Nightfall

by Jay Allan

  His ships were engaged, moving forward alongside Clint Winters’s, leapfrogging into firing position. He’d been vaguely uncomfortable with the maneuver, some residual impulses of the old Palatian inside him crying out that such was beneath his dignity. But, the tactic had worked brilliantly, and if he knew anything about Clint Winters, it was that the officer was no coward. There was victory in war, and there was defeat, and any stratagems that avoided the latter were worthwhile. Tulus’s own people had experienced the bitterness of defeat, of occupation by outworlders and a century of slavery. Too many of them had forgotten the essence of that bitter lesson.

  But, he had sworn he never would.

  I will do as you ask, Tyler, my brother, though I will never forgive myself.

  Tulus stared straight ahead, and when he spoke, his tone was as cold as the grave. “All ships…the fleet will withdraw at once. Full thrust toward the designated transit point.”

  The bridge was silent for a moment, a delay even in Globus’s acknowledgement of the command. Tulus knew what they were all thinking. He was thinking the same thing. But, there was no choice. Withdrawing was the tactically correct decision. And, far more importantly, he simply could not deny Barron’s request.

  He sat like a statue, cold stone, unmoving, and he thought one thing, and only one thing.

  I will make the enemy pay for this…and, if you are fated to die here, my brother, I will avenge you if I must cast the Rim, and the whole galaxy infested by man, into the flaming pits of hell…

  Chapter Nineteen

  CFS Hermes

  Calvus System, Approaching Planet Craydon

  Year 318 AC

  “Craydon control, this is CFS Hermes, requesting final approach authorization.” Andi was raw, her pain an open would, and it showed in the coarseness of her voice. And, in her thoughts, dark and miserable.

  Somebody get up off your ass over there, before I just decide to open fire.

  It was an empty threat, she knew. Hermes was a glorified courier ship, not a combat vessel, and no matter how much of a useless chunk of organic material was sitting in the control center in orbit around Craydon, the last thing Confederation personnel needed just then was to be shooting at each other.

  “Hermes, we have cleared your beacon. You may approach and dock at gamma platform, gate four.” The traffic controller’s voice was firm, confident-sounding. Andi knew her impatience was mostly her own creation, and not based on anything outside of the anger and hatred that was driving her.

  She was glad to have those dark thoughts, though, because the rage was the only thing keeping her going. She’d never been closer to just giving up. She’d likely lost the one person she cared most about, worse, she’d left him behind. The Confederation itself seemed doomed, and for all the raw tenacity that ran through her veins, her intellect told a different tale, one of seemingly inevitable defeat.

  But, she had something to do for Tyler, and she would die—and kill anyone she had to who stood in her way—before she would fail to see it done.

  “Bring us in, Commander. And, advise Dr. Witter we’ll be unloading his people and their cargo as soon as the ship is docked.” Andi didn’t know where the Institute’s researchers would end up, but she was damned sure going to see they had everything they needed, whatever that took. She had orders from Admiral Nguyen and from Tyler, but nothing from the Senate. That had just been too much of an ask on short notice, especially with every politician on Megara screaming for the fleet to drive the enemy away, or else frantically looking for some kind of cover to protect themselves if things came to an actual assault on the planet. That didn’t even address those who had already fled the Olyus system in advance of the hostilities.

  She wasn’t sure if military commanders had the legal authority to compel planetary leaders to cooperate, but the Craydonite who gave her a hard time was going to be one very sorry bureaucrat.

  She got up, and walked toward the lift, turning back to face her exec. “Advise the authorities I will be coming aboard at once to discuss a matter of the highest importance.” She took another step and stopped again. “Have Dr. Witter meet me at the docking port.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  She nodded to herself as she stepped into the elevator car. She hadn’t thought earlier about bringing Witter, but now it made perfect sense to her. He would support the orders she carried, help explain the importance of the research team’s mission.

  And, he just might lessen the chance that she’d have to decorate a wall with the insides of some pompous local official who gave her shit, while Tyler and the others were back in Megara, possibly dying.

  Or dead already…

  It was a thought that chilled her to the bone, and she struggled to wrench her mind away from it. The battle might very well still be raging, she knew, but it could be over, too. And, the implications of that were more than she could handle just then.

  She reached out and punched in the code for the docking portal, and then she closed her eyes and forced herself to focus. She had work to do…work that was crucial to saving the Confederation.

  To defeating the Hegemony.

  She might not have been able to stay with Tyler, or to save him.

  But, if he didn’t make it out of Olyus, if he died there with his spacers, she damned sure was going to do everything she could to avenge him.

  * * *

  “Those orders are from the naval C in C, Mr. Davidoff, and they leave no room for anything short of total obedience.” Andi’s face was twisted into a scowl, and she turned and gestured toward the uniformed woman standing behind her. “Captain Elvarez, here, remains your liaison to the Admiralty, however, her mission has changed somewhat. Instead of waiting helplessly while your shipyards concoct one delay after another to create additional billings—a legacy of fraud sustained, no doubt, with the help of purchased politicians, and a tradition I can assure you, is over, as of this instant—she will become your watchdog. One with teeth. You will now apply your no doubt considerable, if ill-used, talents to expediting the launch of every new ship into immediate service, whether finished or not. If it has reactors and any weapons at all, it needs to be ready for service in a matter of days, weeks at most.”

