Invasion (Blood on the Stars Book 9) Read online

  She glanced over at the comm station, half surprised that Winters hadn’t issued a retreat order yet. Still, even as she expected such a command, she understood why it hadn’t come yet. Stockton and the fighter wings had fought like demons to blunt the enemy’s forward line, and Sonya was sure Clint Winters intended to do as much additional damage before he called his people off. One way or another, the fleet would be fighting this Hegemony force again, if not at Dannith, then at Carthago or Aragos…or some other system deeper into Confederation space.

  There was one thing about which she didn’t have any doubt at all. The Hegemony hadn’t brought such a vast fleet so far just to take Dannith. They were after the Confederation, all of it, if not the entire Rim…and that meant this was going to be a fight to the finish.

  She saw the status monitor reach the fully charged mark…and a few seconds later, the familiar power flicker as Repulse’s main guns lashed out yet again.

  * * *

  “Goddammned pieces of shit, we’re going to kill every last one of them before this is done.” Anya Fritz was lying on the floor where she’d fallen, rolling over onto her hands and knees and—slowly—rising to her feet. She’d slammed into the bulkhead hard when Repulse shook from that last hit, and so many places on her body hurt, is was hard to enumerate them all. Her arm wasn’t broken—she didn’t think, at least—but it throbbed like hell.

  No time to worry about any of that. Not now.

  Fritz had always been able to remove herself from the emotions of combat, to focus on her role in keeping a ship functioning and in the fight and not to project rages and fury toward the enemy. But she had to acknowledge, she was beginning to hate the Hegemony.

  She turned and looked around. She’d had three of her engineers with her, and a quick glance confirmed they were all still down, in various stages of trying to rise back to their feet. “If you’re not at death’s door, get the hell up, all of you. We’ve got work to do.” Her voice was sharp, hard. She’d never been one to show weakness, or even much in the way of compassion. Her engineers obeyed her commands, because she scared the hell out of them, and because they knew she was the best. Jumping the instant she shouted a command was the likeliest way to keep the ship they were on in the fight…and to prevent their vessel, and their own bodies, from becoming radioactive dust clouds.

  She was tough, and she relished in her own way the uneasy demeanor of those around her. Her worst nightmare had never been damage to the ship or the hardship of battle. It was that her people might one day discover just how proud of them she truly was. She’d built her persona on being a relentless, unforgiving force of nature, and she knew that fact—and the name calling and complaining that went on incessantly behind her back—had contributed mightily to the string of victories that Tyler Barron and Dauntless had left behind them. Many of the technicians complaining about her owed their lives to the near-brutality with which she’d driven them. Few realized that, but she didn’t care. She knew it.

  She took a few steps toward the end of the room and leaned over a workstation. Her fingers flew over the controls, bringing up status reports, power transmission levels…and a few dozen other bits of data. The hit had been a bad one, and for an instant, she was afraid Repulse’s primaries had been knocked out. The main guns were fragile beasts, and if the newest versions were a bit tougher than the cantankerous ones the old Dauntless had carried, that didn’t mean they were durable.

  She pulled up a schematic of the ship and stared at several key sections. There was a lot of damage, but it looked like they’d been fortunate so far. None of it was in vital areas…and a few seconds later, a targeted diagnostic analysis confirmed the primaries were still online.

  She started to turn back toward her people, but then she froze, her eyes fixed on a single spot on the display. The primaries and the reactors were undamaged, but there was a power spike about halfway forward on the port side, and she didn’t like the looks of it.

  She didn’t like the looks of it at all.

  “Farner, Gomez…get over here. Take a look at this blip here. That’s the main transmission line along the outer port side.” She was staring at the location, even as her fingers moved over the controls, pulling up readings from the adjacent systems. Everything was still fully operational, but if that line failed, it was going to be bad. Repulse would lose her primaries for sure, and maybe even the entire port broadside. If it blew badly enough, it could scrag all of the reactors…and that would leave the battleship dead in space, a sitting duck.

