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

by Jay Allan

  She didn’t know…but she intended to figure it out.

  “Alright, Vig…as soon as you’re sure of the numbers, nudge up the thrust. Let’s go to thirty in three increments.”

  And let’s hope to hell those ships don’t manage to pick us up…

  * * *

  What the hell…

  Andi sat at her station on the bridge, the place she’d remained for three days, eating what little she had consumed right there, drinking barely enough water to fend off dehydration, and actually moving only for brief moments when necessity called.

  She’d watched the Highborn ships with stinging, bleary eyes, and she’d grown increasingly edgy. But now, she felt as though she’d been punched in the gut with an iron fist.

  The scanner readings weren’t clear or conclusive…but they were too many to ignore. The dozen ships she’d spotted from the other end of the system were still more or less where they had been. But there were new contacts as well, hints of things that might be more ships…in places that seemed conspicuously like the kind of spots a task force would choose if it was trying to hide.

  “I don’t like the looks of this, Andi…” Vig was staring at the same data she was, and clearly coming to the same conclusion. It was a realization she fought against, one that shook her resolve.

  There wasn’t a small flotilla of Highborn ships positioned in the system to block Tyler’s communications. There was a full blown task force waiting to ambush his fleet, and block its way back home.

  Implications raced wildly in her mind, and understanding gelled into conclusions she hated. If the enemy had a force waiting to intercept Tyler’s retreat, they had an expectation of forcing that very withdrawal.

  I have to warn him, get to him…

  But she couldn’t.

  If she even tried to reverse course, blast the engines hard enough to turn her ship from its current vector back toward the point leading in the direction of Barron’s fleet, Pegasus would be detected. Not certainly, perhaps, but she guessed the chances were somewhere north of ninety percent. And if they were spotted, they were dead. The chances there were functionally one hundred percent.

  She couldn’t help Tyler that way. If he was driven back, if the enemy had sprung the trap they’d all feared, it had likely already begun. Tyler knew about it, and she couldn’t do anything useful to aid the fleet. Still, she wanted to see Tyler, to be with him in whatever struggle lay ahead.

  But more than that, she wanted to do something to save him. And she’d realized immediately the only way she could do that. She had to get back to Striker, to Clint Winters. She didn’t know how much force remained at the great base, how many new ships had arrived after she’d left, but it was the only place she could reach that might possess enough force to make a difference. If she could get there, and get back in time, those ships just might make the difference.

  Assuming she could convince Winters to disobey Tyler’s orders.

  “We’ve got to get to Striker now, Vig.” Every fiber of her being longed to unleash the full power of Pegasus’s engines, to blast at maximum acceleration right for the transit point. But the thrusters were shut down, as they would remain. She’d been focused on escaping, but now it was even more vital that her ship get past the Highborn waiting just ahead of her.

  “Shut down the reactor, Vig. We can manage life support and passive scans on the batteries until we transit.” Every instinct inside her called for decisive action, but her intellect remained in control. The best chance of helping Tyler—of saving him and his entire fleet—was to continue on her present course, and to trust in the spacer’s gods that Pegasus would slip by unnoticed.

  “On it, Andi.” Vig leaned forward and moved his hands over the controls, just as Andi tapped her comm unit again.

  “Lex, we’re shutting down the reactor. Close down the vents…we’ll have to hold any radiation in the chamber until after we transit.” One more problem. She couldn’t risk leaving any kind of trail for the enemy to spot…but by the time Pegasus transited, the reactor core was going to be damned hot with radiation.

  That was a problem she’d deal with if they got through.

  When we get through…

  She sat, silent, not a sound on the bridge save the vents pouring out clean air…at a rate far below normal. Andi hadn’t noticed any difference yet, but the power saving protocols were likely to make things quite stuffy on Pegasus by the time the ship reached the transit point.

  Andi looked over at Vig’s station, just as her friend picked up his head and gazed her way. Neither of them spoke, but they communicated nevertheless. They were about twenty minutes from transiting, and every second of that time could be the one when a Highborn ship picked them up. The enemy ships weren’t battleships, but they didn’t have to be, not to take on Pegasus. Andi loved her ship, and she knew it was far more powerful than it looked, but against even a Highborn cruiser, it might as well be an unshielded lifeboat. Just about any hit, even the most glancing of blows, would vaporize Pegasus, and kill everyone onboard…and destroy the information that still might lead to a way to defeat the enemy.

  The only way to defend against an enemy attack would be to evade, to avoid getting hit, something impossible with Pegasus’s reactor shut down. Even if it had been an option, it would take the ship off course, away from the transit that was its only true escape.

  Andi had bet everything on stealth, on sneaking past the Highborn. Now, there was nothing to do except ride that out, and count the minutes, the seconds.

  And hope.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  CFS Dauntless

  Velitara System

  Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  Dauntless shook hard, as the Highborn beam clipped the ship’s port side. It was a glancing blow, in the terms commonly applied to personal combat, a flesh wound. But no hit from the deadly Highborn weapons was insignificant, and his screen filled almost immediately with a fairly extensive damage report.

