by Jay Allan
“Son of a bitch,” Hurley said, the words slipping through her lips before she could stop them. She’d been staring at the scope, watching the ships of the fleet whipping around the star, coming out of the corona on perfect vectors toward the warp gate. She’d known what Compton had intended, and she’d even believed in it on some level, that place in her mind where she viewed the great admiral as infallible. But sitting and watching it unfold just as he’d planned was still astonishing. She knew those ships were threading a needle, racing through a cool spot in the corona. There were sections to either side of that lane where temperatures reached into the millions of degrees, and the slightest navigational error could vaporize a ship or send it careening into the sun.
Compton’s plan had been brilliant, wildly original…and if it worked, just maybe he would have saved his fleet from certain doom. And it looked like it was working. Still, Hurley had to get her squadrons to the designated place on time—and they had to be at the exact velocity and vector to land on the fleeing platforms. There was no room for error on her part either, and she knew the big capital ships couldn’t decelerate for her if her people weren’t in position. Compton had to save the big warships, first and foremost. A few cruisers would bring up the rear, decelerating enough to link up with the shuttles carrying Kato’s survivors, but Hurley’s fighters had to land on the battleships. And that meant they had to be exactly in position.
“Let’s check and recheck this, John. Anybody who’s not spot on is dead. It’s that simple.”
Wilder nodded. “I’ve reviewed the calculations three times, Admiral. They’re dead on.”
Hurley sighed. “It’s not you I’m worried about. But every pilot out there who is not up to this is another fighter and five crew lost.” And not lost in battle doing their duty, but abandoned, left behind to be hunted down and killed by the enemy.
“There is nothing you can do about that, Admiral.” There was an odd tone to Wilder’s voice, as if he was only just letting himself realize they had a chance to get out of the system. “You’ve honed this strike force into a razor. This is going to be a tough landing, but they’re up to it. You‘ll see.”
She nodded and gave him a weak smile when he looked back toward her, but she didn’t say anything. Part of her was gratified to have a chance at escape, something she would have thought impossible just a few hours before. But she was still wrestling with the fact that most of her people were dead already killed in the last three days of sustained combat. They’d run sortie after sortie, returning to their launch platforms only long enough to refuel and rearm—and maybe wolf down a quick meal. They’d gone three days without sleep, and every one of them was running on stims. But still they’d gone back, without question, without complaint. And every time they did, they paid a price. Fewer than one in three were still alive, and the thought of losing more people, not in a fight now, but in botched or aborted landings, cut at her deeply.
“We’re coming up on Midway now, Admiral. They’ve cleared us to land.”
She flipped on her com unit. “Midway squadrons, commence final approach and landing.” All through the strike force, she knew her wing commanders were doing the same, directing their squadrons to their own base ships. But it rested with the individual pilots to manage the landings. Hurley was confident about her own ship—she had John Wilder, and she was willing to wager he was the best pilot in the fleet. But the rest of her people were facing the most difficult landing they’d ever attempted…and their lives were riding on their success.
She watched the display as the four squadrons of her command wing split into two long columns, each heading for one of Midway’s fighter bays. Her ship was last on the second line, heading for a landing in Bay B.
The tiny symbols moved closer to the large image representing the flagship. The fighters’ vectors and velocities were almost synced with Midway’s, creating an illusion of very slow movement—despite the fact that they were traveling at almost 4% of the speed of light.
Slowly, steadily, the line of dots disappeared as they landed. Hurley watched, so tense she had to remind herself to breathe. She felt a rush of satisfaction as each fighter icon vanished from the screen, five more of her people safely back on Midway. Or at least whatever passed for safety for all of them now.
She glanced at the other status reports on her display. One of the fighters landing on Conde had come in with its angle of approach slightly off, and it had crashed inside the bay, killing the entire crew. And at least a dozen fighters had failed to match vector and velocity with their landing platforms, falling too far behind or racing ahead. That was a far lower number than she’d expected, but she still felt a wave of sadness. Those crews were as good as dead. The chance of them correcting course and making another approach before the fleet bugged out was close to zero.
