The Last Stand

by Jay Allan

  Chronos didn’t know much about the enemy, who they were or where they were from, but it was clear they didn’t possess attack craft, much as the Hegemony hadn’t. He understood, as few likely did, just how powerful a weapon the squadrons were.

  I didn’t have those missiles, though…

  He was no expert on bomber tactics, but it wasn’t hard to figure that leading the assaults in piecemeal was going to massively increase losses. But he also realized what Stockton himself no doubt had.

  The fleet didn’t have much time.

  The battle was raging, and the forces of the Hegemony and its allies were making the enemy pay a high price. But they were losing. He’d analyzed the fight half a dozen ways, and he couldn’t come up with a scenario that led to victory. At least not one with more than a one or two percent chance.

  He’d been directing the battle, and trying to hold his own thoughts at bay. He was determined to fight, to the death if necessary, but the thought of seeing the enemy land on Calpharon, and knowing it was the end of the Hegemony, was more than he could endure.

  The planet was his home, and the capital of his nation. He had served the Hegemony his entire life, and he had no desire to outlive it. But Akella was there, and Ajia. And his other children. Everyone he cared about in his life, at least those who weren’t fighting along with him, was down on the planet.

  And if the fleet withdrew, if the surviving ships retreated—soon—there would remain a force in being. Calpahron would fall, but the Hegemony and its allies would fight on. Hope would be tattered, tenuous…but it would still exist. And where there was time, there was a chance.

  He knew he had to give the order, but he still held back. The very idea was anathema to him, and he was far from sure his directive would be accepted even if he issued it. He’d talked to Akella about the possibility before he’d departed the last time for the fleet, but they’d never reached a conclusion. She’d been as hesitant as he was to abandon Calpaharon, but Chronos had argued, urging her to be ready to leave, reminding her she was the leader of the entire Hegemony, of hundreds of other worlds, all of which needed her. That was all true, and all the concerns he’d raised were valid, but he knew in his own mind it had all been manipulation. He’d simply wanted Akella and Ajia to leave Calpharon. He wanted then safe, no matter what happened to the fleet or to the capital…or to him.

  Now, he wondered if he should comm Tyler Barron, if he dared to suggest the possibility of a withdrawal. Was it even possible? Could the fleet abandon Calpharon and still fight on?

  Chronos had begun to consider just that possibility. His military intellect, the purely analytical part of his mind that understood tactics and combat realities, told him to withdraw. Victory was unlikely in the current fight, and however remote the possibility was, more time would allow for at least the chance of some change in the strategic situation.

  The warrior part of him was firmly on the other side. Death before retreat! That side would have prevailed, if it was only his life at stake, or only the lives of his officers and Kriegeri. It was their duty to serve, to fight to the end if need be, and his honor would be better served by death in a heroic, if failed, defense than by an ignominious retreat.

  But he knew it was neither of those sides that was prevailing. He was grasping with a cold reality. Akella wouldn’t leave, not unless he and the fleet did. Even then, she would struggle and argue. She detested the job her genetics had mandated she accept, and she hated her role as head of state. But she’d always taken her duty seriously. And Chronos wasn’t sure he could convince her to leave, and to abandon Calpharon’s billions.

  But she wouldn’t go unless he and the fleet did. And he wasn’t ready. He couldn’t bring himself to give up. Not yet.

  And perhaps not ever.

  * * *

  Stockton’s hands were moving almost on their own, his conscious mind barely aware of the decisions to angle and re-angle his thrusters. A lifetime of combat had honed his instincts, and they were firmly in control. The laser fire was heavy, but the worst danger was the cluster of missiles chasing his ship. There were three of the weapons on his tail, and they were accelerating with more than three times the power of his own engines.

  But they weren’t going to stop him. He’d done the calculations in his head twice, and the AI had confirmed the results. He—and the over one hundred bombers grouped right around him—were going to get to launch range before the missiles closed.

  His people had run the gauntlet toward the targeted ships, endured the missiles fired by those vessels. They’d paid a terrible price, and over two hundred of their comrades had died in a brief few minutes. But all across the line, the survivors were coming on, and Stockton knew his people well enough to be sure there was only one thing on all their minds…the same thing that consumed his own thoughts.

  Vengeance.

  It was almost time. Time to make the enemy pay.

  He stared at the main screen in front of him. His fingers moved over the controls, and the area view disappeared, replaced by the targeting display. Stockton knew his people would have to face the incoming missiles—and another trip back past the Highborn line—before they could return to their baseships.

  Assuming any of the battleships that had launched them still had operational bays to land them. But that worry seemed distant and unimportant. Getting back past the enemy was enough to worry about.

  Stockton stared at the targeting screen. He couldn’t control the missiles pursuing his people, nor the damage the battleships were taking in the sustained firefight. He couldn’t even do anything to help his own pilots. Each of them was on his or her own. They would hit or miss themselves. They would escape or fall as individuals.

  All Stockton could do was make damned sure the two torpedoes he carried hit the enemy battleships in front of him. All he could do was kill some of the enemy.

