Attack Plan Alpha (Blood on the Stars Book 16) Read online

  Attack Plan Alpha

  Blood on the Stars XVI

  Jay Allan

  Copyright © 2020 Jay Allan Books

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  The Crimson Worlds Series

  Blood on the Stars Series

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Appendix

  Hegemony Military Ranks

  Books by Jay Allan

  The Crimson Worlds Series

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Marines (Crimson Worlds I)

  The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

  A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)

  The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)

  The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)

  To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)

  The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)

  Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)

  The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)

  Blood on the Stars Series

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Duel in the Dark (Blood on the Stars I)

  Call to Arms (Blood on the Stars II)

  Ruins of Empire (Blood on the Stars III)

  Echoes of Glory (Blood on the Stars IV)

  Cauldron of Fire (Blood on the Stars V)

  Dauntless (Blood on the Stars VI)

  The White Fleet (Blood on the Stars VII)

  Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars VIII)

  Invasion (Blood on the Stars IX)

  Nightfall (Blood on the Stars X)

  The Grand Alliance (Blood on the Stars XI)

  The Colossus (Blood on the Stars XII)

  The Others (Blood on the Stars XIII)

  The Last Stand (Blood on the Stars XIV)

  Empire’s Ashes (Blood on the Stars XV)

  Attack Plan Alpha (Blood on the Stars XVI)

  Descent into Darkness – Coming 2020

  Empire Reborn – Coming 2020

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  Chapter One

  Confederation Border Outpost Twelve

  Sigma Delaris System

  Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  “Commander Jaymes, we’re picking up an energy spike from point number two…the one leading in from Union space.” The junior officer acquitted himself well, making the one report every spacer who’d served on Outpost Twelve had dreaded, but it was beyond his abilities to hide the fear suddenly struggling to take him. He was too young, Jaymes knew, to have any actual remembrance of fighting against Union forces, but he hadn’t made it through the Academy without a good exposure to a century’s history of war between the powers.

  The reminder that point two led to Union space seemed a bit unnecessary, as well. It was the entire reason the outpost existed, after all. But nerves made their presence known in all sorts of ways, and Jaymes just hoped his own wouldn’t get in the way. They’d led him astray before, taken him down roads that had almost cost him his career. He knew what he was hearing and seeing just then could cost him much more. It could cost everyone on Twelve their lives.

  Jaymes was scared, of course, as scared as the junior officer at the scanner station, and it took just about all the effort he could muster to keep from visibly shaking on the bridge. He managed it, though, if just. He was determined to make amends for his past, to put aside old disgrace and strive to reclaim his place as a proud Confederation officer. Whether he had what it would take remained to be seen.

  Very possibly in the moments that lay just ahead.

  Outpost Twelve, like every other installation two or fewer transits from Union space, was completely unarmed. Jaymes wondered who had agreed to such a ridiculous treaty provision, and why. Fixed armament on a stationary defensive platform didn’t seem like much of a threat to the peace, but then, he often found himself questioning the ways of diplomacy. His own personal view held that ambassadors and their vast staffs were a lot better at claiming credit for achieving and maintaining peace than actually doing it. It seemed to him, the ends of wars usually resulted from outright victory or defeat, or the sheer exhaustion of the combatants. But he was just an alcoholic—ex-alcoholic—officer dispatched to what had been perceived as a backwater posting and hanging onto his commission mostly because of the Highborn front’s insatiable demand for ships and personnel. Nobody gave a shit what he thought about diplomacy or government policy.

  They should all be here, staring into the face of an invasion without a gun on this tub powerful enough to heat up a bowl of soup. The diplomat who agreed to that isn’t here…

  “Send an alert to Commodore Simpson…and to Admiral Denisov as well.” As if they haven’t seen this already themselves…

  That was just about all Jaymes could do…warn his comrades. The outpost was equipped with one of the most sophisticated scanner suites in Confederation space, and just about all those billions of credits of high tech gear would accomplish was to allow his people to watch their impending demise.

  Assuming that is an invasion coming through…

  Jaymes had thought Gary Holsten was paranoid or crazy, or something like that when the intelligence chief had first contacted him. The arrival of Andrei Denisov’s fleet, what was left of it, was a noteworthy event, of course, but it spoke more to Jaymes of the escape of the losing faction in that power’s civil war than it did of looming invasion.

