The Grand Alliance

by Jay Allan

  Staying with the original plan would at least ensure getting his last wave in before the enemy was able to pull back too far. That was the best he could do. The rest would be up to Barron and the battleships.

  “Where do you want us, Raptor?” It was ‘Lynx’ Federov. She had commanded the first wave, despite his own presence with the wings, and she’d done a brilliant job. Over a thousand bombers had gone in, utterly ignoring the dense defensive fire, and they’d hit the enemy hard. The escorts mixed in along the line added their defensive fire to that of the battleships, and they gunned two hundred of the approaching bombers. But the ones who got through followed Federov’s lead, closing to point blank range, and pouring their cluster bombs into the guts of dozens of Hegemony battleships.

  “Get your people back, Lynx.” Stockton had sent fighters with expended bombs back into the fight more than once, throwing them at the massive enemy battleships with nothing but their lasers. But that was a waste, of lives certainly, and in this case, of any potential of executing any further attacks. Federov’s wings wouldn’t get back until the battle lines had engaged, and that would make landings a difficult undertaking, and any subsequent launches even more so. But any ships she managed to get into the bays at least had a chance of refitting in time to launch again. That offered a chance for some last-minute support for the battleships, a chance the admiral might desperately need.

  “Land as well as you can, and get Stara on the refit. Tell her we need your ships ready to launch, and we need it done in record time, regardless of what else is going on.” He knew just what he was asking of Stara. Those battleships would be wracked by enemy fire, their systems would be gutted, their landing bays set aflame, their crews killed, one by one and in groups, and conditions would only get worse as the lines continued to exchange deadly broadsides. It would be about as far from optimal conditions as possible, a nightmare for flight crews trying to do their work, but if anyone could see it done, it was Stara.

  “Yes, Admiral.” Stockton could hear in her tone that she didn’t like heading back without him, leaving while two-thirds of the strike force was still engaged. But he knew she understood, and he had no doubt she would do what he commanded.

  “Go, Lynx…get those birds back. Admiral Barron’s most likely going to need them. And, if I’m not back yet, you take them out as soon as any number of them are ready to go, you understand me?”

  “Yes, Raptor. Understood.”

  He watched her ship coming about, her thrusters blasting at full and, a moment later, he saw the rest of the first wave, the whole formation turning about to follow, still ragged from finishing their attack, but coming together even as he watched.

  He turned back, confident his people were in the best possible hands.

  The second wave was going in, with Dirk Timmons in the lead. His ego wanted to believe they needed his attention, but he knew that wasn’t really true. Not with ‘Warrior’ Timmons in the lead.

  He just stayed where he was, waiting.

  Waiting for the last wave.

  * * *

  “It is clear the enemy has developed a longer-ranged version of their particle accelerators. That is unfortunate, yet it appears that we retain an advantage, a shortened one in terms of range, and also one in hitting power. We are going to maximize this in the coming exchange.” Illius sat in his position on Hegemony’s Glory, looking out over the vessel’s senior officers, and at the cluster of aides, his staff as acting fleet commander. They were all well-trained, perfectly genetically suited to their roles, yet Illius was nervous, and he’d repeated the same directives several times. He’d seen too many errors committed so far, and there was no more room for confusion, nor for lackluster performance. The fleet had been caught by surprise. That was a credit to the enemy’s initiative, but it was one that wouldn’t have been possible without a series of mistakes by the Hegemony forces or, if not outright errors, certainly carelessness.

  Arrogance…Chronos is correct. If we fail, our own assurance of our superiority will be the culprit.

  There was no more time for that kind of foolishness. Illius had ordered the fleet to pull back, to take a carefully-chosen position, one that would allow the heavy railguns on the platforms—fully operational, despite the incomplete state of the forts themselves—to support the fleet’s battered broadsides. The enemy bombers had already knocked out close to half of the fleet’s railgun batteries. Some of those were blasted to wreckage, others taken offline by minor damage or cut power transmission lines. Damage control teams were working feverishly, trying to bring anything repairable back online. But the bombers had hurt the fleet’s combat strength. Again.

  This time, the forts will help fill that gap. Those guns are heavier and deadlier than anything we’ve deployed yet.

  “Our timing must be exact. Every ship must follow orders with unrelenting precision.” Hegemony’s Glory shook as he was speaking. Another hit. The last squadrons of the enemy’s final wave were completing their attacks. The enemy bombers had struck hard, but Illius believed the Hegemony forces still held the advantage. The fight would be a toe to toe slugging match now, a bloodbath, the losses vastly higher than anything his people had imagined before they’d commenced the war against the Rim dwellers.

  We’re past that now. We’re too deep in to pull back, to give up on the Rim. We have to win, at all costs…

  “The enemy fleet is here, now. When we destroy it, the war will be all but won.” He turned toward the display, watching the small symbols positioned around the circle that represented Megara. Chronos was on one of the stations, and that troubled him. None of the fortresses were fully complete, and when the enemy realized the power of the weapons positioned there, they would find a way to hit back. They would try, at least. He’d fought them long enough to understand that.

