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  His eyes moved rapidly, from one side of the display to another. Clint Winters commanded the task force on the far side of the enemy, his ships positioned in the outer reaches of the Olyus system. His fighters had launched, too, Dirk Timmons and Alicia Covington taking the wings forward. They were coming in on the far side of the enemy formation, even as Federov’s and Trent’s attacks were petering out. Barron had almost suggested sending them all in together, a synchronized assault of nearly four thousand small craft. But, in the end, he’d agreed with Nguyen and Winters. It was more important to keep the enemy constantly busy, facing one threat or another the entire way from the transit point to the orbital bases around the capital itself.

  That’s right…there won’t be any time, no respite. If you want Megara, you bastards, you’re going to have to fight every step of the way…

  And, Barron had something ready, and would just about be coming into range as Winters’s bombing wings concluded their assaults.

  “Commander, all asteroid bases are to come to battlestations and prepare to open fire as soon as the enemy moves into range.”

  The asteroids were something new, a testament to the driving force of desperation, and the unstoppable determination of the fleet. The bases weren’t carefully designed, nor where they well-constructed. But, the hurriedly-assembled combinations of solid rock and enormously powerful weapons had been designed for one purpose only.

  Unleashing a blast of pure hell on the enemy.

  * * *

  “The fleet will advance, Commander.” Vian Tulus sat on Invictus’s bridge. The new Alliance flagship was the first ship in Palatian history named after a preceding vessel that had lost in combat. For more than sixty years, since the Alliance had been founded by a Palatia that had just freed itself from enslavement, victory had been its mantra, a tenet followed by its society with the fervor of an ancient religion. Tulus himself had christened Invictus, however, in celebration of Katrine Rigellus, the lost commander of the first, tragic ship of that name. The epic battle between Rigellus’s Invictus, and Tyler Barron’s Dauntless, also now lost and replaced by a new vessel, set the stage for the current treaty between the two powers. That fight had been a model of skill and tenacity of command, and, through events that followed, it proved to be the foundation of a respect between the Confederation and the Alliance, one that led eventually to the powers becoming allies.

  “Yes, your Supremacy.” Cilian Globus sat in the ship’s command chair. The Commander-Maximus was the highest-ranking officer in the Alliance military, save only for the Imperator himself. Yet, despite his lofty position, he’d reserved the direct command of Invictus to himself, a tribute to Katrine Rigellus, Tulus suspected, and his method of pushing the calcified ways of the Palatian warrior class forward.

  Globus turned, and he looked across toward the row of three aides sitting at a line of workstations. He and Tulus shared the small staff, and the three officers were their conduit to the Alliance forces deployed in the Olyus system, alongside their Confederation allies.

  Tulus was tense, edgy. He knew the battle would be a difficult one, possibly even impossible. Yet, despite his efforts to move his people to a new way of thinking, the core of a Palatian warrior still resided inside him. For all his concerns of defeat, of a Hegemony conquest of the entire Rim…he still felt the rush inside him, the call of battle drawing him forward. This fight was the dream of the old Palatian within him, a fight that would live forever in the history of the Rim. He would write some of that history, with his words and deeds, and in that, he would achieve immortality.

  His more analytical side, the more modern views he harbored, introduced a concern about just who would write that history. Would his people be remembered as noble warriors, who fought and sacrificed to hold the line against invaders? Or simply as unnamed barbarians briefly mentioned in the Hegemony annals as those swept away when the Rim was ‘civilized?’

  Tulus hadn’t received orders to move forward. Technically, he was under the command of Dustin Nguyen, the Confederation senior commander, though that arrangement, already tenuous for any Palatian forces serving alongside an ally, became infernally complex when the fleet commander in question was also the Alliance head of state. Tulus knew he could do whatever he saw fit to do, and he knew Nguyen could only request he do otherwise…and, in the end, agree to whatever he had done.

