by Jay Allan
Eaton nodded, staring at her own screen as the incoming data scrolled by. “I think you’re right, Commander.” Then, looking out at her bridge crew. “Well done, all of you.” She slapped her hand down on the comm unit, switching to the intraship channel. “All crew members, this is the captain. The enemy vessel appears to have been destroyed. That is the second capital ship you have taken down today. I can’t express the pride and gratitude that I feel to serve with a crew like you.” Her praise was heartfelt, but her tone was restrained, weighed down by the fact that she knew her people were likely to die here in this system, that their “victory” would be short-lived indeed.
But it’s better than no victory…
She shut down the comm and turned her eyes to the display, looking for another target. Her ship might be doomed, but it wasn’t dead yet. And as long as she had a gun hot enough to heat up a cup of tea, she was still in the fight.
“Captain, we’ve got some of our fighters returning, requesting clearance to land.”
She hesitated. It would take time to recover her squadrons now, especially with alpha bay damaged and no more than fifty percent operational. Her flight crews might get them refit and turned around in time to get back into the fight. But she bristled at the delay in moving against the enemy. Her destruction of the two ships she’d faced left Intrepid in a quiet area of the battle, at the extreme end of the line. She considered leaving the fighters behind…they were all going to die anyway. But it wasn’t in her to do that. There were different ways to die, and she’d be damned if she was going to have her pilots’ last thoughts be that she had abandoned them.
“Very well, Commander. Commence recovery operations at once…and tell them I want those birds back onboard as quickly as possible.”
“Understood.” Then, a few seconds later: “We’re getting transmissions from other squadrons, Captain, fighters from some of the ships that bugged out. All requesting permission to land. Many of them are reporting critical fuel statuses.”
Eaton sighed softly to herself. Intrepid was damaged, and the truth was, she had no idea how many fighters her wounded bays could take in. There was some room, she was sure of that, if only because of the losses her own squadrons had taken. As anxious as she was to rejoin the fight, she knew what she had to do. Those pilots out there were her comrades…and those last two squadrons that had shown up had damned sure done their part to take down the last enemy battleship.
“Advise landing control they are to accommodate every fighter they possibly can.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I mean it, Commander. Every bird they can take. Put them anywhere, but we’re not leaving those pilots out there, out of fuel and with no place to land.”
Chapter Ten
Landing Bay Beta
CFS Repulse
Arcturon System
On the Extreme Edge of the Confederation Line
308 AC
“Red Eagle One, you are cleared to land.”
“Roger that, Intrepid control.” And it’s about time…
His fuel status was beyond critical. By the time he’d reversed the velocity that had taken him toward his attack on the enemy ship—a course something close to diametrically away from Intrepid—he’d burned just about the last of his fuel. His gauges read dead empty, but Timmons knew his way around his fighter well enough to realize there was a bit of unmeasured reserve built in. He didn’t know if that had been by design—the efforts of those who built the Lightning-class strikefighters to account for the insanity of so many of those who flew the birds—or if it was a deficiency in the measurement systems, but he was damned grateful for it today.
Timmons knew he had no one to blame but himself for his plight. He’d been the lowest on fuel, courtesy of his penchant for wild and aggressive maneuvering, but he’d still insisted the rest of his Eagles land first. Timmons was a hotshot pilot—crazy, some people said—but he never let that interfere with his command of the squadron. He’d watched over his people, trained them, led them in two dozen fights…and now he’d be damned if he’d land before he knew every one of them was safe onboard.
They were all docked now, and Aire’s Direwolves were coming up. It was time.
He tapped his throttle forward, just a touch of thrust. Normally, he’d have approached at a greater velocity, but he just didn’t have the fuel. If he burned through more than half of what he had accelerating, he wouldn’t have enough left to slow down, and he’d crash into the bay. He watched the huge hulk of Intrepid growing in front of him, the range dropping rapidly. Five kilometers, four, three. He was coming up on the battleship’s starboard side, toward its beta bay. His vector looked good. No…he was off, just a bit. He tapped the throttle, just a tiny burst of thrust, and then, a few seconds later another, partially reversing the first.
