by Jay Allan
Second fleet…gone. My God, the Confederation is in real trouble. If we lose all of First Fleet too…
She tried to shake the thoughts from her head. It was Winston’s place to direct the fleet, and hers to follow his orders and command Intrepid. Her vessel had finished off one of the enemy ships it had faced, and only one other remained in range. She didn’t have the authority to order a retreat, and she wasn’t about to break ranks and flee without Admiral Winston’s order. But she could clear out the space around her, buy some time for her ship if and when the orders to bug out came. All she had to do was destroy one more enemy vessel.
“Increase power to secondaries to one hundred ten percent.” She hoped her tone sounded more like confidence than the desperation she was truly feeling. Overpowering guns was a dangerous tactic, but one that could make the difference in a desperate fight. The enemy ship opposing Intrepid had already been damaged when it closed, and she was sure if she kept hammering away at it, she could finish it off. Before Intrepid was too badly battered herself to stay in the fight.
“Yes, Captain.” Nordstrom leaned forward over his workstation, staring down at the screens. “Captain, we’ve got friendly fighters inbound. Looks like part of our Longsword squadron and some from other strike groups.”
Eaton just nodded. The fighter battles had raged all along the line, and she knew the squadron structures were hopelessly intermixed. She had the urge to order all the fighters near Intrepid to land, whether they were hers or not. If she waited, and the order to retreat came through, there wouldn’t be enough time to get them all in. The idea of abandoning her pilots—any Confederation pilots—was horrifying to her, but she knew the priorities as well as anyone else, and the fighter jocks knew them best of all. Capital ships were the primary concern. If it came to a choice of saving the battle line or recovering the fighters, she knew Admiral Winston would have no choice. It made sense, in a mathematical or logical sort of way. After all, little purpose would be served by landing fighters only to have the pilots die when the mothership itself was destroyed. But there were things that made up the essence of a man or woman besides logic, and she dreaded the order to leave her squadrons behind and flee.
She looked down at her scanners. There were three other ships near Intrepid, two escort cruisers and a fast scoutship. One of the escorts was hers, Astara. Commander Jacarde was already firing alongside Intrepid, pounding away at the enemy vessel engaged with her ship. The other—Cambria—was just out of range. She’d been part of Dominion’s group, but the big battleship had been destroyed, and the escort had just been following the general battle line forward.
“Commander, get me a channel to Cambria.”
“Yes, Admiral. On your line.”
Eaton glanced down at the stats displayed on her screen. Commander Eliot Strand.
“Commander Strand,” she snapped into her comm unit, without hesitation or preamble, “I need you to close on the enemy vessel at 132.010.200 and open fire with everything you’ve got.” Cambria wasn’t attached to Intrepid, and Eaton’s command authority over the vessel was questionable at best. But she did outrank Strand, and capital ship captains were generally lofty figures in the Confederation navy, revered and respected almost without exception.
“Understood, Captain Eaton. We’re on the way.”
“Thank you, Commander. Eaton out.” She cut the connection, turning her attention back to the scanner reports on the enemy vessel. It was big, even for a battleship, over four million tons. Her fire had definitely caused a lot of damage, but the massive vessel was still there, firing back with its remaining guns. She could take the enemy…she was pretty sure about that, at least as long as no other enemy ships moved into range. But Intrepid would take a real pounding by the time the fight was through, and she had no idea what condition her ship would be in when the deadly duel was over.
If the engines were down, or even damaged enough to hinder a retreat, it could be a death sentence for her crew. Surrender wasn’t an option, at least not one she’d consider against an enemy like the Union. She knew enough about Sector Nine and its techniques to be certain of one thing. She’d see her people blasted to atoms in a desperate fight to the finish before she’d risk allowing them to be consigned to the torture chambers and interrogation rooms of the enemy intelligence service.
“Captain, we’ve got another wave of fighters inbound. Signal incoming.”
“Switch to my comm.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“This is Captain Eaton of Intrepid.”
“Captain, this is Lieutenant Timmons, callsign Warrior, commanding Red Eagles squadron. I’ve got the Direwolves with me too. We hail from Repulse, Captain, but we find ourselves far away from our mothership. We’re forlorn and looking for a target. We were wondering if you’d like an assist with that big bastard out there.”
Eaton held back a smile. Exchanges with fighter pilots were always refreshing. They were so utterly devoid of the stilted language and restrained demeanor that so often characterized ship-to-ship exchanges. And she’d heard of the famous Warrior before. There were few in the fleet who hadn’t.
“Warrior, you and your people are most welcome. By all means, we would greatly appreciate your help in taking down that…big bastard, as you put it.”
“Roger that, Captain. We’re inbound hot.”
Chapter Nine
CFS Repulse
Arcturon System
Deep in the System Oort Cloud
308 AC
“I will not order a retreat, Commodore Malcolm, not until the entire force can withdraw.” Winston was sitting in his chair, the dense, chemical-tainted air pouring from Repulse’s damaged ventilation system stinging his eyes and scratching at his throat. His flagship was battered, but she was still in the fight.
“That’s not going to happen, Admiral. We’re too far from the transit point on this flank. But you can still save most of the battle line if you move now.”
