Crimson Worlds: War Stories: 3 Crimson Worlds Prequel Novellas Read online

  With the loss of their damaged dreadnought, the enemy fleet couldn’t sustain the offensive, and they withdrew. Garret and Compton and their two small ships had arguably won the campaign for the Alliance, though that victory had not, as they both knew all too well, come without its cost.

  * * * * *

  Garret walked slowly across the perfectly manicured grounds, glancing up at the massive hyper-polycarbonate dome and the vast blackness of space beyond. The Alliance Naval Academy was one of the greatest structures ever built by man, a massive series of interlocked modules orbiting a gas giant in the Wolf 1061 system. Under the nearly indestructible material of the domes, the Academy, many sections of it at least, resembled a university. There were fields and buildings that could have been part of any past navy’s campus, but instead of clouds and sky they sat beneath the inky blackness and pinprick stars of space.

  During the Academy’s night, when the artificial lighting of its simulated day receded, the midshipmen could look up at the magnificent vastness of the universe…the battlefield they would fight their wars upon. Garret had always loved that view, clearer and more perfect than any terrestrial panorama, than any visage obscured by atmosphere and pollution. But now it was changed…or he was. Or both. He saw the beauty still, but now it was marred, imperfect. Now he also saw the death, the destruction…men and women struggling to keep their savaged and dying ships in the fight…the horrible, transfixed look on their frozen, dead faces when that beautiful black vacuum took them.

  Garret was silent as he walked, deep in his own thoughts, his private struggle with himself. All his life he’d longed to taste glory, and now he had. But it wasn’t what he’d imagined, sweet and invigorating. Instead, it was bitter, gut-wrenching. He choked on it. Had he traded Charlotte’s life for it? For the fleeting rush of victory? The acclaim he’d ached for so longingly that now tore at his soul? He couldn’t imagine any accolades worth Charlotte…sweet, beloved Charlotte. Charlotte, whose love he never truly appreciated until it was lost.

  He’d been away from the Academy for twelve years, but he remembered the way perfectly. The little knoll - another construct designed for effect – and the small cluster of stone buildings perched upon it. Stokely Hall, room 311, he remembered. He walked down the corridor, past the bank of lifts to the stairs. My God, he thought, it hasn’t changed at all. He could feel himself drifting back in time, remembering an 18 year-old version of himself, fresh from Terra Nova and cocky as hell.

  He turned at the top of the stairs and walked slowly until he stood in front of a small sign that read, “Room 311.” He reached out and pressed the intercom button. “Admiral Horn? It’s Augustus Garret, sir.”

  The door slid open, revealing an office that hadn’t changed either. Seated at an antique oak desk – the same desk, Garret remembered well – was his professor, older now, but somehow also unchanged. Except for the admiral’s stars on his collar.

  Horn had long been out of the real line of command in the navy, and his eventual promotion to flag rank was a purely honorary gesture. He’d committed the cardinal sin, the one thing a serving combat leader could never do…he’d lost his nerve. It had slipped away, the ability to go back, to forget the consequences of his command decisions and face the same conflicts again.

  Augustus Garret was there to talk to his old professor, to finally ask him after all these years what terrible event had driven him from the combat ranks and banished him to the classrooms of the Academy. He was there to decide if he, too, had lost the driving force a combat commander needed.

  The older officer stood up and leaned across the desk toward his visitor, extending his hand. Garret could see it was shaking as he grasped it firmly. Garret had always liked Horn, though he’d pitied the man for what he had always seen as cowardice. Now he knew he’d been a fool. Stupid, obstinate bravery was easy, simpler at least than learning to deal with the consequences of command action. Facing your own death was one thing, but dealing with the phantoms, the faces of those who paid the price of those decisions…that was altogether a different thing.

  “Augustus, it is good to see you.” Garret snapped to attention and gave Horn a crisp salute, but the older man was already waving him off. “No salutes today, Augustus.” Horn could see the anguish in his old pupil’s face. “Today it is just two friends talking…catching up. No officers, no chain of command.” Horn walked around the desk, extending his arms to embrace Garret.

  Garret walked forward and put his arms around his old teacher. “Thank you, sir.” He took half a step back from the hug and looked into Horn’s eyes. “I was hoping we could talk about a few things.”

  Epilogue

  Garret closed the door behind him and walked through the silent corridors of Stokely Hall and out into the main quad. He’d lost all track of time, and now he realized he’d been with Horn almost four hours. They had spoken of many things, and Horn had told him what he’d come to hear. One thing Augustus Garret knew for certain…he would never again think of Jackson Horn as a coward. There were simply things from which no man could ever recover.

  Now he had to decide if he could move past all that had happened to him, to put it behind him…to fight the navy’s wars and climb through its ranks…and put the guilt and grief in its place. Charlotte’s face was there in front of him as he thought, one moment smiling, an image from their past – and the next, terrified, begging him for help, tears streaming down her raw, red cheeks. She was dead now, and nothing he did would ever change that. Worse, she’d died knowing he hadn’t come to her aid, that he’d abandoned her once again.