  He didn’t like the idea of the invasion’s supreme commander being off the planet, in an exposed position. He didn’t like it one bit.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. There was only one thing that mattered just then.

  He watched as the range counted down, as his ships moved into their assigned positions. The last of the enemy bombers had finished their attacks. They had savaged the fleet, but they had paid a heavy price for it. Now, it was down to the battle lines, a desperate, vicious brawl…for control of the Olyus system.

  And possibly for the entire Rim.

  A small light flashed on his comm control, and he tapped the button on the side. “Yes, Commander…” It wasn’t a question. He knew why Chronos was on the line.

  “It is almost time, Illius.”

  “Yes, Commander. All units are prepared. The fleet is synchronized with fortress command.”

  “Very good.” There was a short silence. “Good luck to you, Illius.”

  “And to you, Commander.” Illius cut the line and stared straight ahead, battling the tension that struggled to divert his attention. He watched as the enemy battleships moved forward, as their waves of small craft pulled back. As the range display counted down, each second bringing the approaching enemy forces closer and closer.

  Then, it was time.

  “All batteries…open fire!”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  CFS Dauntless

  Olyus System

  Year 320 AC

  The Second Battle of Megara – “Kill them. Kill them all.”

  “All batteries, prepare to open fire.” Barron’s voice was cold, a sound almost like steel striking steel. He’d spoken the words without thought, almost on pure instinct. The fleet was entering the enemy’s range. His ships had a two-minute gauntlet to run, one hundred twenty seconds before they could return fire, and bring death to the enemy.

  Death. That was Barron’s purpose, and all he cared about. The Confederation, the entire Rim, billions of civilians…their futures all hung on what happened next, but Tyler Barron, so long the noble leader, the warrior who fought to protect his people, was gone. All that remained was fury, rage,
and an aching hurt that could only be salved by oceans of enemy blood.

  Dauntless rocked hard, then again, the battleship’s engines driving it forward on an irregular course, toward the enemy, but erratically so, doing everything possible to upset the Hegemony target locks.

  The flagship pushed forward, unscathed by the chunks of super-heavy metals whipping by at hypersonic velocities. The Hegemony railguns were a deadly weapon, even to the largest ships. Barron and his people knew that, but it wasn’t long before they got a pointed reminder.

  Vincennes wasn’t one of the newest battleships, nor one of the largest, but the vessel was certainly powerful, and she was equipped with the enhanced primaries. She was firmly in her place on the line, guns ready to fire. Then, the symbol on the display expanded, a shimmering halo hovering around it for a few seconds.

  A hit.

  Barron barely noticed the reports coming in on his own screen, the words and figures scrolling along in his peripheral vision. His eyes had always been glued to the damage and casualty reports in past battles, but now he barely paid attention.

  He knew many of his people were going to die in the next hours, perhaps all of them. But there was little point spending time watching it happen one ship at a time. There were no decisions to make, no reactions to losses. The fleet was going in, no matter what. When it was over, he would know who had lived and who had died, assuming, of course, he was still there to see. Until then, nothing mattered but killing the enemy.

  Vincennes wasn’t gone, but even his casual observation told him the battleship was just about out of the fight. At least until she’d closed enough to open fire with whatever remained of her secondaries. That was a helpful thought, the kind of thing Barron had used to sustain his morale in a hundred battles. But it was pointless, too.

  Vincennes had almost no chance of closing to firing range. The vessel had lost almost half her power, and Barron couldn’t imagine the hell raging in her engineering spaces just then. Her people would endure as long as they could, they would battle the fires, the radiation, the vacuum of space tearing through damaged compartments. But their ship was half crippled, and in a fight as ferocious as the one Barron knew they all faced, those who stumbled were very likely to fall.

  And never rise again.

  “Fritzie…” His hands moved almost without mental bidding, connecting his direct line to the fleet’s chief engineer, essentially limited in that moment to serving the function for Dauntless alone.

  “Admiral?”

  “We need more power to the primaries, all ships. We need maximum rate of fire once we enter range.”

  “Admiral…the enhanced primaries are already on the verge of failure, that’s how they function. The whole system’s basically just an overload already. If we push that any harder…”

  “What, Fritzie? We’ll lose ships?” Barron’s voice was caustic, but then he went silent. His eye caught Vincennes again on the monitor. The ship’s engines had failed, long enough, at least, to shut down her evasive maneuvers. The enemy had already targeted her, and it was almost effortless for her assailants to deliver another railgun shot right into her guts. The chunk of super-heavy metal tore through the armor and the steel of her decks, obliterating one system after another, and delivering a staggering amount of kinetic energy to the target.

  The battleship hung where she was for a few seconds, as thousands watched on their screens and scanners…and then she vanished in the hell of thermonuclear fury.

