Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars Book 8)

by Jay Allan

  The assessments came streaming in, confirming his suspicions. The cruiser had a massive, gaping wound in its hull, and a geyser of gaseous material was pouring out from the inside, spewing into space and instantly freezing into long spear-like shards. The ship’s energy levels had dropped well below half of normal, and there were signs of secondary explosions. The cruiser was out of the fight, most likely, and there was little doubt the casualties among her crew were severe.

  Dauntless’s primaries were already recharging. Barron figured he’d get two more shots off, before the cruisers closed to their own range. Maybe, three.

  He knew how fortunate he was to even have the option to face the ships coming at him separately. Dauntless had barely escaped becoming a sitting duck, cruising through space on a fixed course, with no thrust at all, allowing the pursuing vessels to join up and launch a devastating combined assault. He knew he had Dave Glaven to thank for that, and if the engineer wasn’t the equal of Anya Fritz—and who was?—he had surely earned his pay on this mission. Barron had fully eighty-two percent of Dauntless’s normal thrust capacity, more than he’d dared hope for just an hour earlier.

  Even as he completed his thought, the big guns fired again. Another hit, though only with one of the four beams this time. Barron’s instincts again leapt into action guessing at the damage level. Bad, he suspected, but his best guess was, the ship was still in the fight to some extent.

  He felt the instinctive urge, for about the hundredth time, to launch fighters, to send one of his squadrons to take advantage of the cruisers’ lack of their own small craft, only to recall once again, with growing frustration, that Dauntless didn’t have any. He’d grown accustomed to having the best fighter wing in the navy at his disposal, and now that he was without Stockton and his pack of veterans, he realized just how much he’d relied on them in his many battles.

  He turned toward Atara, feeling as though he should say something, issue some kind of order. But, there was nothing to do…nothing save wait to see what his gunners could do with one more shot, or perhaps two, before Dauntless faced incoming fire.

  The familiar whine told him the primaries had fired again, and a few seconds later the scanners confirmed yet another hit. He’d barely focused on the display to wait for damage assessments, when that became unnecessary. All four of Dauntless’s primaries had hit one of the cruisers. The stricken ship hovered in space for a few seconds…and then it disappeared in the fury of nuclear fusion.

  One less ship to fight, one step closer to extricating his people from the trap they were in.

  And, a good three hundred Confederation spacers dead…

  No, he thought to himself, dragging up a detail from the depths of his mind, the exact complement of a Springfield-class medium cruiser. Three hundred forty-two.

  And not a chance a single one had survived.

  Barron felt nauseous, and he clamped down, held back the bile rising up his throat. There was no time for any of that now. He had to get his ship out of the Delphi system. He had to get somewhere he could begin to rally forces to face the Hegemony. He had to save the Confederation. Somehow.

  Even if he had to kill thousands of Confederation spacers to do it.

  Because if he didn’t the Hegemony would kill millions.

  * * *

  Heaton sat in his command chair in the center of Titania’s bridge, watching as Dauntless tore into the cruisers she was facing. He’d known Tyler Barron’s reputation, and he was as aware as any Confederation officer was of the admiral’s long list of accomplishments and victories. But, watching it happening, and knowing his own ships would soon have to engage the renegade admiral, was something else entirely.

  “Capella has fallen out of formation, Captain.” A pause. “That makes four of the six ships out of action.”

  Heaton nodded, but his only audible acknowledgement was a deep grunt. The tactical officer was only doing his job reporting on the loss of another one of the vessels fighting Dauntless, but he wondered—unjustly, he knew—if the fool thought he’d forgot how to count. He knew damned well there were only two ships left, and that both of them were damaged. For all his force outnumbered the fugitive vessel he was chasing, and even with the damage Dauntless had clearly taken in the fight so far, he had to admit—to himself, at least—he was scared shitless to go up against Barron and his people.

  There had been one advantage to watching Dauntless so thoroughly chop up the force of cruisers, though. Heaton had been fighting the sense that it was wrong to be chasing the great hero, that something was clearly amiss in the orders that put him up against his own comrades. But, watching Tyler Barron cut down those ships, and kill so many Confederation spacers, just to save himself from prosecution, had gone a long way to purge him of his earlier hesitation. He wasn’t exactly thirsting for Barron’s blood, not yet, but he knew he had to stop the fugitive, and stop him now…before more of his comrades died.

  Still no fighters…

  He couldn’t understand why Dauntless hadn’t launched her squadrons. At first, he’d guessed Barron was holding back his deadly veterans, waiting until he really needed them. Then, he’d wondered if the great admiral faced dissension among the fighter corps, if his pilots had been unwilling to follow the rest of Dauntless’s crew in fighting their comrades. But, that didn’t seem quite right either. Heaton would have guessed the wild pilots would have been the first to rally to Barron’s side.

  He still didn’t understand it, and while he’d been thinking for some time that Barron didn’t have his squadrons aboard, he couldn’t shake the thought that the brilliant admiral was planning some kind of trap, that he was holding the fighters to launch at just the right time.