  The grief alone was enough to consume him. He hadn’t seen her in twelve years, not since she’d come to his graduation. He’d never intended for so long to go by, but time has a way of slipping past, draining away in small bits until the days and weeks become years gone by. Now he realized, though he’d long thought that part of his life was far behind him, he’d never stopped loving her. Memories kept flooding into his consciousness, the two of them together, always together. All those years he’d longed to leave Terra Nova, to win glory fighting among the stars. Now he wished he could go back; he ached for a single day with Charlotte, a chance to appreciate what he never truly had before, when it had been his. He wondered what life with her would have been, a life with love, but without war, without glory. But he knew that had never been his destiny.

  His mind drifted to the tragic days in the Wolf 424 system. He’d been sure he could take out the CAC battleship and get back in time to save Charlotte…at least he’d convinced himself he could. His ambition had made him leave her all those years ago, and now his arrogance had gotten her killed. He would carry the guilt with him the rest of his days…and the images of the life he might have had with her, the one he’d walked away from.

  He understood now, at least he thought he did, the pain she must have felt when he left her on Terra Nova, when he walked away from her again after graduation. He imagined what she must have thought, how she reconciled with the one person she trusted more than anyone leaving her behind, alone and abandoned. Garret’s own emotions had been masked by his ambition, but now the coverings were stripped away, and he felt the grief, all of it. Charlotte was gone forever…how could that be? How could he deal with that, and with his own failure?

  But for all the pain, Garret knew in his heart he wasn’t finished, that he wouldn’t succumb to Horn’s fate. To let the heartbreak and guilt defeat him would be to render Charlotte’s sacrifices even more meaningless. The war was still going on, and there would be new conflicts after this one, of that he was sure. He would be there, fighting those battles, making the enemy pay the price for his pain and remorse.

  The youthful cockiness that had clouded his judgment, that allowed him to turn his back on Charlotte…that was gone, as was the hunger for glory. In their place was duty, obligation, grim resolution. He could feel the chill, the emotion draining from his eyes, leaving in their place only the cold-blooded stare of a predator.
Garret would heed his calling - he would carry the standard wherever his navy went to battle. He would become its sharpened blade, and he would never falter. He would destroy his enemies, the Alliance’s enemies, without pity, without mercy. That much he owed to his lost love.

  AS Wasp

  Barracuda-class Fast Attack Ship

  (2nd ship in class)

  Complement:

  18 officers, 61 crew

  Primary Armament:

  Dual plasma torpedo tubes

  8 – 3 gigawatt plasma torpedoes

  Secondary Armament:

  2 – dual light laser (500 megawatt) turrets

  8 – light cruise missiles, thermonuclear-armed

  Defensive Array:

  4 – anti-missile lasers (50 megawatts)

  2 – laser-diffusion systems (“angeldust” launchers)

  1 – wide-dispersal magnetic cannon (“shotguns”)

  Mark V advanced ECM system

  Primary Power Plant:

  1 – 16 gigawatt laser-primed fusion reactor

  Propulsion:

  2 – GDL Model 6 Engines (max thrust – 24g)

  6 – gas-ejection repositioning jets

  Western Alliance Navy

  The Alliance Navy traces its existence to the Frontier Patrol, an early organization tasked with defending the Alliance’s first interstellar colonies. With the outbreak of the First Frontier War, Alliance Gov combined the Frontier Patrol with several smaller paramilitary forces into a unified command structure.

  The Frontier Patrol had been recruited mostly on Earth, with enlisted personnel drawn from the Cog populations and officers from the lowest levels of the political class. But the privileged classes were reluctant to serve in space, and the Cogs generally lacked the basic education to facilitate the training required by a modern space fleet. As the war continued and expanded, the newly-formed navy began to look to the colonies themselves for recruits. By the time the Peace of Titan ended the First Frontier War, most of the active duty personnel were colonists. In the years immediately following, most administrative and support functions were also moved from Earth to more strategic locations among the colonies.

  As the Superpowers continued to raid each other in space while adhering to the Treaty of Paris’ prohibition against warfare on Earth, the navy became more and more a frontier-oriented force, with little or no connection to Earth save a chain of command that eventually led to Alliance Gov in Washbalt.

  Although an entirely different organization, the Alliance navy considered itself the successor to the British and American forces that had dominated Earth’s oceans for several centuries. Prickly about its short history, the young organization quickly developed a significant body of tradition, mostly borrowed from the older, predecessor forces.

  The growing colonies embraced the fleet that protected them and safeguarded their trade lifelines back to Earth. Service in the navy became highly respected and, eventually, extremely competitive. As fleets became larger and space combat tactics more developed, the Alliance navy grew into the largest and most effective of all the Power’s space forces.

  Despite its ultimate skill and power, the geo-political situation generally worked against the Alliance navy, and it was frequently compelled to face the combined forces of the Caliphate and CAC, often alone and outnumbered. As a result, it developed an aggressive officer corps that encouraged boldness and risk-taking. A cult of glory grew up around the senior commanders, and subsequent generations aspired to equal and exceed the exploits of those who had come before.

