Empire's Ashes (Blood on the Stars Book 15)

by Jay Allan

  And from where he wanted more than anything to flee.

  “Admiral, Casaleon and Muralan are in position on the flanks as ordered. The fleet is ready.”

  Ready…ready for what? For me to lead it? To call these battered hulls a fleet, as though that would make it so? What can they—we—do? There is only one choice. Flee again to the Confederation…and watch and see what kind of nightmare becomes of our home…

  “All ships are to engage engines at 20g thrust. Course directly for Alsatiana transit point.” Denisov had led his fleet to almost total destruction, and in every way he was still capable of feeling anything, he found it grotesque that he was still in command of the survivors. But his attempts to step aside, to stand down, even to surrender himself to his spacers, to accept their judgment of him and whatever punishment they decreed, had been rebuffed by the almost unanimous support of all who remained of the crews of his once powerful fleet. Acclamations came at him from all directions. From the bridge of the cruiser Declanne first, where he’d placed his flag, leading first six refugee ships, the seed of a force that now numbered thirty-four hulls. From the comm unit, in rapid succession, as every ship that joined the growing flotilla affirmed him as the choice of its officers and crew to lead them all. Even from the dead and dying in the sickbays, men and women who’d been broken and burned carrying out his commands. Spacers lying burned in agony, leaning upward and saluting him with their dying strength. It was too much to endure.

  He’d tried to refuse, but it quickly became apparent that fate wasn’t done with him yet. He was still the admiral, at least as far as the spacers were concerned, and that meant the walls of his prison were unbreakable. The death he’d intended, the end that could only relieve him of his misery, was out of reach, at least until the fates of war so decreed that he die. Duty bound him more tightly to a losing cause than any chains could have.

  “Admiral, Captain Droute wishes to know if you want to transfer the flag to Casaleon.”

  Denisov turned his head, but he didn’t answer immediately. He’d never even thought about moving to the larger of the heavy ships. Regulation stipulated that a fleet commander fly his flag from an available battleship, and the largest one available unless age and other factors provided clear cause to choose another vessel.

  What the hell does regulation matter now anyway?

  The navy he had served was gone, dead. He’d considered his fleet fighting years earlier alongside the Confeds to be the rightful Union navy, even if it served in exile. But the pathetic cluster of ships he had left made that point of view seem ridiculous. He and his people were fugitives, nothing more…and they would be lucky to escape across the border into the Confederation.

  He took a deep breath. “Negative, Lieutenant. I’m going to stay here. Please offer my thanks to Captain Droute for his loyalty, but I think getting the fleet to a place of relative safety is my first and only concern right now.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Denisov closed his eyes for a moment, and he tried to tell himself his cause was still alive, that as long as he had ships under arms, his people weren’t truly defeated. Such efforts had worked for him in the past, but now they failed utterly. All but ten of his ships had heavy damage, and his supply situation was critical. If his people were engaged before they could cross the frontier, they were finished. And even if they escaped, they were a tattered remnant, incapable of action on their own, even of fueling and arming their own ships.

  That looked a lot like defeat to him, no matter how many wild mental gymnastics he attempted.

  * * *

  “I appreciate your anger, and your thirst for revenge. Indeed, nothing is so grating as the arrogance of an inferior.” Percelax towered above Villieneuve, astonished that the Union dictator seemed to miss the true meaning of his words. He’d shown something approaching respect to Villieneuve, and to label such efforts as tiresome was a remarkable understatement. It took considerable control not to order the Union leader to his knees, to beg favor from one who was as a god to him. But expediency was his primary concern, at least at that moment.

  “Nevertheless, Gaston, from what I know of this subject, and of her past dealings, I believe she can be useful to us alive…and well.”

  Villieneuve was shaking his head, even as Percelax finished, something that infuriated the Highborn and further tested his patience. Still, he held his anger. There would be a time, but it was not quite yet.

  “Percelax, I am deeply grateful for your aid in defeating my enemies. Your forces were greatly helpful.”

  Our forces were critical. I would say so! You would have lost without us. Indeed, you were on the verge of utter defeat when we contacted you.

  Still, the Highborn said nothing.

  “However, your people do not understand mine, I fear. It is essential that Sandrine Ciara receive the treatment that is due her. She has information I need, and while I can likely expose most of those involved in her treason without her, she is the surest and quickest way to uncover them all. Besides, it is essential to make an example of her. Even if I was willing to grant her clemency as an individual—which I most certainly am not—I could never take such a step. Anything except the harshest of punishments would only encourage others to try as she did. Your people may have different motivations, but the Union population is controlled by fear, by stark terror of the consequences of disobedience or rebellion.”

  You do not know anger, you lowborn mongrel. One day, I will show you how the gods feel rage…and you will quake in abject terror…

  “You know little of the resources at my disposal, Gaston, nor the technology behind them. Your methods of torture are primitive tools for interrogation, unpredictable and often slow to achieve complete success. I can assure you, we can obtain a list of names for you, a quite complete one, at least as far as Sandrine Ciara’s knowledge extends, and we can do so almost immediately, and without injuring her.”