“At what cost? Leaving you behind? And Intrepid, Constitution, Valorous? Not to mention a huge chunk of our fighter squadrons? No, never.”
Winston had looked at the display half a dozen times. The situation hadn’t changed. The enemy force coming from the Copernika transwarp link was moving to cut off the fleet’s escape route. They’d already trapped Malcolm’s task force, and it wouldn’t be long before every ship Winston had would be bracketed, attacked from the front and rear.
“Admiral, there’s no choice. You have to pull back now. Save the fleet…or at least what’s left of it. If you don’t go now, no one will escape.” Malcolm’s voice was raw, and Winston could hear the sounds of explosions and screaming in the background. Renown was in bad shape, and he knew that nothing he did could save Malcolm’s stricken battleship or the rest of its group. But he shook his head, grimly refusing to accept what his intellect told him was fact.
“Commodore…” Winston searched for words, but nothing came. He couldn’t abandon all those ships, leave them behind to almost certain destruction. He just couldn’t.
But what else can I do?
“Don’t let us die for nothing, sir. If the whole fleet is lost here, the Confederation is doomed. You have to go, sir. You have to…please…”
“No, Commodore.” Winston’s answer was instinctive, almost involuntary. The idea of running and leaving behind a large part of his fleet was so utterly alien to his way of thinking, he could hardly imagine giving the orders. But Malcolm was right. It wasn’t about the ships caught in the enemy’s trap. It wasn’t even about the whole fleet. The Confederation itself was at stake here. At least if he ordered the retreat now, some of the battle line would survive to fight again. If he stayed…
He sighed hard. “Very well, Commodore,” he said gravely. He pushed back against the despair he felt closing in on him. He’d known Bill Malcolm since the two had been junior officers. He’d been at Malcolm’s wedding, watched his friend’s children—and then grandchildren—grow up alongside his own.
They’d been friends for half a century, brothers in arms.
And now I’m leaving him here. To die.
“Bill,” he added, struggling to keep his voice from breaking down. “I’m sorry…”
“None of that, Art. We’ve been friends for a long time, but we’ve been officers for longer even than that. You know your duty. And I know mine.” The officer’s voice paused. Then he added, his voice barely a whisper. “Art…tell Allison I love her.”
The words slammed into Winston, almost costing him his hard-fought control. “I will, Bill,” he barely managed to reply. Then he took a deep breath. “Very well, Commodore Malcolm, my respect and admiration to you and to those who serve you…and Godspeed.”
“Go with fortune, Admiral. Save the fleet. We’ll hold here as long as we can.” Then, a few seconds later: “Never give up, my friend. Fight to the last.”
The transmission went silent as Malcolm cut the line. Winston sat for a few seconds, silent, fighting the aching sadness inside him. Then he turned toward Beltran, and he saw the pain in his aide’s eyes. “We have no choice, Captain,” he said softly. “The fleet will retreat through the Gamalon transwarp link.” He choked on the words, but he managed to force them out. He knew he was pronouncing a death sentence on Commodore Malcolm, and on the thousands of spacers serving on the trapped ships. And the fighters. He guessed that maybe half of his fighters would be able to land in time. He would be leaving the others behind, dozens of squadrons in total, from every surviving ship in the fleet. But there was no alternative.
Beltran hesitated, looking as though he was going to argue. But he just stared across the bridge toward the admiral’s chair.
“Captain Beltran, execute fleet retirement order at once.” Winston repeated the order more sternly. He had all the same doubts and self-recriminations any of his crew were feeling, more even, but right now there was no time for delay. Abandoning so many ships to their doom was nightmare enough, but every moment they delayed would only add to the number of vessels stuck in the Union trap.
“Yes, Admiral.” There was sorrow in Beltran’s voice, but no recrimination. That tugged at Winston even harder. He felt like a coward for running, and the understanding of his aide, of all of his officers, just cut at him all the more deeply.
He waited for the vessels of the fleet to confirm the order. At least the ships that had a chance of running. He suspected the command was not being received well. It went against the grain of Confederation naval personnel to abandon their brethren. Winston understood. He even felt the same way. But it wasn’t about pride or loyalty or camaraderie now. It was about saving the Confederation.
“All ships acknowledge, sir.”
Winston looked around the flag bridge, imagining for a moment what was going through the minds of his staff, what they would think of him, even as he was saving many of their lives. He shook his head slightly, and closed his eyes for an instant. Then he turned and looked over toward his aide.
“Commander Beltran…execute fleet order. All units are to accelerate toward the Gamalon transit link at maximum thrust.”
“Yes, sir. Transmitting fleet order now.”
* * *
“Let’s go, Eagles…one more strafing run on that thing.” Timmons leaned back in his cockpit and reached out for the throttle. His eyes moved over to his fuel gauge, but he didn’t look. He didn’t want to know. Fuel status was important for fighters that had someplace to land. And Timmons had watched on the scanner as his base ship blasted away at full thrust. Repulse might escape from the pursuing enemy or she might not…but there was no way Timmons and his people could catch her. They were dead men and women, all except for the formality of a laser blast or slow suffocation to complete the process. And until that happened, he was going to make the enemy pay.
