by Jay Allan
Heaton took a deep breath and then exhaled hard. He struggled to center himself, to focus on what he was about to do, what had to be done.
“Fire,” he said, knowing he hadn’t kept all the tension from his tone.
He turned toward the display, waiting for damage assessments, even as he heard Titania’s main guns fire. He felt anticipation at what the scanners would report, what his people had done…but only for a fleeting instant.
Then, his ship pitched roughly, sending his body forward hard against his harness. He could hear the shouts on the bridge, and he knew instantly some of his officers were injured. He froze, only for a few seconds, and then he realized what had happened. His hopes were dashed. Dauntless’s primaries weren’t down after all, whether they’d somehow stayed operational after the torpedo hit, or Barron’s crews had pulled off another miracle…and they had just hit Titania.
He wasn’t sure yet what damage his ship had taken, or what the glancing hit his guns had scored did to Dauntless.
But, he knew one thing. Dauntless was still dangerous.
Really dangerous.
* * *
“Direct hit, Admiral. Two of the beams…and a solid location, just aft of their reactors.” Atara’s voice had lost much of the hesitancy Barron knew she’d felt about battling Confederation comrades. It was natural, and he knew it, the main reason why civil wars happened so often in history, and why they were always such bitter engagements. National loyalties and higher ideals tended to get stripped away in the heat of battle, and all that remained were the people standing at your side…and those shooting at you.
Barron had felt it, too, but he’d tried to fight it off, to cling to the doubts and pain and misery. The day he could shoot down his Confederation brethren and feel nothing but satisfaction…that was a moment he dreaded above all things.
“Very well,” he said, his voice subdued. “All guns are to fire at will as soon as recharged.” He could embrace the misery of what he was doing, but that didn’t change the fact that he had to do it. Every time he felt himself faltering, he imagined the huge Hegemony battleships and their massive railguns. It was like a waking dream, images of Confederation worlds burning, its citizens butchered…or shoved into the Hegemony’s structured breeding programs, labeled as Inferiors, and forced into compelled mating pairs and roles based solely on their genetic ratings. That waking nightmare fed him strength, and pushed back his doubts. “Advise Commander Glaven we need those guns ready to go as soon as possible.” He paused for an instant. “Seconds count,” he added. “Anything he can do to speed up power transmission will help.”
“Yes, sir.”
Barron looked around the bridge. Titania had fired her primaries, too, but his evasive maneuvers had taken Dauntless almost entirely out of the arc of the deadly beams, and Dauntless had suffered only a partial hit of no significant consequence.
The whole exchange had been based on surprise. Titania’s captain had guessed Dauntless’s primaries were down, as Barron thought he might, and he’d failed to engage in sufficient evasion. Barron had been ready, his main guns fully charged, and power temporarily diverted to the engines for a massive series of sudden bursts, a wild, random pattern designed to confound enemy targeting.
It had worked almost perfectly, but it was over now. Barron didn’t know what Titania’s commander would do next, but he was sure the officer wouldn’t repeat his mistake. He would adjust his targeting solutions, do all he could to offset Dauntless’s evasion…and, he would make sure his own ship was a much harder target next time. Barron had gotten the first shot, the edge he knew he needed. But, he wasn’t sure it was enough. At best, he’d equalized things, inflicted enough damage on Titania to match what Dauntless had already suffered. But, the battleship opposing him was backed by half a dozen smaller vessels, two cruisers and four escorts. The supporting craft didn’t have the firepower of the battleships, but they still represented considerable weight on the scale against him.
He allowed himself to hope his people could prevail in the fight that had seemed so unwinnable, just a faint glimmer. But, it was all he’d had in what seemed like a long while, and he felt it pouring energy into him. If he could escape, maybe—just maybe—he could figure out what was happening on Megara, and he could get the word out to the fleet that a new and deadly enemy was coming.
He turned toward the display, checking on the progress of recharging. The guns were almost there, almost ready to fire again.
But, so are Titania’s. He’d hoped to knock out the opposing ship’s big guns, but a quick analysis of hit locations and damage assessment told him the weapons had likely survived.
He turned toward the display, staring at Dauntless’s position, his hand moving to his board, making changes to the evasion plan when his eyes caught something.
And, he felt the hope, so newly sparked, drain from his body like water from a holed bucket.
“Admiral, scanners are picking up…”
He heard Atara’s voice, but he didn’t need the report. He was staring right at the display, at the space around the Corinth transit point…and the fifteen or more icons that had just appeared. New ships transiting into the system.
He thought for a moment, brief hopes flashing through his mind that perhaps it was a routine freight convoy, or something equally innocuous. But, Corinth was on a direct route to Megara, and that could mean only one thing.
Those ships had come after him…yet another task force sent to engage his ship, and to capture him.
Or, are they even trying to catch me anymore?
He could feel the doubt growing. Whoever was behind events on Megara didn’t want to capture him, or Gary Holsten. Not anymore.
They just wanted him dead.
