Call to Arms: Blood on the Stars II

by Jay Allan

  “No, Commander. We can handle it…no problem.” For the first time he could recall, Evan’s voice had almost a pleading sound to it.

  “Twenty minutes, Chief…not one minute more.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll have the whole strike force ready to launch on time. You have my word.”

  “Very well, Chief. Get it done.” He felt a wave of sympathy for Evans’s people, knowing they would bear the brunt of the chief’s anger and tension. But there was no way around that. He wanted those fighters ready.

  He turned and walked across the open floor of the bay, toward the pilots’ prep area. He’d sent them all to get something to eat, but they should be back by now. He’d dressed down Evans, done all he could to make sure the fighters themselves were ready to go. Now, it was his turn to prepare. He had to make some sense out of the crazy combination of partial squadrons he had…and turn them into a tightly-organized strike force.

  That wasn’t going to be easy.

  Chapter Twenty

  CFS Dauntless

  Arcturon System

  308 AC

  “We go in suited up, and we stay that way, even if we think the pressurization is intact.” Bryan Rogan looked out at his Marines. There were two hundred and one of them, not counting himself. He suspected there had been more than a few groans among the assembled fighters, but the Marines were in their pressure suits with their helmets snapped shut. Rogan would only hear them if they activated their microphones and spoke to him over the comm. He was grateful for that arrangement. If he’d heard the complaints he’d have had to come down on those making them. This way, he could just pretend they had cheerfully accepted the order.

  Marines were technically naval troops, trained to fight shipboard actions as well as ground combats. But there weren’t many boarding actions, certainly not in the large general engagements of a war like the one going on, and Rogan’s people were no different than Marines throughout the Confederation service in despising pressure suits and bottled air. They preferred to fight in just their body armor, but Rogan wasn’t about to lose Marines because an airlock blew out or a compartment lost life support. He hated the tight, uncomfortable pressure suits as much as anyone in the bay, but he hated seeing his Marines killed more.

  Rogan had seen the images of pre-Cataclysmic soldiers, clad from head to toe in great suits of powered armor, looking more like robots than men and women. He couldn’t imagine the firepower and endurance of soldiers so equipped—or how uncomfortable those ancient suits must have been. But post-Cataclysmic technology wasn’t even close to developing the miniaturization and nanotechnology required to build true powered armor, so the best he could do for his Marines was to make sure they wouldn’t suffocate or die from the effects of sudden depressurization.

  “This is an important mission. Dauntless and Intrepid need those supplies. So, we hit those target ships, and we take them. It’s that simple.” He paused a moment, his eyes flashing toward the end of the line. “The fighter wings are going to do everything they can to knock out any defensive weapons before the assault ships go in, but whatever defensive capability is inside those ships is our problem.” He knew just what “defensive capability” would be waiting there. The Foudre Rouge. The clone soldiers of the Federal Union.

  Rogan was disgusted by any government so oppressive it would create soldiers as virtual slaves. The FRs were tough, trained their entire lives to serve in the Union’s wars. They didn’t have personal lives. They didn’t have families. They were conditioned from the moment they emerged from their crèches to serve as soldiers. Rogan knew his people were a match for them, his veterans at least. They had fought the Alliance stormtroopers and won, and those warriors had been as tough as any that had ever existed. But there was something chilling about the FRs.

  His eyes locked on Ernesto Billos’s. Billos had been his senior sergeant since he’d reported for duty on Dauntless. The career non-com had fought in the last war. He was one of the few Marines on Dauntless who had actually met the FRs in battle.

  “Sergeant Billos and Sergeant Hargraves have fought against the FRs.” Rogan gestured toward Billos and the sergeant standing right next to him. Hargraves had been one of the handful of survivors from the original Santis garrison. Dauntless had given them a ride back to Archellia, and every one of them had volunteered to serve under Rogan…and Captain Barron, filling at least a few of Dauntless’s ocean of empty slots with veterans. “Sergeant Billos will be with first company, and Sergeant Hargraves will be under Lieutenant Plunkett. Listen to them. They have faced what you are about to.”

