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

  “We don’t have time to waste, Ellia.”

  “I know, Andi, but this carbon is very dense. It’s going to take some time to complete a thorough scan.”

  Andi knew Ellia was right, but she was still edgy. There was something about the planet, a foreboding that ate away at her. She knew the importance of the mission, but she still felt the urge to order everyone aboard Pegasus and blast off, putting as much distance as possible between her ship and Telus Zakaris III.

  “Lex!” Andi turned her head toward the engineer. He’d been standing just to the rear of the ship, checking out the engine cone.

  “Yes, Andi, what is it?” He stepped around the end of the ship and jogged over toward where Andi and Ellia were standing.

  “Lex, we need more scanner power. We’ve got to get through this compressed carbon field and check for any kind of underground base, or the remains of one.”

  “I’ve got the reactor on low power…I could fire it up, but it will keep us from doing a lot of maintenance. Pegasus seems fine, but I always like to take advantage of being in an atmosphere to check out some exterior features without having to suit up. I know we’re in a hurry, but do you really think a few hours matters that much?”

  Andi didn’t answer, not right away. She didn’t think a few hours were likely to matter, not when her people were on a mission that would take weeks, months even. But she wanted to get off Telus Zakaris III was quickly as possible. There wasn’t any logic to it, nothing she could express in words. But she’d been on a good number of dead imperial planets, and this one felt somehow…haunted.

  “Do it, Lex. I know you won’t be able to service the ship as well, but she’ll get us back home anyway. She’s a tough old girl.” Andi suspected her people were wondering why she was so edgy. She’d have told them, if she’d been able to explain it.

  She was beginning to believe the planet was the one they had sought, though she didn’t know if it would provide what they had come for. Regardless, success or not, she had a troubling feeling the ravaged, haunted world would extract a price from her, from her people.

  “Let’s do all we can to find what we came for and get the hell out of here.” She exchanged glances with Lex and Ellia, but she pulled her eyes away from each after a few seconds. She tried not to shiver at the chill she felt in her spine…but she failed, and her entire body quivered in the light breeze.

  * * *

  Andi stared as her people raced around, setting up the drilling apparatus at the spot Ellia had designated. She had reviewed her friend’s analysis, and she’d agreed with every conclusion. Almost certainly, Telus Zakaris III was the planet they’d all come to find. They couldn’t be absolutely sure until and unless they found what they had come for, but she’d upped her mental assessment to north of ninety percent.

  Even if they were on the right planet, that didn’t guarantee what they had come to find had survived the Cataclysm and the intervening centuries…but the data they’d gathered so far was cause for optimism.

  Still, Andi was troubled, and she couldn’t shake the dark feeling. The planet had a macabre feel, certainly. Any place where millions had lived that was now totally dead was bound to carry its share of gloom. But Andi had been to more than a dozen major planets in the Badlands, and she’d never been particularly troubled by the haunted nature of them.

  Until now.

  She walked up toward the drilling site. “We almost ready to start?” Andi had been the force driving them all forward, the one who’d been most insistent on coming to Telus Zakaris. Now, she was fighting the urge to order all the equipment packed up so they could get the hell off the planet as quickly as possible.

  “About ten minutes, Andi. But if we have to go too deep, we’re going to have to figure out a way to get down there. We can set up a winch to bring us to about a thousand meters, but any more than that’s going to be a problem.”

  “Well, let’s see what happens. The scanning data suggests a few areas that could be what we’re looking for are lot closer to the surface that a thousand meters. If they’re all a bust, we’ll figure out what to do next.

  Andi knew what she really wanted to do…but that was impossible. Whatever dangers, imagined or otherwise, that awaited them on Telus Zakaris, they were no greater hazards than defeat at the hands of the Highborn. Andi knew people responded to choices and dangers differently, but if it came down to death in some forgotten tunnel in the Badlands, or life as a slave of the Highborn, her choice was clear. No danger, no hazard, cold and real, or fuzzy and dreamlike, was enough to drive her away. Not while there was a chance of finding what they’d come for.

