The Grand Alliance

by Jay Allan

  Now, they were going to see something darker, the essence of what would win the fight, if anything would. The darkness that lived within Barron, the living nightmare, inflamed by the stress of battle and painful personal loss.

  They think they’re afraid of the enemy…

  “Attention all contingent and ship commanders, all officers and spacers of the fleet. We are engaged in a desperate fight now. Whatever discussions there might have been on strategy and tactics, whatever questions may have been raised and debated, whatever prevarication in terms of pushing forward as a part of this fleet…the time for all of that is past. The next hours will determine victory or defeat, survival or death, not just for us, but perhaps for all the people in our nations. There is no time for anything now, but absolute and unerring obedience. There will be no change of plans, no retreat, no reorganization. Fight now, all of you. Fight as you’ve never fought before. All our lives depend on it.”

  He paused, just for a second, and when he continued, his tone was even darker, more malevolent than it had been. “We have all suffered losses, made sacrifices, and no doubt more are to come. But I say this now, and any who doubt me for an instant do so at their own grave peril. If it comes down to a choice between killing an enemy, or a black traitor whose hands are still wet with blood from the knife shoved into my back, have no doubt what I will choose. No doubt. This fleet will fight to the end, and make no mistake…I will destroy the first ship that runs! Even if such action hands the Rim to the Hegemony!”

  Barron ripped the headset off and tossed it aside. Dauntless’s bridge was silent, no sounds save the whining of the batteries firing. For an instant, Barron wasn’t sure if he’d gone too far, if the darkness he’d unleashed had unnerved even his most loyal officers and spacers.

  Then, it began. He didn’t know who had started it, but it was soft at first, almost inaudible. Then it grew in volume as more voices joined in. It rose and rose, until it was almost deafening, the sounds of voices pushed as hard as possible, and then also booted feet slamming on the polished metal floor.

  It was a chant, one that left no doubt where his people stood, at least on Dauntless.

  “Barron…Barron…Barron…Barron!”

  Chapter Forty

  Platform Aryantis

  Orbiting Megara, Olyus III

  Year of Renewal 265 (320 AC)

  The Second Battle of Megara – “It’s those forts or us…only one survives”

  “All fortress batteries are to maintain maximum fire, Kiloron. Engineering teams are to monitor reactors and energy transmission systems constantly. There are to be no interruptions in the frequency of attacks. Is that understood?” Chronos could see the officer almost cowering under the onslaught of his words. The Kriegeri wasn’t a coward, certainly. He’d seen to it himself, that only the very best had been assigned to the fortresses. But taking combat orders directly from Number Eight of the Hegemony was simply more than the officer was equipped to handle.

  “Yes, Number Eight, as you command.” The Kriegeri saluted, and he turned and hurried off to relay the orders.

  Chronos turned and looked out over the control room. The orbital platform was a mess, entire sections unfinished, cluttered with construction materials, long cables laying along the floor, serving as temporary connections between systems.

  These platforms are wrecks, not even close to ready for action.

  And they might very well be the fulcrum of victory.

  Chronos had ordered the railguns and their supporting power systems to be made operational almost immediately after the basic structures of the fortresses had been completed. Even then, as he stood in the center of the partially functional control room, almost half the station’s enclosed space remained vacuum, vast stores of supplies and electronic equipment sat piled on landing bays, and virtually none of the enormous proposed command and control systems were operational. Fire control for the main guns was almost the single exception to that, and Chronos understood by just how slim a margin the forts were maintaining the deadly barrage.

  He might have claimed credit for detailed foresight, for his wisdom in ensuring that the stations were ready to support the fleet in repelling an enemy attack. But the past several years had been full of humbling experiences, and whatever proclivities Chronos had ever had for unrestrained self-congratulation, were long gone.

  He didn’t even know why he’d insisted on beginning with the railguns. The size of them, perhaps, the concern that installation of such vast systems would be difficult once other sections of the stations had been completed. Or even just a whim. But he knew it would be a lie to say, even to himself, that he had foreseen the enemy attack, that he’d anticipated the need to defend Megara from a full-scale enemy attack would have arisen so soon.

  The appearance of the Confederation fleet, and its allies, in truth, had stunned him. He hadn’t seriously considered it as a possibility. He’d underestimated his adversaries yet again, and he’d allowed them to take him by surprise.

  Only to be bailed out by the gut instinct, or whatever it had been, that gave him thirty massive railguns, each half again the size of the largest shipborne units, and every one of them operational and ready to fire.

  Those guns have been the difference. Without them, the enemy’s audacity might have paid off.

  Very probably would have…

  “Commander, the scanners are detecting incoming small craft.”

  Chronos turned abruptly, his eyes moving toward the small screen, the only one in the control center that was operational, beyond the railgun targeting systems. There was a faint cloud, a cluster of tiny dots. They had been moving on a course that appeared to be toward the fleet’s battle line, just one more wave of the hated enemy bombers moving on the line of battleships.

