by Jay Allan
“I want all defensive batteries armed and ready, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
Because whatever Jamison and his people do, some of those bombers are going to get through…
* * *
“Stay focused. We’re going to hit these fighters hard, and then we’re going to blast right through to the bombers. Fire your missiles against these interceptors…they’re the tougher targets, and we want to blow a hole through their formation. But no dogfighting, no breaking our vector to go chasing after them. We’re after the bombers. That’s our priority.”
Jamison knew his veteran pilots didn’t need those instructions. They understood what was at stake. But half his force consisted of former garrison pilots, men and women who’d never fired at an enemy before this fight. It was natural to focus on the interceptors, the enemy that could hurt you. But the fighters were there to protect Dauntless, and their own safety, even survival, was a secondary concern.
He looked at his screen, at the incoming wave of enemy fighters. His people were outnumbered, and no matter how well his people did in the first minutes of the fight, they’d have enemy interceptors chasing them down as they tried to reach the bombers. The enemy wouldn’t stop his attack, he was sure of that. But they were probably going to make it expensive.
“Typhoon, you’ve got the left. I’ll take the right. You know why we’re here.”
“Roger that, Thunder. We’ll get the job done.”
Jamison knew Turner was one of his best, but even the ace pilot was in new territory, stepping into the big shoes of Tillis “Ice” Krill as commander of Yellow squadron.
“All squadrons, accelerate at 6g. Let’s get some velocity going and blast right through these bastards.”
Jamison moved his throttle, pulling it back, feeling the kick as his engines fired. He picked out one of the lead interceptors in the enemy force, and his hand slipped to the side, bringing his fighter toward his chosen target.
“All personnel, choose your targets…break.”
His eyes were glued to his scanner, focused on the fighter right in front of him. The other dots on the screen were shifting all around him—his people were moving out, arcing their vectors slightly and attacking individual targets.
He flipped a row of switches on his dashboard, arming his missiles. Then he gripped the throttle, his finger poised on the firing stud. There was a loud bong from his targeting system, the AI advising that he’d achieved a final lock. But he still didn’t launch the weapon. He was moving right toward his target, still accelerating, and every second not only brought him closer, it imparted more intrinsic velocity to the missile itself. He was less than ten thousand kilometers from the enemy fighter when he squeezed his finger hard, sending the deadly weapon on its way.
The enemy fighter changed the angle of its thrust almost immediately, but it was too late. Jamison had gotten close, his missile’s velocity too great for the pilot to escape. Jamison imagined the frustration his enemy felt, the panic. And then, a few second later, it was over. The fighter was gone from his screen.
His eyes darted around, checking his own blind spot and keeping an eye on his pilots, even as he searched for his next target. He felt a rush of excitement as he realized his fighters had taken out seven of the enemy already. No, eight. And they’d only lost one of their own.
His finger closed over the trigger, launching his second missile. He fired at longer range this time, and as soon as the weapon disengaged, he angled his throttle, turning his thrust back toward his original vector. Straight toward the enemy strike group. He was at least two thirds of the way through the enemy line of interceptors. There was one more in front of him…and then clear space all the way to bombers. There were interceptors left, but it would take time for them to reverse even their modest velocity and turn to pursue his fighters. With luck, his people would reach the strike craft first…before the surviving enemy interceptors took them from the sides.
He fired his lasers, holding down the trigger, blasting away. The enemy fighter moved hard to the side, struggling to escape Thunder’s fire. Jamison knew he could catch the enemy ship. He had him dead to rights. But pursuit would turn him away from his primary targets, so he let his prey go.
He turned away, and he stared ahead, single-minded, focused. Until he saw the symbols on the edge of his screen. The fighter he’d allowed to escape…and one of his own. In one terrible second he saw that his pilot—one of the transfers from Archellia’s garrison—was at a disadvantage. Caught. Dead to rights. Then he saw a tiny spec of light. A missile.
He felt his hand try to move, to turn and accelerate at full thrust after the ship he’d just let by. But he knew it was too late. He could see the scene in his mind, that pilot’s terrible realization that his death was seconds away. He would know, of course, that he was caught, that he didn’t have the skill or experience to break away. But there was nothing Jamison could do. He could torture himself, scream murderer into the mirror when he got back to Dauntless, blaming himself for what he had done. If he got back. But right now, he had his mission. And nothing would change that, not even the pain that hit him when the small blue dot winked off the screen. His pilot was dead.
He felt rage, almost uncontrollable. It took all he had in him not to chase the enemy he’d allowed to live a moment before. But his duty was still there, and for all the pain of imagining the death of one pilot, his mind was full of starker images. Dauntless, her broken hull bleeding air and fluids, great walls of flame in the landing bays, consuming everything in their path.
No, he couldn’t go back. Not for revenge. Not for anything. He stared ahead, grim, his eyes focused. He would take his revenge. He would take it on the enemy bombers.
“Let’s go,” he said into the comm, his voice as cold as space. “It’s time to kill some bombers.”
