by Jay Allan
And you can’t lead from behind…
“All battle line ships are to charge up primaries. We’re going to open fire as soon as we enter range.”
“Yes, Admiral.” Atara’s steely resolve was, as always, an inspiration. And in some way, he found the barest hint of weakness and fear he picked up there, something he was sure only he could hear, strangely reassuring.
He turned back toward the display, and his eyes moved to a single, tiny dot…one moving at extreme velocity. He knew just what he was seeing, without even checking.
Jake…
What he didn’t know, at least not until an instant later when the data came in, was just how insanely the fleet’s strike force commander was redlining his reactor to get so far out so quickly. He was horrified at the thought of Stockton taking such insane chances.
Horrified…but not surprised. Not in the slightest.
And he wouldn’t have stopped Stockton, even if he could have.
Go, Jake…we’ve got to find a way to beat the Highborn. Or we’re going to lose everything that matters…
* * *
Yes! Nicely done, Reg…
Stockton was looking at his fighter’s small screen, trying desperately to ignore the losses mounting among his squadrons and to focus on the damage they were doing to the enemy battle line. The Highborn ships were immense, and they vastly outclassed anything the defenders possessed. But they were not invulnerable. His pilots were proving that.
Any doubts he’d had about his impulsive promotion of Reg Griffin was gone. She’d exceeded his every hope, and she had directed the squadrons with skill that surpassed his wildest expectations. Now, she was leading the survivors on a desperate race back to the motherships.
Stockton winced as he saw the casualties, over twelve hundred and still counting. The Highborn missiles were a deadly threat to his fighters, one that had been mitigated so far only by the speed of the first strike, and the fact that his squadrons had mostly completed their attacks before the first waves of missiles had launched.
The bomber attack had disabled at least some of the battleships’ missile systems, too. Twenty-eight battleships had transited so far, and two had been destroyed outright. Of the other twenty-six, fifteen had launched missiles, just over half the initial force.
His eyes darted to the side. More battleships were coming through, and these would be untouched when they moved into range. Admiral Barron had decided to move the battle line forward, to minimize the enemy’s range advantage. That made sense, but it also virtually guaranteed his squadrons wouldn’t be ready to launch until the fight was well underway.
If they were able to land at all. The battleships would be entering combat range just as the returning squadrons arrived. The recovery operation would be a mess at best, and an impossibility at worst.
He felt an almost irresistible urge to race forward, to try to catch up with the final waves attacking the enemy ships. But he knew he’d never get there, not until the final runs were complete. He’d trusted Reg to lead the wings in, and she’d repaid his confidence tenfold. There was nothing to be gained by moving toward the Highborn line. He could do more nursing his wounded squadrons back in, helping the tired pilots execute difficult landings while their launch platforms were engaged with the enemy.
He brought his ship around, angling his thrusters to full deceleration position. He’d been blasting hard toward the enemy lines, and now he was doing the same in the opposite direction. His eyes dropped to the status monitor for his reactor. He’d been torturing the thing, driving it at more than one hundred fifteen percent of its rated capacity. He’d intended to back off, to drop down to one hundred, or even ninety. But he wanted to get back toward the motherships in time to direct landing operations. He hated that he had missed the fight, and part of him still wanted to turn back, to race forward alone and launch his two torpedoes. But that was pure foolishness. He wasn’t sure what made less sense…the notion that he could somehow make it alone through the missiles and other enemy point defense, or the idea that his two torpedoes would make a difference in the battle. Still, he knew he might have done it, out of raw drive and stubbornness…but concern for his people overrode his wild thoughts. He could save lives, he was sure, get pilots who would otherwise die back into the bays. That left him no choice.
He stared at the screen, picking out the lead formations heading back to the fleet. He still had a considerable amount of deceleration to do, but he realigned the thrust vector slightly, doing all he could to put himself on an intercept course with those squadrons.
Stockton had landed under every imaginable condition, and now he had to use that experience to get his people back onto their ships…so the flight crews could turn them around and get them right back out.
Back out to throw themselves once more into the maw of death.
* * *
“All ships, open fire!” Barron’s tone was harsh, as he barked out the command with enough force to hurt his throat. He was focused on the battle, angry, scared, nervous. But mostly, he was frustrated…frustrated that the battle line had entered firing range, and Dauntless’s guns were still out.
He’d harassed Fritz again. Twice. But he knew the engineer was doing all she could. And all Anya Fritz could do was all anyone could. If Barron’s battles had taught him one thing, it was that Anya Fritz was the best engineer the Confederation had ever known.
“All ships, open fire.” Atara repeated the order into the comm, and a few seconds later, the display lit up with bright lines darting across the empty space, three hundred Confederation primary beams lancing out, seeking targets along the enemy formation. The particle accelerators fired from the single turrets of the oldest battleships present and the more common double barreled weapons of the fleet’s mainstays.
And the quad batteries of the newest battleships, the Repulse-class monsters that were the pride of the Confederation fleet.