  The station’s skeletal crew had barely paid attention. Even the temporary AI operating the fort’s systems had not identified the ships as a threat to any of the forts.

  Then, they changed course.

  Their thrust vectors had been indeterminate, at first, but now it was completely clear. They were heading toward Megara. Toward the fortresses.

  Of course…the only heavy guns out of range of their battleships…

  The guns that are really gutting their forces.

  Chronos felt a wave of frustration, one he could barely contain. He was the eighth most genetically perfect human being in existence, a genius by every definable measure of mental ability. He had excelled at every endeavor in his life…until he’d come to the Rim.

  The Rim dwellers were violent, and resourceful. They’d fought each other almost without pause for over a century. Their genetics might lag his, and those of his top commanders—with their chaotic breeding rituals, almost certainly they did—but they were masters of war. No matter how carefully he had planned operations, how meticulously he’d organized his forces, they had found a way, to survive at least, if not to prevail.

  Now, they were coming toward the fortresses, and he knew immediately, they were there to take out the heavy guns.

  Chronos didn’t respond to the report. He just watched, his mind racing, his eyes focused on the approaching strike force.

  It was small, fewer than two hundred of the attack craft. Nowhere close to enough to take out the fortresses. If they’d had any of their defense grids up.

  Which they didn’t.

  Not one of the fortresses had an active point defense network. The anti-assault batteries were just one of the things that had been postponed to allow the ship-killing railguns to be made operational.

  “Kiloron, send a communique to Commander Illius immediately. He is to detach two divisions of escorts at once to intercept the bombers moving on the fortresses.” But even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew his actions were too late.

  “Yes, Commander.” The Kriegeri turned, but even before he could carry out Chronos’s orders, the Master spoke again. “How many escorts are in position in and around Megara orbit?”


  There was a pause, as the officer turned and leaned over one of the workstations. “Twenty-three, Commander. Nine currently in orbit, and fourteen close enough to be in position before the enemy strike arrives.”

  Chronos could feel his fists clench. Twenty-three escorts against one hundred eighty enemy bombers. For all the massive forces locked in battle in the system, he realized it could all very well come down to twenty-three escorts fighting to blunt the attack of a dozen enemy squadrons.

  * * *

  “On me, all of you. Ignore those escorts. Ignore any defensive fire. We’re here for one purpose, and one purpose only. To take down those fortresses.” Olya Federov looked down at her scanner. There were almost two hundred enemy frigates and cruisers coming up behind her strike force, but they weren’t going to make it in time. She’d kept her people driving their ships hard, blasting at full thrust, without regard to safety margins or fuel status. Only one thing mattered. Hitting those fortresses, taking those massive railguns out of the battle. It was what the fleet needed, what Admiral Barron needed. If her people could do it, and do it quickly enough, there was just a chance that the desperate attack on Megara could actually succeed.

  Her eyes moved slightly, from the hundreds of escorts that could not prevent her attack, to the twenty-odd that could. The enemy ships formed a line less than fifty thousand kilometers from the planet, waiting for her people to move into range.

  She thought about accelerating, increasing her ships’ velocities as much as possible to reduce the time they would have the endure the enemy’s fire, but she held back. Her strike force wasn’t attacking a group of ships in deep space. They were hitting fortresses in Megara orbit. They had to come in and engage those stations, and that meant keeping velocities low…and taking all the fire the enemy could give.

  She could see the escorts’ point defense guns firing already, flashes on her display all around her formation. The pilots following her were mostly veterans, and she had more than two dozen aces in the group. That was helpful, and the skill of her pilots would certainly reduce the effectiveness of the incoming fire. But there was an element of luck there, too. She’d known some incredible pilots, men and women who were dead now, killed when their luck ran out, when their intuition failed them at the wrong moment.

  Then she saw one of her ships vanish, followed almost immediately by another. All across the front of her formation, enemy fire lanced out, great pulses of concentrated laser energy ripping by her bombers. The ships themselves were conducting wild evasive maneuvers, at least as much as possible, but with their targets in tight orbit around Megara, they were forced to exercise more restraint than they would have in open space.

  That would increase the death tool, too.

  Her own hand moved, a seeming random sequence of changes, smaller perhaps, and of shorter duration that she might have tried in a conventional fight, but so far, she’d managed to keep herself out of trouble. A dozen of her people had been hit, and at least eight of those destroyed outright, but the force continued on, unbroken, unbowed, fiercely determined.

  She stared ahead, seeing the large circle on her screen, a blue disk growing larger with each passing second. Megara.

  Her ships were close to the enemy escorts now, and the fire was growing heavier. But it wasn’t enough to stop the strike force. Her people would make it past the escorts, at least.

  Enough of them to get the job done.

  That was a guess…or a hope. She wasn’t sure which. She hadn’t even been convinced the entire strike force was enough. The answer would depend on the status of those forts. If their defense grids were fully online, and as powerful as she imagined they would be after five years of bombers ravaging Hegemony ships, her people had no chance.

