by Jay Allan
He turned and stepped into the room, and a second later the place erupted into applause. Blue squadron was there, of course, as were the rest of Dauntless’s fighter jocks. And standing right in front of the bar were Captain Barron and Commander Travis.
Stockton snapped to attention. “Captain. Commander.”
“At ease, Commander…for the love of God, at ease.”
Stockton looked back, a confused expression on his face. “I’m sorry, sir…did you call me Commander?”
“You don’t miss much, do you?” Barron had a broad smile on his face. “You turned the admiral down, Jake, and I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to have you back. But we couldn’t let you walk away from your promotion too, could we? I was all ready to dust off the Barron name and take it for a ride, demanding you get the bump in rank, but the admiral said yes right away. Apparently—somehow—you made a good impression. Don’t take it personally, Commander, but you wouldn’t be my first pick to grease the brass, so to speak. Still, congratulations. That trip you made will almost certainly get you a medal as well as your clusters, but for now you’ll just have to be happy being the second highest ranking pilot on Dauntless.”
“I am, sir. I really am. Thank you. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be home.”
“We’re thrilled to have you back. Now, how would you feel about drinking with your captain?” Barron turned back toward the bar. “A round for everyone.”
The room echoed with a loud cheer as the bartender started handing out mugs.
“Jake,” Barron said softly, “there is one thing I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Timmons.” He looked up at the captain and then at Jamison. “He led the Blues while I was away.” Stockton took a deep breath. His people were nothing if not loyal. Half a dozen pilots had already told him what had happened, urging him to make amends with the Red Eagle leader…but assuring him if they were forced to choose between the two, they would always be Stockton’s. “We’ve had our differences, but I’d never say he wasn’t one hell of a pilot…or a squadron commander.”
“It’s not just that.” Barron flashed a glance to Jamison and then back. “We took terrible losses, Jake, and that was on top of Santis. We need to replenish our ranks, and I’d rather not have to deal with an influx of raw trainees. So, I asked Lieutenant Timmons and the Red Eagles to stay permanently, to bulk up our roster. I’ll have to get the admiral to approve the transfer, but I suspect he owes us one for taking out the enemy supply station.”
“Did Timmons accept?”
“He said he would stay…but only if you were okay with it. He lost his best friend in the last battle, and he’s taken the survivors of the Direwolves into his squadron.”
“Captain, I’d have probably said something very different a couple weeks ago, but a lot of things have changed since then.” He looked across the room to where Timmons was standing, and he waved his hand, gesturing for the pilot to come over.
“Yes, Commander?” Timmons said, clearly uncomfortable.
“We’ve had our differences, Warrior. We both know that. But maybe it’s time for all that to end. I can’t even say I remember why we ended up at odds all that well anymore. So, let’s start over now, clean. And if that’s good for you, it’s good for me.”
“It’s good for me, Raptor.”
Stockton extended his hand, and Timmons took it enthusiastically. “Welcome to Dauntless, Warrior. And you don’t have to thank us for getting you off that massive flagship. You’ve swapped the most prestigious ship in the fleet for the best one.”
Timmons nodded, and he even cracked a tiny smile. “No argument there, Raptor. And we’ll do whatever we have to do to keep it that way!”
Confederation Intelligence
Troyus City
Planet Megara, Olyus III
308 AC
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever see this office again, my friend.” Holsten sat behind his palatial desk, staring across at Vonns. “It was an…interesting…experience being with the fleet during a battle like that, but I think once was enough for me. I was able to keep from soiling my pants, which was a Godsend for my dignity, but I don’t think I should push my luck. Besides, with Admiral Striker securely in place, I believe the fleet is in good hands.”
“I still don’t know how you managed to extricate yourself from the hole you dug. The Senate retroactively approved all your actions. You’re in the clear, and while we’ve still got one hell of a war to fight, at least we’re not staring into the abyss anymore.” Vonns seemed genuinely surprised. “How did you pull it off with the Senate? I was waiting for word you were arrested.”
