“How’s she holding, Cadet?” Bishop asked. After a second, she repeated, “Cadet, how’s she holding?”
“She’ll finish the run, ma’am,” Bradley replied, forcing a confidence she hardly felt. She longed for the engine burn to be over, already feeling as though it had lasted for several eternities, watching as hatches slammed shut throughout the ship, more and more of her exposed to space, debris surrounding the ship like a shroud, trailing behind them all the way to the station.
“Twenty seconds,” Bishop said. “Come on, baby, hold together. Almost there.”
“Shuttles have launched and are in pursuit,” Drake reported.
“Fifteen seconds to go,” Bishop said.
“We’re losing the aft section!” Bradley warned. “Sections Five through Nine are going!”
“Overload forward, fire in the communications suite. Damage control is on the way,” Nguyen added.
“Eight seconds. Seven. Six,” Bishop counted, ignoring the tales of woe that were being fed to her from all sides, remorselessly pressing them towards their goal. “Three. Two. One. Zero.”
The noise stopped, replaced with the distant fizz and crackle of micro-fractures in the hull, a faint hiss that suggested that they were leaking air. Decompression warnings began to wail, shut off with the tap of a control by Drake, who looked across with a soft smile.
“We’ll get them patched. I think we can keep two decks pressurized, at least for the moment. That’ll have to be enough.”
“Power systems?”
“Burn-outs all over the place, ma’am,” Nguyen reported. “I’ll have to see just how much is left of the network before I tell you what systems we can keep online.”
“The hull?”
“She’ll never take another burn, ma’am,” Bradley replied. “Five more seconds and we’d have lost the ship.”
“Fortunately, I doubt she’ll have to,” Bishop said. “We’re on our way. Battered and beaten, but we’re on our way. Drake, get damage control working. If this ship is going to fight its final battle, I want it to be a good one!”
Chapter 17
Shaking her head, Haynes said, “I’ll be damned.”
“Possibly, Flight, but I’d take that up with a priest,” Winter quipped. “What’s up?”
“Ariadne has left the station and is on its way to us. Well on its way. Mitchell Station was out of our line-of-sight until just now. They’re going to be here in ten minutes.” She paused, then said, “They now have rescue shuttles up, heading to the squadron. I guess we’re not going to be floating out here for long after all.”
“No objection here,” Winter replied with a smile. “How much juice have you got left in the thrusters?”
“Just enough for one decent-sized pulse. I figured I’d hold onto it for docking.”
“Seems logical enough.” He reached for a control, and said, “Given that we’re not going to be conserving our power, I’m bringing the long-range sensors online. If my calculations are anywhere close to correct, our fleet should be engaging the Terran formation any moment now. Keep an eye on the incoming shuttle, see if you can make contact with them when they get a little closer.”
“Aye, sir,” she replied.
Winter cleared all of his displays to allow the sensor feeds to wash over the canopy, surrounded by the tangled trajectory plots as he watched the two forces speed towards each other. The task force had broken into three smaller formations, two of them veering to the right, leaving Theseus and Ares alone on the original trajectory, diving directly for the target with four attack squadrons surrounding them in defensive formation. Ahead, the Terran cruiser was at the heart of a formation of fighters, nine squadrons facing four.
This was wrong. Maddox was either extremely stupid or extremely smart, and neither was going to serve Caledonia especially well during the battle as it unfolded. He seemed to be attempting a flanking maneuver, but leaving a third of his fleet unsupported and vulnerable didn’t make any sense. He was giving the enemy an easy way through, risking opening the path clear all the way to Caledonian orbit, unless something happened to change the game.
Grim-faced, he watched as the fighters made contact with the enemy, the squadrons finally released to burn into the Terran formation, dozens of pulsar bolts and missiles flying through the sky towards their target. The carefully-planned formations collapsed as the battle unfolded, the cruiser coming into range to pound fire and flame at the nearest corvette. Abruptly, Theseus dropped away, drifting to the right, her engines dead, leaving the luckless Ares to take the brunt of the incoming salvo, a dozen plasma bolts hammering into the lone ship’s hull, tearing and ripping through her hull armor. Fountains of escaping atmosphere raced into space, sending the corvette tumbling, end over end, her helmsman struggling to regain control.