  Tulus would follow Tyler Barron’s commands, however, though he might choose to view them as requests from a friend. Barron was Tulus’s blood brother, a bond that had never existed before between a Palatian and a foreigner. Tulus would refuse Barron no honorable request, and not too many dishonorable ones, if it came to that. To do so would be a breach of friendship, and a failure to repay the debt he still owed Barron for his aid in the Alliance Civil War.

  Tulus respected Nguyen. The admiral had a distinguished career, and the two times he’d met with the officer, he’d been impressed with the man. But, Tulus was slow to trust new acquaintances, and he couldn’t help feeling resentment toward the officer who had supplanted Barron as overall commander. To the old Palatian still living within him, that was a slight to his friend’s—to his brother’s—honor, and it took considerable discipline to put such thoughts aside and respect Barron’s acceptance of the arrangement.

  “All landing bays are to be ready for immediate refit of returning squadrons.” Tulus wished he was moving forward into battle. He ached for the final fight, the voice of every ancestor screaming in his mind for him to plunge into battle. But, he knew the strength of the enemy heavy weapons, and he understood the burden his pilots, and the countless squadrons of their Confederation comrades, carried.

  “Yes, your Supremacy.”

  His advance would place his ships closer to the enemy, and it carried danger with it, but it would also cut valuable minutes from the turnaround time in launching the second strike. The fleet would definitely get the next wave of fighters launched against the advancing enemy. The real question was, could they launch a third? Tulus had run the calculations ten times, and come up with each result five of those times. It was that close, the final determination resting on a number of variables he couldn’t control, that even defied his efforts to guess at them.

  Many of those, he could not control, but getting his base ships a little closer, that he could do.

  “All ships report landing bays on full alert. All crews standing by for immediate refit operations.”

  “Very well, Commander-Maximus.” He used Globus’s full rank, a subtle gesture, but one that showed his respect for his immediate subordinate. Tulus knew the two of them should be on different ships, that if he was killed, Globus would be the next in line to command. But, to a Palatian, at least, even with the movement to new ways of thinking, sometimes honor made demands that could not be refused. Invictus was a special ship in this fight, the heart and soul of the Alliance contingent. He and Globus had to be on her bridge, flying their flags together, in utter defiance of the invading Hegemony.

  Tulus was a realist, and he couldn’t lie to himself, force his mind to believe the battle would end in victory. But, he was sure of one thing. His warriors would show the invaders just how Palatians could fight, and victory or defeat, any Hegemony spacers who survived this battle would carry the memory of Alliance warriors to their graves.

  * * *

  Federov pressed the firing stud, letting loose her torpedo, even as she angled her vector and blasted her thrusters at full to clear the rapidly approaching target dead ahead. The style of fighting Jake Stockton had developed for use against the Hegemony was effective, certainly, but it was also draining. She was almost as old a veteran as ‘Raptor’ Stockton himself, as cool in combat as anyone she’d ever met—except for maybe old ‘Ice’ Krill—but now she was soaked in sweat, her forehead wet, droplets streaming down her face. Her head pounded, too, some devilish combination of fatigue and tension turned into pain. It felt a lot like a drill boring through her temple.

  Combat was al
ways difficult, terrifying, and she’d pounded the need for constant focus into her head, in any fight, no matter how one-sided it was. Even an outmatched enemy could take a pilot down. It only took one lucky shot…or one moment a fighter jock got distracted. But, the battles against the Hegemony had all been wild, desperate affairs, taking everything she could give and demanding more. There was a breaking point somewhere for all of her people, and she’d started to see more and more signs of stress overcoming her pilots. That was bad enough, but the limit she was really worried about was her own. When she lost it, hundreds of pilots would be left without the leadership they needed to hold off their own hopeless despair.

  And, what about when Jake can’t take anymore?

