The Others

by Jay Allan

  He watched, shocked on one level at the recklessness of such tactics, but realizing on another, he would almost certainly have done the same thing. The results, at least, were clear. The Hegemony forward line was drawing blood, though it was bleeding itself to do it, and much more quickly.

  He didn’t know the technology that powered the enemy railguns, not all of it, at least. But he knew enough to realize the only thing the Hegemony vessels could have done was to jam more antimatter into their guns.

  That had to be dangerous.

  Antimatter was the most powerful—and volatile—fuel known to human science, and Chronos’s people were taking wild chances with it.

  Barron’s insides froze. He wanted to wonder how the Hegemony warriors had become so desperate. But he knew already…he knew because he’d been there.

  He remembered making similar decisions, watching ships destroyed and crews killed because they’d followed his orders, tore up their safety manuals, and done as he’d told them to do. His people had destroyed countless more Hegemony vessels through such tactics than they might have otherwise, but they’d paid for it as well.

  Paid dearly.

  Now, it was the Hegemony’s turn to learn what that felt like. Part of Barron experienced a grim satisfaction at seeing his old enemy driven to the desperate kind of tactics his own spacers had been compelled to employ. He knew that was pointless, that such kinds of gratification always carried a terrible cost.

  He was watching his old enemy struggling to survive, but his eyes were clear enough to see the future as well as the present, the inevitable vision of his own people fighting this same new enemy, struggling to find their own ways to battle them, at whatever cost.

  Just as they’d done before. But he knew it would be even worse this time.

  * * *

  “Damage control teams to gunnery. All ships, I want engineering parties posted at all railguns. I expect those weapons to keep firing, whatever it takes.” Helas felt a rush, a burst of excitement. Her makeshift tactic was working, at least where it wasn’t blasting her ships to plasma. She would be in the history texts now.

  If there are any history texts…

  Her forces had become the first to destroy one of the Others’ ships. It was noteworthy, and she and her people would be feted for their achievement.

  If any of them made it out of the current fight, which seemed like a shaky prospect.

  “Commander, we’ve got multiple reports coming in. Damage to railguns, casualties among the crews. We can’t…”

  “Maintain full fire…all shots with double loads.” Helas wasn’t oblivious to the hell she was inflicting on her gunners. Several of the task force’s batteries had been destroyed by the overpowered shots, their crews wiped out before any had even had a chance to escape. Others were damaged, some knocked out of action for the duration, others with some hope of quick repair. And two ships were gone, destroyed outright as the overloaded antimatter canisters lost containment and annihilated.

  Damage or no damage, she also knew all of her crews had been bathed in radiation as they’d worked feverishly in the raging heat of the contaminated gunnery stations. The shielding around the railguns was thick enough to offer protection against normal shots, but her double-powered blasts were almost certainly pushing hard gamma rays into her ships.

  But the tactic—deadly, dangerous, costly—was also working. The double-shotted railgun rounds had better than half again the velocity of normal shots. They ripped through space that much faster, confounding the enemy’s evasive routines, and scoring hits at better than double the rate of unmodified weapons.

  The shots hit harder, too, the kinetic energy imparted to the target almost twice as great. Even the enemy ships, for all their technological superiority, suffered when one of those deadly chunks of super-heavy metal struck. No physical construct ever known could absorb such a hit without buckling, melting. Vaporizing.

  Helas’s best guess was three of the enemy ships had been badly damaged—two of those so badly, they were no longer firing—in addition to the one vessel destroyed. Then, even as she sat there staring right at the display, a second enemy ship winked out of existence.

  She felt a rush of exhilaration, one that almost sent her leaping from her chair. But the joy was short-lived. Less than thirty seconds later, two more of her own ships were destroyed…and a third was close, its broken hull bleeding atmosphere, even as its crew frantically tried to restore basic power and maneuver.

  Still, however grim the situation, it couldn’t dampen the satisfaction of seeing enemy ships destroyed. What she had done, others could do. And that meant, whether she survived the battle or not, the war wasn’t over. The Hegemony would fight on, with some chance at least, some way to hurt the enemy.

  She heard the distant rattle as Vegalitor’s railguns fired again, and seconds later, she saw the impact, as a thousand kilograms of high-density metal slammed into an enemy ship. The mysterious vessel shuddered, and then it just hung there, looking very much like it was dead in space.

  She clenched her fists in silent celebration, even as she turned toward her damage control screen, closing her eyes for an instant as she saw the sheer mass of warnings and red status icons scrolling down the page. That last shot had caused a deadly backblast of radiation, and a dozen systems had shorted out.

  Vegalitor had led the first attack to destroy an enemy vessel. But now the flagship itself was in trouble, the deep wound a self-inflicted one. Helas had known the risks of her reckless tactic, and they had struck home. She was still reading the reports and snapping out orders to her engineering teams when a deep explosion shook Vegalitor…and every light on the bridge went dark.

  * * *

  “Commander Helas is insane, Megaron. Three of her ships have been destroyed by railgun backfires. Her tactics are…”

  “Her tactics are working. Commander Helas is showing us the way, Kiloron. All ships are to double load their railgun batteries. We will be in range in two minutes, and it’s time we did some damage to the enemy. Some real damage.” Chronos’s tone was hard, his displeasure with the Kriegeri kiloron becoming clearer with every word.

