Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars Book 8)

by Jay Allan

  So what are they doing now?

  He tried to think of it, to figure out what could be happening, but he kept coming up with nothing.

  Almost nothing. He suspected Gary Holsten’s disappearance had something to do with it. He’d been sure the Senate had Holsten, that the secret deliberations had involved the Intelligence chief somehow…but now he wondered if Lille and his Sector Nine cronies had taken the intelligence chief as well.

  The more he thought about it, the sicker he felt.

  * * *

  “I haven’t been able to find out much, Andi…not beyond the news stories.” Vig stood under a small stand of trees in one of Troyus City’s many small parks. Fully a third of the ground area of the Confederation’s capital city was dedicated to greenspace and recreational areas, a fact that sounded high-minded until one realized that the vast majority of those who lived in the breathtakingly expensive metropolis were government officials and highly-placed executives and financiers. Troyus City’s beauty had more to do with those in charge creating a virtual paradise around themselves than for any civic responsibility or obligation to the Confederation’s poor and middle classes.

  “There has to be someone who knows something.” Andi was frustrated. She’d come to Megara expecting to have trouble discovering anything…and she’d arrived to a tidal wave of newscasts announcing Holsten’s conviction on a staggering list of criminal offenses. She’d had to hear it three times before it had sunk in, and she still struggled to understand it. There had been a mistake, almost certainly. Gary Holsten wasn’t one who respected rules, perhaps even no more than she did. But he wasn’t a thief or a conspirator who would steal billions of credits from the military budgets. She’d have bet her life on that.

  Perhaps, she realized, she was doing just that. She’d upped the intensity of her search efforts, and she knew that could draw attention to her…attention that could catch the interest of dangerous people. But that wasn’t going to stop her. Things like that never had.

  Her first thought had been to find Admiral Striker, to see what he knew about Holsten. She’d been a little worried about talking her way past security at the Admiralty, but when she got there, she’d found her name on a list of people to admit at all times. She’d been excited to see Striker, both to find out the latest on Holsten, and because she missed the admiral and considered him one of her closest friends. But she didn’t see end up seeing him at all. Instead, one of his aides, Commander Britten, came to see her along with a pair of Marine officers—none other than Jon Peterson and his second in command. And instead of telling her where Striker was, they had hoped she could tell them. That was how she’d found out that Striker, too, was missing…just a few hours before stories hit the news about the admiral’s alleged involvement in Holsten’s corruptions.

  Listening to those broadcasts, watching politicians and news anchors demonize two of her closest friends, and two men she’d seen risk their lives for the Confederation countless times, infuriated her. Her goal to find and kill Ricard Lille burned as intently as ever, but to it she now added finding Striker and Holsten, and helping to defeat whatever plot was in effect against them.

  She conferred with Britten and the Marines, told them what little she knew of Holsten’s arrest on Dannith, and agreed they should all work together…as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. She’d realized already that Megara was not like Dannith, that strolling into bars and roughing up local miscreants wasn’t likely to accomplish much in the capital except perhaps landing her in a cell somewhere. So she’d switched over to the other tool she had now, one she imagined would fit in perfectly among the political dealings and high finance of Troyus. Money.

  Andi was a vastly wealthy woman, a fact that still seemed foreign to her and had suddenly come to mind when she was trying to think of how to proceed. The interstellar banking system didn’t allow instant interplanetary transfer of funds, at least not the massive amounts she had in mind, but with a bit of effort, she had managed to build up a substantial war chest, which she used to bribe every sleazy information broker and political influence peddler she could find.

  It had been an inefficient use of funds, certainly, and one she’d found frustrating, especially when Troyus City’s level of law enforcement denied her the tactics she usually employed against those who cheated her. In the end, she simply wrote off the unproductive bribes as a cost of doing business and reminded herself even the few million credits she’d spread around the capital was just a small bit of her vast fortune. A treasure she’d fought for all her life and, to her own stunned surprise, the one she cared less and less about. She didn’t long to return to her days of miserable poverty, but now she realized those had long been gone from her life…and were unlikely to return.

  “It just can’t be a coincidence that Lille is on Megara somewhere, so soon after Holsten was brought here.” She was sitting in a room in her hotel suite, with Britten and Jon Peterson also at the table. They’d all agreed that whoever was behind what was happening almost certainly had some eyes in the Admiralty, so Andi had rented the largest suite at the Grand Hotel, and they’d turned it into their makeshift headquarters.

  “No, Andi…I’m sure it’s not a coincidence. That means this is more than just power politics in the Senate. The Union is somehow involved…and that means trouble.” Britten shook her head as she spoke, and the frown on her face became even grimmer.

  “That means war.” Peterson’s voice was gruff, his anger far less concealed than Britten’s. If the Union has been interfering in Senate politics, that’s a blatant act of war. If they abducted…or worse…Admiral Striker or Gary...” He hesitated. “This time, we’ll do what we should have done two years ago. We’ll blast those bastards back into the Stone Age.” It was a Marine’s answer, and one Andi agreed with…except she knew the problems they faced went far deeper.

