Nightfall

by Jay Allan

  Three days that had seen his ship fleeing across a series of systems, constantly pursued by the Hegemony forces. Three days that had seen multiple repeats of gut-wrenchingly close races to stay just far enough ahead.

  He’d sent in his bomber wings, again and again, each time scoring significant successes, albeit at high loss rates. He’d almost sent out a another just before he’d left the bridge, but then he’d decided to hold what remained back. The fighting in Pollux—and the more than one hundred fighters from the last wave that hadn’t returned to their base ships in time—followed by the ongoing battles in two subsequent systems, had left him with barely forty percent of his original force still ready for action.

  If stunned pilots and battered, barely functional bombers combined into something he could call ‘ready for action.’

  He’d decided to hold back his forces, to save them for a time when running seemed hopeless, when the enemy was closing inevitably on his fleet.

  For the last stand he believed in his gut was waiting for them…and soon.

  He picked up a small, white towel and dried his face. He’d eaten about half the food the steward had brought him, and as he walked out of the bathroom, he knew he should eat the rest. But, for all he’d been so hungry when he’d left the bridge, the first few bites had tied his stomach into churning knots. He would take another stim—though he would slip it by the chief surgeon, who’d urged him to wait at least a few more hours. He suspected if he forced much more food down his throat just then, he’d see it again in short order.

  He turned and walked toward the door, peering out into the corridor before he stepped out. There were two guards standing there, spacers who owed their allegiance to him above all others. He hated the idea of moving around his own flagship, worried about what might happen, but the truth was a stark one. He’d violated orders. His fleet was racing away from the Union, from the worlds that were home to almost every spacer on his ships. He knew there had been talk, hushed whispers of treason, spoken in sometimes heated opposition to those backing his actions.

  But, it wasn’t angry spacers that troubled him the most. It was Villieneuve’s spies and political officers. Denisov had swept the fleet, arrested every agent he knew of, and over a hundred he just suspected. Still, he knew he’d very likely missed some.

  All it would take was one, a zealot committed to his role, and with the authorization to take decisive action. Denisov wasn’t a coward, not by any means, but he didn’t relish the thought dying at the hands of some Sector Nine watcher, and being branded a traitor to his people.

  Worse, perhaps, he’d done what he had for a reason, one he considered unassailable. He was preserving the fleet the only way he could devise. The only way that offered a chance that survival, at fighting another day.

  If some implanted agent made a move, felled him with a successful assassination attempt, he knew his fleet—the Union’s fleet—would follow him swiftly into the darkness, and those who had been most loyal to him would pay the price.

  Then, the war would truly be lost, and the long suffering worlds of the Union would slip into foreign domination and slavery even more profound than that they’d endured under the Presidium and Villieneuve’s dictatorship.

  * * *

  Raketh sat in the shadowy darkness of his sanctum. The dimness of the lights had been at his command, an accommodation to match his mood. He’d been chasing the Union fleet for days, and his enemy had eluded pursuit through one ruse or clever tactic after another. His frustration had intensified steadily, and now it was morphing into rage. This Union admiral was an unexpected wrinkle in his plan, and now he had to make a difficult decision.

  The gravity assisted vector change had been particularly intriguing, and he’d taken the brilliant stratagem as full warning that he faced a capable and wily opponent. He’d perhaps been a bit careless himself, allowed the Confederation notes on Union capabilities to influence the urgency of his pursuit. If he’d risked some overloads on the drives, pushed at least some of the fleet forward at redline thrust levels…

  But, there was no gain to be had in obsessing over what he might have done. He had more important things to consider. Predominantly, what to do next.

  His blood was up, perhaps more so than was seemly for a first century Master. He wanted to catch the Union forces. He wanted the battle honors, the glory he’d lost when the Grand Fleet command had gone to Chronos. If he’d taken Dannith, if he’d crushed the Confederation forces there and pacified the planet, perhaps he would have retained the overall command. He knew his thoughts were unproductive, and also that, realistically, command of something like Grand Fleet had to go to a top ten Master, he was still unsettled at what he perceived as undeserved shame.

  Chronos had authorized his strike on the Union, but there had been no discussion of a pursuit, of chasing the enemy farther and farther from the initial attack point at Pollux. That oversight gave him an out, an excuse to continue his operation against the Union fleet, or at least the lack of orders prohibiting such a course. But, if Grand Fleet needed the Reserve, or if the enemy managed to get around the main force and strike at the Hegemony’s supply lines while Raketh was off on his endless pursuit, things would get ugly fast.

  He wanted the Union fleet. He wanted the victory, the credit for taking down the largest of the Rim nations in one massive strike, but he was nervous about the risks involved. He had limited intelligence on the systems into which the enemy might retreat. Were there fortifications, supply bases…more natural features that could be used to facilitate defense or continued withdrawal? Just how far could he pursue before he had to turn around, bring the Reserve back to Dannith?

  He had multiple answers, but some, he knew, were born from his desires, and not from cold logical analysis. Should he go one more system, push his ships to the limit and try a final time to compel an engagement?

  Or, was it too late? Was he too far in already to risk overloading engines and moving farther from his base and lines of communications?

