by Jay Allan
Cain glanced up at his tactical display. The battle was degenerating into a confused, wild melee. His eyes flashed to the side, settling on the small column of red symbols. The First Imperium had not employed nuclear weapons. As in most of the earlier war, their doctrine seemed to regard the target worlds as their own, and their invasions as liberation efforts designed to destroy an invader. They refrained, therefore, from going nuclear. But Cain was under no such restriction. Caravalis was a human planet, with a population of just under a million—at least before the invasion. But the survival of mankind was at stake, and Erik Cain was prepared to sacrifice every man, woman, and child on the planet—including himself and all his soldiers—to destroy the First Imperium forces. Before they moved through the heart of Occupied Space. Before they reached Atlantia.
“Hector, get me Colonel Cho.” His voice was somber.
“Yes, General Cain.” Cho had been an enemy at one time, a junior officer for the Central Asian Combine during the devastating battles late in the Third Frontier War. But he had been an ally more recently, during the initial war against the First Imperium. And now Erik Cain had entrusted him with his nuclear arsenal.
“I want your weapons ready in twenty minutes, Colonel.”
“How many?”
“All of them.”
The line was silent for a few seconds. “General, we have thousands of unarmored troops out there.”
“I am aware of that, Colonel.”
“But a full strike will be devastating, as much to our own people as to the enemy.”
Cain’s voice was like iron. “I am aware of that as well, Colonel.” He paused. “But we are all expendable. There is only one absolute in this battle. The First Imperium must be stopped. Here. Now. I want you ready.” Another pause. Even Cain’s iron will was being put to its ultimate test. “Because if it appears we are losing this battle, you are to launch a full strike…and you are to do so without consideration for casualties caused to our own forces. Your only concern is the destruction of the enemy. You are to proceed no matter what. Even if you cannot reach me. Even if I am dead already. But the enemy does not leave here. Do you understand me, Colonel?”
There was a short pause then Cho’s voice came through the com. “Yes, General. Understood.”
Cain stared out over the field again. He could see Teller’s people approaching. They were the cream of humanity’s remaining warriors, the strongest and bravest remaining to the colors. C’mon, James. Cut these bastards off. Blow ‘em to hell…and don’t make me nuke everyone down here.
* * * * *
The cheers echoed through the corridors of the ship, momentarily drowning out the secondary explosions and the sounds of work crews frantically trying to fight the fires and stop the spread of the damage. Garret knew Pershing was dead. She would never fight another battle. Her spine was broken, and the thousands of kilometers of conduits spanning her 1,800 meter length were twisted wreckage. Her engines were destroyed, and her last surviving reactor was down to 20% output. But she was still there…and the last First Imperium warship was gone, blown into a floating pile of radioactive debris. His beloved flagship would give one last service, surviving long enough to get her crews home.
Garret sat in his command chair. The left side of his face was covered with blood, just beginning to dry into a crust. Half his bridge crew were casualties. Indeed, at least 50% of Pershing’s complement had been killed or wounded. Garret and his fleet had put all they had left into this fight, and winning the victory had taken it all.
“It’s time, sir.” The voice of the tactical officer seemed remote, distant. “Admiral Garret, sir? Are you ready to transfer the flag?”
Garret rose slowly from the well-worn chair, realizing in his heart it would be the last time. It felt disloyal to abandon Pershing, at least while she had some level of functionality, but he still had work to do, and his longtime flagship could no longer take him where he had to go. The war against the First Imperium was almost won, but there were stragglers, robot-controlled warships of astonishing power, all of which would keep fighting until they were hunted down and destroyed. He had to get them. He had to get them all. And he had nothing but the shattered remnants of a once-great fleet to do it.
* * * * *
“You go back to Armstrong, James. I’ll take half the Corps and Janissary survivors and flush out the last few remnants of the enemy.” There were small detachments of First Imperium robots remaining on a number of worlds. They were too small to seriously threaten humanity, but they would kill any people they encountered. The war was won, but there was still mopping up to do.
“You sure, Erik? I can take care of it if you want to go back.” Teller couldn’t hide the exhaustion in his voice. He knew his friend had to be even more spent, but there had always been something about Erik Cain, an almost inexhaustible capacity to drive himself further. Teller knew even Cain had a limit—all men did. But he’d never seen it.
“I’m sure. You earned an early ride home, my friend. I was two minutes, maybe three from ordering Cho to launch everything we had. That would have been the end of all of us. But then your people broke through. I’ve never seen a deadlier killing ground than the one you managed to set up.” He smiled at his friend. “Well done, General Teller. Well done.” And thank you for saving me from taking one more regret to my grave.
Teller smiled. “Thank you, Erik.” He paused. “Before I go, I want to tell you something. I won’t be the last to say this, I am sure, but I’d like to be the first. “This victory is yours. Yours and Garret’s. Without the two of you, none of the rest of us could have made it through.” He paused. “I don’t know where you get your strength from, but I thank whatever powers exist in the universe that you have it.”
