by Jay Allan
There was no choice. They had to go in…and that meant there was no point worrying about anything but attacking with all the skill and ferocity he could dredge up.
“All ships, increase thrust to maximum. We’re going in.”
* * *
“We’ve got to do something, Mike. We can’t be a part of this. These people are worse than the Union. My God, they’re more brutal than Sector Nine.”
Mike Hoover sat quietly, listening to Silvia Breen. She was upset, and he thought it might help her to get it all off her chest. It was the least he could do, because he knew what she truly wanted was out of reach.
“Sil,” he finally said, his voice as calm as he could manage, “you know our orders, and you know why we’re here. Caron and his people are reprehensible, but we didn’t come to liberate the workers of Barroux. We’re here to put a thorn in the Union’s side, and that’s our only concern.” He didn’t feel good about what he was saying. He was as torn and guilty about aiding such ruthless totalitarians as Breen. But that didn’t change their orders. Or the fact that there was little or nothing they could do to interfere, even if they wanted to.
“So that’s it? We’re just following orders? Do you think Director Holsten would even want us to prop up such a horrific regime if he knew the truth?”
Hoover didn’t answer the question. He knew Holsten better than Breen did, and he’d served him for longer. He didn’t know what the director of Confederation Intelligence would do or say if he’d been there, but he was far from sure Holsten would have changed anything. The Confederation had been fighting the Union for a century, and millions had died in those recurring conflicts. It was hard to see the workers of Barroux so victimized…but Hoover knew his allegiance—and Breen’s—belonged to the Confederation and its people, first and foremost. And, he was sure that was exactly what Gary Holsten would have told them if he’d been there.
Finally, Hoover looked over at his number two. “Sil, I understand how you feel. I feel that way, too. But what, exactly, do you think we could do for these splinter rebels, even if we wanted to? Assisting Caron and his killers with holding Barroux helps the Confederation—it preserves the peace, or at least extends it. Nothing we can do for Bernard and his people is going to change a thing here. We don’t have troops, we don’t have any significant cache of weapons…we don’t even have enough agents to conduct proper intelligence operations. If we tried to help the resistance, we’d only weaken the planet’s defenses…and blow our mission.”
Breen looked like she was going to argue again, but she just slouched backward and let out a long, loud breath. “I know you’re right, Mike…but this is the first time I’ve thought of myself as one of the bad guys.”
Hoover didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t wrong, though perhaps her view was a bit naïve. War was a deadly business, and, while he knew Caron and his minions were evil to the core, he also had an idea how many of his own people had died in four wars against the Union. If helping Caron hold onto Barroux a little longer did the Confederation some good, so be it. He felt sorry for the workers of Barroux, but his own people came first. Always.
Besides, Barroux wouldn’t hold out forever, no matter what he and his people did. One day, the Foudre Rouge and Sector Nine would land…and Remy Caron—and Ami Delacorte and the rest of his bloodthirsty mob—would get theirs.
Oh yes…if he knew anything about Sector Nine, or whatever they were calling themselves now, Caron and his cronies would get every bit of what was coming to them.
* * *
Rene Valours moved slowly around the outside of the building, pressed against the cold, masonry walls. He was one of Ami Delacorte’s people, one of the first agents in her Protectors of the Revolution. He’d distinguished himself early, hunting down and disposing of more of the revolutionaries on the proscribed list than anyone else. Remy Caron had given the actual orders, but Valours had seen Delacorte’s fingerprints all over the plan, even as he did his part to see it executed. And he saw her influence on Caron in this operation as well.
He turned and glanced back behind him. He had a dozen and a half Protectors with him, some experienced, others less so. The agency was still in its early stages, and the repeated purges to remove…unreliables…had slowed its growth. There were maybe three of the eighteen he’d have chosen, given better selection.
Ideally, he’d have worked alone, but that wasn’t possible here. He knew that well enough. This job had to be done quickly…and completely. He was here to kill the Confeds, all of them, and he didn’t want to think of the consequences of failure, or even partial success. There couldn’t be any survivors, Delacorte had been extremely clear about that, and he also had to make sure it looked like the fringe rebel groups had done it. Valours tended not to think about the politics behind the killings he handled, but it was impossible not to grasp the sensitivity of murdering a couple dozen Confeds.
He reached down and pulled the small comm unit from his belt. He’d already signaled base, advising them his people were in position. Now, he was waiting for the final go-ahead.
He tightened the grip of his other hand around the old, battered rifle. He had far better weapons back at headquarters, inheritances from the Union forces that had once ruled the planet, but he wasn’t taking any chances on this mission. The splinter groups he intended to blame for the killings—at least for Confederation consumption once contact was reestablished—generally had to make due with far less advanced weaponry. That meant his team had to make do with the junky garbage their intended scapegoats used.
He moved forward a few steps, standing near an air vent. He could hear talking—the Confeds, he was sure—but he couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. His general opinion on questions of whether to kill someone was, why not? There was no reason to take chances, and letting some go was always a chance. If a mistake was made, better to kill a few innocents than allow one problem to escape…and become larger, more dangerous. But killing Confeds made even a stone-cold killer like him nervous.