  “Captain Lafarge, that is simply not how we…”

  “I am doing you a courtesy in coming here, Mr. Davidoff. I have been on Craydon for two days, and my executive officer has been able to discover at least six different prosecutable offenses in your military contracting activities. I understand that you own most of Craydon’s local officials, and no doubt, the planet’s four Senators…Victoria Janus, I believe is the most senior, is she not?” She’d had no idea who Craydon’s senior member of the Senate was until less than an hour before, but Davidoff didn’t know that. “However, that impressive collection of criminals and miscreants will no longer be sufficient to sustain your rampant overbilling and other illegal acts. I would see to it that your family’s entire corporate empire comes crashing to the ground, if only out of sheer outrage, but that is not my style.” She hesitated for an instant, and then she let her hand drop to her waist. She was dressed in her—still—strange feeling uniform, but the pistol she had her side was her own, trusty and well-used.

  The local magnate, by all accounts, the richest individual on Craydon, and one of the twenty or so most wealthy in the entire Confederation, stood stone still, clearly seething…but just as obviously, physically intimidated by Andi and her threats.

  “Captain Lafarge, I must protest this…”

  “You can protest anything you want, Mr. Davidoff, to anyone you want. But, if you’d like to walk out of this room in one piece, you will take my request rather more seriously than you have to this moment.” She could see the tense rustle among the magnate’s four bodyguards, but Andi Lafarge wasn’t the kind of woman to bring a knife to a gunfight. She had six Marines with her, half of Hermes’s entire compliment, and they were equipped as if they were about to launch an invasion somewhere. Killing
four guards and one pompous scion of a six-generation old family fortune wouldn’t even be a warmup for them.

  “Please, gentlemen,” she said softly, her eyes darting toward the leader of the guard contingent. “We’re here to conduct business, but if I have to kill you all, I can assure you most earnestly, I will do it, and then I will go home and sleep soundly.” That was a lie. Andi hadn’t had a minute’s sleep since she’d left Olyus. But, greasing the men standing in front of her wouldn’t contribute at all to her insomnia.

  “Can you assure me, at least, that all costs related to this crash launch effort will be covered in addition to previously-contracted terms and conditions?”

  “Mr. Davidoff, all I can assure you is that, if you do everything these orders require you to do—and you don’t speak more than is necessary—I will allow you to leave this room alive. All other matters, you will have to take up with the appropriate authorities via the usual channels.” Assuming there still are any. “I trust your usual level of graft and corruption will lead to a speedy resolution for you, though perhaps it will be more costly than usual.”

  She was taunting Davidoff, but the man simply stood, clearly enraged, but just as obviously not ready to challenge Andi. She was glad that he seemed to be giving in. At least she wouldn’t have to spend any more time dealing with him…and the ships in the yards would be up and ready when the Hegemony pushed out from Megara to continue the conquest of the Confederation.

  Still, the man’s capitulation only increased the utter contempt and disgust in which she held him. And, she swore to herself, if the bastard did anything but exactly what he’d been told to do, she would personally gut him like a fish.

  “I’ll expect a schedule for the deployment of all near-operational vessels by this time tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? That’s not…” Davidoff paused, and he struggled for a moment to restrain his rage. “Yes, Captain. I will see that you have it.” The magnate turned abruptly and waved to his guards as he walked briskly to the door. Andi suspected his mind of full of thoughts of revenge, of how he was going to strike back at her for the way she’d treated him.

  She almost felt sorry for the fool. There was no way he could hurt her. She lacked the one weakness that would require.

  She didn’t care. And, save for her last obligations to Tyler, she didn’t care about a damned thing. They were all as good as dead or slaves already…and to Andi Lafarge, that was a very easy choice.

  It also left very little in the way of restraint to stop her from actually running her knife up the obnoxious industrialist’s midsection if he pissed her off enough.

  * * *

  “Thank you, Captain Lafarge. This whole thing has been very…upsetting. I don’t like that we had to retreat from the Olyus system…especially when we had to leave so many people behind. But, we’ve made considerable progress on a number of fronts. If we can get a little more time, I believe we can put some new systems into production, and really make a difference in this war.”

  “I am glad I was able to get you here, and…smooth out…the dealings with the local authorities.” Andi had run roughshod over a number of Craydon officials, but, somewhat to her surprise, she hadn’t had to kill anybody. If she’d been in a better frame of mind, that probably wouldn’t have felt as much like a disappointment as it did. “Your work is of vital importance, Doctor, and as long as I am here, you can come to me anytime if you need something.”

  She did believe the research was crucial work. She just felt it was going to come too late to make a difference. From what she’d heard, the cluster bombs, the first system developed by Witter’s team, had been highly effective in preliminary testing. But, there weren’t enough available, not to affect the outcome of the battle, and she had no idea how long it would take to get mass production underway.