  And he was determined to see that done.

  He watched as the range dropped rapidly. He was coming in fast and hard, like all his people. The return to the ships would start with an extensive period of deceleration, after which his people would have to come back, rebuilding their velocities as they moved back through the Highborn line.

  He stared at the targeting scope. The ship in front of him was one of the least damaged in the enemy line. He’d targeted it for precisely that reason, but now he was paying for that choices. The ship’s fire was withering, and Stockton expected another volley of missiles to launch any time. That wouldn’t stop him from completing his attack run. The Highborn missiles seemed to have a minimum range before they could separate and arm themselves. Anything the ship managed to launch would just be that much more his people had to come through if they made it through the attack…and had any chance of getting back home.

  He felt a twinge inside, a moment of harsh honesty with himself. He’d led his people in knowing few of them would return. He had believed from the moment he’d ordered the attack force to follow him that most of them, all of them perhaps, would die.

  That he, too, would die.

  The math supported that grim view. The way back would be difficult, nearly impossible, strewn with clusters of deadly missiles, and laser fire tearing across space all around. The only diversions that might aid his returning ships would be the disordered waves following them in, and Stockton couldn’t hope that a loaded ship would be destroyed to save a spent one. The coldest calculus was in play, and he knew just how desperate the fight truly was.

  But he didn’t feel guilty, didn’t bear the usual weight he did when he led his people into desperate danger. They were all dead anyway if the fleet was destroyed, and he couldn’t imagine any of his pilots would choose a slow end from suffocation or freezing to a final desperate fight…and a chance to hurt the enemy one last time.

  He saw the range tick down under one thousand kilometers. Once, that would have been the most extreme of short ranges for an attack, but against the hard to target Highborn ships, Stockton had trained his p
eople to go in even closer. He’d led attacks down to five hundred kilometers, even four hundred or less. But now, he was going to go in even closer.

  He breathed deeply, doing all he could to remain calm. Fear would not serve him, nor would tension. He had lived much of his adult life behind the cockpit, and he’d never felt so at home anywhere as he did there. It was where he belonged, where he could do his best. And if it was where he died, as he’d so long believed it would be, then so be it.

  Three hundred kilometers.

  He’d already armed his plasma torpedoes, and he’d set them to convert to energy the instant they left the bomb bay. He wasn’t sure how that would affect his ship, if the transition to superhot plasma so close would damage his tiny vessel. As far as he knew, no bomber had every launched a torpedo set to convert the instant it was released.

  That data set would soon include hundreds of samples, however. Every ship following him in had their torpedoes set the same way. He hadn’t ordered it—there were certain things he just couldn’t order someone to do—but he’d told them what he intended, fully aware of the effect it would have on his pilots.

  Two hundred kilometers.

  He was going down to one hundred kilometers before he launched. He wasn’t even sure it was possible to pull up at that range, that there was enough time to react, to nudge his vector sufficiently to clear the ship he was attacking.

  He wasn’t even sure crashing in right after his torpedoes wouldn’t be the merciful way to go, a chance to escape the nightmarish struggle to try, somehow, to get back to Dauntless.

  Assuming Dauntless was even there by the time he made it back.

  He sucked in another deep breath, and he held it, and, as his eyes registered the distance meter reading one hundred, he launched both of his torpedoes.

  The instant they were away, he angled his thrusters as far to port as possible, and he blasted at full. In two seconds, he would know he’d cleared the enemy ship…or he’d be dead.

  The time passed, somehow seeming glacial despite its being a brief instant. For a passing flash of time that seemed like a lifetime, he wondered if he had made it past. Then he knew.

  He was still alive.

  He checked the readings. He’d some less than a kilometer from the enemy hull. That wasn’t just close. It was close…unheard of, beyond even the most insane things he’d attempted before. He wasn’t going to calculate the margin of his escape, the fraction of a second in reaction time that had been the difference between life and death. There were some things it was better not to know.

  He gripped his controls, decelerating his ship at maximum thrust. He didn’t even check the targeting screen to confirm that he’d hit. At the range from which he’d launched, it would have been almost impossible to miss. Now, his concern was getting to Dauntless, and somehow leading as many of his people who made it through with him back to the fleet.

  Chapter Thirty

  Union Battleship Tonnerre

  Gavarouche System

  Union Year 227 (323 AC)

  “Rebroadcast the communique continually.” Denisov sat rigidly, like a statue staring coldly across the bridge. “And maintain full fire. Only vessels that have surrendered and powered down are to be spared…is that understood?” It had been difficult enough to go into battle against other units of the fleet, against officers with whom he’d served, men and women he’d fought beside, called friends. It absolutely sickened him to gun them down like sheep, even as they desperately tried to flee from the battlefield. But he was a creature of duty, and he understood his all too well.

  He might have found it a bit easier if he’d believed the dying spacers were all like Villieneuve, that they were the same kind of human beasts, for whom extermination could only be considered a cleansing. But he knew that wasn’t true. The fleet was far from free of power-grasping schemers, but he knew many of the officers out there were with Villieneuve out of blind obedience to what they saw as the legitimate government. Creatures of duty, even as he was.