  Plunkett was another veteran of Santis, the commander of the original garrison of the Rim world. He’d been wounded and sick by the end of the battle, almost dead. But Hargraves had carried his commander to safety and watched over him until the battle was won. Rogan was glad to have another experienced officer to put in command of his mostly-raw second company, and he wasn’t about to split up the lieutenant and his devoted non-com.

  “We’re cut off behind enemy lines, but we’re still in this fight. The Cap and the others blasted three enemy battleships…and now it’s our turn. We’ve got one way to resupply…to take what we need from the enemy. And that’s on us, Marines. I don’t care how many FRs are on those ships. I don’t care how hard they fight. We keep at it no matter what, until we take those ships.” He knew his veterans understood the situation, but more than half his force had been part of the Archellia garrison, and few of them had been in battle. He was breaking up his companies, sending a veteran platoon to each ship, backed up by one of the green ones. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing else he could do. After the losses his forces suffered on Santis, he knew he was lucky just to have his force up to strength.

  “Any questions?” He knew there wouldn’t be. Even the garrison troops were Marines. They knew what they had to do. “Okay…and remember, the FRs don’t surrender. They’re conditioned from ear to ear and terrorized by draconian punishments. They don’t react to things the way we do. So, just keep fighting. Keep fighting until every one of them is dead.”

  He paused a few seconds, looking out over his force. Then he said, “Very well. You all have your boarding assignments. Let’s get moving.”

  * * *

  “Commence launch operations.” Tyler Barron sat bolt upright in his chair, his voice crisp, confident. There was a fair amount of playacting in his demeanor, but that was part of the burden of command. His ship was behind the battle lines, alone save for Intrepid and her tiny group of escorts. He was as scared as anyone on Dauntless, feeling alone and cut off from the rest of the Confederation fleet. But he knew what his people needed from him, and he was determined to give it to them.

  “Yes, Captain. Commencing launch operations now.” Atara Travis seemed, if anything, even more focused, like a bar of dense metal that resisted bending even under the greatest pressure. Barron suspected she was also putting on a show for the crew—and him—but he wasn’t sure. She had a strength of her own, a toughness born of her difficult background and the route to her current rank. It was just possible Travis truly wasn’t afraid.

  Barron hadn’t been entirely sure his launch crews would have the strike force ready in time. He’d set a tight schedule—he knew enemy reinforcements could appear at any moment, and he wasn’t about to waste time he might not have—and he’d taunted Chief Evans with the mention that Intrepid had somehow managed to prep and launch even more fighters. But then Commander Jamison checked in and reported he’d threatened the chief with Commander Fritz. Barron had almost burst into laughter, and he’d freely admitted his strike force commander had elegantly outdone him in terms of motivating the flight crews and their cantankerous leader.

  Barron could feel the slight vibration under his feet, Dauntless’s launch catapults sending her fighters out into space. The squadrons had their orders. The two battleships were moving forward even now, closing with the freighters and tankers. With the escorting capital ships destroyed, the
convoy was virtually defenseless. The supply vessels didn’t have a gun hot enough to hurt a massive ship like Dauntless, at least not from the range where the battleship’s weapons would blast them to scrap. But before the assault ships carrying his marines moved toward their targets, he had to make sure the defensive lasers were neutralized. Taking out turrets without causing significant damage to the rest of a ship was precision work, tailor made for his fighter squadrons.

  He watched as fighter after fighter launched, his squadrons—and those created from bits and pieces of other vessels’ wings—forming up and engaging their thrusters, heading for their targets. The launch went on for longer than usual, as Dauntless sent some thirty extra ships out of her bays.

  “Launch completed, Captain.”

  “Very well.”

