Blood on the Stars Collection 1

by Jay Allan

  Stealth tech…something out there is cloaked.

  The Alliance was behind the Confederation in such technologies, there was little question of that. She’d run into stealth tech before, fighting against the Unaligned Systems. It was expensive and complex, and…

  What would they be trying to hide out there?

  “Optiomagis, I want more thrust, now. Increase reactor output, regardless of risk.”

  “Y…yes, Commander.” Wentus repeated her commands, clearly unnerved by her obvious concern.

  “And I want those probes on maximum power. Burn them out, but get me a better look at what’s out there.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Kat watched on the screen as the shadowy images stabilized…and more appeared. Dozens, perhaps a hundred. She felt a cold feeling in her gut, and she fought back a wave of fear.

  Mines.

  “Activate all defensive batteries! Target those objects. Now!”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Evasive maneuvers. Steer us clear.”

  But she knew Invictus’s velocity was too great. She’d accelerated at full power to close with the enemy, and now her momentum was taking her right into the minefield ahead.

  She nodded slowly as she watched her vessel moving on the display, getting closer to the mines with each passing second. And she knew now she was facing a commander who was her true match, a captain who could defeat her. Who might very well be on the verge of defeating her right now.

  * * *

  Barron watched the display, along with everyone else on Dauntless’s bridge. The enemy ship was moving right into the spread of mines Commander Travis and her people had positioned along the line of retreat. Now Barron would see if his tactics had worked, or if the enemy would manage to escape from the trap he’d set.

  “They’re decelerating, sir. From the energy readings, I’d guess they’re pouring everything they can into it.”

  It won’t be enough…

  Barron’s eyes darted to his own screen, confirming the enemy velocity readings. The Alliance ship would have been hard pressed to escape the minefield with full thrust, but with its damaged engines, there was no chance.

  “Picking up laser fire, sir.”

  Of course, they can’t escape, so they’ll try to pick off the nearby mines. It’s what I’d do.

  Barron felt the tension building in his gut. It wasn’t easy to target mines, but it wasn’t impossible. The enemy had walked into his trap, but they could still get out unscathed. A hundred mines was all he’d had, and his makeshift minefield was far less dense than he’d have liked.

  Still, it will be hard for them to get them all…

  He pushed the concern from his mind. If the enemy got through unscathed, the battle was over. His ship was simply too damaged relative to its adversary. If he couldn’t even the odds, his people would still fight like hell, but they would lose.

  “Commander Travis…” He tapped his headset, opening the line to his first officer. “Status report?”

  “We’re on it, Captain. It’s a mess of half-assed fixes and patchwork, but I think it will work.” The first officer paused for a few seconds. Then she added, “At least I hope it will.”

  “Very reassuring, Atara.”

  “I don’t lie to you, sir. We’re looking at a coin toss…and that’s the truth.”

  “Atara…” He was about to urge her to do anything she could, but of all the people he knew who didn’t need to be told that, Atara Travis was at the head of the list. “Very well…understood.”

  He cut the line and stared straight ahead, watching the enemy ship enter the minefield, and reminding himself to breathe every so often.

  * * *

  “Another hit, Commander.” Wentus was staring down at his scope, reporting every time Invictus’s defensive batteries destroyed one of the mines. Kat’s gunners had picked off a dozen of the closest contacts, more than she’d dared to hope for. But she was far from sure it would be enough.

  “Very well, Optiomagis. All batteries are to maintain maximum fire.”

  She glanced down at the scanning reports on her screen. The mines were big, probably multiple warhead devices that would send out short-ranged sprint missiles when a target ship moved close enough to trigger them. And Invictus was heading right into a thick cluster of them. Her ship was decelerating, trying to pull back, but Kat had already done the calculations. Her engine output just wasn’t enough to bring the giant vessel to a halt. Not before it plunged through the heart of the minefield.

  “Energy readings, Commander…from multiple contacts.”