  He felt an instinct to grab the comm, to call down to Fritzie and get the real story. But Fritz wasn’t on Dauntless, she was back in the Confederation heading up Project Quasar. Barron couldn’t argue that wasn’t a more important use of her almost immeasurable talents, but he still wished he had her back in engineering, keeping his flagship in the fight with her uncanny ability.

  The fleet had been in almost constant combat for days now. Barron had been granted the meager satisfaction that his instincts, his concerns of a trap, had once again been correct. It was cold comfort.

  The fleet had faced Highborn ships sitting astride its line of retreat in multiple locations, and it had taken a sustained and bloody fight to push through and escape from the system. When his ships emerged on the other side of the point, he knew the enemy would be in hot pursuit…and his first scanner reports had quickly told him things were far worse than that.

  A Highborn task force was deployed just in-system from the point, and his people endured another battle to break free, and continue their increasingly desperate retreat, looking behind them every passing moment, to see if their pursuers were coming through yet.

  The same story repeated itself in the following system, and once again, he was about to order his ships to red alert, and to scramble Reg Griffin’s increasingly ragged and exhausted squadrons. Barron had slammed the gate down on his emotions, struggled to face the situation with machinelike precision. But it was a long way back to the border, and with each enemy attack, he lost a little bit of his remaining hope that his people would escape.

  You led them here, dammit, you can lead them away!

  Determination had taken Barron far in his career, but he knew it wasn’t magic. And he wasn’t sure anything short of a sorcerer’s conjurings could save his fleet.

  “The Highborn task force looks smaller than the one in the previous system, by at least twenty percent in hulls.”

  Atara’s unsolicited report had been intended as much for the other officers on the bridge as f
or him, though he suspected she was doing what she could to prop him up as well. Barron didn’t doubt his fleet could defeat the forces currently in front of them, but he didn’t have much time, not with the force he knew was on his tail. And rushed battles sacrificed tactical elegance, buying victory with buckets of blood instead. He would break through the force in front of his fleet, but he would lose more ships and spacers in the process. Worse, he was almost certain the same situation would await him on the other side of the next transit.

  He’d done some rough calculations, basic guesstimates on how much of the fleet might make it back to the border. His totals varied widely, but all of them were south of half, and some lower than that. And he hadn’t dared to imagine larger enemy forces waiting in the systems ahead.

  “All units…battlestations. Prepare to engage the enemy.” He paused, hesitant to issue the rest of his order. “All squadrons are to scramble at once…interceptors and bombers will launch simultaneously.” He sighed softly, hoping he’d kept it low enough to hide from his comrades. Griffin’s pilots were exhausted, and most of them were already strung out on stims. He’d really hoped he could give them a rest, at least a day without combat, but it didn’t look like that was in the cards.

  “Yes, Admiral. All ships, red alert. All wings scramble.”

  Barron looked at the display, and the pressure of a lifetime at war suddenly pushed down on him from all sides. How many had died under his command? Tens of thousands certainly. No, hundreds of thousands…millions if you count the Marines…

  He’d never even considered a career outside the navy. As his grandfather’s only direct descendant, he’d never really had a choice. He’d been eager in his early days, and then discipline had taken him the rest of the way. But how much blood could one man wallow in before it destroyed him?

  “All ships, increase to full thrust. Let’s get through the dead zone to our own firing range as quickly as we can.”

  He stared straight ahead. Yes, one day war would probably destroy him.

  But that day had not yet come.

  * * *

  Vian Tulus felt the adrenalin surge that always accompanied combat. He’d chafed at Barron’s withdrawal orders in Alantra Vega, and his Palatian spirit had cried out against the ignominy of retreat. To his view, attack was always preferable to defense, and taking the war to the enemy was the surest road to victory.

  Tulus’s views on such things had changed somewhat in the years since he’d taken Tyler Barron as his blood brother. He fancied, with some solid reasoning, that the two had benefitted each other, that their bond had made each of them stronger. But in his lucid moments, he realized he had learned more from Barron than his blood brother had from him.

  Alantra Vega was just another proof of that. Barron had been right to retreat, his nose had indeed sniffed out the trap the Highborn had laid for the Pact fleet. Tulus knew without doubt that he, on his own initiative, would have plunged forward…and that he would have led the fleet even deeper into the enemy’s snare. He had become far more deliberative and thoughtful of his actions in the dozen or more years he’d known Barron, but the Palatian inside had never died.

  That spirit surged now, in its glory fighting the enemy, even though the battles now were struggles to escape, to open the way for further retreat. To try to get at least some of the fleet back to the border, and to Striker. It was early to call the entire offensive a disaster, but it didn’t take tactical wizardry to see that was where it was in grave danger of going.

  All that remained was to determine how great a catastrophe it became.

  “Sir, we are about to enter firing range. All batteries report full charges and readiness.”

  Tulus looked over at the officer. The young warrior’s voice had been slightly tentative, but he knew that had nothing to do with any fear of battle. His people had encountered more difficulty dealing with his reforms than they had fighting an enemy with vastly superior technology. Tulus had done away with generations of tradition, sweeping away the old forms of address, and mandating that he be called simply, ‘sir’ in combat situations.