It was time…no, it was past time. He looked down at the small comm unit, raised the hand that held it up to his head, tapping his earpiece. There was a burst of static, but still nothing.
On any other mission, he would have gone in anyway, without confirmation…but taking out the Confeds was a heavier load than he wanted on his shoulders alone. He would wait.
Another minute passed, then two. He started to get edgy. Something is wrong…
He turned again, looking back at his team. They were impatient, too. They were in a back alley, but the delay was endangering the mission badly. All it would take was one drunk wandering into the alley, looking for a place to take a leak or sleep off a bender. Any noise could tip off the Confeds, and Velours didn’t have the slightest doubt they could defend themselves given any warning at all. He was here for a quick mass execution, not to start a firefight. One Confed escaping and eluding pursuit long enough to get a message back home…and the consequences could be dire.
He was about to give the order without confirmation, to wave his people forward and get the job done. Just as he extended his arm, his earpiece crackled loudly, and Ami Delacorte’s voice filled his ears.
“Abort. Repeat, abort. We’re under attack by a Union fleet. Return to base at once. I repeat, abort…”
* * *
“Open fire, all ships.” Denisov glared forward, eyes fixed on Carcajou’s main screen. There was a smoky haze floating across the bridge, and his eyes were red, stinging. The orbital defenses had outranged his ships—that hadn’t been a surprise. What had been unexpected was the strength of those installations. There were over a hundred laser buoys supporting the bases, and they were tearing his ships apart.
He watched as his vessels finally got to return fire. He’d ordered all batteries to focus on the forts…the lasers were just too small to effectively target at long range. But the buoys were ripping into his ships, doing as much damage as the fortresses. Possibly more.
/> He scanned the info streaming across the display, his eyes moving from one platform to another, trying to determine if one was the headquarters of the orbital forces. He couldn’t explain all the added firepower, but he was still willing to bet that whoever was crewing those things were mostly novices, revolutionaries who’d hurriedly figured out how to operate the planet’s defense grid, perhaps aided by a few prisoners or turncoats from the original crews.
His mind raced, wondering how he could turn inexperience against his adversaries. Even as he considered his options, Carcajou shook hard, and a shower of sparks flew across the bridge. He swung his head around, his eyes finding the overloaded panel. It wasn’t a vital station, and none of his people on the bridge seemed to be injured. It would take another half minute at least for damage control reports to flow in from the rest of the ship.
This isn’t going to work, he thought, just as he heard his bridge officers shout out a cheer. One of the forts had been bracketed between three of his approaching vessels, and a shot from one of them took it in a critical area. There had been a moderate explosion, and a blast of escaping gas from one section of the hull…but now, perhaps half a minute later, the entire thing vanished in a thermonuclear explosion.
The celebration was short-lived, however. Denisov’s ships had taken a beating just getting into range, and now all the fire from the platforms and the laser buoys was blasting away at his entire fleet. Vipere went first, in an explosion no less dramatic than that which had accompanied the fortress’s demise. Then Guerrier sent out a code black transmission. The ship didn’t disappear in the fury of a thermonuclear explosion, but there was no response to any efforts to communicate, nor any detectable energy output. Denisov knew that the ship was a wreck, and that her entire crew was likely dead.
He watched as another of the fortresses succumbed, reduced to a useless hulk like Guerrier, a shattered and holed hull remaining in its place. His ships were targeting the laser buoys as the range decreased, and they’d taken down about ten of the weapons. But the return fire was taking its toll.
Denisov knew what defeat would mean. It had taken Villieneuve nearly two years to scrape up enough ships to mount a credible assault on the rebellious planet. He wasn’t likely to be terribly understanding to an admiral who’d gotten that relentlessly-assembled fleet shot to pieces with nothing to show for it all. But Denisov had always been very analytical, able to follow a battle moment by moment and project such things as loss ratios and expected damage rates forward. And that skill was telling him one thing, no matter how he tried to look at it.
His force wasn’t going to make it. They would damage the planet’s defensive array, probably badly. But there would be enough of it left to repel the troop transports…and his ships would be spent, destroyed or crippled. All the rebels needed to do was hang onto enough orbital strength to keep the troops from landing, and they would retain control of the planet…and of the factories they appeared to have somehow repurposed to build additional defenses.
Worse, if he didn’t pull out now, there would be no turning back. He could get his fleet out now, at least he thought he could. But, he didn’t have much time. Delaying, even for a few minutes more, would make a choice just as certainly as giving an order now.
“All ships…reverse thrust. The fleet is to withdraw.”
There was a pause. Then, his tactical officer responded, uncertainty in his voice. “Mmm…yes, sir.” Denisov wasn’t the only one with an idea of how Gaston Villieneuve would respond to the fleet returning without completing its mission.
