by Jay Allan
The vessels were old, but many of their systems had been modernized. And there was something else, a hazy concept, but one important to an old spacer like Harmon. These ships were blooded, they had seen combat, performed again and again against the odds. They had seen their occupants to a new world, through all the death and power the Regent could throw at them. They were hallowed, sanctified by the blood of those who had died manning them. And Harmon knew they would do what they were called upon to do…now as they had so long ago.
He wondered about the men and women who would crew the newly activated vessels. They were all Pilgrims, the original officers and spacers who had served aboard these very vessels decades before. They had been a finely tuned unit then, almost fanatically devoted to Admiral Compton. But Harmon knew many of those men and women being called back to duty disliked him now. His popularity was better among the Pilgrims than the rest of the population, but nevertheless, thousands of the veteran spacers had been ready to vote against him. And now they were reporting for duty, preparing to fight in space once more at his command. Would they rally to the cause, rediscover their old élan? Or would they nurse their resentments toward him?
Harmon had done the best he could to mitigate the impact on the republic’s veterans. The old ships were all equipped with new AIs and legions of robots. They would never be as manpower-efficient as the ships built in recent years, but they would function with a fraction of their old crews. And that allowed Harmon to cherry pick those recalled to the colors, to try and avoid the ones most opposed to him. It was an imperfect system, but it was the best he had.
“Max…” Mariko came walking in, the aide posted outside the door following her helplessly.
“It’s okay, Lieutenant. You can let her through.” He didn’t envy a junior officer caught between the commanding admiral and his wife…and the fact that the admiral was also president pushed it off the scale.
“I need you to reactivate my commission.”
Harmon looked up at his wife, feeling his stomach tighten. Mariko Fujin didn’t look like much, barely a wisp of a woman standing there staring at him. He felt the same urge anyone would about loved ones, the desire to protect them, to keep them safe. But his wife had been one of the fiercest warriors the Alliance had ever produced, the protégé of the legendary Greta Hurley, and one of the deadliest pilots and experts on fighter tactics who had ever lived.
“Mariko…”
“Forget it, Max. Your loving urge to protect me is noted and appreciated, but I remind you that if the enemy manages to get close enough to Earth Two to drop an antimatter warhead on us, I’ll be every bit as dead as I would be in a cockpit.”
Harmon shook his head. There was an element of truth in her argument, but she had twisted the logic to make her point. He knew everyone was in danger…but he was also well aware that the fighter pilots in their twenty-ton craft were a lot more likely to die than someone sitting in Victory City waiting to see what happened.
She took a few steps forward and dropped herself in one of the desk chairs. “Max, I did some checking, and it turns out we’ve got a lot of operational fighters, new models…and even some of the old ones from the days of the fleet. We produced a lot of fighters early on, when we were trying to get as much defensive punch as quickly as possible. But then we made the breakthroughs in AI technology, and the fighter complements were scaled down to keep crew sizes small. A lot of those birds just ended up getting crated and locked away in the storehouses.”
“I see where you’re going, but who is going to fly those fighters? The Academy is only graduating forty pilots a year…and that’s been the case for a long time. We’ve got the pilots stationed in the defensive platforms and the ones assigned to the fleet’s ships, but not many more than that.”
“You’d be surprised. I did some research. You know as well as I do that there is a lot of turnover in the fighter corps. Even when we’re not suffering casualties in war…” She paused for an instant.
Harmon knew she was thinking of old comrades. The losses suffered by the fleet’s fighter crews had been staggering, and he knew his wife struggled to make peace with her own ghosts from the past.
“Even beyond the casualties we suffered back in the day, we’ve always had transfers, crew members moving to other positions. We’ve got a good number of officers and crew with fighter experience currently assigned to different positions on the home fleet ships and defensive fortresses. They could be reassigned back to the fighter corps.”
“Washouts? You want to build an expanded fighter corps out of people who couldn’t cut it?” He knew the words were harsh as they left his lips, but they burst out anyway. He didn’t really think a failure to fit into the specific culture of the fighter teams was a character flaw, but it wasn’t likely to be predictive of success in one of the deadly craft either.
“I can work with them, Max. If they know how to fly—or how to work the weapons or keep the engines running—I can turn them into an effective force.” She paused. “Of course, I will need the old veterans, but I have no doubt they will rally back to the colors.” There were a few seconds of silence. Both of them knew how few survivors there were from the old fighter wings.
“Mariko…”
“There are over two hundred fifty fighters available to us, Max…more than half of them never used. Do you realize what that does to our defensive capability? And our ability to track down missiles? One of those crated fighters could be the one that picks off a warhead before it gets to Earth Two.”