  Tulus had learned as much from the Confederation Senate and from nations like the Union as he had from Barron, the perils of arrogance and the narcissistic pursuit of political power and recognition. An Alliance Imperator was a hero warrior, who earned his position in battle and not in dark and shadowy back room deals. Still, Palatia had not always managed to maintain the purity of such things, and some of his predecessors had succumbed to the pomp and privilege of the office. He suspected he had as well, at least at times, but he’d also made an effort to return to his roots, and to those of the Imperator’s chair, to remain the simple and honorable warrior, the man who kept his oaths and stood in the line of battle whatever the odds.

  This was such a fight, and his warriors looked to him. His allies needed him as well…the fleet could not hope to escape without the very best every contingent, every warrior, had to give. It was a difficult situation, one he suspected was wracking Tyler Barron with pain and regret that he’d led his people there, that he hadn’t pulled them back sooner.

  But to Vian Tulus, it was the vision he’d nursed since childhood, the unbreakable warrior standing tall against the overwhelming enemy. The shame of retreat was almost gone, washed away by battle after battle, by the blood of warriors, heroically shed.

  In that moment, Vian Tulus embraced his Palatian soul, the primal scream of the warrior.

  “All ships…it is time. Open fire.”

  * * *

  Chronos watched his staff at their stations, snapping out commands into the comm units, coordinating the actions of his fleet. His part of the fleet.

  The Hegemony Master, Number Eight of the Council, one of the most genetically perfect humans known, had allowed his position to slip from the unchallenged Pact military command many believed he should hold. He hadn’t submitted to Tyler Barron’s authority in any formal way, but in every practical sense that mattered, he had done just that.

  He’d felt some resentment at first, but far less than he might have anticipated. He’d long fought against Barron and his Confederation comrades, and he’d come to respect them, first as enemies, and later as allies, if not as outright friends. There was more to it than that, however. He hadn’t yielded his authority to the Confederation—though that body had clearly taken the lead as the most productive and powerful member of the Pact. His willingness to follow the guidance, if not the straight out orders, of another, was limited to Barron himself. It went against all his beliefs and a lifetime of cultural indoctrination to so accept an outsider, one who hadn’t even submitted to genetic testing.

  Though, do you doubt Tyler Barron’s test would reveal him to be of Master status, very highly rated Master status?

  He had no doubt at all, nor did he have reservations about Barron’s tactical abilities. Pressed to name one man or woman as the most capable military leader in human-occupied space, he would offer his enemy turned ally without hesitation.

  There was no place for ego, not in a fight against an enemy like the Highborn. Chronos had long doubted the shadowy threat, even questioned the existence of those his people had long called, ‘The Others,’ but the old legends had proven not only to be true, but the real threat was vastly greater than any had imagined. It was difficult for a leader of the Hegemony, so long assured of its supremacy over humanity, to acknowledge that half his nation, and its capital, were in enemy hands, and that any hope of reclaiming the occupied systems, or even of surviving, depended on the aid of allies.

  He looked up at the display, watching the formations moving slowly across. There was nothing slow about those ships in real terms, he knew. Much of the fleet was moving at a velocity of one or two percent of lightspeed, putting thousands of kilometers behind them with each passing second.

  He felt the urge to issue some kind of orders, but he knew there was nothing more he could do. The fleet was vast, and its battle plan was well founded. The operat
ion was more of a fighting withdrawal than a real battle, and there was nothing else it could be, no other options the fleet could embrace.

  That didn’t mean ships weren’t being destroyed…and men and women killed. The fleet’s losses had been severe, if somewhat lighter than he might have feared, and there was still a long way to go before they reached the shaky border that separated Highborn-Occupied Space from that still controlled by the Hegemony.

  Assuming they just don’t follow us all the way back to Striker…

  Chronos had always had a deliberative approach to things, but as he sat on his flagship, watching his fleet fight their way out of a trap, the reality that his nation, half of it anyway, was gone, pressed in on him from all sides. The offensive had been intended to liberate those worlds, to return to Calpharon and reclaim the capital. Now, his best hope was for the Pact fleet to escape at least somewhat intact…and prepare to endure an inevitable renewal of the Highborn invasion. He looked into the depths of his mind, into his visualization of the future, and he couldn’t see a path to the liberation he sought. All he saw was a desperate—and perhaps hopeless—defense, and more defeat.

  Will you ever see Calpharon again?

  He cut off the thought abruptly. He didn’t think he’d like the answer.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Forward Base Striker

  Vasa Denaris System

  Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  “You have to do something, Clint!” Andi stood on one side of the table looking across at her friend, the Confederation navy’s second in command…and perhaps Tyler Barron’s only hope of returning to Striker alive.

  The two were standing next to the conference table. They’d been in the room for almost ten minutes, but neither had made a move to sit down. The thought hadn’t even occurred to Andi. She was too tense, too wired, to sit.