by Jay Allan
And the deafening sound of her own heartbeat.
She pressed her finger on the firing stud…but she stopped, just short of activating the lasers. She nudged the scope’s controls one more time, the slightest adjustment, almost a whim…and then she pulled the trigger.
It was a sudden and abrupt move, a decision made more by her gut than her brain. She was used to the delaying factor distance played in space combat, but Pegasus was close, no more than two hundred kilometers from the enemy ship. She had the first answer she needed almost immediately. She had hit!
The second determination, the one that would decide the fight, and the survival prospects of her people, was still uncertain. She had connected, but had she scored the deadly critical hit she needed?
She didn’t know, not for a few seconds, a period of time that stretched mercilessly into seeming eternity, each instant feeling like a passing geological age.
She was snapping out orders, even as she waited. “Evasive maneuvers, now!”
“Got it, Andi!” She could hear the tension in Vig’s voice, and the hope. She was sure her friend believed she had scored the critical hit they needed. She was less certain.
Then, a second later, the AI confirmed it.
Her laser blast had ripped deeply into the Highborn ship’s hull. Pegasus’s weapons were less powerful than those of a true warship, but they were vastly uprated from anything a free trader would normally carry…and the absurdly close range meant the beams struck with considerable power.
She watched as the scanners reported explosions on the enemy ship, and expulsions of fluids and gasses into space. She dared to hope she had crippled the vessel in one shot.
Then, one of the deadly energy lances ripped by, no more than five hundred meters from Pegasus, the deadly electric blue speckled with black appearing on the screen. Whatever damage Andi had done—and it was considerable, she was sure of that at least—the enemy retained at least one weapon, and the energy to power it. The battle wasn’t over yet.
Her whole body tensed, gripped with resolve, with pure determination as hard as a neutron star’s core. The fight might not be over yet, but Andi Lafarge was going to win it. That wasn’t hope, it wasn’t confidence.
It was her absolute damned refusal to accept any other outcome.
“Switch to nav plan two, Vig.” She could feel the sweat pouring down the back of her neck as she snapped out the order, all the while pushing her face harder into the scope. She’d scored one dead on hit, but it was going to take at least one more. And this time, she had to compensate for Pegasus’s wild evasive maneuvers when she did her targeting.
She’d done that before, of course, in more battles than she could easily count…but fighting the Highborn was somehow different than battling any past enemy. She despised the genetically-engineered monsters, and she would have killed every one of them if she could.
She would drag the last one from his final refuge, if she had the chance, and cut his throat herself. Still, despite the rage, the hatred, she wasn’t immune to seeing their strengths. She would die before she would worship any of them, but she also understood their abilities, their intelligence, and their technology, were all far superior.
She saw the gauge on her screen turn green as her weapons once again reached a full charge. She had been waiting, honing her aim. She told herself to take her time, be cautious…but she didn’t know how long she had.
Her fingers tightened, even as she was telling herself to take time, and Pegasus’s lasers blasted forth again…and scored a second hit. She wasn’t sure she’d caught the enemy quite as directly amidships as she had the first time, and a second later, she confirmed that. She’d hit the Highborn vessel toward the bow, not a glancing shot by any measure, but not the solid strike dead center she’d managed the first time. Still, it was a second hit, more damage, and she held her breath, waiting to see if the enemy ship fired again.
Nothing.
She pushed back the hopes growing around her, even as her eyes darted back and forth, watching the charging gauge move up as her laser repowered. The fight wasn’t over yet…and Andi Lafarge didn’t celebrate until the enemy was dead, and often as not, cut up in half a dozen pieces and buried in different places. She’d seen arrogance and overconfidence destroy some of the most capable people she’d known, and she didn’t play that game.
But the Highborn ship didn’t attack again. At first, she wasn’t sure what it was doing. Then, her stomach clenched hard, and a cold feeling took her from head to toe.
They were turning. They were running.
That would normally good, at least a reasonable result of battle. Absent killing an enemy, driving one away was usually an acceptable thing. But if she let the Highborn ship get through the point, they would send a warning. Pegasus had been an unidentified vessel, something that rated pursuit but not panic. But Andi had just upgraded that status, badly damaged a Highborn vessel. If the enemy could get a message through, she’d have real warships on her tail.
She couldn’t allow that.
“Vig, bring us in, directly toward the contact.” Her voice was almost feral, with just enough doubt to attest that she knew the gamble she was taking. If the enemy ship was truly damaged, if its weapons systems were all knocked out, she had a good chance of getting in even closer, scoring a kill shot.
But if the ship was luring her in, pretending its guns were down, she was serving up a perfect target. And, unlike her laser blasts on the enemy ship, it wasn’t going to take a precise hit to obliterate Pegasus. Just about any decent shot from the Highborn gun would turn her beloved ship, and all inside it, into plasma.
That prospect bothered her all the more, because it was precisely what she would have done in the enemy’s position. Assuming that ship had a gun that could still fire.
She pushed the thought away. She was all in now. She knew what she had to do, and worrying about it served no purpose. Her eyes moved back to the power display, waiting for the lasers to reach full charge. Pegasus was bearing down on the enemy ship, on a course so direct and straight, the enemy couldn’t possibly miss if they had anything to shoot.
