by Jay Allan
No, whatever the hell is coming is in that cloud, or right behind us, and it’s going to be here in…
He paused, running some quick calculations in his head, and then checking them through the computer.
Eighteen minutes.
Whatever threat was coming for his people, they had less than twenty minutes before it arrived. And Barron had no idea what it would be.
None at all.
* * *
“Okay…you all know why we’re here, and what’s at stake. You’ve done the training, the exercises, put in the hours. This is what it was all for. This is your time. Make every shot count. The fleet’s counting on us, everyone we left behind, back in Confederation space, too. You all can do this…I believe in you. Admiral Stockton would be gratified to see you, how you have endured and fought in his absence. Somewhere he is watching, and he is bursting with pride. So, don’t let him down. Let’s do the work!”
Reg tapped her controls, adjusting her fighter’s vector slightly. Her eyes darted over to the long-range scanner for about the tenth time in the last few minutes. She’d wondered what the projectiles the enemy advance guard had launched had been, and now she knew. They’ve cut off the fleet’s scans…
She couldn’t see a ship of the fleet, nor even a hint of the massive bulk of Fortress Striker. She saw the utility in the enemy’s plan, but it seemed early to her.
Why wouldn’t they wait until their own ships were closer?
She’d been asking herself that same question since the enemy missiles had detonated. Suddenly, an answer appeared.
That radiation might block their own scans as badly as ours.
The thought just popped into her head, and she realized for all the concern over countering the enemy’s Sigma-9 pulses, the blanket assumption had always been that the Highborn scanners could see through that bizarre radiation. But perhaps they couldn’t. That would reduce the usefulness of a screen of the blocking radiation.
So, why go to the trouble of blocking the fleet’s scans at this range, especially if you can’t target either…
Then she saw something. Contacts, a cluster of ships coming from the far end of the line. A lot of ships.
Was it some kind of attack, some effort to take the fleet in flank? It still didn’t make any sense. The Highborn wouldn’t be able to fire until they’d penetrated the radiation cloud. All they would do was surrender their own range advantage and burst in on the fleet at point blank range. And once they were through the cloud, Striker and the fleet could target them, too.
Reg glanced back at her main screen. She was less than two minutes from entering launch range for her missiles. But she couldn’t yank her attention from whatever was heading toward Striker and the fleet.
She felt the urge to pull her people back, lead them against the new contacts, but it didn’t take more than a few seconds for her to do preliminary calculations in her head and determine that wasn’t an option. Her wings were heading toward the enemy at substantial velocity. It would take at least twenty minutes to decelerate to a stop, and longer to build thrust back toward the contacts.
And whatever she was seeing on her screen was going to reach the fleet in less than even that twenty minutes. There was nothing she could do, but she maintained her focus anyway, watching as the scans provided more information. She’d assumed the vessels were warships of some kind, but the data coming in didn’t support that.
They look like some kind of transports…
She felt a second urge, one calling again for her to break off, to blast to a place where she could bypass the cloud and get a signal to Admiral Barron. But that, too, would take too long. Longer than she had, and longer than it was going to take whatever those ships were to reach Striker.
She sucked in a deep breath, and she turned her attention back to the fight about to begin. It was all she could do, the way she could contribute the most to the fleet’s efforts.
She moved her fingers, flipping a series of switches, arming her two ship-to-ship missiles. She’d always sought to make the best use of the heavy weapons, and she’d trained her people to do the same. But it had never been as important as it was just then, facing the massive enemy force bearing down on her wings. Her people had to score every hit they could.
But she feared even that would be far too little.
* * *
“Dammit, Reg…use that routine. You’ll take them by surprise. Your pilots will kill thousands in the first few minutes.” Stockton’s hands were clenched in tight fists, and his body shook with frustration. For five years, he’d longed for the ability to control his thoughts, his distress, to shake his body. But now that he could do it, there was only misery. He’d come up with the best possible way to help his people against the attacking Highborn fighters, and he’d actually pulled it off, regained control of his body and sent out the message exactly as he’d planned.
But no one out there believed it was legitimate. That made sense, of course, but Stockton hadn’t spent a lot of time worrying about that, not when he’d been far from sure he’d even be able to send the message. There hadn’t been any purpose in worrying about whether the Confeds and their allies out there would trust it. He’d expected them to mistrust it…but he’d hoped they would at least analyze it, check it out. It was real, completely accurate, and it was the key to giving them all a chance in the battle about to commence. He’d prayed that they would realize that…while there was still time.
“C’mon, Reg…” He still didn’t completely believe Reg Griffin was alive, not with any degree of confidence. But the pilot he’d been tracking, the one he was almost sure was the overall strike force commander, flew just like Griffin. So much so, it was eerie. He’d taken to calling that pilot, ‘Reg,’ even as his mind rebelled against any potentially false hope she could somehow still be alive.