  “The first likely spot is about two hundred down. We’d be through normal ground in less than half an hour, but once we hit that compressed carbon, our drilling rate is going to drop hard. Maybe six hours to get down two hundred? Seven?” Ellia sounded almost apologetic, as though it was somehow her fault the material under the drilling site was dense and difficult to penetrate.

  “Let’s just do the best we can. I’d say we could draw more power from the ship, but if we burn out that drill, then we’ve really got a problem.”

  Ellia just nodded. Andi cursed herself silently for not including spares for the large drill…even though she knew she’d already packed Pegasus about as full as she could. There just hadn’t been space for everything they might need.

  Andi stared at the ground, and she looked up at her people moving all around. She had six Marines, the survivors from her last expedition, reinforced with three fresh additions…all experienced veterans. She hadn’t even had the urge to argue with Tyler when he insisted she take them again. She couldn’t argue they hadn’t saved her ass on Pintarus. None of her people would have made it out of there without the Marines’ firepower.

  There was no guarantee they wouldn’t face another fight like that on Telus Zakaris III. “Ellia, I want everybody armed…and I mean at all times. Is that understood? She glanced down at the Hegemony Master’s waist, to her belt and the empty holster at its side.

  “Sure, Andi. I just figured the Marines…”

  “We needed everybody at Pintarus, and I see no reason to expect things to be easier here. I want three of the Marines on duty during drilling…and I want them all here, fully combat-equipped, when we’re ready to break through into any of the chambers shown on the scan. We’re not taking any chances, Ellia. I want everybody on the alert. These old imperial bases are dangerous, and we know very little about this planet, about what was here other than this base. But I can tell you from personal experience—and we all saw it on Pintarus—old imperial defense systems are durable. So, wherever you left your pistol, humor me and go get it now…and grab one of the assault rifles from the rack while you’re at it.” Andi herself had a rifle slung across her back and a pistol holstered on each side.

  She couldn’t guarantee none of her people would die on Telus Zakaris III, in fact, if she was honest with herself, she expected casualties. But she could make damned sure none of those happened because she hadn’t been ready.

  Ready for whatever the hell was down there.

  Chapter Twenty

  250,000 Kilometers from Base Striker

  Vasa Denaris System

  Year 328 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  Reg Griffin took a deep breath, grateful she was alone in her cockpit. She could feel the clammy, warm sweat under her flightsuit…and the droplets sliding down the side of her face from her dampened hairline. She was a veteran, but she was scared to death. She wouldn’t admit that to any of her people, but she couldn’t deny herself the truth. She’d barely made it back from the last battle, plucked from the cold depths of space at the last moment by her rescuers. She could still feel death’s icy grip on her spine, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t purge the darkness from her thoughts.

  She’d given her people a rousing speech moments before, tinkered with their formations until they were perfect, reviewed the scans and the fleet disposition. She’
d done everything she could possibly do to prepare her people for what lay ahead, to get them ready for the ordeal they faced.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Her wings were outnumbered, that much was certain. The exact math was still a guess, as enemy ships continued to pour through the transit point and launch additional squadrons. Two to one, at least, she’d guessed, and maybe worse. She’d has fifteen hundred of her ships outfitted as bombers, giving her a strike capability against Highborn line ships, but she’d just sent the comm back to flight control. Stara Sinclair had agreed completely with her decision to refit those ships as interceptors and launch them as soon as possible.

  Wasting time in the middle of a battle outfitting and reoutfitting ships was never a good thing. She needed those fighters, certainly, but she was far from sure it wouldn’t be too late by the time they finally launched. Assuming they didn’t get stuck in blasted launch bays once the battleships got into the fight.

