by Jay Allan
He had other reasons for minimizing his refueling efforts, cool, rational thoughts quite at odds with his image as the fearless, arrogant fighter ace. He had reviewed every aspect of his mission, considered each thing that could go wrong—indeed, he had little else to do as the endless hours passed.
There was nothing to be done about the enemy…if they found him they found him. He didn’t have a beam hot enough to make a piece of toast, so he wasn’t about to fight his way out of any mess. But an enemy attack wasn’t his only worry; there were all sorts of other things that could kill him out here, including a failure of the hastily jury-rigged system that allowed him to refuel from the shuttle.
It took precision positioning to line up the two ships so perfectly, but that wasn’t his concern. He knew he could nudge his fighter wherever he needed it to go. But hooking up with the shuttle also required perfect performance from the fragile umbilicals, and the robot arms that put them in place. One failure, one part of the system slipping centimeters out of alignment, and he was dead. It would just be a matter of waiting for his air to run out.
The white lights above his tank readouts flicked on, and a small buzzer sounded. His fighter’s fuel tanks were topped off, his air supply fully replenished. He’d be good for hours now…it was amazing how far a fighter’s fuel went without the rapid acceleration and deceleration of combat. He only needed enough thrust to establish his vector and reach a reasonable cruising velocity, and even then he couldn’t go too fast, because the cumbersome shuttle had to match his maneuvers.
He sighed as he flipped a series of switches, disengaging the fuel and air lines, and directing the shuttle’s AI to pull them back into place. He watched on his scanner as the robot arms slowly retracted, waiting for the signal that the shuttle was ready. When the green light blinked on he tapped his throttle, pulling the fighter slowly away from the shuttle. He hit the maneuvering thruster, spinning the fighter slowly, orienting his engine along the vector toward the Turas transwarp link. “Four g thrust commencing in five, four, three, two, one…”
He pulled back on the throttle, blasting his engines, accelerating toward his destination. He wasn’t accustomed to announcing his intentions out loud, but he’d found that the shuttle’s AI was better able to follow closely if he gave it advanced notice of what he was intending. He found it annoying, but then he told himself the fuel and air on the shuttle was all that stood between him and some manner of unpleasant death.
He’d kept his thrust to a maximum of 4g, and usually even less. The shuttle was one reason, though he suspected even modified as it was to carry fuel tanks, it could pull at least 6g for a while. The enemy was the other. Ultara seemed to be devoid of enemy ships, at least as far as his fighter’s limited scanning suite could detect. But he didn’t dare engage his active scanners, so he was limited to data from passive sweeps. The stealth setup made his own fighter harder to detect, but even Commander Fritz had been uncertain how much protection the ECM device would extend to the nearby shuttle. Blasting engines at full was practically begging to be spotted, and while Stockton wasn’t one to run from a fight, his lack of weapons made the prospect…unappealing.
He glanced down at the display. Fourteen hours to the Turas transwarp link. He’d thought he’d understood boredom before. Service on a battleship, especially in peacetime, involved long stretches of inactivity. But this mission had taught him the true meaning of boredom. It had been endless, unchanging hours of nothing. No maneuvers, no acceleration or deceleration except when his course required a vector change. Nothing but the constant blackness of space.
And the fear, the eerie feeling that any second his alarm would sound, that a squadron of enemy fighters, ships with actual missiles and lasers, would spot him. He’d imagined his death in battle many times, but the images had never been those of a trapped animal, unarmed, with no recourse but to run. He hated that vision, but he knew there was no alternative, not on this mission. He wasn’t the type to surrender, no matter what the circumstances. But he knew that wasn’t even an option now. His orders had been clear…get through to fleet command with the data from the nav unit. And if he couldn’t, there was only one option. Under no circumstances could he allow his ship to be captured. Even if he couldn’t get through, he was not to allow the enemy to discover that their locations had been compromised.
