by Jay Allan
“You’re right, Gary. It’s got to be a vulnerability, but we haven’t got a clue about what they’re doing or how they’re maintaining a supply line that long. What can we do about it, with Second Fleet almost destroyed and First Fleet on the run?”
“I don’t know, Mike. But we have to figure out something, and we have to do it quickly. They’ve got to have a vulnerability now, but if we give them long enough to settle into the occupied systems, they’ll build up conventional supply bases and consolidate their conquests.”
Vonns sat quietly for a moment, staring at the ground. “I don’t know, Gary…I’m stumped. We’d have to try to get something around their flanks…” He looked over at the map. “…and there’s just no way. First Fleet’s beaten up, but worse, it’s between the Union and the heart of the Confederation. If Admiral Winston went off on a crazy mission to try to get around the enemy fleet, there would be nothing to stop—or even slow—the enemy. They’d have an open route right into the Iron Belt.”
“No, you’re right about First Fleet. It’s got to stay where it is, though I’m not sure it can do much to stop the enemy if they keep pushing hard.”
“What then? Second Fleet is a wreck. Third Fleet is deployed to defend the Core worlds. There’s no way the Senate is going to let the navy move those ships, not now. Not when they’re scared.”
Holsten paused. “They’re scared all right…but they don’t know how bad things really are.”
“You’ve been censoring the reports to the Senate?” Vonns stared across the desk. “Gary, come on. I agreed with some of the earlier stuff we…massaged…but you’re playing with fire now.”
“I know. But I’m in it already. I knew if they got accurate reports on the enemy strength they would panic. They’d want to defend themselves, and they would have voted to pull forces back from the front. Admiral Winston was planning his stand at Arcturon and, while I had my doubts about the plan, I didn’t want to see him lose any of his force right before the battle.” He paused. “And, of course, one falsified report led to another…”
Vonns shook his head. “What a mess.”
“Yeah, it’s a mess. But I don’t really care about that right now. The Confederation is teetering on the edge, Mike. We’re staring into the abyss, and a bunch of chattering politicians aren’t going to save us.” Holsten took a deep breath before he continued. “Which is why I have activated Fifth Fleet.”
“You can activate anything you want, Gary, but where are you going to get the ships to turn it from a paper formation into a real force?”
“Third Fleet, to start.”
“Gary, we just agreed the Senate will never allow Third Fleet to move forward.”
“Third Fleet will stay right where it is. At least the flag will.”
“What are you talking about, Gary? Please don’t tell me…”
“I’ve arranged for Admiral Striker to command Fifth Fleet…and Admiral Thompson is on board with the plan. We transfer enough ships from Third Fleet to build up Fifth Fleet…quietly.”
“You’re insane, Gary. How long can you possibly expect to maintain a deception on that scale?”
Holsten looked back at his friend. “However long it takes to save the Confederation, Mike. If we pull it off, I’m sure I can smooth things over.” He sounded less than one hundred percent confident.
“And if the plan fails?”
“Then, my friend, the Confederation is doomed.” He reached down and pulled something from a drawer, setting it down on the desk. It was a gun, small, stubby, easy to hide. Standard issue for operatives. “If that happens, I have no intention of surviving to see Foudre Rouge soldiers landing on Megara, my old friend…and it makes very little difference to me if the Senate condemns me before I blow my brains out.”
Chapter Seventeen
CFS Intrepid
Arcturon System
Just Outside the Outer System Dust Cloud
308 AC
“Launch control reports the last of the fighters are ready, Captain. Awaiting your order to launch.”
“By all means, Commander. Launch at once.” Eaton had always been proud of her people, but she’d never been more impressed than by the crews of her launch bays. Intrepid carried a full complement of forty-eight fighters, but with this last wave, she had refit and launched almost one hundred. It shouldn’t even have been possible. There were too few service docks, too little space. Yet her people had done it.
