by Jay Allan
If this was going to be her last fight, it was going to be her greatest one too.
Chapter Thirty-One
Captain Josie Strand to her Bridge Crew
Moments Before Starfire Opened Fire
You’ve heard the stories, read the accounts. You’ve looked up at the statues, the memorials to lost heroes. You know, every one of you, the deeds done by our parents, by the Pilgrims who came before us. Now it is our turn. Honor them now through emulation. Stand by your posts and fight…like no men and women have ever fought before. Show these machines from what warriors we spawned.
To victory! To victory…or death!
Cockpit, Fighter 001
System G42
Earth Two Date 01.08.31
“Alright boys and girls…this is what we trained for, what we practiced for. Let’s make all those flight hours count. Forget the standard tactics…we’re going to do this old school, the way the pilots of the old fleet did. We’re going to go right down the throats of these bastards…and we’re going to blow them to hell!”
McDaid was staring straight ahead as he addressed his squadrons. He had all the dash, all the pure insanity of a great fighter pilot…but he was also realistic. If this battle was going to cost all his people their lives, by God they were going to make it count.
He angled his throttle, wincing as he pushed it to full thrust, altering his ship’s vector, bringing it to bear directly on the Leviathan. The Spacehawk fighter he was piloting was a vast improvement on those the pilots of the old fleet had flown. It was faster, more maneuverable…and it held not one, but two plasma torpedoes in its bomb bay. That was a punch that could make even a Leviathan take notice.
His people had ridden in on the heels of the missiles, slipping through the enemy point defense with only eight losses. That was forty of his people, and it hurt like hell, but it was far less than he’d feared. And now their comrades were ready to take their revenge.
He glanced at range on the display. Thirty thousand kilometers. The book said anything less than twenty thousand was optimum firing range…but McDaid had read the accounts of Greta Hurley’s pilots, and he had listened to Mariko Fujin speak of the tactics that had saved the fleet.
Twenty thousand kilometers is for gutless punks who have no place in a cockpit…
He was going right down this ship’s throat…and he was going to drop both torpedoes at point blank range.
The Leviathan was growing larger on the scanner as the kilometers ticked off the readout.
Twenty thousand.
He flipped a row of switches, activating the launch mechanisms. He could hear the loud clicks as the torpedoes were lowered into firing positon.
Fifteen thousand.
He pulled open a small hatch on his workstation, grabbing a lever with his hand and twisting it to the right.
“Plasma torpedoes armed and ready.” It was the voice of the fighter’s AI. He could fire at any time.
Ten thousand.
He had two gunners on his bird, and they were both manning the ship’s laser turrets, but McDaid wasn’t going to let anyone near the torpedo controls. He was going to fly the fighter to the perfect spot…and he was going to launch the two weapons himself.
Eight thousand kilometers.
Close. Too close, he thought for an instant. His hands were tingling, his body was twitching with excitement, tension.
No, not too close. Fujin closed to less than five thousand more than once…and God only knows what Greta Hurley did…
Six thousand kilometers.
He could hear his crew behind him, breathing hard. He could sense their fear. But none of them said a word.
Five thousand kilometers.
He tapped the throttle one last time, adjusting the trajectory. Then he depressed his finger on the firing stud…once…then an instant later a second time. Then he pulled the throttle hard, back and to the side.
He could see the enemy ship now, filling the screen in front of him.
We’re not going to make it…
He felt his body tense…and he knew his bird was going to crash…
And then it didn’t. His eyes darted to the screen as the fighter zipped past the Leviathan. The numbers he saw made him nauseous. His bird had cleared the enemy by less than eighty kilometers. That was a lot of distance on the ground, but in a space battle it was beyond threading a needle. If he’d tapped the throttle so much a fraction of a second later, the fighter would have smashed into its target.
He loosened his grip on the throttle, gasping for breath as the crushing gee forces abated. His eyes snapped down to the display, anxious for a damage assessment on the target.
But there was nothing there when he looked, nothing at all.
Nothing but a dissipating cloud of plasma where a First Imperium battleship had been.
* * *
Starfire shook hard. Strand could hear the sounds of distant explosions, but it was all soft, far away. She didn’t need to listen…she knew exactly what was happening to her ship.
She leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, allowing the AI to push the data she needed into her mind. It was uncomfortable, but she couldn’t argue it hadn’t given her an advantage. Starfire had pushed forward, driving right past the enemy’s light ships…and engaging the battle line directly. She had faced off against four Leviathans, and her pinpoint fire had destroyed one…and gutted another. But Starfire had paid for its victories, and for her boldness. Her ship was bleeding air, spewing liquids into space to flash freeze the instant they left the torn hull. Her crew had worked wonders keeping the ship in the fight, but she knew it wouldn’t be much longer. Her main batteries were gone, a good portion of the guns nothing now but melted and twisted wreckage. And even if they had been reparable, she didn’t have the power to fire them. The reactor was down to thirty percent.
