Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars Book 8)

by Jay Allan

  But, duty was sometimes hard, and watching the enemy, seeing the power and capability of their ships, he knew his first duty was—had to be—to get out the word, to make sure the rest of the Confederation was on alert. He’d already sounded the alarm, of course, the instant Barron’s message had arrived, and no doubt the famous admiral was already back on Megara, doing the same. But, Winters had actually fought the enemy, and for all he’d taken Barron’s words as pure fact, he realized now he still hadn’t appreciated just how deadly the new enemy was, or just what kind of a conflict was coming on them all.

  His darkest thoughts were wild with images of great worlds burning, fleets battered to scrap, of the fall of the Confederation itself.

  He’d sent three ships back through the transit point, grateful that the enemy had come in from the frontier end of the system, that the way back toward the Confederation’s network of transit points remained open to his ships. That made retreat a real option, and one he’d forced himself to consider. He wouldn’t have thought about it for an instant if he had been alone. The ‘Sledgehammer’ didn’t run. But, he was less cavalier about throwing away the lives of his people, and he’d been tortured for hours by uncertainty. He couldn’t save Dannith, not with the forces he had with him. The tactical decision was clear. He should retreat, rally more forces, and return when he had some chance of victory. But, he hadn’t been able to force himself to issue the commands.

  Not yet.

  His fingers moved over his workstation, pulling up damage control reports. His crews had worked wonders on his ships, repairing far more than he’d imagined possible in such a short time…though ‘repair’ was a strong word for most of it. The hasty fixes were mostly fragile patch jobs, and even on the bridge of his flagship, there were auxiliary cables strewn across the deck, replacements and temporary reconfigurations for comm lines and energy transmission conduits blasted in the fighting. His ships had more systems online than they had half a day earlier, but he knew they would lose them again quickly in a fight.

  He shook his head bitterly. If he advanced into range of the enemy, the result wouldn’t be a fight. It would be a slaughter. He had no choice. There was nothing he could do for Dannith, not now…and there was a war to fight. His duty had been in the Ventica system, doing all he could to protect the beleaguered planet, but now it lay elsewhere…helping to prepare the Confederation for what looked to be the most desperate war it had ever seen.

  “Commander, lay in a fleet course for the Talyon transit point.” His tone was somber, morose, despite his best efforts to hide his misery.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He looked back to the main display, to the scans from the space around Dannith.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, softly, to himself.

  And, to the millions he had to leave to their fate.

  * * *

  “Faster! We’re almost out of time.” Blanth stood on the bank of the river, watching as a column of Marines streamed across the hasty bridge his engineers had built. Bridge was a bit of an overstatement for the rickety structure, but he’d already gotten over two thousand Marines across already, plus a similar number of planetary regulars and militia. That was more than he’d expected just hours before, and he knew he owed the operation’s success to the five hundred volunteers out on the other side of the city, struggling to hold back the enemy advance.

  The Marines weren’t so much fighting the tanks, as they were tearing up the landscape, doing everything possible to slow the massive things down. It had still been dangerous, and the last casualty report he’d gotten was somewhere north of thirty percent, but the desperate struggle had allowed him to regroup at least some of the planet’s defenders.

  ‘Planet’ wasn’t entirely an accurate characterization. To be honest, Blanth had no idea what was going on anywhere but around the capital, having lost planetwide communications with the destruction of the satellite network. He had positioned smaller forces in other key areas, but he’d known from the start that the fight around Dannith’s main city would determine the planet’s fate. If he’d had any air power, or more troops, he might have made an effort to conduct a true planetwide defense, but without the resources, he’d put ninety percent of his strength within twenty kilometers of Port Royal City.

  “Keep moving.” He’d been shouting some version of the same thing for the last few hours, but now there was a new urgency. He could hear the sounds of fighting getting closer, and he knew the enemy was advancing rapidly now, that his battered rearguard was almost spent, its remnants falling back on the bridgehead. It all felt almost surreal, like some army from thousands of years before, scrambling around on the ground on foot, and seeing things like rivers as grand obstacles. For the hundredth time, he craved air power, craft for both combat and transport, but as he had every other time he’d considered it, he realized he was better off with neither his forces nor the enemy having any. If the invaders had been able to land some kind of aircraft, the battle would be over already, his forces wiped out.

  Of course, it he’d had any kind of air assault assets, even those giant, lumbering tanks would have been in a world of hurt…depending on how effective their anti-air defenses were.

  There was no point of imagining what ifs. He had to get as many of his people across as he could…and he had to get them organized, ready to resume the fight. He was giving the city to the enemy, and he didn’t like that. But, he had no hope of holding it, and if he’d dug in for a fight in the heavily urbanized areas, Port Royal would have been leveled, and many—or most—of its millions of occupants, killed.

  The enemy didn’t seem to be conducting any kind of genocidal operation, and that meant yielding the city was the best way to save lives.