He’d felt a touch of resentment as he’d first watched the flagship retreating, leaving his squadron behind. Rationally, he knew there’d been no alternative, that if the battle line hadn’t withdrawn, every Confederation battleship would have been caught and destroyed.
Instead of close to a dozen already destroyed, or too bracketed to escape…and thirty fighter squadrons, give or take…
“Form up on me…Intrepid’s been hitting that ship hard, but she could use our help.” He brought his fighter around, heading right for the enemy battleship. His birds were outfitted as interceptors, which meant their laser batteries weren’t hot enough to really hurt a capital ship, at least not one in prime condition. But the enemy vessel was wounded, and she had great gaping holes in her hull. A well-placed shot could do some damage, and every bit helped.
He looked down at the scanner. He was less than twenty thousand kilometers out, well within firing range. But he was going to go right down the throat of the enemy vessel, where he could do some real good.
“Stay in tight…we’re going close. Pick your spots, and make these shots count.”
They might be your last.
He watched as the dot grew larger on his targeting display. The range was under fifteen thousand kilometers now, and he was still closing fast. He punched at the controls under the display, and the image expanded, the large red oval almost filling the screen. There were light spots, areas where his scanners were picking up higher energy readings leaking into space. Hull breeches.
He tapped the thruster, and he pulled back, engaging his engines. Almost 10g of force slammed into him, as the new thrust altered his vector, bringing him directly toward the spot he’d chosen as a target. He released the throttle, and the pressure vanished, replaced by weightlessness. His fighter was directly on target, less than ten thousand kilometers away.
Close enough to smell their bad breath…
Still, he didn’t fire. And none of his Red Eagles did either. They were locked on him, less than five hundred meters between each fighter. He had ten of his original fifteen birds left, all inbound. And Chuck Aires and the Direwolves were right behind, their own attack run less than five thousand kilometers behind his.
Eight thousand kilometers. His screen was almost entirely filled with the image of the enemy ship.
He’d have gone closer, perhaps even to three or four thousand, but that was too much to ask from his squadron. They were good pilots, but he knew none of them could match his own abilities…and he was just as sure every one of them would try if he led them in.
He squeezed the firing stud slowly, steadily, and then he heard the loud whine, his laser cannons blasting away. He held his finger down, firing three, four, five bursts before he slammed the throttle back and to the side hard, 12g of thrust throwing him painfully back into his chair. He gasped for air and pushed back against the pain as his ship’s vector changed from the collision course it had been on and cleared the enemy ship.
He released the throttle and sucked in a deep breath…and then he howled with excitement. He’d hit the son of a bitch, there was no question about that. And he’d put his laser blasts right through a huge gash in the battleship’s hull. There was no way to know exactly how much damage he’d done, but his scanners were reporting great plumes of superheated vapor blasting out of the hull breach.
His squadron repeated his success, ship after ship targeting their lasers at the weakest points, and for the most part, hitting. The small lasers on his interceptors were a poor substitute for the bombers’ plasma torpedoes, but enough of them could make the difference. He was still celebrating what looked like a particularly well-placed shot from one of his birds when another of his fighters just vanished.
The enemy ship was badly damaged, many of its defensive turrets silenced. But not all of them, and damaged or not, the Union ship had claimed another of his people.
Jute, he thought grimly, as the AI displayed the ID data for the destroyed ship. Annie Jute had been with him since before the war, another of his original roster lost to the endless fighting.
A loud buzz shook him from his thoughts. His fuel alarm. He was down to less than five percent. But he had nowher
e to go, no place to lead his people. His eyes froze on the wide area displays, on the singe blue oval even remotely close enough for his people to reach with their remaining fuel. Intrepid.
There were going to be more fighters along the line than launch platforms, he could see that immediately. The retreating battleships had recovered their squadrons that were close enough, but the fleet’s fighter wings were spread out all over the place. A lot of pilots were going to end up stranded in depleted ships, waiting to see if the enemy bothered to hunt them down or just waited and let them die slowly as emergency life support waned. But his people were close to Intrepid, and he suspected the big battleship had lost a good number of its own birds. With any luck, they’d have room for the Red Eagles. And the Direwolves too.
“Mustang, this is Warrior.” His friend’s squadron was still completing its attack run against the enemy battleship. “Fuel status is critical…we’re going to head toward Intrepid, see if they can take in a few strays.”
“Roger that, Warrior. We’ll be right on your tail, old friend, so put in a good word for us too.”
“You got it, Mustang.”
* * *
“Keep pounding away…everything we’ve got. I want every watt of power we don’t need for vital functions routed right to the lasers.” Eaton was watching the enemy ship in the display. There was a flood of numbers on her screen, scanning reports, AI assessments, transmissions from the probes Intrepid had launched to monitor its adversary. But none of that mattered to her right now. She knew the enemy ship was going to go any second. She felt it in her gut. And that was something that rarely failed her.
“Yes, Captain. Commander Merton reports reactor B is nearly critical. Output down to thirty percent, and he might have to shut down even that production.”