“We’re next, Admiral,” Wilder said. His tone was distracted as he focused completely on the approach.
“Very we…” Her eyes darted forward as the fighter’s small emergency lights engaged. She snapped her head back around, staring down at her display. The readout told her at once what had happened. The ship ahead of them had come in too quickly, and it had crashed. The landing bay was an inferno.
“They took out the control station—and the bay is strewn with debris,” Wilder said grimly. Beta bay’s closed, Admiral.”
Hurley felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Normally, they’d just maneuver to the other side of Midway and land in alpha bay, but that was almost impossibly difficult at 4c.
Almost. “John…”
“Bringing us around, Admiral.” His voice was like iron.
Hurley leaned back and took a deep breath. If there’s a pilot in the fleet who can pull this off, it’s Wilder.
“Brace for thrust,” Wilder said, an instant before 11g of force slammed into the crew. He was overloading the engines, trying desperately to alter the fighter’s vector relative to Midway, and maneuver to the other side of the mothership.
Hurley heard a scream from behind her—Janz—and she knew immediately he was hurt. She wanted to turn and check on him, but she was pinned in place by gee forces equivalent to eleven times her body weight.
She could hear Wilder gasping for breath as he sat at his station, barely able to move his hands to work the controls. “Upping acceleration,” he rasped, as the forces increased...12g…13g.”
Hurley struggled for breath as the pressure pushed higher, past her endurance. She could feel herself becoming disoriented. It wouldn’t be long before they all blacked out, she knew—and that would be the end. The instant Wilder lost consciousness their attempt to land would be over. The ship’s AI would cut the deadly acceleration, but they’d be hopelessly out of position, with nothing to do but watch the fleet transit and wait for the enemy to hunt them down.
Suddenly, the crushing pressure was gone, replaced for a few seconds by the relief of freefall. She breathed deeply, filling her tortured lungs with fresh cool air. Her lucidity was returning, and she could feel her head clearing.
“Prepare for deceleration.”
She knew what Wilder’s words meant, and she quickly sucked in another lungful of air before the crushing force returned, this time from deceleration, as Wilder struggled to restore the fighter’s vector to match Midway’s. She couldn’t imagine how her pilot was staying focused, and she was amazed at how the ships controls seemed like extensions of his own body. Hurley had been a renowned pilot herself before her success pushed her to the top of the fighter command, but even she was amazed at the display Wilder was putting on. They hadn’t landed yet, but she was beginning to believe that, against all odds, he would pull this off.
“Approaching alpha bay,” he forced out.
Hurley lay back against her chair, unable to even move her head to glance at the display. All she could do was sit where she was and struggle for breath waiting to see if Wilder saved them.
The seconds drew out, each one seeming to last an eternity. The physical discomfort was
extreme, almost torturous. And even Hurley was scared. The risk of dying in battle was an unalterable part of war, but there was something primal about the fear of being abandoned, left behind to the enemy. It killed her to see even one of her crews relegated to that terrible fate, and now, unless Wilder could manage to somehow pull off this landing, she and her crew would join them…or just crash in the bay. That would be quicker, she thought. Probably more merciful than the day or two of fleeing and pointless resistance that lay ahead for those left behind.
“Hang on, everybody,” Wilder cried as he cut the thrust. Hurley felt the relief of freefall, and then an instant later the ship shook hard once and came to an abrupt halt. The momentary weightlessness was replaced by a more normal 1g. She looked out the viewscreen to see a beehive of activity. It was Midway’s alpha bay.
“Excellent landing, Commander Wilder. You couldn’t hear it, but you got a round of applause on the flag bridge.” It was Terrance Compton’s voice on the com, and he sounded relieved. “You guys just sit tight while they pressurize the bay.” There was a short pause then: “Welcome home.”
