The Others Page 14

  He was positioned right in front of the tube, a place he was mandated to remain, not just by Chronos’s order, but also those of the entire Council, including Akella herself. He had been authorized to go, but only to observe, to gather the needed data, and to return to Calpharon before any enemy forces could engage his small cluster of ships.

  The rest of the small fleet would not be so lucky, he realized. Some of the ships might escape, at least part of him wanted to believe that, but a lot of his people were going to die in the next few hours. He dreaded watching more of his Kriegeri sacrificed in a hopeless struggle, and more, the planet Eliason had over half a billion inhabitants. His people weren’t even pretending to try to defend it. The system layout mandated the position of his fleet, a location that allowed unimpeded communications from the fighting ships to the small group of vessels waiting to bring the data back to Calpharon.

  A position well back from Eliason, leaving the planet exposed along the expected enemy approach vector.

  Ilius had tried not to think about what had happened to the inhabited words in Venta Traconis, an exercise that, altogether, had not been particularly successful. The records about the first incursion by the Others were sparse on details of the treatment of captured populations. The Hegemony was younger then, its expanse smaller, its planets far less populated. Ilius tried to tell himself the hundreds of millions on Venta Traconis’s two inhabited planets, and the millions more in other systems that had simply been abandoned to the enemy advance, were being held in some kind of humane captivity. But he didn’t believe it.

  “The Verification Force reports multiple contacts, Commander.”

  Ilius heard the officer’s words, and he pulled himself from his dark thoughts. Duty still came first.

  “Very well, Hectoron. Let’s keep a close watch on what is happening. All comm receivers on maximum. Any incoming data feeds go right to the AI, understood?” The fact that the Others had ships there was information any of his people could understand. But the petabytes of data that would be coming in, every detail of every scanner reading from more than three dozen ships, defied examination by any human mind, Master or not. If he had to watch forty ships sacrificed to the enemy, he intended at least to come away with usable data, every detail of what worked and what didn’t. He’d been sent there simply to determine if what had been informally dubbed the ‘Avia Method’ actually worked, but he wanted more. If the scanner program did allow effective targeting of the enemy, he wanted more than confirmation…he wanted every detail that could allow the system to be refined, improved.

  “The lead ships of the Verification Force are closing into projected enemy fire range.”

  Ilius sighed softly, doing all he could to keep it to himself. This was the moment, the ten or twenty minutes that would determine the mission’s success or failure. If Krellos’s ships were blasted to atoms before they reached their own firing ranges, all his warriors would all die for nothing. Ilius and the crews of his monitoring ships would transit, and run back to Calpharon, defeated and empty handed.

  But if the evasion routines worked well enough, if Krellos had some of the old magic left in that ancient mind and body, maybe—just maybe—Ilius would return with word that Kiloron Tragus’s firing solutions worked, that the next time a Hegemony fleet met the Others in battle, the fight would be at least a bit more even.

  * * *

  “All ships, continue forward.” Krellos sat in Hetaria’s command chair, his eyes still bright, attentive, despite his advanced age. His flagship was almost as old as he was, as were most of the vessels in his cobbled together force. The deployment of the fleet’s oldest and most obsolete ships to the desperately dangerous expedition—Krellos felt he owed it to his crews not to call it a suicide mission—had been his suggestion. It had required some crash retrofitting to bring the scanning suites up to snuff, and upgrades of the weapons arrays to allow the small force to truly test out their new targeting algorithms, but it preserved the most battleworthy vessels for the fight Krellos knew was coming, the struggle that would ultimately determine if the Hegemony survived.

  “All units acknowledge, Commander.”

  Krellos was resolved to his likely fate, and while he longed on one level to be there when the Hegemony fought the ultimate battle for the future, he had lived a long and productive life. He relished the chance to return to the colors, to serve the Hegemony one last time, to die as he had lived, as a Master and a protector of humanity. His greatest regret was that most of those who would die with him were far younger than he was, that many would lose long and productive decades that otherwise would have lain before them. The loss of so many useful lives would be a tragedy, though one that seemed insignificant compared to the magnitude of all that was at stake.

  “Commander, we’re picking up energy readings from the enemy formation. AI analysis suggests weapons systems being activated.”

  Krellos remained still, though he could feel his hands shaking. It wasn’t fear, just the tremors he always endured, the result of the nerve damage spreading through his aged and failing body. He was old, even by the standards of humanity’s genetic elite, but he had not escaped all of time’s ravages.

  “All ships, engage pre-programmed evasive routines.” He had done all he could to ensure his small force was prepared to complete its mission, whatever the cost. The enemy’s weapons outranged his own, and that meant his fleet would have to endure—and survive—incoming fire while it continued to close. When—if—his ships reached their own firing range, they could complete their mission, determine with some level of certainty whether or not the radiation detection routine enabled effective targeting of enemy vessels.

  If the algorithms worked, if his people were able to score a certain number of verified hits—ten was the number in his mind—he could give the retreat order…and every ship in his small command would be free to make a run for it, to try to escape, however unlikely such a result might be.

