Nightfall

by Jay Allan

  Now, the sheer audacity of the White Fleet and its mission was evident to him, the pure arrogance that had sent a force so far from home, searching for scraps of ancient science and clues to the lost history of the late empire. He’d allowed himself to imagine finding some traces of survivors, if not living humans, perhaps indications that some people had at least lived beyond the dates normally set as the end of the Cataclysm.

  But, they hadn’t found scattered survivors or their remnants. Instead, they had awakened a giant and announced to a vast and technologically superior Hegemony that billions of human beings still lived beyond the Badlands, on the Rim.

  He’d wallowed morosely more than once, sitting in his quarters alone, imagining how many more years the Rim might have had before the Hegemony found it. Decades certainly, even centuries. Almost certainly, they, too, had taken the silent death of the Badlands as a sign that no life endured farther out.

  But, the audacity to reach out and explore had brought back death and destruction.

  He’d watched the scanners, as the energy levels raced off the charts, and then he’d stared intently at the display as ships began to appear. He’d imagined watching the enemy battleships come in, most likely at high velocities, in an effort to close with the Confederation battle line as quickly as possible, with as little time for repeated bomber strikes as possible.

  But, he saw over a hundred symbols now, all of them tiny circles that represented Hegemony vessels.

  But, not one of them was a battleship.

  The enemy had sent its escorts through, the line of modified cruisers and frigates reconfigured for anti-bomber duty. The instant he saw what was happening, he knew…and he cursed himself for not expecting it. The enemy had been developing its anti-fighter tactics for months now, and that effort had clearly continued. Confederation tactics had become rigid, its fleet maneuvers predictable. That was by necessity, perhaps, born of the need to protect the heavy ships from enemy railguns, but it didn’t make them any less obvious.

  Why wouldn’t they bet none of our heavy units would be far forward? It’s only common sense. It’s what we’ve done in every battle.

  He watched as the escorts pressed on forward, moving at close to two tenths of light speed and blasting their engines at full, gradually redirecting their vectors in-system, toward Megara itself…and then as the lead units pushed into the outskirts of the minefield, and the first x-ray lasers opened fire.

  The mines, not really mines at all, were basically simple devices, nothing more than a series of high-energy x-ray lasers mounted around a thermonuclear warhead. When targets entered range, the AI firing systems locked on to the closest ships and detonated the bomb. The massive energy released was channeled into half a dozen laser blasts, nanoseconds before the atomic fury consumed the entire apparatus. If the final acts of the doomed AIs were properly executed, half a dozen beams, each one several times as powerful as Confederation primaries, would rip through space at the speed of light and cut into the targeted ships.

  With devastating results.

  The beams did indeed work, perhaps better than Barron had dared to expect. The targeting was spot on, the pulses striking with unimaginable power. But, the targets weren’t the railgun-armed battleships Barron and his comrades had hoped they would be.

  One after another, escort ships pushed into the field’s targeting area, and when they did, they died. A single laser was strong enough to destroy, or at least cripple, one of the smaller ships, and even the large cruisers, new additions to the enemy’s escort line, were almost spit open by the deadly blasts…and then finished off by a second hit.

  Barron had hoped the mines would be effective. He’d believed they would be, as much because the deployment was something new, a threat that would be a surprise to the enemy. It was a disappointment the Hegemony heavy units had not engaged the fields, and more than that, it had dark implications for the rest of the battle, but at least Stockton’s wings would have a clearer opening to attack. The enemy escorts wouldn’t be entirely gone, but there were going to be a lot less of them.

  But, Stockton’s going to have to take out even more railguns…and that means even crazier, more desperate attack runs…

  Barron didn’t doubt his heroic pilot would do whatever was necessary, but neither did he harbor any illusions about the loss numbers he was likely to see.

  He turned his head, staring now at the far end of the display, where Stockton, with something just over half the squadrons in the system, sat, already launched, floating in space waiting for the attack command.

  The order he would give.

  On the far side of the display, Alicia Covington and Dirk Timmons waited, almost another two thousand bombers in serried ranks behind them. The Battle of Megara would go down in the history books in more ways than Barron could easily count. The greatest number of fighters, certainly, almost four thousand. The largest force of battleships the Confederation had ever fielded in one spot, and the most massive deployment of all vessels. The greatest fixed fortifications as well, probably, though Barron wondered if the struggle at Grimaldi base might not retain a claim to that particular notation.

  The most ships lost. The most men and women killed.

  Those final two were still supposition, of course, but Barron couldn’t see how such losses were avoidable. His military mind, the cold and reasoned part of him that made him such a successful leader, was already imagining the decision that might have to be made, the order to save what was left of the fleet and flee to fight another time. That would be a horrendous moment, and he was grateful it would be Nguyen’s burden and not his own. It was a little spark of cowardice, perhaps, or at least weakness, and, he wasn’t proud of it. But, it was real nevertheless.

  The Senate would never approve a withdrawal, of course. Barron didn’t doubt the self-serving politicians had imagined that the labor of billions had gone into building the fleet just to protect their own wretched hides, but Barron understood the difference between fighting for the Confederation, and fighting for the Senate. Still, he’d had his fill of munity, and again, if someone in the fleet had to tell the Senate to drop dead, he was just as glad Dustin Nguyen would be the one to do it.

