by Jay Allan
And even if she’d had a reliable OB, Stockton was the fleet-wide strike force commander, and while she hadn’t really considered it, she suspected she’d never had any real authority directly over him.
Certainly, that was the way Stockton saw it.
She wanted to be angry…in fact, she was angry. But she also knew that Stockton’s crazy fighter tactics were probably all that had kept the fleet from being overtaken and destroyed. Fighters were the one advantage the fleet had over their Hegemony pursuers, and she doubted there was a better man or woman in human-inhabited space to take advantage of that edge than Jake Stockton.
She turned and looked at the display. Stockton had sent a third of his fighters back to the fleet, and another third were still on the ships, completing their refits and repairs. A quick look at the status reports told her most of the ships weren’t going to make their schedules and launch on time. The fighters had flown repeated sorties, refueling multiple times at the shuttles, and the damage and wear and tear on the craft exceeded what the flight crews had expected.
Or, more likely, exceeded what they told you. Sinclair wasn’t too surprised. She hadn’t believed the figures her people had given her either.
She watched as the display updated. A small group of fighters were moving toward a forward cluster of enemy ships. There were no more than a dozen and a half of them in the first wave. About as many again were just pulling away from the shuttles behind and following.
It was a weak force, far smaller than should have been attacking even the single group of enemy battleships, but she wasn’t surprised Stockton was sending them in. She was even less surprised when she saw his fighter was at the head of the formation.
As a fellow officer, she respected his courage and his devotion to his pilots. As a spacer hoping to preserve some chance—any chance—of actually getting back home, she appreciated his heroics and his unstoppable effort.
As a woman who loved him, she wanted to strangle him.
She knew how tired he had to be…and she was well aware he was leading in a light attack force because that was all he had now. She was also fairly sure that the idea of not attacking, of bringing all his ships back to base, had simply never occurred to him.
She watched as the symbols moved across her screen, coming to within a few minutes of range. She was watching the past, she realized, looking at scanner signals that had traveled across more than six light minutes. The ships on her screen appeared to be two or three minutes from attack range.
The real ships, out there in the darkness, had already completed their runs…or failed to do so. The thought that Stockton was already dead, that he’d been hit by enemy defensive fire and the light depicting that reality had simply not reached her yet, stirred a quick panic in her stomach.
But, as mad as she was at Stockton, she believed in him too much to assume any Hegemony gun turret had bested him.
As much as she worried about him, and as crazy as he drove her, part of her also believed no one could take him down. Stockton and his fighter were as close to a perfect pair as existed…she’d made her peace with that.
No, they wouldn’t take him.
Not my Jake Stockton…
* * *
Stockton squeezed his hands tightly, gripping the throttle so firmly, he half expected to see finger indents driven deep in the tempered steel. He’d finished his attack run, planted the plasma torpedo right in the midsection of the biggest Hegemony ship. It was his seventh hit of nine attempts.
But then he’d stayed around too long.
He had brought his ship around and driven back toward the enemy ship just as the rest of his pilots were coming in. He didn’t have anything but lasers, and he knew the tiny energy weapons offered limited effectiveness against a behemoth like the Hegemony battleship. But he couldn’t bring himself to pull away and head back to Repulse, not until the rest of his wave had come through. They would all go back together.
He had fired as he closed, scoring a few minor hits, even taking out what looked a lot like a defensive turret. Three of his ships had streaked in, one after another, planting their bombs almost dead center to where he had landed his own. The third one had set off a massive series of internal explosions, sending huge plumes of radiation and instantly-frozen fluids blasting out into space.
Stockton had allowed his attention to wander, to focus for too long on the damage his ships had done.
His eyes had been fixed on that last torpedo going in…just as one of the target’s remaining defensive emplacements scored a hit on his Lightning.
I’m dead.
It was his first thought, one he’d truly believed…perhaps for the longest three or four seconds of his life. Then he realized his ship was still there.
It was spinning wildly out of control, and until the repair bot managed to seal the gap, it had been spewing precious life support into the frigid wastes of space. But it was still there, mostly intact, and he frantically grabbed the controls, struggling to restore the vessel’s bearing.
The ship was damaged. Badly, most likely.
But it was still functional…enough that he was still alive. He was willing to take it one step at a time from there.
He reached down and tapped on the comm controls. Active.
“Attention all squadrons…all groups return to base ships as soon as you complete your final attack runs. All supply shuttles, return to base immediately.” He’d pushed things as far as he could. If he could get tired and careless enough to get hit, any of his people could. He still had time to get them all back aboard before the fleet transited again and they had to make another trip through the transwarp lines in their tiny, unprotected craft. He still had two dozen pilots in sickbay from the last transit, at least half of whom were likely to face a long and difficult recovery before they were themselves again. He wouldn’t put his people through that again unless it was a dire emergency.
