Blood on the Stars Collection 1

by Jay Allan

Orbiting Krakus II

  “I want those revised transit orders ready in ten minutes, Commander. And send a communique to the shipyards at Gravis. Honorable and Indomitable are to be released at once for return to duty.”

  “Yes, sir.” The logistics officer was clearly stretched close to his limit. Striker had been at the fleet’s main forward base for less than twelve hours, but he’d hit like a typhoon, blasting out a seemingly unending series of orders and demands for information.

  “Any word yet from Tantor?” Admiral Van Striker was on edge too, but he carried the burden of knowledge in a much deeper way than his subordinates. The various specialists who staffed the fleet’s main forward base tended to focus on their own specific areas of expertise, tracking enemy movements or fleet logistics. Striker was thinking about all of it, every second.

  “Negative, sir. The last report stated that Commodore Isaacson was expecting an enemy attack at any time.”

  Striker nodded sharply and stood where he was. Tantor was the next place the enemy would hit, Striker was sure of it. At least it was the logical target if this offensive was the real thing and not some kind of deception or sick Union strategy to “bleed its enemy white.” Tantor was a choke point, a system with connections to four other Confederation systems, each of them leading to strategically crucial locations. If the enemy took Tantor, they would be two transits away from Krakus, which was the next vital nexus they’d have to seize to threaten the Iron Belt and the Core.

  If Isaacson was defeated, Striker knew he’d be under immense pressure to abandon Grimaldi base. He looked around at the officers at their stations. They’d fled once before during the initial Union onslaught, and he couldn’t imagine the blow to morale a second evacuation would cause. It was a miracle that Grimaldi even still remained. Admiral Winston had not ordered the base destroyed when he’d had to order the retreat, probably because he’d convinced himself he would take it back in short order. Even more amazingly, the Union forces had failed to scuttle the massive orbital platform when they’d been forced to withdraw, a clear deviation from their standard doctrine.

  Somebody went out the airlock for that one…

  That was two close calls for Grimaldi, but there wouldn’t be a third. Striker hated the idea of abandoning the fleet’s main operations center, but if he was forced to do it, one thing was absolutely certain. He’d leave nothing behind for the enemy but dust and plasma.

  “Admiral, shuttle Omicron has just landed.” The officer paused for a second. “You asked to be notified, sir.”

  “Very well,” Striker replied. The added explanation wasn’t surprising. He’d specifically told the officer to advise him when the ship landed. No one else on Grimaldi knew that shuttle Omicron was anything but a routine courier ship, and certainly not that Gary Holsten, head of Confederation Intelligence, was its primary cargo.

  “I will be in my quarters,” Striker said abruptly. He walked across the control center, pausing at the bank of lifts and turning back for a few seconds. “If any reports come through from Tantor, any at all, advise me immediately. I don’t care if it’s a battle report or a requisition for cleaning supplies.”

  “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  Striker turned and stepped into the small car, reaching out and punching one of the keys on the control panel instead of simply telling the AI where he was going. His quarters were on level four, but he had a stop planned on the way…though it was just about as out of the way as possible.

  He stood quietly as the lift moved down, past level four, all the way to the shuttle bays, more than five hundred meters below his quarters. The doors finally opened, revealing a massive deck, filled with more than a dozen small craft, shuttles, freight carriers, and fighters from one of the squadrons tasked with defending the fleet base. There was a background level of activity, ships being loaded and unloaded, and service teams working on the fighters. A single man stood in the forefront, alone, waiting quietly, his eyes focused straight ahead.

  “Gary, I’m glad you could come.” Striker stepped out of the elevator and extended his hand.

  “There was no choice, Van. You know that.” Gary Holsten took a step forward and grasped the fleet admiral’s hand. There were all sorts of protocols for how two such lofty personages were expected to greet each other and converse, but the two had worked closely together over the past six months, and they’d both agreed to dispense with the formality, especially when they were alone.

  The intelligence chief and the admiral had collaborated on a number of projects, including the perpetration of a massive fraud that had put Striker in command of the fleet and Admiral Winston out to pasture. It had been done solely out of concern for the Confederation, a move born in desperation during the darkest moments of the war, but that hadn’t made it any less risky. The results had been extremely beneficial for the Confederation, and Striker’s offensive—a move Winston would never have dared to make—had hit the Union just as the effects of the destruction of their supply base had reached their forward formations. In one move, Striker had driven the enemy forces back almost to the prewar borders, a situation that had held for six months of bitter stalemate. Until now.

  “I hope you have more insight into what’s happening than I do, Gary. I’m afraid the enemy’s actions make very little sense…unless there’s something we don’t know. And all the ‘somethings’ I can think of are quite bad for us.”

  “Is there a ‘Supply Two’ base out there somewhere? That is what you want to ask me, isn’t it?”

  Striker hesitated, looking for a few seconds as though he was going to deny Holsten’s statement, or at least expand on it. But then he simply said, “Yes.”

  “That’s a question I’d love to be able to answer for you, Van…” Holsten paused and then gestured toward the lift. “Why don’t we head back to your quarters? I’m sure the security on Grimaldi is top of the line, but I’d feel better if we were behind a closed door instead of out in the middle of a landing bay. I’d bet there are Union spies on this station, despite our best efforts to root them out.”

