by Jay Allan
The battle is over, my God, it’s over…
* * *
“Tyler!” Atara Travis’s voice was a high-pitched screech, as unlike his longtime comrade as anything he’d ever heard. His insides tensed, wondering what kind of new crisis she could have found, what would have so unnerved the stone-cold veteran.
“What is it, Atara?” Barron had begun to allow himself to believe his people had won the victory, and the thought of some new disaster was more than he thought he could take.
“New contact…it just appeared on the display. The stealth unit…they must have shut down the stealth unit.” She was excited, he realized, not panicked. Happy.
“What are you talking about, Atara?”
“Pegasus, Admiral. We’re picking up Pegasus on the scanners.”
The words hit Barron like a brick. It wasn’t possible, was it? She was dead. He hadn’t even begun to figure out how he was going to move past her death, but he hadn’t doubted it, not since the tragic moment he’d watched with his own eyes as Hermes was destroyed.
But he could see the contact, too, a small blue circle in the display, where no ship had been seconds before.
Can it be? He struggled to maintain his composure, as a flood of hope and despair and rage and vengeance swirled around inside him, like some titanic storm.
Then, Atara spoke again, and his doubts poured away, like water flowing from holes in the bottom of a container.
“Tyler, we have an incoming communique. It’s Captain Lafarge, Admiral…for you.”
* * *
Olya Federov pulled her hand back abruptly, as a shower of sparks flew up around her fighter’s controls. The ship was on its last legs, coming in far too fast to even attempt a landing. She was frantically trying to get the ship’s systems operational enough to get back to Dauntless, but she was losing hope with each passing second.
She was wounded. She hadn’t even noticed that until after she’d struggled to get her battered ship back on course toward the fleet. She’d felt the warm wetness first, blood she’d quickly realized, and then the pain began to register.
Now, her arm was numb, and she could see the electrical burns on her fingers, her hand. Her lungs were like fire, the mix of caustic chemicals leaking from her ship’s systems poisoning what remained of her air. She wasn’t the sort to give up…ever. But she realized she wasn’t going to be able to land. She doubted she could even get her ship to Dauntless, and even if she did, she couldn’t risk closing the sole open landing bay on the battered warship. There were still fifty of her people coming in, and they were all low on fuel.
I’ll have to eject…hope for the best.
She was far from Dauntless, from any of the fleet’s battleships. Too far. It would take incredible luck for a retrieval boat to find her in time, especially with the Hegemony fleet still in the system. The two forces had ceased fire, and they were warily eyeing each other, the Hegemony ships seemingly content to withdraw if they were allowed to do so unmolested, and the exhausted Grand Alliance fleet happy to watch them go if they were of a mind to do so.
Still, the situation was far from ideal. Perhaps if she tried again, even a few bursts of well-aimed thrust could get her closer…
Then she felt something. Heat. Then more pain, searing agony. The air in the cockpit was thick now with brown smoke, and she could feel the fire raging just behind her, consuming what remained of her ship’s oxygen. She pulled the visor of helmet down and buttoned up her survival gear, wincing in pain with almost every move. Then she hit the eject controls.
Nothing.
She did it again, and a third time.
Still nothing.
Damn!
She reached down, pulled the cover off the control panel, shoved her fingers down, clawing at the mechanism. The cockpit was an inferno, and she knew her survival suit was the only thing keeping her alive in the blazing heat. She’d switched to bottled air when she pulled on the helmet, and that, at least, was fresh and cool, at least, a massive improvement over the acidic nightmare she’d been breathing an instant before.
But if she didn’t get out of her ship in the next few seconds, she knew she never would.
She yanked at the controls again, almost frantically…and then, she felt something.
Her seat jerked hard, and she was pushed up, and then new pain, the feeling of bones breaking.
She was floating, out of her ship, drifting through space. She wasn’t sure what had happened. Her best guess was the cockpit hadn’t entirely broken away, and her right shoulder and leg had slammed hard into as she ejected.
The pain from her injuries was almost unbearable, and she remained as still as she could, floating in the void, grateful, at least, for the lack of gravity pushing down on shattered bones and ravaged tissue. Whatever rationality remained to her focused at first on the unlikelihood of the evident fact that the survival suit remained spaceworthy. That would buy her another few hours, and at least if she didn’t die from her wounds.
But she realized a rescue was a terrific longshot. A quick glance at one of the readouts inside her helmet told her all she needed to know.
The shock of the ejection, of the crash against the cockpit, had damaged her transponder.
Without that signal, whatever small chance she had of being found had plunged exponentially. She’d made it out of her ship…barely.
But that was as far as she was going to go.
At least we won the battle. She tried to gain solace from that, to keep her last thoughts on victory rather than despair.
The last casualty…you came all this way, fought hard, brought your people back, and you’re probably going to die right here.
At least we won. She repeated the thought, the only one she had that wasn’t dark and grim.
It was a bright side, after all. If she had to die, far better to do it in victory.