  He didn’t have an answer…not yet.

  But, he’d sworn to himself he would before he left the confines of the sanctum.

  * * *

  Regina Descortes sat at the dimly-lit workstation, her fingers moving swiftly over the keypad. Every few seconds, she looked over her shoulder, confirming that she was still alone. The sector nine agent knew something was wrong. She’d known it from the moment Admiral Denisov had initiated the course change, and used the gas giant’s gravity to alter the fleet’s vector, away from the route back home, and off along the border and toward the Confederation.

  She’d taken a massive risk sending a message back to Montmirail, but so far at least, it appeared she had escaped discovery. Even if one of Illustre’s AIs or some routine deep scan of its information systems turned up some record of the transmission, she doubted it could be traced to her. That was good news, of course, but it still left her in a quandary.

  Denisov’s tactic had violated his orders, she was sure of that. The admiral had been left no option if he’d been forced to leave the Pollux system, save to return to Montmirail.

  She would have made her move already, but she realized she wasn’t sure Denisov had done what he had for any reason save raw, tactical necessity. The fleet would likely have been caught if it had tried to flee toward Montmirail, and if the intel she had on enemy capabilities was accurate, it would almost certainly have been destroyed. She wondered if Denisov had done the only thing he could have, if his only concern had been to preserve the fleet, and not to make some traitorous run toward the Confederation. That had been a possibility. It still was, though his choice of subsequent transits didn’t bode well.

  There was a route back to Montmirail from the fleet’s current location, a long, tenuous path, but a way back nevertheless. But, Denisov was not heading that way. He had the fleet on a course directly toward the Triton transit point…and Confederation space.

  Worse, perhaps…she’d tried to access the
main data banks, using an old Sector Nine backdoor. The pathway had been cut, and access restricted to Denisov’s voice pattern alone.

  Descortes couldn’t be sure Denisov’s actions were deliberate treason, but then again, in the Union, proof wasn’t really a prerequisite to action. Suspicion alone was almost certainly enough to authorize an execution under normal conditions. A situation involving a fleet commander this far from base required a bit more…but she had almost convinced herself there was no choice.

  She closed down the workstation, entering her own codes to erase any record of her efforts. Then, she stood up and reached down to her side, to the small pocket inside her jacket.

  The gun was small, easy to hide. It wasn’t the most powerful weapon she could have, nor the most accurate beyond close range. But, that wasn’t a problem. She only had one target, and she would get close enough to get the job done.

  She would have felt more comfortable with direct orders from Villieneuve, or at least a less hazy analysis of Denisov’s motivations. But, she’d made her decision, and there was no going back.

  There was no waiting, either. The fleet was almost into Confederation space, and if she wanted to stop it before it transited, now was the time.

  She had to kill Andrei Denisov. And, she had to do it soon.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1,450,000,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless

  Olyus System

  Year 318 AC

  The Battle of Megara – The Stone Giants

  Dirk Timmons inhaled deeply, savoring the scent of his cockpit. It was a strange thing to do, nothing most people would consider fragrant or pleasant, mainly a combination of sweat mixed with a mild burning smell from his overtaxed engines and the faint odor from his new, never before worn, polymer survival suit. To Timmons, though, it smelled like home, and like a place he’d never expected to see again.

  He wouldn’t have seen it, either, not without the Hegemony invasion, and their successful advance all the way to Megara. Panic had a way of overcoming foolish regulations bureaucrats otherwise defended with the passion of zealots. His artificial legs were wonders of science, and he was actually faster than he’d been with the ones he’d been born with, and more dexterous as well. But, none of that mattered to those who wrote the rules, usually with little or no regard for reality. At least not until they worked themselves up into a good, righteous fear. Then, they opened the doors to anyone who offered a promise of salvation for them. In this case, forefront on that list was anyone with flight experience.

  And, Dirk Timmons had been well known as one of the best pilots to ever fly a Lightning.

  He’d had a moment or two of doubt when he’d first lowered himself into the cockpit, uncertainty that he was, could still be, as good as he’d been. But, as soon as he’d launched, it all came back, almost like a torrent. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t lost a step, either from his prosthetic legs or from the years he’d spent teaching and not doing. The throttle in his hand felt as it always had, as an extension of his own body, and every vibration, every sound took him back to his days at the head of the Scarlet Eagle squadron.

  Now, it is time to let these bastards know who I am…

  The bluster was one thing that came less easily than it once had. Timmons wasn’t as arrogant as he’d been in his younger days. Losing countless friends and comrades, being critically wounded and almost killed, and learning to walk with new, artificial legs, all had a way of aging a man, imparting deep levels of wisdom, forged from pain. But, he was still a Lightning jock at heart, and there was always a core of ego behind the driving force that allowed a man or woman to slide into a tiny ship and blast it wildly toward a target tens of thousands of times its size. There was some degree of crazy in every fighter pilot, and no amount of reasoned thought or tragedy could squeeze it all out.

  He was still ‘Warrior’ Timmons, and somewhere deep within him, he needed to make the enemy know that.

