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

  “You are not alone, Tyler.” Clint Winters stepped up and put his hand on Barron’s shoulder. “We have your back.”

  Barron turned and looked at Winters. The Confederation’s other fleet admiral had long been his number two, a role the man known as ‘the Sledgehammer’ always accepted without the slightest sign of resentment or jealousy. “Thank you, Clint, but I’m fine. Really, I am.”

  “Tyler…I have come to trust you in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Indeed, I entrusted my children to you. But I cannot believe you in this. You have to be exhausted, beyond that even. And this fight will be too important. You will serve us all better if you are awake and alert when the time comes. That will be of far greater value than a few extra hours of routine tasks.”

  Barron was about to answer Akella when Chronos spoke.

  “Akella is correct. You have to get some rest, my friend. Call this a mutiny if you want, but we are all in agreement. A nap, at least, if not a full night’s sleep. You’re not alone here. We’re all with you. And we can keep watch for a few hours while…”

  Chronos stopped abruptly as the comm unit buzzed.

  “What is it?” Barron snapped into the small unit, clearly annoyed at being disturbed. But that only lasted a few seconds.

  “We’re getting energy readings from transit point number one. Massive energy readings. The AI assigns a probability of eighty-four percent a major fleet is coming through.”

  The room was silent for a moment, a shroud of gloom quickly descending. Finally, Barron spoke, surprising himself with the cold strength in his tone.

  “Thank you all for your concern. It means more than you can know…and I count all of you as my friends.” A pause, just a few seconds. “But I’m afraid that nap will have to wait.” Or it will be a permanent one…

  Barron nodded once to all his companions, certain they understood the deep emotion behind the simple gesture. Then, his voice even firmer, almost the sound of pure determination, he said, “We’ve all got places to be, jobs to do. Good luck, to all of you…and I pray we are able to gather all together again when this is finished.”

  He didn’t believe he would ever be in a room again with all those present, but it would serve no purpose to share such dark thoughts.

  He reached down and tapped the comm unit. “Commander, this is Admiral Barron. Fortress Striker and the Grand Fleet will come to full alert. All units to battlestations.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  CFS Constellation

  60,000 Kilometers from Fleet Base Grimaldi

  Krakus System

  Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  “Commodore on the bridge!” Sam Taggart snapped out the announcement as Simpson emerged from the door of the lift and stepped out onto Constellation’s control deck. The superbattleship remained in the fight, still powerful, though she had taken her share of damage. The bridge floor was strewn in several places with mangled debris, and the air carried a caustic twinge of smoke and chemical residue that irritated eyes and lungs alike.

  There was one more thing not clearly evident to those less familiar with the ship than Taggart. Four of the bridge stations were manned by replacements, backups ordered to man the positions to replace spacers who were now in sickbay…or dead.

  “Thank you, Captain…but I think we can dispense with formalities now. Run your ship.” Simpson paused for a few seconds, and then he added, “I seem to be down a pair of aides right now. Perhaps you can lend me one of your officers.”

  “I can lend you me, Commodore. Constellation’s crew knows what they’re doing…and we’re pretty much in the line now, pounding away. All I could do is distract them, and I daresay, I can be more help right now as your aide.”

  “Thank you, Captain. I’m glad to have you.” Simpson walked across the bridge to the vacant flag officer’s station. He stared at the plush black leather chair, looking as though he felt somewhat uncomfortable at the prospect of sitting there. Vandengraf had been built to serve as a flagship back in its day as well, but the admiral’s station on the old battleship didn’t compare to the large and luxurious setup on the Confederation’s newest mobile fortress.

  Simpson turned abruptly and sat down. The middle of a desperate fight was no time to sit and stare at a chair, however uncomfortably opulent it might be. “Are we plugged into the fleetnet, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir. Command com line at your station.” Taggart gestured toward the side of the chair. Simpson looked down, his eyes landing on the headset slipped inside a custom cradle. The designers of the Excalibur-class had forgotten nothing, however trivial.

  Hopefully, I won’t get their magnificent creation blasted to atoms…

  He reached down and pulled out the headset, pulling it on and flipping the switch to active. He had accepted Taggart’s offer to serve as his aide, but he intended to handle as much as he could on his own. Whatever his new host said, running a vessel like the gargantuan Constellation was one hell of a job, no matter how well its crew functioned.

  “Grimaldi, status report.” He was staring down at the triple screen setup at the station, his hands moving even as he spoke, pulling up the latest info on the fortress. He could see the place was in bad shape, at least half of its great bulk torn and twisted, whole sections clearly dead…as very likely were any crew members who’d been caught there. But Grimaldi still had operable guns, and they were firing away, raking the Highborn ships attacking the station. Both sides were dishing out damage, but Simpson wasn’t one to fool himself. Grimaldi had done well, destroyed a number of enemy vessels, but the old station had simply been too neglected for too long. Its guns were mostly old, nearly a generation out of date, and it was showing in the exchange with the highly advanced Highborn vessels.

