Cauldron of Fire (Blood on the Stars Book 5) Read online

  “Yes, Commodore?” The response was almost immediate, but Barron could hear a hint of distraction as well. Wherever she was, Fritz was working on something.

  “I just wanted to get a status report before those bombers come in.” And what the hell are you working on already? We haven’t taken any real damage yet.

  “Everything’s good, sir. I’ve got response teams stationed at all crucial points, and double crews at the landing bays. Wherever we get hit…” Barron noted she hadn’t said “if” we get hit. “…we’ll be ready.” A pause. “Is it true, sir, we’re facing only fighters?”

  “It looks true enough. No sign of anything larger.” And it’s my fault for not predicting the hardship these Alliance pilots can take. I should have seen this coming…or at least been more prepared in case it did.

  “If you’re sure of that…” Her voice trailed off.

  “What is it, Fritzie? You’ve never had any trouble speaking your mind to me.”

  “Well, sir…I was just thinking. If we’re sure there are no enemy battleships out there, I could take the primaries offline completely. We could cut the power leads entirely, and get some fire suppressant all around the main equipment. It will protect them against any overloads caused by hits we might take.”

  “Makes sense. Do it.”

  “You have to understand, sir. I’m talking about physically severing a dozen connections. I’d be doing as much damage as a direct hit, but it would be more controlled, easier to reverse. Still, if we do it, we’re looking at six hours at least to get them back online.”

  Barron heard her words, and he understood the hesitancy she’d shown.

  “It would make it a lot less likely they’ll suffer significant damage…but then they’re effectively out of this battle.”

  Barron paused, his eyes panning across the scanners again, looking for any signs of an enemy vessel larger than a fighter. He almost ordered Travis to run a new scan, but he realized it was a waste of time. He’d have found anything out there by now, at least anything in range. And if the Alliance had found a way to hide capital ships this well, another concentrated search wasn’t going to find them.

  “Do it, Fritzie.”

  “Yes, sir.” The line was still live, but she didn’t say anything else. Barron sat for a moment, and then he cut the connection. He looked up at the main display, just as Blue squadron slammed into the rear of the enemy bomber formation.

  * * *

  Stockton brought his ship around, firing a final blast toward the closest bomber. It had been a last hope, a long shot to try to take down one more attack ship. But his lasers went wide—barely—and the bomber continued on. Toward Federov’s Reds. And then Dauntless…

  Stockton’s Blues had managed to get back for an attack run against the bombers, but their velocity and vectors precluded them from staying in the fight. By the time they could decelerate and come around again, the surviving assault craft would already have launched their torpedoes.

  He paused, cursing under his breath as he watched his would-be prey slip from his grasp. But the distraction only lasted a few seconds. His gaze shifted to the mass of icons and symbols on the display, Timmons and his Eagles, surrounded and almost overwhelmed.

  The Eagles had held the enemy back, bought Stockton and his people the chance to cut into the bombers. It was normal procedure—battleships came first—but it was still hard to watch his comrades and friends facing the prospect of imminent destruction. The Blues had done what they could for the mothership. Now, it was time to back up Timmons and his Eagles.

  “Let’s go, Blues. I know fuel’s getting a little low, but we don’t have time to waste here. Full turbos…the Eagles need some help, and we’re the closest right now.” Fuel was getting more than a little low, and he knew his pilots would burn half of what they had left getting to the enemy formation. But the only alternative was to watch the Eagles get wiped out.

  “Hang on, Warrior. We’re heading your way now.”

  “Hurry, Raptor. We could use the backup about now.”

  Stockton would hear the tension in Timmons’s voice. It stood out, perhaps because he’d so rarely heard his former rival seem afraid. Like he did now.

  He looked at the display. Timmons was blasting hard, a series of wildly evasive maneuvers, with an enemy ship on his tail. Stockton knew better than anyone how good a pilot Timmons was, but the Alliance fighter was glued to him, matching his every attempt to break free, almost as though its pilot was reading his mind.