He leaned back, trying to get comfortable. It was an impossible goal, he realized. A fighter’s cockpit wasn’t designed for endless days of occupancy. He thought of Dauntless’s landing bays, imagining the walk from his fighter to the ready room, the sublime pleasure of stretching his legs. He’d been a fool, never truly appreciating that simple joy.
“Wake me up if we get any contacts.” He knew the order to the AI was needless. The intelligence would ceaselessly monitor the scanners, and it would sound an alarm immediately if it detected anything, even without Stockton’s specific instructions to do so. Besides, he doubted he would fall asleep. He was a natural pilot. “Born to be in the cockpit,” he’d been called. But now all he wanted was to get out of the confines of his ship, to walk, to stretch out in a bed…or even on the floor someplace he could extend his legs fully.
If you want to walk across a landing bay, you need to find the fleet…
He leaned back and closed his eyes, fighting the hopeless fight for a few hours of sleep.
* * *
Admiral Van Striker sat quietly and stared out at his team. He had a few of his preexisting staffers with him, but this was the first time he’d commanded an entire fleet, and he’d had to massively expand his staff to handle the many duties of his new position. He’d had the pick of the personnel Holsten had scraped up for Fifth Fleet, but he’d found himself making his choices from among the activated retirees. These were men and women who’d seen battle before, who’d fought against the Union in the last war, and some even in the war before that.
Striker himself was among the younger officers in the Confederation’s upper command structure. He’d seen action in the past war as a junior officer, but unlike the older generation of admirals, he had never served with Rance Barron. He’d never even met the Confederation’s great hero. His career had been a distinguished one, but he’d long found his advancement to fleet command effectively blocked by the septuagenarians and octogenarians still riding their associations with the great admiral to the highest levels.
He’d hidden whatever resentment he’d felt…it wasn’t something likely to help his career along. And he was as mesmerized by the cult of Rance Barron as every other officer in the navy. Still, he’d sometimes wondered if the great admiral’s memory had become more burden than inspiration. Barron had shattered a calcified old order, sweeping it away and replacing it with a cadre of dynamic young officers. But now, the remnants of the great admiral’s followers sometimes resembled the old command structure they had replaced, at least it seemed that way to him.
“Admiral, we’re approaching the Mellas transwarp link.” Commander Jaravick’s voice was firm, strong. The officer’s demeanor exuded confidence. Jaravick had served for forty years before he’d retired, achieving the rank of Commodore before he’d hung up his stars. Striker had served under Jaravick, and when he saw the name on the list of reactivated retirees, he immediately transferred the veteran to his own team. He’d had second thoughts, concerns over how he would feel giving orders to his old superior, but Jaravick had made it as easy as possible, even insisting on reactivating as commander, a more typical rank for an admiral’s aide, rather than commodore.
“Very well, Commander.” It still felt strange calling Jaravick ‘commander,’ though, he realized, perhaps no less bizarre than giving the old warhorse orders at all. “The fleet will begin transit. Fortitude will take the lead. I want to speak with Admiral Winston as soon as possible.”
“Yes, sir.” Striker might have been uncomfortable with his old boss in a subordinate position to him, but Jaravick seemed to have no trouble slipping into a role as the admiral’s aide.
“Transit in one minute, sir.”
Striker leaned back in his chair. He’d been flattered when Holsten chose him to command Fifth Fleet, though he was still a little uncertain how he felt about realizing just how much control Confederation Intelligence held over the force. In all the dealings he’d had to make to get Fifth Fleet operational, almost none of it had been through normal channels. Holsten seemed to be overstepping his bounds, but from what he’d seen, Striker was confident the spymaster was only doing what he could to turn the war around. It was certainly not the normal chain of command at work, but then Rance Barron had been the first one to take the established order and turn it on its head. Maybe it was time for that kind of thing again. It was certainly time for something. If the fleet couldn’t halt the Union advance, the whole Confederation was in jeopardy.