“Theseus to all ships,” a panicked voice said, the sender not even bothering to use encryption. “We’ve lost the bridge, hull breach, everyone up there is dead! It was a cranial bomb, Commodore Maddox…”
“Christ,” Winter said. “I guess that explains pretty much everything.”
“This is Gold Leader to all ships,” a harsh, faintly distorted voice replied. “I’m assuming command of the fleet. All fighters, all ships, disengage and return to Caledonian orbit. We’re not going to be able to hold them back, but if we can get under our defensive umbrella, we might be able to live to fight another day.” She paused, then said, “Ares, take command of the Thirty-Ninth and Seventh to screen the retreat of the rest of the fleet.”
“Apollo Actual here. We can still win this, Commodore.”
“Maybe, but I’m not about to risk the future of our planet on a battle planned by a traitor. We pull back, we regroup. That’s my decision. Out.”
Winter frowned, sharing the thoughts of Apollo’s young commander, anxious and eager to engage the enemy. They’d fought so hard to give the fleet it’s chance, risked everything, and all of those efforts were being thrown away. It felt like cowardice, but at his core, he found it difficult to truly disagree with Tyler’s decision. They were outmatched, and Maddox had pushed the fleet into a trap. That they had any chance to get out of it at all was down to Winter and the Double-Deuce. He swept his hand across the screen, magnifying the two ships and their accompanying squadrons as they bore down on the enemy, Ares somehow back under control as it lurched towards the cruiser, particle beams lancing out into the void in a desperate bid to sell its life dearly.
It was a good try. It was a damned good try, but it was doomed to failure. The fighters swarmed ahead of the two remaining capital ships, attempting to take some of the heat, but the Terran gunners knew their targets, knew what they had to do, and were determined to bring down the pair of ships that had dared to challenge them in open combat. The Terran fighters swept past their Caledonian counterparts with almost contemptuous ease, launching wave after wave of attacks on the crippled Ares, the final pass breaking through to her oxygen reservoir, tearing the ship apart.
Stabbing a control, Winter said, “Anyone who makes it through the firing pass, head for Ariadne. Repeat, hard burn for Ariadne. It’s your only chance.” As he watched, a few of the fighters attempted to follow his advice, the last vestige of the defensive formation lost as the surviving pilots raced for home, only two of them surviving the frantic escape, ignored by the enemy interceptors as they turned back towards Theseus, struggling to finish off the crippled ship. Her crew wasn’t even making a pretense of a fight, instead opting to get clear of the vessel before it was destroyed, and a gaggle of shuttles raced away, all but three shot down before they could escape the enemy.
The battle had lasted less than a minute. Taking a deep breath, Winter watched the trajectory track of the Terran fleet, waiting to see what they would do next. There was a potential window to launch an attack on the fleeing Caledonian vessels, one that would take them deep into the heart of the orbital defense grid. Alone, neither the remaining fighters nor the satellites would suffice to ward off the Te
rrans, but it was just possible that the two together might be able to protect the homeworld. That was all they could hope, in any case, and after a moment, it became evident that the enemy commander shared his fears.
“They’re veering off,” Haynes said with a relieved sigh.
“That’s not good news, Flight,” Winter replied. “I’d have been a lot happier if they’d made the attempt. We’d have had a chance to beat them off. Look at where they’re going.” The formation was breaking up, the cruiser returning to Taranis while the carriers split apart, each of them gathering its fighters and making for one of the deep stations. “They’re going to secure the moons, the outposts. That gives them a dozen bases to use to harry our orbital facilities, as well as the bulk of our resource extraction sites. They’ve decided to play the long game, rather than risk everything on a single battle. Now they’ve lost Maddox, they don’t have the advantages they once did. Assuming he was a traitor, rather than just being stupid.”