  “I see the spike, Captain, but I don’t see any damage that could have caused it.” Gomez was standing next to her now, trying to hide the confusion in his voice.

  “It could be a hundred things, Gomez. We don’t have time to investigate, but we damned sure have to stabilize that line. You two get down there now, and grab as many techs as you think you’ll need. Just get it done.” She was still staring at the screen, her eyes fixed now on reactor three. It was a guess at best that the power plant would be the next thing to fail as power build ups worked their way back up the line…but Fritz had learned to trust her guesses over the years. “Go! Now!” She waved with her hands as the two engineers turned and raced through the door.

  She took a deep breath. She had to get down to that reactor…as soon as possible. “Bartlett,” she snapped to the last technician remaining in the room, “find Walt Billings and tell him to meet me down in reactor three.” She turned and stared at the engineer. “Right away.”

  * * *

  “Blues and Eagles…you’re with me. The rest of you, launch as soon as your ships are ready, and follow us.” Jake Stockton stood next to his fighter, shouting out across Repulse’s flight deck. He felt a touch of grim nostalgia as he spoke to the pilots of Repulse’s two elite squadrons. Actually, they were Dauntless’s by right. Tyler Barron had left them with the fleet when he’d returned to the Confederation, and they’d served there for months now, first fighting the running campaign in the Badlands, and now, struggling to defend Confederation space from invasion.

  As they had so many times before.

  It was different now, though. The two formations were formidable, but both were shadows of their almost legendary pasts, when Stockton had commanded the Blues directly, and Dirk Timmons the Eagles. Timmons was back on Megara instructing at the Academy now, his prosthetic legs disqualifying him from combat duty. And most of the pilots who’d called themselves Blues and Scarlet Eagles had moved on to command positions elsewhere…or they had died in battle.

  Stockton looked out for a moment, watching as his people responded to his commands. Then he turned and climbed up the ladder to his own fighter, throwing his leg over the edge and sliding into the cockpit. He turned and nodded to his flight tech, and an instant later, he hit the controls to close the canopy. Another series of quick movements over the buttons and switches on his dashboard, and he could hear the sound of his life support system engaging, and fresh, highly-oxygenated air flowing into the small space around him.

  Back into battle once again.

  “You’re cleared for launch, Jake.” Stara’s voice, calm and professional—mostly—with just a hint of the fear he knew she felt for him. Anyone would worry about a lover going into combat…but she knew Stockton, perhaps better than anyone else, and that had to make her even more terrified. He knew he’d come a long way from the loose cannon he’d been in his younger days, but by normal standards he was borderline insane.

  He suspected she knew he was well aware of the deadly reality of the current conflict, that he would do whatever he had to do to win. To protect Repulse and the fleet.

  To protect her.

  “Roger that, flight control.” He reached out and activated his engines, prepping the launch sequence. He flashed a glance to his control panel, confirming that the rest of the pilots in the two squadrons were doing the same.

  The familiar drone filled his ears, his reactor and engines powering up, and a few seconds later, the red
indicator light turned green. His fighter was ready.

  He reached out, grabbing the throttle and taking one long, deep breath. Then he pulled back hard, and he was slammed back into his seat as the fighter accelerated rapidly, the launch catapults adding to his engine’s thrust as the sleek vessel slid down the tube and into the darkness of space.

  Stockton looked out at the inky blackness, highlighted only by the tiny pinpricks of stars all around. The battle was one of the largest he’d ever seen. The enemy fleet was the biggest he’d ever faced. Yet, he couldn’t see anything save the illusion of peacefulness all around him. He’d always known the vast distances involved in space combat, but it was still sometimes hard for him to reconcile when he blasted out into the maelstrom, bound for the inferno of combat…and he felt completely alone.