But Dauntless’s four beams had remained silent, along with those of almost forty other damaged battleships. The advance to firing range had been a costly one, and even though the newer primaries were less prone to damage than the models Barron remembered from his earlier days, they were still complex mechanisms, subject to a dozen different problems that could silence them.
Barron watched as many of the beams whipped past their targets, coming within a few thousand meters of the enemy in many cases, but only hitting in half a dozen or so. That wasn’t unexpected. The range was still long, the firing ships far too distant from their targets to effectively adjust for the Sigma-9 distortion wreaking havoc on fire locks.
But that would change, at least assuming a reasonable number of Barron’s ships were able to close with their primaries still functional. The scanner enhancements the Hegemony had shared with Barron’s people would enable greater targeting effectiveness, as least at shorter range.
How many battleships would manage to reach close range with their main guns intact was another question. The enemy fire was increasing in frequency and accuracy, and when one of those deadly blue beams struck, even a mighty Confederation battleship shook to its girders. The Highborn fleet was still disordered, from the transit and from the desperate and massive bomber attack. But its formation was tightening with each passing minute, and as it did, the volume and accuracy of its fire was increasing.
Barron caught a flash out of the corner of his eye, from the far end of the display. One of the Palatian heavies blinking out, destroyed as its reactor lost containment. His own fleet had lost nine battleships and almost two dozen lighter ships, and as he scanned Vian Tulus’s section of the line, he saw that the Palatians had lost six of their largest ships, and a dozen lighter units…a far higher percentage of their total force.
He was about to turn toward the Hegemony part of the line, to check on Chronos’s fleets and the losses they had suffered, but a voice erupted into his headphones, distracting him at once.
“The primaries are back online, Admiral. I rerouted tw
o of the main trunk lines, and I think I can shave thirty seconds on charging time. Give me a minute, maybe seventy seconds, and you’ll have guns ready to fire.”
Barron felt a wave of relief, a pointless and misleading feeling, he realized. As anxious as he was to get Dauntless fully into the fight, one set of primaries wasn’t going to make that big of a difference.
Except to him. He wanted to open fire on the Highborn so badly, he could taste it.
“Thank you, Fritzie. You’re a magician, as always.” He turned and looked over at the main gunnery station. “The primaries are back online, Commander Jones. You’ll have a full charge in less than a minute, and I expect you to make good use of it.” The pressure wasn’t fair, and the range was still long for hitting a Highborn vessel. But Barron didn’t care if he was being reasonable. He wanted Dauntless to draw blood, and he wanted it now. It wasn’t a tactically valid attitude, perhaps, but then he was human, too.
“Yes, Admiral…we’re working on a fire lock now.”
Barron stared at the screen, nodding to himself as he saw a small red circle surround one of the Highborn ships. Jones and his people had chosen their target, and it was the very one Barron would have picked himself. It was one of the big new battleships, one positioned forward in the enemy formation…and one that had been badly battered by Reg Griffin’s and Jake Stockton’s bombers.
He stared at the small symbol, and even as he did, he could hear the echo of his heartbeat in his ears. A dozen emotions intertwined—fear, pain, sadness about being separated from Andi and his daughter, frustration, rage. It mingled together in a toxic brew, and as he sat there, all Tyler Barron wanted was to kill Highborn. He didn’t know anything about the enemy, not really. He had no idea where they were from or why they had come. He just knew they were the reason he’d had to leave his home, the cause of so many of his people’s deaths, of so much pain. He knew revenge wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t undo the losses he’d suffered. It was almost always an empty and useless pursuit.
But he didn’t care. He wanted it. He wanted vengeance. He needed payback.
His eyes moved to the charging display, and he saw as the small bar of light reached the far end of the gauge.
The primaries were ready.
He looked across the bridge, and his eyes met Jones’s. He exchanged a glance, a knowing look that told each man the other felt the same as he did, wanted the same thing. Barron’s voice was like ice as he uttered a single word.
“Fire.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Union Battleship Tonnerre
Gavarouche System
Union Year 227 (323 AC)
“We are approaching the…opposing fleet. I can have you transferred to one of the light cruisers. There is still time for you to leave the system and return to Montmirail, First Citizen. Or even to await word in the adjacent system.” Denisov clearly found it difficult to describe the forces even then racing toward his own ships. He’d avoided characterizing them as enemies, but Ciara was more direct in her thoughts, and she knew that was mostly playacting, Denisov warring with his idea of who he should be.
The ships coming at them would soon be trying o kill them all, and she couldn’t think of a better definition of an enemy than that. But Denisov was that rarest of creatures, an honorable man, a true patriot, and calling other Union spacers ‘enemies’ came hard to him.
But he’s going to have to start killing them soon, whatever he calls them, or they’re going to kill him…
Sandrine Ciara stood where she was, trying with all her resolve to appear comfortable about the upcoming fight. It wouldn’t do for her people to see fear in her, or a lack of confidence…though both were present in full force.
“Thank you, Fleet Admiral, but no. This is my place. The Union fights for its future, and no true patriot could wish to be anywhere else.” She was still amazed at her at ability to spew bullshit. She’d have vastly preferred weathering the storm in the next system, or even better, some armored bunker back on Montmirail. She’d even seriously considered it. But there really was no choice. She’d moved past the point of no return when she’d launched her coup, and she had to see it through.