  “We will enter primary range in two minutes, sir. Should I activate the main guns?”

  Barron paused. Firing the massive particle accelerators seemed like overkill. They were designed for fighting other capital ships, not for blasting freighters. But they were longer-ranged than the secondaries…and the sooner Barron could destroy the convoy, the better he would feel. It was the only way his people could aid in the war effort right now, and if enemy ships started pouring through any of the system’s transit points, the opportunity could be lost.

  “Yes, Commander. Contact Captain Eaton and request…” Barron was still uncomfortable assuming command on the basis of a commission a few months older than his comrade’s. “…order her to power up her primaries and prepare to fire as targets come into range.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Travis repeated the order to Dauntless’s own gunnery crews. Then she passed it on to Intrepid. “Captain Eaton acknowledges, sir.” Then, a few seconds later. “Primary range in forty-five seconds. Gunnery reports the weapons will be ready to fire immediately.”

  “All gunnery stations are authorized to fire at will. I want targets assigned to either Dauntless or Intrepid…put our gunnery control in charge of that.” Barron glanced over at Travis. “And make sure no one takes a shot at the vessels we’re boarding.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Barron sat quietly, counting down in his head. A few seconds after the ship passed into range, the bridge lights flickered as Dauntless poured almost all its power into firing the massive particle accelerators. An instant later, Travis shouted out the report.

  “Direct hit, sir.”

  Barron’s eyes were on the display as the small red dot blinked out of existence, a sanitized version of what he knew had actually happened. He imagined the enormously powerful particle beams smashing into the freighter’s lightly armored hull, tearing massive holes clear through the target ship. The supply vessel was large, but it wasn’t built to withstand the intensity of battle, and Barron imagined it splitting open like an egg, spilling its contents—and its crew—into space as its hull broke up into pieces. He could see the images of terrified spacers struggling to don survival gear, even as they were blown out of great rents in the hull and into the frozen death of space.

  He didn’t like the idea of blasting freighter crews, but he hadn’t hesitated to give the orders either. This was war, shorn of the pretensions of glory and other blandishments humanity had attached to the grim business of killing each other. He was here to buy time for the fleet to reorganize, to slow the enemy advance by striking at their supplies. And he would kill whomever he had to in order to make that happen.

  He was still staring at the screen when another icon vanished, the victim of Intrepid’s gunners. He could see the supply vessels struggling to get away, blasting their engines at full to cut the velocity and vectors that were still taking them closer to their attackers. It was a futile effort—freighters and tankers didn’t have the kind of thrust warships could generate—but Barron knew they had no choice but to try.

  “Primaries, maintain maximum rate of fire until secondaries come into range.” The energy-hogging main guns were really overkill for destroying freighters and tankers. Dauntless had two of the primary batteries and twenty-four of the secondaries. “Switch to secondaries at seventy thousand kilometers.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Travis relayed the order, just as the lights dimmed again and another shot lanced out from Dauntless’s heavy guns.

  “Another hit, sir,” Travis reported, unnecessarily. Barron was as focused on the display as she was, and he’d been watching when yet another small dot blinked out.

  “Maintain fire, Commander.” Barron leaned back, his eyes dropping to his screen. His primaries would get off one more shot, and then Dauntless’s more numerous secondary weapons would come into range. He looked back at the main display, checking the transit points one by one. Still nothing.

  Good…this is a large convoy. It’s got to hurt the enemy to lose it.

  He still didn’t understand how the enemy fleet was supplying itself so far from its home bases. There hadn’t been time to build a forward depot, and there was no way the Union had enough freighters to sustain a supply line all the way to the front lines and back. There was something missing, some fact he didn’t know…and his mind raced to come up with any idea of what it might be.

  “Another hit, Captain.” Travis had succeeded this time in reporting the destruction of the enemy ship before he’d noticed it. He’d been deep in thought about the enemy logistics, and he hadn’t even noticed the lights dimming when the primaries fired again.

