased.

“How many times can he teleport?”

Zint sighed.

“We’re still trying to figure out how they managed to rig a teleporter without a fusion generator to power it.”

“Fusion generators count as a third modification,” I hinted. “Think they’re cheating?”

“The Secretary-General’s one savvy AI, with spies in every House,” the colonel replied with dead-certainty. “If they were cheating, he’d know about it. Besides, the satellites didn’t pull a fusion reading off his plane.”

I didn’t buy it.

“Colonel, how could he run a teleporter – multiple times – off a regular jet engine?” I asked. “That smells to me.”

“I’ll bug the Judges about it,” Zint assured me. “Just assume that Ghanendra can teleport all day and expect him to pop out on your six at any time.”

“Understood. What about the Aussies and Italians?”

“Pull up their combat footage,” Zint ordered to someone off-screen.

The image shifted to their respective fighters. At first, they made three high-speed passes at each other. The Wings of Venice dumped a mad volley of ammo from at least eight different mounted guns, one of the House Italy mods. But the Australian’s Jigsaw Saber nimbly dodged the hyper-velocity barrage without a scratch, which should’ve been impossible.

“Sat scans indicate that Vincenzo’s guns were firing four different types of ammo – plasma rounds, heat-seeking slugs, high-explosive rounds, and viral slugs.”

I hate viral slugs! Upon impact, the ammo could literally allow Vincenzo to hack into my fighter’s CPU. On a whim, he could turn off my engines, auto-eject me, or even autopilot me straight into the ocean. Mixed in with four other hard-hitting types of ammunition, I might get tagged and then hacked … or just blown to pieces.

“What’s the second mod?”

Before Zint could answer, I spotted it. Miles cut loose with a volley of mini-missiles from the Jigsaw Saber at close-range. At least one of the beer-can-sized warheads should’ve hit the Wings of Venice. Instead, they all veered off and flew back at the Jigsaw Saber, which barely had time to dump chaff and get clear before they exploded in his wake.

“Some kind of countermeasure,” Zint replied. “Vincenzo’s bird can actually con the missiles into chasing a different target.”

“Neat tech,” I admitted. “If he can paint my bird, he could actually steer someone else’s missiles towards me.”

“That evil thought crossed our minds, too. But you haven’t seen the best of ‘em all.”

“What? The Australians managed to come up with something worse?”

Zint nodded and gestured toward the holo-image. Miles took the Jigsaw Saber away from Vincenzo’s Wings of Venice. Then, at ridiculously high speeds, the Saber broke apart into fragments. I could actually see the crazy bastard hurtling amidst the debris, still in his pilot’s chair!

Then, within two seconds, the pieces reformed themselves into the shape of a humanoid robot with a very large rifle in its hands. Thrusters in its feet and back held it aloft as Miles aimed his robot’s blocky gun at Vincenzo and fired away at full-auto. Vincenzo veered away after taking a bunch of minor hits to his armor, which looked to be the standard fighter stock.

“A flying combat mech?!” I winced. That crap was supposed to only be possible on the cartoons I watched as a kid!

“They’ve been toying with technomorphic weaponry for years,” Zint shrugged. “We always thought it was a dead-end.”

“But why?” I frowned. “He can’t outmaneuver anybody like that.”

“Keep watching,” Zint replied.

I watched Vincenzo make another pass with his multi-cannons and try to blow his Australian counterpart out of the sky. Even piloting the bulky robot, Miles managed to perfectly evade the cannon fire.

“How’s he dodging like that?” I asked.

“Some kind of tactical evasion program’s set into his controls. Anything coming at him will cause it to react. In that mech configuration, he’s way more agile.”

“You mean he can dodge anything we shoot at him? Even missiles?”

“Possibly. Keep in mind that this is a shaky theory that our eggheads scraped together five minutes ago. My advice would be to pattern-fire your missiles and blow them all up at once. He won’t be able to dodge a blast that big.”

“Fair enough.”

Even with all of their fancy mods, I could win this. Yes, they knew about my fighter’s force field. But no one knew about the Eagle’s hypno-emitter. Built into the wings, it’s designed to render anyone who directly looked at it into a mindless vegetable for about thirty minutes.

As the YR-1 disengaged its hoses, the repair drones flew off. My systems were all in the green. I kicked on my aft thrusters and headed for the rendezvous. The second half would start up in five minutes. Odds were that Miles and Vincenzo would finish their little feud (as would Lenore and Ghanendra). That’s fine with me. I can just fly off to the side and let my enemies waste ammo on each other.

It’ll make killing them so much easier.

“Time’s almost up, Mendez. Any questions?”

“Nah,” I replied. “You’ve been more than thorough, sir.”

“It’s what they pay me for,” Zint replied with a stiff, formal salute.

I returned it.

“And don’t forget to finish your letter,” Zint said. “You’re making history today.”

“Oh yeah,” I grinned. “Almost forgot. I’ll forward it to you in a minute.”

Zint nodded and broke contact. The old man must’ve sent dozens of holo-letters to his three daughters over the years. A common tradition among House pilots, holo-letters were started before the duel and then finished by any pilot who survived until half-time. Should a pilot die, the holo-letter would be sent to his/her next of kin. In certain circles, each one was worth six figures (at least).

In our line of work, this counted as life insurance.

Yes, the Mercenary Houses took care of the dependents of their fallen pilots, but they could be cheap at times. The bigger the stakes, the more valuable the holo-letter. For those few duelists lucky enough to retire, holo-letters were worth far more than their crappy pensions. Winning – or even surviving – a duel added to their value. If Zint (a living legend) auctioned off his holo-letters today, he’d be a millionaire tomorrow.

I sighed as I lowered my helmet’s breathing visor and thought of home.

Becky could never sleep whenever I dueled. She’d be glued to the flat screen, like the rest of the world, watching us fly and die. Little Isaac was probably asleep in his crib, dreaming of whatever nine-month-olds dreamed about. This was my third duel since his birth. All my holo-letters were now directed his way, each one explaining different parts of the dueling tradition. I rewound to the beginning and listened to it as I flew, hoping I covered the major points.

I started off by explaining that this had to be the largest duel in years. All ten of the world’s remaining nations and their Mercenary Houses decided to participate. With stakes this high, everyone expected the Secretary General to select a ground-based contest between mechanized battalions. Instead, the U.N., which basically ran the planet these days, called for an aerial duel. Each House would send one fighter with standard-issue thrusters, weaponry, and two weapon modifications of its choice.

The prize: a huge, recently discovered mineral bed smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Rather than split the mineral rights amongst themselves, the ten Houses decided to have a “winner-take-all” duel to the death. While these House duels were an odd way to settle disputes, they were preferable to the nuclear wars of old.

Satisfied that I had covered the basics, I hit RECORD.

“Sorry about that,” I sighed. “My CO wanted a quick status chat. The duel is about to resume, so this is where I sign off. As always, you and your mom are in my thoughts. I’ll win this duel and make it home to you both. I won’t do it just for House and Country. I’ll do it so I can watch you grow into a man and spoil your kids rotten.”

I grinned as my bird broke the sound barrier.

“Sleep tight, son. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

With that, I hit a few buttons to end the transmission and sent the holo-letter to Colonel Zint. I pulled my helmet’s visor down and headed for the Adriatic. The sun gleamed through the clouds in a mesmerizing fashion. I felt a familiar anticipation as I armed the weapons systems and waited for my enemies’ fighters to appear on my long-range radar.

It was a wonderful day for dueling.