by Jay Allan
Then she just stood there, silent, unmoving, hearing her people calling to her, but only as a muddled background noise.
One of the Marines moved up toward the twisted remains of the bot, checking to make sure it was dead. Andi was standing there, right next to him. She didn’t turn, didn’t seem to notice his presence. The bot was torn to pieces, completely destroyed. But suddenly, Andi reached behind her and pulled another clip from her belt. She slammed it in place and opened fire, tearing into the bot’s remains from less than a meter away, shredding the battered wreckage into tiny shards of metal. Her fury served no purpose, and her duty called to her, pulling her away. She had a ship full of people depending on her, and she had found what she had come for, a way to truly fight the Highborn. She knew what she had to do. She just wasn’t sure where she’d find the strength.
She turned and walked toward her original position, wanting to look away from Vig’s body, but being complete unable. Her eyes were drawn to her dead friend, and she walked up next to him and dropped to her knees. She looked down at him. Vig…
She sucked in a raspy breath and she reached out and put her hand on his face, gently closing his eyes. She struggled to retain her control, hanging on a precipice, trying to hold off despair for a few seconds longer. “Get him into the harness and take him back to the ship.”
Ross Tarnan moved up behind her and knelt down. “He’s dead, Andi. Perhaps we should…”
“Get him up there!” she roared, her voice something between an angry shout and the growl of a predatory beast. “We’re not leaving him here!”
She leapt to her feet. “Get him back to the ship. Now! I’ll be right there.” She stood for a moment, struggling to hold back her emotions, even as they pushed past her defenses, taking control. “Go,” she said one more time. Then she turned and walked out beyond the flickering light of the portable lamp and into the gray darkness of the cavern…just as the tears came.
Chapter Twenty-Six
120,000 Kilometers from Fortress Striker
Vasa Denaris System
Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)
Reg stared at her screen, laughing maniacally as she watched her fighters slam into their adversaries, cutting deep swaths in the enemy formations. Any doubts she’d had about Stockton’s data being legitimate were gone. Her people had obliterated four thousand Highborn fighters in less than twenty minutes. Still, she realized even that carnage didn’t come close to equalizing the fight, and she knew the enemy would break off soon and make a run for it before her people could do enough damage to truly even the odds. When they rearmed and relaunched, they would be using modified evasion routines, and the fight would be a straight up one again. But she was determined to enjoy it while it lasted.
Watching the one-sided fight served another purpose as well. It took her mind off Jake Stockton, off the worries that Olya Federov wouldn’t get to him on time, that she would discover he’d been alive the last five years she’d mourned him dead…only to watch him actually killed before he could make his way back.
There was something else, too, a strange unsettling feeling about those five years, about where Stockton had been, and what he had done. Reg knew about the Collar. She knew anything her old commander had done had been purely involuntary, but the suffering her people had endured facing the Highborn wings weighed on her. The enemy forces had been, until the current battle, inexplicably well-trained and led, and that remained a heavy weight. The thought of Jake Stockton’s talent and experience used to benefit the Highborn was hard to accept. She was happy to know that her old friend was still alive…but she didn’t quite know how she would face him, how they could move past all that had happened.
Her fingers tightened on the firing stud, and her lasers lanced out again, taking yet another enemy ship almost dead on and blasting it to bits. The data Stockton sent was not only real, it was highly detailed. A few of the Highborn fighters were adding their own maneuvers onto the fixed routines, but the vast majority were relying only on the preprogrammed jigs and jogs, and the targeting computers in the Pact fighters were now compensating for those, producing hit ratios beyond anything Reg Griffin had ever seen.
An old phrase came to mind, something her grandfather had often said, referring to his own days during the First Union War. It was a ‘turkey shoot,’ though she wasn’t sure what exactly what a ‘turkey’ was, even though she understood what the phrase meant.
She fired yet again, and scored another hit, her tenth. One thing was certain…a lot of her pilots would earn their status as aces that day.
She looked down at the screen, and her eyes caught movement, the enemy fighters changing their courses…and with them their evasion programs. Stockton had given her people an enormous advantage, but it was a fleeting one.
One she intended to exploit to the maximum while there was still time.
“Harder…hit them harder, all of you. Before they pull out. We’re going to have to go back and refuel ourselves soon, and I want every second we’ve got used fully.” She was shouting into the comm, even as her own hands tensed on her controls, her body taken by the frantic need to track and destroy as many Highborn fighters as possible.
Her eyes kept darting to the display, to Stockton’s ship—and she was sure now that it was Jake Stockton out there—and to the hundreds of Highborn fighters all around him. Olya Federov’s elite wing was blasting their way in, but the enemy ships where still closer. She told herself Federov would make it in time, that she would get Stockton out of there.
Then she had a brief flash in her head, a thought she immediately regretted, that she struggled to forget had even slipped into her mind…the idea that perhaps it might be better if Federov didn’t get there in time, if Stockton perished in the fight, if his legend endured without this latest chapter of collaboration, forced or not.
