BattleCorps

DJINN OF DESPAIR
Kevin Killiany

Chapter Five
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

Jump point seven-gamma-three

Despair system, Ender’s Cluster
Lyran Alliance
28 October 3057

“There’s a low-metal rock on an eccentric ellipse,” the pilot from

Ender’s Cluster said. “Pumice; fourteen clicks mean diameter.
Perigee thirty-two thousand klicks; apogee eighty-seven.”
“Mr. Brandon?” asked Lanier.
Tradition, dating from the days when harbor pilots had guided
sailing ships into unfamiliar ports, dictated that a pilot neither
touch a control aboard a JumpShip nor give an order to the helm
unless specifically authorized by the captain.
Sardella knew he’d have been frustrated by that level of formal-
ity. If he knew the best way to get the ship somewhere, he’d take
the controls and get them there himself. Or at least order the helm
to do it. But so far the Ender’s Cluster pilot had floated at ease,
tethered beside Captain Lanier’s command chair, and seemed
content to offer suggestions.
“Got it,” helm answered, confirming he’d plotted the moonlet.
Sardella wasn’t familiar with JumpShip sensors, but he knew
that at max range something as porous as frozen lava froth would
be a ghost to his Highlander’s targeting computer. The pilot’s ad-
vice may have saved the Saint George an unpleasant surprise.
He’d already brought them through a pirate point that was closer
to the primary than any Sardella had seen.
Inside the Cluster, everything is a pirate point, Sardella reminded
himself. That’s why we need a pilot.
“Sir,” said Faraday, the leutnant on scanners this watch.
“JumpShip, outbound on reaction thrusters—”
The string of coordinates and vector data that followed made no
sense to Sardella.
He wondered why the man hadn’t sung out the minute the Saint
George cleared the jump point. Then kicked himself for being an
idiot. Picking a JumpShip out of a system crowded with moving
objects required active sensors—and at the ranges ships in space
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

had to consider, it took long minutes for the pulse of active sen-
sors to reach out and bounce back.
“Making for jump point seven beta fourteen,” the pilot was say-
ing in response to the string of numbers. “More stable, but two
days farther out.”
How unstable was the point you just pulled us through?
“Incoming message from JumpShip Zoroaster,” said the leutnant
at comm. “Text.”
Which made sense, Sardella thought. He knew graphic symbols
survived interference that garbled voice transmission, though he
had never understood the physics of why that was true.
“Pirates on Despair,” the comm officer read aloud. “Chevalier
Base faces imminent attack. Two of the Florida TTM BattleMechs
have been destroyed.”
“Composition of enemy forces?” Sardella demanded before re-
membering where he was.
The comm officer looked to Lanier, who nodded.
“Details unknown, sir, though assault-class BattleMechs have
been sighted,” the leutnant said. “Zoroaster is transmitting avail-
able data including report by the commander of the Florida PMM
garrison now.”
PMM? Despair must not stay in touch with the outside world.
“How fast?” he asked aloud.
“At this rate, two minutes to receive. Maybe six to decompress
and format for noteputers.”
“Anything else on long range scans?” Captain Lanier asked.
“Nothing showing power outside planetary envelope,” Leutnant
Faraday answered his captain. “Too much metal to find anything dog-
go without close fly-by. Planetary atmosphere is opaque to sensors.”
Even if it hadn’t been, Sardella knew, without a good idea where
to look, there was almost no chance of finding any sort of pirate
installation from space. He always got a kick out of holovid dra-
mas where the good guys spotted the bad guys’ hideout on the
first orbit. Locating anything that didn’t want to be seen on some-
thing the size of a planet required weeks of careful survey.
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

