by Jay Allan
He could imagine the desperate scene on Dauntless, Fritz and her team frantically trying to keep the ancient device functioning, knowing failure meant death within minutes. Their evasive maneuvers had taken them off their direct course, adding thousands of kilometers to their trip to firing range…and now, every enemy in the system knew they were there.
The ship appeared again, for only a few seconds this time before vanishing. He held his breath for a few seconds after the pulsar’s next blast ripped by where Dauntless had been…but there were no signs the ship had been hit.
As he watched, it was all suddenly clear to him. They’re never going to make it.
He was no engineer, but he had enough experience with complex systems to guess that Fritz and her crew, as brilliant as they were, didn’t have much chance of keeping the generator working long enough for Dauntless to get into range and fire.
Assuming Dauntless is still functional enough to attack. Which he doubted.
His eyes dropped to his long-range scanner. The fleet was moving forward. Clearly, Admiral Striker had decided to do all he could to pull attention away from Barron’s wounded ship.
Stockton’s face was twisted into a frustrated grimace. He had to do something. And then, suddenly, he knew what.
His fighters could never attack the pulsar…but maybe they could hit enough of the line of reactors that powered the thing. If they could knock out the power supply, even temporarily, they could buy time for Dauntless, for the fleet.
His eyes darted from one screen to another. His fighters were scattered all around, each with a different vector and velocity. There was almost no time to get them into battle formation. If they were going to do anything, it had to be now.
“All fighters…we’re going to attack the power stations behind the pulsar. Dauntless needs us. The fleet needs us. I know you want to finish off this Union battleship—and I do too—but, we’ve got to get the pulsar out of action, at least for a while, and we can do that by cutting off its power.” He was far from sure they could do it, but he knew they had to try.
“Come around, follow me in. Whatever it takes, we’ve got to knock out enough of those reactors to cut that thing off.” He reached down, as he had more than once, and pulled the cover off his safety override switches. His fingers moved over the series of levers, flipping each of them to the ‘off’ position, ignoring the series of warnings from his AI as he did. Then he turned his reactor power level to one hundred fifteen percent.
“Cut your safeties, all of you. Everybody at one fifteen on their reactors. Time is one thing we don’t have.” He’d never ordered his pilots to follow his lead in this way before, to engage in the recklessness of abusing their ships’ reactors. But everything was on the line this time. Failure meant death, for all of them.
He could hear the acknowledgements flooding in, not a single complaint among them, despite the extreme danger of the orders he’d just given. He’d lose ships to reactor overloads, he had no doubt about that. But there was no other way.
Not if we’re going to save Dauntless. And Stara…
Or the fleet.
He grabbed his throttle and slammed it back full, feeling the massive force of thrust slam into his body. He’d been in desperate situations before, but none worse than this one. He didn’t know how he’d get to those reactors in time.
He just knew he had to do it.
* * *
“Fleet units three, four, and five are to proceed immediately to the designated coordinates. Somehow, a Confederation battleship got past our lines. I want that ship found, and I want it destroyed!” Gaston Villieneuve had always prided himself on his cool demeanor, on his ability to hold his temper, or hide it at least. But that was shot to hell now.
The enemy fighters had come as a shock when they’d suddenly appeared, and rationally, he’d known the instant he saw them that they’d come from somewhere. But staring at the small oval on his screen, the designation for a Confederation battleship, his control had snapped. The fighters were dangerous, but they couldn’t threaten the pulsar, not seriously. The ancient weapon was defended by a dense point defense network, and almost three hundred fighters in the bases that surrounded it. Its armor was thick enough to thwart the small laser cannons of the tiny ships. Not even the legendary Confederation squadrons could endure long enough to close and take down the pulsar one laser hit at a time.
But a Confederation battleship was a different story. Its primaries were powerful enough to blast the great weapon to atoms and, if it was able to hide from all his scanners—and the pulsar’s targeting systems—it just might get close enough to do just that.
For a moment, he’d watched as the pulsar opened fire, even scoring a hit. But then, his nascent hopes were dashed. The enemy ship vanished again, and the massive weapon’s finishing shot ripped through empty space instead of slamming into its target.
Wherever that ship was, it had to be found. Now.
“Units three, four, and five all acknowledge, Minister.”
Villieneuve watched as the dozen battleships pulled out of the main formation. Combined with the ships he had detached as the flanking force, it left the main line weak. But, as long as he could keep the pulsar in operation, he was confident he could destroy the approaching enemy fleet. Striker had discovered the ships waiting behind the transit point, and he’d dispatched part of his own force to engage. That was inconvenient, but at least the Confed line moving toward the pulsar had also been weakened. The battle was shaping up well…except for the Confederation incursion to the rear.
“I want to know how that ship got back there,” he roared. “Review every scan. They slipped past us, and I want to know how. And who is responsible.” There was a darkness in his tone for the last sentence. Villieneuve wasn’t a sadist, not normally. He was just a man who used whatever tactics were necessary. But when he found out who had let a Confed battleship sneak around the fleet and get that close to the pulsar…he was going to make an exception. Whoever screwed up was going to wish they had never been born. They would beg him for death, and his only response would be laughter.