  His eyes were fixed on the display. The massive, 3D setup was another new addition to Hetaria’s otherwise simple and dingy bridge. There were tiny flashes, a few at first, and then dozens, as the lead formations of the enemy fleet opened fire. His ships were already into their defensive routines, and Krellos nodded silently, an expression of gratitude that whatever technological advantages the Others possessed, they did not appear to include the ability to negate random, chaos-driven evasive maneuvers. That was no guarantee of survival for any of his vessels—a fact emphasized by the disappearance of one of his ships from the display, the first casualty of the battle—but it did offer hope, at least, that his people who died would not do so in vain.

  He winced as one of the flashes zipped right past Hetaria, coming, he guessed, within two or three kilometers of the battleship. One point two, he silently acknowledged, as the AI streamed the data onto his screen.

  His recollections of space combat were many and varied, but the forces he’d led had always been superior, and death and defeat, if they came at all, had been slow, gradual. He remembered ships being damaged, battered by hit after hit until finally, some critical system or another failed and triggered an epic explosion. Or vessels were simply pummeled into lifeless hulks. But he knew well from reviewing the data from Venta Traconis, that the enemy’s main guns could cripple a Hegemony battleship with a single shot, and even destroy one outright. It was a different feeling, one harder to control, as he looked into the display, knowing any second could be his last, that he and his flagship’s crew, so far untouched by the enemy’s fire, might die at any moment, without the slightest warning.

  He watched as three more of his ships were hit, two suffering severe damage, and the third vanishing in an instant of thermonuclear fury. He known when he volunteered, that his force would suffer terribly closing to combat range, but it had been many years since he’d seen his comrades dying in such numbers, and he found it harder to endure than he’d expected. However ready he’d believed he was, he realized there were some thi
ngs one could never fully prepare for. He’d prepared himself for heavy losses, even to die himself…but now he began to imagine a total failure, the loss of all his ships before they closed enough to test their new target locks.

  He opened his mouth, as if to give a command, but he remained silent. He’d been about to order his ships to alter their evasion routines, but he realized that would be a waste of time at best, and harmful at worst. The programs had been devised in as random a pattern as possible. The losses he’d suffered so far were the result of the Others’ targeting prowess and high-tech scanners, not any failure of the routines. If he ordered his commanders to take control themselves, to engage in their own programs, the loss rate would almost certainly spike.

  Krellos was a veteran of more than two-thirds of a century of service, a hardened warrior who had faced countless dangers. But even he felt overwhelmed, held almost in awe by the mysterious ships moving steadily toward his fleet, the eerie blue beams of their weapons slicing through space, and when one connected, inflicting catastrophic damage on the ships he commanded.

  His eyes darted to his screen, to the range display. Fifty thousand kilometers until his lead ships could open fire. The range would still be long, and shots fired from such a distance would provide weak and confusing data regarding the efficacy of the fire locks. He knew he had to get at least some of his ships in close, near enough to overcome the enemy’s own evasion tactics, and determine with some sense of certainty whether the new scanner programs truly worked.

  His mind ran calculations, evaluating the losses to date, and extrapolating those he was likely to suffer the rest of the way in. The enemy’s hit rates would climb as the distance diminished, though how much was probably more guesswork than calculation. He decided to call it an estimate, and he finished his analysis. Some of his ships would get close enough, assuming the enemy hit rates didn’t soar as the range dropped. He tried to cut off the line of thought before it moved to the inevitable next calculation. A projection on how many of his ships might survive long enough to make escape attempts…and how many had even a remote chance of making it back to the tube. The effort failed. He didn’t have an exact analysis, but he didn’t need one to know that none of his people—not one—was going to make it out of Upsilon Vega.

  Perhaps our deaths can continue to serve. No doubt Ilius would record everything happening in the system. The enemy targeting data, their accuracy percentages at different ranges, to median damage caused by hits at various distances…it was all useful tactical data, a bit more coin, perhaps, paid in return for the lives of eighteen thousand Kriegeri and nine Masters.

  And one very old fleet commander, perhaps just a bit less useless than people had thought…

  * * *

  “Megaron Krellos’s ships are opening fire, Commander.” Ilius’s crew was disciplined and focused, as were most Kriegeri forces. And all of those who served under the veteran megaron’s command.

  But discipline and experience proved inadequate to hide the tension and excitement in the officer’s voice. Ilius might have scolded the Hectoron, but he knew the Kriegeri was as aware as he was—as every officer and rank and file warrior in the small armada was—that the next moments would reveal whether the Hegemony fleet had a chance in the war, or at least the ability to hurt the enemy, to make them pay for their gains. There were reasonable standards, even ones that were very tough and strict…and then there was expecting human beings to behave as machines.

  Besides, Ilius was far from sure his own tone and demeanor were hiding the anxiety gnawing at him.

  He watched silently, his tension growing with every sudden flash on the screen. Krellos’s ships were indeed firing…and they were missing. Ilius watched a dozen shots, and not one came close to any of the enemy ships, at least as far as he could tell at his own vessel’s extreme range. Even as he sat there, he realized how much he’d allowed hope to penetrate his usual grim and skeptical psyche. He could feel the sense of promise slipping away, the now unwelcome hope being driven from his mind.