  But still, the officer continued.

  “Megaron, we can’t…”

  “Was some part of my order unclear, Kiloron?” Chrono’s voice was loud, booming, every bit of the pride and authority that went with his position as Number Eight of the Hegemony utterly apparent.

  “No, Commander…certainly not.” The officer sounded terrified…scared of Chronos now, even more than he was of the enemy. “Relaying your orders, Commander.”

  Chronos didn’t respond. He just looked out, watching the shattered remnants of Helas’s force fighting on grimly, even as his own line came up behind them. Vegalitor was along the front of the formation, but it was clear the battleship was badly damaged. Chronos had watched as the battered ship fired again, and scored a deadly hit. But it was the last shot Vegalitor managed. Helas’s flagship had wounded itself, possibly mortally.

  He had no idea how the ship was still there, or what had kept her main guns firing for so long. He’d almost have believed it was a manifestation of the pure stubbornness of his vanguard commander.

  Helas had done more than he could have hoped, served with courage and distinction. She was a hero, even if she had lost sixty percent of her ships so far. But she’d drawn blood, four enemy ships destroyed outright, and at least a dozen others with measurable damage. That was still an uneven exchange…and yet it was better than Chronos had dared to imagine.

  And he was leading more than one hundred battleships and monitors into the fight, throwing a massive portion of Hegemony power at the enemy. More than one hundred thousand Kriegeri, and two hundred Masters manned those capital ships, and thousands more the escorts accompanying them.

  Helas had shown the way, desperate though it was.

  Now, Chronos was going to put some real force behind it.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  C
onfederation Naval HQ

  Troyus City

  Megara, Olyus III

  Year 322 AC

  “Senator Flandry, I want to be sure there is no confusion between us, so I’m afraid I may be rather blunt. Tyler is out there, with a relatively small fleet. His reports leave little doubt this new incursion is a threat to the Confederation, and indeed the entire Rim, as well as the Hegemony. Yet, the Senate debates endlessly, with no vote in sight, and no certainty there will even be an authorization for the military to prepare to dispatch the fleet to Hegemony space, to Tyler’s aid.”

  “Captain Lafarge, I am delighted to see you.” The Senate Speaker addressed Andi by her naval rank, though she’d reverted to inactive status just after the end of the war with the Hegemony. The form of address was proper, and no doubt his effort to be as respectful as possible to her, but somehow, it just pissed her off. If she was being honest with herself, she’d have admitted that anything except a total and complete—and immediate—acceptance of all her requests, demands really, would have angered her. But she’d come to try to reason with the politician, somewhat of an ally of convenience to Tyler, at least before she took…other…measures.

  “Before we get to the business you came to discuss, allow me to congratulate you. Another generation of Barrons is a cause for the entire Confederation to celebrate.”

  “Thank you, Speaker.” It was a short, abrupt response, but it was the best she could manage. Andi was hiding multiple causes of annoyance. First, she’d have preferred that no one knew she was pregnant, and certainly not before she had the chance to tell Tyler. She tended to despise the sort of perfunctory well wishes commonly offered by people who simply were not a real part of her life. She considered every word she heard to be insincere, unless she had good reason to believe otherwise, and she found engaging in the choreographed dance of fake social interactions tiring. She wouldn’t have ventured out at all, most likely, if Tyler hadn’t needed her. But he did, and that being the case, there was no prison cell that could have held her, much less the palatial hotel suite that still served as home.

  “Not to be rude, Speaker, but if possible, I would like to return to the matter at hand. Tyler led the mission to Hegemony space, as requested by the Senate. He has investigated, as he was sent to do, and he has sent back his report. It has been days now, and yet there has been no action.” She was trying to keep her tone measured, her demeanor diplomatic, but the edge that always crept into her voice in tense situations was there. Andi looked as harmless as she ever had, a pregnant woman, unarmed and there expressing concern for her spouse. At least she appeared unarmed. The one weapon she carried—and it had been a very long time since Andi had gone anywhere completely unarmed—was very cleverly concealed.

  Still, she could see beyond Flandry’s reflexive charm. The Speaker was a bit intimidated. It didn’t matter how harmless she looked, how pregnant she was…Andi was still the woman who’d killed Ricard Lille, and that reputation would follow her to her grave.

  “Andi, I can assure you, I am Tyler’s ally in all of this. Your ally.” A pause, which Andi knew served as one massive ‘but.’ “There are problems, however. You can understand the reluctance of many to present their constituents with the prospect of a new war so soon after all the hardship and strife of the recently concluded conflict. I have made every effort to accede to Tyler’s requests. I have not brought the matter to a vote yet for a simple reason. I do not, at this time, have enough support to guarantee approval. I can promise you, I will keep trying. Given time, I believe we can reach the desired result. I urge you to be patient.”

  Patient was the one thing Andi had never been, and she damned sure wasn’t going to start while Tyler and his people were in danger so far from home. But ally or not—and she still wasn’t sure—she realized she’d gotten everything she was going to get from Flandry.

