Sol Strike (Battlegroup Z Book 3) by Daniel Gibbs (red novels .txt) 📗

orange, and purple, was breathtaking. The vortex grew until it was large enough for a single-seat small craft.

Justin pushed the throttle forward and accelerated. All around him, other small wormholes opened, and the two dozen fighters raced through. During the several-second journey through the fabric of space-time itself, he experienced sensory overload. Everything seemed to fade out, and for a few moments, Justin wasn’t sure he was still conscious.

“Spencer, can you hear me?” Feldstein’s voice seemed distant and distorted.

It was all Justin could do to focus on her words and process them through his mind. “Yeeeah.” He blinked. The stars had returned to normal. “Wow. That was a head triiip,” he continued.

“Yeah. I closed my eyes during transit. It seemed to help.”

“I think we’re in the right place,” Justin said as the universe came back into focus. The stars quit spinning, and he moved his gaze to the sensor readout in his HUD. It took an average of five seconds after a successful jump for all electronics on a vessel to restart—an eternity in hostile space.

All of a sudden, dozens of red dots appeared. “You seeing this?”

“If by ‘this,’ you mean loads of League ships, then yes.”

“Well, it was unlikely we’d knock one out of the park on our first at-bat.”

“Sports metaphor? Really? Come on. You’ve got to have a better line in there somewhere.”

Justin studied the sensor data intently. Most of the contacts were civilian freighters, and several were large space stations around gas giants in the system. But the beehive of activity also included military vessels.

“This place is too busy. I see at least two frigates and a bunch of smaller ships.” Feldstein said.

“Probably corvettes for trade inspections, not unlike the Terran Coalition’s Revenue Cutter Service.”

“Still, too many. They could call in reinforcements quickly, even if we could take something out and capture it,” she replied. “Mark this one off the list.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Justin said jauntily.

“Ha.”

He grinned, thankful that the edge of the solar system they’d emerged in was empty, even if the rest of it wasn’t.

The thirty-minute cooldown period for the Lawrence drive passed uneventfully. He didn’t understand the ins and outs of the faster-than-light engine or the science behind it. The training manual was direct, though—a minimum of fifteen minutes between jumps except in abject emergencies. Several pages had discussed exotic particles and why their release was a bad thing. Pretty sure my eyes glazed over at that crap. “Ready to get out of here?”

“I was ready thirty minutes ago.”

“Touché.”

“You know, you’ve changed.”

Though he was five hundred meters away from her and in a different fighter, Justin cocked his head. “How do you mean?”

“You were always the goofball when we flew together after graduating. I don’t think you realize how much like Whatley you’ve become now.”

Feldstein’s words were a shock. Justin twisted his neck as he pondered them. Me? Act like the CAG? “I, uh, don’t see it.”

“Oh, you haven’t mastered the art of the complisult yet, but give it some time. You’ll get there, Captain Spencer.”

“Compli what?”

“A complimentary insult. Whatley’s the best I’ve ever seen,” Feldstein replied.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before.” Justin chuckled. “The last six months have changed me. They’ve changed us all.”

“It’s not a bad thing. It’s only bad if we lose ourselves in… Hate. Anger. Elation in killing another human being. Or an alien, for that matter. We’re all God’s creatures.”

Justin toggled the jump computer’s next destination, a red dwarf system with no information on planetary bodies. “What’s with you and the God talk lately? Scratch that. What’s with everyone and the God stuff?”

“It’s how I cope.”

“The war?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it,” Justin replied, almost angry. “None of you guys were focused on religion before the war started.”

“It’s called getting your priorities in order, Justin.”

Her use of his first name surprised him. “I fail to see what the imaginary friend in the sky does to help get our priorities right. What’s in front of us—what we can see, feel, and taste—that’s what matters.” Justin thought back to holding his wife and daughter. How much I miss them.

“God isn’t imaginary.” A bit of pique crept into Feldstein’s voice. “Maybe I can’t touch Him, but I know He’s real just as surely as I know the spacecraft we’re flying are.”

Justin caught himself before he uttered another nasty retort. Who am I to tell her she’s wrong? That’s why it’s called faith, right? “Well. Let’s focus on the mission, shall we?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

With the distraction pushed aside, Justin double-checked the jump computer one last time. “All systems green over here.”

“Same. Ready for Lawrence drive initiation.”

“Execute jump.” Justin pressed the button to kick off the sequence, and much like before, all power drained from his Ghost. An artificial wormhole opened in front of the cockpit canopy, and Justin eased his fighter into it. Learning from the last time, he closed his eyes for the entire journey.

Once the shaking stopped, he opened them. “Oh shit.”

Blind Lawrence jumps were, by their very nature, unpredictable. That wasn’t too big of a deal for a capital ship and its battlegroup, but for a single-seat fighter, emerging in the middle of a group of unknown vessels was a disaster. Justin willed his HUD to reengage. Come on. Come on. Don’t fail me now, old girl. The sensors came back online and immediately populated dozens of League contacts.

“Still with me, Lieutenant?” As his heart pounded, Justin took deep breaths, forcing himself to stay calm and work on one problem at a time.

“Yeah. You seeing this? I think most of these ships are freighters.”

The onboard classification system agreed with her. All but two of the ten vessels near them showed as civilian, but the other two appeared to be patrol corvettes of the same type they’d seen in the last star system. “I don’t think they’ve seen us.”

“We should jump out now. The drive can handle back-to-back emergency jumps with less than five percent chance of failure.”

Justin ran her idea through his head. It’s a small miracle they didn’t