by Jay Allan
Then, he heard the blast, almost deafening, and the shockwave caught him in the back and lifted him from the ground, throwing him down hard at least thirty meters from where he’d been.
His instincts told him to get up, to keep running and find a place to hide. But he couldn’t move. A wave of pain struck him, and he realized he was injured, though he couldn’t get a real feeling on where or how bad it was.
He was lying on his back, and he could see a plume of fire and smoke where the building had been, and even as his vision blurred and he felt his consciousness slipping away, he managed a tiny, crooked smile.
His Marines had done their duty. They had taken down the enemy communications.
He hadn’t failed Admiral Barron.
Chapter Thirty-Three
CFS Dauntless
Olyus System
Year 320 AC
The Second Battle of Megara – “Vengeance, the blood of my enemies…all I have left”
“All ships, full thrust.” Barron’s voice was utterly cold, not a shred of emotion detectable in a word that came from his mouth. He’d shut down his emotions. It was the only way to keep Andi out of his mind, to stop from replaying the moment Hermes had vanished from the display. There was nothing left for him anymore, nothing he cared about, save victory.
And vengeance, the blood of my enemies…all I have left.
He’d been a professional warrior his entire adult life, but now he was a killer, more like some demon of the deepest darks, a story from some old spacer’s tale, than a soldier. He’d been hesitant to lead the fleet forward, to commit to a direct frontal assault against all the Hegemony could field against him, but now he welcomed it. He ached for it. He wanted those ships to come, to engage his forces. He needed it.
He needed to kill Hegemony spacers, as many as he could.
“All ships acknowledge, Admiral. The fleet is moving in-system.” Atara spoke softly, calmly. Barron knew his friend understood what he was feeling, or at least that she came as close to it as anyone could. He was glad she was there, and he could feel the support from her, but part of him wished he could fight the battle alone, that he could claim sole credit for every drop of Hegemony blood that was spilled.
Yes!
Barron watched with bloodthirsty excitement as the last ship of the Hegemony first line vanished in the maelstrom of thermonuclear fury. Stockton’s attack had finished off all but two of the battleships, and Dirk Timmons and his wings had been waiting for those. It almost seemed too easy, watching it all. It would have been, save for the casualty reports coming in. They weren’t as bad as he’d feared, as they had been in so many other fights against the Hegemony, but they were substantial, nevertheless.
And the battle had just begun, and there would be vast bloodletting before it was done.
“Admiral Stockton is to bring his wings back to refuel and rearm.” There was time to turn the bombers around and get them back out before the fleet closed to firing range, but there wasn’t time to waste. Barron’s ships weren’t fencing with the enemy this time, dodging in and out of asteroid fields and dust clouds. Not this time. They were coming straight on, led by the line of battleships armed with the new primaries.
And that line would be preceded by another bomber strike, the largest in known history, every Lightning in the fleet this time, backed up by the Palatian Strikers, Union Typhoons, and the bewildering array of bizarre and dated attack craft from the Far Rim. Over five thousand ships in all, led by the greatest fighter pilot the Confederation had ever produced.
Barron didn’t know if it would be enough, and he still couldn’t tell if Bryan Rogan had managed to interdict the Hegemony’s command comm, but he was sure of one thing. No one who fought this battle on either side would ever forget it.
At least those who lived to tell about it.
* * *
“Lex, I don’t want you more than a meter from this reactor, do you hear me? I know the connection’s a jury-rigged mess, but you made it work. Now, keep it working.” Andi was standing just outside the engineering space, leaning in as she spoke. The corridor outside was jammed full. Andi had crammed every survivor from Hermes aboard Pegasus, and Lex had managed to connect the smaller ship’s power source to the stealth unit. Then, Andi and Vig had cut the landing connection and opened the bay doors. Somehow, they’d managed to get Pegasus out into space, using only the positioning jets, and Lex had gotten the stealth unit operational. All just as Hermes was blasted to bits by at least a dozen attackers.
She’d conceived the plan and almost discounted it. The timing had to be perfect, and everything had to go exactly right. Her view of the universe left her entirely unprepared to believe that so many things could happen in just he right way, one after the other.
But one part of her nature was stronger still than he grim pessimism. The only other choice had been simply to give up. And that was unthinkable.
And it had worked. So far, at least.
The best she could tell, the enemy had not detected Pegasus. They were altering their vectors, pulling back after the destruction of Hermes, apparently convinced they had finally tracked and destroyed their target.
Everything had worked so far at least. But she was going to have to divert some power at least to beefing up the life support systems—there were a lot more people on Pegasus than she’d ever had before—and she needed to deploy some thrust at least, get the ship on a vector away from the enemy, back toward the approaching fleet.
One thing at a time…
She squeezed past the spacers jammed in the corridor. They were standing, pressed tightly against each other, and the crowd stretched back to the cargo hold, which was also full of her Hermes’s crew. She’d gotten everybody out, at least everyone who’d still been alive. She’d lost more than twenty of her crew in the fighting, most of those after she’d dropped the stealth field.
