by Jay Allan
Chapter Two
Forward Base Striker
Vasa Denaris System
Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)
“We’ve managed to repair all the vessels on the first list on your screen, Admiral, more or less to full combat status. There have been some supply bottlenecks, but my people have made do with available components. We’ve come up with several coupling adapters that allow us to use Hegemony parts in Confederation ships. The newest of our ships, at least.” A pause. “By repair, I mean we’ve got all systems functional, but not necessarily up to shipyard specs.”
Tyler Barron listened to the report, paying some attention to the specifics, but mostly feeling relief and satisfaction at the voice delivering them. His fleet had received its first significant antimatter shipment, the initial quantity of the priceless substance produced in the Confederation’s brand new planetwide facility. But perhaps even more valuable was something else the supply convoy brought to Striker. Anya Fritz, was perhaps the Confederation’s foremost engineer, but to Tyler Barron, she would always be the presence he longed for aboard his flagship, the miracle worker to whom he credited his victories almost as much as to his tactics and the resolute courage and skill of his crews. There wasn’t a question is his mind Fritz’s wizardry had saved his life and the Confederation cause. The only variable was how many times she’d done it.
“That’s very good news, Fritzie…better than I could have expected.” It was better than he’d expected, a magnificent performance, even for Fritz and her people. But Barron wasn’t sure it would be enough. He had the border well screened, scouts deployed in successive lines back from the enemy’s entry points, to ensure that word would get back to Striker of any advance. But that would only give him something between a day and a half and three days to prepare, and his fleet had limped back from its ill-fated offensive with a lot of damage. Not even the legendary Anya Fritz had been able to get it all repaired, and for all Striker was the strongest fortress ever built, it lacked extensive shipyard facilities, a byproduct of the haste of its construction. That had given Barron and Fritz a choice between conducting what were essentially damage control efforts, patchwork repairs executed without proper equipment…or sending the ships back to the Confederation to actual shipyards there, an action that practically guaranteed any such vessels would be out of action for at least a year, and probably longer.
“Thank you, Admiral. I’m afraid the second list is more problematic. We simply don’t have the resources at Striker to perform major structural repairs, so we’re—you’re—going to have to decide whether to keep those ships here with the fleet, at sub-optimal functionality, or to send them back to available repair facilities.” Fritz’s tone was its usual grim near-monotone. People tended to find the engineer off-putting because of what they perceived as her relentless negativity, but Barron had always found it strangely endearing. Fritz was one of the few people he could count on to always give it to him straight and unfiltered, and he loved her for it. The two had been through hell together, more times than he could readily count, and so far, they’d made it back every time. They wouldn’t have if Anya Fritz hadn’t been at the top of her game in the most desperate of situations, coldly focused on the problems, and on how to deal with them. If that was negativity, Barron would take it every time.
He stared at the screen in front of him. There was a third column, another list, this one of vessels so badly battered he’d had no choice but to send them home. Some damaged ships could still provide a meaningful contribution to the fleet’s combat power. Keeping others in the line would accomplish little more than the murder of their crews. Tyler Barron had asked men and women to make the ultimate sacrifice, so many times it pressed down on his soul like a giant slab of rock. But he’d never knowingly done it when there had been no point, no hope the inevitable deaths would be balanced by a chance of success.
The third column wasn’t a problem, though, at least not one that required his attention. Those ships would return when they did. The situation was out of his hands. But the second list was going to require some careful analysis…and cold decision-making.
“Well, let’s go through this ship by ship, Fritzie. Anything that can stand in the line stays.
You and your people will do what you can here to bring them as close to combat worthy as possible. The others, the ones that can’t hold their place in battle…we’ll send back.” Barron paused. His mind still recounted the number of Highborn ships his fleet had encountered, and he wondered what other forces the enemy had in reserve. He doubted he had enough strength to hold Striker against an all-out attack anyway…and every ship he sent limping back on the long journey to the Iron Belt shipyards cut his numbers even further.
“Let’s start with primaries. We’ve already got a range deficit. Any ships with damaged primary batteries you can’t fix isn’t going to be able to stand in the line, not against the Highborn. So, a battleship’s got to have its main guns…or at least its launch bays in decent shape. If it can’t fire its primaries or put fighter wings into the fight, it’s got no place here.” His eyes scanned the battleships on the list, and he came up with a rough guess that he’d just consigned half the ships in group B to make the long trip back home.
And he was just getting started.
* * *
“We all underestimated the enemy. For a time, I didn’t even believe the old legends about the Others. But even if we had known, how much more could we have done? Our mistake was not in lack of preparedness to face the Highborn. The grave error that weighs on us was our decision to invade the Confederation. We were fortunate indeed that they overcame their anger and hostility, and recognized the threat the Highborn pose to us all. Would we have behaved as they did?” Akella looked at Chronos. The two were sitting on a large sofa in her quarters, sharing a few stolen moments together. It was getting more and more difficult to make time for such rendezvous.
