by Jay Allan
Duncan closed his eyes as the pressure increased, struggling to keep himself from crying out. His knees shook, but they held, and his hands gripped the back of his chair tightly, the muscles all the way up his arm tense, rigid.
“All ships decelerating at 10g, Commodore.”
Duncan managed a jerky nod. “Very well.” He struggled to turn his head, to look at the display, just as the first enemy battleship disappeared. It wasn’t enough to make a real difference, not yet, but it was a start.
“Enemy ships increasing acceleration, sir.”
He’d have known that was coming even without Eaton’s report. The war hadn’t left him with much respect for Union leadership, but he didn’t anticipate the enemy would just sit there, out of their own range, while his ships picked them apart with primaries.
“Maintain maximum fire until the enemy enters secondary range.” In some ways, the slow rate of fire of the deadly primaries made the huge broadsides of his battleships the more effective weapon once they were in range. The laser cannons weren’t nearly as powerful as the big particle accelerators, but there were as many as a dozen on each side of his larger ships, and they could fire every fifteen to twenty seconds instead of once every two or three minutes.
“All ships report primaries active at maximum fire rate, secondaries on standby.”
Duncan watched as the enemy ships advanced toward his force. He glanced down at the AI’s projection, the time estimate until the Union vessels entered their own firing range. Eleven minutes, twenty seconds. Not long, especially when it took two and a half minutes to recharge one of his ships’ primaries. He did a series of calculations, really no more than wild guesses about how many hits his people could score, and how many enemy ships they could knock out. Even with his most optimistic assumptions, his force was going to have one hell of a fight on its hands.
But none of that mattered. His ships were here to hold back the enemy, to prevent them from striking the main fleet from the rear, or blocking the escape route if Admiral Striker gave the withdrawal order.
Duncan intended to do just that. He wasn’t going to let them pass, no matter what it took.
No matter what the cost.
* * *
Stockton was staring straight ahead, through the clear portal of his cockpit, as if he could see his targets, still almost fifty thousand kilometers in front of his ship. His fighter was ripping through space at close to one percent of light speed, but the pain of acceleration was gone, at least. There was no point in getting there sooner if he would just blast by so quickly, he couldn’t even target a shot. His people would have to take out more than one of the power plants, he was sure of that, but he had no idea how many. That meant they had to decelerate on the way in, and it was just about time to hit the engines again and start braking.
His eyes moved across his screens and scanners, doing his best to keep track of what was going on around him. His squadrons had broken off from the Union battleship. That had been the right call…he was more certain of that now than he’d been when he gave the order, despite the frustration at letting that ship go when they could have destroyed it.
The way was almost clear of enemy fighters. Grachus’s struggle had pulled away more and more of the squadrons the enemy had deployed to defend the pulsar. Maybe, just maybe, that left enough of an opening to get to the reactors, to take out enough of them to knock the pulsar out of action…at least for a while. Stockton had no idea how badly Dauntless had been damaged, but it was obvious the stealth generator was barely functioning. If it went down again long enough for the pulsar to get a target lock—and that was only a minute, perhaps two, at most—the ship was finished.
He knew his desperate plan was a long shot…but he didn’t have any other ideas.
He realized one other thing, and it was uncomfortable for him to accept. The only reason his attack had any chance at all was the incredible skill and bravery exhibited by Jovi Grachus and her mixed group of Alliance and Confederation pilots. They had engaged wave after wave of enemy fighters, and they’d grimly fought on, outnumbered and outgunned. Stockton’s rage toward the Alliance ace was still there, but now confusion and doubt ate away at his resolve. She’d placed herself in the forefront of the attack, and as he’d watched the great dogfight, he’d seen her take terrible risks to aid her pilots who were in trouble…and she’d shown no differentiation between Alliance and Confederation fighters. She was exhibiting faithfulness, courage…every attribute of an honorable ally. But the image of Kyle Jamison was still there, the ghost of his friend haunting him, though he suspected Jamison would have been the first to tell him to get over it.
“We’ve got enemy squadrons coming in, Commander.” The voice crackled in over the comm, just as Stockton noticed the launches himself. For an instant, his heart sank. If the enemy had a significant number of fighters left in those bases, his strike for the reactors was a lost cause. His squadrons were battered, and many of his ships were outfitted as bombers. Enough Union fighters would overwhelm them, and stop the assault in its tracks.
Then he saw the formations coming toward his ships. They were ragged, partial squadrons, poorly organized. He felt a burst of renewed hope. There were a good number of Union birds coming his way, but from the looks of them, they were the last. There was no way to be sure, but it certainly looked like the enemy had scraped up every fighter they could, a last-ditch attempt to intercept his strike force.
His eyes were fixed on the screen. The situation wasn’t as bad as he’d feared for those first few seconds, but the wings coming in still outnumbered his people. He’d have one hell of a fight to break through, especially since he had to protect the bombers at all costs. But he had Blue and Scarlet Eagle squadrons with him. The two elite formations had taken grievous losses over the war, but they were still the best in space, he was sure of that. And they could get the job done…they would get it done.