She looked at the display, watching her first two waves of fighters as they moved toward the enemy strike force. Dauntless had launched just under thirty fighters, which Eaton knew from memory was half her complement. Whether they had lost the rest, or whether they were prepping them even now, she didn’t know. The interference from the cloud was still affecting her comm.
Her wings were coming in at an angle, and they were going to hit the enemy bombers before they closed to firing range.
Which is a damned good thing, because that many bombers would have hit Dauntless hard. And those two battleships would have finished her off, no question.
We’re still going to have one hell of a fight on our hands, but it’s one we can win together.
Her scanners confirmed that Dauntless had already destroyed one enemy battleship. Its shattered ruins were still floating through space, leaking radiation and residual heat, but it had only taken Intrepid’s AI a few seconds to determine that the vessel was lifeless and essentially destroyed.
She watched as her fighters closed the last distance and struck into the enemy bomber force. The Union interceptors, which had been fighting Dauntless’s remaining fighters, broke off and tried to come about to face the new threat. But they were late and disorganized, and one wing of Intrepid’s incoming fighters hit them with a wave of missiles. A third of the Union craft were destroyed in the first minute of combat, and the battle continued on, the results nearly as lopsided as the original exchange. Even Dauntless’s battered force attacked with renewed vigor, coming in from the other side and bracketing the enemy squadrons. It wasn’t a battle; it was a slaughter. Finally, a few Union craft broke out and fled back toward their mother ships, Intrepid’s fighters right behind them.
Farther forward, the second group of Intrepid’s fighters crashed into the force heading for Dauntless. They fired their missiles and then sliced into the remnants of the group, blasting the unwieldy bombers to atoms. More than fifty interceptors tore into half as many bombers, and within a few minutes not a single attack craft remained.
She felt a wave of satisfaction. She’d put her people at risk, given up their hiding place, and saving Dauntless from the bombing strike made it all worth the risk.
That risk isn’t over yet…
She glanced at the display, at the two enemy battleships. The massive vessels were still moving forward. Her makeshift squadrons were all equipped for anti-fighter operations. It had been miracle enough that her people got the ships into battle, but there had been no way to install the bulky bombing kits in the overcrowded bays.
That meant there would be no significant bomber attacks on the enemy battleships. The fight would be a toe-to-toe slugging match, Dauntless and Intrepid standing together, throwing everything they had at the enemy and enduring every incoming shot. Unless Dauntless had some bombers in their bay. She’d only seen about half the battleship’s complement, but she had no idea whether the others had been destroyed, or whether they were in the bays being refit.
She’d been trying to remember everything she knew about Barron, but beyond his general reputation—and, of course his famous lineage—she had come up with very little.
Tyler Barron…the favored son of the Confederation navy…
She’d met Barron briefly once or twice, but she didn’t really know him. She knew of him of course, everybody did. Rance Barron’s exploits were required lessons in every school in the Confederation, and from what she’d heard, Tyler was a fine officer. His recent actions on the Rim had only added to his reputation,
even if the details of what he had done there remained classified. She’d never second-guessed the praise she’d heard for the famous officer…but the lives of her own people had never depended as much on his abilities as they did now. She wasn’t doubting him, not exactly, but she was nervous, edgy.
“Captain, we’re getting a signal from Dauntless.”
“On my comm, Commander.” She reached down and grabbed her headset, pulling it over her hair, struggling for a few seconds when it caught on a few loose strands from her otherwise tightly-bound ponytail.
“Intrepid…this is Captain Barron on Dauntless. Do you read?”
“We read you, Dauntless. Captain Sara Eaton here.”
“Captain Eaton, what can I say? We’re delighted to find you here. Thanks for the assist.”
“Anytime, Captain Barron. We’re all on the same team.” She paused for a few seconds. “Speaking of which, our team’s not out of the woods yet.”
“No, Captain, it’s not. I’ve got twenty-eight fighters in my bay ready to launch, thirteen of them bombers.”
