by Jay Allan
* * * * *
Jarrod Tyler walked across the field, toward the rows of barracks neatly arrayed down several perfectly straight avenues. His army had never been stronger, the forces mobilized for the defense of Columbia larger and better equipped than they had been for any past war. It was the reason he’d seized power, the purpose for his enduring the hated job of head of state for so long. He’d known war would come again to his cursed world, and he’d be damned if he would allow his people to get caught unprepared yet again.
He would endure anything to protect Columbia, even the realization that his beloved wife would have despised all he had done. Lucia had been that rarest of creatures, a true idealist, one who had actually believed in people. Tyler had been far less cynical himself once, but he was no fool, and if life was set on teaching him harsh lessons, he had resolved he would learn from them.
Columbia’s entire society was geared for military action, its armed forces far vaster now than anything the planet could have supported without the influx of funding from the Black Eagles. Tyler knew Darius Cain had overpaid for the title to a frozen moon, a barren rock, useless save for the vast base the Eagles had built there. That was a value in itself, perhaps, the security of permanent ownership. The cost of relocating would have been billions of credits, perhaps even trillions.
As though I could have done anything to evict the Eagles, even if I’d wanted to.
Which he most certainly didn’t. He’d always considered having the mercenaries in Columbia’s system a safeguard, one that had to at least give pause to anyone who might try to invade his planet. He’d been forced to trust Darius, of course, and such things came hard to him these days. But the blunt nature of the mercenary, the clear feeling that if he’d been harboring ill will, he’d have just unleashed his trained killers and been done with it, somehow bolstered Tyler’s comfort. The two men shared much with each other in terms of their grim outlooks and, as much as any man outside the inner circle of the Black Eagles could claim, he believed he and Darius had become friends.
He was almost up to the first row of barracks. A surprise inspection on a bunch of new recruits seemed below the paygrade of a planet’s dictator, but Tyler had been a soldier long before he’d seized power, and his had many old school ideas on how to turn inductees into soldiers.
There was something going on up ahead, some kind of dispute. He felt a wave of annoyance. He didn’t like disorganization in his camp, and he swore to himself if any of his non-coms were setting a bad example for the recruits…
He moved forward abruptly, heading toward the figures ahead, startling his guards as he did. He’d taken three steps, perhaps four, before they reacted and hurried to catch up. Only an instant, but enough. They were too late.
The group that had been arguing split apart, one of the men pulling out a pistol and shooting two of the others. The final one had turned toward Tyler.
The general saw the move, and he reacted almost immediately. But ‘almost’ wasn’t enough. He felt the first bullet hit him, even as his body was swinging hard to the side. Then the second.
He could hear the gunfire now, his guards he realized, and he caught an image of the assassin falling back, his body riddled with bullets. He tried to stay on his feet, but then he realized he was dropping, and an instant later, he felt the hard coldness of the ground as he slammed into it.
He could hear sirens, alarms, shouts all around him. But even as he listened, he felt the darkness closing around him. All the while, a single thought went through his head.
You damned fool…
Chapter 10
“The Nest” – Black Eagles Base
Second Moon of Eos, Eta Cassiopeiae VII
Earthdate: 2321 AD (36 Years After the Fall)
“I’ll take over for you, Rolf.” Ana Bazarov tapped the communications officer on the shoulder. “It’s my shift.”
Rolf Anders looked up at Bazarov, and he slid abruptly out of his seat. He was a Black Eagles captain, an officer authorized to stand watch in the Nest’s main control center, and Bazarov was a senior cadet, still undergoing training, and wrapping up her duty rotations before graduation. Before she would become a full-fledged Black Eagle.
Bazarov was more than that, of course. She was the mistress of the Black Eagles’ commanding general, if that was the right term. She had no more use of labels than Darius did, but she knew if the two of them had been other people, in some other place, words like girlfriend and dating would have applied. Such designations seemed absurd and out of place in the Nest, of course, and unnecessary as well. She couldn’t have imagined the course her life had taken, but she was happy. Happier than she’d ever been.
She slid into the comm station, watching as Anders stepped away, giving her far more respect than he would have accorded another trainee. She detested that sort of behavior, but she wasn’t a fool, and she understood it. Such things came with the territory of being Darius’s lover, especially his exclusive companion, which she had been for two years now, and she’d long ago decided she’d put up with it if she had to.
What she’d been unwilling to do, to continue doing at least, was to remain a pampered and sheltered doll. It had taken some convincing, but she’d demanded to be given a real job on the Nest, one that involved duties outside the bedchamber. She’d sleep with him because she cared for him, she had said finally, but from that moment on, she would earn her keep as a member of the Eagles, or by God, she would pack up and leave. It had been a bluff, of course, but one she’d delivered well. She didn’t fool herself that Darius had been taken in by it, of course. Bluffs had a poor history as a tool to be used against the Eagles’ commander, but her spirit had impressed him. He’d refused combat training outright, and they’d had something like a fight that evening, but in the end, they’d come to an agreement. She would complete the training program for Nest operations, jumping through the same hoops any trainee would, without so much as the slightest slack for being the general’s lover. And she had done just that. The fitness sections of the program had been brutal—even non-combat Eagles were ready to fight if the need arose—but she’d gotten through. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d had one hundred percent of the full treatment thrown at her, but what she’d experienced, and the aches and pains and sore muscles that had accompanied it all, had been enough to preserve her pride.