“You look good Red Eagle One. Cleared for final approach. Reduce velocity to three meters per second.”
“Roger that, Intrepid. Reducing thrust now.” He hit the positioning jets, spinning his fighter around, positioning the engines to push against his vector. Then he pulled back slightly, engaging them again. There was a burst of thrust, enough to slow him down to twenty meters per second. Then fifteen. Ten.
Then his engines cut out, the last vapors of fuel to sustain them gone. His eyes dropped to his display, fixing on the velocity readings. Six point two meters per second…far too fast for a safe landing.
“Intrepid, I’m out of fuel, and I’m coming in hot.” He knew procedure. A pilot unsure he could land safely was supposed to pull up, fly by the mothership and hopefully come around and make another pass. But Timmons had no thrust. None at all. And he doubted his positioning jets were enough to push him clear of Intrepid. If he tried it, he was as likely to smash into the great ship’s hull as to clear it.
“Roger that, Red Eagles One. Stay on track. Reduce velocity as much as possible with positioning jets.”
“Way ahead of you, Intrepid.” Timmons already had his hands on the controls for the positioning units. The tiny jets ejected compressed gasses to spin the tiny fighter around. The thrust they produced was negligible, far from enough to materially reduce even his ship’s miniscule velocity. But every little bit helped.
Timmons clutched the throttle, by habit as much as anything since his engines were dead. He zipped past Intrepid’s bow, moving alongside the battleship, the looming gray hull no more than twenty meters from his fighter as it passed by in a blur. He hated the feeling of helplessness. All he could do was sit there, and hope the base ship’s safeties could catch his fighter and slow it before he crashed into a bulkhead.
His looked ahead as the opening of the bay loomed before him, a great entryway twenty meters high by thirty wide. Beyond, he could see the cavernous bay, the emergency vehicles moving into place, around the chunks of debris and collapsed sections of interior hull…damage from the battle. His view was slightly distorted by a vague rippling effect, accented by occasional blue currents, almost like tiny bolts of lightning. The energy field kept the bay insulated from the vacuum of space, holding in air and pressure. There were actually several consecutive levels to the screen. The first would drop, only for the instant it took his ship to pass through. Then it would reactivate, and the tiny area between two sections would partially repressurize before the next one dropped. His fighter would pass through four layers in total, transitioning to the full pressure environment of the bay. Then he would be in.
He looked forward, staring at the seemingly random patterns of crackling blue light. Not just blue, but an absolutely perfect, electric blue. He’d seen it hundreds of times, but only now he noticed how beautiful it was. Normally he was concerned with landing his fighter, but this time he was just a passenger with nothing to do, waiting to see if the projectile he rode would slow quickly enough to make a rough, but survivable landing…or if he would crash into the bay and die, not in combat as he’d always imagined, but smashed to goo when his ship slammed into some heavy structural s
upport.
His fighter zipped through the screens, and as always, he was unable to discern the four distinct levels. Even to his honed senses, his fighter appeared to move from space to the inside of the bay in an instant.
The fighter shook as the grapples caught against his wings, slowing the velocity before they detached from their moorings. The flight crew had managed to deploy three waves of the soft but tough cables, and by the time his fighter passed through the third, he was moving at less than two meters per second. Still a hard landing, but now a survivable one.
His ship hit the deck hard, and one of the landing gears snapped. The fighter twisted, skidding to the side and impacting with one of the heavy bulkheads. Timmons was thrown forward, and the harness strapping him in dug deeply into his chest. He felt a sharp pain, and he knew he’d broken at least one rib. His leg had twisted painfully as well, but he didn’t think it was seriously injured. And despite the near-agony in his upper body, there was one overwhelming thought in his head. He wasn’t moving. His fighter had come to a stop.