She could see the AI’s representation of laser fire lancing out from her battered ship. Three of the secondaries were still online, and at this range their fire was extremely effective. They weren’t the ship killers the main particle accelerators were, but the shots tore into one of the damaged enemy ships, each one another hit, one more bit of devastation before they were silenced for good.
“Commander Hahn, I need thrust. We’re going to close on that bastard.” Her tone was odd, distracted. It was difficult to interact with her human crew when she was wearing the neural link. But what she wanted now wasn’t anything the AI could do for her. She wanted that last bit of effort, the final bit of pure defiance her crew possessed.
“Commander Willis is down at the reactor now, Captain. He requests permission to do an emergency power surge.”
Strand heard the words, the meaning crystalizing in her mind. Willis was suggesting something crazy, a wild gamble…but she knew he was only trying to give her what she needed. If she could close, her people just might be able to take another enemy ship with them. And right now, that was worth any risk.
“Do it.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Strand could see the reactor room, another projection the AI pushed into her mind. She could feel it somehow, the extra power surging through the conduits leading out from the reaction chamber, the whole mechanism strained to the brink of catastrophic failure…but holding together. Somehow.
She could see the target ship as well, feel Starfire accelerating, moving toward it. She directed the AI, adjusted the navigation to bring all her surviving guns to bear.
Another twenty thousand kilometers…
She sat, holding her breath, waiting for the right moment…
And then the ship shook wildly. She felt her body slamming forward into her harness, the sharp pain as at least one of her ribs broke. She reached up and pulled the headset off, shaking her head to clear her mind. Starfire’s bridge was a nightmare. The main lights were out, only a dim illumination from the emergency fixtures and a small electrical fire on one of the consoles lighting the dark space.
Her people were scre
aming, and she could see several of them were wounded. And then her eyes settled on Hahn. He was lying on the deck next to his workstation…and she could see in an instant his head was twisted at a grotesque angle. She unstrapped herself and lunged across the deck, dropping to her hands and knees next to him, but even before she reached out, put her fingers on his neck, she knew he was dead.
And so was Starfire.
She knew her ship was mortally wounded. She didn’t need any reports to tell her the reactor had scragged, and she doubted there was any hope of restarting it…if Commander Willis and any of his techs were even still alive.
She’d targeted one last enemy, but it had turned out to be a ship too far. She wanted to cry, to slump down to the deck and wait for death. But even though she knew there was no hope, it wasn’t in her to give up on her people. Not if she could save them…even for a few more hours.
She tried to stand, wincing at the pain in her chest and reaching out toward her chair to stabilize herself. She leaned forward, slamming her fist down on the com unit, opening the intraship channel.
“All hands, this is the captain…” She coughed, spraying blood on the arm of her chair. “…abandon ship. All hands to the lifepods. Abandon ship.”
She felt a pain inside, worse in its way than the agony of her broken ribs. Starfire was her first command, and now it seemed it was also her last. She ached for her ship, and she couldn’t imagine anything worse than surviving Starfire’s destruction. But the training was there, and she knew she had her duty. To survive as long as she could, to get her people off the ship…even if that promised little more than a few extra moments before death.
She leaned over the chair, moving her mouth toward the com unit to repeat her command.
“All hands…abandon ship…”
* * *
Nicki Frette sat watching her fleet die. Her people had fought well, better than she’d dared to hope. Eight enemy Leviathans were gone, destroyed outright in the cataclysmic battle, and most of the others were damaged. But eight or nine of them were still firing…and her battle line had fallen almost silent. Only Compton still had operational primaries, though she knew that wasn’t likely to last much longer. The other four battleships were completely silent, or they had at most one or two secondaries still operational.
Her eyes paused on the small icon representing Starfire. Josie Strand’s ship had been an inspiration as it sliced into the enemy lines, taking all the punishment the enemy vessels could dish out, even as she drove to point blank range and unleashed her own particle accelerators, targeting ships McDaid’s fighters had left damaged and vulnerable.
Starfire was dead now, a floating, lifeless wreck. No energy output, no readings at all…just a hunk of twisted metal drifting past the enemy into deep space. There were small contacts, lifepods, Frette realized. At least some of Strand’s people had survived. But Frette knew their escape would be short-lived. The enemy ships would hunt them down and destroy them. And, if through some miracle, any of them escaped detection they would face a slow death from cold and lack of oxygen.
She heard the distant whining sound, the main guns firing again…and she felt a flash of elation when another Leviathan vanished. But her satisfaction was short-lived. A few seconds later Compton shook hard…another hit, this one solidly amidships.
“Main guns are offline, Admiral.” Kemp’s voice was hoarse, raw…but he was keeping calm even in the face of certain destruction. Frette was impressed with her people, all of them. Her surviving ships were still in the line, fighting an increasingly hopeless struggle. She’d have given Kemp a decoration, and Strand too…if any of them were ever getting back.
“Divert available power to secondaries.” There was nothing else to do. The primaries were done, she knew that. And she doubted the reactor would last much longer anyway. Better to take what shots she still had than wish for what she didn’t.
“Bandelero and Winchester…Code Omega.”