Maybe he even had time to get himself back, too. He looked down at the display, at the wavering power monitors.
Maybe.
That would be a good thing, because as far from sure as he was that he could get his shaky, battered ship back to Repulse, he didn’t figure he had one chance in ten of getting through the jump point if he missed the ride on the mother ship.
And the Hegemony fleet was a bit large to face off against in a single, damaged Lightning.
Chapter Four
CFS Dauntless
System Z-111 (Chrysallis)
Deep Inside the Quarantined Zone (“The Badlands”)
Year 316 AC
Barron stared out from his chair into Dauntless’s massive main display. His thoughts were in a dark place, as they’d been since he’d reluctantly agreed to return to the Confederation…while most of his ships and spacers put themselves at horrific risk to cover his escape. It went against everything that made him who he was, every belief he’d ever held. But, in the end, he’d realized his people were right in their insistence that he go. The Confederation was in grave danger—and worse, no one beyond the White Fleet even knew the deadly hazard existed. Someone had to get back and warn the fleet, the Senate…everyone. As uncomfortable as he’d always been with his celebrity, he couldn’t argue that his voice would likely be taken the most seriously by those he had to warn.
Now, however, his thoughts were elsewhere, out among the planets and the vast empty space of the system Dauntless was passing through. His ship had made many transits since leaving the fleet, and was now moving back into the area of space known for the past two centuries as the Badlands.
The Badlands was a haunted region of space, dotted with the ruins of ancient civilization but devoid of any signs of ongoing human life. It was a vast stretch of hundreds of systems, extending out from the Confederation’s border into the depths of the unknown.
The Badlands didn’t have a set outer border, not one that was universally agreed upon. It was generally considered to extend out as far as any exploratory missions reached,
at least until the White Fleet pressed on well past the range of any previous expedition. But, Dauntless had returned back to familiar space now…very familiar space.
Seven years before—has it really been almost seven years?—when the old Dauntless had visited this system.
He thought about it for a few seconds, redoing the calculations in his head and coming to the unavoidable conclusion that it had, in fact, been that long since he’d led his ship into the Chrysallis system. Since he’d faced and defeated a Union fleet that vastly outnumbered his force…and somehow managed to destroy the planetkiller as well, the most deadly and powerful ancient artifact ever discovered by those who dwelled on the Rim.
Almost seven years since he’d met Andromeda Lafarge.
He still remembered the first time he’d seen her. She was tough, as tough as any veteran spacer he’d ever known, and she was smart too. He’d found her irritating, off-putting in the extreme…and at the time, he’d longed only to complete his mission, to prevent the Union forces from gaining control of the artifact…and to say his final goodbyes to Captain Lafarge and her group of frontier bandits.
Things hadn’t worked quite the way he’d expected with regard to Andi Lafarge. He’d never been able to get her out of his system—and he’d tried—and over the intervening years, they’d reconnected a number of times. He loved her, though it wasn’t something he was always willing to admit to himself, and he had a pretty good guess she returned the feelings. But that wasn’t enough, not for two people like them. He was a creature of duty, born to it, with obligations that preceded his birth. And Andi had her own irresistible drives: to escape the desperate poverty into which she’d been born, to attain the wealth and privilege she’d seen all around her childhood squalor, and to disregard, disrespect, and otherwise ignore the rules and societal constraints that were such a central part of his life as a naval officer.
She’d achieved all she’d set out to, and more. Barron was truly happy that Andi had attained all she’d pursued for so long. She was wealthy now, her resources almost as vast as those of the Barron fortune around which he’d always lived. He missed her, as he always did when he didn’t see her, but she had been part of the reason he’d accepted command of the White Fleet…to give her the time to adapt to her new life.
Time to get over him.
Barron had even considered retiring, leaving the navy and joining Andi in her new home, but in the end, he’d known it just wasn’t something he could do. He’d been born into obligation to the navy, his wealth and privilege acting as chains in some ways. Tyler Barron had been destined since birth to lead Confederation fleets, and he knew there was no escape. As much as part of him might want a different life, he could never live with a choice that abandoned his duty.
He’d also considered asking Andi to join him…she’d come close to outright offering to do just that. But she could never have been happy as just the spouse of an admiral. She’d made her own way in the universe, attained a level of success that almost defied comprehension. She had done all she’d set out to do in life, and Barron wasn’t willing to lure her away from what she’d spent a lifetime building.
Still, he still missed her, as much as he ever had. Even the misery at leaving so many of his people behind, the tension about what he now knew was facing the Confederation…none of it was enough to push Andi Lafarge from his thoughts.
“Admiral…we’re picking up a scanner contact, on the other side of the primary, moving toward our target transit point.”