“I wonder what happened to him,” Haynes asked.
“Maybe someone worked it out at the last minute. Maybe some vestige of the man we thought he was finally emerged, and he did it to himself. That’s what I’m going to imagine, anyway. He was a good commander, once.” Slamming his hand on the console, he said, “Damn it, he was a pompous ass, but I couldn’t figure him as a traitor. If he’s changed sides, how many others might have as well?”
“There’s no way to know that, sir,” she replied.
“No, I guess not.” He looked at the trajectory plot, then across at a status update, cursing, “Damn it! That cowardly son of a bitch Ballard! The damn fool’s surrendered. They weren’t even going to reach him for an hour. We could have been back there faster.” Shaking his head, he added, “We just lost our only place to land.”
“He’s got eight hundred civilians to worry about, sir…”
“Most of them are already on their way back to Caledonia. He’s probably worried about how much a battle would end up costing him in damages.” He paused, then said, “Our forces are almost certainly all on Ariadne. Or they’d have had something to say about that surrender, I suspect. That means we’ve still got the makings of a strike force.”
“Commander?” she asked. “There’s nowhere for us to go. Best guess suggests that the enemy will have control of everything outside low orbit in a matter of hours at best. They’re concentrating their forces to prevent us moving to garrison anything. I’m not even sure we could have held Mitchell Station, sir. Ballard might have been right.”
“We’ve conceded too much ground already today, Flight. I don’t relish the idea of conceding more.”
She paused, looked at the monitor, and said, “We might be able to head for home, sir. Break through the enemy formation. It’d be risky, especially given the current condition of Ariadne, but I suppose we could use her to get as close as we can then run for one of the orbital stations with shuttles and fighters.”
“I doubt we could get on the right sort of trajectory in anything less than a day, and by then they’ll be set up to stop us, one way or another. Besides, even if we did, half a dozen fighters and an understrength platoon isn’t going to be much help to the defense. They could mobilize enough from the reserves to make that up quickly enough. There’s got to be something else we can do out here.”
“I don’t see what, sir,” she replied. “We’re closing for docking. Looks like the shuttle broke all records to get out here. We’ll be locked on in a minute.” She paused, then added, “We’re the last, sir. They’ve done a damned good job. When we do finally get home, I’m going to buy them a case of beer.”
“Thanks, Flight,” Bradley’s voice replied over the communicator, “but I’m more a wine girl. Ten seconds to contact.”
“Roger, copy,” Winter said with a smile. “All systems good here, clear for docking.” There was a loud report, and he added, “Nice work. How long before we’re back at the barn?”
“Eighteen minutes minus, I’m afraid. We’re going to have to do all the work. Ariadne’s almost in pieces, sir.”
“She’s that badly damaged?”
“And then some, boss. Most of her power grid is out. We’ve still got sensors and communications, but that’s about all we’ve got.” She paused, then said, “I already hooked us into their network. You should be getting the sensor feed now.”
“Thanks,” he said, calling up the display. The picture was about as bad as he had feared, the Terrans doing an excellent job of covering the entirety of local space. One brief glance at the message log showed that there had been no contact with Tartarus for hours, but that another carrier had moved into orbit, easily battering down the small orbital garrison. Hibernia was another story, a sixth ship securing the planet, shuttles already racing to the surface. The planet had been peaceful enough that neither the Patrol nor the Aerospace Force had ever maintained a permanent presence there, and presumably the few scattered reserve forces had already been destroyed.
There were dozens of other settlements scattered throughout the system, but either they were too small to play any significant part in the fighting, or they’d be easy targets for the enemy. Even with the forces he’d already seen, the Terrans would have control of the whole system, beyond low Caledonian orbit, in days. Maybe hours. Caledonia’s military had been forced to concede almost everything in order to merely survive, perhaps to strike back at some future point. The prospects of that did not seem promising. At a stroke, Caledonia was cut off from all of the space-based resources it depended upon, and would be hard-pressed to defend the orbital refineries and factories from attack.
