The Others

by Jay Allan

  And that meant finding a way to hit those enemy ships.

  “And increase the power flow on all weapons. Knock it up to one thirty…” That wasn’t aggressive…it was straight out reckless. But the situation was already desperate. “…and make your shots count.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” The gunnery officer’s response was shaky, edgy. Barron wasn’t sure if the man was more scared of the enemy…or of him. He tried not to misuse the weight his name and record placed on his words…usually at least. But just then, he was willing to employ any manipulation to get what he needed from his people.

  He watched as another shot went wide, and then, as Repulse fired a few seconds later and scored a hit. Barron’s clenched his fist in satisfaction, but part of him was disappointed Dauntless hadn’t connected first.

  But his flagship, the namesake of his beloved old command, didn’t let him down. Two minutes later, the recharged primaries fired again…and three of the four shots struck a damaged enemy ship just ahead. One of the hits cut a long gash in the outer hull, but the other two struck the vessel dead center.

  The ship hovered in space for a few seconds, as Barron and every officer on Dauntless’s bridge watched in tense anticipation.

  Then, a cheer went up as the enemy vessel exploded in the fury of matter-antimatter annihilation.

  His people had drawn blood…and even as he watched and listened to his people celebrating, the volume rose to almost deafening levels.

  The first line of the approaching fleet had moved into position, and almost as one, thirty Confederation battleships opened fire.

  * * *

  “Commander Chronos…the Confederation fleet is fully engaged. They caught the enemy flanking force from behind. The Others have begun to adjust their facings, and they’re heavily engaging Admiral Barron’s ships now. But the Confeds took out three of the Others’ ships…and they did heavy damage to five more.”

  Chronos listened to the report, feeling a strange sense of relief that, for once, he wasn’t on the receiving end of Tyler Barron’s fury. The Confed ships were outmatched, of course, but at least they had the transit tube just to their rear. His own ships were under fire from behind now, the main enemy fleet closing hard, even as his force continued its fight against the flanking formation ahead of it.

  As they tried to buy time for Ilius’s ships to escape. At least some of them.

  Chronos hadn’t been able to contact his friend. Anthrocles had been badly hit, though through some miracle, the flagship had managed to maintain a reasonable amount of its thrust capacity. But repeated communiques to its bridge had gone unanswered.

  Chronos wanted to hold his position, to give Ilius’s people more time. But he knew he couldn’t. He and Barron had bracketed the flanking force between them, and inflicted considerable damage. But now, his own ships faced the same treatment. He could make a run for it, dashing through the battered and disordered enemy task force that had intended to bar his route. But he had to do it without any delay. Every second lost brought the mass of the enemy fleet closer to the rear of his shattered formation.

  He looked over at the display. Ilius’s ships were coming on hard, most of them at least. There were a few lagging behind, vessels with damaged engines or compromised power generation. Chronos wanted to help them, but he knew there was nothing he could do. Every Master, every Kriegeri on the ships that couldn’t keep up was going to die.

  As more than a billion of our people have already…

  “Kiloron, we’re out of time. Commander Ilius’s forces will have to follow us the best they can.” He’d have felt better if he’d been able to reach Ilius, but it really didn’t matter. He couldn’t sacrifice the Hegemony’s ability to fight on, not even in a direct exchange for this friend’s life.

  “All ships, full thrust forward…directly toward the Confeds on the other side…and the transit tube beyond.”

  * * *

  “Go, go, go…all of you. Full deceleration as you approach. I don’t want anybody firing from outside five hundred kilometers…so make sure you slow down enough to maneuver inside the envelope.” Stockton had led his second strike in, just over two hundred bombers, the same as he had the first wave. Now he had six hundred coming in, every remaining fighter the ships of the fleet carried. There were rookies in there, mixed with veterans…and a few real aces in the mix. But they were all facing something new. A different enemy, and different tactics to engage that foe. They were learning as they went, and he was directing them, leading them, even though he had only an hour’s more experience at it than they did.

  But he was Jake Stockton, and as uncomfortable as it made him to acknowledge the effect that had on his pilots, the reality was undeniable. And useful. He could get more from the squadrons than anyone…and young pilots would die for him almost without hesitation. It was a heavy burden, one he knew he’d carry to his grave. But that didn’t matter just then. He needed those pilots to fight for him, to do as he said.

  To die for him.

  He watched as eight Lightnings, all that remained of a squadron, moved in on an enemy ship, blasting their engines at overload levels, decelerating until they came almost to a halt in front of their target. The two closest were less than three hundred kilometers away, and all were inside the five hundred kilometer zone.

  Two of them disappeared almost immediately, but the other six managed to get their torpedoes off. The weapons moved toward the enemy ship, their engines burning furiously, accelerating them from the almost zero intrinsic velocity they’d launched with.

  The enemy defensive fire took out two of them, but the other four slammed into the target in rapid succession. It was almost impossible to miss at such close range.

  Barron’s eyes darted back to the fighters, now only three…and then he watched as another vanished. He could imagine the frantic efforts as the last two pilots scrambled to blast their engines, to build up enough velocity to conduct some sort of evasive maneuvers.