  “Prepare for evasive maneuvers.” There was no way to meaningfully change Invictus’s vector, but even a slight blast of thrust to the side could evade an incoming missile.

  “Evasive maneuvers.”

  Time passed, feeling like an eternity, though Kat realized it had just been a few seconds. Her eyes were on the display, watching Invictus move through a cluster of small red circles…watching as half a dozen of the icons disappeared, each of them replaced by eight small dots. All moving toward her ship.

  “Mines activating, Commander.” Wentus was just reporting what she already knew. “Multiple objects inbound.”

  Warheads.

  Damn.

  “Cut forward thrust now! Prepare to implement full evasive maneuvers!”

  “Yes, Commander.” All of the earlier arrogance was gone from Wentus’s voice. “Scanners confirm approximately thirty-eight sprint-mode missiles incoming. Gunnery stations transferring targeting to approaching warheads.”

  Kat just sat at her station, watching as her crew went about their duties. She was proud of them, of their efficiency and courage. They were scared now, all the more so because just a few moments before they’d expected certain victory, not a fight for their lives. Now the only question was a stark one: could they shoot down enough of the enemy mines to prevent Invictus from being crippled or destroyed?

  Even if they did, she wasn’t ready to discount this Confederation captain. He was out there, waiting. He’d baited her into the minefield, and now she wondered if his ship was as crippled as her scanners led her to believe.

  Her eyes settled on the display, watching as her gunners desperately targeted the incoming missiles. They’d taken down ten so far, which was outstanding performance, but far from enough.

  “Evasive maneuvers…now.”

  “Initiating evasive maneuvers, Commander.”

  Invictus lurched hard as it swung around on its positioning jets, angling the main engines and blasting hard at a sharp angle from its current vector. She could see the ship’s course shift, almost imperceptibly, and as it did, clusters of missiles zipped past. The warheads were sprint missiles. They aimed right at their target and accelerated hard. But once they went past the target, they were expended. They weren’t guided units like the missiles the fighter used. There was both advantage and disadvantage in that. The sprint units were able to attain velocities far beyond those available to their guided cousins.

  “Bring us to 320-111-012…full thrust.” Kat was barking out orders, thrust angles as she stared at the screen, watching the missiles coming at her ship. She suspected the enemy weapons were hyper-nukes, which meant they didn’t need to score a direct hit to damage Invictus. The weapons were designed to get as close as possible and detonate, blasting the target with heat and radiation.

  Kat could feel wetness on her back. Sweat. Fear. She had done well, avoided perhaps half the incoming warheads. But now she was bracketed, clouds of missiles coming in from three directions.

  “Bring us about! 233/210/045…now!”

  But she was too late this time. She saw the dots on the scanner moving closer, even before Wentus could confirm her order. And then the alarms went off.

  “Multiple nuclear explosions, Commander. Massive radiation levels in all outer compartments. Hull breaches in sections Green-7 through Red-9.”

  The bridge lights dimmed, and then they
went out, leaving nothing but the emergency lamps illuminating her ship’s control center.

  “More detonations, Commander. Overloads on all power transmission lines. Engineering reports significant damage to reactors. Engines down to twenty-four percent output. Crew casualties severe in all affected areas…”

  Kat sat and listened to the seemingly unending damage report. She’d walked into a trap, and she’d paid the price…and her people with her.

  “Scanners?” she snapped.

  “Still operational, Commander.”

  “Concentrate an active scan on the enemy vessel. Any aspect change?” She could already feel the answer in her gut.

  “Yes, Commander. They are decelerating…” He turned and looked back at Kat. “Commander, their thrust is approximately fifty percent higher than previously.”

  Kat stared at Wentus, not a hint of surprise on her face. “I need power transmission back online, Optiomagis. And weapons. All other repairs are zero priority now. We need as many guns online as we can get, and the power to fire them.”