She hated herself for even thinking that, but she couldn’t fight off the resentment, the anger at the damage Stockton had done to her wings—his wings—and then a sudden realization hit.
Stockton isn’t planning to escape…he just wanted to help us, and then he is going to let the Highborn destroy him.
Her mind filled with thoughts counter to the first one. She wanted her friend back…and he wasn’t even going to defend himself.
Her eyes darted back to the screen. Come on, Olya…you’ve got to get there.
Stockton needed to be rescued…because he wasn’t even going to try to save himself…and as much as Reg struggled with all that had happened, she was absolutely sure of one thing.
She didn’t want to watch Jake Stockton die.
* * *
Gunfire ripped down the narrow corridor, turning the passageway into an impassable nightmare. Bryan Rogan looked out over the dozen or so Marines posted in the forward position, trading fire with the boarders. His people were on the defensive, trying to hold back the enemy troops who’d poured aboard the station. Rogan had just brought up reserves, a full company, or at least what was left of one. That brought the total defenders in the section to around one hundred…with something between seven hundred and one thousand enemy troopers attacking.
Rogan had spent much of his career aboard ships, and the concept of fighting in such confined spaces was something he grasped well. But he’d never seen a battle of the scope of the one now unfolding, nowhere but on the surface of a planet. The situation in Striker’s vast network of corridors and compartments was fluid, confusing, with his forces holding in some places and falling back in others, even as more enemy soldiers flooded in from the hundreds of landing craft attached to the fortress’s exterior.
The Highborn infantry were blasting their way through the hull, even moving around the station’s exterior in environmental suits, forcing their way through in hundreds of locations. Rogan and his senior commanders had struggled to establish some kind of perimeter that made sense, but every time they’d achieved a level of stabilization, new enemy forces came through in a previously quiet sector. T
he battle had become a running fight, and Rogan had been forced to reposition many of his units, refining his focus to the vital areas of the stations…the reactors, the main weapons systems, the launch bays.
And the command center. The invaders were trying to drive on the control room from multiple directions, and Rogan had begun to understand one aspect of the enemy’s operation.
They wanted to disrupt the command and control staff. They wanted to kill Tyler Barron and the fleet’s other senior officers.
Never…not on my watch.
Rogan was pressed against the metal of the corridor, just back from the forward positions. One of the Marines came crawling back from the edge of the fighting, clearly wounded. The fire was fairly heavy, even so far back, but Rogan dropped down and grabbed the man. He helped the wounded Marine back to the end of the corridor, and around the corner, out of the main firing line. Then he knelt down, trying to get a look at the stricken Marine’s wounds.
“Medic,” he shouted, his head spinning back and forth as no one responded. He tapped the comm unit on his chest and he said, “I’m at position 231-14A. The Marines down here need a medic…now!”
“I’m sorry, General, but all medical staff are deployed to combat positions already.”
Rogan cursed under his breath, not sure whether the officer on the other end of the line heard him or not. And not caring either.
“Get someone down here, as soon as anyone is available.” He cut the line, and he tugged at the wounded man’s armor, unhooking the breastplate and shoving it aside. Rogan was a hardened Marine, a veteran of dozens of battles…but what he saw under the Marine’s armor came a hair’s breadth from making him sick.
The wounded Marine had taken a shot just under his chest armor, and above the heavy padding that protected his legs. No, not one shot…three, at least. His chest was covered in blood, as were Rogan’s hands, as they frantically moved over the wounded man, trying to find the wounds, to stop the bleeding. The general had a hundred places he had to be, thousands of Marines fighting from one end of Striker to the other, but he couldn’t pull himself away. He wouldn’t leave the stricken man without care.
Even after he’d realized there was no hope.
The Marine, who’d fought under his orders, who’d pulled himself out of the line after he’d been hit—a man he was frantically trying to save—was going to die, no matter what he did.
He cursed the lack of medics, vowed to break whoever was responsible for these Marines fighting with no medical support. But he knew that was just frustration, a desperate attempt to deal with the hell erupting all around him. There simply weren’t enough medics. That was no one’s fault. He hadn’t expected his Marines to face direct combat…much less to fend off a massive boarding force in a hundred different locations.
His hands were still on the Marine’s chest, but he realized the blood that had been pulsing out with each heartbeat had stopped. The raspy sounds of breathing, each seemingly more choked with fluid than the last, had gone silent.
Rogan put his blood-soaked fingers to the Marine’s throat, checking for a pulse he knew wasn’t there. The Marine, the private who’d received his last care from none other than the Corps’ commandant, was dead.
Rogan had seen thousands die, endured all kinds of hell and misery in the wars of the past twenty years. But the death he’d just witnessed, the one he’d been so powerless to prevent, struck him hard, slipping past all his defenses. He had to get up, to get to the next position, to return to the command post and check on the battle’s overall status. But he didn’t have the strength, at least not in that passing moment. He just sat where he was, looking down at the dead Marine, wondering who would mourn for him. Did he have parents, brothers and sisters? A wife, a girlfriend? Where were they? Were they sitting home, blissfully unaware that their loved one had spent his final moments crawling down a cold hall in pain, as his lifeblood poured out onto the hard deck?