“Ten seconds to transit, Admiral.”
Striker leaned back and closed his eyes. The effects of transwarp space weren’t particularly hard on him, save for the occasional fairly severe headache. The jump to Mellas was a short one, at least in terms of actual distance between the two stars, less than three light years. That meant no more than ten seconds in the tube, barely enough time to worry about side effects at all.
He hardly had time to think about it before the monitors displayed the inky blackness of normal space. Fifth Fleet’s flagship was in the Mellas system.
He sat and waited as Fortitude’s scanners searched the surrounding space, and her comm system linked up with the fleet channels. Space was a massive place, and the speed of light could seem very slow when it took minutes or longer for signals to traverse interplanetary distances.
“Helios and Vanguard have transited, Admiral.” Jaravick’s tone was the same as before, the veteran unaffected by the transit. Striker tried to imagine how many system jumps the old spacer had made in his day.
Hundreds, for sure. Maybe even a thousand.
“Very well. The fleet is to form up as soon as all ships have transited.” There was no rush. Striker would normally have sent escorts ships through first to scout the area around the transwarp link, and then reordered the fleet in sections as ships emerged. But he knew First Fleet was in Mellas, and that his entry point was deep in the rear of Admiral Winston’s force. Striker wasn’t one to relax his caution or the discipline he demanded from his people. But he knew they had enough challenges ahead…and he was just as aware how many would likely not return from the campaign that lay before them. He didn’t need to put them through pointless effort, not when he would have to ask so much from them soon.
“We’re starting to get scanner data, Admiral…and we’re connected to the fleet net.” Jaravick paused, and when he continued his voice carried the first chink Striker had seen in the veteran’s iron demeanor. “The fleet is badly battered, sir. Half of these battleships should be in spacedock, not preparing to fight again.”
“That may be, Commander…and half our ships should be museum displays, not active warships. But we all do what we must, do we not?”
“Yes, sir. We do.” The old spacer’s tone was back, as hard as polished steel. “And we will do whatever is needed, Admiral. Ancient ships—and crews—notwithstanding.”
“I suspect when all is said and done, the enemy will be quite surprised what a bunch of old ships and spacers can do.”
Chapter Thirty
Bridge
CFS Dauntless
Varus System
308 AC
Barron’s eyes glazed over at the stats scrolling down the screen. He could see the words and numbers as they updated, and he knew what they meant. But it couldn’t be. It simply wasn’t possible. The construction orbiting the gas giant was enormous. No, such words didn’t even come close to describing the thing. It was unspeakably, unimaginably, incalculably massive.
Two hundred forty-three million tons…
He read the data feed again. It still didn’t seem possible, but that was what it said. He’d seen such mass figures before of course, and far larger ones, but for stars, planets, moons…never for anything manmade. Aside from the incalculable amount of work building such a structure would require, he couldn’t even begin to imagine the engineering challenges that had to be overcome in its design.
Dauntless’s drones were still far from the base, too far for specifics. Perhaps the data was wrong. Maybe it was an asteroid or some other natural phenomenon and not something built by man. But he knew even as he thought it, that wasn’t the case. He stared at the screen and saw the energy readings, a level of power beyond what a hundred of Dauntless’s reactors could have produced.
“Captain…” It was Travis, and for once his normally resolute first officer seemed utterly unnerved.
“I see it, Atara.”
He saw it, but he was still fighting to accept what his eyes told him. “Launch another spread of probes, Commander. No, two more spreads. I want that thing covered from every angle. And get all remaining squadrons ready to launch. There’s no way that thing is unprotected.”
God only knows what weapons it carries, beyond what ships are deployed out there in support…
“Yes, sir.”