There hadn’t been any choice with that. Hermes’s reactor had been dying, and at best, it would have held out a few more hours, and she and Lex had managed to cart the stealth unit down the corridors of the doomed cruiser, to the bay and into Pegasus herself…before cutting the long—and amazingly still functioning—cable that led back to Hermes’s reactor. Reconnecting to her old ship’s power grid had been difficult, and a wild race against time, but one Lex had managed to complete.
He’d done it faster than she’d had a right to hope, but even that time had been sufficient for the enemy to almost englobe Hermes, and to blast the already damaged ship to plasma. Even that had served a purpose, an indispensable one. The surest way to evade someone trying to kill you is to convince them you were already dead. If the maneuver, including Pegasus’s exit from the bay, with only positioning jets for thrust, had truly gone off as well as she dared hope it had, the Hegemony ships wouldn’t be looking for her and her people any longer.
As far as they were concerned—and anyone who’d been watching—she was dead. They all were dead…and in that lay their hopes for survival.
She had every reason to believe the plan would work, and the Hegemony fleet in Olyus had a lot more to worry about than chasing one small ship. Pegasus was limited to passive scans, and even those at minimal power, but something the size of the Confederation—no, she reminded herself, the Grand Alliance—fleet was hard to miss.
She made her way forward to the bridge, slipping through the door and breathing a sigh of relief at the—relatively—open space of the ship’s small control room. The one thing she’d never called Pegasus’s bridge was roomy, at least until that very moment.
She sat in her chair and stared down at the screen, watching the ships of the fleet push forward from the transit point, their course taking them directly toward the—more haphazardly organized—Hegemony force.
She knew Barron hadn’t wanted to let her go, and she’d almost stayed back, out of her love for him. But she had to be who she was, and sitting on the sidelines wasn’t her way. Besides, there would be no future, not for her, nor for
Tyler or anyone else, if they didn’t win this fight. Hopefully, she’d played a part in that, and what she’d done would contribute to the victory they all needed.
Now it was her turn to sit and worry. About herself and her people, of course, who were still far from safe, but mostly about Tyler and the others she cared about, every one of them now on those warships moving inexorably toward their destinies.
Her eyes caught one symbol, a battleship, and she guessed—with a reasonable feeling of certainty from its position in the line—that it was Dauntless. She looked for a few seconds, her eyes moist. It was her turn, she knew, to sit and watch…and worry about him.
“You can do this, my love. You can win this fight. I know you can.” Her words were soft, under her breath, for her alone, and she tried hard to believe them. Barron was the best naval commander she’d ever seen, even that she’d ever heard of, but she was far from sure the battle was winnable.
If it is, Tyler will find a way…
She didn’t dare let herself imagine the two of them having a future together, after war and strife and so much death.
But then she did anyway, at least for a few seconds.
* * *
“You are a damned fool, Megaron, and you are relieved, as of this moment.” Chronos was angry, his rage searing hot. He held most of it back, trying to maintain his usual controlled demeanor, or at least something close to it, but some of the fury leaked out anyway.
He watched as the officer’s face displayed his own anger. The Megaron was a high-ranking officer, and a Hegemony Master. He was unaccustomed to being spoken to the way Chronos just had, but the supreme commander of the invasion, and Number Eight in the Hegemony, didn’t give a shit what the idiot thought. As far as Chronos was concerned, the fool was lucky he didn’t grab a pistol right there in the control center and put a pair of bullets in his head.
The officer turned, clearly—and wisely—deciding there was no gain in arguing with one as highly ranked as Chronos.
Good decision, you useless piece of…
Chronos forced his mind from rage to analysis. He had a problem, a considerable one, and even if his forces still held the clear advantage, he had to do something immediately.
His first thought was to rush to the spaceport, to take a shuttle up to the flagship and take direct command himself. He almost did that, going so far as to begin moving toward the hatch leading out of the control center. But he stopped himself when his eyes found Akella’s. Number One, the Hegemony’s supreme leader, and the woman carrying his unborn child…was standing right there, in the center of things.
In a location that can’t be any lower on the enemy’s priority list than the comm center…
He had to get her someplace safe, or better yet, get her off of Megara, and on her way back to the Hegemony. She’d been scheduled to leave just a few days later, but now the enemy forces were blocking the primary route back to Dannith.
He wasn’t sure what to do about any of that, but he knew the fleet needed direction, and quickly.
“Illius!” He shouted the officer’s name, as if calling across a vast space, but when he turned around, the Master was standing right behind him.
“Commander!” The officer looked like he was on parade, utterly unaffected by all that had happened. Chronos knew that was bullshit, that Illius was almost certainly as concerned as he was, but it was an impressive display of self-control.
The megaron was a brilliant officer, too, one even Chronos admitted to himself could lead the fleet as well as he could.
At least as well…
“Report to the spaceport at once, Megaron. You are to shuttle to Hegemony’s Glory and take command of the fleet.” A pause. “The enemy seems to be coming on more directly than usual, but that may be some kind of deception. I leave decisions on tactics and deployments to you. Understood?”