  He’d started to really get nervous when the ships began to arrive. Friendly vessels, not enemy ships. Denisov’s fleet had been first, of course, but it was quickly followed by a steady stream of various warships cobbled together from every corner of the Confederation. The navy was committed to the war against the Highborn, and almost all its strength was positioned out at Fortress Striker, several dozen transits from Outpost Twelve. But Holsten had found ships to send to the Union front as well, including a number of new vessels, freshly launched and manned
by rookie crews. It wasn’t the stuff of great and victorious fleets, but then everything Jaymes had heard suggested the Union was bankrupt and its fleet was battered down to a nub by civil strife and lack of resources.

  The fear came more from what Jaymes didn’t know than what he did. Gary Holsten didn’t seem like the type to get overly excited about things, but the flow of naval forces to the system suggested there was reason to fear what was coming. He’d even heard rumors about Highborn forces working with the Union, though he’d discounted them as fear mongering. The front lines in the war with the Highborn were far from the Confederation-Union border, and it seemed a bit far fetched that the enemy had somehow linked up with the Union.

  He’d been almost sure of that, convinced his analysis was correct…until a moment later, when hulls started coming through the point.

  Strange, mysterious ships that blinked on and off his screens, defying even the efforts of Twelve’s great scanner array to pinpoint their exact locations.

  Jaymes felt sick, and he longed to run…or at least to flee the bridge in search of a drink. But he held firm where he was…and he watched as the invasion he’d doubted was possible materialized before his eyes.

  * * *

  “It looks like they’ve managed to put up a defense after all.” Carlos Fierra sat in the center of Vengeur’s bridge. His posture, as always, was perfect, the very model of a naval officer. Fierra was old school all the way, and it was his dedication to duty, and to obeying the orders of the legitimate government, that had forged his loyalty to Gaston Villieneuve’s cause. It was just that, the cause, and not the man himself, that fixed his devotion. He didn’t much care for Villieneuve himself, or for the First Citizen’s wanton brutality. The executions and reign of terror that had followed the recapture of Montmirail had sickened him, and he’d been relieved when the fleet had set out so quickly after the restoration of the old regime.

  No one responded to his statement. It hadn’t demanded a response, of course, and Union spacers quickly learned how to handle their officers with a degree of care. The navy had a reputation for promoting politically connected officers of limited ability, but that hid the fact that the Union fleet had produced its share of capable commanders over the years. Still, veteran Union spacers, like the one on Fierra’s flagship, developed a sort of sixth sense about when a prompt reply was best, and when silence was the wisest option. And silence was always the default option in such cases.

  His fleet was not a force he’d ever imagined leading into the Confederation, and no amount of glory or celebration at victory in the civil war blinded him to its weakness. Vengeur was new, one of the very few battleships to roll out of the Union’s battered and resource-starved shipyards, but overall, the armada he led was a shadow of those that had fought in the last Confederation war. Barely a hundred ships strong, many of its units had been hastily repaired, and some still carried barely patched battle damage. They were old, too, save for perhaps a dozen newer ships, and his OB looked like almost anything but a formation that could credibly invade the Confederation.

  Except for the expeditionary force.

  The initial sixteen ships sent by the Highborn—and almost everyone now knew the identity of Gaston Villieneuve’s mysterious benefactors by then—had been supplemented by an additional force of twenty-four warships, along with ordnance, and a supply of the precious antimatter the Highborn vessels required to fuel themselves and power their weapons. It was a small force by the standards of the battles rumored to have been fought out on the main front, but it represented almost irresistible power next to the withered and wasted Union navy, and very likely also the scant forces the Confeds had managed to race to their almost undefended border. The ships the Confederation navy had managed to cobble together might have managed to stall Fierra’s larger fleet, buying time, and grinding an invasion down to stalemate. But as unnerving as it was to see more enemy power than he’d expected, he knew the old enemy had no chance to stop the fleet’s new allies.

  Fierra didn’t like the Highborn. More accurately, given his limited exposure to them, he didn’t like the idea of them. They were strange, intimidating, and as much as he had always thought of the Confederation as the enemy, part of him wondered if his people shouldn’t be fighting alongside their longtime rivals, against the immensely powerful Highborn. It wasn’t his place to make decisions of state, of course, and he knew his place. Fierra followed orders. He’d fought a civil war rather than support a usurper, and he wasn’t going to change his course now. If the Union government had allied with the Highborn, he would fight alongside them.

  Or behind them. From what he’d seen in the battle against the rebels a few months earlier, the forty Highborn ships were in every way the heart of the invasion force, and they would likely do most of the fighting.

  He looked at the display, even as the mysterious ships in the vanguard began to open fire, their strange black-speckled blue beams lancing out from what seemed like impossible ranges…and slamming into the Confederation ships positioned around the outpost.