Harmon fidgeted in his seat. He hated the idea of Mariko back in the cockpit of a tiny, frail fighter…and he knew she’d never agree to command the corps from the relative safety of one of the fortresses. No, he remembered what she had been like back in the days of the fleet. Crazy…as absolutely single-mindedly insane as any pilot he’d ever known. Her record of kills was beyond impressive…he doubted he’d have even believed it if he hadn’t seen her in action. It had been hard to watch her climb into her craft back then, when they were just two officers engaged in a passionate romance, jumping into bed every time the two managed to get off duty at the same time. Now, she was his wife of thirty years, and the mother of his children. He knew the republic was in deadly danger, and he was sure Mariko could get more out of the fighter corps than any other living man or woman. But all he wanted to do was protect her, keep her from the deadly danger.
Mariko reached across the desk, put her hand on his. “I know this is hard for you, my love. But you married a fighter jock, not a meek little science officer or comm specialist. I am what I am…and you know I can help defend Earth Two.”
Harmon looked at her. His mind was scrambling, trying to find a reason to refuse her request. But he knew it was pointless. He loved his wife, but he respected her too, and he knew she had earned the right to be part of the defense of her adopted home world. She would die just like everyone else if the battle was lost. And he knew Earth Two’s prospects, its chances in a desperate battle, were far stronger with Mariko Fujin leading her squadrons into battle.
He hated the whole thing, and the part of him that was Max Harmon screamed inside to say ‘no,’ to refuse her request. But the naval officer in him, the president—the successor to Terrance Compton—couldn’t say no. Mariko Fujin was one of the most accomplished officers of the fleet, a bona fide war hero…and that trumped her place as Max Harmon’s wife. At least when every man and woman on Earth Two lived under the threat of a First Imperium attack.
He struggled to tell her he would approve her request, reactivate her commission. But he couldn’t force the words out. Finally, he just nodded.
She smiled. “I’ll get started immediately. I just need you to authorize me to transfer the personnel…and of course, to reactivate the old veterans.”
Harmon sat still for a few seconds. Then he nodded again.
“Consider yourself on active duty, Captain Fujin.” He paused, looking across the desk at her, noticing the glint in her eye. Mar
iko Fujin had adapted to peacetime life…and a position teaching fighter tactics at the Academy. But Harmon knew she’d never lost her edge. The predator that lived inside all true fighter pilots was alive and well…and for all the fear he felt over the danger she would face, he almost pitied any enemies she would face.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
From the Personal Log of Erika West
Are you out here? Are you in trouble? I am coming…and I pray that I am not too late.
Why did I let you go? You deserve your rank, certainly, and no one has served the republic with more intelligence and loyalty than you. But you have never commanded a fleet in combat, not in a situation like this. Did I underestimate the danger of a major First Imperium incursion? Or was I simply too weak to look at you and tell you I didn’t think you were experienced enough for this mission…and see the hurt in your eyes my lack of confidence would surely have caused?
Will my weakness cost you your life…cost me the person closer to me than anyone I have ever known? I am pushing the fleet, perhaps even beyond reason. I am doing all I can to get to you…but I can do nothing but sit here and hope we are in time. Hope that I have saved you from the doom my own failure has threatened to bring on you…and all those who serve with you.
I sit here thinking of our last moments together before you left…if the words we exchanged will be the final ones between us. They were so inadequate, so incomplete. My mind is awash now with things I would have said, should have said. I know you are sure of my affection, as I am of yours. Yet, I fear you cannot understand the full intensity of what you have come to mean to me. I make my appeal to whatever unknown forces decide the fates of spacers like us. If one of us must die because of my weakness, my failure, let it be me. I have faced death many times, escaped by the barest of margins. I have seen many good men and women die, too many. If the survival of our people must claim another, let it be me…and not you.
Bridge – E2S Constitution
System G35
Earth Two Date 01.03.31
“I want those systems up and running now.” Erika West sat in center of Constitution’s flag bridge like a marble statue, cold, unyielding. The Pilgrims on her staff had seen her like this before, or at least heard stories from those who had. But the younger officers sat in stunned shock, struggling to face the withering intensity of her commands.
Erika West was a legend in the fleet, one whose own accomplishments shone even through the blinding light of Terrance Compton’s achievements. She had been Compton’s right hand, loyal to the finish, and her skills in battle matched those of her mentor. West had commanded the republic’s navy as long as there had been a republic, and throughout that time, no one would have called her soft or undemanding. But her peacetime demeanor had given way, replaced by the raw force of the pure warrior the veterans who had seen her in battle remembered.
“Yes, Admiral…the AI is rebooting. Estimate forty seconds to full operation.” Elsa Wagner had seen West in action before, or, more accurately, she had heard her on the com during battle. Wagner had been a young ensign, months out of the Academy when she’d been assigned to Saratoga, arriving eleven days before the fleet was trapped behind the Barrier. Barret Dumont had flown his flag from the Yorktown class battlewagon, and she’d been terrified of the stern old admiral. But then Dumont was killed in action, and Erika West arrived to take his place. Wagner remembered the terror she had felt at the mere presence of the new commander. She could still recall her first glimpse of West, hair short, neat…her uniform spotless, crisp, as if a wrinkle wouldn’t dare show itself.