“Understood, sir!” Illius turned on a dime and moved from the room at a pace that could only be described as a jog. As soon as he was gone, Chronos turned back toward Akella.
“Hectoron Fesurus…you are to assemble an elite company of Kriegeri and escort Number One to the underground bunker. You will remain with her, and guard against any incursions.”
“Yes, Commander!”
Chronos turned back to Akella again. “Go with him, Akella…please.” The last word had been a final addition, the verbal manifestation of Chronos’s realization that he was speaking to the only person on Megara not subject to his commands. “We can’t risk you being hurt or…worse…by some random enemy activity.
How random would it be after the comm center fiasco?
She looked back at him, and for a moment, he thought she was going to refuse his request. Akella was many things, but she was no coward. But then, she just nodded. He wasn’t sure if it was the realization that she was the supreme leader of the Hegemony, or if it was some maternal instinct to protect the child she carried…and he didn’t care. Either reason was sufficient to get her to the safest place possible, and he felt a wave of relief when she turned and walked out of the room, the Hectoron and the dozen of his Kriegeri who’d been there already, forming a defensive cordon all around her.
Chronos took a deep breath. Now he could focus on the battle. He had no idea what the enemy planned to do, but his stomach told him it was going to be one hell of a fight.
Chapter Thirty-Four
450,000,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless
Olyus System
Year 320 AC
The Second Battle of Megara – “Fight…fight as you have never fought before!”
Stockton’s eyes dropped down to his screen. For all his focus, the grim determination that drove him forward, he was still stunned every time he saw the vast array of ships lined up around him. The first strike had been large, well over two thousand bombers, but now, he had the fleet’s entire strike force, still over five thousand strong, even after the losses his people had already suffered.
There were stone cold veterans in the mix, and raw rookies. Highly advanced Confederation Lightnings, and rusted old tubs from the Far Rim he suspected had been flying since before he’d been born. His own veteran Confederation pilots were disciplined, motivated…in every respect, the killing machines into which he had forged them. The Palatians, too. They had served alongside their Confed allies for years now, and they’d more than held their own, despite the moderate technological inferiority of their ships. Stockton had almost suggested giving the Palatians Lightnings—something he knew would be complex in terms of military balance, diplomacy, and classified systems—but he’d held back. The Confederation ships were better, no doubt, but the Palatians had been flying their own fighters since their first days in training, and the relentless Hegemony advance had offered little prospect of an adjustment period to get used to new craft. An abrupt change was as likely to harm as to help.
But, experienced or raw, flying leading edge craft or old rustbuckets, over five thousand bombers were tearing through space toward the Hegemony main fleet. The enemy force was vast, and Stockton knew the hundreds of escorts forming up in front of the Hegemony battle line would exact a terrible toll from his wings. But it wouldn’t stop them. He’d already issued the orders…ignore the escorts, fly past them as quickly as possible, and hit the enemy’s battleships with all the fury they could muster. Stockton knew how important this fight was, and the what the consequences of failure would be, and his pilots did, too.
He flipped a series of switches, engaging the AI-controlled evasive maneuvers. He wasn’t in range of the enemy escort line, not quite at least, but his engaging the sequence was the signal for the rest of the strike force to do the same. And, he wanted them erring on the side of readiness.
The canned routines weren’t enough, not to make a run through the level of fire Stockton knew awaited his people. He would be adding his instincts, his reflexes, increasing the randomness of the small vector changes intended to confuse the Hegemony’s gunners and targeting computers. It was
one of the areas where experienced pilots had a massive advantage over their raw comrades, and he knew he would lose a large number of green fighter jocks over the next minutes. But there was nothing more he could do about that. He’d trained them, lectured them, harassed them…done everything he could do to beat the realities of combat into their heads. The rest was up to them.
He stared at the screen, at the enemy formation just ahead. The escorts weren’t quite as tightly organized as usual, and the battleships behind were even more disordered. Stockton was one of the few officers who’d known about the plan for the Marines on the ground to interdict Hegemony communications. It had seemed pretty far-fetched to him, but now he wondered. Perhaps it had been successful after all…
He was still looking at the screen when it lit up with enemy fire. The escorts were opening up, and again, there was a ragged look to it, almost as though individual squadron commanders were taking action on their own. It was a departure from the usually incredibly precise operation of the enemy’s vessels.
It wouldn’t make that much difference. Hegemony gunners and targeting computers were highly capable, and any lack of higher direction wasn’t likely to seriously degrade their performance. But Stockton would take anything he could get.
His hand moved to the controls, and he shifted the throttle lightly back and forth, supplementing the actions initiated by the AI. Proper evasive maneuvering was a difficult skill to master. It was easy enough to fly a wild and unpredictable course, but far more challenging to do it while maintaining the same overall vector. Stockton’s pilots needed to do what they could to avoid getting hit, to stay alive, but they also had to reach their targets on schedule.