  And the fear…he imagined what those pilots were feeling, the last of twelve as they were, racing against time, against an enemy they didn’t understand. Stockton was transfixed for a moment, hoping against hope they would make it.

  But he knew they were dead, even before two sharp spears of energy finished them both, no more than ten seconds before the containment failed in their target ship, and that vessel disappeared in a billowing cloud of titanic fury.

  Stockton mourned his lost pilots, a whole squadron wiped out, but one thing really hung there for him, like a dark cloud.

  They didn’t live long enough to realize they’d taken out their target…

  That seemed like a small enough mercy, and yet one his lost pilots had been denied.

  It was the kind of thing only one of his pilots could fully understand.

  * * *

  “All ships with damage to drive or power systems are to transit immediately, at maximum possible speed. And all escorts.” The smaller ships existed to protect their larger cousins, but against the approaching enemy battle line, the cruisers and smaller vessels had nothing to offer, save for more dead spacers if they stayed. “Fully operable battleships are to remain in position, and prepare to receive returning bomber squadrons.” Barron knew they were running out of time, but there was no way he was abandoning Stockton’s fighters. The bomber wings had done their share—more than their share—yet again, and Barron was confident he could get them landed and make good his escape.

  At least something close to confident.

  Most of Chronos’s ships had gone through the point already, and the survivors from Ilius’s battered task force were going through now. Chronos had argued with Barron, insisting the Confederation ships transit first, but the Hegemony forces were the harder hit by far, and Barron’s were in the best position. The Confed admiral had held his ground, and Chronos had finally yielded and sent his people through. But Leonidor remained, attaching itself to the Confederation line with the Hegemony’s supreme military commander at
the helm.

  We’ll make one of us out of him one of these days…

  Lingering resentment clashed with newfound respect, but Barron was at last confident that he, and most of his people, could find the way forward, the way to stand beside their old enemies and face the new threat that endangered them all.

  The Senate presented a worse problem than an old enemy turned ally.

  “Admiral Stockton reports his lead squadrons will enter final approach range in two minutes, Admiral.”

  “Tell him his ships are to land anywhere they can reach. And all battleships are to make their run through the point as soon as their bays are full.”

  “Yes, Admiral.”

  Barron knew the landing would be a terrible, confused mess…but he also knew Stockton would make it work. They could reorder the squadrons later, get the fighters back to their own motherships. All he cared about at that moment was getting his people out of there, the fastest way possible.

  He felt satisfaction growing inside him, a warm glow at what his people had achieved, but he pushed back hard against it. They weren’t out yet, and even if his forces made good their escape, they had paid a heavy price for their intervention. They’d saved Chronos’s fleet, what was left of it anyway, but they’d lost more than twenty percent of their number, and even more of their bombers.

  And that didn’t even take into account the fact that Barron was much more likely to face a trial and imprisonment than a victory parade.

  But at that moment, there was nothing in the universe that mattered, nothing save his spacers. The Senate could order him shot when he got out, but until then, he would do everything possible to bring out as many of the people who’d followed him in as he possibly could.

  He watched as Stockton’s lead units approached the waiting battleships. The formation was a disordered wreck, but the strike force commander was somehow keeping it all just enough in line, directing groups of fighters to waiting motherships, and nursing his wounded birds in, too. Barron couldn’t understand how Stockton had any fuel left—he’d launched with the first strike, and both those ships and the entire second wave, had already landed. But no one knew how to fly that ship like Jake Stockton did. He’d land it, even if he was down to his last watt of power when he did it.

  Barron saw a cluster of fighters heading toward Dauntless, bound for the flagship’s waiting bays. He figured it would take another ten minutes, maybe twelve to get all the squadrons safely aboard…and fourteen or fifteen before the rest of the enemy force got close enough to open fire.

  That was close, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d survived by a margin of two or three minutes.

  Barron’s and Chronos’s ships had battered the enemy flanking force, inflicting heavy losses and forcing at least part of the line to pull back. There were sixteen of the deadly vessels still in position, and they continued to fire away at the retreating Confeds, a fact Barron recalled sharply as Ardent—and the forty-one fighters that had landed in her bays—blinked off the display, one more casualty near the end of a bloody day.

  Another few shots ripped by close to his ships, but he’d trained his people well. Conducting evasive maneuvers while launching or recovering fighters was an impossibly difficult maneuver, probably something out of reach to any team that didn’t have Barron in the command chair and Jake Stockton herding the squadrons in.

  Barron watched as the last of the wings flew into the bays, and then as Stockton himself came into Dauntless’s bay, the last to land Then, he snapped out the order. “All remaining ships, maximum thrust for the transit point. And advise Commander Chronos that it’s time to get the hell out of here.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Planet Calpharon

  Sigma Nordlin IV

  Year of Renewal 267 (322 AC)

  “I know Chronos has thanked you, Admiral Barron, multiple times I suspect, but now it is for me to do the same, to offer my sincere gratitude, both personally, and as Number One of the Council, on behalf of the entire Hegemony.” Akella stood in front of Barron, wearing the strange robe and pants combination that seemed to be the Hegemony’s incarnation of formal civilian dress.