She reached out, moving her hands across the display. Nest operations entailed dozens of fields of study, but she’d taken a liking to communications almost immediately. The shifts in the control center were the last stages of her training. She’d done eight already, and she only had one after this…and then she’d get her insignia, and she’d be a real Black Eagle. She tried to remember how terrified she’d been on Karelia, and how she’d lashed out at Darius when he tried to help her. She’d come a long way since then, and the moment she’d thought the darkest in her life had led her to her true home.
Something caught her eye, a flashing light. Don’t daydream and screw up on your second to last rotation, she thought, mildly scolding herself. Then her stomach tightened.
She spun around. “Major Cranston,” she said, her voice a bit shrill as she turned to face the officer in charge of the Nest’s nerve center.
“Yes, Cadet?” he answered, using the correct form of address, but doing it with a touch more respect that she suspected he usually did with trainees.
“We’re getting a transmission from the warp gate notification scanners, sir.” Damn, she scolded herself. Reports should include complete information…how many times had she been told that? “From the Beta-Omicron gate, Major,” she completed the report, before Cranston could dress her down for lack of information.
“Send the readings to my screen, Cadet.” Cranston didn’t sound particularly worried. The Eagles weren’t expecting anything through the gate, but Columbia always had freight traffic moving in and out, and…
“Red alert,” the officer said, an instant after glancing at the screen, his
tone vastly more serious than it had been a few seconds before.
She turned back, trying to see what Cranston had noticed so quickly in the sketchy transmission that she hadn’t. Then, after hesitating for just a second, she hit the alarm switch. The Nest’s control center was bathed in glowing red light, and the klaxons on the wall blared loudly. She had a good idea—some from training and some from Darius—of what was happening now throughout the massive fortress. Weapons systems were activating, armored doors were sliding shut, protecting vital areas, the crews of the Eagles’ giant ships were responding to the battlestations calls.
Her eyes darted down to the screen again, and then she saw it. The energy output, the mass readings. That was no freighter. That was a warship, a big one. And then, as if on cue, another three dots popped on the screen, and then more. A dozen…twenty.
This wasn’t a raid, nor some lost ship. This was a full-scale attack.
* * * * *
“Launch another spread of probes, Lieutenant. A double cluster this time. I want detailed analysis on those ships, and I want it before they enter firing range.” Whatever the hell their firing range is…
“Yes, Captain Grayson.” A few seconds later, an almost astonishingly short time to have executed the command, but still one that didn’t quite satisfy Grayson, the tactical officer added, “Probes launched, sir.”
Grayson stared out at the main display, his eyes darting from the cloud of contacts moving in from the warp gate to the line of fourteen blue circles, the battlefleet of the Black Eagles, minus the two ships Darius had sent to shadow his parent’s trip to Armstrong to make sure they got there. Grayson couldn’t imagine what it felt like for the general to know his father was alive and being tortured for fifteen years, but if he knew Darius Cain at all, the Eagle commander would never let his guard down again, not as far as his parents’ travels through space were concerned.
The Eagles’ ships were the strongest things in space, at least they had been. A number of the approaching vessels were just as large, and if the rumors flying around were true, those ships had First Imperium technology in them. The Eagles’ vessels did, too, so it very well might come down to who had learned more and implemented it, Thomas Sparks and his Eagle engineering teams, or the mysterious enemy that now seemed ready to commence open war.
“Captain, I have Commodore Allegre for you.”
“On my line.” Grayson had been expecting the communique. Allegre was the Eagles’ naval commander, another refugee from the service of Earth’s destroyed superpowers, though, unlike most of the old veterans who’d found their way to the Eagles, he wasn’t a former Alliance or Caliphate warrior. Gaston Allegre had served the navy of Europa Federalis, a service with a spotty and uncertain battle record. But Allegre himself had been well-regarded by officers of the other services, friend and foe alike, and he’d proven himself to Darius Cain from the day he’d taken command of the first Eagle vessel, a rickety old destroyer that traced its service all the way back to the Second Frontier War.
“Captain, Eagle Fourteen will take position on the right flank of our line. Once everyone is in position, we’re going to accelerate at 5g to point Alpha…” The range points had long been a part of the Eagles’ defense setup, marked by a series of carefully located buoys. For a warrior who fought most of his battles on his enemies’ home ground, Darius Cain had spared no thought or expense to secure his home base. His people had conducted hundreds of drills, and Allegre was simply activating the pre-determined response for an attack of this size.
“Yes, Commodore.”
“We’re going to flush our external racks and launch three follow up volleys, and then we’re going to pull back within the Nest’s protective umbrella before their missiles can close.”
That all made sense to Grayson. The Nest was massively armed, and its array of antimissile and antifighter batteries was nothing short of astonishing.
“Yes, Commodore. Eagle Fourteen will be ready.”
