by Jay Allan
Holsten listened, even as hope drained away, and cold guilt and remorse filled him. Striker was the closest thing the aloof spy had ever had to a true friend.
“…I…leave the…fleet…to…him…”
Holsten was a man who had remarkable control over his emotions, yet now, for the first time he could ever recall, he felt his eyes watering.
“…tell him…he can…do it.”
Holsten’s eyes darted up for an instant, even as the med team disembarked and began running over.
“Tell him…I believe….believe in…him…counting…on him…”
Holsten closed his eyes tightly, struggling to hold back the tears trying to escape. He couldn’t remember crying, ever, not even as a child…but he knew he was close just then.
“I will tell him.” It was all he could manage, all he could say. Then the words were gone, and he just stared in pure horror.
The medical team raced up behind him, and Holsten stood up, turning to face them, his gray suit soaked with blood, his expression on of utter grief.
He looked at the head medic, and his eyes told the story, the grim fact that he confirmed a few seconds later with two words, choked out through the bitter tightness of his throat.
“He’s dead.”
* * *
Andi threw her hand up, grabbing Lille’s arm, as the assassin struggled to bring his blade down. He was stronger than her, and she struggled to resist, but with each instant, the knife moved closer. She watched it, knowing it was her death, and, finally, she reached up with her other hand, dropping her own knife, struggling with all the strength that remained to her to hold back her enemy’s final blow.
She was losing. He was stronger than she was, and the fight had come to close quarters, to a battle of raw power. Her mind raced, and she tried with all the stamina that remained to her to come up with something, a plan, some kind of move. She would die if she had to, she’d been ready for that since Dannith, as long as she could take her enemy with her. But, for Lille to beat her, for her tormentor to finish her and walk away…it was just too much to contemplate.
She stepped back, gasping in a ragged breath, and trying to somehow ignore the pain in her side. The blade was closer, moving slowly but steadily toward her throat. She could feel panic setting in, and her thoughts became jumbled, disordered, images of combat tactics mixing with personal memories, the faces of those she cared about.
She was almost finished. She’d put all she had into tracking Lille, and now she was fighting with every bit of dwindling power left in her. But, she didn’t think it was going to be enough. She’d almost gotten Lille, she’d tracked the man with unyielding intensity, and probably came closer to killing him than anyone ever had.
But, close was nothing, and losing was losing.
No…
She felt her stubbornness growing in intensity, some kind of strength, derived almost entirely from her pigheadedness, filling her, reviving the dead weight of her limbs. She couldn’t beat Lille in a test of strength…but she would find another way.
She dropped down to one knee, letting her body partially collapse, pulling herself down, away from Lille’s strike as she pulled her arms away, and let his blade come down into the empty space where her throat had been an instant before.
The assassin leaned forward, the hard blow into the empty air costing him some portion of his balance…and Andi used the time well. She dove forward, screaming loudly at the pain that radiated to every part of her body, and she grasped her blade from the ground, bringing it up and around…and plunging it into Lille’s gut.
The assassin yelled, and he threw himself back, pulling his body off her knife. She’d gained the edge, and against any other opponent, her perfectly executed move would have been the end. But, Ricard Lille was unique, a master fighter, a stone-cold killer, and Andi was as exhausted and wounded as he was. Lille paused, for a fraction of a second, and then he lunged forward, reaching out and grabbing hold of the chunk of metal in Andi’s side, twisting it, ripping it out and sending it skittering across the roof with a series of loud clanks.
Andi howled, every bit of breath in her body expelled as she screamed at the unbearable pain. Her mind went dark, and there was nothing at all but unyielding torment. Still, despite her agony, despite the fading strength of her body, she’d somehow seen the opportunity Lille’s attack had given her, and even as the assassin was gripping the spike in her side, she’s plunged her knife into him once again.
Lille staggered back, blood pouring from his back now, and he stood, stunned, barely able to move, even as Andi faced him, wobbling on her feet, tears streaming down her face, her own geyser of blood erupting from her now grievously opened wound.
She had nothing left, but a look across the short distance told her that Lille didn’t either. She was close, so close. The assassin was almost done, hanging on by the same thread that kept her standing. She couldn’t fail now, not this close to her goal. She wanted to live, but if her death was the price of victory, so be it. It was unthinkable to come so close to killing Lille and to fail. She gathered up all her strength, every last bit of endurance and power she could muster…and, she lunged forward, her arms extended in one last, desperate attempt to push Lille over the edge of the roof.
Her hands struck his chest, and the impact sending a wave of pain down her arms and all through her body. Her vision was almost gone, blacked out, and she was barely able to follow what was happening. She caught a hazy image, Lille, moving, falling back toward the edge. She wasn’t sure if it was real, or if she was hallucinating. She heard a yell, words coming from the figure in front of her, but she couldn’t understand any of it.
She caught the blur of motion, and now she was sure she saw Lille falling backwards, slipping over the edge…and his hand, reaching up as he did, grabbing onto the torn sleeve of her jacket, and pulling her after him.
Pulling her over the edge of the roof, as they both plunged into the nothingness below.