  Striker nodded. “Of course, you’re right.” He turned and stepped into one of the cars, waiting for Holsten to follow before he said, “Deck four.”

  The two men were silent as the car moved quickly upward. The door opened onto the fourth level corridor, and Striker stepped out, turning left and walking about thirty meters before stopping in front of a silvery metal door. “Open,” he said. The door slid open, and he gestured for Holsten to enter, then he followed after the intelligence chief.

  “Lights.” Striker walked across the large room. The fleet admiral’s quarters were massive by the standards that usually applied in space. Striker was the fleet’s senior commander, and Grimaldi was a fortress and an enormous base, not a ship. Still, the admiral had been a little stunned when he’d first set eyes on the suite of rooms. “Whoever designed Grimaldi was looking to kiss up to the admiral,” he said, sounding a little embarrassed about the opulence of his quarters.

  “Who wouldn’t want to kiss up to the fleet admiral?” Holsten smiled, briefly at least. The situation they were together to discuss was a grave and dangerous one, and Striker knew the stress Holsten was under, mostly because he was under it too. “You deserve every square centimeter, Van. Your victories saved the Confederation.”

  “Most likely I would have led the fleet to its final annihilation, had I not had unexpected help. We both know Captains Barron and Eaton were the real heroes.”

  “The Confederation is large enough to have three heroes…more even, if accomplishments warrant. I gambled on you, Van, if you will recall, and your success repaid me. Not only by saving the Confederation, but by doing so in such a decisive manner as to make it politically impossible for the Senate to come after me. Presented with the choice of ‘blaming’ me for the actions that led to victory or taking credit themselves, they chose to pat themselves on the back instead. They backdated more than one resolution that day.”

  S
triker just nodded. “Anyway, we’re alone, Gary. So, have a seat…” He gestured toward a large sectional sofa. “…and tell me, do they have another mobile supply base?”

  “I wish I could tell you,” the spy said softly. “But the truth is, I don’t know. The economists, the number crunchers and analysts…they maintain it is absolutely impossible. They claim there’s no possible way the Union had sufficient resources to construct another base of that size and cost.” He stared at Striker, and there was doubt in his eyes. “But, of course, they’re the same geniuses who had no inkling the enemy had the resources to build the first one…so we must at least allow for the possibility that our esteemed and highly educated colleagues don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

  Striker nodded, a small grin slipping out. He shared Holsten’s disdain for highly credentialed “experts” with little real world experience to temper their conclusions. “So, you think they may have one?”

  “Honestly, I don’t see how either. They put the original one past us…a brilliant piece of intelligence work, I have to admit. One that made me look like a fool. But over the past six months, we’ve gone a long way toward rebuilding our assets in the Union. They took us by surprise just before the outbreak of the war, purging a vast number of our agents. Now, we’ve started to see a greater flow of intel.”

  “And you haven’t gotten wind of any new supply base?”

  “Quite the contrary,” Holsten said. “We have gotten multiple leads on one.”

  Striker’s face went white. “You have?”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, Van. You have no idea how much data we go through, and how little of it actually proves to be useful.”

  “But if you’re getting leads about a mobile supply base…”

  “We’re almost getting too many leads.”

  “Too many? What does that mean?”

  “It means maybe they do have another base as big and capable as the one Captain Barron’s expedition destroyed, or even one of much smaller capability.” He paused, looking right at Striker. “Or maybe they have nothing at all…and they just want us to believe they do.”

  “What would they gain by that? Why launch such a costly offensive if they don’t have the ability to sustain it?”

  “As a diversion, perhaps?”

  “A diversion? For what purpose?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it? Perhaps they’re trying to take our attention away from the Badlands.”

  “They would launch an assault across the entire front just to distract us from the Badlands?”

  “What would you do to gain control over an ancient warship, one with technology far beyond anything we have now?”

  “So, you think the intel we found is accurate? That Captain Barron is actually going to find an artifact of such power? You did just mention how much useless information flows through your organization.”

  “I don’t know. It’s true that only a small percentage of the raw data we analyze leads to anything important. But the lead regarding the artifact seemed credible—enough that I still believe it was worth sending Dauntless. That means it’s definitely possible that this entire offensive is nothing but an elaborate diversion.

  “And it’s possible it’s a real attack, an attempt to break us before ships start rolling off the Iron Belt production lines. Perhaps they’ve managed to come up with some kind of logistical scheme to support their fleet. We must be prepared to hold them back, keep them out of the heart of the Confederation.”

  “Yes, you’re right. We must keep them from reaching the Iron Belt worlds. If they’re able to destroy our new ships half-built in their spacedocks…” Holsten’s voice trailed off. His meaning was clear.

  “On the other hand, if you were correct earlier, if the Union is going to such lengths to take our attention away from the Badlands, we can be sure they’ve got more than one battleship there. So, even if Captain Barron finds what we sent him to locate…”

  “He may be overwhelmed.” Holsten shook his head. “In that case, Dauntless would be destroyed, and the enemy would gain control over whatever is out there.”