  They had to close to point blank range. The gravitational effects of the planet, and even traces of the upper atmosphere added massively to the difficultly of targeting. Her people were flying in at low velocity, and that meant they could come within a hundred kilometers or less of the targets.

  At that range, a strong point defense network would blast her ships to atoms.

  There was no way to know, no point in speculating. The fleet needed those forts silenced, and her strike force, now down to fewer than one hundred sixty ships, was the only chance of that happening.

  They were past the escorts, but still in their range. The fire from behind was heavy, but all Federov could thing of was how grateful she was they’d only had to face a thin line of enemy frigates. The hundreds of ships racing back from the battle line’s position would have eradicated her entire formation.

  It was a difference of fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. But she knew it could decide the battle.

  She watched a flash on the scanner, the first enemy shot that had really threatened her. It had been close. Close enough to make the hair on her neck stand up.

  But she had more important things to think about than enemy fire. The forts were visible now on her display, and the readout showed the range dropping rapidly. It was time.

  She flipped on the comm, opening the channel to all her people. “We’re here. It’s time. It’s those forts or us…only one survives.”

  She angled her ship, setting up for her attack run. The fire from the escorts had dropped off. She knew the frigates were coming about, looking to enter orbit and close again, but it gave her people the time they needed. She was still nervous about fire from the platforms themselves, but the strike force was well within range, and there hadn’t been a shot fired.

  Was it possible? Had she gotten her people in, slipped between the enemy escort forces and hit the unfinished stations, and were they truly devoid of any operational point defense networks?

  Her eyes fixed on one of the forts, the biggest one. It was straight ahead, less than a thousand kilometers from her position. That was insanely close by the standards of most space combat, but she going to come in a lot closer than that.

  She was decelerating hard as she made the approach, slowing her ship almost to a standstill. Her hand gripped the throttle, her finger on the firing stud as her ship roared in, dropping below five hundred kilometers.

  Four hundred….three hundred…

  * * *

  Chronos stood and stared at the display, watching in horror as the enemy bomber flew right toward the station. The ship was less than two hundred kilometers out, and two dozen others were following right behind. His thin line of escorts had done what they could, and he had enough force on the way to obliterate every bomber out there, at least five times over.

  But it was going to be too late. Battles were decided by numbers, tactics…and by time. The stations were large, but their armor plating was incomplete, their defense nets non-existent. He knew he was going to lose them to the enemy attack, most likely by a margin of fifteen minutes.

  He was standing there right in the center of the biggest target on the enemy scanners. Chronos wasn’t afraid. He was no coward. Even the thought of his new child never meeting him failed to break him down. But he worried about his fleet, about the battle and what would happen if the stations were destroyed.

  And, he was worried about who would see to getting Akella out of the system, if need be.

  He almost despaired, but he knew, if he didn’t survive, Illius would see it done. His second-in-command was highly capable…and a friend.

  He will make sure Akella is safe…and our child.

  That thought was still on his mind when the station shook wildly, as one plasma torpedo after another slammed into its massive hull. Chronos spun around, staring at the display, and shouting across the room for damage reports.

  But before he got an answer, an explosion rocked the control center. A wall of flame ripped across the deck, and slammed into him.

  Pain, unimaginable pain, and then something else, a cool feeling, the searing heat gone.

  The fire suppression system, his mind told him…it’s one of the active systems.

  But the lucidity lasted only a fe
w seconds, and then it was gone. The fire was gone, but the pain endured, even increased. He cried out, the sound of his own voice seeming somehow distant.

  Then he fell, and as he did there was relief, numbness.

  Darkness.

  Chapter Forty-One

  CFS Dauntless

  Olyus System

  Year 320 AC

  The Second Battle of Megara – “The time for victory is here!”

  “Resplendent has been destroyed, Admiral. And Commitment. The Palatian contingent has lost Varianus, as well, and…Invictus is severely damaged.”

  Barron had been half-listening to Atara’s casualty reports. He knew it was her job as his aide, and miraculously, she’d not only managed it flawlessly, but none of her duties as the head of his staff seemed to reduce her effectiveness as Dauntless’s captain. But as much as he knew she had no choice but to sound off as each ship went down, he really didn’t want to hear it. He’d led them all to Megara, and he’d already accepted that whatever fate befell them all, it was his fault.

  But, for the first time, none of that mattered He was already morose, teetering on the edge of a pit of black despair, held out only by the iron bands of duty. Duty to the Confederation, to stand at his post until the very end, to bring every bit of fight that remained in him to the enemy.

  And duty to those spacers he’d led into the very maw of hell’s fire. He didn’t care if he survived the battle, not anymore, but he owed every spacer in the fleet, sweating and bleeding and fighting with the last of their strength, his very best to bring them back home.

  Through his hazy comprehension of the casualty reports, though, the name Invictus struck him hard. The Palatian flagship carried Vian Tulus, the Imperator and a man he trusted completely. He would mourn his blood brother’s death on a personal level, of course, but Barron the man was already so distraught he dared fate to even try to hurt him further.