Hells jesters, p.1
Hell's Jesters, page 1
Hell's Jesters
Hell's Jesters, Volume 1
K.J. Coble
Published by Haymore House Publishing, 2020.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HELL'S JESTERS
First edition. March 15, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 K.J. Coble.
ISBN: 978-1393850595
Written by K.J. Coble.
Also by K.J. Coble
Hell's Jesters
Hell's Jesters
Cry Havoc
Rebel Hell
Back Into The Fire
Hell or Highwater
Last Call (Coming Soon)
Heroes of the Valley
Defenders of the Valley
Blood in the Valley
Stand in the Valley
Warlock of the Valley (Coming Soon)
Scourge of the Valley (Coming Soon)
The Quintorius Chronicles
Lord of Exiles
Legion of Exiles
Republic of Exiles
The Vothan Guard
The Tome of Flesh
Crypt of the Violator
The Witch of Vendar
The Witch of Vendar
Hell at the Gates
Twilight in the City of God
Standalone
Magic Fire - Metal Storm
The Shadows of Maunathyrr
Ashes of Freedom
Beyond the Bulwarks
Watch for more at K.J. Coble’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By K.J. Coble
Dedication
Part 1 – Business, Nothing Personal
Part 2 – Converging Destinies
Part 3 – Darkest Before Dawn
Part 4 – Hell’s Recruits
Part 5 – Hell’s Jesters
Part 6 – The End of the Beginning
Also By K.J. Coble
For Mom and Dad.
Part 1 – Business, Nothing Personal
The nanobots keeping Bradley Boxer younger than the HoloMedia would ever know seethed under his flesh in a million granules of fire. His physicians had warned him the rejuvenators would have to be deactivated soon, before they ceased holding the ravages of age at bay and started consuming the very man they preserved. There are limits to everything went their glib logic.
Boxer had fired them immediately.
His new team assured him he’d remain the perpetual forty-something seen captaining the greatest organ of commerce in the galaxy. They called the burning a side effect driven by mood, by the increased blood pressure and heightened metabolism that came of excitement or arousal.
Or anger.
Admittedly, he was damned angry.
The waiting room of Alexi Noovin, High Councilor of the Grand Galactic Alliance, was a concave of transparent blastisteel offering Boxer a spectacular view of the primary setting over the curve of Nova Terra. Sunlight dashed cloud cover far below into a glimmering gold foil that faded at the terminator, where the billion lights of the Capitol World’s mega-metropolises winked from shadow. Space elevators like the one housing Noovin’s Council offices clawed to the heavens, metallic beads of shuttles flocked about their seemingly fragile stalks.
The dizzying vantage belonged to a god.
Which is what Alexi apparently thinks he is now. Boxer wanted to claw at the simmer under his flesh, gripped the armrest of the waiting room couch, instead. The smug bastard—keeping me waiting like this.
A door whisked open on the far side of the chamber, admitting a young woman with a smile that must’ve cost a hundred thousand credits. “The High Councilor will see you now, Mr. Boxer.”
She led him into a hexagonal chamber with no windows, but holoscreens on every wall. Hundreds of views flared and crackled, from the markets to minor proceedings on the floor of the Galactic Assembly to coverage of labor strikes in the orbital ship-building yards above New Bonn. The net effect intended to overwhelm a casual visitor with the illusion of the Councilor’s all-seeing eye.
But Bradley Boxer, CEO of Syntar Fleet Corporation had no illusions, of either the display or the man behind the desk amidst the flash and static.
Alexi Noovin appeared to be in his early fifties, a facade no more real than Boxer’s. The streaking of gray in perfectly trimmed, straw blonde hair, the crow’s feet at the corner of icy blue eyes far older, all were as much crafted to effect as the antiquated High Councilor’s robes of white trimmed with patrician purple.
Noovin offered Boxer a smile worth ten times his secretary’s before waving her out. The smile hardened as the door hissed shut at her shapely back. “Good to see you, Brad.”