  He nodded, and he said, “Thank you, Akella. Perhaps, you will send an affidavit to the Senate on my behalf, requesting leniency at my court martial.” He smiled thinly as he spoke the words. He’d meant it as a joke, but it had come out sounding serious. The truth was, he didn’t think anything Akella said would make a difference. He fully expected the Senate to crucify him…but he didn’t care. He was sure he’d done the right thing, and he knew he’d do the same thing again if he had the chance. And against the losses his people had suffered—27,544 casualties at last count, over seventeen thousand of them killed---he found it hard to care what the pompous fools on Megara did to him. What was a cell somewhere, compared to the sacrifices his spacers had made? The only thing that really tugged at him was leaving Andi behind. Had he married her so she could live in loneliness, while he spent the rest of his life in the stockade? He wished he could let her go, convince her to leave him, to start a new life somewhere else—with someone else, if that was what she wanted—but he knew her too well. She was even more stubborn than he was, and she would never leave his side, even if she could only remain there in a figurative sense while he rotted away in some cell.

  He looked over at Akella, though, and through his own pain and uncertainty, his remembered an enemy turned ally, one he could imagine one day calling friend.

  If he survived.

  “Ilius…have you…”

  “He’s still alive, but that’s about all I know. It’s all anybody knows. The med teams have been working around the clock, but the only thing they’ve managed to come up with is that they’re shocked he’s still alive.” A pause, as Akella looked down sadly. Chronos is there now. The two are very…close.”

  Barron felt the urge to go himself, but he held back. The Confederation and the Hegemony had fought alongside each other…once, in the closing moments of the battle. Barron knew they were tied together, that each owed any hope of survival to the other’s aid and cooperation. But human beings were fragile and flawed creatures, and old hatreds died hard. He’d learned to work with Chronos and the Hegemony commanders, to fight with them. But he imagined how he would feel if Atara lay in a hospital bed, near death…if he would welcome Chronos in that stressful and painful moment.

  No…not yet. I will wait, give them time. If this alliance is going to work, we need to learn to respect each other, to recognize the strengths of the other, as well as the weaknesses.

  “Any word on the enemy fleet?”

  “That’s one bit of good news, or what passes for good news these days…amid a storm of bad news. They seem to have paused. The few scoutships we’ve managed to get in and out have collected some data. The Others inflicted far more damage than they sustained, of course, a loss ratio we cannot possibly sustain. But it appears our combined forces inflicted enough damage to delay the enemy offensive. Whether they’ve paused to make repairs or whether the fight in Ettara-Mordlin drained their supplies more quickly than they expected—or, most likely, both—we have gained a respite, probably a brief one.”

  “That is certainly good news.” It was, by all military standards, but Barron knew, if enough time passed, word would reach Megara of what he’d done…and the Senate would send orders relieving him, demanding he return at once to be tried. He didn’t know how he’d handle that when it happened. He’d probably ignore it if it came on some courier boat, without the force to impose the Senate’s will on him. After all, how much worse could it get than treason?

  But if the Senate sent a fleet, could he expect the spacers with him to resist, to fight their comrades? Or would he try to subvert whoever was sent for him? He didn’t know…and he was sure he wouldn’t know, not until the situation was upon him.

  “You said bad news, Akella?”

  “Yes…well, aside from the entire situation, of course. This is likely somet
hing you would have noticed immediately if you knew our stellar geography better…but there are no highly defensible systems between Ettara-Mordlin and here, no good place to mount another effort to stop the enemy fleet.”

  Barron stared back at her, feeling a coldness as he grasped where she was going. “So, the next battle will be…”

  “Here.” She paused. “That is right, Tyler Barron. In all likelihood, our next chance to stop the enemy, and very likely our last chance, will be right here. At Calpharon.”

  * * *

  “Come on, old friend…you made it this far. No one on the medical staff can explain how you did. What’s the point of surviving all the way back here just to die in the hospital? Besides, I’m going to need you. I can’t win this fight alone.” Chronos sat next to the pod holding Ilius’s almost lifeless body. Somehow, Anthrocles had made it out of Ettara-Mordlin and all the way back to Calpharon, despite damage that had seemed desperately critical.

  And inside the monitor’s broken and battered hull, Ilius, the second in command of the fleet, lay in a deep coma, clinging somehow, even less explicably, to his own life.

  Fewer than half of Ilius’s ships had made it out of Ettara-Mordlin, and for all Chronos told himself the Hegemony fleet remained a battleworthy force, between the lost ships and the dozens and dozens of badly damaged hull in need or repairs, he wasn’t really sure. Tyler Barron was a welcome addition, though it still remained to be seen how much Confederation power he could deliver. Chronos couldn’t imagine the Rimdwellers turning on their great hero, ignoring his warnings.

  But then he was often shocked and appalled at some of the petty nonsense that dominated the Council proceedings, and by all accounts, the Confederation Senate was worse.