by Jay Allan
“That certainly seems to make sense, Admiral. After all, if we are attacked here, the transferred squadrons can just as easily launch from the battleships as the fortress’s bays.” Ilius had been silent, grim and noncommittal as usual. He had been almost a model of physical perfection, like so many of the Hegemony Masters, but years of war and terrible wounds had scarred his face, and left him with a permanent limp, as well as a hunch forward when he stood or walked. “And I can think of no one more capable of managing such an operation than Captain Jahn.”
Winters looked around the table, seeing no signs of disagreement. Jahn didn’t say a word, but he nodded slightly when the admiral’s eyes passed over him.
“Second, I would have all ships maintained in a state of readiness, prepared to embark on four hours’ notice.” He knew that would be the more controversial suggestion.
There was a small rustling around the table. Having warships ready to depart in such a short time would require something close to maintaining a constant alert status. It meant a lot of work, but perhaps of greater concern, it would also wear down the crews after a while.
But again, there were no objections. Only Vestilius voiced any opinion at all, and his was typically Palatian. “I am under so such orders as you, Admiral, to remain here while the fleet takes the war to our enemy. My ships will be ready to depart at any time, on far less than four hours’ notice.” It was an empty boast, of course, one that spoke more of Palatian pride and honor than engineering reality. The warrior ethic of a culture didn’t speed up the process of powering up reactors and preparing ships for the rigors of interstellar travel.
But all things considered, if Clint Winters had to face an enemy like the Highborn, he was just as glad to have some Palatians with him.
“Your eagerness does you credit, Commander Vestilius, but I urge you to remain with the rest of the fleet here until…the situation changes. Tyler Barron knows what he is doing, and I believe Imperator Tulus supports him completely. So, perhaps you have no formal orders, but if Vian Tulus was here now, I daresay he would endorse Admiral Barron’s orders wholeheartedly.”
Winters considered Tyler Barron one of his few true friends, his best friend, in fact. But he wasn’t sure he could ever quite forgive his commander for leaving him behind, and especially for saddling him with the diplomatic duties that came along with his quasi-command position. He hated it, despised every torturous second…but the expression on the Palatian commander’s face, and the simple, if somewhat sour looking nod that stood as his answer, proved again that as much as he detested such duties, he could handle them when he had to.
The Palatians were the weakest of the three major powers in the Pact, and by a considerable margin, despite what he didn’t doubt were their own heartfelt beliefs that their courage and warrior spirit more than made up for any deficit in hulls and technology. Nevertheless, their contributions were far from irrelevant, and if the Pact somehow managed to prevail, to hold off the Highborn, it was very likely the margin of victory would be far less than the strength of Palatian arms.
Winters didn’t really believe they were going to prevail, though, even as part of him dug in every more deeply, determined to somehow do just that very thing. But if victory was somehow attainable, he didn’t doubt that would come down to the fact that years before, a future Palatian Imperator took a liking to a Confederation officer named Tyler Barron.
One more achievement.
Winters knew Tyler had always struggled to live under the shadow of his grandfather’s glory…but he’d come to believe his friend’s efforts had overtaken those of his illustrious ancestor. As far as Winters was concerned, Tyler Barron was the greatest hero in Confederation history, bar none.
The Palatians might have joined the Pact anyway, of course, despite their history of eschewing allies and relationships, but he couldn’t imagine they would have been as controllable, as effectively integrated into the overall force structure, as they had been under Vian Tulus, Barron’s friend and blood brother. That could very well be the difference between victory and defeat all by itself.
Ilius broke the long silence, and pulled Winters from his thoughts. “Admiral, if I may ask a salient question…it is all well and good to prepare to set off after the main fleet, but what, exactly, would constitute sufficient reason to…massage, as you put it…Admiral Barron’s orders that we remain here?” Ilius looked right at Winters. “Under what circumstances would we move forward?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Beneath Ruins of Pintarus City (Former Imperial Capital)
Planet Number Four (Pintarus)
Undesignated Imperial System 12
Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)
The shockwave threw Andi against the rock wall behind her, and then to the ground with a disconcerting—and painful—thud. Pain radiated out from half a dozen places, but two decades of combat instincts told her she hadn’t been seriously hurt.
She just felt like it.
She wanted more than anything to stay still for a while, to rest and do her best not to move at all, but there was no time. She knew what had happened. Vig had reached Pegasus, and he had fired the ship’s topside laser turret. While the weapon was a light one compared to the armament of a true warship, it was still designed for combat in space at ranges measured in thousands of kilometers. At a distance of a hundred meters, not even the attenuating effect of a planetary atmosphere would substantially reduce the weapon’s hitting power. Andi could hear sections of the massive cavern coming down, cascades of rock and debris crumbling off in the distance, and she knew there was a good chance the whole place would collapse, that she and the others would be buried along with the old empire’s ashes.