  Heaton had wanted to equip most of his small craft as bombers, but he’d held back, allowed his caution to prevail. Only a single squadron was equipped with the deadly plasma torpedoes, and all his other ships were fitted out as interceptors, ready to deal with any surprise launch from Dauntless. Heaton knew that Jake Stockton had shipped out with Barron when the White Fleet set out, and if that crazy son of a bitch came tearing out of Dauntless’s bays with his borderline insane pilots behind him, Titania’s squadrons needed to be ready.

  He was still looking at the display when Dauntless’s broadside opened up on one of the remaining cruisers. The battleship had switched from her longer-ranged primaries to her more numerous secondary batteries, and seven of the shots hit the target. Heaton knew what the battleship’s guns were doing to the more lightly armored cruiser, and even as the reports came in, he just nodded somberly. Cranston wasn’t a complete wreck, but she was close. And, that meant Dauntless was down to one opposing ship.

  Heaton had hoped his fighters would engage Barron’s ship before the cruisers were defeated, but now all he could hope for was for them to arrive at the tail end of the fight. If Dauntless had any fighters, he had to believe Barron would launch them any second.

  If not, his strike force would hit in less than ten minutes, and they would come in against a vessel with no fighter screen.

  If that was the case, they might not take out Dauntless, but they would almost certainly damage the battleship, probably severely…and set the stage for Titania and her escorts to finish the deadly pursuit in Delphi.

  * * *

  “Commander Glaven is to divert all possible damage control assets to the defensive array.” Barron was tense, sweating, his eyes darting from one screen to another, monitoring the attacks coming in from all angles.

  “Yes, sir.” Atara’s voice was sharp, and in the immediacy of her response he saw that she had been thinking the same thing.

  His people had almost finished off the cruisers. He’d left three of them burnt out ruins, combat ineffective, but hopefully with enough remaining functionality to maintain life support. For whatever portion of their crews had survived the battle. One ship was still engaged, but she’d lost two-thirds of her guns and most of her thrust. She was barely managing to keep what weapons she still ha
d in range and arc of Dauntless, and, as much as Barron always worried about any combatant facing him, the vessel had been reduced more to a nuisance than a serious threat.

  But, now there were fighters coming in, and from the looks of the formation, it was Titania’s entire strike force. For a brief, terrible instant, Barron had imagined an entire wing of bombers, but as the ships came close enough for detailed scans, he realized with considerable relief that he was facing only a single squadron equipped with torpedoes. A smile almost pushed its way through the grimness that had taken hold of him, a nod to the power of Jake Stockton and Dauntless’s crack pilots…and their ability to affect an attacker’s decisions even when they were hundreds of lightyears away.

  A squadron of unopposed bombers was enough of a threat, but seventy torpedo-armed ships would likely have been the end of Dauntless, despite anything he might had done, any tricks or maneuvers he could have devised.

  Dauntless had a considerable defensive array for use against attacking fighters, over sixty small turrets positioned all along the massive ship’s bulk. But fighters were difficult targets for fixed guns, and he knew, even focusing on the bombers and ignoring the interceptors entirely, his people weren’t going to get them all.

  His mind raced. Titania…what did he know about that brand-new battleship? She’d come off the lines more a year after the end of the war, after he’d left with the White Fleet. She’d almost been canceled when she was half-completed, and she owed her existence to the influence wielded by the Senators from the Iron Belt world from which she had come. The immediate post-war period had seen somewhat of a feeding frenzy over what remained from vastly reduced appropriations budgets and, as was usually the case, the final decisions were based more on the political standing of a world’s representatives than any real strategic consideration of what the navy did or did not need.

  Barron didn’t have hard data on the battleship’s crew or its fighter squadrons, but he was willing to bet they were mostly green. Stockton’s people could probably have cut them down like a farmer scything hay…but there was no gain in sinking into what ifs. Barron didn’t have any fighters, and that meant his gunnery crews were all that stood between Dauntless and a barrage of deadly plasma torpedoes.

  “Admiral, Commander Glaven reports he has already deployed two dozen bots and six engineers to the defensive array. He advises, if he diverts any more resources, he cannot guarantee to have the primaries back online by the time Titania is in range.

  Shit.

  Barron had always believed in prioritizing the immediate problem over one that followed, but he couldn’t risk Dauntless having to endure Titania’s long-range bombardment with no ability to return fire. The primaries had been knocked out by a fluke hit from one of the cruisers, and while the damage was not critical, the repair process was tedious and work-intensive.

  “Very well, Captain. He is to maintain his current organization.” Most of Dauntless’s defensive guns were operational anyway. It would be useful to have the eight that were damaged back in the firing line, but it wasn’t worth giving up on the primaries.

  Assuming the big guns make it through the fighter attack without taking more damage…

  The logic of his usual “deal with the immediate problem first” creed was only too evident in that last thought. But, he stayed firm. There was no point worrying about new damage to the main guns if they never got back online to begin with.

  “Gunnery control reports all stations ready. The enemy will enter range in…forty-five seconds.”