Chapter Forty-Five
Next to Fortress Bennett
High Orbit Above Planet Dannith, Ventica III
Year 316 AC
“Let’s go, all squadrons, full thrusters. We’ve got to hit those enemy ships, and we’ve got to do it now!” Alicia Covington felt the stress in her gut, like a rock sitting there, weighing her down, making her nauseous. It wasn’t just the fact that she was leading a mere six squadrons against the entire enemy fleet, nor that her birds had launched with fuel tanks less than two-thirds full. No, it was the fact that she’d just looked at her scanners…at the condition of Admiral Winters’s fleet.
Fleet had been a grandiose term when the ships had left Grimaldi, but now, one of Winters’s battleships and a third of his escorts were completely gone…and Discovery wasn’t far from being an outright cripple. The battered ship only had two or three guns left operational, and from the vessel’s apparent rate of fire, it seemed to Covington that she was having trouble powering even that modest broadside.
Constitution was still in the battleline, but she didn’t know how. Winters’s flagship had been pounded relentlessly, and yet somehow had managed to remain combat effective. Winters had somehow managed to knock out all the enemy railguns save one…but that final weapon had at last scored a hit, tearing down the port side of the flagship and destroying ten of its secondary guns.
She had smiled as she watched Winters do exactly what she knew he would…bring the ship around, and its starboard weapons to bear, replacing the destroyed port broadside and continuing the fight.
The admiral had been forced to fall back, though, to keep the smaller enemy support vessels out of range. There were just too many of them, and if he allowed them to swarm Constitution and the other surviving Confederation ships, the fight would be over in an instant. Considerations about the planet had become secondary. Dannith would face certain attack and possible invasion when Winters’s ships were destroyed, whether or not the shattered fleet made a last stand alongside the forts.
She knew the firepower of those platforms would bolster the defenders’ strength considerably…but she also knew they wouldn’t last long. They had modest positional thrusters that could be used in an evasive role, but in the end, they w
ere mostly static platforms. Their batteries outranged the enemy weapons, save of course for the railguns, but once the attacking fleet closed enough, the incoming firepower would be overwhelming.
Covington was determined to lead her people in before that happened, to hit the enemy when they were being blasted by the forts…and before they had a chance to finish off Constitution.
She’d reorganized the entire strike force, and left behind officers she trusted, each tasked with leading out additional wings as soon as the base crews could get them ready. She’d get another six squadrons into the fight, she was pretty sure about that, but whatever happened after that had more to do with how long the fortresses held out than anything else. She’d done all she could, and there was nothing left to do but hope for the best.
And hit the enemy like a piledriver.
“We’re going in close this time.” She knew what her words must have sounded like to her pilots. The fighters had shredded all doctrine and every principle of their training in the last attack, driving their ships to previously unimagined ranges. But she intended to take it farther this time, and she was going to go in first, to show them just what she planned…and shame them into following her lead.
She ignored the responses. It was all the usual fighter pilot stuff, a seemingly endless display of bravado and confidence run amok. But, this time she could hear the difference. There was a hesitation, an uncertainty that hadn’t been there after the initial launch hours earlier. It wasn’t fear, not directly so. If anything, even closing to dangerous ranges, her pilots were safer than they’d be against an enemy protected by swarms of interceptors. It was the realization that they were fighting a hopeless battle, that no matter how well they performed, how many enemy ships they blasted, they couldn’t really make a difference.
Whatever they did, whatever tactical plans Admiral Winters might conceive, none of it would be enough. Dannith would be invaded…or blasted from orbit.
Millions of people were going to die. Confederation citizens, men and women who’d depended on the fleet to protect them.
And, the Confederation would have a new war…one Covington suddenly realized it might very well lose.
It was too much to take, the thought that the entire Union war had been fought—and won—for nothing, that defeat had come anyway, from the depths of a darkness they had all long believed to be empty and dead.
She tried to control her emotions, direct her uncertainty—and her fear—into rage, and focus it on the enemy before her. The fleet might lose the battle. The Confederation might lose the war.
But, just then her squadrons were going to show these bastards just what veteran pilots could do with their Lightnings.
“All squadrons…pump up reactors to one hundred ten percent. All power to the engines.”
* * *
Winters watched as a large Hegemony task force moved toward Dannith’s orbital fortresses. There was a line of what had to be battleships in the front, giant vessels, every one of them larger than Constitution. He imagined such a force could have shredded the platforms in a matter of minutes with their deadly railguns…save for the fact that between Covington’s fighters and his own shattered battleline, the enemy only appeared to have a single ship with the huge weapons still operational. Even that last ship’s rate of fire had slowed considerably, though whether that was caused by damage or some other, unknown factor, he could only guess.
As it was, the fortresses had opened fire before the attackers, at least with their own primaries. But, the forts were old, and poorly maintained, Dannith’s frontier long considered a safe one…from more than criminal traffic and rogue tech hunters. For decades, Confederation funds for upgrades had gone to other worlds, those on threatened borders…or with powerful political representatives able to direct the flow of funds back home. Being neither of these, Dannith’s defenses had been neglected for decades, as even local funds committed to their maintenance were squandered by corrupt politicians and special interests with little apparent gain. The platforms were state of the art…by the standards of thirty years before.