* * *
“The fighters are breaking off, sir. It’s a miracle.” Maramont was stunned, and it showed in his voice. Temeraire had already taken a pair of hits from the enemy’s first wave, and the second group of bombers was even larger, its approach ominous in the extreme.
“Set a course toward the last sighting of that battleship, Commander. Every bit of thrust engineering can give us.” Which will be a lot less than one hundred percent.
Temeraire was damaged, but so was the Confed ship out there…and Turenne knew his enemy was in worse shape. The pulsar had scored a glancing blow, but it had been enough to practically tear open the ship’s starboard side. Turenne had been studying the incoming scans, trying to do a damage assessment, when the Confed battleship disappeared again.
He’d thought for a moment his adversary was crippled, that the pulsar would finish it off before he could intervene. But then the vessel vanished, and obviously moved from where it had been. That indicated some level of remaining functionality. Still, Turenne had seen that hit, and he knew the Confed was badly hurt. He was confident Temeraire would have the edge in any fight, even without the pulsar.
If he could find his target.
“Engineering reports forty percent thrust, sir. Fifty-five percent possible in approximately ten minutes.”
“Very well, Commander. All weapons crews are to be ready for action on a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, sir.”
Turenne looked at his screen, at the enemy fighters pulling away. Maramont was right…it was a miracle of sorts. He continued watching the tiny dots on the display changing their vectors.
No, not a miracle…
He felt a coldness inside as realization dawned.
They’re heading for the pulsar.
The enemy’s other fighter wing—and he was still not sure how there were so many Confed squadrons out the
re—had blasted through the first waves of fighters, forcing the bases defending the pulsar to launch more and more of their ships. With all their squadrons deployed, there was no defense remaining against a fighter attack.
Still, the fighters would never get through the point defense around the pulsar, he was sure of that. Even the bombers still armed with their torpedoes would never get in range to be a serious danger.
The power plants…
Suddenly, he saw the vulnerability. The reactors were mostly outside the heaviest zone of point defense, and they were vital to the weapon’s operation. An attack on the power stations wouldn’t destroy the pulsar, but it would disable it…with the entire Confederation fleet coming on.
He had to stop those fighters…but there was nothing he could do. His own wings had been savaged, barely a third of his ships making it back, and none of those were refueled or rearmed.
He shook his head. The fighters were somebody else’s problem. All he could do was finish off the battleship, the one he’d tracked, the one no one else had taken seriously.
“Tell engineering I want that fifty-five percent, Commander. Now.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Formara System
“The Bottleneck”
313 AC
“Maximum evasive maneuvers. We’re going in.” Sara Eaton sat on Repulse’s bridge, staring at the display showing the entire advance guard, every ship in her command, moving forward. There were light red ovals just next to the crisp white icons of her task force, each representing one of Commander Tulus’s Alliance battleships. Farther down the line, there were symbols in half a dozen colors, depicting the locations of all the ships of the combined Confederation-Alliance fleet, save for those detached to engage the enemy flanking force. All the might the Confederation and its new ally could muster, and it was moving forward, into the maw of the enemy’s great weapon.
There was a shaded area in the 3D display, a bit ahead of her force’s current location, the best projected guess of the pulsar’s effective range.
The ancient weapon was deadly, capable of crippling or destroying even a massive battleship like Repulse with a single direct hit. That much, everyone in the fleet knew. But the actual effective range was an educated guess, and the fact that her force was still one hundred twenty thousand kilometers outside the designated space was cold comfort.
She could feel the tension even now, the fear that any instant, even before Repulse crossed into the shaded space of the presumed death zone, a great lance of concentrated energy might cut through her ship. Despite her efforts to set aside the doubts and fear, she couldn’t banish thoughts about how she would live her last seconds, watching as she lost her second ship, as Repulse disintegrated all around her. She’d known for weeks now what the mission would entail, but she hadn’t felt the true coldness of her fear until the order came through to begin the final advance.
She’d been watching the chronometer. Enough time had passed for Dauntless to reach the pulsar, but, of course, much depended on the exact course Commodore Barron had taken and, now, on what damage the ship had sustained. Dauntless’s problems with the stealth generator, and the hit she’d taken from the pulsar, did nothing to sustain Eaton’s hopes that Barron and his people could succeed.
She’d been waiting before Dauntless was hit, counting each second, hoping to see the pulsar blasted to atoms before her ships had to move into its range. When she’d first seen Dauntless suddenly appear on her long-range scanners, she’d felt a burst of excitement, a fleeting thought that the moment had come, that Barron’s people had done it, and in a second, perhaps two or three, the battleship’s primaries would open up and tear the deadly Union superweapon into harmless chunks of semi-molten metal. But it didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to realize Dauntless was still too far away from its target. She wasn’t picking up Barron’s location because he’d decloaked while preparing to fire, the ship was on her scanners because the stealth generator had failed before Dauntless had gotten into range.