* * *
“Another hit, Captain. Commander Jamison’s strike force really hit the enemy bomber wing hard.”
Barron didn’t respond. He was gratified that his fighter commander had managed to kill so many bombers. He’d known how good Jamison was, but even he was surprised at the tally. Over twenty bombers destroyed outright, and a number more damaged. But that still left twenty-five heading toward Dauntless, with nothing to stop them except the ship’s own defensive batteries. And perhaps a handful of fighters, if Chief Evans and his people were able to get a few of Lieutenant Stockton’s birds back into space.
Hell, Stockton alone would be worthwhile. And Barron didn’t have a doubt the sometimes troublesome ace had insisted his own fighter be the first one serviced.
Barron took a deep breath as he watched another of Jamison’s fighters disappear. Thunder’s attack had been devastating, but at the cost of leaving two-thirds of the enemy interceptors untouched. Those fighters were coming around now, ripping toward Jamison’s exhausted pilots from behind and from the flanks. As they did, the casualty numbers began to rise sharply.
“Captain, we’re getting several intermittent contacts from the dust cloud at 233.019.214.”
Barron’s head swung around to the main display. The big 3D tank was projecting the huge dust cloud, and he could see tiny lights flickering in and out as the AI tried to deal with the sporadic contacts.
“Launch a spread of probes, Commander. If we’ve got more enemy forces coming at us, I need to know now.”
If we’ve got more enemy forces coming, we’re dead. It’s that simple.
“Probes launching, Captain.”
He hadn’t had much hope that his ship and its exhausted fighter squadrons could defeat two enemy battleships. But “not much” and “none” were two entirely different things. If those contacts were more enemy forces—and what else could they be?—Barron had moved firmly into the “none” camp.
Still, whether he had any hope or not, he would fight to the end. All his people would. Enemy reinforcements just forced a change of plans.
“Commander, prepare for full thrust forward. We’r
e going to close with those bombers and engage before they’re reinforced.” Expecting Dauntless’s point defense batteries to take out so many bombers was a fantasy, but it was also his ship’s only chance. And more squadrons piling on were only going to make things worse.
“Yes, Captain.” Travis turned and relayed the command to engineering. Then she looked back at Barron. “We’ll take them, sir. The gun crews are ready, and they know what’s at stake.”
Barron was silent, but he flashed a smile at his first officer. He didn’t think she believed that for a minute. He considered himself to be a cold realist, but he was a wild dreamer next to Travis’s grim and clear grasp of things. She knew they were as good as dead. He was as sure of that as he was of anything. But he appreciated her efforts to bolster his morale. A captain was there to provide strength to his crew, to give them the inspiration they needed to endure the stress and fear of battle. Everyone knew that. But Travis understood something far fewer spacers realized. It was her job, the first officer’s, to help provide that strength to the captain, to aid him in bearing his almost incalculable burden. And he knew she would do that as long as she still drew breath.
“Engine room reports ready, Captain.”
Barron was about to respond when Travis continued with, “Captain, we’re picking up solid readings now…ships emerging from the dust cloud.”
Barron’s eyes darted to the display. There they were. Fighters. Almost fifty of them. His eyes were locked on them, even as they moved completely free of the dense cloud and into open space. He was about to look away when he saw more blinking lights, another wave behind the first, still partially covered by interference from the dense, radioactive particulate of the cloud.
“Probes?” he snapped.
“Still too far out for better data, sir. We should have a read in a minute or two.”
“Very well. Enga…”
“Captain! We’re getting signals from the fighters. Identification beacons.” There was shock in Travis’s voice, something that Barron knew was a rare occurrence indeed. “I don’t know how, sir…but they’re ours! They’re Lightning’s! They’re Confederation fighters!”
Chapter Sixteen
Confederation Intelligence
Troyus City
Planet Megara, Olyus III
308 AC
Gary Holsten sat at his desk, staring out at the vast metropolis below. Troyus City was a monument to the wealth and industry of the Confederation. Other planets bore the scars of such progress, the dense acid smog of Pradera or the polluted lakes and seas of Grivas, but Megara was a Core world, the home of the Confederation’s capital, and Troyus City itself was the very center of its vast government apparatus. Humanity had seen many types of societies—and even more, Holsten suspected, in the pre-Cataclysmic past, though few reliable records of those times survived—but he’d never heard of one that didn’t lavish untold riches on the seat of its government. People prospered, or they starved. Jobs were plentiful, or they were rare. Borders were defended, or they fell. But whatever else was happening, at least until the very end, it was a dead certainty the politicians lived in comfort.
Holsten was the head of the Confederation’s sprawling intelligence operation, a job he had long treated as effectively a part time vocation, leaving his nights—his late nights—free to enjoy the perks of his other position, that of the sole heir to one of the Confederation’s largest family fortunes. At least until war had broken out. Holsten had virtually disappeared from the capital’s exclusive party scene since the first shots were fired on the frontier. He was missed there, he suspected, if not by true friends who pined for his company, at least by the string of beautiful women he’d dated and the bartenders, hosts and hostesses, casino employees, and general hangers on who had benefited so greatly from his bountiful largesse. Holsten had done his best to create his reputation as a dissolute hedonist, a wastrel with little on his mind but women, gambling, and the alcohol he consumed in far smaller quantities than he led people to believe. It was a useful cover, if one he’d utterly enjoyed creating, but there had been no time for such endeavors recently. The Confederation was in real trouble.