He had made it.
For whatever good it will do…
* * *
“That’s an order, Captain. Intrepid is to break off and make a run for it. If you go now, the confusion of the fighting might buy you the time you need to find someplace to hide. That’s a huge dust cloud…just maybe it’s big enough to conceal a battleship, even from a serious search effort.” Eaton was struck by the calm tone of Commodore Malcolm’s voice, the control, despite the fact that the commander of the fleet’s rearguard was facing his own imminent and almost certain death.
“Commodore, please…we can close to join the fight. We can be there in less than ten minutes.” Intrepid was on the far end of the line, and for the moment, out of the fight. The Union flanking forces were behind her, cutting her off from the main fleet’s retreat, but they were still out of range. She was over a million kilometers from the nearest friend or enemy, save for the three small escort ships clustered around her.
“Don’t be an ass, Captain. I appreciate your loyalty, but there’s no time for such displays. The Confederation is at war. If you join the fight here, Intrepid will be destroyed, along with the rest of us. If you retreat now, just maybe you’ll get lucky and manage to disappear into that cloud…and then the Confederation will have one more capital ship still in the fight.”
Eaton knew Malcolm was right. Intrepid had a lot of fight left in her, but by the time she could get back into the battle, half the ships of the rearguard would already be gone, and the rest would be swarmed by half a dozen enemies each. Still, the idea of running while Malcolm and his remaining battleships were still in the fight was too much for her.
“Go, Captain,” Malcom added, after a few seconds of silence. “I know it’s difficult, and I know you’d rather rush to our aid in some kind of heroic display, but there’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome here. Intrepid will be destroyed, and you won’t save one ship or one spacer for her loss. It won’t be a legendary struggle. It will be waste. Utter waste. And the Confederation can’t afford to lose another ship, not for no reason. Find a way to save your ship…and hope if its destruction comes it will be to accomplish something, to help us win this war.”
Eaton struggled to speak, her dry throat defying her attempts to make the words come forth. She realized Malcolm was right, though she also knew her chances at escape were poor. But some chance was better than none. Finally, she managed to say, “Yes, Commodore.”
“Good. Go now, Captain. There is no time to waste.”
“Yes, sir. Commodore, it has been an honor to serve with you.”
“Thank you, Captain. Now, go before…” His voice was cut off, replaced by static. Eaton’s eyes darted to the display, but she knew in her gut what had happened even before the scanners confirmed it. Renown was gone. Commodore William Malcolm was dead.
She sat silently for a moment, trying to absorb what had happened. She wanted to leave the bridge, to go somewhere—anywhere—she could be alone and just lose it, let the tears come. But that wasn’t an option. She had a job to do. There was no time to mourn Malcolm or to properly honor him, not now. Her memorial would be a simple one. She would do everything in her power to carry out his final order to her.
“Commander Nordstrom, set a course toward the large dust cloud. Advise engineering I want maximum possible thrust.”
Nordstrom hesitated. Then he turned toward Eaton’s station. “Captain, that will take us away from the battle…”
“Yes, Commander, it will.”
“But…”
“No buts, Commander Nordstrom. It was Commodore Malcolm’s order…and it is mine to you. Do you have a problem following it?” Her voice was cold, not so much out of anger at her exec but because she didn’t have time to discuss it with him.
“No, Captain.” The officer paused briefly, perhaps a second or two. Then he turned and began working on the course plot. When he was done, he said, “Ready to execute, Captain.” There was a coolness in his own voice now, and Eaton saw that Nordstrom was still looking at his console, not turning to face her as he usually did by habit.
“Advise Cambria, Astara, and Condor to do the same. All ships are to engage as soon as they are ready.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She sat stone still in her chair. She hated what she was doing as much as her exec clearly did, though her rational mind knew Malcolm had been right. Leading her people into the fight—into certain death—would have accomplished exactly nothing. Maybe, just maybe, she could sneak out of the battle, lose Intrepid somewhere in the dust cloud. The enemy scanners would have trouble finding her in there, and right now the closest Union vessels were heavily engaged finishing off the trapped rearguard.