  He brought his ship around, changing the vector from the one the launch tube and Repulse’s intrinsic vector and velocity had given him. He might not be able to see the enemy, but he knew where they were. Straight ahead, no more than eighty thousand kilometers. It was medium range for ship to ship weapons, the kind that were pounding Repulse hard, along with her brethren in the battle line. Stockton knew the fleet wasn’t going to win the battle, that Admiral Winters would issue a retreat order soon. Captain Eaton hadn’t wanted to launch the squadrons again, but Stockton had convinced her he could get everybody back in time if the fleet bugged out. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. He figured he had a shot to pull it off, after all.

  Of course, there was a damned good chance his people would end up stranded, watching Repulse and the other ships of the fleet disappearing toward the Carthago transit point. It was an upsetting thought, but Stockton had never allowed those kinds of dangers to get in his way.

  Besides, his fighters might be the difference between Repulse making that run for the transit point, and the great warship getting blasted to plasma before it could make good its escape. He’d always known where the fighter squadrons lay on the unwritten chart of priorities.

  A quick check of the scanner showed that the Blues and Eagles were in two successive lines behind him. They may not have been the cold veterans from the height of the Union War, but they’d formed up quickly and cleanly after launch, and not one of them had hesitated to head back into the fire.

  They know what’s at stake in this war, as much as you do. They’ll do what they have to, whatever is needed.

  Thoughts flashed through his mind about just what “whatever is needed” might come to mean by the time the war was over, but he wrenched his focus back to the matter at hand. There was a fight going on, and his people had a job to do.

  And they had to do it quickly and get back if they wanted a ride out of Ventica system.

  “On me, Blues and Eagles. We’re going in, quick and dirty. Full thrust the first half of the way, then we hit the closest battleships and bring ourselves around and back to home base. No fancy stuff, no showboating. We don’t have time for anything fancy. This one’s clean and simple.”

  And dangerous. The directness of the attack would aid the enemy point defense. His pilots would have to fly through a web of laser fire, with minimal evasive maneuvering, and he’d lose more of his people before the fight was over.

  He nodded as the acknowledgements came in. Blue and Scarlet Eagle leaders were veteran pilots, and they knew as well as he did what was at stake. He’d left Olya Federov back on Repulse, against her boisterously-expressed objections, ready to lead the second flight…though he’d known even then there wasn’t going to be another wave. The fleet would bolt before those bombers were refit, he was almost sure of that. But he’d ordered them readied for launch anyway. If he was wrong, if Admiral Winters kept the fleet in the fight, he was going to need those squadrons…and every other formation the ships of the battle line could launch.

  And, if not, if Repulse blasted for the transit point, well…Federov was his choice to replace him if he didn’t make it back, and he didn’t want her out with him just then, taking risks that could be avoided.

  He looked down at the screen, watching as the line of symbols ahead grew, the massive Hegemony battleships less than thirty thousand kilometers ahead.

  “All right, all of you, Blues and Eagles…and every squadron out there…” Not all of the ships of the fleet had managed to turn their fighters around so quickly in the heat of battle, but his scanners showed he had a hundred craft besides the two formations from Repulse. It was more than he’d expected…and the fleet needed everything his birds could manage. “…we’re hitting this forward line, and it looks like all the railguns are already offline.” That was true, but his eyes couldn’t help but catch the advancing second line of Hegemony vessels, including two dozen of the immense super-battleships, untouched and no doubt mounting fully functional heavy weapons. The fleet had twenty minutes, maximum, before those guns opened up…and when they did, it was going to be a nightmare. Unless Winters bugged out in time.

  Stockton stared straight ahead. “So, we’re back to old tactics, comrades. We’re not here now to spread it around, to try to knock out railguns…we’re here to take down cripples. I want to see kills, cold hunks of dead wreckage or blinding fusion explosions. Anything we leave behind here can be repaired and sent back at us. But if we pound it to dust, it’s gone.” He paused. “You all know what to do.”

  He snapped off the comm and turned back toward his controls. He’d done his job as strike force commander, issued his orders, rallied his troops. Now, he was just another pilot.

  All he needed was a Hegemony battleship to kill.