Chronos had been enormously busy trying to supervise fleet repairs and preparedness, and a number of factors, from the close proximity they all shared on Striker to the fact that Akella’s oldest child, the son she shared with her rival Thantor, was getting old enough to be of concern. The boy was close to his mother, and would never knowingly cause her harm, but an errant comment to his father about Chronos spending time with his mother, could lead to disaster. Chronos had cause enough to be in Akella’s quarters to visit their daughter, of course, but it wouldn’t take much to spark a dangerous curiosity, and while Thantor had relaxed his efforts to challenge Akella since the fleet had returned from the failed reconquest, he was still a significant danger. If he could prove that Number One and Number Eight had continued a permanent and monogamous relationship for years, he would have all the tools he needed to destroy them both and gain control of the Council himself.
“We must change, Akella.” Chronos had been quiet since he’d arrived, clearly preoccupied with his thoughts. “Our action against the Confederation was proper, unavoidable even…at least in keeping with our laws and customs. It is—was—our place to reunite humanity, to bring them under our protection, to show them the way to the future. At least that is what we were taught, what we believed for so long.” A pause. “How different have we been from the Highborn? They would be worshipped, treated as gods…but do we demand that much less, save for semantics? We would have our own systems and laws accepted by all other humans, by force if necessary. Do we expect that much less than worship from the Defekts?” He hesitated again, and this time he looked at her, his eyes locking onto hers. She could see in his stare that he was lost. “We are the same as the enemy we fight. Were we less confident in our superiority? Yes, we based our society on genetic rankings, and justified our actions as nature’s mandate. But there is no argument, whatever you think of the Highborn, that by our old standards, they are our natural rulers. What argument can we make to justify our own resistance that would have been less valid if uttered by those populations we absorbed? How do we call o
urselves Masters, and yet resist the Highborn? What battle cry do we have as we fight on, save for hypocrisy?”
Akella stared down at the plush material of the sofa, silent for a moment. She had been plagued by similar thoughts. She’d never been entirely comfortable with Hegemony policy, and she’d been somewhat of an unwilling leader, driven by a sense of duty, but always certain she would have been much happier working quietly in her lab rather than serving as head of state to hundreds of billions of human beings.
“I wish I could say something that would give you solace, Chronos, but I have nothing. I regret now my complicity in allowing the war against the Confederation. I still find it difficult to look Tyler Barron in the eye, to forget that however much he has become our ally, it must be impossible for him to forget his comrades who died fighting us. But we cannot undo what was done, and our choice now, for all the pain and moral difficulties we both feel, is a startlingly simple one. We fight, preserve our freedom, refuse to bow before the Highborn monsters, whether this makes us hypocrites or not…or we sacrifice our future as truly sentient beings, and we bow down to become slaves of a group of genetically engineered creatures.” She paused for a moment. “I choose to fight, for myself, for you…and perhaps most of all, for our children, for the next generation that has not yet had the chance to make the mistakes we have.”
Chronos nodded, and he managed something approaching a smile. “Your point is valid, Akella, as always, and yet, it is still…difficult.”
“I know it is…” She leaned toward Chronos and put her hand on his face. “We will endure, somehow…and we will make what amends we can for past mistakes. We can change our culture, Chronos, make up for past mistakes…but only if we survive this threat.” She hesitated, suddenly looking more uncomfortable. “Chronos…there is one other thing I would discuss with you while you are here. I spoke with Tyler and Andi this morning. They are sending Cassie back to the Confederation with Lita Mareth. To Megara.” Another pause. “They offered to take Ajia and Ragus—and your other children—if we wish it.”
Chronos looked startled. “Do you think that is necessary? It will be…controversial.” Akella knew that was true. No one would argue with her sending the children away from Striker. The Council itself had debated relocating to pull itself back from harm’s way. But for Number One to send her children not to another Hegemony world, but all the way to the Rim, in the custody of Confeds…the blowback on that would be severe. Many would consider it borderline treason, a sign Number One had given up on the Hegemony.
But she didn’t care. Not when the safety of her children was at stake. And she knew if the defense against the expected attack failed, if Striker fell, the rest of the Hegemony would soon follow. There was nowhere she could send the children that was truly safe, but the vast distance to the Confederation capital was the best buffer she could put between them and the enemy.
“I do not care what the Council thinks. Not about this.”
Chronos nodded a few seconds later. “I agree. But what of Thantor? Ragus is his child, after all. Will he approve of such a plan…or will he use it against you?”
Akella felt a vague amusement at Chronos’s effort to hide his jealousy that Thantor of all people had been her first mating partner. It was unbecoming for a Master of his rank to feel that way, of course…but no more so than the strange satisfaction his reaction gave her, the affirmation of his forbidden feelings for her. “I have no intention of asking him, nor am I required to do so.” That much, at least, was true. Akella was the senior ranked of the two, and by Hegemony law, that was all that mattered. Thantor had certain rights to visit Ragus, but Akella’s parental authority was almost absolute.