Which was true by a factor of ten on a world swamped with static

so thick DropShips needed a homing beacon to find the ground.
Lanier rotated his chair to face Sardella.
“Recommendations?” he asked.
Another tradition. Sardella had overall command of the mission,
but as master of a JumpShip, Lanier outranked him. Technically,
Sardella could give Lanier a direct order on the bridge of his ship,
but one did not exercise that letter of the law unnecessarily.
“I think the Saint George should remain on station between
Despair and the pirate point while the DropShips go in,” he said,
thinking fast. Naval tactics were not his strong suit. Weren’t his
suit at all. “It is unlikely any hostile JumpShip will challenge.”
“Your supposition being our position here would force any hos-
tiles attempting escape to use a more distant jump point,” Lanier
said, expanding on Sardella’s suggestion. “Increasing our chances
of a capture in system. However, this is not a WarShip.”
Right. He was used to thinking ’Mech scale—which made the
naval PPCs mounded by the Invader-class JumpShip devastating.
Against another ship, however, they were barely adequate.
“From what I understand of Despair, aerospace fighters will
be next to useless on the planet’s surface,” Sardella suggested.
“The fighters from the Pith and Harpy could remain to defend
the JumpShip. That’s four additional aerospace fighters, two
of them heavies. Rotating their fueling and rest with your own
aerospace fighters will give you four defenders in place at all
times.”
Lanier nodded.
“What of the planet itself?” he asked.
“We’ll know more in a few minutes,” Sardella indicated the comm
officer bent over his console. “But at first blush, I think the Harpy
should take a polar orbit that will cover the entire globe as it turns.
An Intruder in close orbit will keep anyone on the ground on the
ground.
“The Pith will then land at Chevalier Base. I’ll lead Alpha Lance to
hunt for the pirate base. Dimitri will command in Beta and Gamma
Lances which will stay aboard for a ballistic hop and drop once the
hostiles’ coordinates are established.”
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

Explaining ’Mech strategy wasn’t really necessary, of course—

but telling the man covering his six what he intended was sound
tactics.
“Are there any navigational problems with that?” Lanier asked
the Ender’s Cluster pilot.
“A ballistic course in Despair’s soup is problematic,” the man an-
swered. Sardella tried to remember the man’s name and failed.
“However a suborbital arc, clearing the envelope, should be simple
enough and add less than an hour to the flight time.”
Sardella felt a corner of his mouth twitch.
Forming a battle plan against an enemy of unknown resourc-
es on an unknown world before reading the first data file. What
would his old tactical instructors at the Nagelring think?
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

Pirate outpost, northeast of Chevalier Base

Despair, Ender’s Cluster
Lyran Alliance
29 October 3057

“Pulmonary edema,” Nick said, his voice oddly nasal through his
swollen nose.
“What?”
Still feeling unnaturally light without Caradine on her back, Lex
stood beside him in the infirmary, reading a medical scanner she
didn’t understand.
Caradine’s bruised and naked body lay supine on the examina-
tion table. Even her contusions looked healthy under the golden
glow of the warming lamps. The sensor array of the medical scan-
ner—ultrasonic imager, Nick had called it—was suspended on a
metal boom that swung out from the wall, its flared nozzle centi-
meters above her torso.
Behind them, Chevalier was secured to a metal chair and table
with a half-dozen meters of electrical cord.
“There,” Nick pointed to a cloudy region that covered the image
of Caradine’s chest on the screen. “Fluid build-up in the pulmo-
nary sac.
“At a guess I’d say one of these broken ribs—or whatever broke
those ribs—shoved hard enough to bruise the right side of her
heart,” he said. “Not a puncture, or she’d be dead, but enough
shock to startle it out of doing its job.”
Lex followed his pointing finger as he described each point, but
gained nothing except new empathy for Rufus; though her dog had
passed away years before she was accepted at Buena. Whenever
she’d tried to point out a toy or a squirrel to her puppy, the stupid
animal would stare blankly at her extended finger, then look back
at her face, clearly having no idea what she meant. Rufus had lived
to be twelve and never grasped the concept of pointing.
Until this moment, watching Nick’s tan finger move back and
forth across the black and white screen and listening to the drone
of his voice, she’d never considered how frustrating that must
have been for the animal.
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