  “Admiral…yes, sir. I will do what I can.” She’d sounded as though she was going to argue when Barron had first told her what he wanted, but now she just agreed with him. Vincennes’s destruction had made the admiral’s point with a grim eloquence words could never have matched.

  Barron turned as he closed the comm line, his eyes moving back to the display. Within a minute, eight of his ships had been hit…and two destroyed. Formidable was the second vessel lost, and the report confirmed what Barron had already suspected from watching Vincennes demise.

  The enemy forts did indeed have operational railguns. And the monster weapons were larger and more powerful, even than those on the Hegemony battleships. Such a realization might have unnerved him in another time, another place. But he’d led his people to the Olyus system to win or die, and there was no turning back. If the Hegemony wanted to stop his fleet, to hold Megara, they were going to have to destroy every single ship he had.

  Because there would be no retreat order. None given by Tyler Barron.

  “Commander, put me on fleetwide comm.” Dauntless was in the lead, the first ship in the fleet, and the display showed less than thirty seconds to firing range.

  “Yes, Admiral.” An instant later: “On your line.” Atara’s voice was almost as cold and hard as Barron’s. It was determination, courage…and, he suspected, also her way of telling him she was with him.

  To the end.

  “Attention, all ships of the battle line. All ships of the fleet. We are about to begin the final stage of the battle. There can be but two outcomes to this fight. The enemy flees, and we retake Megara. Or we die, every one of us. There will be no retreat, no pause. Forward now, to victory. The battle plan is simple, and clear, and all that remains is for us to execute it.”

  Barron paused, just for a moment. Then he added a few words, the ones he’d heard in his head, a relentless, unstoppable scream.

  “Kill them. Kill them all.”

  He turned once again toward Atara’s station. He held her gaze, for perhaps two seconds, a final instant of humanity between two friends. Then, he spoke again, one more command.

  “All ships…open fire.”

  * * *

  “Stara, we’re coming in now. We’re matching the fleet’s course and velocity, but we’re going to have to tie into the defense nets for final approach.” Olya Federov had made combat landings before, though perhaps never under quite the circumstances the battle line was facing just then. The fleet’s battleships were getting hammered by the enemy’s railguns, and they’d just opened up with their own fire. Dauntless had shot first, and scored a direct hit. That was a strong start, especially at such long range, and she decided to take it as a positive omen.

  She needed everything she could get just then.

  “Olya, we’re on maximum evasive maneuvers. Even if you’re plugged into the datanet, your people are going to have a hell of a time syncing up. If you pull back, take position behind the…”

  “No, Stara. Admiral Stockton wants us to land and refit. Immediately.” Federov had agreed with Stockton when he’d given her the order. She still did, at least with the rationale. But now, she wasn’t sure if she could pull it off. If her people could.

  There was a pause, a long one. She wasn’t sure if Stara was thinking, or if the flight control commander had called up to Dauntless’s bridge for guidance or permission. Security was always tight around a warship’s evasive routines. If an enemy could sync into a datanet like the one her people would, they could tear even a monster like Dauntless apart in seconds.

  “Alright, Olya…but you need to bring your best pilots in first. The bays are already damaged, and with the combat maneuvers…” Another pause. “If one of your people loses it…”

  “Understood, Stara.” She was about to ask Stara to get the other nearby battleships ready when the flight control officer beat her to it.

  “I’ve got Dauntless, Constitution, Remorseless, Standard, Exeter, Repulse, and Avenger locked into one net for your landings. Bring as many ships as you can in…but, hurry. Things are only going to get worse as we close.”

  “We’re on the way, Stara.” A pause. “And, thanks…”

  “Invictus just acknowledged, too. Advise your Palatian squadrons they should connect with their own datanet. Imperator Tulus has commanded all of their battleships to prepare to land and refit their bombers.”

  “Thank you again, Stara. We’ll be landing in about four minutes.”

  Federov glanced down at her
screen, highlighting the locations of the ships Stara had specified. They were mostly close to Dauntless, though Constitution was Admiral Winters’s flagship, and fairly far out on the port flank. Which was fine. Her returning wing was stretched out over a hundred thousand kilometers, and she’d already instructed the AI to issue approach orders. She wasn’t worried about squadron integrity, not then. Her pilots would land wherever they could, on the closest ships, or the ones that had room, or functional bays, to take them.

  She wasn’t going to get them all landed, not while the battle lines were so heavily engaged. But she’d get some of them in…and, she promised herself, she’d get them back out again too.

  Whatever it took.

  The nightmare unfolding on her screen, the desperate maneuvers, the shattered hulks of savaged battleships, the death and destruction all around…it was all screaming to her, a single message, one that had started with Stockton’s orders.

  The fleet still needs your people…as many as you can lead back out.

  * * *

  “Please, General…drink.” Taylor was leaning over Rogan, holding the small, metal canteen to the general’s lips.

  “This is your water, Taylor.” Rogan turned his head away as he spoke, but the private moved his hands as well, keeping the small canister just in front of the general’s mouth.