“I just reasoned with them. Nothing but cold logic.”
No one except Holsten himself ever need know the extent of the threats and deals and outright intimidation it had taken to secure the support of enough Senators to ratify what he had done. Fortunately, those who’d screamed the loudest for his blood and expressed the greatest outrage at his ‘betrayal,’ had turned out to be the ones with the longest lists of financial improprieties and illegitimate children and illicit affairs, all neatly categorized and documented in Holsten’s private files.
No politician could idly make an enemy of a man who’d occupied Holsten’s position, and so it had been with the Confederation’s Senate. A man like Holsten had his secret resources, and he’d made sure the politicians realized he would retain most of them, even when he’d been stripped of his post and charged with a long list of crimes. If his machinations had failed and the fleet had been defeated, perhaps he would have had a harder time, but the Senate was overjoyed that the Union forces were no longer advancing inexorably toward them. They’d found it relatively easy to get over their outrage, courtesy of a judicious combination of relief, blackmail and bribery.
“So, what is next? We averted disaster, but if the reports I’ve seen are any indication, the fleet is in bad shape.”
“It’s far worse than you imagine. But the Union forces were badly damaged too. I suspect there will be a lull while both sides recover. But based on the resources they committed in building their fleet and that supply base, I’d say the Union is in it to the end this time. I fear we face a long and difficult fight.”
Vonns just nodded. Then he asked, “What about Tyler Barron? This is the second massive victory he’s won. I know he is young, but should we be considering a move to flag rank?”
“We probably should…but not yet. He and that ship of his are a unit, unlike any I have ever seen. His people are devoted to him, and they seem uniquely able to achieve the impossible. I’m reluctant to separate them, at least so soon. Tyler Barron may yet prove to be his grandfather’s equal, but with Striker in command, we can be patient. Our new commanding admiral brings a whole generation of officers with him, and a fresh energy. Striker is willing to promote Barron to task force command now, but I asked him to wait. To give Barron and his people and his ship a bit more time together. I think they’ve earned at least that much.”
CFS Dauntless
Ultara System
308 AC
“Commander Fritz has worked wonders, Captain. It gets old saying it so often, but she really is the closest thing to a miracle worker.”
“I think Fritzie would badger a miracle worker to the verge of insanity. All this time together, and I still can’t say for certain that the woman sleeps. Ever.” Barron flashed a smile at Travis. The two were in his quarters, just catching up on the latest reports. He appreciated the quiet, and the company.
Dauntless still carried a fair number of scars, but the battleship was more or less fully functional. Barron knew she could use a long stretch in spacedock, but he also realized there were other ships in greater need. The opening battles of the war had been the fiercest and most costly ever known, and the fleet had a tremendous amount of repair and rebuilding to do.
“We’re in good shape, Ty…considering. The Red Eagles will go a long way toward bringing our squadrons back to top readiness. And
even for all our losses, the pilot roster looks like an all-star assembly.”
“We’re very lucky, Atara…if that’s something we can say after all we’ve been through.” Barron paused. “This war isn’t over, not by a long shot. As soon as the Union gets their fleets refit and resupplied, they’ll be back at us. And we’d better be ready for them when they come.”
Travis looked at him, an iron look on her face. “We will be, Ty. We will be.”
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Ruins of Empire (Blood on the Stars III)
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Ruins of Empire
Blood on the Stars III
Chapter One
Epheseus System
Ten Light Minutes from the Hystari Transwarp Portal
309 AC
“C’mon, c’mon…just a few seconds more,” Jake Stockton muttered to himself as he pursued his enemy. His eyes were focused tightly on the small screen, following the Union fighter’s every move. He’d taken out three enemy craft already, but that wasn’t enough to hang on to his status as the fleet’s leading ace…Dirk Timmons had five kills, and that left Stockton two behind his rival.