Cain reached out and shook Teller’s hand. “Thank you, James.” He took a breath. “Now go back to Armstrong, and tell Cate Gilson she’d better listen to her doctors and get the hell better. Fast. Because as soon as I hunt these last few units down, I’m headed for Atlantia. It’s time for me to hang up these stars, for good this time.”
* * * * *
Sarah walked into the large front room of the house. When the AI informed her that Augustus Garret was there to see her, she immediately suspected something was wrong. Why would Garret be here without warning, without sending a message? But it wasn’t until she saw his face that she knew for sure.
“Sarah…I…” Garret spoke slowly, forcing out the choked words.
Her face went white. “Erik?”
“Sarah…I’m so sorry.” Fleet Admiral Augustus Garret was mankind’s greatest hero, a warrior idolized on a thousand planets. But it was an old man who stood in front of Sarah Cain, sad and broken. “I…” he tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. He didn’t know what to say. And as devastated as he was at the news of Erik Cain’s loss, he couldn’t imagine what it would do to her.
“How?” She barely managed to force out the single word.
“His ship was destroyed. He was on his way back, Sarah. He’d finished off the last enemy garrison, and he was on his way home.” Garret hesitated, struggling to continue. Sarah could see he was wracked with pain, with guilt. “I don’t know how it happened, Sarah. I thought we had gotten them all.” He paused, his voice choked with emotion. “I must have let one slip through, it’s the only answer.” He was looking down at the floor, unable to face her. “I missed one, Sarah, and it killed Erik…and all the Marines with him.”
Sarah felt the tears streaming down her face, but it was strangely detached. She had expected this news for fifty years, knew one day Erik’s luck would fail him. But fifteen years of peace and happiness had stripped her of the strength she’d counted on to see her through. Decades of constant war had made loss easier to accept, at least in some ways. But now, after all they’d been through, he was gone. Their life along the Atlantia coast, the joys they had fought a lifetime to win—it was over. Gone forever.
“Are you sure?” she croaked mis
erably, knowing as she did that Augustus Garret would not be there if he wasn’t certain.
“His ship disappeared…no distress call, nothing. I took the fleet there, Sarah. All of it. We scoured the space around its last reported location. We blasted out one communique after another, burned out our scanners, all the while hoping beyond hope that his ship was just stranded, her com units down.” He forced himself to look up, to meet her gaze. “Then we found a debris field, Sarah. We scanned it a hundred times. The reactor had blown, so there was nothing big enough to identify, but the total mass matched projections for a ship that size.”
Sarah was trying to hang onto what little control she had left, but she could feel it slipping away. She lunged forward, wrapping her arms around Garret and plunging her face into his chest, crying inconsolably. She felt his arms around her, trying to provide what comfort he could. She could feel him shaking. The grim, invincible admiral was broken—by the loss of a friend, and the heartrending grief of another.
“We kept looking, Sarah. We explored every centimeter of space, anywhere a lifeboat could have gotten. If there had been anything, so much as a man in a suit of armor floating powerless through the void, we would have found it. But…there was nothing.” She could hear the pain in his voice, the sense of guilt and failure. She knew his self-flagellation was undeserved, that Erik would be the last one to want his friend to carry more pain for his loss. But she knew Garret too well to imagine that he would ever feel differently.
Sarah tightened her grip. In many ways, Garret had been like a father to her, especially in the years after General Holm had died. She knew there was nothing that could console her, no comfort or support anyone could offer her. But she couldn’t let go. She knew that when she did, she would have to begin the rest of her life…and she would have to go on without Erik. She realized she would, somehow. She was a Marine and the wife of a Marine, and she would accept nothing less from herself. She had two sons who needed her, teenaged boys who idolized their father—and who would be devastated at the news. But now, she clung to her old friend and put off the future. Just for a few moments…
Chapter 20
Command Center – Spaceship Eagle One
Sol System – 1.2 AU Past the Orbit of Pluto
Earthdate: 2318 AD (17 Years After the Fall)
Darius Cain sat quietly in the command chair of Eagle One’s control center, deep in thought. The meeting on Mars had gone on for hours, each attendee reporting in turn on various events, none of them obviously linked, but all of them possibly connected nevertheless. There was much to consider.
First and foremost, at least as far as Darius was concerned, someone was after the Eagles. He believed that even more now than he had before. If a hidden enemy was attempting to frame his private army there had to be a reason behind it, a longer term plan to destroy the Black Eagles. And just making his people appear to be guilty of attacks they did not execute wouldn’t be the end of it. People might hate the Eagles—indeed, most already feared them at least—but that didn’t give them the courage or capability to attack and destroy his band of deadly fighters. Whatever people might say, whatever whispers might be exchanged in the dark, everyone in Occupied Space knew what fighting the Eagles meant. And they just got a reminder. News of the destruction of the Gold Spears had spread like wildfire. The complete obliteration of one of the other Great Companies sent a message, confirmation of what people had already suspected. The Black Eagles were in a class by themselves.
No, there is more to this than a PR war. Whoever is doing this will eventually make a more direct move. This is all just preliminary skirmishing. And I have to be ready when the shit hits the fan.