  More were there out of fear, or because Villieneuve and his henchmen had something one them. How many were fighting because families—spouses, parents, children, siblings—had been targeted by Villieneuve’s operatives? How many had been given a choice, swear to Villieneuve or see their loved ones butchered in their homes? There was no limit to what Gaston Villieneuve would do to cling to his power, Denisov knew that all too well.

  “Rebroadcasting, Admiral.” A pause. “Admiral, Villeroi is requesting permission to fall back out of the line. She has reactor problems.”

  “Permission granted.” Denisov could feel the exhaustion as he uttered the words, and he knew every spacer in the fleet felt the same.

  No, not all of them. At least thirty thousand of them are dead…

  The battle had been a fierce one, a brutal slugfest that had gone on for almost two days. He’d remained on the bridge, jacked up on stims as all his people were…and their enemies as well, no doubt. In the end, it had been skill, tactics, experience that had made the difference. Villieneuve had some of the fleet’s top officers serving on his side, but none of them could match Denisov, especially not since the admiral had honed his skills for more than two years fighting against the Hegemony.

  Alongside Tyler Barron.

  The Confederation admiral was perhaps the one person in all known space that Gaston Villieneuve hated more than he did Denisov. He was also the most gifted naval tactician of his generation. Denisov felt that way, and he suspected almost every serving officer who had fought with Barron—alongside or against—shared that view.

  “Admiral…we’re receiving a communique from Cruiser Squadron Three. Commander Quillet is requesting we accept her surrender. They have ceased fire and powered down their engines as ordered.”

  Denisov nodded immediately, but his verbal response was delayed. He didn’t know what changes Villieneuve had made in his forces, but if a commander was in charge of the cruiser squadron, that meant a lot of officers had been killed or incapacitated. He didn’t know Quillet personally, but he was vaguely aware of her position in the fleet, at least before he’d left.

  She couldn’t have been more than eighth in line for command, if that…

  He was still trying to come to terms with the bloodiness of the battle, though he knew on some level, he never would. His own fleet was badly damaged, but Villieneuve’s had been hurt worse. Much worse. The former First Citizen had lost half his ships, at least when those surrendering, and the crippled vessels left behind by his retreating forces were counted. The battle had been a terrible one, a titanic clash that Denisov knew had cost him some part of himself.

  But it had also been a victory. A complete victory.

  Villieneuve had escaped, and that meant he was still dangerous. He retained a large force of ships as well, though how many of those were damaged and unable to keep up with his retreat—and how many would slip away and desert as soon as they could—Denisov didn’t know. It wasn’t enough strength for the deposed dictator to meet Denisov again in an all-out fight, but control of something like the Union was a more complex problem. If Villieneuve spread his forces, controlled as many systems as possible, it would take years to root them all out.

  Denisov was grateful for the victory, though he feared what a desperate Villieneuve might do, what kind of traps he might lay for his enemies. He was confident he could defeat the remaining enemy naval units, that he could crush Villieneuve’s remaining military power….if he got the chance. He just wasn’t sure it would be enough.

  Even if Villieneuve was defeated, what would happen next. He would chase after the renegade First Citizen, hunt him down and destroy any forces remaining loyal to him, however long it took. That was his job. The rest he would leave to Sandrine Ciara. When Villieneuve was finally killed or captured, when the Union’s tyrant had finally faced justice, he would discover his ally’s true colors. Would Ciara become just a new Villieneuve, a brutal despot who kept the Unions billions under an iron b
oot? Or would she be something else, not a freedom fighter certainly, but perhaps a step in that direction. Would she rule with a lighter touch? Would she give the people at least some shreds of freedom?

  And would she keep her word and end the century of animosity and war with the Confederation?

  He was tentative on most of it, hopeful but far from convinced. But Ciara had been aided by the Confeds, and if the Confederation ambassador had indeed become, as all accounts suggested, her lover, it seemed likely at least that the two nations would enter a new era, of peace if not outright cooperation. He had reason to expect that she would honor at least that part of her pledge…and, if she did, they could build from there.

  Don’t get ahead of yourself. Gaston Villieneuve will be dangerous until he is dead on the ground in front of you. And you’ve got a year of repairs before this fleet will be ready to fight again. That’s a lot of time for a man like Villieneuve to cause problems. To find a way to fight on.

  He had won a battle, but he knew the war was far from over.

  * * *

  “Fools! Is there no one here who can match the traitor, Denisov? Are none of the vaunted Union admirals I have assembled a match for a single mongrel rogue?” Villieneuve stood in front of his high command, what was left of it at least, after the battle. Actually, that was most of it. His senior commanders had survived in far greater percentages than his spacers. Virtually every unit flagship had managed to escape, often leaving behind half or more of the original vessels in their commands. It was a pathetic display, and one for which Villieneuve would once have sent every one of them the to cells. But his position had changed, and he needed the officers standing in the room, perhaps even more than he had before. He was down, but he wasn’t out yet, and he had to hang on to every ship he still had.