Hurley let out a long breath. Yes, she thought, looking out at the landing bay. I suppose this is home now…
* * *
“Admiral Hurley’s fighters have completed landing operations, sir. Approximately 92% have successfully docked. Another four ships were destroyed on landing.” Harmon’s voice was a bit less grim than it had been. A 92% success rate was far beyond what anyone had dared to expect.
Compton nodded and sighed softly. He was gratified that so many of the fighters had safely docked, but he realized that fourteen of those birds had failed to match course and speed—and now he was going to leave them behind. He imagined the thoughts going through the heads of those men and women, what they would be feeling as they stared at their screens, watching the ships of the fleet slip through the warp gate. They would run from the enemy, he supposed, at least as long as their dwindling fuel supplies lasted. Still, eventually they would either be caught or they’d slip away into deep space, tiny ghost ships, traveling forever on their last heading, their frozen crews still at the controls.
Some of them might try to follow the fleet through the warp gate, but that was just another way to die. Fighters didn’t have enough shielding for the crews to survive the exotic types of radiation inside the gate. The ships might get through, but the men and women aboard would be dead before they reemerged.
This is what command is like, Compton thought. Faced with an astonishing success in leading his people out of the system, and another in the miraculous number of fighters that had safely returned, all his thoughts were on the dead…and those he was about to abandon. As all of his people had been abandoned hours before. He’d found it easy to absolve Admiral Garret for making the necessary choice, but now he was punishing himself for the same thing. It was unthinkable to lose the entire fleet over 70 fighter crew, just as it had been to risk all of mankind for fewer than 50,000. He knew that, and his actions spoke accordingly. But he was still carrying the guilt. As he knew Garret was too.
“Very well, Commodore.” Harmon was a captain by rank, but navy tradition demanded only one officer be addressed as captain on a vessel. Flag Captain Horace was the unlikeliest officer in the navy to give a shit about nonsense like that, but traditions that old stuck, and Harmon received the courtesy promotion when someone called him by rank on Midway.
Compton took a deep breath. “Time to first transit?” He knew the answer, but sitting around with nothing to do wasn’t going to help the crew or him.
“Saratoga’s in the lead, sir. Projected insertion in three minutes, twenty seconds.”
It was no accident that one of the fleet’s two other Yorktown class battlewagons was in the front of the line. Admiral Barret Dumont flew his flag from Saratoga, and there was no one Compton trusted more to handle a crisis than the feisty old firebrand of the Second Frontier War. Dumont had been retired when the First Imperium invaded human space, but he’d rejoined the colors when Garret had rallied the navy to face the deadly new threat. Dumont was old, over 100, but he didn’t look or act like it.
Compton had placed Midway near the end of the line. The only ships behind her were the six cruisers of the squadron that had decelerated to pick up Kato’s crews. It wasn’t where he belonged, he knew that. But it was where he had to be if he was going to live with himself.
He felt an urge to rush down to the landing bay, but he stifled it. His place now was on the flag bridge. He knew Hurley would be hurting, mourning all the people she’d lost in the last few days, and he resolved to speak with her as soon as events allowed him the time. The whole fleet had suffered terribly in the fighting in X2, but the fighters had been truly decimated. He’d see some medals given out, commendations for the valor of the pilots and crews of Hurley’s squadrons—though he wondered how much meaning such symbols would have in their new reality.
Compton felt the minor disorientation he always did when Midway slipped through the warp gate. He looked around the bridge, watching how the rest of his staff reacted to the strange, and still largely unexplained, trip through the portal. The use of warp gates was well-understood, but human science had largely failed to align its understanding of physics with the miraculous effect of simply flying into one of the strange phenomenon and emerging lightyears away. The only thing that was known for sure was the trip was not instantaneous—it took a small fraction of a second to reach the other side, during which time the transiting ships, and their crews, were somewhere. Exactly what that meant, whether there was simply some kind of tunnel through normal space—or if the vessel and its crew briefly passed into some alternate universe or dimension—was purely a guess.