  “So, what do we do? Do we send reinforcements to Captain Barron? I had planned to dispatch Triumphant and Aspirant, as we’d discussed…but…”

  “But?”

  “Aspirant was destroyed in the initial Union onslaught. And I held Triumphant back to support the line.”

  “So, what can you spare?”

  “Nothing, really. I’m not even sure I can hold the line with everything I have.”

  “So, if we assume the Union attack is a diversion to take our attention off the Badlands, and we dispatch a task force there…if the assault turns out to be real, we may weaken ourselves to the point where we can’t hold.”

  Striker nodded. “And if we don’t send aid to Dauntless, and the Union invasion is nothing more than a deception, we could be doing exactly what they want. We could end up sitting here and watching them seize a weapon of almost unimaginable power.”

  “If it even exists.”

  Striker had a pained look on his face. “We could go around in this circle forever. But we believed it existed enough to send Captain Barron and his people to go find it. What of them? Do we abandon them, leave them to be overwhelmed by the enemy?”

  “It’s as upsetting to me as it is to you…but Captain Barron volunteered for the mission.”

  “Volunteered?” Striker shook his head. “We may have put on a little farce to that effect, but you know as well as I do there was no way for Barron to decline, not with both of us asking him to go. He took it as an order, no matter what you and I might have pretended. And we promised to send him reinforcements.”

  “There are, what? A thousand crew on Dauntless?”

  “Just under. Why?”

  “What are the losses along the front since the enemy launched this offensive?”

  Striker frowned. He knew where Holsten was going, and he didn’t like it. Cold-blooded logic had always been difficult for him, despite his reputation as a fighting admiral. “Considerable.”

  “My last report has them at over ten thousand, just in the first few days. I have no doubt you have more up to date figures than I do. And none of that includes the thousands—millions—of people living on the worlds we’re being forced to abandon.” He paused, and Striker could see the pain in his expression. “Or the billions on the worlds still behind us.

  “I admire Captain Barron as much as you, Van…he is a credit to his famous family and a true hero in his own right. But we have to make a decision based on far more than one man, or even the crew of one ship. If this is not a diversion, it could mean total defeat. Millions dead, billions more enslaved.” His eyes were focused on Striker’s. “The fate of Dauntless and her crew are irrelevant in our analysis. We can only consider the military situation, and the likelihood that there really is an artifact of immense power out there. But even if there is, if the line collapses, if the enemy fleets advance into the Iron Belt and the Core…they will capture or destroy the ships under construction…and the Confederation will fall. Regardless of whether there was an ancient ship out there and we sent ships to seize it, it would be too late.”

  Striker sat silently for a moment. Finally, a look of acquiescence came over his face. “So, the question remains, does the enemy really have a supply base, or is this all an elaborate deception? And what do we do about it?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Or, more to the point, if it is real, can you stop them if you send a task force to the Badlands?”

  Striker felt cold. “Gary, I’m not sure I can stop them anyway, even if I don’t detach any ships. If they can sustain this offensive…we’re in trouble.”

  Holsten frowned, and he took a deep breath. “Do we bet the Confederation that they’re bluffing?”

  Striker shook his head, not in answer to the question, but simply the manifestation of his uncertainty. He hated the idea of abandoning Dauntless. And the th
ought of the enemy gaining ancient technology was terrifying…but if the Union offensive was real…

  The comm buzzed. “Yes,” Striker snapped, leaning toward the small unit.

  “Admiral, we have received a report from Tantor.”

  He could hear from the officer’s tone. The news was bad.

  “Yes?”

  “Commodore Isaacson is dead, sir.” A pause. “His task force is all but destroyed.”

  Striker felt as though he’d been kicked in the stomach. Isaacson dead? With most of his force?

  “The transmission advises the enemy is on the move, Admiral. They are coming this way.”

  To Grimaldi. Of course. If they can take or destroy the fleet base, we’ll have to fall back from a dozen systems.

  Striker turned and looked at Holsten.

  “I think we have our answer,” the intelligence chief said grimly. “We have to assume the enemy advance is real, and that they have the means to sustain it. We just can’t take the chance. At least until we can stabilize the line. If there is going to be a battle here, it’s one we can’t lose. No matter what.” He stared at the admiral. Striker had a horrified look on his face, but he began nodding his head in reluctant agreement.

  “Captain Barron will have to manage on his own…somehow. At least until the fight here is done.” Holsten looked as despondent as Striker, but there wasn’t a hint of doubt in his voice.

  “I agree,” Striker said, sounding like death. “We must hold here. God help us…” He paused for a few seconds. “And God help Captain Barron.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  CFS Dauntless

  Z-107 System (Melatha)

  Approaching Z-111 Transwarp link

  “It’s called Chrysallis. Informally, at least. It’s officially designated as Z-111.” Barron sat behind the metal desk in his office, trying to ignore the headache he’d had for a week now. The destruction of Vaillant, the victory over the Union’s greatest vessel, should have been a cause for celebration. But the cost had been too high…and too personal this time. Discussing minutia like the names of Badlands systems was an effort to keep his mind off things he’d rather not think about…and it had been a stunningly unsuccessful effort.