An instant later, the pulsar fired, its shot just missing, courtesy of Dauntless’s wild evasive maneuvers. Eaton had clung to hope since the fleet left Grimaldi, a belief she hadn’t even consciously realized, that Barron’s crazy plan could work, that Dauntless would save them all. Now she felt that hope draining away, like air from a punctured balloon. She watched, her stomach twisted into knots, her eyes watery, knowing Dauntless was doomed, that Barron and his people were finished, that she was about to watch them die.
She saw the shot that hit the wildly evading ship. For a few seconds, she feared it was over…but then she saw that Dauntless still had power readings. The pulsar’s shot had only clipped the side of the great ship, and while it appeared the battleship was badly hurt, she was still there. Then, a few seconds later, Barron’s vessel vanished again. Eaton gasped, panicked for an instant, but then she realized she hadn’t seen another shot from the pulsar. Dauntless had not been hit…she was cloaked again. Somehow.
Anya Fritz…
Barron’s amazing ship had survived the hit, and it was clear now that she was still producing enough energy to power the apparently restored stealth generator. An instant later, Eaton realized Dauntless still had engine capacity too, when the pulsar’s next shot ripped right through the space Barron’s ship had occupied…hitting nothing.
She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she realized she was breathing heavily. The bridge was virtually silent, and she knew every pair of eyes was fixed on the display, on the empty space where Dauntless had been. And every heart was with Tyler Barron and his crew.
* * *
“All ships, fire at will.” Commodore Ambrose Duncan stood on Guardian’s bridge, gripping the back of his chair and wincing at the pressure of 3g bearing down on him. Duncan was a veteran, one who bore the scars of his service. He’d been wounded at Arcturon, so badly hurt that his surgeon had given him a ten percent chance of survival. Stanford Emory was a gifted medical professional—at least he had been before he died aboard Pathfinder, when that ship was destroyed at Grimaldi—but he’d underestimated Duncan’s ornery stubbornness. As far as the medical professionals around him had been able to diagnose, Duncan had simply refused to die.
The wounds were still with him, or at least the pain was. There wasn’t a moment he didn’t endure some level of discomfort, and he felt a kinship of sorts to the fleet admiral, a sympathy for Striker’s pains that went beyond that of the other flag officers. Still, if the fleet made it out of the Bottleneck, Striker’s agonies would diminish as he continued to heal. Duncan had already recovered as much as possible. The pain he felt was there for the rest of his life.
He found sitting to be the most uncomfortable, and it was compounded by the g forces of acceleration and deceleration. He’d been offered retirement, desk jobs, even command of Grimaldi base, but he’d turned them all down, more than once with a level of colorful admonishment that left no question he intended to see the war through from the front lines…to its end or to his own.
“All ships engaging primaries, sir.” Sonya Eaton was Duncan’s tactical officer. Eaton was a decorated officer, and one who had climbed quickly in rank, even if she tended to be overshadowed by her older sister. Sara Eaton had won her own glory in the aftermath of the terrible defeat at Arcturon, and the aura that surrounded her had only brightened when chance caused her to wander into Tyler Barron’s orbit. Duncan respected Sara Eaton enormously, but he also recognized the quality of her younger sister, and he considered himself fortunate to have her with him. He wouldn’t have her for long, though. He intended to make sure she got her own command, as soon as the fleet got back to Grimaldi. Assuming any of them got back.
Duncan watched on the display as his ships opened fire. The Confederation primaries were the longest ranged weapons possessed by any of the powers—at least until the Union found the pulsar. They’d been a tremendous tactical advantage during the war, both against Union forces and out on the Ri
m during the Alliance civil war. Duncan knew his force had the advantage, at least for a short time…that they could shoot at an enemy that couldn’t return fire yet.
He clenched his fist tightly as he saw a series of hits. The distance to the targets was still long, and he recognized that the fifteen percent hit rate his ships had achieved so far was actually quite good. But the math in his head told him a somewhat different story.
Admiral Striker had detached two task groups to face the Union forces that had been hiding behind the fleet’s entry point, but as Duncan’s ships approached, they discovered more enemy vessels, sitting idle in the dust clouds and hiding behind asteroids. He known he’d be outnumbered from the moment Striker had placed him in command of the intercept force, but now he realized just how many enemy ships he faced.
“All ships, increase deceleration to 10g.” He almost winced out loud as he gave the order. The dampeners would do all they could, but the 3g bearing down on him would increase to 4g, perhaps a bit more. That was tolerable, if uncomfortable, in the specially-designed acceleration chairs scattered across the bridge…at least for the rest of his officers. Standing as he was, his partially-mended bones and ligaments pressed to the brink, it would push Duncan to the limit of his own endurance. But he needed to bring his ships to a halt…he needed to make the enemy come to him. That would extend the amount of time his ships had an effective monopoly on deadly force. If they could take out enough Union battleships before the enemy could return fire, maybe they could lessen the odds.
“Increasing deceleration, Commodore.” He could hear the concern in Eaton’s voice, and respect as well. His exec knew perfectly well how painful the execution of his order would be for him.