  “There is no concern about injury, Percelax. We are quite skilled at keeping subjects alive until their interrogations are complete. And when hers is done, she must die anyway.”

  “No.” The word was firm, the voice loud and commanding. “I told you Sandrine Ciara would be useful to us…and shortly, I will show you how. For now, you must accept my word on the matter. Surely, you are indebted to us for all we have done for you. Do as I…request…” It took considerable effort not to say ‘command.’ “…and you will have our thanks, and our continued support.”

  Villieneuve was silent, and for a moment, Percelax thought the Union dictator might find the courage and resolve to resist. That would force his hand, and complicate his mission. Tesserax had been clear. If at all possible, he was to control the Union through diplomacy and not force. At least until it was time to execute Plan Alpha.

  A moment later, Villieneuve nodded, the Highborn knew the human had given in.

  “I will do as you ask, Percelax…for now. But I cannot guarantee anything permanent.”

  The impertinence of the human was almost unbearable…but Percelax knew he wouldn’t have to take it for long. Soon, Villieneuve, and all the humans on the Rim, would learn their places.

  They would learn them, or they would die.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  CFS Dauntless

  Alantra Vega System

  Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  “All primaries, open fire!” Tyler Barron hadn’t had to give the command, of course. The fleet had been under orders to fire the instant the enemy came into range. But it made him feel better, gave him the illusion of having more control over the situation than he did.

  Such were the tricks that helped him find his way through impossible situations.

  “All primaries engaged, Admiral.” Atara’s voice was reassuring as well. Not what she said, just the fact of having her there, of really having her there. He was deep in enemy space, feeling very much as though he’d led all his people to their doom, and if he faced the kind of battle he sus
pected he did, there was nothing he wanted, needed, more than having Atara Travis at his side.

  He could hear the distant whining of Dauntless’s main guns firing. He still found himself expecting the lights to blink out for a second, but the newer ship’s power generation dwarfed that of his long lost old Dauntless. The second ship packed a heavier punch, too, with a quad turret instead of the old double gun.

  The particle accelerator’s beams lanced out, and he watched as they scored a hit on one of the lead Highborn units. Doctrine called for targeting battleships first, but Barron had ordered the fleet’s gunners to focus on the smaller carriers. That was a massive gamble, especially with the firepower of the heavy units, but if he could blast the enemy launch platforms, just maybe his wings could gain tactical superiority in the system. Then he could get his bombers into the mix, perhaps even convert some of the interceptors back into attack ships to hit the Highborn battle line.

  It made sense, or it didn’t. Barron wasn’t sure. So much depended on variables, not the least of which was when the hell the stream of incoming Highborn ships would cease. He still had numbers, but that advantage was slipping away steadily, and he had no intel at all to tell him what the enemy had to throw at him. They could match his fleet in hulls, which would be a huge advantage for them with their superior technology. Or they could have ten times as many ships as he did. The only bright spot in that scenario was that the end would come quickly.

  The war against the Highborn had turned tactical orthodoxy on its head. From the doctrines developed to deal with the enemy’s longer ranged and more powerful weapons, to the difficulty of targeting their mysterious hulls through clouds of Sigma-9 radiation, to the terrifying and unexpected realization that they had not only developed their own fighters, but deployed them en masse, Barron and his colleagues had bounced from one tactic to another, always reacting, trying to catch up with the situation.

  Ideally, he’d have held his line ships back while the bomber squadrons hit the enemy battleships. That had become a more costly tactic with the deadly Highborn point defense missiles…and a downright impossible one now that space was filled with thousands of enemy interceptors. He’d had to convert most of his wings back to the anti-fighter ops they would have conducted a decade before, against a different enemy, and that left him without the bludgeon the bomber squadrons had been. Which, in turn, made it essential to push his own heavy units forward, to run through a deadly stretch of space nearly eighty thousand kilometers long, where his weapons were out of range, but the enemy’s deadly blue-black beams were not.

  That particular nightmare had been moderately less dark than it might have been, this time at least. The enemy fleet was still transiting, and the fact that his own ships had been fairly close to the point provided a chance to hit part of the Highborn force before reinforcements could deploy.

  Less dark didn’t mean without cost, however. He’d lost four battleships outright, and a large number of his forward ships had sustained various levels of damage. The battle was just beginning, and the death toll already numbered in the thousands. He wouldn’t let himself imagine what the final totals would be.

  Dauntless shook, and for an instant, he thought the flagship had taken a hit. But a quick glance at his small screen confirmed that it had merely been an aggressive evasive maneuver. His ship had been lucky so far, and for all the skill and dedication of her crew, Barron knew luck was just what it had been. The randomized evasive routines had been designed before the battle, and they were largely executed by the ship’s AI. There was some human interaction, a touch of intuition thrown into the mix with the devilishly complex mathematics, but mostly, the difference between a vessel slipping through unscathed and one getting blasted to rubble was little more than mathematics, and how well those complex calculations did in guessing the angles of incoming fire.

