by Jay Allan
“Keep pounding away with those primaries. And get a status update from Intrepid.”
“Sir, Captain Eaton reports that her primaries are back online. She is charging them now.”
“Yes!” Barron said, not quite as under his breath as he’d intended. He slammed his fist against his leg, hard. But he didn’t feel a thing. He’d been openly insistent that his people would find a way to destroy the massive station, but inside, he’d begun to lose hope. Now, he could feel victory there for the taking, and he intended to reach out with both hands and grab it.
He stared at the display, at the projections coming in from the probes he’d sent directly at the station. The behemoth was splitting apart, just as Fritzie said it would, great explosions and geysers of flash-freezing fluids bursting out from multiple spots within.
The fighters had done their job, eighteen of them delivering their weapons, though six of them hadn’t survived the attack. But the pilots who died had died as heroes, ripping open the great rents in the station’s hull, exactly where Fritz had declared the weak points lay.
The fighters had done their part, and now Dauntless’s primaries were finishing the job. The deadly beams had done considerable damage to the station’s hull earlier, but now they sliced into the carved out sections, cutting deeply through the unprotected spots inside and cracking apart the great segments of the Union immense construct.
He watched as Intrepid fired, her restored weapons lashing out alongside Dauntless’s and hitting right on one of the designated spots. Hull sections buckled and melted, and the ravening power of the particle beams bit into the body of the station. Then Barron saw it, exactly what Fritz had told him to expect. He had acknowledged the theory, but never truly believed until this moment. A chunk of the station, perhaps six kilometers long, broke free of the main structure, its shattered modular supports snapping from their moorings. The chunk of twisted metal, larger than any capital ship, drifted away slowly, carrying with it half a dozen docked freighters struggling to launch before they were torn to pieces by the shifting stresses of giant girders.
“Primaries, maintain fire. Engine room, I want 2g thrust…forward.”
The enemy laser had ceased firing. No doubt the massive power plants were no longer feeding it the energy it needed to function. And without that deadly threat, there was nothing to stop Dauntless from moving forward, from bringing its entire broadside of secondaries into action and raking the enemy installation.
“Captain Eaton,” he said, his hand still resting on the comm unit. “Can you close?”
“Yes, sir,” Eaton replied, clearly feeling the same renewed spirit that had taken Barron. “Let’s finish this thing.”
“Absolutely, Captain…it’s time to tear that monstrosity to debris.”
“What say you, Commander Travis?” He turned toward his exec, a broad smile on his face. “Shall we blow the rest of this station to atoms?”
“Yes, sir,” Travis responded with a sharp nod. “Entering secondary range in one minute. All batteries are ready to fire…awaiting your orders.”
“Primaries…fire.” He stood in place while the bridge lights dimmed again, and Dauntless’s ravenous primary guns ripped through space toward their dying target. Then, almost without pause, he said, “Secondaries, open fire.”
Dauntless’s laser turrets didn’t have the direct hitting power of her massive particle beams, but she had more of them, twenty-four compared to two. And their recharge time was much quicker, their rate of fire vastly higher. The primary beams had done their jobs, ripping open the station’s wounded hull. Now the secondaries would finish off the stricken enemy, pouring blasts of energy deep into the gaping rends.
“Message to Astara…watch those tankers and freighters. If any of them escape, they are to hunt them down.” Barron had seen too many of his people killed and maimed. None of the enemy were getting away from here. His face tightened with focused rage. Not so much as a lifeboat would escape his grasp.
“Astara confirms, sir.”
Barron heard the familiar whine as a whole broadside of laser blasts opened up, raking the target. His people had been driven almost past their endurance…they’d stared into the abyss, and no doubt many had made their own peace with death. But now victory was resurgent, and Barron couldn’t move. He couldn’t think of anything save standing there transfixed, watching the display.
Watching as the two battleships sliced the enemy station into chunks of worthless debris and pools of rapidly congealing slag.
* * *
“They got too cocky. They equipped the thing with a massive fighter wing, but only one supporting capital ship. The modular design was brilliant for portability, but it was a dangerous vulnerability in an attack.” Sara Eaton sat in Barron’s office on Dauntless. The station was gone, torn apart section by section along the weak points Fritz had identified. Every supply vessel that had been docked had also been destroyed, including one freighter that had gotten to within ten thousand kilometers of the transwarp link before Astara had taken it down.
Barron sat back, something close to relaxed. The war was still going on, of course, and his tiny fleet was several systems deep in enemy territory, but for the first time since Dauntless had arrived at the front, he felt there was some cause for hope. The Confederation was still in trouble, but he knew his ships had given another chance to the fleets and spacers on the front lines.
“There may have been some arrogance at play, Sara, but I think it’s more that we’re seeing the limit of Union resources. They did an impressive job in the twenty plus years we gave them since the last war, far more than any of us thought possible. They built that thing, and they got more battleships into service than our most aggressive estimates suggested was possible. But their resources had to run out at some point. They kept the station back multiple transits from the front. They figured they were safe back here. And ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they were right. When we’re patting ourselves on the backs, let’s not forget to give luck its due. How could they have anticipated the way our ships ended up behind the lines? That two Confederation battleships would meet up behind their line of advance, directly astride their communications lines?