  He had one responsibility of his own now, however, one given to him directly from Nguyen. The senior officer had deferred to Barron’s experience facing the enemy, and he’d given him the authority to send Stockton’s people forward.

  Barron stared at the display for perhaps another minute, though it seemed almost an eternity. He was hesitant to start the bloodbath he knew lay in the future…but there was no choice. And, no time to waste.

  “Captain Travis…” He looked across the two meters or so between them, as he had done so many times. “…all squadrons are to commence the attack.”

  * * *

  “Alright…you all heard the admiral’s orders, so I don’t have to repeat what he said. I don’t have to go over what lies ahead of us either, or the fact that the mines blasted a decent-sized hole in their forward defenses…or that the positioning of the battleships mostly spared them from damage, leaving that many more for us to deal with. You all know that. We’ve talked about it again and again, planned, prepared. Now, it’s time to do it, and I know the one thing above all others that I do not need to repeat to you all, is what lies behind us. The whole fleet, almost every ship the navy has…and behind that, the Confederation’s capital. This is no longer some struggle along the frontier, nor a fight to save a strategically useful system. This is the battle, the one we’ve been preparing for since our Academy days. So, all I will say is, just follow me. We’re going straight past the surviving escorts, and damned whatever fire they manage to throw at us. That hole is there because the escorts got torn apart by the mines, and there are a hell of a lot of battleships beyond. That’s all I care about. All we’re going after.”

  Stockton took a deep and ragged breath.

  “It is an honor to serve with each and every one of you.” A pause. �
��All squadrons, power up engines…prepare to attack.”

  Stockton sat in his cockpit, a place that he could only think of as a second home, at least if he didn’t consider it his first. Some people were born to do certain things, though not all of them found their true callings. For all the pain, the death, the mindkilling stress of his career, Jake Stockton knew he had been fortunate to find his. His work was difficult, dangerous, in many ways a nightmare.

  But, there was nothing else he would choose instead, nowhere he would be, save wrapped up in the tiny cockpit of his Lightning.

  He took another breath, focusing on steadying himself, slamming down the cold wall closed off distractions in combat.

  He was a stone-cold veteran, a legend in the fleet. His pilots spoke in whispered tones of his exploits, of his immunity to fear. Yet, for a man who was supposed to be unaffected by such things, he was finding it somewhat difficult to keep his hands from shaking. He wasn’t sure how much of the fear was for himself, how much for his pilots, so many of them seeming almost like children to him, and how much for Stara, and for the others he cared about back in those ships lined up a few million kilometers behind his squadrons. He just knew one thing. It would be a hard and bloody day…or, more likely, days.

  And, none of those who survived would ever be the same again.

  “All squadrons…attack.”

  * * *

  “Admiral Barron has sent his wings in, sir.”

  Clint Winters stared across the bridge, his eyes fixed on Davis Harrington for several seconds before he responded to his aide. Finally, the words came, pushing through the uncertainty. He and Barron had agreed, and they’d both convinced Admiral Nguyen that the enemy battleships had to be the primary target. He knew that was a dangerous tactic, one that would almost certainly result in higher losses among the squadrons. It still made sense. There weren’t enough of the new cluster bombs to arm the entire strike force, even if the decision had been made to do it…and, in the end, the enemy battle line, and its fate, would decide the fight. If they got enough railguns in close enough, the Confederation navy would be destroyed. The bombers had to break up that wave of battleships, and that mean gutting their way through the remaining enemy escorts, and taking whatever losses those ships could inflict.

  He looked out at the rows and rows of tiny pin-sized lights, each a squadron of roughly fifteen Lightnings. The faces of pilots slid past his eyes, as many as he knew personally and could remember. He suspected Barron had gone through a similar round of doubt.

  Then, he gave the order.

  “Attack, Commander. All wings are to attack.”

  He heard the aide’s acknowledgement, but it only registered as a distant, indistinguishable sound. Winters had been engaged with the Confederation almost constantly, since the moment he’d answered Barron’s call and rushed what forces he could from Grimaldi to Dannith. He’d barely had time to think, at least beyond the next deployment, or some forgotten location where he could obtain a few new ships to replace his losses. But, now, the exhaustion was weighing heavily on him.

  He’d begun fighting on the frontier, and now he found it difficult to believe his forces had been pushed all the way back to the Confederation’s capital, the world that had founded the entire mighty nation he called his own. He’d done all he could, employed every ruse, every tactic he could concoct, and yet he’d done almost nothing to hold the enemy back, or even to substantially delay their relentless advance.

  Now, it’s the final battle…

  Or, is it?

  He couldn’t imagine Admiral Nguyen ordering the fleet to abandon Megara…and yet, could the admiral, could any of the senior commanders, himself included, allow the navy to be destroyed, to lose all hope of mounting any further resistance anywhere else? Even for Megara?

  He didn’t know the answer…and he didn’t want to think about it. It was time now to fight, and thoughts of defeat and retreat had no place in the forefront of his mind. He owed his people more than that.

