Ruins of Empire: Blood on the Stars III

by Jay Allan

  His people had a chance. It was still a longshot, and everything had to go right for Dauntless to make it through. But it was real, and from where things had been hours before, that seemed pretty damned good.

  * * *

  Bryan Rogan fired again, a perfectly placed shot. The FR dropped hard, leaving a spray of blood and other innards hanging in the air for an instant. The Marine captain was a skilled marksman, and as often as not, he only needed one shot. But that wasn’t why he’d flipped off his auto fire. His people were running out of ammo…and it was going to be close, damned close, as to whether they had enough to finish the battle.

  Dauntless’s Marines, at least what was left of its battered contingent, had a real chance to hold out, to repel the FRs invading the artifact. If their supplies held.

  The battle had been a bloody one, and half of Rogan’s people were casualties. They weren’t all dead of course, and the wounded gave those still in the line yet another reason to fight. It was unthinkable to leave their broken and bleeding comrades to the mercy of the enemy, and every Marine still in the fight struggled that much harder to stave off that terrible possibility.

  The fighting was vicious everywhere, but right around Rogan, where the largest enemy forces had landed, it was beyond brutal. Men and women had fought to the death with rifle, pistols, knives…even ammunition boxes and makeshift clubs. The dead littered the corridors and compartments, and the smooth metal floors were slick with blood. But still the intensity had not waned. These two forces were blood enemies, and the battle would not end—could not end—until one side was wiped out.

  Rogan hated the Union, and he detested the FRs with a passion half inherited and half formed by his own experiences. He felt sorrow for the Marines he’d lost in his battles, and he always tried to put their lives first…except when facing the FRs. Defeating the hated enemy was more important than anything, than anyone’s survival. Including his own.

  He fired again, dropping another of the enemy. He had a good position, one with partial cover and a tremendous field of fire. The enemy had to come around the corner to get line of sight on him…and a Marine like Bryan Rogan didn’t need much time. He had three of his people with him, and between them they were holding the front edge of the line.

  There wasn’t much behind them, save for wounded and the last few crates of ammunition. He’d stripped the rest of his forces, sent them in twos and threes where they were most needed, relying on his ability to hold with a small contingent. The rest, what few remained, he’d sent to Plunkett. The lieutenant was about to launch a final assault, one designed to push the enemy back on their boarding points and bracket the surviving FRs between Rogan’s people and the attacking squads. It was risky, and based on an imperfect knowledge of the ship’s layout, but Rogan knew his people had to win now. They didn’t have the strength for a sustained battle, and they damned sure didn’t have the ammo.

  “Captain, we’re ready up here…we just need the word from you.” Plunkett’s voice was strange, strained and raspy. Rogan knew without asking that the lieutenant had been wounded. He almost said something, but then he held it. Plunkett knew what was at stake. If the officer was ready to lead his Marines in the assault, Bryan Rogan knew he had to let him. Besides, he had no one to replace Plunkett. No one at all.

  “Go, Lieutenant. Good luck to you and your people.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Rogan wondered for an instant how badly Plunkett was hurt. Then he put it out of his mind and whipped his rifle around, firing again. He missed, the FR reacting quickly and dropping back behind the corner just in time. But he didn’t have to hit, not really. He just had to hold the enemy back.

  Just for a while longer.

  * * *

  “Careful with that!” Fritz yelled across the room toward a pair of her technicians. The two men had put down one of the canisters more heavily than she liked. “Any one of those things can kill all of us in a microsecond. Those containers have been here for centuries without a single containment failure…at least until you fools rushed in here like a herd of stampeding cattle.”

  “Sorry, Commander.” The lieutenant’s voice was haggard, her fatigue clear in every word.

  Fritz knew her people were exhausted, that she was being almost impossibly hard on them. But she was just as tired, and no amount of fatigue changed a thing. The Marines were fighting twice their number, desperately trying to keep the FRs from taking control of the station. Dauntless was out there playing a deadly cat and mouse game with four enemy battleships. Even Andromeda Lafarge’s smugglers had joined in the fight. So, as far as she was concerned, her engineers would just have to dig up the fortitude and energy to keep going.

  “Just be careful,” Fritz said, softening her voice just a bit. “We’ve got to get this done. Dauntless doesn’t have a chance unless we hold up our end.” Then she got dirty, pulling out a tactic she knew was unfair. “Captain Barron is counting on us.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Fritz turned back to her own task, checking the wiring job on one of the makeshift antimatter mines. She was pleased with what her people had managed to do in such a short time. In another two hours, they’d have sixty-one mines ready to go, more than the top end number she’d promised Barron, and each one with a crude proximity fuse as well as an ECM suite she hoped would confuse the scanners on the enemy ships.

  Everything was thrown together from the materials at hand, and she’d stopped trying to count the things that could go wrong. Besides the obvious worry that one of her people would inadvertently destroy the containment on one of the canisters, killing them all in an instant, she had concerns about the ECM, about the detonation controls…even about whether the charges she’d affixed to blow the things would penetrate the tough shells on the containers.

