by Jay Allan
Chronos looked away from planet seven, his eyes moving back to the main battle area. Just in time to see a pair of his battleships wink off the screen. The fight was still raging all around, and his people were drawing blood themselves. But it was becoming clearer with every passing moment that his forces weren’t going to prevail. But in that moment, he saw Ilius’s ships moving up, driving right through the enemy fire, losing four of their big ships in the process. But then the reserves moved into their own range, and over a hundred ships opened up with railgun batteries…every one of the double loaded, their super-heavy metal projectiles streaking through space at unimaginable velocities.
And when one of those shots struck, even the nearly invulnerable hulls of the Others’ ships gave way. One of the enemy ships in the forward group was struck by three shots in rapid succession. The vessel shook hard, and then split open like an egg. Two more of the Others’ vessels followed, in explosions of such magnitude, Chronos could only imagine what the scanner readings would have said.
He felt a moment’s satisfaction, and his hands clenched reflexively into fists as he silently urged Ilius and his warriors forward.
Then he saw the price they were paying.
No fewer than ten capital ships, two monitors and eight battleships were gone. Just gone. And two dozen other vessels had suffered some degree of damage. Some of that had happened during the early stages of the advance, when the enemy could fire and Ilius’s ships could not. Things had moved closer to even…but not close enough.
Chronos watched as another of the black-speckled blue beams of energy tore through one of the already damaged monitors. The massive vessel shuddered, and then nothing. For a few seconds, Chronos thought the ship might survive. Then, it vanished in a searing blast of pure energy, and when the miniature sun was gone, nothing remained except for a cloud of extremely hard radiation.
But the rest of Ilius’s ships were plunging into the battle, looking very much like they intended to fight to the bitter end.
Unless he called them off…gave the order to run.
* * *
“Admiral, the Heggies…I mean, the Hegemony forces…are fighting well, better than we could have expected. But they’re still going to lose.” Atara had walked the three meters from her post to Barron’s command chair. She stood next to him, leaning over, her lips millimeters from his ear. Her words were for him only, and for all of Dauntless’s technology and equipment, the quickest and easiest way to deliver them was still to walk over and whisper to him.
“I know, Atara.” Barron had turned his head slightly, his voice almost as soft as hers. “But there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Are you sure, Tyler? We could…”
“We have been expressly forbidden to intervene, to even engage the enemy in any situation absent a direct and intentional attack against us. There is nothing we can do.” Barron paused, almost consumed by frustration. The urge to order his ships forward, to disregard his orders, was overwhelming. Duty held him back, discipline…and the realization that simply leading his ships forward, into the already wild melee would achieve nothing except the destruction of his entire force. The enemy was simply too powerful, too concentrated in the center.
He knew what he had to do. His fleet had collected enough data, more than it could ever use. The rules of engagement were clear. His decision had been made for him months before on the Senate floor.
“Admiral Travis…” He turned his head, and he looked right at Atara, his eyes no more than four or five centimeters from her own. “…the fleet will prepare to withdraw. The rear line will begin transiting as soon as the ships are in position.”
He could see the hesitation, feel the pain and tension almost radiating off his friend and comrade. She had been almost inveterately hostile to the Hegemony, against any chance of siding with them. Now, she wanted to dash forward, to plunge into the battle.
But she didn’t argue. She just nodded her head and turned back toward her own seat.
Barron knew she understood as well as he did. They had no other choice.
* * *
The engineer looked through the clear hyperpolycarbonate of the dome, up into the fiery red sky, streaked, as usual, with gray-white trails of toxic gasses. The planet was a nightmare, a vision of hell itself, but it was one of the most important places in the Hegemony. And, according to the scanner reports, it was about to be bombarded by waves of enemy missiles.
Much of the vast antimatter production facility was underground, bored deep into the planet’s bedrock. It would take an enormous amount of destructive energy to knock it out entirely, though smaller, targeted impacts could cause significant damage to transmission lines and other critical systems.
Vigius was a Hegemony Master, and the head of engineering at the sprawling antimatter foundry, but at that moment, all he could do was look up into the planet’s impenetrable haze, his eyes squinting, trying to detect some sign of warheads descending toward the surface. That was foolish, he knew, a pointless effort in more ways than one. But the reports had also confirmed the destruction of the orbital fortresses. All of them. The planet’s defenses were gone, the ships posted around it destroyed. There were no options left, no modes of defense remaining available.
Nothing but to gaze up at the sky, searching for signs of approaching death.
Vigius was somewhat typical of his exalted caste in Hegemony society. He’d been cocky as a young man, arrogant, overly proud of the genes inside him, an advantage for which he could claim no personal credit. Much of that had mellowed with age, as the cumulative effects of his own misjudgments, mixed with some examples of clearly brilliant work by many of the high-level Arbeiter on his staff, had given him cause to think. He still believed in the Hegemonic system. There was simply too much proof, far too many clear correlations between strong genetics and intelligence, ability. But it was far less an exact science than he’d once believed.