  “Very well, Captain. All gunners are to fire at will, and to maintain at maximum speed until ordered to halt.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, they are to target bombers only. I’m not too worried about those interceptors and their lasers, but I want as many of those torpedo-armed ships gone as possible.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Barron sat still, quiet…and he watched as the wave of fighters moved steadily closer on the display. The seconds passed, slowly, agonizingly, and he could feel every heartbeat, even every droplet of sweat breaking loose along the base of his neck and streaming down his back. He knew it had been less than a minute, but he’d have sworn it had been hours.

  And then the defensive batteries opened fire.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  CFS Constitution

  1,150,000 Kilometers from Planet Dannith, Ventica III

  Year 316 AC

  “All primaries, open fire as soon as we enter range.” Clint Winters sat motionless, his grim visage unmoving, looking as though it had been carved from stone. He knew he was fortunate that Constitution still had operational main guns to fire, though he wasn’t sure how much good they would do in the overall scheme of things, firing alone, into an enemy fleet that vastly outnumbered his meager force. Discovery’s primaries were offline, if such terminology could be used to describe a system that had been so badly chopped to pieces, the only chance of saving the battleship’s spinally mounted weapon was a full refit in a prime spacedock.

  Still, he was grateful that one of his companion battleships still remained in the line, even if her primary guns were offline. The enemy railguns had battered Discovery, but they hadn’t put her down, not yet. He couldn’t say the same for Triumph. The newest of his three battleships had also been the least fortunate. The vessel had been the first hit by the enemy railguns, and that initial assault had been followed by two more. The last one had torn off a huge section of the ship’s bow and rendered the vessel powerless and dead in space.

  Until yet another shot had struck her amidships…and split the unlucky ship in half. Winters had watched in undisguised horror as Triumph’s shattered structural spine snapped and her sections drifted apart, two massive chunks of metal, devoid now of any life, save for two lifeboats his scanners had detected.

  He’d lost ships before, and he was familiar with the pain, and yet he was unsettled in a different way. The war against the Union had seen its share of brutal carnage, but this was something entirely different. He’d believed Barron’s warnings about the enemy’s heavy guns, but being told something—and actually seeing it—were two different things. The railguns were enormously powerful, and a deadly threat to any battleline, his tiny one of three battleships…or that of the combined Confederation fleet formed up for combat.

  There was only one solace, one target for his gratitude. The enemy appeared to have only three ships with the heavy weapons still functioning. Barron had said the systems were fragile, more so even than the Confederation primaries. And, so it seemed to be.

  Winters knew that Alicia Covington and her people had saved his small fleet—and the orbital bases around Dannith as well—from immediate and utter destruction. He didn’t know how many of the enemy ships had the railguns, but he guessed that Covington’s squadrons had taken out a dozen vessels or more armed with the deadly weapons. If those ships had closed to range with their heavy weapons all intact, he doubted any of his own would have survived long enough to have gotten off a shot. And, the fixed fortresses would almost certainly have been gutted

  He watched as the distance to the enemy ticked down on the display…and slipped under the maximum range of the primaries. He felt an impulse to repeat his earlier attack order, but before he could get the words out, he heard the guns firing.

  The range was long, and he knew scoring even a single hit was far from a certain proposition. If he’d had all three battleships still fully functional, he’d have had ten shots. But Triumph’s four guns were gone along with the whole of that unfortunate ship, and Discovery’s two were just so much scrap metal.

  That left Constitution’s four…and even as he stared straight ahead, he saw the report. All had missed their targets.

  Damn!

  He felt a flush of anger, but he realized it was more at the situation than at his people. He knew the odds well enough. He’d written the section of ‘the book’ on weapons targeting, and he knew the stats better than anyone.
His guns had had less than a ten percent chance of scoring a hit at such extreme range…but he’d still hoped to get lucky with at least one of the beams. He’d ordered his gunners to ignore all other enemy ships save those with demonstrated active railgun capacity, and even a single hit with one of his primaries could be just enough to knock out another of the deadly weapons.

  He glanced up at the screen. One minute forty seconds to recharge.

  Too long.

  He’d been tracking the enemy’s rate of fire, and he guessed he had a minute, maybe less, before the next railgun attack. Constitution had been fortunate so far, mostly at the expense of her companion vessels, but Winters knew any commander worth his salt would be coming after the only untouched battleship next. Constitution might not attract every shot that was coming, but he didn’t have a doubt that most of them would be heading his way.

  “I want all scanners on those enemy battleships, Commander. There’s a power surge before they fire those railguns, and it should give us a good two or three seconds warning.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Winters was leaning forward, his workstation pulled around from its stowed position on the side to directly in front of his chair. He was hunched over, his hands over the controls. It was unorthodox for a ship commander to take the helm directly, and even more so for the fleet’s admiral to do it. But, Clint Winters had come up through the ranks as a capital ship pilot, and one of the best…and if Constitution didn’t evade the railgun shots he knew were coming its way, the fleet would be down to a half-shattered battleship and a bunch of hopelessly outgunned escorts.