by Jay Allan
“We’re almost there. Maybe you should call your ship and let them know it’s us. I’d hate to slip by all these Union ships only to get blasted by your people.”
“Pegasus is in Dauntless’s database, and Commander Travis knows your ship. They won’t shoot at us.”
“But we’ve still got to dock, and that ship of yours is gyrating like a fish flopping around in a boat.” She switched on the main screen. “We’ve got a scanner feed now.”
Barron turned and looked up at the small display. Dauntless was there, and then he saw the energy readings spike up dramatically. He knew immediately, his ship had fired her primaries.
At least the main batteries are still online. That’s a good sign…
But his eyes caught more than just Dauntless and the ship she’d been fighting. There were two more Union battleships, and they were getting dangerously close.
C’mon, Atara…get out of there…
Barron liked to think he had strong nerves, but he’d never seen anything like the stuff that stiffened Atara Travis’s spine. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she’d scooped it right out of a neutron star.
“Dauntless, this is Free Trader Pegasus…we are on an approach vector and request permission to dock.”
There was a brief delay. Then Darrow’s voice crackled through the comm unit. “Negative, Pegasus. We are in combat. You are to pull back at once and stay clear.”
Barron smiled. He could hear Travis’s words in that response. She’d been more receptive to Lafarge’s crew than he had been, but he’d seen her before in combat, the way she clamped down and focused on the struggle at hand. She would have no time for Lafarge’s people, not now.
“Lieutenant Darrow, please advise Commander Travis that Captain Barron would like to come aboard.” He knew he shouldn’t have given his name. In an age of supercomputers and sophisticated AIs, it was always a race between breaking codes and creating new ones. His training had made one thing clear about combat cryptography…always assume the enemy could be listening. And there wasn’t much doubt about the effort the enemy would take to shoot down Dauntless’s famous captain. But he didn’t have time to play games with Atara, and he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t open fire on a Pegasus that ignored her command. They were too close for the enemy to intercept them anyway, even if they picked up his transmission. Probably.
“Captain?” It was Travis’s voice, and he could hear the excitement in it. And the tension.
“Yes, Atara, it’s me. I need to get onboard Dauntless as quickly as possible.”
“Of course, sir…” There was a short pause. “We’re conducting evasive maneuvers. We were just about to pull out of here. As soon as you get within five kilometers, I’ll terminate our…”
“You’ll do no such thing. You keep dodging enemy fire with everything you’ve got.” He turned and looked across the bridge, a strange grin on his face. “I’ve got a pilot in here that can dock no matter what you’re doing. We’ll come in slow. When we get within ten kilometers, transmit us your thrust plan for the next thirty seconds…we’ll adjust and dock on the fly.” Barron knew he’d just committed Pegasus to a maneuver his instructors at the Academy would have called crazy. But the whole situation was crazy.
“Captain, you can’t…”
“That’s an order, Commander.” Then, a few seconds later. “I’ve got it under control, Atara. Trust me.”
“Yes, sir.” She still didn’t sound happy, but he knew asking for her trust would shut her down. There was no way for her to argue after that.
“Ten kilometers,” he repeated. Then he cut the line. He glanced across the cramped confines of Pegasus’s tiny bridge, ducking to look under the low riding conduit that partially blocked his view of his companion. “That’s not a problem, right?” he said, somehow drawing a bizarre satisfaction from calling Andi on her boasts…even though he was stuck there with her. “Not for a pilot like you…”
“No, it’s no problem.”
He could hear the unease in her voice. She was good, he knew that. But the maneuver they were about to attempt was as insane as any Academy class said it was. He’d never have attempted it, no matter how good a pilot was at the helm…but the only alternative was for Dauntless to cut its evasive maneuvering, and that would make his ship a sitting duck.
“No problem at all,” she repeated. But he knew she was scared. He was scared too.
* * *
Dauntless shook hard, and Stu Weldon struggled to maintain his balance with only his legs. It would have been easy enough to reach out and grab something…except both of his hands were deep inside a man’s body, desperately working to save his life.
The operating theater was bright, garish, the lights bathing the sterile whiteness of the room with an almost blinding intensity. Doctors Weldon and Silla had been working for hours, surrounded by four of their staff, trying with all their skill and talent to perform a procedure they had no place attempting in a spaceship’s sickbay. One conventional wisdom held was impossible.
Weldon had resolved to make the attempt, no matter what. The only alternative had been to watch his friend die, trapped in the confines of a two-meter-long metal tube. Weldon had a hard time discerning where realism and hope met, whether his belief he had a chance was real, or just a facet of his relentless stubbornness. But he knew one thing. He wasn’t going to give up, not while Jake Stockton was alive…or even still revivable.
Stockton had “died” twice already, but both times the resuscitator had brought him back. Weldon had faced a moment of crisis early on, a near-panic that shook his confidence. But he’d quickly pulled himself back together, and for a short time, he’d actually been optimistic. He and his team had made enormous progress, and he’d begun to believe they could actually pull it off. Then Dauntless went back into battle.