His thoughts were strangely philosophical for a man facing imminent death. Or maybe not, he thought. What else is there to fill these last moments?
He wasn’t a warrior, though he knew enough about the current military situation to entertain the thought that he was actually fortunate. If there were antimatter warheads even then descending from orbit, his end would come quickly, as it would for all of his people. For the rest of the Hegemony, from the Kriegeri in the warships fighting all around the system to the billions living on planets across a vast swath of space, there would be continued terror and anguish. Some would also die quickly when their times came, and others in agony, screaming in pain and uncontrolled fear.
How is this possible? We are—were—the pinnacle, the society destined to rebuild humanity, to restore the glory of the empire…while avoiding its terrible mistakes. He’d always believed that, supported the Hegemony’s sacred purpose with all his heart. Now, all he saw was the hubris, the uncontrolled arrogance.
Why do we always think we know more than we do? In our way, while speaking so boldly of the need to avoid the empire’s course, what have we done but emulated it, taking from them the unshakeable belief that we are always right.
Now, we will pay the price. As the empire did before us.
He heard the klaxons in the background, the alarm system calling the staff to the underground bunkers. Vigius twitched, his body’s reflexes trying to respond to the warning call. But his intellect was still in charge, and he knew there was no point. No need to spend the final seconds of his life crawling into a doomed hole in the ground.
He took a breath, sucking in a lungful of the station’s sterile, artificial air. But in his mind, it was the spring breeze of his homeworld. How many things did I ignore, fail to appreciate? How many things I planned to do were left undone? We think so highly of ourselves, yet we are so fragile, we have so little time.
As he continued his thoughts, his eye caught something, a trail of light, of flaming sparks as one of the warheads came down through the planet’s dense atmosph
ere.
Some of those warheads will be set for airburst, others for burrowing mode. It was a realization of no real value, and yet it was worth all he had left, the difference between dying in minutes, or dying in seconds.
His mind raced, every person in his life to whom he still had something to say staring at him from the dark reaches, every decision he regretted, pushing its way to the forefront of his thoughts.
He could hear his heart pounding, and as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, he could feel that his hands, too, were wet with perspiration. He was afraid, as scared as he’d ever been.
And yet, there was peace there, too, a strange calm. He ached not for himself, nor for his people on the planet, but for the others, still doomed to fight a hopeless war, to endure just long enough to see all they knew, all they’d lived for and cared about destroyed.
His thoughts slipped back, wondering if the incoming bombs were set to burrow, or…
He never completed that thought.
In an instant, it was all gone, Vigius, the building he was in, every surface structure in any direction for kilometers upon kilometers, obliterated in the unimaginable fury of matter-antimatter annihilation.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Senate Compound
Troyus City
Megara, Olyus III
Year 322 AC
“What you did was outrageous, Captain. I will see that you are clapped in irons. You can deliver that brat you’re carrying in the deepest, darkest cell in the detention center.” Kettle Vaughn was apoplectic. Andi had considered ignoring the Senate’s demand that she appear, but she knew her work wasn’t done, not until the politicians voted to authorize the fleet to go to Tyler’s aid. She’d backed them into a corner with her broadcast, maneuvered them to the edge of the precipice.
Now, it was time to push them over.
Vaughn’s words came at her, almost like a fuel stoking her own volatile rage. Andi was not the kind to take abuse, to stand helplessly while some miserable fool threatened her.
Not even when that fool was a Confederation Senator.
She’d killed men for less. Far less. And she wouldn’t have lost a night’s sleep for putting Vaughn in his grave either. But killing a Senator in the middle of the Compound would have a lot of…complications. And it wouldn’t do anything for Tyler.
So, she just took it, or at least what Andi Lafarge considered ‘taking it.’ But that was only going to go so far.
“Senator Vaughn, you can threaten me all you want, but I’ve faced some really intimidating people in my life and lived to tell about it. If you think a pompous buffoon of a politician from some industrial shithole—especially one with such…unfortunate…taste in suits—is going to make the grade, you’re sorely mistaken. You are too stupid to realize it, of course, but you’re actually in my debt. My solution was more elegant, and probably a lot less unpleasant for you than the others you might have faced. I realize that your particular breed of Elventian boreworm doesn’t understand loyalty, Senator, but do you really think the navy, the Marines, were going to let you ignore Tyler’s request for aid? Did you think they would allow you to dicker and debate endlessly while the danger grew ever more dire? You’re too stupid and too arrogant to realize that your Senate rank does not make you invulnerable, regardless of what you tell yourself in the mirror when you’re shaving. Now, do you want to keep threatening me, and pretending that you’ve got enough inside your entire worthless sack of blood and guts to scare me? Or do you want to do what you already know you have to do? Because if we don’t resolve this today, and exactly the way I want it, I swear to God, you worthless maggot, I will go from one end of the Confederation to the other, and tell the people exactly how the Senate abandoned their great hero…and tried to manhandle his pregnant wife.”