The weight of the pistol dragged down on the hand at her side.
She felt her shoulder stretching under the strain of holding it.
Fatigue.
With an effort she brought her mind back into focus.
Nick had apparently finished explaining the situation.
“So what do we do?” she asked.
“First step, get a tube in her and get the fluid out,” Nick said. “Her
heart has a deep muscle bruise, so it’s not going to be one hun-
dred percent for a while. But it’s working. And so are the lungs.
They just can’t work well against the pressure.
“A chest cavity full of fluid is like having somebody piling rocks
on your chest.”
“Congestive heart failure,” Lex said, recognizing the description.
“Right,” Nick agreed as he began searching through equipment
drawers. “The main difference between PE and CHF is which sac
is filling with fluid.
“All we need to get her on her feet is three or four hours to drain
the fluid,” Nick held up a sealed plastic bag with what looked like
a metal straw and a bit of tubing. “Something for the pain, some-
thing to help keep the heart on track until it’s found its rhythm
again. Fast diuretic, too, of course. Clear out all the water she’s
retaining—body’s natural response to trauma. Once the pressure
is off, her body can fix itself.”
“It will take her days to recover,” Chevalier spoke up for the first
time.
“You’re not looking at these muscle density readings,” Nick an-
swered. “Not to mention bone density, heart rate, lung capacity,
all of it. Before somebody beat the hell out of it, this was one top-
notch machine.”
Chevalier snorted.
“Anything I can do to help?” Lex asked Nick.
“Stick the tube in her chest, attach her catheter, or get some sleep
because you look like a wreck,” Nick answered. “Your choice.”
“Right,” Lex answered. “I’ll check back with you in a few minutes.”
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

She had no intention of sleeping immediately—though she had

no illusions about her ability to keep going much longer.
By the door to the infirmary was a shelf of first aid kits, posi-
tioned for quick grab in an emergency. She pulled one case from
its nylon pouch and set it on the counter. Adjusting the buckles,
she slid the strap of the carry sack over her head and arm until it
rested on her left shoulder and held the pouch against her right
hip. She knew it wasn’t much of a holster, but the hook-and-pile
closure held the heavy automatic securely.
A quick search after locking down the others had confirmed
there were no other people in the main dome. But Lex needed
more than that before she was willing to rest.
Like some indication of where the others had gone in the truck. If
she knew where they had to get to, she’d be better able to gauge
when reinforcements might return.
Though any available reinforcements had probably headed their
way when she’d knocked out the dome’s radio tower.
A quick check of the locked storage room confirmed everyone
was still secured and accounted for. A more thorough examination
of the vehicle garage revealed that none of the remaining trucks
was armed or armored against anything more than Despair’s cli-
mate. Nor did any contain maps or geolocators or anything else to
tell her where they had been or where they were likely to go.
Searching the rest of the dome revealed bunks for forty—though
two-thirds of them were dusty and without mattresses. Fourteen
known hostiles and fourteen used bunks—Lex considered that re-
assuring intel.
Most of the dome’s interior space was given over to chemistry
labs. The kind of labs she recognized from high school. Very ba-
sic, very low-tech, and evidently very complete. Or they had been.
Like the living quarters, most of the laboratories seemed to have
been abandoned long ago.
Lex found a holomap in what appeared to be an administration
office. The state of the art map table struck her as over elaborate
given the condition of the rest of the facility. The map and a set of
computer terminals were the only pieces of equipment that looked
as though they had been in recent use.
Including the radio. From the looks of the dusty instrument, she
may have wasted a laser bolt on the broadcasting tower.
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 

Best not to pin too much hope on that.