The ship had been hit multiple times since, and with each one, Weldon’s laser scalpel shook in his hand. The lights had blinked in several instances, and, one heart-stopping time, the power had failed entirely for a gut-wrenching thirty seconds. Stockton’s life functions had stopped that time, and had only been restored with great difficultly. Even Weldon had been almost ready to call it…when one last desperate attempt was crowned with success.
“Dr. Weldon…we have casualties.” The med tech was standing outside the clear wall of the theater, speaking through the comm unit.
“Damn,” Weldon muttered under his breath. He’d known it was only a matter of time, but Dauntless had gotten through the first part of the fight without taking significant losses. “Serious?” he asked without looking up.
“Yes, sir. Two are critical. We’ve got radiation burns too, and one serious case of rad poisoning.”
“That cuts it, Jane…we can’t both be in here.” He paused, sucking in a deep breath that was half a need for oxygen and half pure stress. “Go…you handle things out there. I’ll finish this myself…somehow.” He had no idea how he was going to pull Stockton through without Silla, but he knew one thing for sure…friend or no, he couldn’t let Dauntless spacers sit out there and die while the battleship’s two surgeons were in here fighting a probably hopeless battle to save one man.
“Stu…”
“Go,” he said, more harshly than he’d intended. “Go,” he repeated, softer the second time.
Silla stood where she was for a few seconds, silent, unmoving. Then she slowly extricated her hands from where she’d been working. She looked like she might say something, but then she just walked out into the airlock that kept the hyper-critical theater sterile.
Weldon looked down at Stockton. The pilot looked like a nightmare, the victim of diabolical torture rather than a man receiving the best care possible. He appeared to have been flayed alive in places, and in others, the film that would hold the regenerated skin as it grew was a ghostly, almost translucent white.
Come on, Jake…you’re a strong SOB. Pull through this with me…
Weldon gulped down a deep
breath, and he leaned over again, getting back to work as Dauntless shook hard once again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Command Center
Fleet Base Grimaldi
Orbiting Krakus II
“Get me General Ramsay.” Striker’s voice was raw. “Now.”
“Yes, Admiral.” A few seconds later. “On your line, sir.”
“Mack…I need your Marines in position. The enemy might just blast Grimaldi to scrap, but my gut tells me they want to take it. If they board…well, that makes it your problem. Yours and your Marines’.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer replied grimly, “it does. Don’t you worry, Admiral. If they board this station, they’ll have one hell of a fight on their hands.”
“I know they will, Mack. And I can promise you we’ll give them everything we’ve got before they board.”
“I never doubted that, sir. Not for a second.”
“Get your people ready, General. You know all the likely ingress points, and the bottlenecks in the station.” He hesitated for a second. “And you know the FRs too, how they think.”
“Yes, sir.” There was hatred in the general’s response, one that spoke volumes of the animosity between the Marines and the FRs.
“Go to it, Mack.” He cut the line. Grimaldi had a full brigade of Marines, eighteen hundred strong, and Striker knew every one of them would fight to the death if it came to that…as he knew it very well might.
He looked over at the display, watching the fleet move toward the transit point. All but Commodore Flynn’s task force. His ships were having trouble disengaging. Superb was gone now, lost with Captain Wringer and all hands. Colossus was a wreck, dead in space and spewing what remained of her atmosphere through half-kilometer long rents in her hull. She didn’t have a gun left, nor an engine, and Striker had ordered her abandoned. He didn’t know what would happen to the spacers who managed to escape, whether they had any chance of rescue, or if they’d just float in their lifeboats while the rest of the Confederation fleet was destroyed. But they were alive now—almost half the crew had escaped—and Striker tried to focus on that.
“I want those primaries to count, Commander. We’ll be taking a lot of incoming fire, so we don’t know how many shots we’ll get. We don’t waste any. I’ll skin the man who misses right now.” Striker didn’t care how unfair his statement was, it was how he felt. Men and women were dying all across the God-forsaken system, and he needed every hit he could get if there was to be any chance those sacrifices had been worth the cost.
“Yes, Admiral.”
He’d pulled most of the fleet back. The Union forces had pursued briefly, but now they were doing exactly what he’d hoped they would. They were massing for an attack on Grimaldi. The enemy was battered, almost as badly as his own forces, but they had the strength to take the fortress…as long as they were willing to pay the cost.
And hopefully that cost will be substantial…enough for what I need…
“I think I know what you’re planning, Van.” The barely audible voice was Holsten’s. Striker turned to see the intelligence chief leaning down behind his chair, whispering. “It’s a gutsy move, and just maybe one that will work. But you’re the commander of the entire fleet, and that means you have no place here when this station is being blasted apart, when FRs are boarding from all sides. You need to transfer your flag.”
Striker looked around the command center, clearly uncomfortable having the hushed conversation in front of his officers. “That’s not going to happen, Gary. No chance.”
“Van…your responsibility goes beyond Grimaldi and the people here.”
“No,” Striker said, catching himself as his volume grew too loud. “But there’s no reason at all for you to be here, Gary. This is my place, my duty. I have to stay with my people. But it’s foolish for you to remain. We can still get you out of here before we’re cut off.”
“I’m staying.”
“Gary…”
“I’m staying, Van. We’ll both see it through to the end.”