Two more of her ships, sending out the code that meant a vessel was facing imminent destruction. A third of her ships were gone…and the rest wouldn’t last long.
“Admiral…”
As soon as she heard Kemp’s voice she knew something else was wrong.
“We’re picking up energy readings from the G40 warp gate. Probes coming through.”
She felt cold inside. She’d deployed her fleet just in front of the warp gate. It had been training, instinct…to positon herself so her forces had a line of retreat. She’d done it even though she knew she couldn’t use it, couldn’t lead the enemy closer to Earth Two. But now the enemy was coming from there too. The implications were sobering…the enemy was in far more systems that she’d anticipated. But more urgent was the fact that in a few seconds she would have an enemy force emerging from the warp gate directly to her rear.
Now it was truly over. In a few minutes her ships would be gone, all of them…caught between two enemy lines and obliterated.
I’m sorry, Erika. I’m sorry I couldn’t do better…
Chapter Thirty-Two
Admiral Erika West Fleet Communique
We have come here to the aid of our friends, our comrades…and the probes tell a clear story. We have arrived just in time. I could give a long speech, tell you all of the fleet’s history, of the great battles fought and won, of heroes and courage. But you need none of that. All you need is to know what the probes have reported. Beyond this warp gate our brothers and sisters fight, even now, against overwhelming odds. Alone they are doomed. But they are not alone, not any longer. All ships, forward, maximum thrust. Transit through the warp gate and advance into the fight. All captains, fire at will, engage the enemy, go to the aid of our people…for there is no time to spare. Our comrades are dying with each passing minute.
Go! Forward! And carry with you the spirit of Admiral Compton, and all the great warriors of the fleet, lost years ago and yet still with us always!
E2S Constitution
System G42
Earth Two Date 01.08.31
“I want those systems back online now!” Erika West roared, berating her hapless tactical officer in the same way captains had been doing for almost two centuries. The effect of warp transits was well known, and some mystery remained about the variation in reboot times. The difference was usually minor, a range of perhaps one minute to three. But in battle, those two minutes could be the difference between victory and defeat, life and death.
“Yes, Admiral.” The response was routine, programmed. There was nothing Commander Corker—or all the engineers on Constitution—could do that they weren’t already doing. A sharp crew could shave a few seconds off reboot time, but Constitution’s people were already doing that.
John Corker was hunched over his station, staring at the dark screens. West knew her crew was as tense as she was, that they were well aware of what they faced. She hadn’t said anything, but she suspected most of her people realized their survival required not just victory, but the utter annihilation of the enemy fleet. There would be no retreat, no escape. They were all expendable…better every man and woman in the fleet die than lead the enemy back to Earth Two.
West’s eyes caught a hint of light, and they snapped down to her own workstation. Her screen had lit up, a staticky pattern replacing the blackness that had been there a second before. The AI was rebooting, and along with it every electronic system on Constitution. She had made hundreds of transits in her career, thousands…many into combat, as now. But she was tense in a way she had never been before.
You’ve never been rushing in to save Nicki…knowing every second could be the one that makes you too late…
“Scanners coming online, Admiral…” Corker’s voice was distant, distracted. His attention was focused on his workstation, hands flying over the keyboards, doing everything he could to speed the reboot process.
“Very well, Commander.” West’s own eyes were fixed on the main display. The scanners had picked up the main bodies…the primary an
d the planets. Now they were adding detail. First, large energy readings, including two West knew could only be the destruction of spaceships. She couldn’t tell whose vessels they were, but her gut told her one, at least, had been an antimatter blast. That meant a First Imperium ship…
Slowly the two opposing fleets appeared on the display. Blue triangles—Frette’s ships—in a ragged line not far from the warp gate. And red circles—the First Imperium fleet—less than a hundred thousand kilometers farther away. Both forces were almost at a dead halt, standing still in space blasting away at each other. And there were a lot more red icons than blue ones.
“Fleet com?”
“Not yet, Admiral. Working on it.”
West knew she didn’t really need fleetwide communications. She had given her orders before the fleet transited…and she knew her people knew what to do. But she felt helpless sitting, waiting…watching her people die.
“We’ve got full reactor power, Admiral. Engineering reports engines operational and ready.”
West took a deep breath. Normally, she’d take time to organize the fleet, put her ships into a carefully-planned formation. But there was no time. Her captains had their orders…advance as soon as possible. The tactics were simple. A wild charge into the fight…and then a deadly, toe to toe battle until one side was wiped out. It was basic, pure in its brutality. And Erika West was Constitution’s captain.
“Set a course to the center of the enemy line, Commander.”
“Yes, Admiral.” A few second later: “Course locked in, engines ready.”
“Weapons status?”
“All batteries on full alert. All crews report ready to fire.”
“Take us in, Commander Corker. Forty gees.” She paused. “Right into the center. Right down their throats.”
* * *
Frette looked through the smoky haze of Compton’s battered flag bridge, over toward Kemp. “What?” She’d heard her tactical officer’s words, but they still seemed fuzzy, unreal. It was impossible. But he had said it.