Stockton’s mind was fully on the mission, on his almost feral need to destroy the Union ship in front of him. He knew the enemy pilots had little choice but to fight, that most had found the military to be the only escape from the crushing poverty the masses of the Union endured. But that was too philosophical to interfere with the raw hatred he felt for the foe. He’d seen too many friends die in the year since the war had begun. The faces of his lost comrades stared at him from the darkness of sleep, stoking his need for bloody vengeance.
His hand tightened, the hard rubber of the firing stud smooth against his calloused finger. He’d sent dozens of his enemies to hell, and now he was going to add to that number.
He heard the familiar echo of the lasers firing, the harsh whine loud in the confines of his cockpit. His eyes remained locked on the screen, even as he fired again.
Damn.
The enemy was angling his thrusters, his pattern almost completely random. The changes to his vector were minimal—he was traveling at nearly 600 kilometers per second, and at that velocity it took a lot of thrust to substantially alter heading. But even the slightest variations from the expected were enough to dodge a laser blast.
Stockton felt his anger heating up. There was respect too, recognition that he was facing another talented flyer. But the admiration was buried deeply, covered over by bitterness, by the pain and death the Confederation forces had suffered in the war to date. Stockton was affable enough aboard Dauntless, but when he stepped into his fighter he became something else entirely.
He imagined the thoughts going through his prey’s mind. Fear, of course, but also a rapid sequence of panicked deliberations, plots to deal with the danger on his tail. Stockton knew his enemy must have wanted to come about to face him, to meet him in head to head battle instead of giving his tail. But the Union strike force had been gutted, and dozens of Dauntless’s fighters were screaming forward, chasing down the few surviving enemy craft. Anything but flight was certain death for the Union pilot…and Stockton was determined that running would not save his adversary.
He fired again…and then again. Near misses. Very near. But misses nevertheless.
Stockton’s anger flared. He didn’t often run into a pilot who could put up a fight against him, and that was how he liked it. The Confederation forces had been outnumbered since the start of the war. There was no room for closely fought duels, not when there were twice as many enemy birds. Dominance was the Confederation’s tactic, facing superior forces with smaller ones and winning the victory anyway.
He swung his ship around, matching his enemy’s maneuvers. He hadn’t managed to hit the Union fighter yet, but he’d be damned if was going to let the bastard get away. He fired again. Closer this time, but still a miss. His laser blast had come within twenty meters of the target, which even at close range was considerably more precise than threading a needle. But a miss was a miss.
“You need some help with that one, Raptor?”
Stockton frowned as the voice of Dirk Timmons filled his headset. Stockton and Timmons had been bitter rivals for years, ever since they’d attended the academy together, though they’d mutually agreed to leave the animosity behind after Timmons and his squadron transferred to Dauntless. The two aces—and prima donnas, Stockton had to admit to himself—had won each other’s grudging respect in the grim fighting of the last campaign. He’d made his peace with Timmons, but he wasn’t ready to admit he actually liked the other pilot. Not yet, at least.
“I’ve got it,” Stockton snapped back, his intensity manifesting as annoyance in his tone.
He fired, but Timmons words had shaken his concentration. Now he focused again, putting everything else out of his mind. There was his enemy…and there was him, and nothing else, not in all the vastness of space.
His eyes narrowed, locked even more tightly on the display. Then, in the face of all the tension, of the fear and strife of battle, he let himself go. He ignored the pit in his stomach, and let his intuition guide him. He tried to envision what he would do, the moves he would make to shake a foe. He could see the enemy ship in his mind, the view from his adversary’s cockpit. He was the enemy pilot, moving the throttle, trying to escape the deadly hunter on his tail.
His own hand moved, angling his throttle as his instinct demanded. He fired, and then again, still missing, but ignoring it. There was no frustration now, no urgency, just the enemy, in front of him. Inside his head.