Olya Federov had always hated losing.
She grew faint, felt her clarity fading away, wondering with what strength remained to her if she would go down in the history texts as the last casualty of the Second Battle of Megara.
* * *
Epilogue
Sickbay
CFS Dauntless
“She’s been fighting at my side for so long, I can’t remember launching without her…out there somewhere.” Jake Stockton stood over the medpod that held Olya Federov. The pilot was critically injured. She’d been almost the last casualty of the battle, and she’d been given up for dead until Stockton took his fighter out with the rescue boats, refusing to give up on her, and somehow managed to pick up the faint signal of her badly damaged transponder. She’d been close to dead when they’d gotten her back. In fact, she probably had been dead, though not so far gone that the med team hadn’t been able to resuscitate her.
Stockton had been a fixture at her bedside ever since. He’d haunted the doctors and the med techs, but he still hadn’t been able to get a straight answer to a simple question. “Is she going to make it?”
He was harassing them for an answer he knew they didn’t have. None of them knew. It was that close.
He’d seen comrades recover from grievous wounds before…and he’d watched others die. Federov was one hell of a fighter, he knew that much. If anybody was going to hang on and find the way back, it was her.
Stara Sinclair nestled closer to him, her arm wrapped around his back, looking down silently at his side. Sinclair had known Federov as long as Stockton had, and the two had been close friends for years. Federov had always been somewhat of a loner, but all those select few who’d come into her small circle of friends thought only the best of her. That group included Stockton and Sinclair, of course, but also Tyler Barron and Atara Travis. And, Dirk Timmons, who’d struggled back a few years before from his own almost-fatal wounds. They had all been in sickbay, passing through like some kind of ongoing vigil, as though they believed their thoughts and support could bring her back. Perhaps they could.
“She’s strong, Jake.
You know that. She’ll make it.”
Stockton wasn’t sure if he thought Stara was being sincere, and even if she was, if she’d simply let her emotions take over and control her judgment. No one had seen more pilots die than Stara. She’d sat countless times in flight control, trying to talk damaged ships back in, listening to the final, terrified words of more doomed pilots than he could easily count. She was tough, he knew that. But everybody had their limit.
Even you, Jake. You have a limit too, no matter what nonsense you tell yourself…
He closed his eyes, just for a few seconds. The warmth of Stara standing next to him was a source of comfort, something that had become a rarity in his life. He was devastated at the thought of losing another old friend, but he was greedy for the feelings Stara gave him. He’d driven himself like a machine during the battle, fighting constantly and without rest for days. He hadn’t even realized how close he’d come to breaking until he’d stopped…and the fatigue and heartache hit him all at once.
There was good news, though. The battle had been a victory, the second in a row won against the enemy. The Hegemony fleet hadn’t been destroyed, and it hadn’t been sent fleeing back to its distant home far across the Badlands. But it had been pushed back from Megara. Even if the planet itself was still held by three million entrenched Kriegeri.
He didn’t know what was next, where the war would go. He had an idea of the losses the fleet had suffered, and one thing he could read from those grim figures was the reality that there would be no more offensives, no operations of any kind…for a long while. The fleet had to repair itself and rebuild, and that would take time.
Enough time for Federov to recover, to be ready for the war’s next phase. If she recovered at all.
He looked down at her one more time. “Come on, Olya. You can make it. I know you can.”
He said the words, but he wasn’t sure he believed them. He hoped she would survive, certainly, that she would return to duty…but he just didn’t know what he really expected.
Just like he didn’t know what was next for the fleet, or for the Confederation.
For any of them.
Hegemony’s Glory
Orbiting Dannith
“The enemy’s recapture of Megara, or at least of the system itself, was unfortunate, though perhaps not as disastrous a loss as we may have believed. Our logistics are greatly simplified by the pullback of the main fleet to Dannith, and the enemy was so badly damaged in their victory, they have been unable even to attempt the recovery of any of the other occupied systems. We were only at Olyus because we had hoped a quick capture of their capital would lead to a widespread capitulation, but we already knew that was a failure even before the enemy retook the system.”
Akella sat next to the medical unit, talking softly to Chronos. Her military commander, her friend—and at the current time, also her mate—lay there, listening to her words, but rarely offering any of his own. His wounds were severe, nearly fatal, but Hegemony medical science was highly advanced, and he was already recovering. Physically, at least. His spirit and his morale were proving to be more obstinate problems, which was so unlike Chronos, it had her very concerned.
“You must shake this intolerable melancholy, old friend. There is no time for it. We still have work to do, and there is no one else I would trust with it. I should have returned to the capital weeks ago…but I couldn’t leave until I knew you would recover. Fully…physically, mentally, emotionally. Your body has begun to heal, and now it is time to drive away whatever ill feelings have taken hold of you.”
“Number One, I am perfectly fine.” Chronos’s words were hollow, devoid of emotion and commitment. More than anything, he sounded exhausted. “I still have some pain, and it will be several more weeks before I am up and around fully, but I can assure you that when I am, my mental state will be no impediment to my continued efforts to subjugate the Rim.”