  Could it be? Stockton remembered the pilot he’d fought weeks earlier. He hadn’t been able to get the recollections from his mind, even lying in his bunk at night, thoughts of the enemy who’d come so close to defeating him swirling around in the darkness. He’d almost asked Commodore Barron to see if there were any databases with listings of Alliance aces, but he’d held back. On Dauntless, with days and then weeks filling the gap between him and the fateful struggle, his paranoia seemed sillier, more like wounded pride than cautious curiosity.

  Until now.

  He pulled back harder on the throttle, as if it could somehow coax more thrust from his straining engines. He almost reached down and cut the safeties to crank the reactor up to one hundred ten, but he held back. He’d resorted to that too many times, and he knew each had taken a toll on the ship. If he burnt out his power source now, he’d never get there. And Warrior could hold out a few more seconds.

  I hope.

  He knew the leader of Scarlet Eagle squadron was a great pilot, one of the very best in the fleet. But Stockton was the Confederation’s top ace, and he could still remember the icy feeling between his shoulder blades as that mystery pilot clung to his vector, firing all around, missing him by only the slightest of margins.

  He saw enemy fighters coming up on him, slowly moving into range. Stockton wasn’t interested…his mind was focused on one target only, the ship affixed to Warrior’s tail. But if he didn’t engage, they’d just slip in behind him. And dragging along a string of bogies was not the way to help Timmons.

  Not if it is that pilot on his tail…

  He cut his thrust and hit the positioning jets, whipping the ship around. He eased the throttle to the side, his fingers squeezing tightly on the firing stud. A series of blasts ripped out from his lasers…and the closest ship disappeared. The attack had been lightning quick, unstoppable. Stockton was in his element right now, the state of mind that made him as deadly as any human being who’d ever manned a fighter.

  He was already spinning his fighter around again. The second nearby bogie was trying to get a lock on him, but he tapped the controls a few times in rapid succession, evading the shots coming toward him as he pulled the trigger again…and another Red fighter was gone. His mind was clear, focused…he was like a man possessed.

  He had to save Timmons. He had to defeat that pilot, before more of his people ended up dead.

  Hang on, Dirk…

  He spun around again, blasting toward Timmons’s ship. He dropped his hands to the side of the throttle, flipping open the override controls. He’d held back before, and his rationale had been valid. But this time there was no choice. Timmons was barely hanging on, his every evasive move countered. And each time the next attack came closer. For all Timmons’s extraordinary skill in the cockpit, he was like an animal corralled, penned in by the hunters.

  The hunter. Only one.

  Stockton grabbed the small safety control, pulling it as far as he could to the side. The AI started warning him about impending overloads, but he just watched the energy output on his screen. One hundred ten. One hundred twenty. It was more than he’d ever tried to coax from his engines, more than he’d ever heard of anyone achieving.

  One hundred twenty-three. He could hear the reactor now, and the radiation alarms in the cockpit joined the unending cacophony of warnings and klaxons. But he ignored it all. He could get a radiation cleanse after he landed, and any damage done to his ship could be fixed. But if he didn’t get ther
e in time…

  He saw the first shot graze Timmons’s ship. The fighter shook hard, and its thrust dropped to half what it had been. The explosion exerted considerable force, but the ship’s existing momentum reduced the rate of change to a barely measurable amount. It was enough to evade laser blasts…at least until his pursuer could adjust. But Timmons’s maneuverability was way down.

  Stockton knew he was watching the final stages of the hunt. His eyes locked on the screen. He was still out of range…or perhaps, just at the very extreme edge. He fired, an act of desperation more than anything based in the rational or even in the gut feeling that drove his true skill. The shot went wide, if it even reached the enemy with enough power to do any damage.