His finger tightened, the sound of the lasers again filling his tiny cockpit. But this time was different. He knew. Somehow he knew before the scanners reported, before even the deadly weapons fired. This time he had hit his mark.
He felt the rush inside, the excitement at the kill, but for an instant he struggled to check it, waiting for the screen to confirm what his gut was telling him. Then the small icon representing the Union fighter winked out of existence. He had one more kill, one more stamp to place on the exterior of his ship.
“Nice shot, Raptor.” The earlier slightly mocking tone was gone from Timmons’s words, replaced by honest congratulations. “That looked like a tough one.”
“Thanks, Warrior.” Stockton hoped his response was as genuine as his former rival’s compliment. A decade of bad feelings was hard to erase entirely, but age and long overdue wisdom had come to Dauntless’s two hotshot pilots. The pointless conflict between them seemed especially foolish now that they shared an enemy.
“So, Raptor, now that you got that guy, what do you say the Blues and the Scarlet Eagles do something about that battleship…before it gets to the transwarp link and jumps out of here?”
“I like the way you think, Warrior,” Stockton shot back, angling his thruster to bring him toward the rest of his squadron. “I like the way you think.”
* * *
“The Blues and the Eagles are beginning an attack run on the enemy battleship, Captain.” Atara Travis looked over from her station, her eyes meeting the captain’s, carrying unspoken words. No one had authorized the fighters to engage the enemy mother ship…they had just been sent to pursue the broken Union squadrons.
Barron held her stare for an instant. His own silent reply. Let it go.
Dauntless had one of the best fighter contingents of any ship in the fleet. The best as far as Barron was concerned. And the core of that came down to his two elite squadrons, Stockton’s Blues and Timmons’s Scarlet Eagles. Not only were the squadron leaders almost certainly the two best pilots in the fleet, but each of their formations was jammed full of veteran flyers.
The skill of his battleship’s squadrons had just been displayed in no uncertain terms. Dauntless had been on a forward scouting mission, a quick advance into the “no man’s land” between the two fleets…and she had run into her counterpart, a Union vessel executing similar orders. The enemy ship had responded quickly, l
aunched a heavy bombing assault, but Dauntless’s interceptors had shot down the attack craft like fish in a barrel. Not a single torpedo-bomber had even reached launch range, and their fleeing escort fighters, those that had survived the first engagement at least, were hunted down by Dauntless’s deadly squadrons.
Barron felt pride…and relief. He’d seen his ship battered before, felt the impacts of hit after hit, ripping through her hull, destroying her systems and killing her people. But now, Dauntless was like a razor, a war machine of such capability, she was the prohibitive favorite in any one on one fight against a comparable enemy vessel. She’d faced an equal here, at least in terms of tonnage and numbers of fighters, but she didn’t have a bit of damage…at least none beyond that she’d brought with her into the system.
He looked down at the screen, at the casualty reports that were, for once at least, far less extensive than usual. No one on the ship itself had been killed. There were two injuries, one an engineer who suffered some burns when a cooling pipe blew, and another who fell five meters from a catwalk.
His squadrons had suffered terrible losses in Dauntless’s great battles of the past year, but even in his combat wings, casualties had been far lower than he’d feared. The Blues and the Eagles had only lost one ship each, and the combined toll for all five squadrons was only eight…and at least three of those had managed to eject.
The Blues had been Dauntless’s since Barron had taken command, but he’d only gained the Eagles during the fight against the enemy’s massive supply base. And he’d had to pull out the Barron name to hang onto them once his ship rejoined the fleet. They’d originally been assigned to the flagship, Repulse, but the shade of Barron’s war-hero grandfather was still powerful, and his own reputation was rapidly growing as well. It had taken a little effort, though in the end far less than he’d expected. Admiral Striker was a very different man from Admiral Winston, much less likely to take a stand on staid orthodoxy…and willing to accept the assurance from his most successful captain that Dauntless could indeed handle a total fighter complement more than twenty-five percent above its rated establishment.