  She stared off across the bridge as her first officer confirmed and relayed her orders.

  You tricked me…as I tricked you earlier at the transwarp link. Now, we’re even, more or less. But the fight isn’t over. Not yet, it isn’t…

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  CFS Dauntless

  Krillus Asteroid Belt

  40, 500,000 kilometers from Santis, Krillus IV

  307 AC

  “Cut all thrust. Divert power to gunnery stations.” Barron stared forward, snapping out commands. This was the final struggle. The minefield had given his people a chance, equalized the field. But they still faced a dangerous enemy. And there was no room for error now. Not if any of them wanted to live.

  “Thrust at zero, Captain. All weapons stations report ready to go.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant. Active scanners on full…feed all targeting data directly to the gunnery stations.” There was no reason not to pound away with active scanners now. Stealth no longer had a role in this battle. It was a knife fight now…brutal, close-ranged, to the death.

  “All scanners on full, sir. The enemy vessel’s vector is directly toward us. No thrust detected.”

  Barron nodded. His opponent was acting just as he would have done. Just as he was doing. The two battleships were crawling toward each other, their velocities low, their thrust zero. There was no elegance here, no fancy maneuvering. Both ships were too battered for that. This would be an exchange of gunnery, pure and simple. A pounding match until one combatant gave out.

  Barron had sat on Dauntless’s almost silent bridge, watching along with his officers as their enemy approached the spread of fusion mines they had left behind. The mines had outdated stealth systems, but with no hard data on Alliance scanning capabilities, neither Barron nor any of his crew had known what to expect. Would they detect the mines in time?

  The bridge had erupted into cheers when the first of mines had gotten close enough to detonate. Over the next few minutes, Barron’s people had watched as six sprint missiles closed to detonation range. None actually struck the enemy ship—a direct hit was an extremely rare event that might have vaporized even a massive battleship. But several had gotten close enough to do serious damage.

  Enough, hopefully, to put us on equal playing fields…

  Barron wasn’t sure, but his gut told him the fight had become a match of equals.

  He flipped his com unit to the shipwide channel. “This is the captain. We are about to enter combat range. I won’t sugarcoat this. We’re in a fight for our lives, a battle to the death. We must stop this enemy. Defeat is not an option. I’ve already told you how proud I am to lead a group of men and women like you, and there are no spacers anywhere I would rather have at my side during this fiery trial. Let us face battle again, my friends, and together and united, we will prevail.”

  He leaned back, looking around the bridge. Dauntless had a better chance than before, thanks to the minefield…but the cold reality was still there. His fate—the fates of all his people, and perhaps the Confederation as well—rested on the tenacity and skills of his chief engineer and her band of gifted technicians.

  “Fritzie,” he said, after tapping the com unit. “What’s the status down there?”

  “We got two more secondaries functional, sir. Don’t ask me how. Try to use the port broadside. You’ve got fifty percent more firepower there.”

  Barron felt a rush of surprise. He’d thought most of the damaged secondaries were melted rubble, unrepairable this side of a major base. He wasn’t sure what kind of wizardry his engineer had managed, but he was grateful for it. And two guns on the same side, no less.

  But that wasn’t what he most wanted to know.

  “Nice work, Fritzie, but what about…”

  “The primaries are online too.”

  Barron almost shouted out with joy. “Fritzie, you are a wonder!” But his excitement was somewhat contained. He’d heard that tone before. There was a giant ‘but’ there.

  “Captain, they’re hanging by a thread. And I can’t promise you more than one shot. With the shape the things are in and the power levels that go though there…”

  “One shot is a lot better than none, Fritzie. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it, sir. Which means you’ve got a choice. Take a shot—possibly the only one—at long range, before their lasers can fire on us…or hold for a crippling blow at close range, and risk taking damage and maybe losing the guns again before you shoot.”