  Krellos’s force had lost half its strength, but the surviving ships were still pressing on, moving forward with as much thrust as sometimes-damaged engines could produce. The output, and the resulting acceleration, had fallen, of course, when the vessels had been compelled to divert energy to weapons arrays, but the fleet was pressing on with what Ilius realized was suicidal bravery. He’d never been one to allow emotions to slip into his assessment of war, but years of seeing the often selfless sacrifice of the Rim warriors, the desperate determination they had displayed in the face of overwhelming odds, had shaken him from his almost robotic expectations. He understood heroism in ways he never had, and he realized he was watching it in action.

  Another pair of ships blinked from his screen, another thousand Kriegeri lost. But the rest of Krellos’s fleet continued on, blasting away at their maximum rate of fire.

  Then he saw it. A shot from Hetaria’s main battery. A hit.

  Ilius closed his eyes for a second and then reopened them, focusing again on what he’d seen. He was about to request confirmation from the AI when three more shots hit enemy targets in rapid succession. The hit rate was still poor, no more than four or five percent. But there was no doubt the targeting was working. The chances of four random hits were so unimaginable as to be almost indistinguishable from zero.

  Ilius felt a wave of excitement, one that almost slipped past his efforts to remain calm. He’d seen an entire battlefleet, one vastly larger than Krellos’s beleaguered force, fight a protracted battle without scoring a single hit, save only for Avia’s one focused shot. Now, a dozen remaining vessels, some of them damaged and leaving trails of instantly refreezing atmosphere and fluids behind them, had scored no less than four hits.

  Five…

  Ilius turned his head, looking toward the scanner contacts, the enemy ships now engaged in something far more like an actual battle. He could see their reactions, an increase in evasive maneuvers, and a few seconds later, after two more of Krellos’s shots connected, something new.

  Energy readings, radiation. One of the enemy ships was showing signs of detectable damage.

  Ilius’s head snapped around as his bridge crew erupted in a ragged wave of shouts and applause. It was the kind of outburst he rarely tolerated. But this time, he just looked around the bridge, and he added his own acclamation to that of his people. It was a victory, small, fleeting, far from decisive, but a triumph nevertheless, a light in the darkness of defeat that had plagued his people since the Others had arrived.

  He felt as close to unrestrained joy as he could ever remember, and he dared to imagine a route, a long and bloody one for certain, but a path nevertheless, to survival. To victory.

  His excitement was short-lived, however, as cold reality reasserted itself with brutal force. He was staring right at the display when the small blue symbol, the icon representing Hetaria disappeared. For an instant, he tried to imagine it was a scanner error, a failure of the display mechanism. But he knew with cold certainty that the old battleship was gone, and with it Krellos.

  The Hegemony had lost a hero…but the old man had died as he had lived. In combat, and in victory.

  Ilius glanced over the display one more time, confirming to himself that none of the handful of vessels remaining in Krellos’s force had any chance at all of escaping. It hurt to leave them, but he knew his duty. Krellos was gone, and soon, thousands of his warriors would join him. It was a dark and somber end to the mission, but it had not been in vain. Kiloron Tragus’s theory had been confirmed, his targeting tactics validated. Ilius’s ships clustered around the tube had collected petabyte upon petabyte of detailed data, and their duty was now clear.

  The Hegemony was still outgunned and outclassed, but at least it could fight back now. That was no guarantee of victory, or even survival, but it was a chance…and that was the best Ilius could have hoped for.

  “Hectoron, all ships are to initiate maximum thrust, all vectors toward
the transit tube. We’ve got the data we came for, and now we’ve got to get it back to Calpharon.”

  “Yes, Megaron.”

  Ilius glanced one last time at Krellos’s survivors, now no more than half a dozen battered ships bracketed by multiple enemies. It was almost over, and when the final vessel was destroyed, it would be nothing but a mercy. It was painful, and thoughts of his old commander and mentor drifted through his mind. But those spacers still fighting, out there battling through their last moments—and Krellos who had led them there, the hero who had already passed on to legend—had at least not been sacrificed for nothing. Millions of their comrades would use the knowledge they had provided. They would fight to avenge the losses suffered in Upsilon Vega, and at Venta Traconis. They would fight to save the Hegemony.

  To save humanity.

  And the heroes lost there would never be forgotten, not if the Hegemony endured.

  He leaned back as he felt this ship’s engines firing, driving the vessel, along with its companions, toward the transit tube.

  Toward the way home.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Planet Calpharon

  Sigma Nordlin IV

  Year of Renewal 267 (322 AC)

  “No, that is not going to happen. First, I could never convince the Confederation Senate to approve it, even if I was willing.” Barron stared at Akella, his eyes cold. “Which, I must emphasize without doubt or reservation, I most certainly am not.” Against all odds, Barron had actually warmed to his Hegemony hosts. He’d been treated with courtesy and respect, and he’d come to accept them, if in a halting, irregular sort of way. Moments of respect had been interspersed with sudden memories of the war, of the terrible losses the Hegemony invasion had inflicted on his warriors. His head was spinning, the confusion struggling to overtake his rational thought, to lead him one way and then abruptly, to shove him off in another direction.