by Jay Allan
“Which transit point? The system has three.” Jaymes wasn’t drunk then. In truth, he’d cleaned up his act, and he hadn’t had a drink in months. But he’d been as close to asleep as a man could be when he was still awake. The Union border had been silent for years, first in the aftermath of the last war between the two powers, and subsequently, as the Confederation’s old enemy had slipped into chaos and civil war.
“The transit point, Commander. The one from Union space.”
Jaymes looked up with a rapid jerk of his neck. He wasn’t the most attentive officer at times, but his aide was telling him the one thing he’d been trained to handle, the sole reason he and his sixty-four spacers were stuck in a cold metal cylinder on the very edge of Confederation space, was happening.
Ships were coming in from Union space.
He felt a momentary panic, but then it mostly passed. He was hardly privy to the latest intelligence on conditions in the Union, but based on what he did know, it seemed impossible the enemy was invading. A group of defectors, maybe? Or some foul up in freighter manifests?
“We’re picking up contacts now, sir.”
Time seemed to slow, and Jaymes could feel his mind racing, trying to come up with a list of possible explanations. He’d have been scared of an unexpected Union invasion, if he hadn’t been as well briefed as he was on the disruptions within that power. He’d heard some unsettling rumors about recent events in the civil war there, but he couldn’t come up with any way, a bankrupt and exhausted Union could mount an invasion of the Confederation.
Though the border is stripped clean…it wouldn’t take much to burst through the defenses…
Even Grimaldi, the massive fortress that had been the nerve center for operations in two successive wars with the Union, had been neglected, most of its fighter wings transferred to the Highborn front, its aging weapons neglected and allowed to decay.
“We’re picking up ships now, sir. Union warships.” A short pause. “Confirmed.”
Jaymes still couldn’t imagine how the Union could possibly mount an invasion, but he felt a twinge inside nevertheless. If he was wrong, if the Confederation’s longtime enemy was coming, he knew very well who would be the first to die. Outpost Twelve didn’t have any armament at all, just the sophisticated scanner array fueling the growing panic inside him.
“Transmit a challenge, Lieutenant.” Jaymes was staring at the display as he spoke. His nerves were a wreck, but even as he issued the order, he could see something was wrong.
The Union ships were moving raggedly, in considerable disorder. Some clearly had greater thrust levels than others, and a closer look revealed atmosphere and radiation leaks, and signs of hastily-patched hulls. Those ships, whatever they were, had been through hell. They looked more like a battered and defeated force than any invasion fleet. Still, Jaymes knew the protocols well enough.
“Send a flash transmission back to Grimaldi, Lieutenant…and bring the outpost to full alert.”
“Yes, Commander.” A short pause, then: “Commander, we’re receiving an incoming message. I have an Admiral Denisov on your line…”
* * *
“Andrei, I got here as quickly as I could. I’m sorry to keep you all the way out here. I would have authorized your people to move on to Grimaldi, but I wanted…to be cautious about allowing any rumors to spread.” Gary Holsten extended his arm, grasping the Union admiral’s hand. In truth, he’d been more concerned about the truth getting out than he was any rumors, or at least what he feared was the truth. It had been far easier to quarantine the outpost and its tiny crew than it would have been at Fleet Base Grimaldi.
Even if Grimaldi had been stripped to a skeleton crew.
“Thank you, Mr. Holsten. I had nowhere else to go. I’m not concerned for myself, but my spacers…”
“Of course, Andrei…you are all welcome. I will see that any who wish it are granted asylum, and any who elect to return will be allowed to do so.” A pause. “And it’s Gary, Andrei. We’ve known each other how many years now?” Holsten and Denisov had worked together for some time during the Hegemony War, but the Union admiral had been gone for more than four years, fighting in the Union Civil War. For most of that time, Holsten had been sure his ally would prevail.
Good reminder…never be sure about anything…
“There will not be many who wish to return…if any at all. I’m afraid nothing but death awaits any of them on Montmirail, and perhaps worse.”
Holsten nodded, and he remained silent a few seconds before he spoke. He knew very well there were worse things than death, especially at the hands of a man like Gaston Villieneuve. “Tell me, Andrei, what happened? It seemed you were close to victory? Did Villieneuve have some hidden forces, something he slipped past us all?” Please, let it be that…
“Yes, in a manner of speaking…Gary. He seems to have found some kind of ally…one with technology considerably in advance of our own.” Denisov pulled a small tablet from a pouch at his side, and he tapped the screen, turning it on. “Here is some scanner footage from the battle at Montmirail. One of the mysterious ships.”
Holsten looked down at the screen, knowing what he would see even as he prayed it wasn’t so.
“They are Highborn, are they not?” Denisov’s voice was deadpan, his exhaustion and despair overwhelming his efforts to control them. It was clear he already knew the answer to his question.
Holsten’s eyes focused on the ship displayed on the tablet…and his heart sank. “Yes, Andrei…that is a Highborn ship.” He sighed deeply. “They must have traveled around the perimeter of the Hegemony and the Badlands, and through the Periphery.” It was a long way, almost impossibly so. But Highborn ships did have considerably higher thrust capacities than anything on the Rim. The time spent in interstellar travel wasn’t crossing the great gulfs between suns. The transit points reduced those journeys to seconds in duration. It was crossing the systems, from one point to the next that took time. And 40g of additional thrust could really cut time from such trips.