But the only alternative had been dying under the onslaught of the three most fully-functional imperial bots she’d ever encountered. Two of her Marines were dead already, and two more were wounded, along with several members of her crew. Vig had gotten back to Pegasus and somehow managed to fire the laser in less than ten minutes, faster than she’d dared hope…and it had still been almost too late.
You hope ‘almost.’
She pulled herself up into a prone position, pausing for a second on her hands and knees as she tried to clear her head. She’d sent Vig dead on targeting data, she was sure of that. But even under the best of circumstances, blasting the ground, hoping to score precision hits on targets as small as bots, thirty meters below the surface, was far from a sure thing. And the more shots it took to take down the targets, the more chance the whole cavern roof would come down, killing or trapping them all…and dooming any chance to aid the effort to defeat the Highborn.
She crawled forward, to the old piece of wall—now nothing more than a pile of crumbled debris—that had served as cover before she’d been thrown back by the blast. She peered over the top, her eyes darting frantically around, trying to pinpoint movement or a flash of reflected light, anything that might give her an idea of the status of the imperial security units. There was nothing for an instant…and then she saw motion. She ducked down, just in time, as a stream of fire ripped over her head, hundreds of small projectiles further obliterating the wall behind her.
At least one bot was still active.
She turned and looked laterally, down to the Marines’ position. They were firing again, three of them at least. One of the wounded was still up, fighting. The other was lying behind his comrades, ominously still. Andi knew they had to get him to the ship if he was going to have any chance, but there was no way to carry him out of the cavern, not while any of the bots were still active.
“Vig…nice shot, but we’ve still got incoming fire. I think you might have gotten at least one, but you’re going to have to take another shot.” A lie, or at least an embellishment. She had no idea if he’d actually taken down any of the bots, but a little encouragement wasn’t going to hurt. She looked up at the ceiling of the cavern, her eyes moving back and forth to the bits of rock and dust dropping down to the g
round below. Another shot would be dangerous…
The gunfire over her head resumed, showering her with masonry and metal fragments from the tortured remains of the building behind her.
Not taking another shot meant almost certain death.
She dove forward, crawling around the edge of the half wall in front of her. She pulled her rifle around, and peered through the AI-assisted sight. She caught a glint, light reflecting off something.
One of the bots…
She took a deep breath, and then she said, “Okay Vig…spotting data coming now…” She flipped the small switch on her sight, activating the transmission function, sending the targeting data to Pegasus.
She held the rifle a bit longer, long enough to be sure Vig had gotten a good transmission, then she rolled back around behind the cover, hyperventilating as she lay there on her back, trying hard not to calculate the chances one of the bots might have gotten a fix on her while she’d been partially exposed.
Or the chance she was about to become buried under millions of tons of rock and debris…
The fire from the bot increased in intensity, and she realized there had to be at least two of them still in operation. The sounds were all coming from the same basic location…the spot she had just transmitted to Pegasus.
“Now Vig…fire!” She shouted, almost impulsively, not wanting to risk allowing caution or fear to stop her. She gasped hard and held her breath, waiting as the seconds passed, one, two…
Then the sounds of debris crashing down again, the almost deafening cracking sounds as the rock above split along multiple fault lines…and began to crash all around.
She looked up, terrified for an instant, shaken by a visualization of the top of the cavern above coming down on her. Andi had faced death numerous times, been tortured by Sector Nine, despaired of escape or victory in more instances than she could easily count. No one would call her soft. But the idea of being buried alive ranked up there with the worst things she’d experienced, and she found herself paralyzed for a moment, lying still, waiting to see if she would live to the next instant.
The sounds of the collapse got louder, and she coughed and choked on the dust billowing throughout the great underground cavern. But the roof held, at least where she lay.
She pulled herself up, struggling to regain control of herself. She crawled to the edge of the pile of rubble she’d been using as cover and peered out, cautious of the enemy. The fire had ceased, but that was no guarantee the bots had been destroyed.
She looked over toward where the imperial security units had been, and she was shocked at what she saw. Mountains of debris, meters high, everywhere around the bots’ positions. Unless the units had moved at the last instant, even Andi’s normal caution and pessimism failed to stop her immediate conclusion.
The shot had taken them out.
She could hear the Marines moving already, checking on their dead and wounded. And there were shafts of light streaming in from a great new hole in the cavern’s roof now, replacing the previous dim artificial light that had gone dark with the last attack. Whatever else Vig’s last shot had hit, it appeared that whatever power source had remained had been knocked out.