  Chapter Twelve

  CFS Dauntless

  Variag System

  Two Transits from Archellia

  Year 317 AC

  Tyler Barron sat on Dauntless’s bridge. It was a familiar place, and as he sat there his memories drifted back to another spot, the command chair of the old Dauntless. His Dauntless.

  His first command was gone now, sacrificed to save the Confederation fleet from the ancient pulsar the Union had deployed in a last ditch—and almost successful—effort to win the war. Dauntless had died a glorious death. She’d likely saved more Confederation spacers and citizens than any other vessel in history, and what warship could ask for a more glorious end? But he still missed the old ship…and he mourned the diaspora of sorts that had sent the members of her very special crew to different ends of the Confederation.

  He took a series of deep breaths and watched as his people went through their duties, almost effortlessly. He still had some of that old crew with him in this second Dauntless, plus a lot of new people who seemed as capable, and as loyal to him, as any he’d ever commanded. He regretted that their faithfulness had dragged them into what was beginning to look very much like a full-fledged civil war about to overtake the Confederation.

  The very idea turned his stomach, and he’d seriously considered disbanding the fleet he’d collected with such desperate effort and surrendering to the authorities on Megara. There was something foul going on there, but there was also a limit on the number of people he would put in harm’s way to clear his name. If it had only been about him, about escaping whatever manufactured injustices had been heaped on his person, it would be over already, and he would be in chains, accepting whatever unfair and grim destiny fate had planned for him.

  But it wasn’t just about him. Even as he’d been dragged before the Senate, he’d shouted out warnings about the Hegemony, practically begged his captors to heed his words…to no avail. He simply couldn’t give up, allow the Confederation to be invaded and conquered without putting up a serious fight. And that was exactly what was going to happen if he didn’t end the current crisis immediately. He couldn’t surrender, and he couldn’t waste time. That left one alternative, and the very thought of it made him struggle to hold down the contents of his stomach.

  He had to hit the Confederation forces opposing him…and he had to do it with an unyielding ferocity. There was no time to waste. All reports suggested that a large
fleet had come from Megara to engage his forces. He would meet that formation, and he would destroy it utterly if he had to.

  He would be outnumbered, almost certainly…if he didn’t include the Alliance forces. And while he desperately needed the help, he was determined to leave Imperator Tulus and his fleet out of this fight. He was going to need the Alliance forces when he moved to engage the Hegemony invaders…and they were going to have to fight alongside whatever Confederation forces remained from the internecine struggle about to begin. The treaty between the two powers was young, and trust was still developing between two cultures that had long eyed each other warily. If he allowed Alliance ships to blow their Confederation counterparts to plasma, he would fatally damage the ability of the two forces to fight as allies.

  Barron didn’t need the Alliance in his fight, at least he didn’t think he did. He’d always been uncomfortable acknowledging his own abilities, but the day he couldn’t take on a fop like Torrance Whitten and get the better of him, whatever the odds, was the day he walked out of one of his own airlocks. The question wasn’t winning the fleet battle he knew was coming…it was how many Confederation spacers would die in the wasteful combat, on his side and that opposing his forces. And what would happen when he returned to Megara? Was he prepared to assault the planet’s massive defensive array? To bombard the surface of the capital? To engage Marines on the ground? How far would he go to secure victory?

  Yes, he would. He would do whatever it took to ensure a united Confederation stood against the new enemy. The Hegemony wasn’t giving him any other options. They weren’t allowing him the time to work toward a less brutal conclusion. He’d waited on Archellia as long as he could. Too long, perhaps. The enemy would have already broken through at Dannith and plunged into Confederation space if the White Fleet hadn’t returned just in time. He hadn’t received any more recent updates or intel since the report of that first, desperate fight. Dannith was a long way from Archellia. Clint Winters was a good man, perhaps even his choice to command in such a situation, but Barron didn’t doubt the Hegemony would be back, soon and with enough power to overwhelm any defense the skilled and stubborn admiral could mount.