Chapter Fifty-Six
CFS Dauntless
250,000,000 Miles from Planet Ulion
Venga System
Year 317 AC
The Battle of Ulion – Phase 7
“All fighters launched, Admiral. The strike force is moving in-system at maximum acceleration.” Atara Travis’s voice was stone cold. She sat at her station, Dauntless’s command chair, and she juggled her duties, bouncing almost effortlessly between acting as the battleship’s captain, and as Barron’s primary aide. It was something ‘the book’ said was impossible to do, at least to do well, but she felt an almost telepathic link to her friend and longtime comrade…and something not too far from that with Dauntless itself.
This Dauntless.
Her Dauntless.
She’d loved the old ship with all her heart, but that one had been Tyler’s, in every way an inanimate object could grip a man’s soul. Barron had become attached to the newer, larger ship to carry the name, but she knew it could never be to him what its predecessor had been, his first command.
As the new Dauntless was her first.
“Bring us forward, Captain. It looks like the party’s well along without us. I don’t think Clint Winters would mind sharing, though…do you?”
“No, sir, I don’t.” Travis snapped back, in a tone that had to send a chill down the spine of any living creature.
Travis worked her controls, sending the orders to her own engine room, as she relayed them to the fleet. “All ships…forward. Battle plan Omega-1.”
Dauntless vibrated as her engines fired, and the great battleship blasted forward at maximum thrust. Travis had served aboard both Dauntless’s in all manner of conditions and states of damage, but the battleship was in perfect shape as it moved forward, its dampeners and compensators making 22g acceleration feel like almost nothing.
“All ships accelerating at full thrust, Admiral. Project we will enter primary range in…sixteen minutes.”
* * *
“Alright…I
know most of you haven’t fought against the Hegemony yet…” Hell, a lot of them have never flown against any enemy. “…but you’ve read all the reports, listened to the briefings. You all know what to do, so there’s no point in beating it to death. Let’s just get the hell up there, and do the work.” Dirk Timmons sat in the cockpit of his fighter, feeling somewhat surprised at how normal it felt. It had been years since he’d been sidelined, relegated to training duty by the loss of his legs in battle.
He’d had a hard time dealing with his wounds, learning how to adapt. But, it was mostly the pointless regulations that had kept him from combat duty. It had taken a while to get his prosthetic legs fully adjusted and matched to his body, but now they worked perfectly, so much so that he occasionally forgot they weren’t the ones he’d been born with. He’d tried again and again to have the regs changed, or to gain some special exemption to get himself back in the cockpit…but the end of the Union War had reduced the need for pilots. He’d been showered with platitudes, given medals and commendations, called a hero so many times he’d come to hate the word, and, the entire time, he’d been told again and again his place was training the next generation of pilots. But, a return to combat duty had eluded him, and as much as he poured his heart and soul into prepping his students for the war they would one day likely have to fight, he’d grown more and more lost, cut off from the one thing that had set him apart, the skill that had made him great.
The one that he’d lost, that he’d been compelled to leave behind.
All it took to get it back was a near civil war, followed by an unstoppable invasion from a previously unknown superpower. Timmons found the whole situation hard to believe…but he was deeply grateful to be in the fight and not stuck on the sidelines, reading reports and waiting helplessly to see what happened next.
“Captain Timmons, are you going to assign us targets, or should we pick them?”
He recognized the voice. It was one of his students, and that meant he was twenty-one or twenty-two years old, an adult by any measure, and as an Academy cadet, one of considerable aptitude and maturity. But, to the old veteran’s ears, he sounded like a child.
“We use call signs in battle, son…and mine’s Warrior.” Even uttering his old alias filled him with a sense of power. He’d despaired of every flying another combat mission, come as close as he could to making his peace with a life behind a desk, or in front of the fireplace. But, now he was back…back where he’d never expected to be.
Back where he belonged.
“Yes, Warrior…”
“And, you pick your own targets. Any ship you think you can hit. This battle’s already sunk deep down into the pit of hell. There’s no more room for finesse here. It’s a close-range knife fight to the death, and there are no rules. Throw that blasted ‘book’ away and follow me in…and let your instincts come out and guide you, all of you.”
He pulled back on the throttle, closing his eyes for an instant as he felt the hard force of acceleration before the dampeners activated. It was an unpleasant feeling, almost like suffocating under ten or more times your body weight, but for Dirk ‘Warrior’ Timmons, it felt like coming home.
“Let’s go…we’ve got some Hegemony ships to kill.”
* * *
“Bring us forward, Commander. I’ve heard about the Hegemony, discussed tactics for facing them, and listened to veteran officers wailing like children at their approach. It is high time I wet my spear with their blood.” Vian Tulus sat on the bridge of Invictus, the new Alliance flagship, named for the famed vessel lost ten years before, in a titanic struggle that had led, along a convoluted path, to the current Confederation-Alliance pact, and the strange situation where a Palatian Imperator called a foreign officer friend and blood-brother.
“Yes, your Supremacy.” Cilian Globus sat next to Tulus, newly appointed Commander Magnus, the senior officer among all Palatians, second in authority only to the Imperator himself. “Your Supremacy, Admiral Barron has issued fleet launch orders.”