“Andi!” Her ears were still ringing from the sound of the cave in, but she recognized Ross Tarnan’s voice. Ross had been one of her people back in the days when she’d been a Badlands prospector, through good times and bad, including a few when she’d barely managed to hang onto Pegasus, much less gather a fortune. He was loyal, and an old friend. And she could tell instantly, something was wrong.
“Ross…what is it?” She pulled herself to her feet and she moved toward the sound of his voice.
And then she stopped in her tracks, her eyes fixed on the large building across the square. The imperial intelligence headquarters.
The building where Ellia and Sy and their people were combing through records, searching for what they had come to find. The building that stood now, half collapsed under an avalanche of rock and dirt from what had been the cavern ceiling above.
Andi came close to panic, though her mind later warred with itself to determine what had hit her first…fear for her friends, or that whatever secret to defeating the Highborn might have been there had been destroyed. She knew the answer she wanted to that question, the one she knew she should have. But she wasn’t sure, and she felt a wave of self-loathing in response to her uncertainty.
“…about to try to go in again. I commed Vig, and he’s on the way down with some gear.”
She realized Ross had been speaking while she’d been immersed in her thoughts. His words came back to her slowly, though she was running eight or ten seconds behind.
Ellia and Sy were in the building. And Ross had been trying to get them out.
“Show me…how far could you get?”
“Not far, Andi. This way.” He waved as she approached, and he turned and jogged back toward the building, or what was left of it.
She ran up behind him, and then she lunged around, climbing up a pile of debris in front of what had been the left side of the building. She stumbled, cursing herself for letting panic and guilt keep her from looking where she was going. “Have you tried to raise them on the comm?” She knew the answer, but she asked anyway.
“Yes, nothing…but this building has some kind of strange material in it. Even before the collapse, we could only communicate if they were close to an exit.”
It made sense, of course. She couldn’t imagine the old imperial intelligence service had been particularly fond of anyone trying to listen in on…well, anything.
But it was decidedly inconvenient at the moment.
“Andi…”
She spun around. Vig’s voice was unmistakable. He was a little out of breath, but otherwise he sounded fine.
“Vig…that was a…good shot. You saved us all.” He had saved them all. She was certain they wouldn’t have held out much longer against the bots. But she also suspected he blamed himself for the damage to the building…and those members of the crew who lay inside.
“Maybe not all…” He didn’t go any farther. Pegasus had its own culture, and while dewy-eyed optimism had no place in it, never giving up or writing off any of their own was also a core tenet.
“Come on…let’s go.” She extended her arm, pointing. “Over this way. I think we can get into the section that’s still standing.” She looked up at the building, and the exposed structural elements. Half of it was still standing, but she wasn’t sure how long it would stay that way.
She scrambled up, climbing over a twisted knot of steel girders, and toward what looked like an interior wall, now exposed by the building’s partial collapse. “Here…bring that drill up here, Vig.”
He climbed up right after her, and he pulled the heavy portable drill off his back. “This thing is pretty powerful, Andi.” He looked up at the side of the building, an interior cross section that stood next to the debris that had been the other half of the massive structure. “This place doesn’t look too sturdy.”
Andi moved forward and grabbed the drill, pulling it, and Vig on the other end, toward the wall. “Give me that thing, Vig…this is my responsibility, and if this place going to come down on anyone, it’s going to be me. You can pilot Pegasus, get the others home. Go.”
Vig still held the other side of the drill, and he stared right back at Andi. “I don’t refuse your orders very often, Andi, but this is one of them. Besides the fact that it would take a platoon of Marines to drag me from your side here, that’s my sister in there. So, are we going to waste time arguing, or are we going to do this together?”
Andi opened her mouth to argue, but she’d known Vig a long time, and she could tell from his eyes and his tone he wasn’t going to give in. There were small chunks of masonry skittering down the edge of the building as well, as if her awareness of its instability needed some kind of reminder.
“Okay, Vig, let’s get this thing going.” Andi pulled at the front, and shoved it up
, positioning the bit on what looked like the side of a door of some kind. She pulled back and nodded, and Vig flipped the switch. The drill cut into the masonry like a knife through butter, but then it almost stopped, amid a hideous, squeaking sound.
Imperial steel. Dammit…
“We’re going to have to find another spot, Vig.” Andi wasn’t surprised that the intelligence headquarters had steel reinforced walls. She would just have to find a way around, some route in that didn’t require cutting through the incredibly durable metal. She wasn’t sure if she had anything on Pegasus that could even burn through imperial steel—that depended as much on the thickness of the material as anything else—but she was absolutely certain anything that could do it, was almost certain to bring the rest of the building down.