  “Very well, Commander. My compliments to the gunners. Shut down the primaries. Secondaries, prepare to open fire.” Dauntless was a strong vessel, equipped with two massive fusion reactors, but even that enormous energy production was inadequate to power all its weapons simultaneously.

  “Secondaries activated. All batteries opening fire…now.”

  Barron could hear the faint whines of the lasers firing, and a few seconds later half a dozen icons in the display flickered. The secondaries didn’t destroy the freighters and tankers with a single shot like the primaries did, but the number of guns more than made up for it. Dauntless and Intrepid were cutting through the convoy, destroying millions of tons of vital Union war supplies. It would all be over in a few minutes, the entire convoy wiped out. All except for three ships on the perimeter, two freighters and a tanker designated as off limits to the gunners on the two battleships.

  He stared as a group of tiny dots approached the vessels, looking almost like a cloud on the display, and behind the fighters, a small cluster of blue triangles, the assault shuttles carrying three hundred fifty Marines, the full complements of the two battleships. Those fighters and Marines, as much as anyone in the fleet, would determine what happened next. If they could secure the enemy ships and the supplies they carried, Dauntless and Intrepid could continue to operate behind enemy lines. If not, the supply situation would quickly turn critical.

  Barron had never seen a boarding action this size, much less ordered his own people to carry one out. But Bryan Rogan was in charge of the operation, and he had always had immense confidence in his Marine commander, and more since he’d seen the officer lead Dauntless’s forces against twice their number of Alliance stormtroopers…and win.

  Come on, Bryan…we need those ships…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  85,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless

  Arcturon System

  308 AC

  “Blue Squadron, Direwolves, Red Eagles…with me. Yellows, Grays, Gold Shields, ten thousand klicks behind. Reds, Greens, Black Helms, Longswords, ten thousand klicks behind the second line.” Kyle Jamison leaned back in his cockpit, his eyes fixed on the small display on the fighter’s dashboard. He’d never led a strike this size. He’d never even fought in a battle with so many fighters on one side. He struggled a bit to keep track of so many squadrons, but the absence of enemy fighters made it easier. His entire force was fitted out for light anti-ship strikes—the fighters were carrying heavier laser cannon than usual, but not the bulky plasma torpedoes and their heavy mountings. His ship didn’t hand
le quite as well as it did with the lighter interceptor kit, but it wasn’t the pig it would have been outfitted like a bomber either.

  “Acknowledged, Thunder.” Stockton’s reply was cool, understated. His friend and top ace didn’t sound like himself, not at all. Jamison had put the two crack squadrons from Repulse into the first wave along with Dauntless’s own elite Blues. It was only after the chaotic and rushed launch was complete that Stara Sinclair had commed him and told him that Stockton and Dirk Timmons, commander of the Red Eagles, had some kind of bad blood between them. He’d considered reordering the formation, but he’d decided it was too disruptive. Now he was wondering if that had been a mistake.

  “All right, first wave…remember, we need these ships intact. You’re here to pick off the weapons and disable the engines. Nothing more. Dauntless and Intrepid need these supplies, so anybody who gets carried away is going to have to answer to Captain Barron and Captain Eaton…at least after they answer to me.”

  Jamison gripped his fighter’s throttle. “We’re going in close. Really close. Take it easy. There are no enemy fighters to worry about, so take it nice and slow, and watch out for the defensive lasers.” He paused, glancing quickly down at the display. Then: “You’ve got your assignments…one squadron to a ship. Let’s go!”

  Jamison moved the control to the side, pulling it back slightly and angling his thrust toward Blue squadron’s position. He’d intended to go in with one of Repulse’s squadrons, but he changed his mind. He’d never seen the cocky Stockton sound so off his game, and he was concerned his friend would take it personally if he went in with Timmons.

  Or will he be upset thinking I felt I had to keep an eye on him?