  He was leading his second strike now. The first had pounded the enemy hard, swarming over the battleships on the Hegemony flank and hitting with over forty percent of their torpedoes. Despite the orders to focus on taking out railguns and proceeding to new targets, Timmons’s people had managed to destroy three Hegemony battleships outright, the result more of enthusiasm run amok rather than deliberate disobedience.

  The new wave of fighters behind him was tighter, the pilots more settled in. Between casualties, damaged ships, and stranded and wounded pilots, he had almost twenty percent fewer birds behind him this time. He mourned for every lost pilot, but he also knew the casualties had been heaviest among the least experienced personnel. There was a coldness to the analysis, one that didn’t enhance his opinion of himself, but he knew the force he led now was a better one on average, than the one that had launched hours before. It was uncomfortable looking at dead pilots as data points, but the tight order of his new formations spoke for itself.

  Timmons knew this assault was likely to be the deadliest his wings launched. Far on the other side of the enemy fleet, the Hegemony ships were not only enduring ‘Raptor’ Stockton’s second wave, they were also moving into range of the ‘Stone Giants.’

  The name was entirely unofficial, of course, but it had spread like wildfire through the fleet. A dozen asteroids, towed into position and rapidly outfitted with every hastily overpowered weapon available, along with rows of fusion reactors to power them, the ‘Giants’ were ready to deal out death. They were a mess by any rational design standards, but Anya Fritz had supervised much of the work, and Timmons was sure enough that anything the brilliant engineer built would work.

  He flipped on his comm unit. “Eagle Wing…” He’d named the immense strike force he commanded after the famous squadron he’d led in his younger days. “…we’re coming in on one synchronized attack. Raptor is leading the other wings against the far end of the enemy formation…even as the Hegemony ships move into range of the Stone Giants. Those battleships and their deadly railguns will strike our forces with deadly force. They will claim their price, kill our comrades. But, this moment, right now, before they close, is ours. I could remind you of what is at stake, speak to you of the great history of the Confederation fighter corps, urge you forward with soaring tones and carefully-chosen words. I will do none of that, not now, for all you need to know is that you are here to kill, to destroy. These bastards have invaded our nation, killed our people. They would reduce us all to little more than slaves to their perceived genetic mastery. We do not need to understand them. We do not need to talk with them. We need to kill them. Every one of them. Follow me now, not as officers, not as pilots…but as avenging angels, agents of shadowy death itself. Kill. Follow me and kill.”

  He snapped off the comm, and he stared at his screens, his eyes zeroing in on the biggest enemy battleship in the group ahead of him. And, in that moment, nothing mattered to him, not loyalty to his nation, not camaraderie to his pilots. He only wanted to kill.

  * * *

  “Commander, it is time.” Barron’s eyes stared across the short expanse between him and his aide, his flag captain, his friend. “All bases…open fire.”

  “Yes, sir.” Travis’s voice was stone cold, the only hint of emotion a thirst for blood that would have chilled Barron to his core…if he hadn’t felt the same thing.

  He sat on Dauntless’s bridge, looking around, almost feeling the tension rising off his people. He had his battleships positioned right behind the asteroid bases, using the massive chunks of rock as cover against the enemy railguns. Admiral Nguyen had ordered the bases to be manned by the smallest possible crews, but Barron still found it painful to think of the men and women crawling through those narrow subterranean corridors, relying on weak, hastily-built shielding to protect them from the massive reactors running on constant overload. That was bad enough, but Barron knew radiation sickness was far from the first concern of those gunners and engineers and technicians. The enhanced particle accelerators, giant versions of the primaries o
n the Confederation battleships, were still experimental. They might just as easily explode as fire, and even if they did function as hoped, the result could only be to bring down the full fire of the enemy fleet on the large, but poorly armored bases.

  “All bases…open fire.” Travis repeated Barron’s order, her voice the same echo of death it had been seconds before.

  Barron leaned back and stared into the display. A few seconds later, he saw a series of flashes, the fire from the asteroids. The Stone Giants varied in size. There hadn’t been time or resources to complete them all, and the dozen bases in the fight mounted between two and six of the guns dubbed ‘super-primaries.’

  The particle accelerators opened up at an even greater range than the enemy railguns, though at such distances, they struck with only a fraction of their actual power. Barron watched as two of the beams struck their targets—less than a ten percent hit rate, but not bad at such extended range. He stared as the damage assessments came in, and he allowed himself a passing instant of satisfaction. Even at extreme range, the deadly weapons tore into their targets, slicing through armored hulls and cutting deep into each ship’s innards.

  Barron knew what was happening on those vessels. However alien the Hegemony’s society seemed, they were men and women, the same as those serving on Dauntless and the other ships of the Confederation fleet. They were dying over there, crushed by falling chunks of steel, pushed out into the icy depths of space, burnt to ashes. It was a nightmare, a firestorm of human suffering…and it put a smile on his face.

  Barron wasn’t a brutal man by nature, but he’d seen too much war, watched too many people he respected and cared for consumed by its fire. He had no time anymore for sympathy for his enemies. He would kill them all, until none were left if that’s what it took to achieve peace.