  Fierra felt the energy he always did in battle, and relief at the clear and immediate superiority his allies displayed. The sooner the Confederation forces were defeated or driven away, the sooner the fight for the border system would be over…and few, if any, of his people would die there.

  Fierra knew well enough from his years in combat that such ease would not continue. The Confeds might be outmatched, caught with most of their strength deployed far away, but he knew them well enough to realize they would fight like wildcats, and they would find a way—any way—to make his people, Highborn allies or no, pay for every system, every frontier planet.

  * * *

  “All ships, evasive maneuvers…now!” Colin Simpson shouted out the command, even though he’d issued standing orders to that effect weeks before. Every ship commander in the fleet knew what to do…or they’d damned well better know if they didn’t want to be broken down to spacer third class.

  Simpson’s eyes had been fixed on the large screen at the front of the bridge, and despite the numerous reminders and standing orders, he’d been dissatisfied at the speed with which his ragtag collection of ships had responded to the enemy advance. That impatience had flared hot when the first enemy beams lanced out, and a pair of them took one of his cruisers amidships. He wanted to believe some of Northlake’s crew had escaped, but he knew deep down there hadn’t been time before the old ship lost containment and turned for a few seconds into a miniature sun.

  “Yes, Commodore.” The steady voice of the tactical officer gave a momentary boost to Simpson’s confidence, but it only lasted a few seconds. Commander Graves was a veteran, just like Simpson himself, but over ninety percent of the officers and spacers in the patchwork force he commanded were as green as they came.

  Simpson watched as enemy ships continued to stream through the point. He’d stopped counting at twenty, all of them the strange, flickering contacts he suspected were Highborn ships. No, he knew they were. Simpson was one of the few officers or spacers in his small fleet who’d actually seen action against the Highborn. He owed his command to the battle wounds that had sent him back to the naval hospital on Megara a captain, and seen him returning to duty just when Gary Holsten needed an experienced officer to command the ragtag force he was assembling to garrison the border.

  That bit of fortune—whether is had been good or bad was still an open question—had come with a field promotion to flag rank, and the task of turning a bunch of newly-built, and some not quite finished, ships and their green crews into a fighting force. Simpson had questioned his ability to achieve what he’d been tasked to do, but Holsten had responded with the typically practical remark that Simpson was the most capable and qualified candidate available, with almost all the Confederation’s experienced officers out beyond the Badlands and deep in Hegemony space.

  Simpson had done what he could, and he felt he had some cause for pride in his raw spacers. But it quickly becam
e apparent that any effort to hold the system would be hopeless. He felt a burst of defiance, and he steeled himself to make a last stand, to fight to the end. But it only lasted a few seconds. Holsten had been utterly clear. He was not to risk his fleet unless he had a significant chance to repel the enemy. If faced with overwhelming force, he was to withdraw to Fleet Base Grimaldi, where the real effort to hold back the enemy would occur. It made sense, of course. The ships he had, meager as they may be for a combat fleet, had been difficult to come by, and they weren’t replaceable. And despite some years of neglect, Grimaldi was a powerful fortress. Whatever chance his ships had against the enemy, it would be fighting alongside the great naval base…hopefully reinforced by whatever additional ships Gary Holsten could find.

  Holsten’s words still echoed in her ears…you are all that stands between the enemy and the Core, the Iron Belt, Megara itself.

  Still, Simpson had served for years under Admiral Barron, and he shared that officer’s aversion to retreating. If he’d thought his people had any chance—any chance at all—he might have stood and fought. But he knew it wouldn’t be a battle. It would be a massacre.

  “Issue fleet withdrawal order, Commander. And get Commander Jaymes on my line.”

  He ignored the acknowledgement the officer snapped back, but as soon as he saw the green comm light, he pulled his headset on. “Commander Jaymes, we’re outnumbered and outgunned here. It’s time to pull out. I’ll hold a contingent back as long as possible to retrieve your shuttles, but you’ve got to get your people out of there…now.”

  “Yes, Commodore…issuing the withdrawal orders now.”

  The comm went silent, and Simpson imagined Jaymes had thrown his headset to the deck in his haste to run down to the escape shuttles. He knew that was unfair. The commander of Outpost Twelve had been nothing but professional in his conduct since Simpson had arrived. Still, the commodore knew all about Jaymes’s past, and his disciplinary record. Simpson didn’t consider himself a martinet by any means, but he’d always taken pride in the service, and he couldn’t help but feel dislike for those who did anything less.