“How many of these ships were present?”
“Sixteen confirmed.” Denisov hesitated. “I know that doesn’t seem like many, but they outranged us by a huge margin. None of my ships could even close with them…and my fighter squadrons were all configured for interceptor operations. They were badly depleted as well.”
Holsten nodded. “There was nothing you could have done, Andrei. We struggle at the front, with our latest and most advanced units. Your people went right from the Hegemony War into your own civil conflict. Your ships are at least twelve or fifteen years old, and most of them are considerably older. You didn’t have any chance against the Highborn. Even if they’d had fewer ships, the truth is they could have stayed out of range while they blasted your fleet to scrap. You couldn’t catch them, and you couldn’t fire back, and without sufficient bomber strength, there was no way for you to hurt them. You did well to get any of your ships out.”
“That’s kind of you, Gary, but I lost more than eighty percent of my command…adding in the losses on the ships that did escape, fewer than fifteen percent of my spacers made it out. They’re dead, the rest of them…and if they’re not, it’s only because a few ships were captured, and the crews fell into Villieneuve’s hands.” Denisov looked down at the deck, and he fell silent.
Holsten could almost hear what he wasn’t saying, though. Any captured spacers were suffering all the more because he had survived, and extricated some of his people. There was no doubt that fact had enraged Villieneuve.
“You did the right thing, Andrei. You could have served no purpose by dying at Montmirail. Your skills are incredibly valuable, and your spacers deserve to have you in command.”
“Command? Of what? Three dozen ships, most of the damaged, and every one of them an out of date relic? Is that a fleet? And even if it is, technically, it’s one I can’t supply. Not even with the useless, obsolete weapons that failed us so badly at Montmirail.”
Holsten had alw
ays been impressed with Denisov’s strength, but now he could see the admiral was close to coming apart. “Andrei…you’re here now. You’re with friends. We’ll help you care for your wounded, repair and resupply your ships. I’m going to tell you something Tyler Barron told me a long time ago. The fight isn’t over until you give up. I know things look dark now, but you came to our aid when we were fighting the Hegemony…and we won’t stop until our enemies are defeated. All of them.”
Holsten held his head firm, resisting the urge to shake it at his impetuous suggestion that Confederation forces might invade the Union and overthrow Gaston Villieneuve. He was likely to have enough trouble with the Senate. He tried to imagine convincing them to allow a battered Confed navy that somehow made it through the war with the Highborn turning about immediately and attacking the Union. The thought made his head hurt.
One realization slammed into him like a train, and he struggled to remain calm, to breath regularly and keep the panic at bay.
The Highborn hadn’t made an immense trek around the Badlands just to help Gaston Villieneuve. They had done it to take control of the Union.
No, they have taken control of the Union…
Holsten had long argued that the Union wasn’t a threat, that its fleets were depleted, its science behind, its economy in shambles. Now he faced a Union backed by Highborn technology, its fleets supported by Highborn ships. A theoretical and manageable danger had now become a very real—and extremely dangerous—one.
If the combined Highborn and Union forces invaded, they would punch through the thinly defended border in a matter of weeks, and they would cut off the heart of the Confederation from the main front.
Worse, they could move right on the Iron Belt and the Core…while most of the navy was cut off, forty jumps away.
He had to do something. He had to find some way to strengthen the border.
But how?
Chapter Forty
32,000,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless
Beta Telvara System
Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)
Reg watched as the enemy missiles continued past her, flying off into space on unchanging vectors. They would continue on until they struck something, a planet, a sun, or perhaps they would make their way in a few hundred thousand years, into intergalactic space. Whatever their fate, they weren’t her problem anymore.
She was drenched, and her body slid around inside her flight suit, becoming more and more uncomfortable with each passing minute. The shaking in her hands had gotten worse, and it had spread to her legs as well. She’d escaped her enemy’s missile attack…by the slimmest of margins. But the cold truth had taken hold of her.
Ten seconds more fuel in those weapons would have doomed her.
She sucked in a deep breath, and she pushed back against the nausea. She hadn’t prevailed, not yet. She hadn’t even gained an edge. She’d simply survived the first exchange, as her opponent had done with hers. Both fighters had expended their missiles. Now, they would settle things once and for all, at close range with lasers.
A true dogfight.
She shook her head, as though the motion would clear her jumbled thoughts, and bring her the clarity she craved.
Her eyes were fixed on her opponent. There were other fighters around, from both sides, engaged in their own combats. She thought about calling for aid, trying to overwhelm the ship opposite hers. But none of her people could handle a pilot as skilled at the Highborn leader. Timmons or Federov, perhaps, but they were on the far side of the formation. She’d put them there deliberately…to keep them away. She knew very well she might die in the coming moments, and the strike force couldn’t lose all its leaders. The two remaining Horsemen, Jake Stockton’s old comrades, were the only ones who could step in if she died, the only pilots who could lead the wings, give them any chance at victory.