“And you, Alex.” Boxer slid into a plush chair before the desk. “The new facilities are nice. I got a good look at them in the hour I spent waiting.”
Noovin leaned back in his seat, absorbing the barb as he tented fingers before his lips. “I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“Old friends can’t meet away from the prying eyes and questions of the HoloMedia?”
“Old friends don’t demand emergency meetings with a High Councilor.” Noovin shook his head. “And sorry about the wait but, damn it, I’m a busy man, now. You have no idea the backlog, no idea the mess my predecessor left.”
“I’m sure it’s trying.” Boxer crossed his arms as a cold smile formed. “I forgot to congratulate you on your election, by the way.”
The wrinkles about Noovin’s eyes tightened. “What can I do for you, Brad?”
“No patience for the small talk, I see.”
“What do you want?”
The nanobots clawed under Boxer’s face with the resurgence of his fury. “You’ve got your High Councilor’s seat, and at all no small cost.” He forced the other man to meet his stare. “Do you remember the cost, Alex?”
Noovin’s fingers unknotted, one hand rising to scratch at an earlobe. “Of course I do.”
“Good.” Boxer brightened his tone as some of the roiling of skin and nerves subsided. “Then it’s time you did something for us. The contracts for the Fleet’s transuranic ore suppliers are coming up. Syntar Corp will be bidding on them.”
Noovin’s salted eyebrows bunched. “You build starships. You don’t supply the ore that powers their flight. Syntar possesses no major mines. They are a small player on the transuranic market.”
“For now.” Boxer leaned forward in his seat, jabbed a finger onto Noovin’s desktop. “With those contracts we will become the leader.”
“Please,” Noovin snorted. “Your bids would never stand up to FAC scrutiny.”
“As you said, Alex, you are a busy man now. Certainly, you could see to it that you sat on the Fleet Appropriations Committee, maybe even chaired it?”
Noovin snorted again, quietly. “You’re talking about intergalactic fraud.”
“Ah, and you’re a stranger to such things?”
The High Councilor leaned forward, drumming the desktop with his fingertips as annoyance gave way to a cautious twinkle in his stare. “What if I could? Why? You’d be caught the moment the Fleet found it was stuck in orbital docks, unable to go superluminal without fuel.”
Boxer nodded, had expected that. “Despite holding the current contracts for a decade, United Industries is very near bankruptcy. You can’t have missed the chatter on the markets. Their stocks have been devalued, the HoloMedia decries their ‘creative accounting’—” Boxer’s grin became predatory “—and now certain executives in their leadership have contacted Syntar with...proposals.”
The rattle of Noovin’s fingers on the desk halted.
“If Syntar acquires the primary fleet supplier contracts,” Boxer went on, “then UI stock tanks and they find themselves vulnerable to buy-out. Poof!” He made a theatric gesture with his hands. “Syntar Fleet Corp proposes a merger and finds itself in possession of one of the largest transuranic producers in the galaxy.”
“Brazen as hell.” Noovin’s voice wasn’t dismissive, merely thoughtful. “Amalgamated Galactic Holdings, UI’s chief rival, will expect a fair crack at those Fleet contracts. You know there will be an outcry.”
“They will be under-bid fairly and legally.”
“Legally...” Noovin leaned back in his chair again. “Syntar’s friendship to this office is no secret. AGH will demand an investigation.”
“And I have no doubt your friends in the Assembly can keep such investigations bogged down well below the level of the High Council.” Boxer waved the words away. “All of that will subside once Syntar begins churning out superior quality transuranics at an increased rate. Among United’s many weaknesses is its dependence on organic labor on the Outregion worlds. And Syntar’s automated systems are second to none.”
The Councilor frowned. “You’d be laying-off billions in favor of drones.”
“None of whom are your constituents.”
Noovin’s frown became a cautious smile. “There is also the little matter of the Outregion raiders—these so-called ‘Hell’s Jesters’, in particular. They have been a near-crippling problem for both AGH and United. Their raids have cut into the trade routes significantly and their populist rhetoric has earned them folk hero status in the Outregion systems—” he scowled “—even gained them sympathy from some in the Assembly.”