  Barron sighed softly. He knew his engineer was right. He had a choice to make, and no more than a few minutes to make it. A close range hit from the accelerators could be decisive. It could—probably would—be the battle. A longer ranged shot would be helpful, but far less decisive. But if he held fire and the guns were damaged again…

  “All right, Fritzie…you and your people did your jobs. Now it’s time for me to do mine.”

  He cut the com line. He had no idea what he was going to do.

  * * *

  “Primary batteries, open fire.” Kat’s voice was stone cold. She was nervous, worried about her opponent, about what he might do. But she was the matriarch of the Regulli, and she knew what she had to do.

  “Primary batteries, open fire.”

  Wentus repeated her command, relaying it to the gunnery teams.

  Kat thought of her gun crews, located throughout the ship. Alliance designs tended to place gunners in or near their turrets. It reduced the possibility that damaged circuits or communications lines would silence otherwise functional batteries. It also ramped up casualties among gunnery crew, who were located right at the surface of the ship instead of in some well-protected control center. But losses weren’t an issue, at least not those suffered in victory. Palatians who died in the cause of a battle won were revered, their families honored and cared for. And the Alliance had seen little else but victory in its sixty years of conquest.

  Kat listened to the familiar sounds of her main guns firing, ignoring the flickering of the lights as the guns greedily drew every watt Invictus’s reactor could feed them. She had considered different stratagems, trickery and deceit to lure her enemy into making a mistake. But she’d developed too much respect for this Confederation captain to assume he’d fall for any ploy she might attempt. She realized this was a struggle between two veterans, two strong warriors. It seemed counterintuitive, but she realized there was nothing for two such capable commanders to do now but close to point blank range and blast away at each other. The hardness of their armored hulls, the toughness of their crews, the industry of their engineers and damage control teams…those would be the deciding factors here.

  “Scanners report two hits, Commander.” A few seconds passed. “A third hit!”

  “Very well, Optiomagis…all stations continue maximum rate of fire.” Kat was grateful for the early hits—the enemy hadn’t even opened fire yet— but she knew the range w
as still long, that her beams were hitting with less than fifteen percent of the power they would have at fifty thousand kilometers.

  Fifty thousand klicks. Where this battle will be decided…

  * * *

  “We’ve got wounded backed up out into the corridors, Ty. The aid stations are overloaded too. We’re taking a hell of a pounding. I sure hope you know what you’re doing up there.”

  “Just keep it together down there, Stu. You worry about your job, and I’ll worry about mine.” Barron felt a flash of anger at his friend’s choice of words. He knew Dauntless’s chief surgeon hadn’t meant anything by his comments, save for his doctor’s hatred of anything that tended to tear up men and women and leave them wrecked and bleeding.

  Barron hated thinking of his people going through that too, but he understood well enough, this was war. He didn’t like it any more than Weldon, but he’d been raised his whole life to serve a warrior’s posting.

  “How are you holding it together, Ty? You’re just a man, remember…whoever your grandfather was. You keep taking those stims and pushing yourself, you’ll drop dead right on the bridge.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Stu, but there’s not much alternative now. I’ve…” His eyes caught Darrow’s hand, waving to him. “Gotta go, Stu. Do your best down there.”

  He cut the line and looked over at the communications officer.

  “Secondaries will be in range in thirty seconds, sir.”

  “All batteries open fire as soon as we’re within the envelope. Fire at will, maximum intensity.”

  “Yes, sir…max…”

  Dauntless shook hard, another hit from the enemy primaries. Barron looked down at his screen, his eyes skimming the damage reports coming in. It had been surprisingly light, considering the quality of the enemy’s gunnery, but Barron knew his ship was fragile now, dozens of systems patched together in chaotic fashion. Any hit could be the one that crippled something vital. That lost the battle.

  “Maximum fire, all batteries,” Darrow repeated the command. A few seconds later, Barron felt the vibrations under his feet, heard the telltale whine of Dauntless’s lasers.