Rogan knelt there, his hands clenched into angry fists, and he held back the shout he longed to let loose. He wanted to get up, to run somewhere, someplace where there were no dying and broken men and women, someplace that knew peace.
But after all he’d seen in the last two decades, he no longer believed that place existed. It was a fantasy, and for him and for all his comrades, there was only reality, the unending hell of war and death.
He stood up, willing himself to go on, to move to the next group of his Marines fighting the deadly battle. To protect Striker, and Tyler Barron…whatever it took.
Those words drove him on, echoing in his head. It was his life, his purpose, all that mattered.
Whatever it took.
* * *
“We’ve got boarders, Admiral, but I think we’ve got them penned down in three spots. We’d probably have them wiped out by now if you hadn’t hogged Bryan Rogan for Striker.” It wasn’t a joke, not exactly, but it had just enough lightness in it to fend off the grim situation for a few precious seconds. Atara Travis was aboard Dauntless, and it cut at Barron a little each time he spoke with her. Dauntless was his flagship, his home in many ways. He’d been caught on Striker by circumstance, and he knew that was probably where be belonged during the battle anyway…but part of him ached for his usual place on the battleship’s bridge.
“That’s good news, Atara. We’re getting mixed reports from the rest of the fleet. Most of the line ships are holding their own.” Barron gave thanks for about the tenth time that he’d decided to assign Rogan’s Marines to Striker and to the ships of the fleet to back up the damage control teams. The engineers were going to be on their own once the big ships got into the fight, but having two or three times the normal Marine complement on many of his ships was coming in handy.
“How about Striker?” Atara sounded concerned.
She has every reason to be concerned…
The fight on the fortress had been a bloodbath. There was no question Striker had been the enemy’s primary target and estimates from the parts of the station where combat was heaviest suggested at least fifty thousand enemy soldiers had boarded. Fighting was fierce in at least two dozen places, and Bryan Rogan had been brutally honest in his reports, coming close—but not quite all the way—to admitting he wasn’t sure his people could hold the station.
“We’ve got it under control.” Why even try to fool her? You know she knows you’re lying.
“That’s good news.” Her voice was flat. Barron was as adept at seeing through her tone as she was his…and there was no doubt Atara Travis was well aware the fight for Striker was a desperate one.
“Atara…if we lose fleetcom here, I need you to take over. We can’t have the fleet disintegrating into separate components in the middle of the fight. Clint Winters and Chronos and Vian can work together without me, but they might need a little help.”
“I understand, Tyler. I’ll do what I can…and I’ll remind them of what you’d want. But do what you can to stay on the net, okay? I’ve seen your job up close for too long to want it, even for a few minutes.”
“You’ve got it, Atara. Take care of yourself over there.”
“You too, Tyler. We’ll both get through this one.” She slipped past his radar for once, and he was completely unsure whether she believed that or not.
* * *
“What is happening, Viceroy?” Phazarax stood next to Tesserax, watching as the Highborn fighter wings were being annihilated.
“Clearly, the enemy has gained access to our evasion routines.” It was the only possibility, though Tesserax had no idea how the humans had obtained such precious data.
Tesserax had expected his squadrons to take heavier casualties than their opponents, even with their numerical and technological advantages, but the one-sided affair unfolding before his eyes was a complete surprise. The viceroy tapped the side of his headset. “Issue withdrawal orders to the strike force. They are to return to their carriers and rearm for a renewed assault.” He glanced at Phazarax for a moment, and then h
e added, “I want new evasion routines developed…now. Do not use any preexisting files, neither in full nor in part…is that understood?”
“Yes, Viceroy. Understood.” The Thrall-commander’s words of obedience couldn’t hide the questions in his tone. Tesserax wasn’t surprised the human hadn’t yet determined the source of the strike force’s unexpected rout. The Highborn had run numerous calculations in his head, analyzed the scanner data, reviewed dozens of the attack runs executed by the human fighters. He was not speculating that the enemy had the strike force’s evasion routines. He had determined it as a fact. He couldn’t—and didn’t—expect mere humans to be able to match his analytical capacity.
“This is a setback, but not one of any real consequence. The purpose of our squadrons was served the moment they launched. The humans were compelled to outfit all their own craft for anti-fighter operations, thus preventing them from being utilized against our battle line ships. We will almost certainly take additional losses as the wings retreat, but they will relaunch soon enough, with new routines. The humans will be compelled to keep their entire force outfitted for anti-fighter operations, and as such, little is altered from our plan. The Sigma-9 attack blinded the enemy base and heavy ships, just as intended. Our troopships have successfully boarded the enemy fortress and approximately twenty of their heaviest vessels. Ellerax is moving to engage the human Terradonna, and once our fighters launch and reengage the enemy squadrons, the battle line can implement the final stage of the battle and finish things. That will give our boarding parties time to secure prisoners.”