Boxer rose from his seat, straightening his suit, was surprised to find the nan obot fire gone from under his flesh. Perhaps his physicians were half-wrong. Victory didn’t burn—it was cool like the flush of adrenaline. “The Assembly is your problem.”
“And the raiders?”
Boxer shrugged. “I can assure you, they will be no trouble, at all...”
IN DISGUST, TIM WATKINS waved away the hologram of the checkerboard, and his umpteenth defeat at the hand of the AI, “Jeanie” as he’d dubbed it. With the display dissolved from the air only the desultory flicker of systems displays remained to light the harsh, metallic cocoon of his cockpit. He stretched, groaned at the cramping of muscles left inactive too long. The rattle of the ventilator took on a desperate note as it labored to recycle the locker-room reek of his unwashed body from the tight space.
He—along with the rest of the Hell’s Jesters—had drifted, mostly powered-down in space for two days, now. Waiting.
“Perhaps you’d like another game?” Jeanie asked in a tone so artificially bright, so human that Tim nearly forgot the artificial intelligence that co-piloted his star fighter wasn’t sentient. “Chess this time?”
Tim groaned again. “Yeah, no thanks.”
“I was thinking of your betterment.” The AI seemed to take on a petulant note. “There are lessons of higher strategy, as well. Cadets at the Nova Terra Academy are required to take a whole course in games theory, with a focus on chess.”
“I’m not thinking they’d welcome my type at the Academy, Jeanie,” Tim replied with a chuckle. “And this sure as hell ain’t the Alliance Navy.”
No, they were the Hell’s Jesters, terror of the space lanes and menace to faceless Foundation World conglomerates that’d laid the Alliance’s outer worlds low through greed. And Tim Watkins had long-since given up the toil of an impoverished inter-system flitter pilot, through hooks and crooks he’d rather not remember becoming a wing commander in the band of renegades.
Renegades. He smiled at the thought of it. Childish, of course. But he’d always been accused of refusing to grow up. Of course, we’re not menacing much, floating here like garbage. “Jeanie, bring up the regional display.”
A map materialized before him, drew itself into intricate patterns of star systems. Dotted lines overlapped them to show likely hyperspace routes, the paths merchant traffic was likely to follow in order to minimize time and maximize profit. A star winked at the center, the super-giant Orpheus, with a gravity well so deep it dragged the hyper lanes towards it.
Blue icons leapt into place astride several of the routes and blinked. A week before, Jester heavy craft had strewn those paths with interdictor mines. Behaving as gravitational obstacles—uncharted stars, rogue planets, debris fields—they’d disrupt the passage of vessels through the alter reality of hyper, force them to revert to normal space and cross systems at sub-relativistic speeds. The mines could be cleared out by brute force—would be, eventually—but the sparsely-populated systems in question had thin resources.
Meanwhile, interstellar traffic, their helmsmen detecting the disturbances, would avoid those regions and opt for more time-efficient paths. Perhaps passing through Orpheus, whose disruptive gravity would dictate a sub-light crossing, too, but still save time.
“I’m beginning to think this gig is a dud.” Tim frowned at the display. “Those Syntar spooks told us an AGH ore convoy was due any time. Maybe they found another way.”
Before Jeanie could reply, Tim’s system chirped. A globular hologram coalesced over the local map to show a woman’s narrow, mahogany-skinned face crowned by a shock of curly, crimson-dyed hair.
“Yo, Red.”
The leader of the Jesters—and some said their founder, though no one really seemed to know that for sure—offered a tight, half-smile. “Wake up, everyone! Sensors show hyperspace emissions at system’s edge.”
Tim’s regional map was replaced by a tactical display of Orpheus System. At its periphery, tiny circles like the waves rippling out from stones cast into a pond shimmered. There were dozens. It was a convoy, and a big one at that.