Holsten had clamped down on the flow of information from the front, withholding vast information from the press, and some of it even from the Senate itself. He’d lost count of how many laws he was breaking, but notwithstanding the reputation he’d worked—played?—so hard to create, Holsten was utterly dedicated to protecting the Confederation, whatever it took.
He, more than anyone else perhaps, knew how corrupt the Confederation’s government was, but he also recognized that post-Cataclysmic times were dominated by totalitarian regimes, theocracies, and military societies like the Alliance. The Confederation was the one place where citizens, at least some of them, enjoyed anything remotely resembling freedom. And he knew that would end if they lost the war. Life under Union rule would be a nightmare, even more for the conquered than for the despotic regime’s current citizens.
“I came as soon as I got your message. I assume it isn’t good news.” Michael Vonns stepped into the room. Vonns was one of Holsten’s top aides, and one of his few real friends.
“No, Michael,” he said grimly. “It is not good news.”
“From the front? Arcturon?”
“Arcturon and Ghallus. Union forces hit Second Fleet at Ghallus, and they almost wiped it out. Admiral Marionberg was killed, along with two-thirds of her people. The survivors fled to Belatar in disarray.”
“Did the enemy pursue?”
Holsten shook his head. “No. They moved through Copernika and hit First Fleet in the flank, just as it was engaging the enemy. Admiral Winston was unable to recover the situation, but he did manage to execute a retreat before it was too late. The closest thing to good news is, he was able to extricate twenty-three of his capital ships from the trap.”
Vonns stood, staring back at his friend and boss. He was an experienced spy, but he wasn’t able to keep the look of shock off his face.
“Sit, Mike. You standing there with that expression on your face isn’t going to change anything.”
Vonns hesitated for a few seconds. Then he walked over and dropped into one of the chairs facing Holsten’s desk. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“How could they field two forces of that size?”
“I don’t know, but one thing I’m sure of is that we really screwed the pooch. All our prewar estimates on enemy strength turned out to be completely useless. They successfully hid massive forces from us, and now we’re feeling the impact of that hammer.”
Vonns sighed. “And since the Purge, our intel is for shit. We really have no idea what’s going on behind the battle lines.”
Purge was the informal name Confederation Intelligence had given to the massive roundup of its undercover personnel on Union worlds that occurred in the days before the invasion. Within a matter of seventy-two hours, Confederation Intelligence had lost contact with virtually every one of its agents in Union territory.
Holsten paused, a shadow falling across his face. Giving the chain of events a name, even one as ominous as Purge, tended to sanitize what had happened. All across Union space, on dozens of worlds, Confederation operatives who had been sure their covers were secure were rounded up by Sector Nine agents. He tried to imagine the stunned surprise on each of their faces, the stark terror they must have felt as they realized what was happening. Some, no doubt, acted quickly enough and summoned the immediate courage to kill themselves. All Confederation agents were equipped for a suicide option. But he knew just as well that many wouldn’t have had the chance, or would have hesitated, losing the opportunity.
Those men and women, he knew, had ended up in Sector Nine’s interrogation cells, and there he was certain they had suffered unimaginable torment. Breaking men and women was a Sector Nine specialty and, as much respect as he had for his operatives, he was sure many of them had hemorrhaged information.
It
was possible that a few of his people had survived the roundups, that they had gone deeper under cover, unable to reach headquarters with any communications, but the end result was indisputable. The Confederation had virtually no effective assets remaining in the Union. They had no idea about fleet strengths, force movements, supply status…nothing. And the fact that Sector Nine had known so much about the identities of his personnel suggested the Confederation was riddled with enemy spies. Or one highly-placed traitor.
Holsten looked up at his friend. “We have a lot of questions, and not many answers. As far as their strength is concerned, how they did it doesn’t matter much, not anymore. Reports from the battle at Arcturon suggest they sacrificed an entire line of battleships as decoys. Admiral Winston was shocked, and utterly confused. But I have some guesses myself. Have you ever heard of the Blue Star Duchies?”
Vonns squinted his eyes for a moment, thinking. “Yes, I think so. Far away, no? We don’t have any real way to reach their space, do we?”
“No. They’re on the other side of the Union. And they’re not the only ones there. I suspect the Union has not been as idle these past ten years as we suspected. Our information is sketchy, but there are indications they conducted a series of smaller campaigns in the years before they attacked us, and that they annexed many of the worlds on their far border, stripping them of every valuable resource. That is how they built so many ships, Mike, at least in part. And the vessels they used as bait…I’d wager anything they were former Blue Star naval vessels, or from one of the other subjugated groups.”