  Maybe it will be a distraction…

  But even as the thought drifted through his mind, he recognized it for what it was, a straw he grasped for pointlessly. This pilot was far too good to be rattled by his ineffectual potshots. Especially with a target of Timmons’s obvious stature so close to within reach.

  Stockton felt anger, frustration. He had done everything he could, pushed all he had to the brink. He just needed time, a tiny, pointless, instant of time.

  But in his gut, he knew he wasn’t going to get it.

  * * *

  “Commander!”

  Travis’s tone assumed an almost physical manifestation, reaching inside him like a shadowy claw gripping his spine. His normally-controlled first officer had let the horror she felt loose in her voice. And the instant Barron turned around, he understood.

  The right side of the main display focused on Illustrious, and on the fighters swirling all around her. The big ship’s squadrons had fought to protect the great ship, but her pilots were mostly young, fresh out of the Academy before this deployment. They might have held their own against Union fighters, but the veteran Alliance flyers cut through them like a warm knife through soft butter.

  Illustrious’s squadrons fought—it was not their courage that was in question—but they were outnumbered and outflown. They took down almost two dozen bombers, sacrificing themselves in many instances to do it, but more than twenty attack ships got through.

  Illustrious had an impressive array of defensive turrets, almost half again Dauntless’s complement, but as with her fighters, that impressive armament was manned largely by green crew. Even with the impressive AI-directed fire control built into the Confederation’s newest ships, the seasoned hand of a veteran gunner was invaluable…and sorely missed on the massive battleship.

  Barron stared, his eyes following what Travis had clearly seen. Two dozen bombers, coming in fast, their formation amazingly tight. Illustrious’s guns fired, taking down one, then a second. But the attackers came on, still accelerating. They were well within firing range, but Captain Reardon had maneuvered his ship out of the paths of almost a dozen plasmas during the earlier attack, and these pilots had clearly decided to damn all the battleship could throw at them and drive home for the point blank shot.

  A third bomber vanished in the fire of Illustrious’s massed batteries, but then the remaining ones launched their missiles, the whole salvo surging forth almost as one.

  The missiles accelerated at once, blasting straight for the battleship at 25g, but only for a few seconds, far too short a time for Illustrious to target them. Then, in an instant, they all converted to plasmas, the roiling balls of impossibly hot energy heading right for the ship.

  Barron knew his own vessel was under assault as well. Federov’s Reds had completed their runs, and they’d hit the bombers that had endured Blue squadron’s fury with their own not inconsiderable intensity. Dauntless’s gunners were now firing, trying to take down as many of the incoming weapons as possible. Barron knew it was almost time for evasive maneuvers, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the tragedy he saw unfolding before his other ship. Reardon was a good captain, but there was nothing for him to do. The Red bombers had paid the blood price to close to killing range…and now the battleship would endure the consequences.

  Barron could see the readings, Illustrious’s engines firing, the great ship trying to evade the approaching plasmas. But even as the battleship’s vector began to change, the first warhead slammed hard into its starboard.

  Then another three, in rapid succession.

  Barron watched as the damage assessments flowed in, one wild, blurry series of numbers, racing by one after another. The energy readings were almost off the charts, and the reports that followed were grim. Illustrious’s engines were down…that meant no more evasive maneuvers. Her energy transmission system was a wreck, and most of her batteries that were not outright damaged or destroyed were cut off from the reactors and powerless.

  Barron closed his eyes for an instant, unable to make himself watch. The great vessel was moving along steadily, its vector unaltered. One plasma after another hit it, vaporizing armor plate, gouging great rents in the side of its hull. Barron didn’t want to look, but the darkness was worse. His mind filled the emptiness with images, ones far starker than the antiseptic symbols on the display. Compartments collapsing, broken and twisted girders whipping around, crashing through bulkheads.

  Men and women dying…crushed, burned, blown out into space. He didn’t have casualty reports from Illustrious yet, but he could fill in the blanks, and he knew they’d be bad when they came.

  “Commodore…bombers approaching.”