That didn’t mean her rival wouldn’t use it against her, though. Ragus’s whereabouts could be kept secret for a time, but there was no way she could avoid telling Thantor where she’d sent his son.
“Akella…” She could feel Chronos about to warn her against underestimating Thantor, but he stopped and just looked at her.
She smiled and reached out, putting her hand on his. “I know, Chronos…I know.” She leaned forward and buried her face into his shoulder. They didn’t have much longer. They’d been too careless in recent weeks, and she knew she had to send him away.
In just a few minutes more…
* * *
“I should be gone already, Tyler. We could lose this war because of my weakness…because I couldn’t pull myself away from you and Cassie.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave sooner. You needed some rest, after all. Your whole crew did. You can only ask so much of them.” Andi found that somewhat amusing, coming from the officer who had made a career of asking the impossible from himself and his spacers. But she loved him, so she didn’t call him on it.
Andi could see the pain in Tyler’s eyes, too, the fear at her impending departure. She knew how difficult it was for him when she went off into the depths on one adventure or another. She regretted some of the times she’d gone before, the callousness of her hard-driving nature and the pain it had no doubt caused the only man she’d ever loved. He had done the same to her, of course, though no doubt the veneer of duty and orders made it seem different to him. The pain, however, cut just as deeply, something she could have told him quite clearly if hurting him would do anything but increase her own misery.
This time was different. Those words had been used—and misused—countless times, but in the present situation, she believed it utterly. She knew Tyler wasn’t as convinced as she was that some method for defeating the Highborn lay out there, hidden in ancient imperial ruins, but whatever the chance, there was no way she could stay back and fail to pursue it. She was no fleet tactician, at least not by training, but she had seen the Highborn forces in the last battle, and she had some idea what was likely coming toward Striker. Tyler and his spacers would fight fiercely. They had always done that. But she suspected they would lose again, and another retreat might bring the defensive line all the way back to the Confederation border. If she was going to search the Badlands for some way to turn the tide, it couldn’t wait.
Leaving meant saying goodbye again, to Tyler and to Cassie. And ‘goodbye’ in such a context always carried an implicit possibility of finality. She could go, but she couldn’t guarantee she would return.
And, even if she did, she couldn’t be sure Tyler would survive until she got back.
You’re saying goodbye to Cassie anyway, even if you stay…
She and Tyler had resolved to send their daughter back to Megara, to the newly rebuilt Barron estate there, under the care of Lita Mareth, the governess who had virtually raised a young Tyler after his parents died. The thought of being so far from her daughter gutted Andi emotionally, but she had too coldly focused a mind to tell herself anything except that she had to go, for Cassie if for no other reason. Finding a way to save the future for her daughter was her true and unrelenting duty as a mother.
“Look, we could talk about this all night…but Lita and Cassie are leaving in the morning, so let’s just push it all aside for now, and just be a family for tonight. Just the three of us.”
Andi looked over at him and smiled again. “I would love that, Tyler.”
He returned her smile, and he stood up, moving toward the other room, where Cassie was playing. He got about halfway when the comm unit buzzed. He decided to ignore it…but then he saw the red light on top of the unit flashing.
The signal that denoted a Priority One communique.
Chapter Three
CFS Vandengraf
Sigma Tarsus System (One Transit from Outpost Twelve)
Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)
“You did well, Commander…truly. You got all but six of your people out, and considering the situation, that was extraordinary performance. It’s painful to lose anyone, I know that…but there was nothing more you could have done.” The last thing Colin Simpson had expected he’d be doing was trying to bolster Larson Jaymes’s morale. He’d rese
nted the commander of Outpost Twelve before he’d even met the man, his reaction and judgment fixed by a review of the officer’s file. Simpson wanted to believe that people could change, but he’d always found redemption something far more common in theory and fiction than in actual practice.
But, by all accounts, Commander Jaymes had gotten all his people to the landing bay, then he’d personally searched his dying station for any other survivors…before triggering the self-destruct sequence that would prevent any technology or navigational data from falling into enemy hands. After that, by multiple accounts, he’d been the last man to set foot on the final shuttle off the doomed base.
That was exemplary conduct by any standards, and the fact that the officer was so deeply mournful for the half dozen of his people who’d been killed before the evacuation was complete only hardened that realization. Simpson had been in that very position—he was even then, having lost more than fourteen hundred of his own spacers before he’d extricated his fleet from Sigma Delaris—and he sympathized with the officer he was now seeing in a different light than before.
“If we’d been quicker…”
“That’s nonsense, Larson…” Being on a first name basis with Twelve’s commander was a surprise as well. “You did everything you could. I issued the retreat order as soon as we confirmed the enemy force size and composition, and I still lost four ships and a lot of spacers.”
One thousand four hundred seven…
He looked at Jaymes for a moment before he continued. “You have to do your best, and then get on with it. They’ll be another command, more spacers looking to you…” Simpson stopped abruptly. Given Jaymes’s record, another command was far from a certainty. He’d been sent to what had been thought a quiet backwater, and now he’d lost that command.