  In other words, how well the computers, mixed with a touch of a veteran navigator’s gut, guessed.

  Barron was looking up at the display as Dauntless’s main guns fired again, and two of the four weapons scored hits. That was a far better targeting rate than he could have rationally expected, but he still felt disappointment at the two misses. It wasn’t rational, but amid Barron’s cold skepticism, and his realistic analysis of combat situations, on some level he believed his people could do anything.

  A murmur of stifled shouts rippled around the bridge as a pair of Highborn carriers vanished in rapid succession. No fewer than six beams from the Pact battleline had struck each in rapid succession. It was by no means first blood…Barron’s own fleet had been battered badly enough closing into range, but it was manna for his scared and sweating spacers.

  The butcher’s bill was still far from even, and Barron knew his people could never destroy as many enemy ships as they lost. But getting up on the scoreboard caused a surge in morale all around the bridge, and no doubt the entire fleet.

  And even in it’s grim and troubled admiral.

  * * *

  It’s you again…

  Reg Griffin’s teeth were grinding together, her sweat-soaked hand clasped tightly on the throttle. She was staring at her screen with focused intensity, and a level of determination she could barely understand.

  She’d never wanted to kill anyone so badly in her life.

  She had no verification, but she was sure anyway. The ship facing hers was being flown by the Highborn pilot she’d sparred with before, the one who’d battled her fiercely, until their drawn contest was interrupted by other events in the battle.

  I’m going to get you this time…

  Her eyes were narrow and fixed, her breathing shallow and erratic as her focus tightened on her adversary. She knew she had to direct the strike force, that she didn’t have the luxury to pursue personal vendettas…but there was something about that pilot. She had no real information, nothing on which to base any analysis. Still, somehow she was sure she was looking at part of the reason the Highborn squadrons were so effective. A prodigy, maybe, or some product of genetic manipulation…something. She had to kill that pilot, not just because she wanted to, but because she was certain he was immensely important to the enemy wings.

  She brought her ship around, altering her vector to a direct course toward her enemy. She could feel the thrust bearing down on her, but all the discomfort only fed her bloodthirsty predator’s instinct. She could feel the sweat pooling up around her hairline and at the top of her neck, a few errant beads slipping downward across her face. She ignored them, just as she did everything else. She had thousands of pilots behind her, under her command, but this was her responsibility. If she sent anyone else at the enemy fighter, she might as well blast them to atoms herself. She had her command responsibilities, too, but her wing commanders, and Timmons and Federov, could handle those, at least for a while.

  While she did what she had to do.

  Destroying that fighter, killing the man or woman she was becoming sure was the overall Highborn fighter commander, was her job, and she continued on, feeling the relentlessness driving her as though it was a physical force. Her cockpit seemed uncomfortably hot, but a quick glance confirmed what she already knew. Her life support systems were working perfectly.

  She breathed deeply, trying to center herself, to focus on her enemy. The kilometers were flashing by, bringing her closer to the deadly fight she knew lay ahead. She was about halfway to firing range when her target’s abrupt thrust modifications made one thing startlingly clear.

  The Highborn pilot was changing his own vector. He was coming after her, even as she was bearing down on him.

  She felt a shiver down her body with that realization, and the confidence she had felt when she’d first set out after her prey partly melted away. She remembered the last fight, the incredible skill of that pilot. She was going to go in, try to beat him, but she suddenly wasn’t sure she could prevail.

  She wasn’t sure who was the predator…and who was the prey.

  * * *

  Stockton
tried to move his hand, to upset the delicate maneuvering that was bringing him toward the Confederation fighter. He’d given up on trying to gain control over his motor functions, at least mentally. But the reflex died hard, and every time the Collar-controlled part of him did something of particular concern, he found himself struggling pointlessly, and utterly without effect.

  He wasn’t sure Reg Griffin was in that ship, of course, but he’d have bet on it. Even if it wasn’t her, it was one of the fleet’s best pilots, which meant it was someone he knew well, a man or woman who’d worked directly with him, who’d probably toasted with him in the officer’s club.

  Now, he was going to kill whoever it was.

  His hand was tight on the fighter’s controls, his eyes narrow with the grim determination that had taken him to the very top of the fighter corps, made him such a deadly and stone cold killer.

  He prayed silently, begged any force in the universe to allow that pilot to win the fight about to begin, to take him down. To end his personal hell. There was a chance, perhaps, especially if that was Reg Griffin. If anyone in the fleet could take him out, it was probably her. But the confidence that had led him to so many victories, and the ego that lay at the core of every great pilot, asserted themselves. He believed he would win, as he had in all of his great dogfights…and he understood with sickening realization that he was resolute, determined to blast that ship, and its pilot, into oblivion.

  He tracked the approaching ship on his scanner, and then he launched his first missile. It was a decoy, a shot intended to herd his prey rather than to score a deadly hit, and he watched as it worked perfectly, as the opposing ship moved away from the incoming missile, along the exact vector he’d expected.