Keying the map on she quickly found it had only one scale, with
the location of the small dome she’d come to think of as the pi-
rate outpost clearly marked in the center. There were controls for
plugging different variables into the image—though none were la-
beled—and connections for a sensor feed so the map could reflect
real-time data. But no sensor.
Studying the image she could pull up, Lex saw Chevalier Base
was farther away than she’d expected, and the bearing looked
wrong. Of course. Despair’s demonic atmosphere had been fuzz-
ing her geolocator as well as her sensors.
To the west and north—farther away than Chevalier Base—was
a much larger installation, keyed with the same color code as the
pirate outpost. It was nestled in a high valley in the mountains be-
yond the plain she and Caradine had found the night before. Lex
was willing to bet a flat circle represented a DropShip pad.
A large portion of the plain between the forest and the moun-
tains was painted an angry red. The indicated route between the
pirate outpost and the major installation gave the red zone a wide
berth. The zone was not labeled beyond its bright color, but what-
ever it was, it was clearly dangerous.
Their decision to turn back last night had evidently kept her from
blindly walking her Nightsky into disaster.
Using the distance to Chevalier Base as a yardstick along the
marked route, Lex judged time was not the critical factor she’d
been afraid it was. Best guess—even if they had left the major
strong point when the dome’s radio had gone dark—any relief
force was still a day and a half away.
Only after she’d double-checked her estimates did Lex relax
enough to consider Nick’s suggestion she sleep.
Back at the lab, Chevalier was complaining loudly about needing
the bathroom. Nick hadn’t been willing to risk untying him until
Lex was on hand. She congratulated Nick on his wisdom before
leading the former expedition leader to the head. He complained
again about the lack of privacy, but she wasn’t letting him out of
her sight.
Once he was resecured to the chair and table, Lex made her own
trip to the plumbing.
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 10

“Lie down,” Nick told her again. “Rest.”

“In a minute,” she said.
Fetching a first aid kit from a row of them by the door, she set
about cleaning the caked blood away from his scalp wound. As
she’d expected, it was a split, not a cut. Someone had tried to
crack his head open with an edged club. Gun butt, maybe.
“You’re going to need plastic surgery for the nose,” she an-
nounced.
“I’ll just tell folks I was a boxer,” Nick said. Lex was glad to see a
little of his old humor in his eye. “Cheaper.”
“Since when do MDs worry about money?”
“I’m not a medical doctor,” Nick said.
Lex looked over at Caradine who looked naturally asleep, not
unconscious. And who—despite the undignified tangle of tubes
leading in and out of her body—was clearly breathing easier.
“You sure fooled her.”
That earned a familiar grin. She was glad the crooked tooth was
intact.
“Plumbing,” Nick said. “My diploma says xeno-zoology.
Comparative anatomy, taxonomy, that sort of thing—mostly in
higher orders, such as primates. Which pretty much covers most
people.
“Just a question of recognizing what you’re looking at,” he
shrugged. “Once you do that, everything else falls into place.”
Speaking of which.
Lex turned to Chevalier.
“Why sukkot?” she demanded. “Neo-Reformed at that; you had
the walls wrong. Anyone with half a brain would have recognized
them.”
Chevalier stared at her as though she’d lost her mind.
“What?” he asked.
“The huts in the bird village,” Lex explained. “Booths.”
BattleCorps Djinn of Despair • Page 11

“I had nothing to do with the village,” Chevalier waved his hand

dismissively. “My grandfather thought of it. Epstein—he’s secu-
rity—set it up.”
“Not much imagination,” Lex said. “And security for what?”
The older scientist held her gaze for a long minute.
“You kill to save your friends,” he said at last. “But I don’t think
you’ll kill for information.
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut and see which set of reinforce-
ments gets here first.”
Fair enough.
Lex didn’t bother to explain she wasn’t waiting for any cavalry. As
soon as Caradine was ready to travel they—and now Nick—were
heading back to Chevalier Base at speed.
She looked at the wall chronometer. Catching Nick’s eye, she
tilted her head toward the door. A dozen meters down the corridor,
she decided they were safely out of Chevalier’s earshot.
“How long before Caradine’s ready to travel?” she asked.
Nick frowned at the floor for a moment. Lex knew the question
couldn’t have been a surprise, given their situation. But by the
same token, estimating recovery time was probably not part of his
comparative physiology training. She gave him time to think.
“If you mean walking around, six or seven hours,” he said at last.
“If you just mean bouncing around in a truck, three.”
The trucks in the garage were clearly up to making it through
the jungles and woods of the higher ground around the pirate out-
post, but despite Caradine’s theory about cannon-toting civilian
vehicles, she doubted their ability to negotiate the swamps and
bogs between here and Chevalier Base.
It was going to be damn crowded in the Nightsky’s cockpit.
Which meant she was going to have to make some adjustments.
“I have to see to my ’Mech, then I’m going to grab some shut
eye,” she told Nick. “Have Caradine prepped and ready to travel in
three hours. Not a minute later.”