“Welcome to system X4, Admiral Compton.” Dumont’s gravelly voice burst through the com unit a moment later. It would take Midway’s systems a few minutes to recover from the warp gate transit, but Saratoga had been in the system for over an hour. “The scope is clear. No enemy forces detected.”
Compton felt a wave of relief flow through him. All his carefully-crafted plans would have been for naught if his fleet ran into more First Imperium ships in X4. But a clear scope meant one thing—his people had a chance. They were lost and cut off from home. They were exhausted and scared and low on supplies. But they weren’t dead yet. And even that had seemed impossible less than a day earlier.
“Send a fleet communique, Commodore.” His voice was taut, his tension slightly lowered but still there. “It’s not time for celebrating yet. All ships are to set a course for warp gate two and lock into the navcoms. And all personnel are to prepare to get back in the tanks as soon as the cruisers transit with Kato’s people. This is going to be a long stretch. We need to get through this system, and put some distance between us and the enemy, and we need to do it as quickly as possible.”
He knew the First Imperium fleet had to execute a sharp vector change to pursue—and the warp gate would be a bottleneck for a force so large. He didn’t know how long they would try to pursue Garret’s fleet through the scrambled gate or what percentage of their resources would be devoted to the effort. That might keep them occupied for some time. Still, he didn’t doubt his people would be pursued, and he knew the force chasing them would be strong enough to pound his battered vessels into dust.
He had no idea what he was going to do, where he would lead his ragtag group of refugees. But he was grateful he had that problem to worry about.
Chapter Three
From the Personal Log of Terrance Compton
I am not sure why I have decided to keep this log. It must be completely private, for there are thoughts I will record that I can share with no one, secrets I alone must bear. Perhaps I feel that one day humanity will push out this far, possibly even defeat the First Imperium. Men might one day read these words, centuries from now, and know that my people existed, that they had survived the battles in X2 and pressed on defiantly, deeper into the unknown space of our enemy’s domai
ns.
Or, perhaps we will find a home, somewhere we can settle down in peace and strive to build something lasting. I don’t know how or where that might be possible, for we are deep within the territory of the First Imperium, and we make each successive jump knowing we might meet our doom at the hands of a massive enemy fleet at any time. We have passed a number of habitable worlds so far on our journey, all lifeless, with ancient crumbling cities marking the places where those who built the machines we battle once dwelled. Would they have been enemies, I wonder? Or if they were still here to control their creations, would they be friends, allies? Teachers? Would mankind’s nations strive to enlist their aid against each other?
I wish we could stop and explore these worlds. They are the most amazing discoveries human eyes have ever seen but, alas, we must keep fleeing. I am not foolish enough to think our enemies are not still pursuing us, searching for the fleet even as we continue deeper into the unknown, into the great darkness. Indeed, we cannot even be sure these worlds are completely dead. If I allowed landing parties to explore any of these planets, we could easily trigger some kind of alert and lead our pursuers right to us. Indeed, there are many theories that human activity on Carson’s World caused the First Imperium incursion in the first place. Still, despite my caution, eventually I will have to send landing parties to one of these worlds. We must learn about our enemy if we are to find some way to defeat them, or at least to survive their onslaughts.
For now we must run, stopping only when it is absolutely necessary. We must push deeper into the unknown, ever farther from home, until we can find a way to hide…or to hold off the doom our enemies bring with their relentless pursuit. I have no idea of the size of the First Imperium. Is it possible to travel past their domain, find a home outside of their influence? Or would we simply find another enemy there, perhaps even deadlier than that we now face? We must never forget, as enormously powerful as the First Imperium is to our perceptions, something destroyed them. Perhaps it was a plague or some self-inflicted disaster. But I cannot discount the possibility that an even stronger race existed…or still exists…somewhere in the depths of the galaxy.