  Simpson listened as the officer on the other end of the line—the fourth in command over on Grimaldi if he remembered his chain of command properly—basically confirmed his conclusion. The big station would continue to fight, but it was going to lose. The Highborn were going to achieve what the Union had failed to do for decades…destroy the Confederation’s great border fortress.

  Simpson’s eyes moved over the other two screens. The situation with the rest of the fleet was no better, and in many ways, a good deal worse. Vandengraf was out of action, limping away with almost none of its weapons still operational. He wished the best to Jaymes and the spacers he’d left behind, and he figured they had a chance, at least, of escaping. But the old ship was out of the fight.

  His other battleships were barely better off, and in a very short time, perhaps only minutes, his battleline would consist of Constellation alone.

  It won’t be long after that. She’s a tough ship, the best we’ve got…but there’s a limit to what even she can take…

  He looked out at the reports on the enemy formations. Denisov was working miracles in holding off Villieneuve’s superior forces, but his small fleet, too, was almost at its limit. Fewer than half his ships were still in the line, the others destroyed or limping back from the fight with their weapons arrays obliterated. If the Highborn didn’t finish off the rest of his own forces in the next hour, he’d have Villieneuve’s survivors on his flank, too.

  He sucked in a deep breath, wondering if there’d been any point in transferring the flag. There wasn’t much he could do except watch his people fight to the end…and end that was rapidly approaching.

  If we’d only had more strength…just some extra force. The battle was close, but he just didn’t have enough strength…

  There was no gain in thoughts like that. He had what he had, and it wasn’t going to be enough. The only thing left to consider was whether his forces had hurt the enemy enough to prevent them from pressing on with an invasion deeper into Confederation space. He figured it was a coin toss, which could have been a lot worse…but then that only applied until more Highborn ships arrived in the theater, an eventuality he considered inevitable. Had his people bought a month with their lives? Six months? Would their sacri
fices matter at all?

  He tried to fight off the darkness, the misery of failure, but all he could feel was the shadow of death, growing darker, consuming all his spacers.

  “Commodore…we’re picking up energy readings from the transit point…”

  Simpson felt as though the universe was laughing at him, rejoicing in his despair. The thought of enemy reinforcements not only eliminated any miniscule chance his people had of surviving the battle…it stripped away even that month, or six months. If Highborn reserves were already arriving, the enemy could move on the Confederation’s heart in a matter of days.

  “On my screen…” His voice was morose, his ability to hide his emotions gone.

  But something was wrong. His screen centered on a transit point, but not the one through which the Highborn had come.

  It was the one leading directly back toward the Iron Belt and the Core. The one most of his fleet had come through. He’d assumed Taggart’s report had been about Highborn reinforcements.

  But it looked like Confederation ships were on the way!

  He felt a burst of excitement, but also confusion. It didn’t seem possible.

  How…what ships were left there to send?

  * * *

  “Mr. Holsten…we’ve got two ships transiting in. Friendlies.”

  Holsten had been staring at the deck, but he looked up, his face a mask of surprise. “Confederation ships?”

  “Confirmed, sir. I doublechecked the beacons. Big bastards, too.”

  Holsten was stunned. He’d scoured the Confederation’s ports and shipyards for anything that could carry a gun hot enough to join the fight. What could be coming now?

  Perhaps more of a mystery, who could have sent the new force? Holsten was at Grimaldi, and Tyler Barron, Clint Winters, and every other flag officer of note was out at Striker. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Scanner data updating, sir. They appear to be Excalibur-class vessels.” A short silence. “Confirmed, sir. Two Excalibur-class superbattleships have transited into the system.”

  Holsten felt as though he’d been slapped from one side and then back from the other. Understanding dawned, to a point. He’d almost ordered the third and fourth Excalibur-class vessels to join Constellation, but the ships weren’t complete enough, and he’d had no idea where he could find crews for them on short notice. Someone had taken those ships out of their docks, unfinished and partially operational, and sent them forward.

  But who?

  And where the hell had they found trained spacers to man them?

  Holsten shook his head abruptly, trying to pull his attention back to the battle. He had no real place in the chain of command, but every eye in Grimaldi’s control enter was focused on him.

  “Contact Commodore Simpson. Advise him to take command of the reinforcements…and get them into the line immediately.” Holsten didn’t know how effective the new ships would be. Almost certainly, they lacked fully operational status on at least some of their systems. But whatever they had would be helpful just then. Holsten was no master of space combat tactics, but he’d seen that the battle was being lost. Simpson’s fleet had acquitted itself well, better perhaps than he’d had a right to expect, but it just hadn’t had the strength to repel the Highborn.

  Until now…

  Two Excalibur-class monsters carried a lot of power, even if they were unfinished. Just maybe, they could make the difference. Whoever had sent those ships to Grimaldi may have saved the battle.

  Saved the Confederation.

  But who? Holsten had a sharp mind, one experienced in deciphering such mysteries. But he had nothing.