“Everything I’ve got is already out there.”
“I gathered that, Captain. Warbook confirms Intrepid’s complement at forty-eight. How is it you launched a hundred fighters?”
“The fleet fought here, Captain.” Eaton’s voice became darker. “We were ambushed. We lost a lot of ships before the main force escaped. The retreating ships couldn’t pick up all their fighters. There were squadrons all across the battle line, intermixed, cut off from their motherships. We were on the end of the line, cut off from escape. I picked up as many fighters as we could cram into the bays…but I’m afraid we couldn’t take them all.”
Eaton felt a twinge in her gut. She expected condemnation, or at least probing questions from Barron about how Intrepid ended up hiding in the dust cloud while the remnants of the fleet were being butchered. She had only been following orders, but she’d been telling herself that for days with no effect on her own feelings of guilt. She doubted the explanation would carry much more weight with an officer of Barron’s pedigree.
“Well done, Captain,” Barron said, his voice free of any hint of recrimination. “And well done now too. Again, you have my thanks, and the gratitude of my crew.”
“Thank you, Captain. You’re…um…you’re most welcome.” She was surprised. In her experience, people, especially those among the exalted ranks of ship captains, tended to be judgmental, ready to impose their own, often highly prejudicial, viewpoints. But Barron’s words seemed genuine.
“We’re not done yet, though,” Barron said. “There are still two enemy battleships coming…and as I see it, the Confederation navy has a debt to settle with the Union.”
“Yes, Captain. It certainly does.”
“Then let’s get Intrepid and Dauntless formed up and make a payment on that debt.”
“Absolutely, Captain Barron. Absolutely.”
* * *
“We’re picking up a lot of debris, Captain. Preliminary analysis suggests the battle here was truly massive. We’ve located at least a dozen hulks of capital ships so far.”
Barron looked over at Travis. “That’s why we were on our way here. But we were supposed to link up with the fleet before the battle, not get here after the fact and count the dead. It looks like they could have used us.”
“From the looks of things here, and from Captain’s Eaton’s comments, I don’t think one capital ship would have made the difference, sir.”
“No, perhaps not. But I still don’t like the fact that we weren’t here.”
“I don’t either, Captain. But perhaps it was for the best. If we’d been here, Dauntless might have been destroyed. But now we’re still in the battle…and we’re looking at a straight up fight. And there isn’t an even battle against the Union I wouldn’t take.” Travis’s usually calm tone was different, unusually feral.
“I’m inclined to agree, Commander. But we’ve got it whether we want it or not, and it’s time to strike back. We fight here for ourselves…and for all our comrades who died in this system.” He paused. “Is Intrepid in position?” He’d cut Dauntless’s thrust, waiting for Captain Eaton to bring her vessel around and take position alongside his battleship.
“Yes, Captain. And her escort vessels will be in a few minutes.” Barron had been pleased to discover that Intrepid was accompanied by three smaller ships that had also survived the battle…especially when his scanners revealed the Union battleships were each accompanied by a trio of their own smaller escorts.
“Very well. We will wait until the entire force is in formation.”
Barron glanced down at his screen. The enemy vessels had stopped accelerating, but they were still coming on. He imagined the sudden destruction of their fighter wings, which had seemed so likely to overwhelm and cripple Dauntless, had them on edge. But he had some inkling of the way Sector Nine infiltrated Union vessels, and of the draconian punishments for officers and spacers even suspected of cowardice. He didn’t suppose it was real courage that kept Union forces in the battleline, but it was effective nevertheless.
Besides, they’re protecting something…
There were two dozen other Union vessels lined up behind the battleships. It was too far for detailed data, but the mass estimates suggested they were large ships. Energy readings didn’t match expectations for battleships—and besides, if the enemy force included more capital ships, they would be advancing alongside the other two warships. He couldn’t be sure, but Barron suspected he’d encountered an enemy supply convoy, and that the massive vessels were tankers and freighters.