  The woods south of the river were in a virtually unpopulated area, a perfect spot for the last stand, a place where his people could unleash all that remained of their destructive capability, without killing thousands of civilians. And, a last stand was just what he knew it was. His people would hold there, for a while, but they couldn’t defeat the enemy forces. It wasn’t a question of if Dannith would fall, but when…and Blanth was determined to push that time as far out as he could.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Blackstone Heights

  Outside Port Royal City

  Planet Dannith, Ventica III

  Year 316 AC

  “Maintain fire…but bursts only.” Blanth had repeated the command multiple times, but he still had people firing on full auto, especially among the planetary regulars and the militias, who were governed more by fear than by his orders. He didn’t mind the added firepower, but he did object to running out of ammunition in the middle of the fight…and the absolute last thing he was going to do was pull ammo from his Marines to give it to local troops who’d squandered theirs. When the planetary soldiers went through their own allotments, they were shit out of luck.

  The fire wasn’t doing much anyway. There were enemy soldiers out there, in support of the tanks, which gave his people intermittent targets they could actually hurt. But, for the most part, those troopers stayed behind the behemoths, and mostly out of reach of the Marines’ fire.

  The woods had been a good choice for a defensive position. It seemed clear that the enemy had some level of restriction of the level of devastation they were prepared to utilize. He’d been afraid the attackers would unleash incendiaries on the forest, trapping his people in a conflagration and giving them the choice of fleeing out into the open or roasting alive. But, they hadn’t, not yet.

  Maybe they just need to get authorization from a higher level…

  There was no point worrying about it. For now, he took solace in the knowledge that the enemy war machines were tough—damned tough—but they weren’t indestructible. The three artillery pieces his people had managed to redeploy had taken out four of them, before they themselves were targeted and destroyed. And, his people had knocked out another three with makeshift mines and similar tactics.

  Bl
anth knew he could destroy the tanks with nukes, of course, but he didn’t have any…and he was defending a Confederation world, one he preferred not to turn into a radioactive hell. Still, he wondered what kind of enemies the Hegemony had faced before. The Confederation had shied away from deploying its own tanks for the very reason he’d just considered. Offensive weaponry was just too deadly to concentrate so much power in something so large and vulnerable to fire.

  Do these people fight primitives, enemies without high-yield weapons? Is the size as much for its visual and morale impact as fighting power? Or, do they simply rely on adversaries not using high-yield weapons on their own worlds?

  That would be a dangerous assumption. Blanth was far from sure he’d hold back himself if he’d had nuclear ordnance available.

  He didn’t have answers, and he didn’t have time to think about it. The enemy tanks had gotten across the river, with far greater ease than he’d expected. The things were waterproof, or close to it, and most of them had simply driven across the bottom of the shallow river. The soft, sandy material of the riverbed had slowed them, for sure, but it had still taken less than an hour to get a dozen of the war machines to the southern bank.

  His people had managed to inflict some casualties on the enemy infantry, though for the most part, the soldiers had remained behind the tanks, ready, he suspected, to intervene if he sent his people in to try to take the heavy weapons in the flank. He’d considered doing just that, but the dense columns formed up behind the tanks had discouraged him. Any parties he sent would be quickly surrounded and attacked.

  The enemy soldiers were disturbing in their own ways. He’d seen a few bodies from the limited firefights that had occurred, and they were…different. They were human, or at least they had been before something was…done to them. He’d thought they were fully armored at first. He’d seen the Confederation’s own experimental suits of powered armor, and he had an idea what something of the sort might look like on enemy troops. Then he realized that wasn’t the case. They weren’t wearing armor at all. It was…attached to them. There were heavy plates on their shoulders, and positioned in other places as well. It looked as though part of the armored sections were removeable…but they were affixed to sections protruding from inside the troopers’ bodies. The soldiers had been surgically altered, turned into some kind of human-machine hybrids.

  Blanth hadn’t had time to really study the corpses, nor to develop any kind of reasonable guesses as to the combat potential such…modifications…would provide. But, he guessed that when it finally came to combat between the enemy soldiers and the Marines, his people were going to find that they had encountered their deadliest enemies yet.

  * * *

  “Admiral, the last of Commander Covington’s people have landed.”

  Winters nodded silently. He’d been about to withdraw, when the scanners detected a force of fighters inbound. Covington and her people had launched a second assault on the enemy capital ships, at least those who’d managed to get out before the stations came under attack. They’d inflicted significant damage, and after they’d launched the last of their torpedoes, they’d come about and helped to defend the fortresses, making repeated strafing runs with their lasers.

  Then, when the forts were gone…along with all the squadrons that had remained in the bays—they’d broken off and headed toward the fleet…and Constitution, the sole remaining fighter platform in the system. Discovery had survived the battle, too, but the old battleship was badly battered, and Winters doubted she was repairable, even in a shipyard. There was certainly no chance of getting her bays back in operation anytime soon.

  His first thought was concern about how he would get all the fighters into Constitution’s own battered bays. Then, he realized there were only forty-two of them, not even a tithe of the massive strike force that had gone against the enemy in the first assault.