  She sometimes forgot to think of Stockton as a human being. The pilot had become such a grim and deadly creature since Kyle Jamison was lost, almost like some shadow of death, invulnerable, unstoppable. But, she knew him too well to believe in that view, one she suspected was shared less critically by most of the junior pilots. Jake Stockton was an unmatched pilot, she would be the first one to state that as fact, but he was still only a man. There was only so much he could take, and if his resolve failed, if he sank into hopelessness, the fighter corps was doomed.

  And, in this struggle against the Hegemony, if the squadrons couldn’t bear their burden, the war was as good as lost.

  As soon as she was clear of the target ship, she checked her damage assessments. A hit, and from the looks of things, a solid one. She felt a rush of excitement, but it was short-lived, and it faded quickly. A Lightning’s scanning suite was, by necessity, limited, and that made it difficult to be sure if an enemy ship’s railguns had been knocked out, or if its power generation had been severely degraded. She had come into her own fighting battles where the job of the fighters had been to swarm in on and finish off damaged ships. Tactics of that sort carried with them morale-boosting visual displays of targets being blown to bits by damaged containment or left as dead, floating hulks. But, war against the Hegemony demanded its own tactics, and the fighter wings were tasked with ignoring damaged ships and going after fresh ones, attacking with just enough intensity to guess the railguns had been knocked out, and then proceeding to the next target. It was a method born of necessity. If the enemy line ever got into range of the Confederation battleships with a full spread of railguns operation, the Confed line would be blasted to scrap before it got off a shot in return. But, it was hard, mentally and emotionally.

  She hesitated for a few seconds, trying to guess if she thought her hit had done the job. She had it down to a coin toss, but then her eyes moved to the side, and the rows of oncoming enemy capital ships, dozens and dozens that hadn’t yet been scratched. The math was simple. A one hundred percent chance was more dangerous than one at fifty percent…and her wings, as massive as they were, couldn’t hope to disable all the enemy ships coming on.

  She flipped a small switch, sending a simple message onto the combat net. The ship she’d just hit was off-limits. Her people, the few who hadn’t yet completed attack runs, should choose other targets, ships coming up from the second line, those with no known damage.

  She brought her ship around as she finished her task, and then she hesitated, checking the scanners, watching as the last of her wings blasted forward with their attacks. Her people had done well, and when the ones still going in were finished, she guessed they’d probably have hit thirty or more enemy battleships…and knocked the main guns out on at least half to two-thirds of those.

  That would have been good for a day’s pay, but if there was one thing absolutely, resolutely certain just then, it was just this.

  The day wasn’t over yet. Not be a long shot.

  And there were enough undamaged enemy ships coming on to blast the Confederation and Alliance ships to slag.

  Chapter Thirteen

  UFS Illustre

  Emphillus System

  Union-Confederation Border

  Union Year 222 (318 AC)

  Andrei Denisov stared into the mirror as he reached down and turned on the flow of water. He craved sleep, almost above all things, but such a luxury seemed utterly beyond reach anytime soon. Hot food would have been nice, too, or anything other than a sandwich wolfed down quickly in his command chair. But, there was no use wasting time or thought on unattainable dreams. This was all he could expect, a few stolen moments in his quarters, a splash of cold water on his face. A quick change into a fresh survival suit and uniform, though, without the shower he lacked the time to take, he would only be cramming his sweat-crusted body inside the fresh clothes.

  He was still amazed his escape tactic had worked, that the enemy bought wholeheartedly into his feigned retreat back toward Montmirail. He’d waited longer than should have been possible, and only the gravity-assist course change had made it possible to bring the fleet around and make a run for the Sauvon transit point.

  The Hegemony forces seemed stunned for a few minutes, the surprise total…and then they proceeded to blast their own engines at full, struggling to match the change in vector Denisov’s people had achieved. They lacked the aid of the massive gas giant, however, and even with their superior thrust, the pursuing forces were far behind. It had appeared dicey at one moment or another, but Denisov and his people had managed to stay ahead and transit before the enemy could close to firing range.

  Just.