She couldn’t risk that, not even to save herself.
Besides, it had become a matter of pride. She’d fought a pair of draws with her enemy, but despite the lack of a decisive end to either combat, she couldn’t lie to herself. She’d gotten the worst of it both times. She wanted revenge. She wanted to prove herself…in her own mind, at least.
Her hand tightened on her controls, her finger resting over the firing stud. Her lasers were charged and ready, and the range was quickly counting down on her screen. She was almost there…but so was her adversary.
She was ready to shoot, but even as she did, as she opened fire and tried to kill her enemy, he would be doing the same. In a few seconds, it would begin…and then any instant could be her last. She might not even have any warning. Not knowing it was coming, being alive one second and possibly dead the next, was the hardest part for her to accept. She could feel the tension inside her, almost as though her body was tightening, curling up.
She sucked in one long, deep breath…and then she clenched her fingers, and her cockpit echoed with the high-pitched whine of the lasers firing.
* * *
Olya Federov leaned forward, her hand tight on the bomber’s controls, her mouth barely a few centimeters from the comm unit. “All wings, you’ve got your targets. We’re going in now, and you all know what to do.” She nudged up the power to her engines, feeling the g forces increase as her bomber accelerated. She’d given herself the largest Highborn ship as a target, one of the big battleships, the class she’d seen in the footage of the fighting at Calpharon. It was a big monster, and she suspected it could take a lot of damage. But she had two hundred bombers right behind her, and a force like that could put out a lot of damage.
Even if only half of them made it through.
Federov was a veteran, a legend in the fighter corps only a rung below the place Jake Stockton had occupied. But she’d never been at her best in a bomber. She’d made her bones as an interceptor pilot, as an ace dogfighter. She’d flown bombers during the Hegemony war, of course, as most pilots had, but she’d never reached the level of proficiency she’d always had facing other fighters.
But when Reg Griffin asked her to lead the bombing run, Federov understood. She was aware of the danger, of the deadly fire the bombers would face. If she could get them in fast enough, before the enemy got more ships up to the line, maybe—just maybe—they would escape with less than crushing losses. But that meant moving forward while the interceptor battle was still going on.
If any of those Highborn wings break off and get away from our interceptors…
Bombers could evade point defense attacks, but the cumbersome craft were like a flock of sheep before hungry wolves when facing interceptors. All she could do was trust in Griffin, and the dogfighting wings, who still had at least a fifty percent edge in numbers.
She stared at the screen, watching the battleships growing larger as she closed. For a moment, she thought perhaps none of the ships in front of her mounted the deadly point defense missiles…and then she saw them launching.
They were sporadic, spread out far more than they had been in the scanner data from Calpharon. But that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. They were going to take out bombers, a lot of them.
They were going to kill her people.
“Stay tight on those evasive routines…all of you. Nobody has permission to get scragged by a missile, you all understand that?” It seemed pointless to remind them all yet again, but she’d found such things to be effective. And even if it only saved one of her people, it was worthwhile.
There was one cluster of missiles on the screen in front of her ship. That seemed like light fire, and it was to an extent. But she also knew those weapons would split into multiple smaller warheads…and every one of those would still be strong enough to take her ship out if it could get within half a kilometer before it detonated.
Her finger tapped away on the small keyboard off to the side of her main controls. She activated the AI-assisted evasive routines, and she leaned over the comm. “All units…get your evasive maneuvers started now. Those warheads are going to split an
y time. And remember, those things don’t have to actually hit you. Let one get half a kilometer from your ship, and you’re finished.” It came out a little harsher than she’d intended, but Federov had never been one for soothing tones.
Or for bullshit. A lot of her people were going to die, and many more if they didn’t do what she told them to do. They needed to hear that, and the needed to pay attention. Loud and hard was the way she’d always given it to her subordinates. It was the way it would stick.
She tapped her throttle, even as the four or five missiles nearest her vanished from the screen, replaced by clouds of smaller dots. At least two of those were a threat to her own ship, and as she panned her eyes across the display, she found herself estimating how many of her fighters the missiles would take out.
She breathed deeply, holding it for a few seconds, and then exhaling with considerable force, even as she pushed her arm forward, and fed power to her engines.
* * *
Barron looked out, watching the battle. He was proud of his people, and he felt a closeness to each of them. He sincerely believed every one of them deserved to survive, to return home victorious, and spend the rest of their lives at peace with their families.
He also knew that wasn’t going to happen.
His desperate tactic had worked, better even than he’d dared to expect. The Highborn Vanguard had been crushed, almost obliterated, though his people had paid a heavy price for that success. He’d never seen a Highborn force so battered, so close to outright annihilation. But the image on the scanner drained away his enthusiasm. His people had destroyed a lot of enemy ships…but there were far more of them moving up.
And they were still coming through the point.
His problems had only increased, his situation worse in many ways than it had been. His numerical superiority was gone, or at least it would be once the newest enemy arrivals were able to deploy. His fleet was going to be overwhelmed, and every tactical instinct in him was screaming to withdraw.