Barron’s head snapped around toward his aide’s station. Eliot Cumberland was a capable officer who’d been utterly reliable since the fleet had begun its return journey, but Barron couldn’t help but miss his previous aide. He knew it wasn’t fair, that Cumberland had done no lesser of a job than Sonya Eaton. But Barron still felt the pain of leaving Eaton behind. He hadn’t had a choice, not really…not when Eaton’s sister was in command of the entire fleet. He’d approved Sonya’s transfer request, and he’d wished her the best…but it only made it more difficult to accept what he’d done. For all he tried to tell himself Sara Eaton would somehow lead the fleet through the nightmare to which he’d consigned them, deep down he didn’t believe any of them would survive. He hadn’t just abandoned them all…he’d left them behind to die.
“On the display, Commander.” Barron tried, as he always did, to keep any resentment from his voice when speaking with Cumberland. He was mostly successful, though he suspected sometimes his angst and bitterness slipped through.
“Yes, sir.” The officer’s tone was crisp, respectful. Whatever Cumberland had perceived of Barron’s feelings, he’d never let any of it show.
Barron looked out at the display, watching as the lone symbol appeared. It was a ship, a fairly small one, and there was no question it was heading for the transit point.
Barron had been worried for an instant, as he had been in every system through which they’d passed, that the Hegemony forces had somehow managed to follow his small flotilla. But the ship he was staring at was just a smuggler’s vessel, not unlike Andi Lafarge’s Pegasus, out in the Badlands searching for artifacts.
With a crew that I suspect is none too happy to see a couple of battleships moving into the system…
Private expeditions searching for ancient artifacts were still illegal in the Confederation. The Senate had never pulled out of the international accords regarding Badlands exploration, despite the fact that the Confeds were just about the only signatory who seemed to pay even cursory attention to the treaty’s provisions.
At least it did…before Dauntless came here…
Seven years before, the Union had come close to gaining a weapon deadly enough to alter the balance of power on the Rim. The Confederation politicians hadn’t taken any action based on what had happened in the Chrysallis system, remaining in the accords despite the clear evidence that their enemy was actively seeking artifacts. But virtually everyone else had, especially Gary Holsten and the agents of his intelligence operation. It had become abundantly clear that ancient technology was a potentially destabilizing factor on the Rim, and that realization had set off an arms race of sorts, one that had led all the way to the formation of the White Fleet. The expedition’s purpose had been touted as historical research, but Barron had known from day one, his primary goal was to find old tech…and return it secretly to Megara.
“Should we order them to stop, Admiral?”
Barron sat still for a moment, his eyes fixed on the small ship. “No, Commander…I think we scared the hell out of them, and that’s enough for today. They’d just bolt anyway, and they’re close enough to make it through the transit point before we can do anything about it.” He paused for a moment, still looking at the icon in the display. The ship was a good sized one for a rogue explorer, probably half again as big as Pegasus. But there wasn’t a doubt in Barron’s mind that was just what the ship was. “Just let them go. We’ve got enough to worry about without chasing down frontier smugglers.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barron watched for a few moments as the ship blasted toward the transit point, accelerating with what he’d have bet was its full thrust capacity. He wasn’t surprised to encounter a ship like that one, especially in Chrysallis. As far as he knew, nothing significant had been discovered in the system since the planetkiller, but it only made sense that the frontier scavengers who prowled the Badlands would return to the area in which it had been found.
Finally, Barron pulled his eyes from the display and stood up. “I’ll be in my office, Commander. Keep an eye on that ship until it transits, but don’t interfere. Maintain course and speed.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Barron walked across the bridge, back to the room to the rear he used as an office. He paused once he entered the corridor, glancing at the door across from his. Dauntless had been designed as a flagship, and it had both a captain’s and an admiral’s office. He’d been captain of the previous Dauntless, and he’d spent six y
ears at her helm. But, as his eyes focused on the door across the corridor, he reminded himself he wasn’t this Dauntless’s captain, that he never had been. He was only filling in for the ship’s real commander, and indulging himself a bit as well. He’d had two promotions since his days as the old Dauntless’s commanding officer, and yet, he knew, in his heart he was still a ship’s captain. He would do his duty, rise to meet whatever challenges faced him…but he knew he’d never again feel as centered—as at home—as he had, on a battered old ship that had served him so well.
One that he would never forget.
* * *
Barron stepped into the main area of Dauntless’s sickbay, as he had each day since he’d led his small fleet back from the depths of unexplored space. He’d spent hours sitting in a small, hard chair next to the pod that kept Atara Travis alive. For days, weeks even, he been waiting for her to die, for word to come to him that her worn and weakened body had given out. He’d tried to prepare himself for the loss of his friend…his comrade, his sister, the one person who’d been at his side during every deadly battle he’d fought. But he’d found there was no way to prepare for such a thing. He couldn’t bring himself to give up on her.
And she hadn’t given up on herself either. Atara Travis had clung to life for weeks…and then, something unexpected had happened. She began to get stronger.