Wagner was a commander now, and she had worked for years alongside the admiral who had once inspired such primal fear in her. She’d been a key aide to both of the navy’s top officers, and West had chosen her as fleet tactical officer for the rescue mission. The assignment hadn’t come as a complete surprise, but she was still relieved when she got the word. She was very fond of Admiral Frette, and she had been eager to serve in the fleet being sent to her aid.
The assignment made her Constitution’s exec as well. The admirals in the old fleet had relied on flag captains to skipper their flagships, but with the massively reduced crew complements on the republic’s vessels, it had become standard for a fleet commander to run his or her own ship as well.
“AI coming up now, Admiral…” Wagner’s voice was crisp, professional. Decades of working alongside Erika West had rubbed off on her, and she had acquired her own reputation for being a bit of a cold fish. It wasn’t a fair assessment, not really…but then it wasn’t in West’s case either, and the admiral had been putting up with it for more than forty years.
“Reactor online…scanning systems operational.” She paused, her eyes darting down to her screens. She knew the AI could feed all the information she needed directly into her mind, but the headset sat on its hook, unused. Wagner was an old school officer, slow to adopt radical new technology. She shared that trait with West, who she’d never seen wearing her own AI link. “We’re getting confirmations from the other ships, Admiral. All units coming online.” She was still getting used to the dual responsibility of monitoring both Constitution itself, and the rest of the fleet as well.
“I want full scans, Commander. Active and passive. I want a thorough study of every scrap of debris we can find.” The systems the fleet had passed through since leaving Earth Two had been mostly empty, nothing more than a hint of an energy trail to show that Frette’s forces had come this way. But system G35 was different. The communique delivered by Cyclone had been clear about the location of the battle Frette’s people had fought.
“Yes, Admiral. All ships initiating scans.” Wagner’s eyes dropped to the screen, staring, waiting for any data to come in from the sensors. She knew the AI would alert her to any findings, but she looked down anyway. There were fifty-seven ships in the fleet, and every one of them was banging away with active scanners. If there were any First Imperium ships in the system now, the fleet was advertising its presence.
“I want maximum dispersal patterns. Task groups are to engage thrusters, fan out in search pattern delta-2.” West’s words were like cold granite, not a hint of doubt. But Wagner had come to know the admiral well enough to realize that a fair portion of her legendary coldness was an act. Erika West expected to find trouble, if not in this system then in one ahead. Wagner was sure of that…and she agreed completely.
She was nervous. Spreading the fleet out into small search groups was risky. If they were attacked it would take time to get the whole force back into an effective combat formation…time they might not have. But it wasn’t her decision, and Erika West knew what she was doing.
“Yes, Admiral.” A few seconds later. “All units acknowledge.” Wagner leaned back and took a deep breath. They were searching for small traces of evidence, for anything that might give them a better idea of the battle Frette’s fleet had fought…and finding that was likely to take a while.
Her eyes darted down to her screen, and she snapped bolt upright. She’d expected to wait hours, but now the data was pouring in…reports from the other ships, and a torrent of information from Constitution’s own scanners.
“Admiral, we have scanner reports coming in from all across the fleet.”
West snapped her head around, clearly as surprised as Wagner at the early data. “Analysis?”
Wagner felt edgy, West’s intensity adding to the tension she already felt from the surprise scanner readings. Her fingers moved over her keyboard, entering instructions, executing a full AI review of the data coming in. But she didn’t need the analysis…it was rapidly becoming clear to her what had happened here.
“The battle.” The words just blurted out of her mouth…but now that they did, she went with it. “We’ve got definite debris from the battle, Admiral. High levels of residual radiation, heavy concentrations of heavy metals…even some large chunks of debris.” She turned and looked right at West. “There is no doubt.”
“Very well,
Commander.” West’s tone was steady, seemingly unaffected by the news. “Continue scans…and launch a spread of probes to gather some samples. I want those chunks of destroyed ships analyzed…every one of them.”
* * *
Achilles stood and stared at the shard of twisted metal on the laboratory table in front of him. It looked much like a chunk from any ship’s hull, most likely part of a section that had been blown outward at a high enough velocity to escape vaporization when the ship it had been part of was consumed by the escaping energies of a fusion reactor or a magazine full of antimatter. To look at it, the remnant could have been from either a human ship, or one of the First Imperium’s vessels.
The Mule watched as the rays of the spectral analyzer moved over the sample, its normally invisible light reflecting off the metal as a faint indigo glow. The AI would confirm it in a few seconds, but the color of the light told Achilles all he needed to know. The debris was from a First Imperium vessel. The two powers used similar alloys, but the First Imperium hulls were infused with dark matter, and the knowledge behind its utilization was still a mystery to human science, despite years of research by the Mules. But the indigo spectral halo was a dead giveaway.
“Another First Imperium fragment.” He turned and looked down the table toward Callisto. “We’re running almost twenty to one. Admiral Frette’s report didn’t exaggerate. She crushed the enemy fleet…at least in this system.”