Barron’s head remained fixed, his view of the scanner cast in the all too familiar red glow of Dauntless’s battlestations lamps. He’d wondered what kind of supply base could provide the logistical support needed to keep the Union offensive moving. Now that he saw it, he had no doubts. This hulking behemoth undoubtedly carried munitions factories and vast holds full of every manner of supply a warship needed. And its position orbiting the gas giant was no accident, he knew. The scanners hadn’t confirmed it yet, but he was certain the thing was harvesting tritium from the massive planet’s atmosphere, producing the fuel needed to sustain the invasion.
He watched as minutes passed, as more data came in from the probes. The small drones were accelerating at full thrust, rapidly building up velocity directly toward the base. And as they closed, the information flow increased. The station was as immense as it had appeared at first. It was in low orbit above the gas giant, and all around it smaller vessels were moving toward and away from the thing.
Hoppers, Barron realized. Ore ships moving to and from the system’s asteroid belt, providing raw materials for the production facilities.
A projection was also forming in the main display, the AI’s representation of the data the drones were relaying, the closest thing to actual video of the station. The thing was long, more than twenty-five kilometers. There were a number of nodules along a large stretch of its length…massive docking bays, Barron realized. And at every bay there was a vessel, each as large as a capital ship. Almost thirty of them. He panicked for an instant, afraid they had found a whole new fleet of enemy battleships, but then he realized, the lined up vessels were freighters and tankers.
What in the eleven hells of space is that thing? How could they have built it? And how did they get it here?
“Captain…we’re picking up launches from the station, sir. It looks like fighter squadrons.”
“Launch all remaining fighters.”
“Yes, Captain.”
His eyes moved toward the display, his gaze pausing on the small oval representing Intrepid. The battleship had emerged less than a minute before. He snapped his head toward the communications station. Normally, he relayed his commands through Travis, but she had enough to do right now. “Lieutenant Darrow, get me Captain Eaton.”
“Yes, Captain.” A few seconds later: “On your line, sir.”
“Captain Eaton, I know you just transited, but we found what we were looking for, and a whole lot more. I need you to scramble your fighters.”
“Already done, Captain. All squadrons are ready to launch. Just awaiting your order.”
“Very well, you have it. Launch all fighters now.”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got Intrepid at red alert. What else…” Her voice trailed off to silence, and Barron knew she had gotten her first look at the enemy supply base. A few seconds later: “My Go
d, Tyler…how is that possible?”
“I don’t know, Sara, but that’s not the question we need to answer. How the hell do we destroy it?”
“Have you picked up any escorts or capital ships? Or just those freighters and tankers?”
“No, not yet. But we haven’t been here for very long. There could still be a whole fleet out there for all we know.”
“Any readings on the weaponry that thing packs?”
“No, not yet. If we’re lucky, it’s mostly production and logistics oriented. I can’t explain how they could have built it at all, but there has to be some limit to what they could put into it.”
“I suggest we keep Dauntless and Intrepid tight, within fifty thousand kilometers of each other. That way, if we find a weak spot, we can concentrate our fire.”
“Agreed. Bring Intrepid up alongside us, and then we’ll advance together.”
“Very well, sir.”
“At least we answered the question about how a mobile supply base could support their entire fleet. But what I don’t understand is, how is this thing mobile? Doesn’t look to me like it would fit through a transwarp link…so how do they move it?”
“I have no idea, sir. None at all. But I guess all we have to worry about is destroying it. Somehow.”
“Let’s get to it then, Captain. Barron out.”
“Commander Travis, I want engines ready for 6g acceleration as soon as Intrepid is in position.”
“Yes, Captain.” Travis paused. “Sir, all squadrons have launched. Commander Jamison requests permission to…” Dauntless’s first officer snapped her head around. “Captain, we’re picking up something from the enemy base.” A short pause. “Launches, sir…looks like fighters.” She turned and looked back at her screen. “A lot of fighters.”
Barron stared at the display as clouds of small dots appeared around the enemy station, a few at first but then more and more, until ten full squadrons of fighters had deployed…and begun moving toward Dauntless and Intrepid.