She hesitated. The words were good, close at least to what she wanted to hear…but she didn’t believe any of it. Chronos was hurting, the supreme confidence that had always been such a part of who he was, gone, replaced by caution and somber thoughts.
But she had news. News, she thought might help.
“The Rim dwellers have proven to be far more difficult adversaries than we had imagined, but that is no fault of yours, Chronos. Indeed, I am as much to blame, for providing too little force to crush them quickly, as should have been done. I would correct that now, but I need you to return to your old form, to be the commander I need on this front.”
She paused for a few seconds. “To be the commander we need to implement Project Zed, and to finish this war once and for all.”
“Project Zed? It is ready?” She could hear a spark of renewed spirit in Chronos’s voice. They had discussed deploying Zed to the Rim front a number of times, but she had been hesitant to agree, and the project hadn’t been ready when they’d last discussed it anyway.
“It is not only ready, it is on its way to Dannith, even now.”
Chronos was still weak, and his voice was soft, forced. But there was some sign, at least, of hope…or something struggling to become hope. “If it is all we have hoped, we truly will be able to finish this troublesome war…and finally bring these frustrating, gifted Rim dwellers into the Hegemony, for the good of all humanity.”
“For the good of all humanity,” she repeated. It was the mantra of the Hegemony, the very reason he great power existed. Too many of its people, she knew, Masters included, forgot that sacred duty.
Akella had been reluctant to throw Zed and the last of the reserves into the fight on the Rim, but her own extended visit had changed her mind. Chronos was right, the Rim dwellers were extraordinary. Their strength had to become part of the Hegemony…whatever the cost.
“There is something else, my friend, another development effort I prioritized, and one that is also ready to implement, at least on a test basis. Red Storm.”
She looked down as Chronos’s eyes widened with surprise. Red Storm had been in development for some time, but he’d been unaware of its recent status.
“This will all come as quite a surprise to our enemies, my old friend…and I have no doubt that, armed with Project Zed and Red Storm, you will sweep the Rim dwellers before you…and bring them into the Hegemony where they belong. Where they must be.”
Admiral’s Quarters
CFS Dauntless
Tyler Barron sat quietly on the sofa, a stack of reports piled high on the table next to him, and Andi Lafarge’s head on his leg. She was sleeping soundly, stretched out on the long couch, and he was both happy watching her rest, and a little jealous, too. Sleep had become a difficult thing for him, even more so than he’d let on to her, and an hour or two a night had become the norm.
That you think you’ve let on. Andi was always harder to fool than he expected. For all you know, she’s got detailed files on the whole thing. ‘Subject slipped into a light proto sleeplike state for forty-seven minutes, then woke up, screaming at a nightmare, and then spent the next three hours, fifteen minutes working on fleet manifests.’
He wouldn’t put it past her. He knew she loved him, that she would have harassed him about getting more sleep if she thought it would do any good. But she knew very well how little he liked being told what to do and, perhaps more to the point, she understood that he desperately wished he could sleep more. His sleeplessness was no choice of his own. The insomnia was a symptom of the war, and put against the millions who’d died, it didn’t seem like that terrible a price to pay.
It did help him catch up on the workload. Hours passed slowly in the middle of the night with nothing to do, but it had been a very long time since he’d had nothing to do.
There was something else troubling him, too. He was still shaken about how close he’d come to losing her, how surely he’d believed he had. His feelings and his pain had given him a true glimpse at what Andi’s death would feel like, and it haunted him like some unshakable spirit, inva
ding his thoughts, rendering sleep that had been difficult, almost impossible.
His and Andi’s relationship had been tumultuous, and one both of them had tried to keep at arm’s length time and time again. He was a naval officer, sworn to a life of duty. She was a hardened adventurer, a fighter, a woman who had made her way through desperate frontiers and deadly conflicts since she’d been a teenager. She was hardly the type to fit into a role as the ‘admiral’s wife’ and, he was ‘the admiral,’ a designation as inescapable as the deepest, darkest prison.
But those were excuses. They’d struggled to stay apart, faced endless dangers, fought, argued, screamed at each other like the warriors they both were. None of it had driven them away from each other. Instead, every crisis, every danger, every stolen moment they shared, had only pushed them closer together.
He’d told himself a hundred times…when the war is over, when there is peace, when things are less desperate…maybe then. But he didn’t believe that would ever happen, not anymore. He’d come to accept that his life would be one of war and strife, unending, for as long as he lasted, as may times as he managed to survive some deadly fight and press on.
It wasn’t ideal in terms of hearth and home, far from it, but he’d decided one thing, finally. He would have whatever life he could have with Andi, whatever moments they could share…because he knew either one of them could lose the other at any time.
Besides…who decided what the ‘admiral’s wife’ should be…or even what weapons she might pack under the flowing layers of her magnificent gown at whatever interminable political reception they were compelled to attend.