“The Syntar informants were correct again.” Another globular appeared beside Red’s. The woman in the hologram could’ve have been Red’s daughter. But her clipped, nasal tones were those of the accountant she’d been in a past life, before an ambitious executive decided she’d found a discrepancy that needed to stay hidden. Maddy—another of the Jester wing commanders and a morose, businesslike creature Tim had a hard time liking.
“Anyone else think it’s a little convenient?” The globular that materialized to Red’s other side held a thin, pale face framed by straw-blonde strands. Eyes of blue agate drilled from the hologram. “I mean, they couldn’t have come into the system at a better place for us.”
“Are you worrying, Pitt?” Tim grinned unpleasantly.
Galen Pitt, a skinny, vile-humored youth from the frontier, rumored to be wanted on murder charges, was the last of the Jesters’ wing commanders. If Tim had difficulty getting along with Maddy it could be said he didn’t bother to get along with Pitt, at all.
“Shut up, Watkins.”
“Both of you shut up.” Red had a tone of command that gave credence to whispers that she actually possessed the Academy training Jeanie held in such regard. “Watkins. Pitt. AGH will have provided the usual hunter-killers, especially for a group this big. You two draw them off and neutralize. Maddy, you’ll get the transports. Disable them and try not to do too much damage this time. Syntar says this is a big transuranic shipment out of Molotov. That’s a lot of capital that could go up if you botch it. Once you’ve crippled them, run cover for the assault shuttles. Vheng?”
Yet another globular crowded Tim’s cockpit, showed a blocky, grizzled face framed by the bulges of battle-armored shoulders. Vheng, commander of the Jester heavy ships and boarding parties, had the look of a semi-mythical samurai out of semi-mythical Earth. “I’m here, Red.”
“This is smash-and-grab, bigger than usual but nothing fancy,” Red said. “AGH typically runs automated craft, but there might be small security crews.” Her face pinched. “Don’t waste time on pleasantries.”
A toothy grin spread across Pitt’s face even as Tim’s smile dissolved. He didn’t pretend their business was a pretty one—or that none of the ships they’d blasted open to vacuum over the last two years weren’t occasionally occupied—but neither did he pretend to enjoy its ugly side.
“Let’s make this quick, people.” A clenched fist appeared in Red’s globular. “We’re close enough to the Fringe Worlds that a nearby local security force might respond, or even the Navy. Good luck and good hunting.”
The globular holograms winked from the air around Tim’s head, leaving him the tactical display. Hyperspace emissions had solidified into hard contacts that Jeanie immediately painted with war book schemata—a mix of heavy ore transports, smaller cargo runners, and a trio of sleek drone tenders, already disgorging small swarms of hunter-killers.
Blue-highlighted blips flashed into being around the convoy like electric wolf packs, braying for blood as the Jesters powered up fusion-bottle generators and gravity drives. A flurry of repositioning spread through the convoy as the Jesters’ trap became obvious.
“All right, Jeanie!” Tim adjusted the five-point harness of his flight couch. He didn’t bother with a helmet—if the inertial dampening of his fighter failed or the hull was breached he was dead anyway. “Fire her up!”
Tim’s star fighter, a class dubbed by Jester engineers the Hellhound, shuddered around him. A simple affair, scrounged together from an inner-system flitter chassis, maintained by common parts, and armed with the best skimmed from the galactic black market. The organization Red had built revolved around the simplicity of these craft which could take tremendous punishment, appear anywhere, and—the Jesters liked to believe—out fly even the Navy.
Jeanie threw up a systems screen to Tim’s left, would give him a corner-of-the-eye assessment of the Hellhound in the coming fight. Twin gravity drive nacelles on the fighter’s hunched back provided propulsion and a shield generator coil projected a barrier of coherent energy to protect it. The Jesters liked to mix-and-match weapons—some over-arming their fighters to a ridiculous degree—but Tim preferred a simple arrangement: particle beam cannon on forward-swept wings, scatter-pack missile launchers at the hard points, and a plasma blaster in the blunt nose for close-in work.