  Travis’s words pulled his attention back to Dauntless. There were seven enemy ships coming in, far fewer than the hordes plaguing Illustrious. He knew he had his veteran pilots and gunners to thank for that. Blue squadron had ripped through the attack force like the wrath of God, gunning down bomber after bomber, and Federov’s Reds had done hardly less. And the gunners at their stations, veterans of dozens of hard battles, had fired relentlessly, their triple turrets taking down ten of the attackers.

  Barron watched as yet another bomber fell victim to the precise targeting of his fire crews and then, almost as if in response, the remaining ships launched and began to accelerate away, struggling to get out of range of the deadly guns. But those weapons were no longer firing at them. Barron’s people had needed no order, no direction. As soon as the torpedoes were launched, they trained in on them instead of the now harmless ships, firing at maximum.

  The small warheads were faster than the bombers, more maneuverable. Their wild gyrations at better than 25g made targeting them extremely difficult. But there were only six left, and every one the gunners could hit was one less that could smash into Dauntless, tearing apart the structure of the ship and killing its people.

  Barron watched as one of the tiny icons vanished, a last price extracted by his gunners before the other five converted. Now, it was up to him, and to his nav crew.

  “Engines ready, Commander. I’m going to want fifty percent thrust, course 104.191.333 on my command.”

  The sound of Travis’s hand on her keyboard. “Yes, Commodore. Course laid in. Waiting for your order.”

  Barron sat, his eyes fixed on the approaching plasmas. The enemy’s targeting had been excellent. It would be difficult, maybe impossible to dodge all the warheads. But he would do what he could. “Now, Commander.”

  “Yes, sir,” Travis replied, even as she executed the command. The bridge shook from the abrupt change in thrust angle.

  “Repositioning jets 3a, 4a, 4b…fire at full.”

  “Firing now, Commodore.” The ship shook again, as its starboard jets blasted, shifting its facing.

  Barron watched as two plasmas passed by, one of them close enough to fry a few external antennas, but far enough to spare his ship any real damage.

  “Back, Commander. Jets 17c, 18c, 18d…full.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Barron held onto his armrests. Dauntless shook hard, as the chosen port jets blasted out, offsetting the momentum from his previous maneuver, and sending the ship spinning around the other way. Another plasma zipped by, farther away than the first two. A clean miss.

&
nbsp; The last two were coming on fast. He wasn’t going to clear them, not quickly enough. He almost ordered full thrust forward, but something stopped him. Dauntless wasn’t going to escape the incoming plasmas…and forward thrust would push the impact point backward, toward the engines.

  Any damage was bad enough, but losing the engines now, with hundreds of enemy fighters still out there, would be disastrous.

  “Secure for impact,” he yelled, and a few seconds later, the ship shook wildly, the sounds of muffled explosions vibrating up through the hull.

  His hand was down on his comm, his fingers punching up Fritz’s damage control line. But his eyes were on the display, its projection wavy with power surges moving through. The image was blurry, but it was clear enough. Illustrious, thrust completely dead, wracked with explosions…with yet another flight of bombers heading right for her.

  “Commodore?” Fritzie’s voice was haggard. But Barron didn’t hear her, not for a few seconds, at least. He held his gaze on Illustrious, on her desperate struggle for survival. Then he shook his head and looked down.

  “Commander?” Fritz repeated.

  “Fritzie, sorry. Damage report…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  AS Ferox

  Pergara System

  Inbound from the Capria Transwarp Link

  Year 62 (311 AC)

  Tulus sat like a statue, eyes fixed forward as he watched his ships battle nearly twice their number of enemy vessels. He felt fear, of death certainly, but more, of failure, of defeat. Of disgrace.

  He’d made the decision to stand and fight, to do what he could to extricate even some portion of Mellus’s fleet from this trap. It remained to be seen whether he would succeed or not, but he’d made his choice, and that was the end of that.

  It was an open question if even if his own ships would escape.