  There was no point in worrying about any of it. They had done the best they could with what they had. And there was no way to test anything. Even if she’d been able to deploy one into space and get it far enough from the station, the explosion would be detectable across the entire system. The warning would put the enemy on alert, and almost certainly dissuade them from blundering close to the artifact, where the mines would have a chance to do their jobs. All she could do was trust in her work, and that of her engineers.

  She heard gunfire. It wasn’t the first time, but it was definitely closer this time. She’d set up her makeshift production line as far away from the expected hotspots as she could, but there was really no safe place on the entire ship. Not while the battle still raged.

  “All right, forget that,” she said, looking up. Most of her people had stopped their work and were listening to the shooting. “You’ve got your jobs and the Marines have theirs. Be glad yours is in here.” She paused a few seconds, watching as they all returned their attention—some of it, at least—to their tasks. Fritz took a deep breath. She was a taskmaster and as hard as steel as far as any of her people were concerned, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel fear.

  They all think I’m immune to it, that I’m some kind of mountain of stone. If they knew how close I was to pissing myself…

  But they would never know that. Fritz’s reputation was useful, and she’d seen her people driven to almost superhuman feats by the strange combination of fear and devotion they felt for her. And that had saved Dauntless more than once. It was too much to lose over a moment of human weakness, at least a visible moment.

  The shooting came even closer, and the two Marines Rogan had assigned to guard her people rushed toward the door. One of them, a corporal, turned toward Fritz. “Your people better take cover, Commander.” Then she ran closer to the door, dropping to one knee behind a large crate.

  “You heard Corporal Quince…now! Find some cover.” Fritz slid to the side, behind a large metal box. She reached down to the floor, to the pistol Bryan Rogan had given her. She’d taken it, as all her people had taken weapons, but she hadn’t expected to use it. She’d been in as many dangerous sit
uations as anyone in the fleet, but she’d never fired a gun in close combat.

  There’s a first time for everything…

  She gripped the pistol tightly, but her eyes were moving across the room, from one antimatter canister to the next, wondering helplessly just how those metal shells would handle bullets.

  Time passed slowly, at least it seemed that way, but a quick glance at her chronometer told her it had been less than three minutes. The fighting was right outside the door now, and an instant later, there was an explosion beyond the closed hatch. The super-hard metal mostly held, but the door was blown from its track. She could hear the sound of boots moving just outside, and then the door began moving inward.

  She knew there were FRs just on the other side of that chunk of ancient metal, that they were pushing, forcing the door out of the hatchway. Then it fell with a loud clang, and all hell broke loose.

  The two Marines fired from their chosen positions, taking down all the FRs in the front row. Fritz counted four, but she knew there might have been more. Then she saw dark shapes flying in…grenades, she realized.

  Two of the explosives landed in open spaces, but one fell just behind Corporal Quince. She saw the explosion, and then the Marine staggered to the side, the rear of her armor and what looked like half her back torn away. There was blood everywhere, and Fritz didn’t need Dr. Weldon to tell her the wound was mortal. But the Marine wasn’t done yet, and even as blood poured from her grievous wounds, she held herself up for a few seconds, before falling to her knees, still firing, even as fresh shots riddled her now exposed body. Finally, she fell with a sickening thud, as more FRs poured through the door.

  “Fight!” Fritz screamed, aiming her pistol and opening fire as she did. Her engineers weren’t Marines, they weren’t clone soldiers like the FRs…but they were Confederation spacers, and they were fighting for their lives. She felt a rush as she saw one of the FRs go down under her fire. The Union soldiers were better trained and equipped, but they were forcing their way through a narrow opening and her people were under cover. She had no idea how many of the enemy there were, but that didn’t matter now. This was a fight to the finish.

  She kept firing, even as she saw their second Marine go down. There were at least a dozen FRs dead, more probably, but they were still coming through. Fritz heard a sickening shriek, one of her people, she knew immediately, but she held her focus. “Keep firing,” she screamed, knowing they would all run out of ammunition any moment. The Marines had given out weapons, but they hadn’t had much ordnance to spare.

  She tried to aim, but the FRs were moving forward now, taking cover behind the same boxes the Marines had used. She fired, and again, but the easy targets were gone. There were FRs flanking the doorway, and perhaps seven or eight inside the room, all behind at least some kind of cover.

  She wondered what the FRs would have done if they’d known what was in the canisters spread around the room—if they would have pulled back, fearful of causing a catastrophic accident. At least a couple of the cylinders had been grazed by shots, but so far, they had held their containment.

  Her head snapped around. She could hear more gunfire out in the hall. Not the high-pitched crack of the Union guns, but the lower sound of the heavier Confederation rifles.

  Marines!

  She fired, and then again, feeling a burst of hope. Then she saw the FRs in the doorway go down…and a few seconds later, Marines taking their place, firing on the Union troops in the room from behind. It was over in a few seconds, the huge room she had turned into a relatively tidy workspace now reduced to a nightmare of blood and gore.

  But the FRs were all down.

  Fritz hesitated for a few seconds, until she was sure the fighting was over. Then she stood up.

  “Commander Fritz, are you okay?” The man speaking was tall, clad in body armor that she knew was black despite the fact that nearly every centimeter of it was covered with a bright sheen of blood.