  Maybe they can come up with something in time for the next battle…assuming any of the fleet gets out of Olyus…

  She wanted to believe the fleet would manage to escape, that Tyler would get past the enemy and pull his forces back to Craydon. Andi saw Tyler’s logic in the choice of a fallback position for the fleet. The Confederation’s Core consisted of seven systems, all wealthy and highly-developed, but their days as industrial powerhouses had long since passed. Megara and her six sisters were dominated by information technologies and the like, and it had been years since busy shipyards and bustling factories had surrounded any of them.

  Craydon was different. The planet, like the fifteen other planets in the Confederation’s Iron Belt, wasn’t quite as heavily fortified as Megara, but it was still well-armed by any normal standards, and its productive capacity far outmatched that of the Confederation’s capital. Notwithstanding morale and political considerations, the worlds of the Iron Belt were actually more vital to the Confederation’s continued resistance, and its ability to wage war.

  The Iron Belt worlds treated commerce and production almost as religion, and the great industrial families dominated the planets and their populations, exerting almost total control over the politicians and government agencies, and, of course, the people. Fraud and abuse were common occurrences, but such things had been ignored for at least three generations, during which the sixteen heavily-industrialized worlds had been the true powerhouses of the robust Confederation economy…and provided the raw output to fight three wars against the Union.

  “Dr. Witter, I don’t know how much longer I will be here…” Andi had no other orders, no place to take Hermes, but she wasn’t sure what was next for her. She wasn’t a naval officer, not a real one, no matter how authentic the commission Barron and Holsten had handed her, or how attentively her crew had followed her orders. She was a fighter, in every way one could be, but she didn’t know what would happen if Tyler and the others she cared about, those she’d left to fight in Olyus, didn’t return. Andi had fought her way through one struggle after another with grit and tenacity, and she’d won her deadly duel with Ricard Lille, arguably the most capable assassin the Rim had ever known. But, she knew herself well enough to understand one thing.

  She was close to being used up. She’d pursued things her entire life, success, wealth, the ability to help those she cared about…even vengeance. But, there was nothing now. She’d done what she’d promised Tyler she would do, and now all that remained was to wait.

  To wait and see what happened at Megara.

  And, who, if anybody, survived the titanic struggle there.

  Chapter Twenty

  CFS Dauntless

  140,000 Kilometers from Megara, Olyus III

  Year 318 AC

  The Battle of Megara – “Barron’s Breakout – Part One”

  Tyler Barron was staring at the display, the shards of his hope slipping away with each passing moment. Dauntless was deep in the fight, along with his entire line. The Confederation battleships had fought hard, even as the remaining enemy railguns tore into the big vessels, knocking one, then the next, from the line…and into oblivion.

  The Hegemony forces had copied his tactic of seeking to cripple, not destroy, their targets, to knock out the Confederation primaries before the long-ranged weapons could inflict more damage on their own, battered line. There was some kind of satisfaction, a twisted, perverse one, in realizing the enemy had such respect for the particle accelerators of the Confederation line, but it didn’t change the calculus in any material way. The enemy first line was likely going to crush his fleet, albeit at a horrendous cost…and, if somehow Barron managed to escape that fate, there was another force coming forward, dozens and dozens of virtually untouched Hegemony capital ships. When they closed to railgun range, things would be over very quickly for any victorious, but exhausted and damaged, Confederation survivors. There was simply a point where massive firepower became invincible, where no tactic or counter move could make up for the sheer destructive fire coming in.

  “Admiral, I have Captain Fritz on the line for you.”

  Barron was a little startled. He hadn’t expe
ct to hear from Fritz, and when his longtime engineer had needed to reach him in the past, she’d generally commed directly. Dauntless had been extremely fortunate so far in the battle, and had escaped any serious damage, so he wasn’t sure what she needed. But, he knew anytime Anya Fritz had something to say, he was ready to listen.

  “Fritzie, what is it? Some problem in engineering?” Of course, Fritz wasn’t Dauntless’s engineer anymore, at least not on the official OB. She was responsible for all technical operations fleetwide.

  And, Barron wasn’t Dauntless’s captain anymore either. If there was a problem with the ship, Fritz would have contacted Atara.

  “It’s something I’ve been working on, Captain…I mean, it’s experimental, and probably damned dangerous, but it just might be what we need if you want to…”

  Barron was confused. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Fritz so rattled, tentative. “What is it, Fritzie? Just say it.”

  “I’ve programmed an operational sequence for the reactors, for any of our reactors. I think it can increase output massively, at least for a short time. The wear and tear on the systems will be brutal, and fleetwide, we’d almost certainly see some catastrophic failures, but it just might give us enough power.”

  Barron was still struggling to follow her. “Enough power for what, Fritzie?”

  “To break out. The get the fleet through the enemy lines…and out of the system.”

  Barron was silent for a moment. The Hegemony forces were closing in all around. There was no escape route remaining, none that could accommodate a fleet the size of the one formed up around Megara. Barron had twice urged Dustin Nguyen to make a run for it himself, to try to get to Craydon with a few ships and reorganize the fleet, but the old admiral had answered simply that he would remain with the rest of the force at Megara, whatever fate awaited it.