  “I wish it was that simple, Jon, but if they’ve got some kind of influence in the Senate, then we are really…”

  “Andi…you’ve got to see this. Now.” Andi hadn’t heard Vig’s voice so unsettled in a long time. Her oldest friend was standing on the doorway, looking at her with genuine shock in his expression.

  She leapt up from the table, the instincts of years of adventure kicking in. She walked, more of a jog actually, into the next room, and the instant her eyes focused on the vid, she froze and her blood ran cold.

  “To repeat,” the newscaster said, “CFS Dauntless has returned from its mission, considerably sooner than expected and without most of the White Fleet. In a surprising development, Admiral Tyler Barron has been arrested and is being held on suspicion of involvement in the growing military procurement scandal. The names drawn into this growing investigation have included some of the most beloved and famous military figures in the Confederation, and the addition of Admiral Barron, the grandson of the legendary savior of the Second Union War, to this list is without a doubt the most startling of them all. Again, Tyler Barron, arrested and due to appear before the Senate to be charged in the growing scandal.”

  Andi just stood where she was, stunned, unable to focus her thoughts. Tyler is back?

  Arrested?

  It didn’t seem possible.

  She was sure Holsten and Striker were innocent…but there wasn’t any doubt at all in her mind that Tyler was uninvolved in any illegal activity. He’d spend most of his days at the front, and the bulk of his free time with her. He’d never had much use for the vast Barron wealth, much less a drive to obtain more by betraying the spacers he loved. She’d been worried enough about what was happening before…now, she knew something truly dire was unfolding.

  And Lille had to be deeply involved in it.

  She felt the rage taking control of her. She had to help Tyler…she had to rescue him, before some kangaroo court put on a fraudulent trial and shipped him off to a penal planet.

  Or worse.

  “Colonel Peterson…you said you brought some of your Marines with you. How loyal are they
? Will they do anything you order them to do?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bridge

  CFS Repulse

  Unknown System 20

  Year 316 AC

  “The battle line will open fire on my command.” Sara Eaton was in her chair, leaning forward, her body tight and tense. It was something she hadn’t been able to fight off, despite the fact that it only exacerbated the pain from her old war wounds. She’d fought many battles, and she’d escaped some by the slimmest of margins, but she’d never been as sure as she was now that she was fighting her final one. She was determined to make every shot count, to sell her life and those of her loyal spacers as dearly as possible.

  “Yes, Admiral…all gunnery stations are standing by. All primary batteries fully charged and ready to fire.”

  The enemy fleet had already opened fire, their heavy railguns exceeding the range even of the Confederation’s deadly primaries. Those Hegemony weapons had been deadly, and they had nearly crippled two of her battleships with their opening shots. Only two things kept the enemy from using their superior weapons to obliterate her line before she even got into range. First, the enemy weapons took longer to recharge even than Eaton’s primaries, making their fire devastating, but slow.

  And, second, Jake Stockton and his fighters had launched a withering attack against the enemy’s largest ships, destroying eight of their fifteen targets outright, and leaving only two with functioning railguns. To those two survivors had been added another two vessels the fighters hadn’t attacked, cutting the number of railgun-armed enemy ships to four, at least in the enemy’s forward line.

  That was a deadly force by any measure, and every shot they fired took a horrendous toll. But Eaton had pushed her ships forward with close to maximum thrust, reducing the number of attacks the enemy would get before her people could open up and return the fire. Even as she sat calmly in her chair, waiting for the line to enter range, she thought about the unimaginable destruction her ships would have endured without Stockton’s heroic attack.

  The fighters had paid dearly for the damage they had done, most of their losses coming as they closed beyond point blank range. They had attacked with a level of vicious aggression Eaton had rarely seen before…if ever. By the time the squadrons had completed their assault, they had lost no fewer than one hundred of their number…and then Stockton had rallied them and led them back in to do what damage they could with their lasers.

  Eaton had almost ordered Stockton to call off the second attack, not to lose more of his people for the small amount of damage they could do without their heavy payloads. But she had nowhere else for them to go. Every mothership she had was about to enter combat range, and there was no way they could recover their squadrons when fighting against an enemy like the one they faced. She’d almost ordered a repeat of the supply shuttle operation that had refit the squadrons in the previous system, but she’d lost too many of the small ships, as well as the freighters that carried the fighters’ fuel and weaponry. The White Fleet was rapidly reaching depletion. Whatever happened in the next hours, her ability to support fighter operations in any way was almost at an end. She might be able to mount one more all-out assault, assuming her battleships survived long enough to get the chance, but that was all.

  She stared at the screen, her focus unbroken despite the thoughts of her pilots drifting through her mind. She watched as the icons on the display finally moved into range…but she held back.