  “Captain Rogan,” she said, unable to contain the distress in her voice.

  Rogan looked confused for an instant, and then he gave her a fleeting smile. “No, this isn’t my blood, Commander…at least most of it isn’t.” He turned around toward the Marines behind him. “I want the rest of that hallway swept. Not one of them gets away. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Rogan turned back toward Fritz as the half dozen armored figures jogged back out in the corridor.

  “It was a rough fight, Commander.” He paused, his eyes dropping to the floor for an instant. “A costly fight. But we won. There are a few FRs still on the loose, but this group that got through here was the last major formation.”

  Fritz took a step forward, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Dauntless is heading toward us. The captain managed to pull off some kind of maneuver…he left two of the enemy ships far behind. Dauntless is going to fight the single battleship here…and then it will be your show, Commander. The captain wants the mines ready in two hours, max.”

  Fritz nodded, wiping the sweat from her face. “Very well, Captain.” It seemed a grossly inadequate thing to say to the man whose Marines had just saved her life, but it was all she had. Then she turned and looked across the room. “All right, all of you…the fight is over, and it’s time to get back to work. Now!”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  CFS Dauntless

  System Z-111 (Chrysallis)

  Deep Inside the Quarantined Zone (“The Badlands”)

  309 AC

  “Launch all fighters.”

  Commander Travis’s voice blared through Stara Sinclair’s headset. Sinclair was exhausted, but she was grateful in a way for the seemingly endless stint at red alert. Being at her station, consumed with tasks, helped take her mind off of sickbay. Off Jake.

  “Acknowledged, Commander. All squadrons launch.” She reached out and flipped a series of switches. The squadrons were all ready to go, the pilots already manning their craft. Dauntless had been preparing for this fight through the hours it had taken to travel back to the ancient artifact. Captain Barron’s daring move had bought time, a period of hours for the outnumbered battleship to face its adversary one on one…but it would all be for naught if Dauntless didn’t destroy its enemy and do it quickly.

  Sinclair could feel the vibrations moving through the ship as the catapults began to fire Dauntless’s depleted wings into space. She scanned her workstation, checking the status of each group of fighters as they cleared the ship.

  Sinclair sighed hard as she updated the report status, sending it to the bridge. Her mind wasn’t off Stockton, just partially distracted. Jake Stockton was the living embodiment of the daring hero fighter pilot, and she was neck deep in fighter ops. It was impossible for her to forget about him, even for an instant. But she was busy, so much so that she didn’t have the time to obsess about him.

  She knew Doctor Weldon had operated, that he had tried to apply the regeneration treatment that was Stockton’s only hope for survival. Dauntless’s chief surgeon had taken pity on her, not only telling her what he was going to do, but giving her what she could only assume was a load of bullshit about how well he expected things to go. She hadn’t heard anything further for hours, and she’d begun to fear the worst. But then she got the word. He was still alive. That was all. Anything else would have to wait. He’d either live or die now, and there was nothing she could do but see which it was.

  She moved her hands over the station, confirming readings, checking the positioning of fighters as they launched. “Yellow Three, you’re drifting out of formation. Tighten things up there.”

  “Acknowledged, Control.” Then: “Thanks, Stara.”

  She knew she was popular with the squadrons, that though she was only twenty-eight years old, she was a sort of mother to them all. Her voice on the Control line was one of the most familiar sounds to the pilots…and for many, her voice was the last one they ever heard. She grieved for every one of her flyers who faile
d to come back, and she nursed them through their battles with all the power of her scanners and comm suites. But Stockton was something different.

  She felt one last vibration, the final four ships of Green squadron. Then she reached out and hit the comm unit. “Commander Travis, Flight Control here. All squadrons launched.”

  She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. They were all out again, all her children.

  Once more into the breach…and into the deadly danger and strife of war in space.

  And down in sickbay, the best of them all, fighting his own battle for survival, with not an enemy fighter in sight…Please don’t leave me Jake…

  Don’t die on me…

  * * *

  “We’re going in hard and fast. There’s no time for a protracted fight here. We’re gonna clear their fighters away and the Greens are going to get in there and make an attack run. Quick and dirty, and then back to Dauntless to refuel and rearm before those other ships get here.”

  Kyle Jamison was leaning back in his cockpit, angling his throttle even as he sent out his orders to Dauntless’s squadrons. He was glad to have the attack to absorb his thoughts. It was better than dwelling on the fact that nearly fifty percent of his fighters were gone…or the that his best friend was in sickbay, fighting against the odds to cling to life. The struggle reminded him of the terrible battle at Santis, except this time Dauntless was massively outnumbered. Terrible losses in a victorious fight were bad enough, but suffering grievously and then having to relaunch almost immediately to begin a new battle was just too much.

  At least the Union ship’s squadrons had suffered even more severe losses. The enemy had sent their ship with the most depleted fighter wing to the artifact, expecting that the other two would engage and destroy Dauntless. That was a break for Jamison’s people now, but it only increased the importance of finishing this fight quickly and getting back in time to refit for the next battle.