“Bombers…maintain your headings. You’ve got to take out those power plants…I don’t care how you do it.” He paused, taking a deep breath and squeezing his hand around the throttle. “Blues and Eagles, you’re with me. We’re going to take on these incoming squadrons, and we’re going to make damned sure none of them get to the bombers. Whatever it takes.”
Because there’s no choice.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Formara System
“The Bottleneck”
313 AC
Damn!
Tyler Barron slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair, his frustration pouring out despite his greatest efforts to hold it back. The stealth generator had failed again.
He was scared, of course, but the urgency to save his ship was central in his mind, and it drove the fear back into the recesses. “Evasive maneuvers, Commander Travis,” he said, almost automatically.
“Already engaged, Captain,” came the reply, as sturdy and stalwart as ever.
Travis would do everything possible, but this time a wounded Dauntless could only give her thirty percent thrust. The ship’s damaged engines most likely didn’t have enough in them to prevent the pulsar’s advanced targeting from scoring a hit, one that would almost certainly finish Dauntless. But Travis was still doing her job effectively, projecting confidence to the other bridge officers as she used every skill and trick she had to keep them all alive, even for a few minutes.
A few minutes for Fritzie to get that thing working again…
Barron knew Fritz didn’t understand what was wrong with the stealth generator, why it had begun to fail. Nothing serious seemed to be wrong with the device, at least nothing she’d been able to detect. Her last report had been a guess that it was something minor, akin to a blown circuit. But, it didn’t matter why the thing was down. If Fritz didn’t get it working again, and soon, they were all dead.
“Throw in the positioning jets, Atara. They’ll give us a little extra push.”
“Yes, sir…setting that up now.”
Barron wasn’t surprised that
she was already doing what he suggested. He’d always thought Travis as at least his equal—and truth be told, better than him in many ways—and he’d never been hesitant to give credit to her and the rest of his crew. It always bothered him that people didn’t seem to care, that all they wanted was to make him into a hero, the second coming of his grandfather, and damned all the other men and women who fought, sweat, and bled to win those victories. He’d loved the older Barron dearly as a boy, but now, as much as he’d fought the feeling, he’d come to resent the family’s great hero, not for anything the man had done, but for the weight of the legacy he’d carried since his days in the Academy.
He glanced down at the comm unit alongside his chair. He wanted to talk to Fritz, to get a status report, but he held back. He would only waste her time…time none of them had. Fritz knew what was at stake, what she had to do.
Tyler Barron hated feeling helpless…he hated it above all things. But that was what he was. There was nothing else he could do to save his people. All he could do was wait…and hope Anya Fritz managed to do the impossible one more time.
* * *
“Shit!”
Jake Stockton had his hands full. The enemy fighters outnumbered his small force, but that wasn’t the biggest problem. His veteran aces could handle a larger force, but they were hampered now by the enemy’s failure to engage them. The Union pilots understood the situation, too. They had to get to the bombers and stop them before the attack had a chance to knock the pulsar offline. Stockton had suspected the Union had stationed its best pilots to protect the pulsar and now, as he watched them whip past his fighters, almost ignoring their deadly fire, he was sure of it.
That was bad enough…but now, Dauntless was back on his scanner. That meant the stealth generator was down again.
“Blues, Eagles…come about. We can’t let those birds get through.” Stockton was angling his own controls hard, bring his ship around, trying to alter his vector to a pursuit course. He fired his lasers half a dozen times, taking out one more enemy ship as the Union squadrons blasted toward the edge of his range.
He squeezed every bit of thrust he could get from his ship, knowing he was burning his fuel at a rapid rate. He’d flipped the safeties back on, giving his abused reactors a rest, but now he switched them off again, feeling the massive g forces as his engines blasted once again with more thrust than they were designed to endure.
Confederation Lightnings were a bit faster than their Union counterparts, especially when they were pushed as recklessly as Stockton was driving his. But the enemy had the advantage of momentum, and Stockton and his pilots had to offset their own velocity and match the course of their targets. That took time…time Stockton wasn’t sure he had. If those Union interceptors got to the bombers…
He’d been hesitant to order his pilots to cut their safeties again, as he had. He’d lost three ships on the original approach, and he knew things would be worse now, with the power plants pushed so hard, their seals and cooling systems already pushed to the limits. But there was no choice. His hand moved to activate the comm when his eyes locked on the small display. Every interceptor with him had matched his acceleration. His pilots had already driven their ships to overload levels without his order.
He took a deep breath, at least as deep as he could manage with the forces pushing against his chest. His Blues had always been veterans, and they’d always done what had to be done, whatever the risk. But he still felt the emotional toll of driving so many to their deaths. They deserved better…but they would do what they had to do.
He stared at the screen, at the distance between his fighters and the Union survivors who’d burst through his formation…and to the bombers, blasting at full directly toward the line of power plants. It was going to be close…
Then he saw a flash as the pulsar fired. For an instant, he had a feeling that Dauntless had been destroyed. But the icon was still there, the small blue oval representing a ship that had been his only real home, and that carried inside her every person in the universe that meant anything to him.