There had to be an answer, somewhere, buried in the data. There had to be an option he wasn’t considering. If they were going to present any sort of a threat to the enemy, he had to find somewhere to hide. He looked at the outer planets again, and frowned, bringing up an enhanced view of Golgotha, the world where all of this had begun, two months ago. There were enemy targets in the system, a squadron of interceptors holding position.
“Hey, is there anything at Golgotha right now?”
“Not according to the records,” Haynes said, glancing at a readout. “No record of any ships out there, not since Ariadne got home. Why?”
“The enemy seem to be interested in it, and I can’t work out why. They’ve got twelve fighters sitting in orbit, holding the high ground, but as far as I can see, there’s nothing out there to defend.” He paused, then added, “There is nothing out there, right?”
“Not as far as I know, Commander,” Haynes replied. “Just a few old equipment caches.”
“What sort of caches?” he asked.
“No idea, sir, but it should all be in the Patrol records. Old surplus kit, mothballed out of the way. My old Academy roommate drew it as his first mission, checking over the stored equipment. He complained like hell about it. They were out there for weeks running systems tests.”
“That’s it,” he replied, a smile on his face. “That’s why they’re out there. Maybe they don’t know where it is hidden, but they’ll know that someone’s liable to go and take a look, and that’s precisely what we’re going to do, and with enough force to give them something to think about. We’re going out there.”
“What?” Haynes protested. “Excuse me, sir, but we’re in no shape for a battle.”
Tapping a status monitor, Winter replied, “One unsupported squadron, caught by surprise. We’ll have at least an even chance of bringing them down, and if we can fight our way through, we might be able to make some of those Terran fears come true and start to mobilize for some sort of counterattack. Ariadne’s hyperdrive is operational. We could get out there in a hurry. Just where is the depot?”
“Eusebius,” Haynes replied. “Sir, have you looked at the systems feeds from Ariadne? I’m astonished that she’s still in one piece. There’s no chance that she could live through any sort of a firefight. There’s got to be a better way.”
“Maybe, but right now there’s nowh
ere left to run to. Every station and colony is going to fall by tomorrow. Most of them will probably surrender to avoid bloodshed, and don’t forget that we already know that there are saboteurs and infiltrators out there to cause further mayhem. Right now Commodore Tyler has precisely the right idea. We’ve got to fall back and regroup, but we’ve also got to win at least one victory, right away, before it is too late?”
“Why, sir?” Bradley asked.
“Because right now there are eighty million people down on Caledonia who just watched their military get comprehensively defeated, forced to run from the fight. Morale’s going to be crashing down there, and unless the situation changes, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were serious calls for a surrender. We’ve got to give the people back home something to root for, something to celebrate, some sort of proof that the enemy can be defeated, and from where I’m sitting, the Double-Deuce is the only force out here that has any chance at all of doing just that.”
“Commander, what if we don’t succeed? What if we go out there and get defeated?”
“Then surrender probably wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he replied. “That, fortunately, is way above my pay grade. Can you get me a tight-beam communications link with Lieutenant Bishop? We’ve got a battle to plan.” He paused, then added, “You’d better warn her to be sitting down for this one. I have a feeling it might come as a bit of a shock.”
Chapter 18
Shaking her head, Bishop glared at Winter, and said, “It just isn’t possible.”
“I seem to be hearing that a lot lately,” the fighter pilot replied. “That doesn’t make it true. Listen, there’s no other alternative. Not one that doesn’t involve the certain loss of the ship or surrender. Or both. The odds of us finding a way to get through the blockade the Terrans are about to establish are not promising. We might be able to sneak through with the fighters, but the shuttles will be sitting ducks. You’ve put yourself at risk to save us. I’m not leaving you behind.”
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