But Denisov had no intention of heading back to Montmirail in failure and disgrace. A frontal assault wasn’t going to get the job done…but that didn’t mean there weren’t other options. He had to find another way to cripple the enemy defenses, and the spark of an idea was forming in his mind. Villieneuve wanted the rebellion on Barroux crushed, but Denisov knew the Union’s ruler didn’t particularly care about collateral damage.
Even a lot of collateral damage.
Chapter Thirty
100,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless
Zed-11 System
Year 315 AC
“Squadron leaders, you’re responsible for keeping your people in formation. We’ve got four targets, and we’re going in one after another, like a pile driver. Bombers on the inside, interceptors outside. These bastards haven’t launched yet, but it could happen any second, so be ready for anything.” Stockton was in his cockpit, feeling edgy, even scared…but also disturbingly at home. He’d rejoiced at the end of the Union War as enthusiastically as any spacer in the fleet, but sometime in the two years since, he’d come to accept that a part of him deep down craved war…even needed it. It was, in a sense, his natural habitat, and as much as he craved peace, he was out of place when he got it. There was nothing in the universe he did as well as killing people with his fighter. Nothing he would ever do as well.
Four targets seemed like a pathetically small force for the hundreds of fighters he was leading, but he’d seen the enemy’s weapons, and the damage they were doing to the Confederation’s largest and toughest battleships. He could only guess what their fighters could do…or what deadly close-in defenses those ships had ready to blast his ships to atoms.
He shoved his arm to the side, angling his thrust to bring his ship around. He didn’t have a place in the attacking formation, at least not a formal one. He was in command of the whole shooting match. He’d been the fleet’s strike force commander since the expedition had left Megara, but this was the first combat situation. He hadn’t expected to see his fighters engaged in an actual battle during the mission, at least nothing more than facing off against some leftover old tech that was still functioning…but here they were, about to go in against a group of ships that were ravaging the fleet, killing its people. If that wasn’t war, Stockton didn’t know what was.
His instinct was to link up with the weakest of the four columns moving in against the enemy ships…but there was no weakest. He’d handpicked almost the fleet’s entire strike complement, and save for a small contingent of rookies—themselves the pick of the newest class—he had the cream of the Confederation’s fighter corps with him. They didn’t need his help to take on four enemy ships no bigger than small cruisers.
He found himself heading toward the end grouping, the one that included the Alliance pilots. He didn’t expect any problems between the now-allied forces. His veterans had fought alongside the Palatians at the Bottleneck, and they’d seen just how good the Alliance pilots were. But, if there was any place in his powerful formation that called for his presence, it was there. The Alliance and Confederation were allies now, but their pilots had different flying styles, and the Palatians’ rigid structure of honor and conduct sometimes made the fit between the two sides a bit of a rough one.
Besides, he felt he owed it to Jovi Grachus to watch over the Palatians. His thoughts often drifted to the Alliance pilot, even two years after her death. His recollections were painful, memories of his anger and hatred toward her clashing with the regret he now felt at her death. It was only after she was gone that he’d realized just how similar the two of them had been.
Suddenly, the chatter on the comm line increased, pulling his thoughts back to the present. Stockton’s eyes flashed down to the small screen on his fighter’s dashboard. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened. One of the large blue ovals representing Confederation battleships was gone. For an instant, he thought it might be Dauntless, but then his eye caught the flagship, right where she belonged. She’d taken some damage, but all in all, she was still in good shape.
Formidable…
He concentrated his scanners to the rear, searching…but there was nothing except a heavy cloud of hard radiation where the great battleship had been. Formidable had lost containment, and her reactors had unleashed thermonuclear fury, consuming the massive vessel…and everyone on it.
His mind raced, trying to recall if he knew anyone on Fo
rmidable, but he couldn’t come up with any names or faces. The battleship was—had been—one of the newest in the fleet, commissioned six months after the end of the war, and until today, unblooded in combat. Her first battle had proven to be her last.
He felt anger moving in, replacing shock. Wherever those ships were from, whoever was aboard or had sent them…there wasn’t a doubt remaining, nor the slightest hesitation. To Jake Stockton, they were enemies. And, he only knew one way to deal with enemies.
“All squadron leaders, bring your birds up to full acceleration. We’re going in, and we’re going in hard.”
* * *
Stu Weldon turned around, reaching out frantically and grabbing hold of the table as a vicious dizzy spell took him. He barely managed to stay on his feet, and he closed his eyes and stood still for a moment, taking in a few deep breaths as the sensation receded. He didn’t know if the dizziness was caused by the virus or by the immense quantities of simulants and other drugs he’d taken to keep himself functioning. None of what he’d taken had affected the disease in the slightest—he’d already tried every antiviral known to Confederation medicine on a dozen patients, to no avail. But for the first time since his research had begun, he felt he was onto something. As long as he could stay conscious long enough to finish developing the treatment.
The drugs he’d been taking had ravaged his body, he knew that, and they hadn’t cured a single symptom of the disease the Master had called the Plague. They just combatted—very temporarily—the weakness the virus was creating as it battled his immune system.