  She believed the Speaker had tried to gather the needed support…and that he’d failed.

  Andi wasn’t sure, of course. Flandry could just be full of shit. That was probably a coin toss, she figured, but it didn’t matter. Refusal to try and failure were functionally the same thing in this case, and that only left her one choice. It was a sort of nuclear option, something that would cause the pompous politicians in the Senate to lose their minds. But it wasn’t possible to express how little Andi cared what the Senators liked or hated.

  It was time to press the button. Time to launch everything she had.

  * * *

  “No, Clint…not yet. Tyler wouldn’t want that.” Andi paused. Barron wouldn’t want his friends taking crazy risks for him no matter how deeply he was in danger.

  Andi was having none of that, of course. She was going to get him help one way or another, but before she let Winters bring the fleet to Megara and send Marines into the Senate Compound, she had another idea. “Get everything as ready as you can, just in case. But I think I have a plan, a less disruptive one.”

  Winters nodded slowly. “Okay, Andi. But don’t wait too long. If I have to take action, I will need some time. And we don’t know what is happening out at Calpharon…or how much trouble Tyler’s facing.” A pause. “Or, for that matter, how much of a threat is building against all of us.”

  Andi reached out and put her hand on Winters’s shoulder. The admiral, Tyler’s second-in-command, was one of the few people she considered a true friend. And his loyalty to Tyler was beyond question. It wasn’t every day you found a friend ready to commit mutiny and treason to help you, after all.

  But Andi knew what she was going to do. It wasn’t much subtler, but it was a bit more elegant, and far less destructive. And it had the advantages of not requiring its participants to commit capital crimes and not risking an outbreak of civil war.

  “I’m not going to wait. We have to get help to Tyler as quickly as possible, and I think my way will be quicker than yours.” She paused and looked at Winters. “But what you’re willing to do, Clint…I’ll never forget it.”

  She stood there wordlessly for a few seconds. Then, she turned toward Gary Holsten. The spymaster had been standing there, quietly listening. His job description included stopping plots like the one Winters was prepared to attempt, but Holsten had always had his own interpretation of duty. Andi knew, without a doubt, if it came to armed action, Confederation Intelligence wouldn’t interfere…and would probably help Winters’s mutineers.

  In addition to Holsten’s recognition of the danger, and his respect and admiration for Tyler Barron, he owed Andi. She knew the spymaster still carried guilt for sending her to Dannith, for the torture and interrogations she endured. She’d never held him to blame—when she agreed to do something, she took the responsibility herself—but she wasn’t above using it to get what she wanted from him. If she had to work him, and she didn’t think that would be necessary, the pregnancy would only add to her manipulation arsenal.

  “Gary…I need your help.” She hesitated, trying to get a read on what he was thinking. She was sure enough he would help her, but his expression was impassive. Holsten had just about the best poker face she’d ever seen. Tyler’s was legendary, too, at least in the fleet…but it didn’t work on her. She knew him too well.

  And he was always just a little bit flustered around her. It was one of the first things that attracted her to him.

  “If you’ve got some way to avoid the…other...option, I’m ready to do whatever I can.” He’d carefully avoided any indication he would oppose outright mutiny, but he hadn’t acknowledged support for it either.

  “You’ve got some connections, both as head of Confederation Intelligence and through the Holsten family investments. We might be able to combine those to get what we need.”

  “Anyone I can reach—or pressure—you know I will, Andi. We can apply some considerable force, if needed, to secure cooperation, up to including a room full of agents shoving guns down people’s throats.”

  “I don’t even think that will be necessary, Gary. The people I need will
be ecstatic about doing what I want them to do. It’s the kind of thing they dream about. We just need to reach the decision makers. Quickly.”

  * * *

  Andi walked down the corridor, deep in thought, ignoring the small cluster of people around her as she finalized in her mind just what she was going to say.

  Her stomach was roiling, and it took a fair amount of effort to keep everything down. It wasn’t nerves.

  It wasn’t just nerves.

  Andi wasn’t one prone to being badly affected by stress. She’d faced death numerous times without so much as a stomachache to show for it. But pregnancy was proving to be a…different…experience. She imagined laying guilt trips on her future son or daughter—she hadn’t even taken the time to find out what she was carrying—recounting in excruciating detail every moment she spent doubled over, emptying her guts of what seemed like five times the volume she’d put in.

  Andi was a warrior at heart, a killer. She was a Badlands prospector, an adventurer, and a quasi-criminal turned naval officer. But one thing she’d never imagined, not in all her days scavenging on the streets of her homeworld, nor deep in the bowels of some imperial artifact, was being a mother. It seemed almost an alien concept, and while, deep down there was happiness, it was held back by pain and worry over Tyler’s absence.

  And by the fact that she had no idea what to do with a child. She was as far from maternal by nature as anyone she’d ever known, and she doubted any of the things she was good at, the basics of knife-fighting, for example, would make for ideal mother-child bonding experiences.

  What stories would she tell a child? Would she recount all the Badlands border scumbags she’d put into the ground? Try to describe the look of pure astonishment and terror in Ricard Lille’s eyes when she killed him?