There was nothing he could do to help, just continue his attack, try against the odds to take out those power plants…and hope to hell Anya Fritz and her band of engineer-magicians managed to pull another miracle out of their hats. One that lasted long enough for the bombers to cut the pulsar’s power.
He moved his hand, hesitating for an instant over his override circuits. Then, he nudged his reactor output to one hundred twenty percent. He’d never risked going that high—he wasn’t sure if anyone ever had. But the danger wasn’t important to him, only the mission. And chances were, he wasn’t going to have anyplace to land anyway, even if, through some miracle, his own reactor didn’t kill him first.
* * *
“We have the enemy battleship on our scanners again, Captain.” Maramont reported the instant he’d seen the symbol return to the display, but he hadn’t been quick enough to beat Turenne. The Union captain had seen the Confed ship, and he was already calculating an intercept course.
The Confed vessel hadn’t gotten as far as he’d feared it might, almost certainly because the pulsar’s partial hit had damaged its engines or reactors. Or both.
He didn’t care about specifics, not now. Anything that slowed that ship gave his own wounded vessel a chance to catch up, to get into weapons range and engage. Temeraire was limping, in no proper shape for combat…but so was her prey.
“Maximum thrust, Commander, vector 019.345.132.” Maximum sounded great, but Turenne knew thirty-five percent was the best his ship could give now. The two enemy plasma torpedoes had badly damaged Temeraire, and Turenne knew his ship would almost certainly be gone by now, had the enemy assault force not veered off at the last minute.
But Temeraire was still there, and even with reduced power and blasted systems, she packed a punch.
“Projected time to firing range, eight minutes, sir.” Maramont turned and looked over at Turenne as he made the report.
“Very well.” Turenne was on the hunt, craving the kill he’d pursued—that he’d risked the wrath of Sector Nine to chase—but he knew his ship wouldn’t get there in time. The pulsar would finish off the enemy ship before Temeraire got into range. That would be a slight disappointment, but nothing he couldn’t live with. As long as…
Turenne was watching as the enemy vessel vanished again. Once again, he’d had the brief hope that the pulsar had scored a hit, that the Confederation ship had been destroyed. But he realized almost immediately that the enemy had restored whatever cloaking capability they seemed to have.
“I want a full analysis on possible locations of the enemy,” he roared. We’ve got their last location, time, vector, velocity. Assuming they were at maximum thrust, I want a complete breakdown of where they can get, by time.”
“Yes, sir.”
He might not have the enemy on his scanners anymore, but he knew where they’d been a few seconds before…and he knew where they were going.
And Temeraire was going there too.
* * *
“It’s back online, sir…”
Barron felt a jab in his gut at Fritz’s hesitation. He’d already known the stealth unit was functioning again, mostly because the pulsar had fired, and Dauntless was still there. His ship was still outside its own firing range, but it was well within the deadliest perimeter of the Union’s weapon, and Barron suspected even a repeat of the earlier glancing blow would have finished them all. Still, despite the satisfaction at having escaped yet again, his insides were twisted into knots. He couldn’t remember the last time Fritz had been slow to report anything, and the concern in his engineer’s voice chilled him to the bone.
“But?” It was all he could think of to say.
“Weapons control is down, Captain.”
Barron paused. The implications of Fritz’s report slammed into him like a train. He’d known the fragile primaries were offline, courtesy of the pulsar’s deadly blast. That meant Dauntless would have to get
closer, that its secondaries would have to bombard the pulsar for a longer time, giving the deadly artifact a chance to fire back. The loss of his main weapons had decreased the chances of success, perhaps markedly, but there still had been a chance…the loss of weapons control reduced that percentage to dead zero.
“What happened, Fritzie?”
“It was that hit, sir.” She paused again. “I should have seen it sooner, Captain. It’s my fault. I’ve been so focused on the stealth generator, I missed some of the damage.” Another hesitation. “I’ve got so many of my people working on this artifact that…no, no excuses, sir. I’m sorry. It was my fault.”
“The hell it was, Fritzie. You didn’t fire that pulsar at us, and you’ve gotten that device working multiple times now. You saved our asses each time.” He was silent now, staring at the comm unit, uncertain what else to say. It wasn’t Fritz’s fault, but it was devastating news nevertheless. “Estimate on getting at least the secondaries back online?” He was grasping at straws. The answer to his question had been there already, in the grimness of Fritz’s tone.
“I have no idea, sir. I’ve detached a crew to check out the damage. It’s serious. We’ve got multiple ruptures in both power feeds and control lines. I don’t think there’s any hope of getting the whole system up and running any time soon, but we’re going to try to get a few batteries up. I can’t guarantee anything, sir.”
Barron held back the sigh that was trying to push its way out. “Do what you can, Fritzie.”
“Captain…if I leave the artifact…”
Barron had been thinking the same thing. Yet again, his ship had escaped destruction by the slimmest of margins. Had Fritz been anywhere but standing next to the stealth generator, Dauntless would have been destroyed several times over. If he sent her away to deal with the weapons control system…