But still, there was nothing. Only the range dropping from point blank…to beyond anything she’d seen before. The scanner showed less than forty kilometers between Pegasus and its quarry, a distance so short, it almost defied meaning…but the enemy was accelerating back toward the point, on the verge of transiting.
Come on, come on…
She was watching the power gauge, as though she could somehow will it to move faster. The Highborn ship—and Pegasus—were close to the point. A few seconds more, and they’d get caught in the grav currents. That was going to make targeting far even more difficult, if not impossible.
She looked again, and she swore to herself the thing wasn’t moving. The small bar of light seemed stuck. Was the reactor malfunctioning? Had a transmission line been damaged? Or was it just her mind, her fear and tension boiling over?
Then the canner turned green. The guns were ready.
She adjusted the targeting slightly. Pegasus was so close, she felt like she could hardly miss.
There’s the arrogance, the overconfidence…no, no shortcuts. Do this right…
She chided herself, and she doublechecked her numbers…and just as she saw a massive gravity wave moving toward the enemy ship, she fired.
Pegasus’s lasers lanced out, striking the Highborn ship. A direct hit, even better than her first shot. And at less than forty kilometers her small vessel’s lasers struck with fearsome power.
The scanner report was almost instantaneous. She pulled back from the scope, shouting out to Vig as she looked up at the main display. “Get us out of this gravity well…now!” Pegasus was seconds from transiting, and Andi had no idea what effects her ship would suffer moving through the point so close behind the Highborn vessel.
A Highborn vessel that was coming apart, one that was about to…
She felt the g forces as Vig enga
ged maximum thrust, pulling Pegasus away from the point…just as the Highborn ship erupted in the blinding fury of matter-antimatter annihilation, and the whole billowing, surging nightmare slipped into the point’s dense black center and vanished entirely.
Chapter Twenty
Troyus City
Megara, Olyus III
Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)
“I need you to go back to Montmirail, Alex…right now. I know First Citizen Ciara wanted you offworld while she…cleaned up…but now I’m far from sure she will even get that chance.” Holsten turned and gestured toward a man in a Union uniform. He was standing silently, and there was a bulge under the shoulder of his jacket that, on close inspection, was clearly a dressing on some kind of wound. “This is Commander Sentivere, Alexander. He has come directly from Admiral Denisov’s fleet.” Holsten was silent for a moment. “The admiral sent him to request aid. Military aid.”
Kerevsky stared back, the look of surprise on his face unmistakably genuine. “Military aid? But Gaston Villieneuve is cornered, down to the last of his support and resources. I don’t understand.”
“Apparently, the situation had changed somewhat.” Holsten turned toward the Union officer. “Commander, perhaps you can share with Admiral Kerevsky what you told me.”
“Of course, Mr. Holsten. Gaston Villieneuve’s forces were trapped, blockaded on all sides, save for a narrow link to the Periphery. Admiral Denisov was assembling the fleet for the final push…when Villieneuve’s forces launched their own attack. It was a surprise. We did not believe he had the resources or capability to launch such an operation.”
“But surely, even if he managed to scrape up the ships and supplies to launch an attack, his forces were greatly outnumbered.” Kerevsky looked at Holsten, and then back to the Union officer. “Did Admiral Denisov engage?”
“Indeed, we did offer battle. But Villieneuve’s forces have been somehow…upgraded. Their weapons are more powerful than they were, indeed, considerably stronger than ours. And worse, he had a contingent of vessels that were more capable still. Their range greatly exceeded anything of ours, and their weapons were extremely powerful. Admiral Denisov recognized that those ships could simply blast us to scrap while staying out of our own firing range, so he ordered the fleet to withdraw. He managed to save almost two-thirds of his forces, but the rest were destroyed, or damaged badly enough to be out of action. We have very little data on the inexplicable new ships, but we fear they may be…”
“Highborn ships.” Holsten interrupted, his voice stone cold, grim, without a hint of doubt. “They are Highborn ships. I don’t know how they got there. They must have come all the way around the edge of the Hegemony and the Badlands, and then through the Periphery to link up with Villieneuve.”
“But that means…”
“It means Denisov—and Ciara—are finished. We’ve had a series of advancements after six years of war with the Hegemony, and then the transfer of their technology…but the Union is where they were ten years ago…and that was twenty years behind where we were then. At least they had numbers on us back in the day, but the economic collapse and all the unrest that followed, has reduced their power even farther. They’re a shadow of what they once were. They might be able to threaten us while our forces are so heavily deployed in the Hegemony—in fact, the very likely could pose a major threat—but they have no chance of defeating Highborn forces.” Holsten turned toward Kerevsky. “Which means, if Villieneuve is backed by the Highborn, the war against him is as good as over. Unless we intervene.” A pause, followed by a deep sigh. “And I have no idea where to find the ships. We’ve barely got a picket line on the border, and nothing that can stand up to the Highborn. And everything else is out on the main front.”