“And the modular design was the only way to make the whole crazy plan work. It’s all well and good to look back now, to critique it, but earlier we were dumbfounded about how they even moved the thing. The vulnerability we used to destroy it was an unavoidable aspect of its design, but we almost didn’t discover it. We wouldn’t have if Fritzie hadn’t studied the engineering scans.” And I still don’t know how she found the time to do that…
“You’re right, of course. You have one fine engineer there, Captain Barron.”
“She is that. And she’s very taken…so don’t get any ideas about poaching.” He flashed a smile across the table.
Eaton returned the grin. “Still, I don’t know how they managed to build it. The cost…it must have been almost incalculable.”
“At Confederation rates of labor and costs of materials. The Union is not like us, Sara. No doubt, those they conquered were reduced to virtual slavery to build that station. Forget trying to measure that thing in money…the true cost analysis there is one of human misery. How many workers killed, how many lives destroyed. How many millions lived on the brink of starvation so the Presidium could launch its war to conquer the Confederation?”
Eaton just nodded, and the two sat silently for a few minutes, each deep in thought.
It was more than a surprising level of Union production, Barron realized. It was Confederation neglect. The Confederation’s famed productivity had, to a great extent, saved it in the earlier wars. The problem wasn’t what a scared and mobilized Confederation could achieve when pressed against the wall…it was what a complacent and soft one did between conflicts. The Confederation fleet was only a shadow of what it could have been. But there was no way a republic could sustain public support for constant wartime levels of military production.
Barron knew the Confederation, if it survived, would face the same problems again. He had no doubt the worlds of the Iron Belt were in a frenzy of production, the terrified populations unwilling to oppose any level of military spending…now that it was almost too late. And it would have been too late if Dauntless and Intrepid hadn’t found themselves into a position to strike the blow they had.
Barron sighed, weighed down by heavy thoughts…including one he’d tried to ignore, at least for a few moments. But it kept beating at the edges of his thoughts. They had to get back to the fleet. Somehow.
Both battleships were battered, their savaged systems pieced back together by sweating teams of engineers…and in danger of renewed failure at any moment. Now, their path led toward home, but Barron knew the bulk of the enemy’s forces lay between his people and their comrades in the fleet. He had to figure some way to get his people past their adversaries, back home.
* * *
Timmons walked slowly down the corridor, lost in thought. He’d just returned to Dauntless, and while he wouldn’t have thrown around the word “operational” to describe the launch bay, all his people had landed safely, as had the others who’d been stranded on Intrepid.
The fight to destroy the station had been a brutal and costly one, and he knew every squadron on the two battleships was riddled with vacancies…friends, comrades, skilled pilots who weren’t there anymore. He was heading toward the officers club as custom demanded—a bit delayed, perhaps, by the extended fighting, but on his way nevertheless—to show his respect for the fallen. He and his fellow pilots would drink to them, and then, when duty called again, forget them. They would push forward to another struggle, another fight. And he had no doubt that more desperate battles lay ahead.
He’d gone through the motions many times since the war began. Too many. And for all the bluster about the “pilots’ sendoff,” as it was called, he remembered his fallen friends well. “Skinny” Pete Jenkins, Blake Daniels, Tony Trammel…and a crowd of other faces, staring back at him from the depths of his mind. He thought of them often. They were dead, but at least as far as he was concerned, they were far from forgotten. It was heresy, perhaps, to acknowledge that, a violation of the pilot’s code, but it was true. He could lie to everyone else, but not to himself.
Are you on that list now, Raptor?
For as long as he could remember, he’d resented the other pilot, a rivalry perhaps made inevitable by the fact that the two of them had always been the best. But now, his only thoughts of Stockton were best wishes, hope that his counterpart had somehow completed his seemingly impossible mission, that he had survived against the odds.
He stepped into the officers club and walked up to the bar. Before he got halfway across the room, Rick Turner walked over to him and handed him a mug. “Red Eagle leader is here, pilots,” he said, his voice so loud it was almost a yell. “Listen and listen good. The Red Eagles did the Blues a solid service in the battle we just fought.” Turner reached out and put his hand on Timmons’s shoulder. “We’ve had bad blood between us, and we’ll probably have it again, but tonight you have Blue squadron’s heartfelt thanks. Whatever happens, the Blues owe you one, Red Eagles, and we always pay our debts.”
Timmons stared back at Turner, a smile slipping on to his face. “Thank you, Typhoon…” He looked around the room and raised his mug. “Thanks to all the Blues. You damned sure know how to fly, all of you.” He raised the mug to his lips and took a deep gulp, watching as everyone else present did the same. Then he put his hand in the air.
“One more toast, friends…one that’s been a long time coming for me.” He paused, his smile slipping away to an emotional, almost pained expression. “To a man who is not here today. A magnificent pilot, a Confederation warrior whose courage is legendary, a man I have often been at odds with…but no more, at least not for my part.” He panned his eyes around the room, lifting his mug high into the air. “To Jake ‘Raptor’ Stockton…and to his swift and safe return…to his squadron, and to the rest of his comrades.”