  She’d been counting since the enemy had last fired its railguns. She had no intention of waiting until they got another shot, and possibly knocked out more of her own batteries, but she was damned sure going to use every second she had to lessen the range for her opening shot. The first attack had to be as effective as possible, and she knew every thousand kilometers her ships traveled would increase the hit rate, and the number of enemy ships damaged and destroyed.

  She was counting softly under her breath as she tried to decide just how closely she wanted to cut it. She figured she had twenty seconds for sure, maybe as many as forty. The gambler in her told her to wait, to push it to the brink…but she knew the odds didn’t favor that option.

  “All batteries…open fire.” Her tone was calm, her voice soft, almost as though she was ordering some routine maintenance procedure instead of directing nearly eighty massive particle accelerators to fire as one.

  She watched as the small yellow lines flashed across the display, depicting the various shots tearing out from her ships. Repulse’s own lights blinked as the giant weapons briefly sucked up virtually every watt the battleship’s reactors could produce.

  She waited as the AI processed the raw scanning data and determined how many shots had connected…and prepared estimates of the damage they had done.

  Repulse had hit with three of its four primaries, every one of the beams slamming into a single Hegemony ship that had already been ravaged by Stockton’s fighter squadrons. Eaton stared at the screen, waiting for the AI assessment to come through. She didn’t have to wait long. The small circle floating in the main display expanded to three times its normal size…and then it winked out entirely.

  The readings on the screen left no doubt what had happened. The enemy ship had been one of the railgun-armed vessels, and while the heavy weapons had been knocked out already, Eaton knew it still held the antimatter pods that powered the massive gun. One of the primaries had likely sliced open an antimatter storage facility, allowing the volatile material to mix with regular matter and annihilate in a spectacular explosion that utterly obliterated the ship.

  Eaton felt a burst of excitement, like she had in so many in other battles, watching her spacers perform with their usual professionalism and courage. Repulse’s first shot had drawn blood, taken down a ship millions of tons larger than the Confederation’s most immense battleship. It was a tremendous first volley, and as she checked the row of screens on the far wall, she could see her entire line had done well. No fewer than forty percent of the shots fired had been hits, an astonishingly good result at long range.

  The Hegemony had fought against the fleet’s fighters for several months now, but they were still inexperienced at close quarters combat against the Confederation’s battleships. Eaton knew the enemy’s tech was a cut above her fleet’s…but they’d have to show her more than they had so far before she’d concede that same honor to their crews. Her people were the best spacers she’d ever seen, veterans, and deadly serious when facing an enemy. They might be overwhelmed and destroyed, but the Hegemony forces that defeated them would never forget the cost they paid for their “victory.”

  She grabbed the sides of her chair as Repulse shook. For an instant, she feared the flagship had been hit by one of the enemy railguns, but then she realized the jolt hadn’t been hard enough…and a quick view of the screens showed that the enemy didn’t have many of the big weapons still in action, not in their forward task force…and perhaps none at all. It seemed like the powerful guns were somewhat like the Confederation primaries in many ways, powerful but fragile.

  Even as she looked over at the displays, she saw the countdown moving into single digits. Repulse’s primaries were still online…and as she saw the “one” replaced by a “zero,” she knew they were ready to fire again. No more than a second or two later, the bridge lights darkened again, and her flagship cut loose with its deadly beams once more.

  And scored another hit.

  Then the ship rolled again, harder this time, and sparks flew from a series of conduits running down the far wall. The lights went out, and they stayed out this time for perhaps twenty seconds before power was partially restored.

  Repulse paid for the hit it had just scored, taking one of its own.

  She could see her bridge officers scrambling at their stations, trying to determine what was working and what wasn’t. Eaton was already on the comm to Fritz. Of all the tools she had to prolong this fight, Anya Fritz was at the top of the list. Dauntless’s old chief engineer had
long been a legend in the fleet, and her ability to get shattered systems back online was regarded as nothing short of magical. Things had gotten to the point where captains wrestled with each other to secure engineers who’d served alongside Fritz at some point in their careers, hoping some of what she clearly possessed had rubbed off on them.

  From all Eaton had heard over the years, the consensus was that some of it generally had.

  “It wasn’t a railgun hit, Commodore. Just one of their heavy beams, but it caught us in a vulnerable spot. We’ve got some reactor damage—probably a thirty percent reduction in power output, at least for a while—but most of the rest of it is severed lines and the like. We’ve lost the primaries, and I don’t think we’re going to get them back in this fight, but otherwise, we’ll keep her going.”

  Eaton was nodding as Fritz spoke, amazed at how she somehow knew so much about Repulse’s status just seconds after the hit. “All right, Captain…don’t waste any more time talking to me. Do what you can.”

  Eaton heard the line click off, and she turned back toward the scanners. The screens had all gone down after the hit, but most of them had booted up again. Repulse didn’t have her primaries anymore, but a quick glance at the display confirmed what Eaton had already known.