She might have trusted Denisov to handle things in her absence, though she had so little experience with honest people, she would have struggled with it. But the other officers, the task force commanders and their subordinates, who had rallied to her side, who now reported to Denisov…she didn’t trust them at all. They were on her side because she had bribed them, or because she’d scared them into believing she would emerge the victor at the end of the war, or because they hated Villieneuve. But there wasn’t one of them, besides possibly Denisov himself, who wouldn’t abandon her in an instant if a better offer came along. She had to be there, to keep an eye on them all, if nothing else.
“The bridge is in the center of the ship, then. This is probably the safest place, unless you would like me to dispatch a cruiser. You can transfer and take station close to the transit point, and still remain in the system and observe the battle.”
Ciara pushed aside the impulse to take Denisov up on his offer. “No, Fleet Admiral, I thank you for your consideration, but I will remain here on the flagship. Where I belong.”
"Please, First Citizen, if you are going to remain, take the command chair.” The admiral stood up and stepped to the side of his seat.
Ciara waved toward him. “Again, thank you, Admiral, but the command position is yours. The Union looks to you to lead its loyal forces, and to crush the traitors. I will sit at one of the spare workstations, and do my best to stay out of the way.” She continually referred to the forces loyal to Villieneuve as traitors. A strict definition of the term fit her, and the forces on her side, perhaps better than their enemies. Villieneuve was a tyrant, a brutal dictator, certainly, but he was also—or had been, at least—the legitimate leader of the government. But Ciara knew repeating something was the surest way to make people believe it, and she wanted those loyal to her thinking of their enemies not as one time comrades succumbing to poor judgment, but as filthy traitors. Vermin who had to be hunted down and exterminated.
She walked across the bridge, toward the bank of workstations along the outer perimeter. There were three auxiliary stations, and she sat at the far one. She keenly remembered Villieneuve’s skillful maneuverings during the unrest that followed the disastrous end of the last Confederation war, the way he’d managed to position himself as a man of the people while the government was collapsing, even after a career spent as the head of Sector Nine and a member of the Presidium. She’d come to appreciate the power of feigned humility, and also the gullibility of most people. She was determined to put on a show for Denisov’s spacers, the grim, courageous, duty-focused woman trying to save her nation from Gaston Villieneuve’s insanity. The more they liked her, sympathized with her, the more firmly they would support her.
“Commander Sianelle, please get a survival suit for the First Citizen.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Denisov turned toward Ciara. “You may use my office to change, First Citizen, but I urge you to wear the suit under your clothes…just in case we lose pressurization in the battle.”
Ciara nodded, but inside she felt her stomach twist into knots. She’d decided to see the battle through, but Denisov’s caution had inflamed her fear, and the realization that Tonnerre would soon be exchanging fire with Villieneuve’s forces—that its hull could be breached, and its insides torn apart by the great energy lances ripping into it—was a sobering one. Still, she was determined. But she was scared, too.
“Certainly, Admiral. Thank you.” She got up and walked back toward the admiral’s office, to wait for the other officer to bring her the suit, but mostly to hide for a few moments while she struggled to keep her guts from convulsing.
* * *
Gaston Villieneuve looked at the display, and the rage inside him grew. He held his control, his stony resolve holding his face as a mask to h
ide his fury. He had rallied the larger part of the fleet to his cause, courtesy of years of preparing for such an eventuality. Blackmail had been a major component in his toolkit, as had bribery. He’d promised promotions, political offices, vast cash awards. He’d even showered prospective rewards on officers he knew were ambitious enough to turn on him after his victory was won. Defeating Sandrine Ciara and her allies was the urgent need, the only thing that mattered at that moment. There would be time later to prune his own ranks of the most…troublesome…followers after he’d regained undisputed control over the Union.
He detested Ciara, of course, and he’d imagined her fate at his hands a hundred times. But that wasn’t the thing driving his caustic anger, not just then.
Andrei Denisov.
The traitor, the turncoat…the man who led a large chunk of the Union fleet across the border and aided the hated Confeds. Aided them! Helped them stave off a defeat that would have left them vulnerable. The Confederation had been the Union’s hated enemy for a century, and Denisov had used the navy’s ships to hold off their fall.
Villieneuve had seethed at Denisov’s treason, from the instant he’d heard of it, and he’d done all he could to bring down the treacherous dog. He’d come a hair’s breadth from success, too, with a Sector Nine assassination attempt. But the renegade admiral escaped death, if only by the slimmest of margins.
Now, Denisov had appeared again. Villieneuve hadn’t imagined the renegade admiral could cause more damage than he already had, but now he was allied with Sandrine Ciara, and the return of his fleet, battered and depleted as it was after years of fighting alongside the Confeds, undid all Villieneuve’s preparation had done. The odds that had seemed so in his favor were almost exactly even now, and the prospect of possible defeat had emerged once again in his deepest thoughts.