Holsten’s mind was racing. He’d already sent Excalibur forward. The Confederation’s first superbattleship was bound for the front. He might be able to call it back using the new comm lines…but Tyler Barron was already expecting the vessel and its contingent.
“The next three superbattleships will be ready in a little over six months, at least assuming no unexpected problems.” That was an assumption Holsten was never prepared to make. “We’re going to have to hope that Denisov can somehow hold out that long.” He knew he was way ahead of himself. Diverting the superbattleships, and the other vessels scheduled to enter service in the coming months, would require Senatorial approval—and Tyler Barron’s as well. The situation on the main Highborn front was still grave, and Barron was likely to need every hull he could get.
But if Villieneuve regains control of the Union, with Highborn support…
Holsten didn’t know what to do. If he weakened Barron to divert reserves to aid Denisov, or even to garrison the Union frontier, it might be the difference between success and failure. If the war was lost in the main theater, it didn’t make much difference what happened anywhere else. But if he didn’t strengthen the defenses against a Union advance, they could slice right into the heart of the Confederation…to the Iron Belt industrial worlds. To Megara itself.
“Go, Alexander. Get ready. You leave tonight. I will arrange your transit.” Holsten’s mind raced, trying to think of how he could assemble some military force to send with Kerevsky. But even if he could find the ships—a huge enough question—he didn’t have the authority. He might overreach a little, play around with force distributions, but the Confederation wasn’t allied with Ciara’s Union government. They hadn’t even fully recognized her as head of state. Sending so much as a gunboat to aid her against other Union factions would require the last thing he wanted to deal with.
It would require Senate approval.
* * *
Cliff Wellington eased back in his command chair, surprised for about the fiftieth time by the smoothness of Excalibur’s engines. He was a veteran of the Union War, and he’d served the earliest days of his career in warships without the seemingly magical effect of the dampeners. Thrust levels had been limited in those days not by available power, but by how much punishment the human bodies of the crew could take. Vessels had used special couches, and even tanks of various kinds, but none of it had worked particularly well, and especially not in combat, when crews couldn’t be drugged and immobile.
Modern warships had thrust capacities five or ten times what those vessels of two decades before had managed, and Excalibur was another leap forward. The Confederation’s first antimatter-powered vessel was also the fastest in the fleet, despite also being the largest. In every sense, Excalibur was a superweapon, second only in power and mass to the salvaged imperial wonder of Colossus.
Excalibur had only one real weakness, and that was one, if the last reports he’d received were correct, would soon be solved. The new pride of the Confederation navy relied on Hegemony sources for its antimatter fuel. The Hegemony were allies, of course, at least in the fight against the Highborn, but Wellington had lost too many friends—and been wounded twice himself—in the prior war against that power to feel good about such a dependency.
If production commences as expected, we might have a shipment of our own antimatter less than a month after we reach the front.
That couldn’t come soon enough for Wellington. He knew he had much more to worry about than fuel deliveries from the Hegemony—or from the Confederation’s new production planet—but it was hard to take his mind off of any perceived vulnerability.
“Let’s give these engines a run and see what they can do.” He’d held back on pushing his ship to the limit of her abilities, partly to save that antimatter fuel that so concerned him, and also because the two dozen other ships accompanying Excalibur were conventionally fusion powered, and had no hope of keeping up with the battleship at full thrust.
But he also needed to put the vessel through its paces. He had no doubt Excalibur would quickly find its place in the front of the battle lines, and before that happened, he wanted to know just what the miraculous new ship—and its handpicked crew—could do.
Tyler Barron had entrusted him with the powerful new vessel, and its escorts. He had elevated Wellington to the senior captain in the entire fleet, and save for Commodore Eaton on Colossus, the highest-ranked ship commander. Wellington had always been intensely loyal to Barron, and ready to follow the admiral into hell itself, if that’s where he led. But now, he felt even greater pressure to live up to Barron’s expectations, to make sure Excalibur, its crew—and its captain—were one hundred percent ready when they reached the front.
That was a duty he would see fulfilled, however hard it was on his ship, and on the sweating, overworked men and women in its crew.
* * *
Anya Fritz drew a breath, slowly, methodically, feeling the cool air move through her nose and down into her lungs. She wasn’t much for stress relieving techniques—tension had, as often or not, been a source of energy driving her—but she had never dreaded an order more than the one she was about to give.
Nor had she ever been as impatient for one. It was a contradiction, something she knew made no sense. But then, perhaps there was some kind of twisted rationality to it…at least when it came to something as awesomely powerful, and unbelievably dangerous, as antimatter.
Fritz had been working for almost four years, heading a project that had involved nothing less than harnessing the entire energy output of a planet. The world for the Confederation’s first antimatter refinery had been carefully chosen, one with enough volcanic and seismic activity to harness, without so much that it jeopardized the massive facilities constructed on its surface. The planet’s extensive plains were covered with solar panels, their effectiveness enhanced by the thinness of the atmosphere, and the space above was ringed with satellites capturing even more of the power output from the system’s sun. The world’s tides, waterways, even the heat from its molten core had all been tapped, every captured watt feeding the insatiable appetites of the antimatter production units.