Still, that’s the leader…that’s the one you have to convince…
He was more certain of that than he was of any hope-inspired notion that his old protégé was still alive.
He looked down at his comm unit. He’d taken a wild chance transmitting the routines. If he sent another communique, or engaged in an ongoing discussion, he was begging to be caught. He was deep in the middle of the Highborn formation. If any of the Highborn ordered his death, it would come quickly. He was the best pilot in the fleet, but even Jake Stockton couldn’t defeat a hundred adversaries, or a thousand.
He didn’t care about death…but he needed to survive long enough to convince his old comrades to use the weapon he had given them.
Let me reach them, somehow…and then you can take me…
He tapped out a code on the small keypad. Somehow, he still remembered the Pact frequencies and access codes.
Assuming they’re still functional…
He took a deep breath, and he activated the unit.
“Pact strike force commander—Reg?—this is Raptor. I repeat, this is Jake Stockton. I am the one who transmitted the codes to you. They are accurate. You must use them.”
He leaned back in his seat, and he could feel the tension in every centimeter of his body.
“I repeat, this is Jake Stockton calling Pact commander…”
* * *
Reg heard the words echoing in her headset. She moved her hand almost instinctively to block the transmission, but something stopped her. The transmission continued, the voice at the other end repeating its message.
It was impossible. It just couldn’t be. Jake Stockton was five years dead. It was some kind of trick, some hideous, evil deception. The Highborn was trying to deceive her with her lost friend’s name, and his voice.
And the sound in her headset did sound a lot like Jake Stockton.
She felt her fists clenching as she stared down at her screen. The enemy knew Stockton’s name, of course, and it wasn’t hard to believe they had numerous intercepts capturing his voice giving various orders during dogfights. Still, she’d found the evasion routine data seductive the instant she’d
received it, even as she’d told herself it was a trick. Her people were so outnumbered there weren’t many things that would make a difference. A cracked version of the enemy evasive routines was one of them.
Your needing it doesn’t make it legitimate…and the fact that you miss your friend and have never needed him more doesn’t make that Jake Stockton on that line.
She told herself to ignore it, to tap the unit and shut it down. But then she did the least useful thing she could imagine. She responded.
“I don’t know who this is, but Jake Stockton is dead. You got the better last time we fought, but now I’m going to blast you straight to hell.” There was venom in her voice, fueled by determination and anger, but also by the pain she felt as the wounds of Stockton’s death were torn open again.
She angled her throttle, even as she told herself she was being foolish, letting her rage take charge. She’d always intended to seek out her old adversary, to finish things once and for all. But if she raced too far ahead of her fighters, she would end up swarmed by a hundred Highborn ships before she even got to her target.
That realization was nothing but pure truth…but she ignored it anyway.
She slapped her hand down on the comm, activating the command line. “Dirk, Olya…take over command of the wings. Take them in like we planned.” She heard the beginnings of responses, of protest from her two comrades, but she dropped her hand over the controls again, cutting the line. An instant later, the indicator light came on, Federov and Timmons calling her. She ignored them. She had something to do, and nothing—not fear, not good sense, not even duty—was going to stop her.
“Get ready, you miserable piece of garbage…because it’s time for you to die.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she blasted her ship forward at full thrust…right into the heart of the enemy formation.
* * *
“That ship is not to be attacked…is that understood? That one is mine.” It felt strange to be issuing orders to Highborn formations. He’d done it for almost five years, of course, but that had always been beyond his control. Even when he’d launched into the current fight, he’d still been trapped in his mental prison, waiting for the moment to make his attempt to escape and regain control.
He’d done that, and since then he’d been more concerned about trying to send Highborn secrets to his old comrades than leading the wings under his command. But his entreaties to Griffin had failed. She hadn’t believed him. His words had only served to infuriate her, to goad her into a wildly reckless attempt to reach his location, to resume the duel they’d fought over multiple battles.
Stockton felt something he’d almost forgotten, at least he had for a passing moment. Happiness. The realization that Griffin had somehow survived their last exchange, that he hadn’t killed his old friend, sent a burst of joy through his body. But it quickly faded, replaced by apprehension, even near panic. Griffin was coming after him, heading through a gauntlet of Highborn ships to reach his own. He wasn’t going to fight her. If he couldn’t convince her he was trying to help, he would let her kill him. That would be an escape from his personal hell, and from the guilt that ate away at him every waking second, but if he couldn’t convince her to use the data he’d sent, thousands more of her pilots—his pilots—were going to die.
Calling off the Highborn squadrons was a start—though it was also an action almost certain to attract notice…and an eventual realization that he had escaped his Collar’s control. He’d worry about that later. First, he had to figure out how to convince Griffin he was truly Jake Stockton. He suspected she might have found a way to get through the Highborn squadrons even without his help. He thought that was possible, because he thought he just might be able to do it, and Griffin was almost as good as he was.