Our comrades’ deaths will be our cover…
“All three escorts report ready, Captain.”
She shook her head, almost imperceptibly. She’d already ordered Nordstrom to execute the order as soon as the other ships were prepared, and she knew her first officer was a fastidious man, one who’d almost certainly understood that.
He’s going to make me say it again. Hoping I’ll change my mind…
She wanted to reverse her command. Desperately. But she couldn’t. If she’d been choosing only for herself, she would have plunged into the combat, seeking a glorious end. But she was responsible for Intrepid’s crew, plus those aboard the three escorts.
And all those pilots we rescued…
Intrepid’s damaged bays were packed full of fighters, almost twice as many as her standard complement. Many of them were damaged—and others would have to be jettisoned to clear out the bay so it could function—but every one of the pilots had survived. Only twenty of her own people had made it back, but she’d collected eighty-three pilots from other ships of the fleet, men and women who would have faced certain death without her efforts. She wanted to feel good about that, but it seemed insignificant in the context of the death and destruction all around her.
She had her orders, even if the man who’d given them to her was dead. And she would carry them out, even if she hated herself for it. Even if her entire crew hated her for it.
“Commander…all ships are to engage maximum thrust immediately.”
Chapter Eleven
400,000 Kilometers from CFS Dauntless
Corpus System
En Route to Arcturon
308 AC
“All right, Blues, keep it tight…and make sure those lasers are set to one-quarter percent power. This is a wargame, not a battle.” The reminder was the kind of thing Jake Stockton hadn’t had to say to his Blues in a long time. But half his veterans were gone, lost in the fighting at Santis, and the pilots in their places had spent their careers, such that they were, running routine patrols of the Archellia system. The toughest opponent any of them had ever run into was a freighter trying to sneak past the customs boats, and the last thing he wanted to see was some fool accidentally blasting one of his comrades wit
h full-power lasers.
“Yellows, stay focused. And check your own lasers too. Remember, you’ve got a bunch of bombers right behind you, heading for Dauntless. Your job is to keep the Blues from blowing your strike force to bits. These guys are protecting their ship, the only place in the system they can land…so as much as they’d love to chase you all around and rack up kills, they’ll blow past you if you let them. It’s the bombers that threaten Dauntless, and they know that.”
Well, some of them know that. Hopefully all of them will after this…
Stockton angled his thruster, bringing his ship around to a spot between the two converging forces. He had been Dauntless’s Blue leader for over a year now, but he’d set that hat aside for the moment and named one of his veterans as acting squadron commander. He was a teacher now, and an arbiter…roles he knew he was comically unsuited to perform. But he also realized these garrison pilots needed some hard lessons, and fast. Or he’d get to watch them all die when Dauntless reached the front. So, suited for the job or not, he was determined to teach them something.
He tapped his comm unit, flipping off the Blue channel and leaving the Yellow open. “All right, Yellows, you see the formation the Blues are in. Remember, you’re the attackers. Your one advantage is initiative. The Blues are glued to Dauntless, they have to stay positioned to defend. But you can approach from any angle. Just remember, you have to coordinate with the bombers behind you, and the birds fitted out for anti-ship strikes are slower and less maneuverable.” There were no real bombers, not right now, at least. Just a hypothetical wave of them behind the Yellows’ protective umbrella.
“There are a few ways you can go. Start off by testing your enemy. Change your course and see if they react to you, or if they stay focused on the bombers. Remember, your goal isn’t killing enemy interceptors. It’s getting that strike in so it can do maximum damage to the mothership. Kills are all well and good, but nothing more than a means to an end here. So, if you can get those fighters to follow you away from the bombers, that’s getting your job done before you fire a…”