Jackers by William H Keith Read Free Book Online Page A

Imperial attack.
    Dev had no regrets about joining the rebellion… not really, though he’d frequently questioned the rebellion’s chances for any outcome in this war short of complete annihilation. It was just that he still wondered sometimes what he was, and why.
    Senden, demolished by the shotgun blast from the teleoperated Starhawk, appeared to be adrift now, powerless, her weapons down. Smaller ships accelerated out from Daikokukichi, only to be met by searing laser bursts from the hard-accelerating warflyers. The enemy’s defenses appeared uncertain, almost hesitant. Had the surprise been that complete?
    A familiar, pulse-throbbing excitement surged behind the flutter and scroll of data cascading through Dev’s awareness. The sensation was an alluring one, enough so to bring with it a twinge of guilt. Sometimes, Dev wondered if he hadn’t begun enjoying war too much. It was at times like this, jacked into the AI of a ship going into combat, that he began to feel more than human, somehow, almost as though he were addicted to the surge of power, to the exultation thrilling through his being, and the feeling of invulnerability.
    Full linkage often had that effect on him, especially in a tight meld with a good AI either aboard ship or within the towering, durasheathed embrace of a warstrider. In some people, the feeling arising out of such a union could be one of godlike power, a conviction that nothing was impossible as the linker wielded unthinkable energies through the medium of thought alone. Taken to extremes, that feeling could be classified as a psychotechnic disorder, TM, or technomegalomania, and it had grounded plenty of striderjacks and shipjackers in the past.
    Gently, Dev disentangled himself from the pulsing, triumphant joy of electronic battle. “Communications,” he snapped. “Order all units to converge on the station. Keep repeating until they acknowledge.”
    “Affirmative, Commodore.”
    Concentrate on the fighting, he told himself. The warflyers are getting close now. The enemy’s fire was increasing again in volume. Possibly, their fire control had just been briefly knocked off-line.
    Damn, casualties were going to run high on this one. Dev just hoped the catch would be worth the butcher’s bill.

Chapter 4

Where warstriders are the descendents of twentieth century tanks, for all that they move over rough terrain on articulated legs rather than treads, warflyers trace their lineage back to the combat aircraft of the same era. Similar to conventional warstriders overall, they are equipped with fusorpacks and thrusters that give them a measure of maneuverability in zero-G conditions.
Scorned by the pilots of conventional space fighters, they are considered undergunned, over-armored chimeras, composites neither fish nor fowl designed to do all things, consequentially doing nothing well.

    — Armored Combat: A Modern Military Overview
    Heisaku Ariyoshi
    C.E. 2523

    Long before his arrival at New America, Dev had downloaded to his personal RAM the complete text of Ariyoshi’s exhaustive study of armored warfare, a work already well on its way to becoming a classic of military history. He knew that Ariyoshi, together with most modern Imperial tacticians, still considered the warflyer to be something of a makeshift and make-do weapon, even though it had been in existence now for well over three centuries.
    It had been a makeshift weapon, once. They’d started off as workpods adapted to the needs of warfare not long after the first combat use of warstriders; originally conceived as manned constructors designed to haul building materials and manipulate large, free-floating structures during work on space stations, synchorbital facilities, and other large, zero-G projects, they had considerable endurance, but all of the grace and maneuverability of a small asteroid. Even now they weren’t much more than jacked-up workpods fitted with missile batteries and lasers and run by a low-will onboard AI.