Almost. There was enough of the old Jake Stockton left to limit his acceptance at that.
But she’d never get out. Once she destroyed his ship, she would become the primary target for thousands of Thrall-pilots. Not even Reg Griffin could escape from that deadly cauldron.
“Reg…this is Jake Stockton. You thought I was dead, but I was captured. The Highborn had been using me for years now, controlling my mind and forcing me to train their squadrons. You fought me in those other battles, at least the controlled version of me.” He stopped, realizing how ridiculous the whole thing sounded. He wouldn’t have believed it. Why should he expect her to?
She didn’t answer. She got control over herself. She let herself go when she answered before.
He didn’t know if she was even still listening, but he had to believe she was. Stockton had never been one to place much trust in baseless hope, but it was all he had left.
“Reg, it’s Jake. Those routines I sent you are real. If you don’t believe me, test them out on one squadron…please.” And do it soon…when these comms get intercepted and analyzed, the fleet will change the evasion plan…
“Reg…remember when we first met? I mean really met…and talked? We sat up in the officer’s club, late, talking about old times, and telling a few…embellished…stories. I told you about when Dirk Timmons and I were seniors at the Academy, how we stole two fighters and fought our own wargame to see who was best. How we slipped out and then back again…and how we managed to get back into base. How we convinced one of the computer techs to erase the records, how we updated the fuel manifests…how we covered all of our tracks. And how we got caught anyway, because I left my boots in the ready room?”
Stockton paused a moment, thinking back over what felt like a century. He’d never told that story to anyone except Kyle Jamison and Reg…and Jamison was almost fifteen years dead.
“It is me, Reg…it is truly me. And I’m trying to help you.”
He started at the comm unit, feeling as helpless as he had in five years as a Highborn Thrall.
Please, Reg…please…
* * *
“Point defense batteries, open fire!” Even as he snapped out the command, Barron knew it was too late. The enemy had planned their attack perfectly, and the ships now moving toward Striker had been deep inside the cloud, utterly undetectable until seconds before.
Barron’s first thought was that the vessels were some kind of large attack craft, but as he watched them approach the station, he could see that they were lightly armed…if they were armed at all.
Fire ships? Suicide craft?
The thoughts raced through his mind, each one closely followed by his rejection of it. If the enemy craft carried some kind of explosives, they wouldn’t be decelerating as they were. There weren’t trying to ram the fortress, or close at maximum possible velocity to detonate any warheads they carried. It almost looked like they were going to…
Barron watched as Striker’s hundreds of point defense guns opened up, verifying his realization that the enemy was already inside the primary targeting envelope. The defensive arrays took down some of the ships, but far fewer than Barron needed them to.
My God…those are troop transports. They’re going to…
He turned and hit the comm unit. “General Rogan, bring your Marines to full alert at once. Prepare to repel boarders!”
He turned toward the comm station, even as Rogan’s acknowledgement rattled in his headset. “Orders to all fleet units,” he snapped. “Prepare to defend against boarding actions.”
It didn’t make any sense. Barron had seen ships boarded before, but usually small craft, pirates and similar vessels. Why would the Highborn want to land troops? They could have done as much damage or more if those ship were crammed full of antimatter…
Barron looked up as the main control room doors opened up and twenty Marines poured in, moving around, taking position on both sides of the vast open area. Barron wasn’t sure how Rogan had gotten any of his people there so quickly. The grim looking Marines were still pulling on bits of body armor, but they were fully armed, and they all looked ready for a fight.
Barron was still stunned by what was happening…but the radiation clou
d was moving past Striker, and in just a few minutes, he expected to have scanner contact with the enemy fleet again. He had a battle in space to fight, and he’d have to trust Bryan Rogan to handle whatever happened in the fortress’s corridors and compartments.
He was unsettled, distracted…but there was no one he’d rather have had in command of the defenses.
I just hope the Marines on the other ships can handle this…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Free Trader Pegasus
Telus Zakaris III
Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)
Andi pushed against the smooth rock of the freshly-drilled shaft, trying to keep herself centered as the winch lowered slowly toward the bottom. It wasn’t the most comfortable trip, certainly, and it would have been near torture for anyone more claustrophobic than Andi, but it was workable. Barely. And that was the best she could hope for.
She’d tried to push back against the black thoughts that had been plaguing her. She missed Tyler and Cassie, and worse, she was worried to death about them. She was scared to her core about what would happen to everyone she knew. She’d always had a dark side—no one who’d come from the violence and squalor of the Gut could get entirely away from that—but now she fought to keep it at bay. She had a job to do, and the safety of those very people she was so worried about depended in many ways on her successfully completing it.
She’d decided she didn’t need the oxygen tank Lex had tried to give her, but now she was regretting it. The stale, hot air rising up the shaft was making her throat hurt and her eyes tear. It wasn’t toxic, at least not significantly so, but she would have killed for a breath of cool, fresh air just about then.