Still, even with just a few primaries, the bases bristled with massive laser cannons, weapons two or three times the size of Constitution’s secondaries. They opened fire at ranges scarcely lower than those of the particle accelerators, and while their strength was highly attenuated at such distances, the string of forts carried a lot of them.
Winters imagined that the enemy was taken aback by the amount of force directed at the attacking ships, though he wasn’t sure if that was cold logic or just what he wanted to believe. Still, he could see the fire taking its toll, a pair of primaries slamming into one Hegemon battleship, ripping into its innards. The stricken vessel lost ninety percent of its apparent thrust, and Winters couldn’t help but think of the hellish conditions that had to be ravaging the insides of the ship. He wasn’t proud of the satisfaction he felt, imaging enemy spacers dying horribly…but he’d seen too many of his own people killed in the past few hours, and many of them just as terribly. Regardless of how he thought he should feel, in truth, he welcomed the lust for vengeance. He knew from past experience that it was a source of strength, at least while the battle still raged. And, from the looks of things, there might be no after battle wave of guilt and recrimination as he’d experienced so many times before…because it wasn’t looking like any of his people were going to make it to the end of this fight.
As fixed platforms, the forts had an advantage in power generation and the mass of weaponry, even over a technologically superior enemy like the Hegemony. The platforms blasted away with their guns, almost without any return fire…but only for a few minutes. They’d done considerable damage to the advancing vessels, and destroyed several outright, but then the attackers entered range and opened fire.
The sole remaining railgun fired first, and against the almost immobile stations, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Winters watched as the projectile zipped across the display, right toward one of the largest of the platforms. He knew he was watching over a thousand tons of super-dense metal moving toward the fortress at close to seven percent of lightspeed. He’d seen what the projectiles could do to spaceships that had maneuvered wildly, that even if they hadn’t been able to escape being hit, had increased the approach angle, lessening the force of impact somewhat. But, even as his eyes were fixed to the screen, he knew the shot was going to take the fortress dead-center, and his usually quick mind grasped at wisps of nothingness as he tried to calculate the almost unimaginable amount of kinetic energy involved.
His brain did offer one detail, a scrap of knowledge he’d hardly been aware he knew. Four thousand-six hundred forty. The complement of the orbital station.
The number of men and women killed as he watched the railgun projectile slam into the platform’s hull…and more or less vaporize the whole thing.
Winters gasped, caught by surprise despite the fact that on some level he’d known just what would happen when weapons as powerful as the Hegemony railguns opened up on stations in fixed orbits. Constitution’s bridge was silent, for a good half a minute, everyone present staring in stunned silence at the carnage.
Then, the rest of the enemy force opened up on the forts, a massive barrage tearing into Dannith’s defensive grid, even as the forts fired back with desperate intensity. The platforms did well, better than Winters had expected, knowing the relative inexperience of their crews. On fort, in particular, fought the enemy wildly, firing with uncanny accuracy, taking down no fewer than four of the attacking ships before a combined Hegemony barrage tore it into half a dozen sections, each of them slipping from orbit, beginning a final journey toward the atmosphere and fiery impacts with the ground. Chunks of the platform would land all over the planet, Winters didn’t have a doubt…and if they hit populated areas, the casualties would rise well beyond the numbers of the already-dead crew.
He watched somberly, his own salute to the heroes who’d fought so well, but when his eyes returned
to the main display, he was forced to accept a bitter truth.
Dannith’s defensive array was in ruins.
There were a few forts still fighting, though most of them were damaged. They’d taken their toll on the attackers, destroyed and crippled so many ships, they just might have beaten back the assault…save for the fact that a second wave was coming on, and if it was smaller than the first, it was still beyond anything the last few battered forts could face.
Winters felt the urge to support the platforms, more in some unknown way than his still-fighting ships were doing already…but he had nothing. His fleet had been small when he’d arrived, and now he was down to the tattered remains. He didn’t have a single ship that wasn’t damaged, and many of them were in critical condition. He felt the call of duty, screaming out to him to defend Dannith, to keep the enemy from landing on a Confederation world.
But there was just no way.
“Admiral…” The tactical officer’s voice was hesitant.
“Yes, Commander?”
“The battle around the planet is lost.” A pause. “But, we can pull back, regroup in the dust clouds just beyond the planetary orbit.” Winters could hear the hesitancy in the man’s voice, even a hint of shame at what the officer no doubt considered cowardly advice. But, Winters knew his officer was right. Tactically right. His ships were the only Confederation force remaining in the system, or they would be in a few minutes, once the last of the fortresses had been pounded to dust. He could do nothing by remaining where he was, save, possibly, destroying a very few enemy ships before his people were wiped out. Such a sacrifice would have no effect whatsoever on a potential ground assault.
He couldn’t imagine what would change if he pulled back, what options would present themselves to the remnants of his fleet, but it made more sense to keep a force in being than it did to throw the last of his forces away for nothing.