“Are your people set, Colonel Kuragina? I want them ready to hit the ground as soon as we reach Eris.” He wondered why he’d chosen Cyn Kuragina’s people to bring with him to the Sol system. They’d been the hardest hit on Lysandria, and they deserved a long rest and time to replace their losses. But he knew they were questioning themselves, feeling as though they should have swept aside the Spears’ mysterious allies. Cain suspected those 3,000 troops had been a force far deadlier than Kuragina and her soldiers imagined, but his people felt they should have crushed any force they’d never even heard of. Cain had ordered them to join him as a way of showing that his confidence in them was undiminished. After all, he’d just been exerting some caution in bringing an escort to Sol; he hadn’t really expected any fighting.
But now, that unexpected combat was looming. Vance’s probes had revealed a concentration of structures on Eris, a base of some kind—something that didn’t belong on the dwarf planet so far out in the depths of the Sol system, past the warp gates. The Martian Confederation claimed the entire system, but Mars had suffered enormous damage in the Fall, and its attempts to rebuild had required prioritizing its needs. Its outer system facilities were severely pruned, and those in the great depths beyond the two warp gates were abandoned completely. That had made sense at the time. Eris and the other trans-Neptunian objects of the Kuiper Belt and beyond were of little value, whatever resources they offered long eclipsed by richer sources in other systems. But now it was apparent that the Confederation’s lax vigilance had allowed someone—and Cain couldn’t imagine how it wasn’t an enemy—to occupy that real estate, and fortify it strongly.
“We’re ready, sir. The armor is checked out and ready, and the troopers are on alert, waiting for the orders to suit up.” Kuragina’s voice was firm. He could hear the resolve, the determination to wipe away a disgrace that only she herself—and her warriors—recognized. Cain suddenly realized another reason he had brought the diminutive but tough-as-nails Kuragina, one he hadn’t consciously considered before. Somewhere over the last year or so, the mysterious recruit turned senior officer had become his best regimental commander. Falstaff’s Black Regiment was the Eagles’ senior unit after the Teams, but Cain had seen Kuragina’s Whites in action on Lysandria, and he had to admit, she’d forged them into a weapon as tempered and sharp as Falstaff’s unit.
“Cyn, I want you to exercise extreme care on this drop. We know very little about the enemy—numbers, equipment…nothing. Even who they are.” He knew the White Regiment would be at a fever pitch, ready to prove to their commander that they were as good as any of the other Eagles…something Darius Cain already believed with all his heart. He knew they could do the job, whatever that turned out to be, but he was worried about foolish heroics, about watching his veterans throw their lives away trying to prove their courage.
Such foolishness accompanies war, he thought. Honor and duty and loyalty…they are noble concepts, yet they can be so destructive. How can Kuragina’s people believe they have failed me? Yet nothing I say can purge them of this nonsense…and despite my best efforts, they will wash away the non-existent stain with blood. And too much of it will be their own…
“Yes, General.” There was a short pause. “We’ll get the job done, sir. You can depend on us.”
I do depend on you, Cyn. You and all your people, with every fiber of my being. But you won’t believe that until you fight for me again…and more of you die. “Very well, Colonel.” He closed the com line and sighed. He hadn’t expected her to take his point, but he’d had to try.
He felt a rush of guilt about sending his people in at all. His initial thought had been to obliterate the base with a few nukes. Most contracts forbade the use of nuclear weapons except in an emergency. Those who paid the Eagles to conquer worlds for them wanted productive new populations, not radioactive graveyards. But his people were well-equipped with atomic ordnance nevertheless—and his vessels were some of the few in space that still packed even a small complement of the massive half-gigaton ship-to-ship weapons that had last been carried en masse by Admiral Garret’s huge fleets.
Unfortunately, vaporizing the base would do little to provide the answers he needed. Who was targeting his people? And why? Was this enemy a danger to Occupied Space? He had to know. He needed prisoners…and intac
t facilities to investigate. And that meant sending his people in on the ground.
He turned toward Eagle One’s tactical officer. “I want all weapons systems checked and double-checked. If we miss something and it costs us lives on the ground, by God, I will space whoever is at fault.” Kuragina’s people were going to drop onto Eris, but not before his ships did one hell of a softening up job.
“Yes, sir,” came the prompt reply. “Projected entry into extreme weapons range, two hours, eleven minutes.”
A little over two hours, Cain thought. Then maybe we’ll start to unravel this mystery.
* * * * *
Roderick Vance stared at the data on his screen. How the hell did someone build a base that big under my nose? You know how, you old fool. Your own weakness. For decades you knew the council’s isolationism was destructive, that one day the Confederation would pay the price, but you were too exhausted, too spent to do what had to be done. Now, it appears the day is at last here. You will do what you have to do, but now more will die because of your failure to act earlier.
He had no idea what was waiting on Eris. The base had effective shielding, and his limited probes had only been able to gather basic information. He had a rough idea of the facility’s size—big!—but he had no real data on its weaponry and defenses. And even after he’d obtained proof that someone had built a massive base right in the Sol system, the council had refused to deploy any military assets, preferring to debate endlessly rather than act.