  He owed them some hopefulness that they could win.

  Even if it was nothing but a pile of lies.

  * * *

  “Group Beta…nav plan Green-eleven. Execute in five…four…three…two…one seconds. Execute!”

  Olya Federov watched as one hundred sixty-two Lightnings, about twenty percent of her entire force, engaged their thrust and pushed their vectors away from the dead straight line the rest of the wings were following.

  The cluster bombs were new, and there had only been enough ordnance to arm twelve of her squadrons with them. Her people were inexperienced with the new system, and there had been neither time nor spare reloads for more than a few practice runs per pilot. If the bombs performed as they were supposed to—and Anya Fritz had been surprisingly hopeful about the new system, a fact that gave her hope she’d likely have lacked otherwise—it would be a major step forward in battling the escorts that had so devastatingly ravaged the Confederation and Alliance squadrons.

  If there were enough…

  Which there aren’t.

  She knew the attack would be more of a test than a battle-changing event, but she still felt the vengeful need to see the deadly escorts blasted to hell for all they’d done to her people. And, with any luck, the small attack would add to the disorder the mines had already caused, and her main strike forces—and those of the other ‘Horsemen’—would get a chance to slip through and deliver their strikes on the enemy battle line as undamaged as possible.

  She looked down at her screen, her eyes moving to the hazy clusters of dots, hundreds and hundreds of bombers, her own and Johannes Trent’s formed up side by side. It was a display of might she couldn’t have imagined, even in the darkest days of the last war with the Union. She’d never seen the Confederation fleet so desperate, so frantic to pull fighters from every posting, to mass the greatest strength possible to send against the enemy, regardless of experience or training level. Hundreds of her pilots were out of their depth, nowhere close to experienced enough to conduct the kinds of aggressive attacks needed. It was a grim thought, and yet she knew it was the reality that her people faced.

  The images on the display were complex and hard to read, too much information crammed into too small a place. The enemy escorts had been hit hard by the mines. That, at least, was a blessing. But many of them remained, the result, as much as anything, of a shortage of mines not much different than that affecting the supply of cluster bombs. The Confederation’s researchers and scientists were doing their part, as they always did, and racing to feed weapons into the hands of the warriors facing the enemy. But, such things took time…time the Confederation simply might not have.

  She had her orders. She knew what to do…and for once, she was grateful to lack agency in any of it. She would obey Stockton’s orders, as she had for so long now. And, she would do all she could to keep her thoughts off of anything else. Losses, the importance of the battle, the consequences of defeat…she couldn’t do a damned thing about any of it. So, she would focus on fighting enemy battleships.

  “Group Alpha, on me. You all know the orders. We’re going right through. Directly at those battleships. Full thrust, no deviation from course, no firing at the escorts. That’s the Beta’s job. The rest of you, let’s go.”

  She took a deep breath, steeling herself against the impact she knew she would feel when she opened up her engines at full.

  “Engage…all squadrons. Alpha Group, forward. Attack!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Hall of the People

  Liberte City

  Planet Montmirail, Ghassara IV

  Union Year 222 (318 AC)

  Gaston Villieneuve stared down at the report. He’d been sitting as his desk, reading the same words again and again, and he still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe any of it.

  Dead. Ricard Lille was dead.

  It didn’t seem real. The assassin—and the only one of his minions he’d ever called friend—was just too good. He’d
faced countless enemies, killed more adversaries and targets than Villieneuve could even guess. Lille hadn’t always succeeded, especially when he’d been used for purposes beyond his core skill of killing. He’d botched the effort to bring the Alliance into the war against the Confederation, ultimately triggering a civil war that ended disastrously, with the Palatians firmly on the side of the Confeds. But, when Lille had been sent to kill, and only to kill, his success rate had been uncanny.

  Villieneuve hadn’t ordered Lille to kill anyone on Megara, though he suspected Desiree Marieles had died at his hands, despite the—almost certainly deliberate—vagueness of the assassin’s report on her death. The message about the agent’s demise had been the last communication he’d received from Lille, and while he’d had a moment of anger at what he immediately guessed had been a deliberate assassination, he’d quickly realized that Marieles had outlived her usefulness anyway. She’d done an impressive job in disordering things in the Confederation, and even Lille’s best guess had been that she’d come remarkably close to pushing them into a full-fledged civil war of their own. That would have been a remarkable achievement, far beyond anything he’d expected when he’d sent her to Megara, but she’d been thwarted in the end by Tyler Barron and Gary Holsten, and the usual cast of Confed officers and agents that had been such a thorn in his side for years.

  Marieles deserved better for her success than a quick dispatch by Lille, but the more Villieneuve had considered it, the more he’d come to believe it was for the best. Marieles had been ambitious, and just maybe a little dangerous. Besides, the last thing he needed was for the Confeds to gather proof his people had been behind so many of their recent problems. He didn’t doubt Barron and Holsten suspected Union involvement, but their cumbersome republic was run by squabbling politicians who were far less likely to get serious about sanctions against the Union, certainly without concrete proof.