Timmons drained his mug, but even as he raised it to his mouth, the applause began. He wasn’t sure if it had started with the Blues or with the Red Eagles, but in a few seconds, both squadrons—and every other pilot in the room—were screaming, slamming their hands down on the bar, on the tables. And they began chanting, “Raptor…Raptor…Raptor…”
Chapter Forty-Six
CFS Fortitude
Turas System
308 AC
“Was it what you expected?” Striker stood on Fortitude’s flag bridge, amid the smoke and still-blaring klaxons and the detritus of war. The battle had just ended, but the frantic efforts to land fighters and contain out-of-control fires had the fleet’s personnel still at a fever pitch of activity. There was damage control activity going on all around, and it seemed hardly less frenetic than it had moments before, when combat was still raging.
Holsten was next to the admiral, still trying to absorb everything he had seen, the mass of feelings swirling around inside him. He was afraid, certainly, and horrified at the magnitude of death and suffering. But there was something else. Was it hope? “Was it what I expected?” There was a touch of confusion in his tone.
“Yes. War, Mr. Holsten. The heat of combat. When you chose to stay with the fleet, I suspected you wished to experience it firsthand.”
Holsten took a deep breath before answering. “Perhaps you are right, Admiral. My thoughts were more to stay with you, to support you if anyone questioned your right to command, as I felt responsible for your position. But perhaps there was more at play beneath my conscious thought. I had never faced battle myself, though I daresay I have been responsible many times for sending people to their deaths.”
“So, what are your thoughts now? You have seen it virtually at its worst. I can’t recall a more terrible battle.”
“It is…not as I thought. I’d have expected I’d be more afraid, though of course I was afraid. But it wasn’t as I’d imagined. It was more…detached.”
“We all have the capacity to face more than we think we can, but we don’t realize it until the need is upon us. Then, later, when the danger has passed, we wonder how we did what we did.” Striker paused. “You acquitted yourself well, Mr. Holsten.”
The intelligence chief nodded. “That means something, coming from you, Admiral. I don’t know what else to say. Except that your leadership has confirmed my choice of you to take command.”
“For as long as that lasts.” Striker spoke softly, leaning toward Holsten as he did. The victory had done nothing to change the illegitimacy of Striker’s command, nor the fact that there would be hell to pay when the confusion cleared. He owed his continued command to the delays imposed by vast distances, and nothing more. “Still, we won a victory of sorts here, Mr. Holsten, even if it is far from complete. Though we have paid so great a price to drive the enemy from Turas, I question whether we haven’t worsened our position in terms of the relationship of total forces deployed. We may be more outnumbered now than we were before.”
“No, Admiral…you have not worsened your position. Numbers are not everything. You have taken a defeated, demoralized fleet, and you have renewed its energy. You have reminded them that they can win.”
“Perhaps, Mr. Holsten, but numbers matter too. That is still one massive enemy fleet we face, and unless I am very mistaken, they are now waiting for us in the next system.”
Holsten just nodded, and the two men stood there, silent for a moment, the only sounds those of the bridge crew in the background, fielding damage reports and updates from the fleet.
The two forces had fought in Turas for two days, the combat almost non-stop. Fighter groups savaged each other, and strike wings launched themselves in desperate attack runs against the enemy line. The great capital ships themselves had broken up into groups, closing and raking each other with deadly fire.
The Confederation fleet had been outnumbered, and the enemy’s advantage in size
had almost prevailed. The Union forces had seemed like they were about to break through, to shatter the Confederation line and win the day. Then, suddenly, they retreated. Striker’s plan to force them to expend their supplies in a sustained struggle had been successful, though only by the closest of margins.
Holsten had watched in stunned surprise as the Union ships dropped back toward the transwarp link and slipped out of the system, falling back on Ultara. He’d known, of course, that the enemy was low on supplies, but suspecting something, even believing it, was different than watching it unfold before your eyes.
The flight of the enemy fleet revitalized the exhausted Confeds, and all across the remnants of their battered line, ships surged forward, nipping at the heels of the enemy as they fled. They had known months of almost nonstop defeat, of endless, agonizing retreats. Now they fell on their enemies with vicious abandon, and not a ship of the Union rearguard escaped to join their fellows. When it was done, only the battered units of the Confederation fleet remained in Turas.
“Well, Mr. Holsten, at least this time we paid a cost to gain something. Perhaps not a true victory, certainly not a decisive one. Yet, not another defeat either. And that is something.”
“You struck a blow here that Admiral Winston could never have matched. What you did here has given it another chance. I likely sacrificed my career, even my freedom, to place you in the position to achieve this, Admiral. You have amply repaid my trust. So, until the Senate has me dragged away to face trial, don’t you think you should call me Gary?”
* * *
D’Alvert was in his office, standing, staring at the wall. His arm was bandaged and held in a sling. It would have hurt if he’d been able to feel anything but searing, relentless anger. But he wasn’t.