  He’d known the Hegemony ships would come through less than an hour after his own, perhaps two or three if they took time to reorder a bit before commencing the transit. So, he’d done the only thing he could think of. His ships blasted at full thrust, radically altering their vectors, doing everything he could to head away from the course of the enemy’s intrinsic velocity. There were three transit points besides the one he’d entered, and any one of them would have worked. Each led to another border system, and one jump beyond any of these lines, lay Confederation space.

  The enemy emerged exactly as he’d expected, just over two hours after his forces had transited, and they’d almost immediately adjusted their vectors to match his. But, once again, he had a jump…and he’d chosen his next transit not on any criteria of where it led, but simply because the point was closest…and the only one his people had any real chance to reach ahead of the enemy.

  They had done just that, by a margin not much better than the one by which they’d escaped Pollux, and at the cost of abandoning every one of the ships that couldn’t maintain full thrust the entire way. It was difficult leaving his people behind, but he knew the choice was between saving some and losing them all.

  Denisov didn’t waste a minute after his ships came through into the next system, not even a second. Another abrupt course change. Another unpredictable choice of exit points. His recollection of the destruction of the units he’d left behind only drove him that much harder. There had to be a gain from such draconian tactics. There just had to be.

  Another mad dash across a system. And, a breaking point, a limit on what he could manage without at least a short break. He’d been sitting in his chair for far too long, enduring the high thrust levels, while simultaneously grateful for the dampeners that cut eighty percent of the pressure, making 15g merely uncomfortable instead of borderline deadly. It had been going on for hours without a pause, more than a full day.

  His fleet’s entry into the Emphillus system was accompanied by a longer than expected wait until the enemy followed. Two hours passed before a single ship transited. No, almost two hours twenty minutes before there was any sign of pursuit. He’d been trying to hold back the hopefulness, the crack in his discipline that let a small part of him believe the Hegemony forces had ceased pursued.

  He’d wonder if that would be good.

  Maybe. If they didn’t just advance forward to Montmirail instead. Denisov had no particular love for the Union’s capital, infested as it was with functionaries and party apparatchiks, but it was, without question, the central world of the entire nation. If the Hegemony took it with
out a serious fight, the Union would collapse in short order. He had no doubt about that. Then, he would truly command a fleet without a home, without a nation.

  He wondered as he sat silently, if he’d made the right decision. Should he have left the road to Montmirail so open?

  What else could you have done? You wouldn’t have made it out at all in that direction, and if you’d tried to stay, you would have no fleet left. Montmirail would be in the same position, and the enemy would be freed of the concern about where your ships are.

  There was logic in his thoughts, cold and indisputable, but still, he harbored more than a few doubts. He knew what Gaston Villieneuve was, and even though the dictator had been somewhat of a patron to him, his loyalty to the man was limited. He wasn’t naïve enough to expect anyone better than Villieneuve would come up through the swamp of Union politics, and while he detested the brutal and corrupt government, he’d long ago fallen into a paradox through loving his country. Whatever that meant, whatever his country truly was.

  What was the Union? Planets? People? A twisted and grotesque ruling class, constantly scheming for more power? Was there even logic in feeling some kind of duty to it? And, what was that duty? To die in a hopeless attempt to save the capital? Or to keep the fleet alive, survive to fight another day, to keep alive some hope of ultimate victory?

  His hopes—and his concerns about Montmirail were short-lived, though. Two hours and thirty-four minutes after his last ship had transited, the first Hegemony vessel appeared on the scanners. And hour later, the entire fleet was through, and resuming its pursuit of his ships.

  He shook his head as he looked at his reflection, pushing aside the thoughts. He pulled his hands up, splashing more water on his face. The coldness felt good, and it invigorated him, at least a little. He’d taken a short break when he’d found himself unable to keep his eyes open on the bridge. He’d been shuffling his crews around, giving each shift four hours of sleep between extended periods of duty. But, there was only one fleet admiral, and no one to take his place, so he’d stayed at his post almost without a break for three days now.