  “Very well, Commander. Advise all ships to prepare for immediate thrust.” He’d belayed the earlier withdrawal order when he saw the fighters inbound. Abandoning Covington and her survivors would have been too much, more than he could endure. It seemed foolish perhaps, to worry about forty-two pilots, even as millions on Dannith could be dying. But the fighter pilots had fought like uncaged devils, tearing into the enemy forces again and again. The fault for the fall of Dannith could not be laid upon them.

  And, they were his people. Most of them, at least, along with a few of the pilots from the fortresses, no longer the green warriors they’d been hours before.

  “Admiral…I’m picking something up on the scanners.” Commander Jerome had proven to be highly capable at the tactical station. Winters knew his reputation for being hard-driving was well-deserved, and he respected any officer who could keep up with him. “Incoming ships, sir. A significant force.”

  Winters felt a coldness in his body. He’d already made the decision to retreat, to take advantage of the enemy’s failure to pursue and finish off his last ships. He hadn’t had any remaining doubts, not really, but if he had, the arrival of fresh enemy forces would have finished them off.

  He turned toward Jerome, but he didn’t say anything, not for a few seconds. There was nothing to say. He just sat still, and finally he said, “There is nothing to be gained by delay. All ships…commence nav plan alpha. Forty percent thrust.” The enemy wasn’t following, and the new force was too far away to interfere. Amid the desperation and misery, Winters was grateful for the small mercy that he wasn’t forced to abandon his cripples. Forty percent would keep his survivors together, instead of stringing out what remained of his fleet. He wasn’t sure it really mattered, but it was a small mercy to him.

  “Yes, Admiral…relaying command to all…” Jerome’s voice stopped suddenly.

  Winters’ head snapped around, as much by instinct as intent. He’d come to trust Jerome, and there was something in the officer’s voice…

  “Admiral…we’re picking up beacons from the incoming ships.” A pause. “They’re Confederation vessels, sir!”

  Winters heard the words, but they didn’t make any sense to him. How could there be Confederation forces coming in from the Badlands.

  And, then he realized…

  * * *

  Sara Eaton stared straight ahead, and her eyes were cold like death. Her forces had been pursued by the enemy through several dozen systems, and then the tables had turned suddenly, and her people became the pursuers, chasing a fleet that was faster and stronger…and was heading toward the Confederation.

  The fleet that had left her forces behind had been stronger than the White Fleet, massively so. She’d been engaged in a hopeless battle then, one she’d fully expected to end in defeat and death. Then, the enemy blasted past her ships, leaving her battered force to patch itself up and pursue, as best it could.

  She had followed, chasing every sign of the enemy, every ion trail or other clue as to the direction the Hegemony force had taken…and when she’d realized the trail indeed led back home, she’d driven her ships hard, almost past their endurance, leaving those units that could not keep up behind…to get back to Dannith. And, now, she’d arrived to find a much-depleted enemy force, one that had clearly fought a nasty battle in the system, a defense far more effective than she’d have expected just from Dannith’s fortifications.

  Then, the scanner reports came in. Confederation ships. She smiled, imagining that Tyler Barron had already managed to get some added force deployed to Dannith. But, it didn’t matter why they were there…what mattered was they had hurt the Hegemony fleet, weakened it significantly.

  Her mind analyzed the new information rapidly, concluding that the Hegemony forces still outgunned the White Fleet and the Confederation ships on her scanners combined. But, the margin was far closer than it had been. She didn’t know if her people could win the fight, but she wasn’t sure they couldn’t either…and she was damned sure they could gut the enemy forces, and give them one hell of an idea what to expect when they invaded Confederation s
pace.

  She clenched her fists, turning toward her sister’s station. “All ships…battlestations. All fighter squadrons scramble…prepare for immediate launch.” There was venom in her tone, and a bloodthirsty rage began to take control of her. This was no distant system, no battle fought in the endless depths of space. This was a Confederation system, and the Hegemony ships were invaders.

  Sara Eaton only knew one way to deal with invaders.

  It was time to show these people what a mistake they had made leaving her forces behind…

  * * *

  “It’s the White Fleet, sir!” Jerome had been controlled and calm during the battle, but his excitement slipped into his voice this time. Winters had known he couldn’t expect any reinforcements yet, not from within the Confederation. That had been a key component of his reluctant decision to pull out, to flee the system while he could. But the arrival of the White Fleet changed everything. Retreat became unthinkable…and there was only a single option in his mind.

  “All ships, replot course toward Dannith. We’re going to attack again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And advise the launch bays I want those fighters refitted and ready to launch in twenty minutes.” He paused, and then, with the tone that had earned him his nickname, he added, “And, at twenty-one minutes, I’m going to start spacing flight crew if those birds aren’t blasting down the tubes.”

  His people knew that wasn’t a serious threat, he realized that. But there were enough rumors about him to sustain just the slightest doubt. And, that was enough to have the desired effect.