Striker looked like he was about to argue further, but finally, he just nodded.
“Commander Jarravick, I want all personnel armed and armored. If we have to repel boarders, by God, every man and woman on this station is going to fight.”
“Yes, sir.” Jarravick still seemed confused, but the raw defiance in Striker’s words seemed to energize him. A moment later: “Admiral, Commodore Flynn reports the remnants of this task force are retreating toward the fleet rally point at the Ultara portal. All except Intrepid…”
Striker turned his head abruptly toward the display. Sara Eaton’s ship was there, a small blue oval surrounded by enemy ships. “What is Intrepid’s status, Commander?” He already knew there was nothing he could do, but he had to ask.
“Her engines are down, sir. She appears to have two operable batteries and some minor level of energy generation. A lot of this is guess work. The enemy’s all around her, jamming comm signals.”
“Get me Captain Eaton!”
The aide hunched over his station, his hands working the communications controls.
“Commander…”
“Sorry, sir…we can’t get through. The interference is too great.”
Striker stared at the screen, feeling a wave of helpless panic. He knew there was nothing he could do, even if he could reach Eaton…but it was worse being cut off. Eaton was one of the heroes who had destroyed the enemy’s Supply One base, arguably saving the Confederation in the process. Tyler Barron was the other. He’d sent one into the trackless wastes of the Badlands, denying him the reinforcements he’d promised, and now he was going to watch Eaton’s ship overwhelmed and destroyed.
“Admiral, the enemy’s first line is entering range.”
Striker took a deep breath, doing all he could to focus, to purge Barron and Eaton from his mind. He stared straight ahead, his eyes cold.
“Open fire.”
* * *
“Reroute the power, Doug. I don’t care how you get it there, but I want those guns firing.” Eaton stood amid the wreckage of Intrepid’s shattered bridge.
“Captain, Intrepid is done…there’s not a system that is more than a pile of half-melted junk.” Merton’s words were harsh, but she could hear his own pain in them. She loved her ship, but Douglas Merton had crawled through every centimeter of its vast compartments and access tubes. He had nursed her through battle after battle, carefully repairing her damaged systems. And now he was watching Intrepid die.
“We’ve still got two guns, Doug, and that means we’re still in this fight. I need that power.”
“Captain, the reactors are both down. Unit A is completely gone. B is almost as bad. It would take me a week to get it back online. We’ve got nothing left but backup battery power…and we’re losing that rapidly. We’ve got fires out of control everywhere. The bays are both gone. Half my engineers are dead. Hell, half the crew is dead. There’s nothing left, Captain.”
Eaton wanted to scream, to thrust her hands in the air and howl out all the pain and frustration. But she just sat where she was. Her ship was dying…and she was its captain.
But her crew. She was ready to die with her ship, but she had to give her people any chance they had. She reached out, opening the small control panel at the edge of her chair’s armrest. There was a red button inside. She’d imagined herself in many situations, but never this one. She hit the button.
“Attention all personnel. Abandon ship. Abandon ship. Immediately…and Godspeed to all of you.”
She leaned back in her chair, staring straight ahead, her eyes dull, lifeless. It would be over soon.
“Captain…”
She heard Johns’s voice, but it was distant, far off. She was going to die. That was all that mattered now. It wouldn’t be long.
“Captain Eaton,” Johns said, shouting this time. “We have to go.”
“No,” she said unemotionally. “You go, Commander. All of you…go!”
“Not without you, Captain.” Johns reached out and put his hand on her arm. “Come with us…I’ll help you to the lifeboat.”
“No,” she said, brushing aside his arm. “I’m staying here.”
“Then I’m staying too, Captain.” He looked up, staring across the bridge at the other officers, who nodded back in turn. “We’re all staying.”
“No, you’re not.” Eaton stood up, turning to face her officers. “All of you…abandon ship. That’s an order.”
They all stood firm, staring back at her. Johns put his hand on her arm again. “Captain, I’ll ask you once not to make a mutineer out of me…but if I have to, I’ll carry you out of here on my shoulder kicking and screaming.” He waved toward the rest of the officers. “And they’ll all help me.” He paused. “We’re all going to get out of here…or none of us are.”
She looked back, a flush of anger taking her at first, but then subsiding. She understood her people were loyal, that they wanted to help her. Why didn’t they understand? She didn’t want to survive her ship’s destruction.
She felt Johns’s hands on her arms. Then another pair of hands, pulling her toward the lift. She fought for a few seconds, struggling to get back to her chair, but then she gave up and let them guide her toward the access tube…and down to the bridge’s lifeboat.
* * *
“You may proceed, Admiral Beaufort.” Villieneuve sat to the side, watching as the Union’s top admiral directed his staff. The fleet had pushed the Confederation forces back, compelled them to abandon their vaunted main base for the second time in less than two years. Villieneuve had intended the invasion to be a diversion, but now it seemed as if Beaufort was on the verge of breaking the enemy’s back. The Confeds had taken terrible losses. At least ten capital ships had been destroyed, along with dozens of escorts and a number of fighters that defied easy counting. They had made a stand, chosen this spot to hold the line, but now they were broken, fleeing.