  He glanced down at the small workstation screen in front of him. The two ships were on his map, each depicted by a large blue oval. There was a name in small print next to each. He squinted, struggling to read the text, and when he did, it confirmed his suspicions. Starfire and Argo…the third and fourth ships of the Excalibur class. Someone had indeed ordered those ships to launch, in whatever condition they were in. But he still didn’t know how they’d been crewed.

  The two new arrivals pushed forward, their antimatter-powered drives blasting them at close to 50g. For a few moments, nothing else changed. But then he saw it, the Highborn reaction. The enemy had sparred with Constellation, battled the huge ship with great ferocity, but they hadn’t managed to bring her down. The superbattleship was damaged—badly damaged—but she was still in the fight. And now, two of her twins, a bit less functional perhaps, but powerful nevertheless, were moving forward.

  The Highborn line was shifting, a contingent of their surviving vessels moving to face Starfire and Argo. For a moment, it looked like they were prepared to fight the two monster ships, but then Constellation reacted to the reduced enemy pressure. Simpson brought his new flagship around, taking the repositioning enemy vessels in flank. The fight, already a monstrous and bloody struggle reached a new level of mindless savagery. Confederation ships, regardless of damage, pushed against the enemy, the morale of the spacers revived by the reserves even then moving up to firing range. The Highborn were fighting just as desperately, and no small number of the Confed ships were raked by deadly fire and destroyed.

  Casualties mounted, moving from heavy to almost unimaginable. But just as it seemed the Confederation fleet’s scattered survivors could endure no more, the two superbattleships reached the line and opened fire.

  The vessels didn’t have their full weapons arrays online, but they did have their railguns, and the massive weapons lanced out with unexpected accuracy, each striking an enemy amidships.

  The Highborn vessels had been damaged already, and within seconds of each other, both stricken ships vanished in the fury of antimatter annihilation. Nothing but scattered superhot plasma and hard radiation remained.

  Holsten felt his body tense, his hands clenching tightly as he watched the Highborn ships destroyed…and then, no more than a few moments later, he saw the first movement along the battered enemy line.

  They were retreating. The Highborn were retreating!

  His eyes scanned the large main display. It was true. All across the line, enemy ships were decelerating, or outright blasting back toward the transit point. Even Villieneuve’s Union ships, which had seemed just minutes from finishing off Denisov’s Free Union fleet, were breaking off.

  It was a miracle…or something doing a damned good impression of one. But it was still a mystery to Holsten. Until the comm officer spoke.

  “Mr. Holsten…I’ve got an Emmit Flandry on your line.”

  Understanding hit Holsten like a hammer, and right behind it, surprise. He tapped the comm to open the line.

  “Speaker Flandry?”

  “Yes, Gary…and I think we can dispense with formalities. You probably violated at least a hundred laws rounding up this fleet you’ve got here, but success is a panacea of sorts, is it not? I had to decide whether to come up here and order you arrested…or do whatever the hell I could to help you hold the line. And since I have no real desire to become a slave of the Highborn, the choice was easier than it sounds.”

  “You very well may have saved the day, Emmit.” The politician had saved the day, there was no question about that. But ‘may have’ was as far as Holsten could force himself to go. “I’d ask how, but I imagine the Speaker of the Senate has no small number of tools to get what he wants. But where the hell did you find the crews?”

  “Those ships have skeleton crews, Gary. It’s a damned good thing the Highborn blinked, because damage control on those vessels would be for shit. There’s not a fighter in either ship’s bays, nor any flight crew at all. And the stations that are active are manned by every retired fossil I could dig up. You’ve got veterans of the Second and Third Union Wars on that ship, as well as faculty from the Academy and every experienced spacer we could find. The biggest surprise was how quickly they all agreed. I suspected I’d get some resistance from 70 and 80-year-old spacers to being recalled to duty and climbing aboard brand new ships
to plunge into battle, but in the end, I could barely restrain them.”

  Holsten felt a smile forming on his face. The Confederation was an anomaly, the closest thing mankind knew to a free nation, despite its many faults. But there was no question in his mind the navy, the incredible organization forged by war and sacrifice, was its pride.

  “Well done, Emmit…well done. You are a tribute to your office, and a hero of the Confederation.” They were words Gary Holsten had never expected to say to any politician, especially not one so corrupt and intertwined in the establishment as the Confederation Speaker.

  But he said them without reservation or regret. It had taken all he’d had, all the officers and spacers of the fleet had to give—and an assist from Emmit Flandry—but Grimaldi had held once again. It was a brief respite, he knew, and the Highborn would be back, as soon as they could bring sufficient reinforcements around their extended and difficult line of communications.

  But time was what he needed just then, time for Tyler Barron to focus on the defense of Striker…without worrying about enemy forces moving on his rear. Time to squeeze whatever production he could from overtaxed shipyards.

  Holsten turned and looked over toward the comm station. “Commander, I want to send a communique at once…to Admiral Barron via the Pipe.”