“I know you will, Captain. Allegre out.”
Grayson glanced down at the now silent comm unit. He could only imagine how much Allegre had to do right now. The Eagles, for all their many victorious ground engagements, had never fought a really major space battle before, at least not a full-blown fleet action. They’d blasted the weak squadrons of their objective planets from just outside orbit, and a few of their awesome battleships had engaged enemy ships in what could best be described as ‘slightly less than instantaneous blowouts.’
This is going to be a real fight…
His eyes were fixed on the screen. The enemy ships were still coming through the warp gate, even as their lead elements accelerated in-system.
“Lieutenant, I want all weapons stations to run full checks. The team that isn’t ready when the order comes is going to wish the enemy had blasted them to plasma.”
“Yes, sir.” Then: “Captain, we’re getting the advance signal.”
“Commence acceleration, Lieutenant. Five gees thrust…now.”
* * * * *
“Get the ground forces loaded up, Colonel. The garrison forces can man the Nest, and these people aren’t here to try to force a landing and fight on the frozen dust of Eos’s moon, I’m willing to bet that much. We don’t need anybody getting hit on the ground.”
“Yes, sir.” Teller turned and snapped out a series of orders himself. The Nest’s control center was a beehive of activity, nearly three times as many officers and technicians on duty as had been there before, still including Ana Bazarov. Darius had told her to stand down, to get to the underground shelter, along with her sister and the other non-combat personnel. But she’d done the unthinkable, the one thing more likely to land her in the Eagles’ history than any martial feat imaginable. She’d refused Darius’s command.
“I’m at my position, sir,” she had said firmly. Darius almost argued, but then he did something even less precedented in the history of his illustrious little army. He let it go.
He had strong feelings for Ana, and he’d wanted her as safe as he could make her. But he knew she’d been right to take the stand she had, and he remembered the day they had met, her standing there, wounded and half naked, about to be assaulted by a band of drunk, Raschiddan soldiers. He’d saved her, from a terrible ordeal at least, and probably her life too…and she’d turned, staring up at her savior with hatred in her eyes, cursing him out for invading her world. Something in that instant had struck him. She was beautiful, and he enjoyed her company, but he knew it was her strength—her brave defiance—that had truly captured his attention, and ultimately his affection.
“All six regiments are boarding, sir. It’s going to take some time to get all the transports loaded up.” Translation: We’re never going to get the ground troops out of here before the Nest gets engaged.
“Very well, Colonel. All transports able to load up and depart are to head toward Columbia.” Darius didn’t have a doubt Jarrod Tyler would be pleased to house more than ten thousand of his veteran warriors. The battle for the Nest would be a space engagement, won or lost in the cold depths. Any boarding action would be a final stage, and launched only after the battle was nearly over. But if these forces were planning on invading Columbia as well, he knew his people could do good service helping to hold the allied planet.
“Fighter squadrons in position, sir. They are requesting permission to engage.”
“Negative, Colonel. Advise Major Wiggs his forces are to follow the missile strikes in, but not too close to final engagement range until all warheads have detonated.” Darius had no intention of losing his precious veteran pilots to radiation from the missile barrage…but he did want them on the enemy the instant the bombardment ceased. Their precision attacks could obliterate ships that had taken damage from warhead near misses.
He’d almost held his squadrons back, detailed them to protect his own battleships, but his main fleet would be in the Nest’s defensive perimeter before the attacking fighters caught them…and Darius had b
uried hundreds of anti-assault batteries into the hard crust of the frozen moon. Unlike a normal planetary surface, Eos’s small satellite had no atmosphere to speak of, nothing to weaken the laser batteries when they opened fire. But they were still on a fixed surface, and that allowed them to draw on power no mobile platform could match. The general rule of thumb was that fighters were best for intercepting fighters. Darius was about to put that to the test.
“Point defense array is opening fire, General. Enemy missiles coming into range now.”
Darius didn’t respond. He just sat and watched. The whole thing felt strange. He had always been the sort of commander to lead from the front, but he’d serve no purpose at all on the bridge of one of his battleships, nothing more than a distraction to a seasoned captain. And there was no ground battle to fight, at least not yet.
“Any response from Columbia yet, Cadet?” He stared across the bridge, trying to soften his tone when he directed it toward Ana, but likely failing. His persona in battle was one well-formed by now, and, as hard as it was, it had served him well.
“No, General. No response. Shall I resend the communique?”
“Yes,” Darius snapped, realizing as he did it would be of little worth. There was no question Columbia had received the message, so whatever reason they’d failed to respond, it had been intentional. He couldn’t understand what was happening. He didn’t trust anyone, not completely, at least, but Jarrod Tyler had been one of those he’d thought least likely to turn on him, and especially in the fight against the mysterious attacker. Tyler was almost clinically paranoid about Columbia being invaded again. Was it possible the enemy had gotten to him somehow, persuaded him to join their cause? That would be a disaster for the Eagles, giving them enemies on both sides of their stronghold. Columbia alone could never defeat his forces, but if Tyler’s ships joined the attackers instead of coming to his own aid as he’d expected…