  Augustus Garret and Terrance Compton came of age during a period of rapid growth in the size and scale of the navy. Human-occupied space was expanding rapidly and, with explorers and colonists, man also exported his wars. The senior officers of the day had cut their teeth commanding the ragtag squadrons of the First Frontier War, and they struggled to keep up with changes in tactics and ordnance. Garret and his brethren were the first class brought up from the start within the “big fleet” navy…the first ones comfortable thinking in terms of battlegroups and fleet maneuvers. He and his compatriots would set the standard for naval tactics through the Third Frontier War and beyond.

  The Gates of Hell

  Crimson Worlds Prequel III

  By Jay Allan

  Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one. - Thomas Paine

  Excerpt from the memoirs of General Elias Holm, Commandant, Alliance Marine Corps:

  Persis. It was…it still is…a major Caliphate sector capital and one of their most important colonies. The system is a choke point, a nexus of half a dozen warp gates leading to almost everywhere worthwhile in Caliphate space. It is a massively valuable piece of interstellar real estate, utterly crucial to the Caliphate, and that’s why we were there. The Second Frontier War had been raging for more than a decade, and the scars of battle were everywhere. Tens of thousands of soldiers – and an uncounted number of civilians – were dead, buried in the sands they’d fought to conquer or defend. Dozens of worlds lay in ruins, the battlefields where the Superpowers fought their seemingly never-ending struggle.

  The scale of operations, like the colonial holdings of the Powers, had grown enormously in the years since the previous war, and ten years of all-out effort had driven the combatants to the brink of economic collapse. The fleets were worn down, damaged vessels backed up at the shipyards and new construction unable to keep pace with combat losses. The ground forces had savaged each other in a hundred battles, the few surviving veterans pushed to the breaking point. There was growing starvation in the slums of Earth and hordes of refugees in the colonies, as more and more resources were poured into keeping exhausted armies and navies in the fight. Something had to give…the war had degenerated into a stalemate, one that was strangling all the participants. The invasion of Persis was designed to break that deadlock.

  The operation was General Worthington’s brainchild. It was an audacious undertaking, by far the most ambitious planetary assault ever attempted up to that time. Persis had been considered one of the “untouchables,” a world sufficiently developed to fight off any mobile assault one of the Powers could launch. But no one had ever called “Viper” Worthington timid. His perfectly planned and executed lightning strikes had brought the Alliance back from the brink of defeat early in the war. At Persis, he would launch the most daring assault of his career, and it would win the war for the Alliance. But that brilliant victory would not be without cost…in blood and treasure, of course…but also in disillusionment and despair.

  As a Marine you plan for anything…anything but being abandoned by your own government, left to die at the hands of your enemy, written off as the price of an advantageous peace. The fighting on Persis was brutal, hard on everyone who served there. But it became a nightmare for the Marines of the 3rd Battalion…the men and women it was my privilege to lead during those fateful days.

  Marines stare into the gates of hell every day; it’s what we do. But on Persis, we went through those gates…and we came out on the other side. At least some of us did…

  Chapter 1

  Serapis Ridge

  HQ – Force Hammer

  Planet Persis – Iota Persi II

  Day One

  “Alright, 3rd Battalion, let’s get moving.” Captain Elias Holm turned slowly, looking out over the deep valleys on both sides of the position. The ridge was ideal terrain, a long stretch of upland with a narrow depression running right down the center. Perfect cover. If the enemy wanted to move his people off this high ground they were going to have to throw one hell of a lot of force in to do it…that much was certain. Holm knew they didn’t have that much to spare, not without dangerously weakening their main line. His people had landed at a weak point, kilometers behind the enemy’s primary defensive axis.

  “You all know what to do.” Holm snapped out his orders over the unitwide com. “Nothing’s changed, so
get to work. I want everybody in position now.” There were landers scattered all around the ridge, and some of his platoons were still unloading and shaking out into formation. He had to get the rest of the battalion up onto the high ground and in position. If the enemy hit them while they were still forming up, he’d throw away every advantage gained by the surprise landing.

  You’re running the battalion now, he thought, scolding himself, not your company. You should have gone through the company commanders, not direct on the open com. The other captains had almost certainly already ordered their platoons into position – he could only confuse things by micromanaging. You’ve got good people under you, he reminded himself forcefully…let them do their damned jobs.

  The battalion had dropped behind enemy lines and seized the high ground south of the capital city of Tamiar, a high risk operation, but one with a huge potential payoff. Persis was a must-hold for the Caliphate…and the planet’s capital was the logistical center of the entire defensive effort. By threatening Tamiar and cutting its supply lines to the Caliphate field forces, the Marines disrupted the planetwide defense network and seized the initiative. But it was a dangerous move, a knife’s edge maneuver that could easily end in disaster. The battalion was deep in enemy territory, cut off far from any support. Holm knew his people were on their own.