Vaughn stepped back a bit, his face a mask of astonishment. Andi knew he was accustomed to people pandering to him and kissing his ass, and she wondered if anybody had ever spoken to him quite the way she just had.
Or had enjoyed it as much.
Or if he was capable of understanding that what he’d just heard was her holding back and ‘taking it.’ Anything that didn’t end with a blade deep in his chest cavity pretty much qualified as that.
There was a tense quiet for a moment, and then a voice cut through the quiet. “Senator Vaughn…whatever your feelings about Captain Lafarge’s actions…I daresay she had left us with few options. Senator Avaria has already promised her support for the measure to send reinforcements to Admiral Barron, and to authorize him to negotiate an alliance with the Hegemony and deploy his forces to battle however he deems appropriate. If you join us, the matter will pass by a large margin, and perhaps the other factions will yield to the inevitable, and allow us to pass the authorization unanimously. I don’t like the thought of another war any more than you do, but I can’t imagine Admiral Barron does either. If he sees a threat, it is very likely a real one, best faced hundreds of lightyears from here before it ends up on our doorstep.”
Andi watched as Speaker Flandry spoke to his colleague. Flandry was somewhat of an ally, though she suspected he, too, was secretly enraged at the way she’d gone around them, boxed them in.
She also didn’t care.
Flandry was enough of a realist to know he didn’t have a choice, but she couldn’t imagine the politician, no less arrogant in his own way than Vaughn, if somewhat smarter, was happy with her either. She just didn’t care. She was slightly more disposed to the Speaker than she was to vermin like Vaughn, but all things considered, she wouldn’t shed a tear if the whole Senate fell into a volcano somewhere.
At least after they gave her the vote she needed.
“Senators…I understand you all work on a different schedule than productive elements of society, but can we move this along, please. Admiral Winters is waiting to hear from me, and if there is a problem, I feel duty bound to make another address and tell the people of the Confederation what is happening here.”
So, I guess now we’ll see if any of you have the guts to actually try to arrest me and try to get me to recant what I said.
You don’t have a hole deep or dark enough for that…
* * *
“Thank you, Clint. It’s far from ideal, but it’s the best I can manage.” Andi was usually extremely adept at hiding weaknesses, but she knew that wall was crumbling, that her sadness was fully on display to her friend.
She handed the data chip to Winters. It was just about the last way she wanted to tell Tyler he was going to be a father, but it was her only choice. She couldn’t go with the fleet, not without exposing the baby she carried to terrible hazards in the transit points. She’d thought about not telling him, of waiting until they were together again, whenever that would be. She told herself that would be a mercy, that it would spare him pain, prevent distraction while he was leading his forces.
But too many people in the fleet already knew, and the idea of him finding out by accident was even more upsetting than delivering the news by recorded message.
“Andi…I know this is difficult for you, not only because the prospect of a new conflict is a grim development for all of us, but because you are not the kind to stay behind, out of the fight. But there’s no other way, not now, and you know it. So, take care of yourself and try to think positively. That’s what Tyler would want, and you know it.”
Andi winced slightly. Winters’s last comment had been well-meaning, but it had also been somewhat of a low blow.
“I know that, Clint. It is hard to stay back, to sit here while everyone I know and care about is going off to fight. But it’s more than that. Another war? So soon after the last one? Won’t we ever have peace, some time just to live?”
Andi had spent most of her life pursuing what she wanted. That had mostly been about surviving in her days back in the Gut, and then it had become a pursuit for success, for wealth. Now, she had everything she’d ever wanted…and a good number of things she’d never imagined. She
was enormously wealthy, she had Tyler, she was even about to have a baby, something she’d hardly ever imagined. Everything about her life was good just then, save for the one thing that destroyed it all, cut across her happiness like a jagged blade.
War.
She’d always been a fighter, a warrior in her own right, if not exactly a disciplined soldier or spacer. But she was tired now, and all she wanted was peace, to live with her small but growing family, and the few true friends she’d acquired along her way.
But as she sat there, that seemed an impossible goal. Everyone close to her was a warrior of one kind or another, and now they would all face hardship and danger. Again.
She looked up at Winters, and despite her best efforts, she couldn’t hold back the tears. “Please, Clint…tell Tyler I’m okay. Don’t let him know I’m…so weak.”
“You are the farthest thing I know from weak, Andi. Let me tell you a secret, one thing I’ve come to learn from a lifetime in service. Fighting is hard on us, the pain, the loss, the stress…but it’s harder on those we leave behind. We think of our comrades, those we lost, and those wounded, hurt, but it is too easy to forget spouses and children and parents back home. They suffer as we do, perhaps even more so. And for you, one so used to being in the fight, I can’t imagine what you’re feeling.” Winters paused, and Andi felt a wave of appreciation, for his words, and even more, for his obvious but welcome effort to pretend he didn’t notice she was crying.