Of course…supply. That’s what doesn’t add up here.
Something had been nagging at Barron since Dauntless had encountered the enemy battleship in Corpus. He’d seen the Confederation’s plans for war, their force estimates and reams of scenarios. For months, his ship had patrolled the border, waiting for the outbreak of war. But now he realized something didn’t make sense. There was no way the Union fleet could have moved so far so fast, not while maintaining a supply line that could support non-stop combat.
His mind flashed back to the Rim, to his struggle with Captain Rigellus and Invictus. Rigellus had crossed the border and occupied Santis, a major production site for tritium, the primary fuel used in warship reactors. It had been a prelude to invasion, and an acknowledgement that logistics was the key to sustaining a campaign, that without seizing the Confederation production facility, an invasion was not feasible.
How are they supplying their forces?
Conventional wisdom suggested there was no way the Union forces could have done what they clearly had. They were too far from their bases, and they hadn’t had enough time to build facilities closer to the front lines. There were gas giants in many of the occupied Confederation systems, of course, spots where the invaders could build facilities to produce the reaction mass necessary to fuel their massive fleets. But that took months at least. And that didn’t even account for weapons, provisions, spare parts…all the things it took to keep a battle fleet in action. He had no idea how the Union was keeping their fleets in the fight. Even the Alliance, where toughness and self-sacrifice were virtually national pastimes, had required a tritium production facility to contemplate full-scale invasion. But there was no equivalent of Santis on the Union border.
“Captain, launch control reports that Lieutenant Stockton and his fighters are ready to go on your command.”
Barron shook himself from his thoughts. “Status of escort vessels?”
“Astara and Cambria are ready, sir. Condor is still taking position to the rear.”
Condor was a scout ship, small and fast but with minimal armament. She had no place in the battle line.
“Very well. Commence launch operations. And contact Intrepid. Advise them we are ready to initiate forward thrust.”
* * *
“Yes!” Stockton’s comm microphone was switched off. The yell was only for himself. He’d led the strike force i
n, closing to point blank range before he allowed the bombers to launch their torpedoes. His aggressive strategy had come at a cost. Three of his bombers went down under the battleship’s guns, but the others delivered a crushing barrage, their weapons tearing massive holes in the enemy’s hull, ripping away entire gun turrets.
The enemy ships had sent all of their fighters forward, no doubt confident that the strike would overwhelm Dauntless. But they hadn’t accounted for Intrepid…and the double contingent of fighters she carried. The massive attack from the dust cloud had virtually wiped out the Union fighters, and Stockton’s people hadn’t even had to face a combat space patrol.
“Interceptors, one more run,” he snapped after flipping on his comm unit. “Let’s see if we can’t plant a few shots inside some of those hull breaches. Lieutenant Curtiss, take the bombers and head back to Dauntless.” The fighters with the anti-ship armaments were too unmaneuverable for precise targeting with their lasers, and too vulnerable to the battleship’s still-active point defense guns. The interceptors were another matter. With no CSP to oppose, they hadn’t burned fuel in endless dogfighting. They had one more attack left in them.
“Roger that, Raptor. Bombers, form up on me. Let’s head back to base.” Curtiss was another of Dauntless’s longtime pilots, a veteran of the ten months the battleship had spent on the Union border and the deadly fight against Invictus out on the Rim.
“Interceptors, on me. Pick your targets…your lasers aren’t going to do much good unless you can find a weak spot and hit them there. And watch out for their point defense turrets. They’re damned dangerous this close in.”
He brought his fighter around, hitting his thrust and changing his course right toward the hulking battleship. He couldn’t see his enemy, of course. Space battles took place over ranges entirely too great for visuals, even when fighters were doing close in strafing runs. But his scanner displayed an image of the Union battleship, and the areas where hull integrity was lost were highlighted.