“Very well, Cilian…see to it. We wouldn’t want our Confederation brothers to seize all the glory, would we now?”
“No, sir…we would not.”
Tulus sat quietly, watching his people execute their operations, bringing the big ship into the battle. He knew his spacers were doing the same all across the fleet. The Alliance navy was still recovering from the grievous losses of the civil war, but for all the damage that conflict had done, now he looked around at former Reds and Grays, sitting side by side, working with each other, ready to fight together, as single unit.
Palatian codes of honor had caused their share of pain and trouble in Alliance history, but they had many advantages, too. Tulus doubted any other nation could fight a civil was so bloody and brutal, and then reunite, with so little rancor and residual bitterness. The vast majority of Palatian warriors had fought for the side they believed to be right, and their former adversaries recognized the honor in that, and accepted them back into the fold. There had been some tension, of course, a few remaining bad feelings, but the prospect of a deadly new enemy had cleared all of that away.
The Palatians were there, alongside their Confederation allies. Tulus was there, at the side of his blood brother, Tyler Barron. The fight was there, and Tulus vowed to himself, his people would show these Hegemony ‘Masters’ just what sort of warriors inhabited the Rim.
* * *
Tyler Barron stood on Dauntless’s bridge, straight, tall, proud…setting the image for his people. He felt as though he’d come through fire and darkness, trod through the endless plains of Hell to get to where he was, the Confederation united, and his Palatian allies drawn up alongside his forces. The war was still a desperate struggle, perhaps even an unwinnable one, but Barron knew, at least, that now he could give the enemy one hell of a fight.
He had new comrades at his side. Johannes Trent, the ace pilot who’d rallied to his cause early, who’d stepped up to fill in for the absent Jake Stockton. Trent commanded the fleet’s strike force, over a thousand fighters, all the regular squadrons assigned to Barron’s battleships.
He had old friends, too, trusted comrades from battles fought long ago. Much of Dauntless’s crew, of course, with Atara Travis at the top of that list. And, another old ally, returned to his side…Dirk ‘Warrior’ Timmons, the only pilot he’d ever seen with the audacity to challenge Jake Stockton for position as the fleet’s greatest pilot…and with the skills to make a contest of it. Timmons was leading another thousand fighters, the squadrons formed from the Academy upperclassmen and activated reserves and retirees…plus a few wings pulled from the Megara garrison for good measure.
Dauntless had been launching fighters for what seemed an eternity. He knew his flight crews were working diligently, and that not a spacer down there was dogging it in any way. His bays were crammed full of fighters, as they were all his ships, far beyond their normal complements, and that complicated the launch process immeasurably. He imagined Stara Sinclair might have shaved a little time with her wizardry at managing the flight decks, but she was on Repulse now, deeper in the system, trapped behind an enemy task force he was about to hit with every bit of fury and power he could muster.
Fighter strikes were the Confederation’s sole edge against an enemy that outclassed its forces in every other measurable way. And, Tyler Barron was going to hit them with a blizzard of torpedo-armed Lightnings like nothing they’d imagined. He wasn’t sure it would be enough to win the fight, in fact, he suspected it wouldn’t be…but he’d give those Masters, so full of themselves and their genetic pedigrees, something to think about for a good long time.
And, just maybe, he’d buy time to get his comrades out of the system, to open the way for Eaton and Winters to withdraw.
He felt another series of distant vibrations—more fighters blasting down the launch catapults and out into space. It was the last of Dauntless’s enhanced fighter wing, and Atara marked the moment with an announcement to that effect, followed pe
rhaps two minutes later by a follow up declaration that the entire fleet had completed launch operations.
The fighters were inbound, some veteran squadrons, mostly those that had rallied to Barron in his contest against Whitten, but also many rookies, new and garrison pilots whose performance wouldn’t match that of the experienced flyers…and whose casualty rates would likely be gut wrenching. But, the Confederation was fighting for survival now, and there was no room for hesitation, nor for half measures. Every Lightning that could fly was going in…and the battleships would be right behind. Barron couldn’t play games, he couldn’t build a strategy around avoiding the deadly railguns.
Not if he was going to have a chance of getting any of Winters’s ships out of the system.
“Engage nav plan Alpha, Captain. All ships are to advance and engage. All weapons are to be charged and ready to fire as soon as we enter range.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sound of Atara’s voice was reassuring. They had served together for so long, he could hardly remember what it was like for her not to be at his side. She’d been there whenever he’d needed her, and she was there now, as he led the fleet into the largest battle in Confederation history.
“Well, Atara…let’s go pull Admiral Winters and Commodore Eaton out of the shit, shall we?”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Promenade
Troyus City, Planet Megara, Olyus III
Year 317 AC
Gary Holsten had watched in stunned horror as the two figures struggled along the edge of the roof above, and then as they went over the edge and dropped to the ground.
His eyes were focused like lasers, and he could see the two, still struggling, even as they dropped, their final second spent in some perverse death struggle, even as they both plunged to the ground. One was a man, and the other a woman, he was almost certain of that, and as they dropped he had perhaps half a second of blissful ignorance before he realized the truth he’d somehow suspected all along.