  Her force was large, just over seven thousand interceptors, stretched out in a pair of lines close to thirty thousand kilometers long. The Highborn ships were in a comparable formation, though theirs was much denser…save for the ships out in front and off to the starboard side. She’d reported those wings to Admiral Barron, who’d already known about them, of course. Those birds were clearly trying to avoid meeting up with hers, and she was far from sure she could even intercept them if she tried. But she’d been ready to have a go at it until Barron called her off.

  She’d almost argued, but she quickly realized the admiral was right. Whatever those ships were, whatever they were going to do, she had at best one chance in four of effectively intercepting them, and even if she succeeded, she would expose her wings to a flank attack by the enemy squadrons that already so badly outnumbered them.

  No, whatever those ships were, the base and the battleships would have to handle them. Reg Griffin and her people had their hands full.

  Her comm unit buzzed, and she tapped the small control, piping the message into her headset. But it wasn’t verbal. It wasn’t from any of her wing or division commanders.

  She reached down, tapping at her scanner controls, trying to trace the communications beam. Her fingers moved over the small keypad, and her eyes locked on the screen, searching.

  Then she froze.

  The beam hadn’t come from any of her ships, nor from the fleet positioned behind her squadrons. It was a broad beam transmission aimed directly toward her entire strike force…and it had come from the enemy formation.

  Not just the enemy wings, but from the very ship she’d pegged as her old adversary, the pilot she’d decided was the primary mover behind the proficiency of the Highborn squadrons.

  The pilot who had come a micron from killing her in the last fight.

  It’s a trick. It has to be a trick…

  Her fingers moved over the keys, feeding the transmission into the AI. It looked like some kind of mathematics, highly complex and almost indecipherable. For a few seconds, she was utterly confused. Then she realized.

  These are evasion routines…

  She shook her head, but as she continued to review the equations, she became more and more convinced. She’d developed the routines for her own wings, but these were incredibly detailed, and far more complex.

  She felt a flash of excitement. If her people knew the enemy routines, they could adjust for them. Their hit rates would go off the charts. It might even be enough to offset the hopeless numerical deficit they faced. She reached out, ready to direct the AI to download the routines into her targeting computer.

  She stopped dead.

  Wait…this is a trick. It has to be…

  She rechecked the line on the comm beam. The ship that had sent the message was the one flown by the pilot she’d fought before, she was almost sure of it.

  It was a trick, some kind of effort to disrupt her pilots’ targeting. That was all it could be.

  It’s not going to work…and this time, I am going to kill you…

  She narrowed her eyes, focusing on the single fighter as she pushed her thrust up toward maximum.

  Her last battle with the mysterious Highborn pilot had been close, but it had been a defeat, one that had almost claimed her.

  This time she was going to turn the tables. She was going to send her adversary straight to hell.

  * * *

  Stockton shook his head abruptly. The moves, the routines, the smooth vector changes. Stockton knew fighter combat like no other human being ever had, and he fancied he could identify a pilot by the style of his or her flight.

  It can’t be her. She’s dead…

  He saw Reg Griffin in the ship in the center of his monitor, an image as clear as if she was sitting in the cockpit on his lap. But it couldn’t be her. Reg Griffin wasn’t out there. She was dead. He’d killed her, just as he had so many of his old pilots.

  Still, he couldn’t shake the thought, and his initial analysis quickly became enhanced by intuition. He was sure it was her, somehow, just as he was certain it couldn’t be.

  His mind raced. He’d planned for months, waited for the moment when he could finally lash out against his captors and help his old comrades. He still couldn’t make sense of what he thought of Reg, of the ship on which his eyes were focused, but it didn’t matter who was in that ship, not really. All that mattered was that the Pact squadrons used what he had sent them. He wasn’t sure it would be enough to overcome the numerical superiority of the Highborn, but it was a big edge, and it would save many of his old pilots’ lives. He owed them at least that much.

  It had taken everything he had to wretch control of his body from the Collar, but when he had done it, the change was complete. Or so it seemed. He’d prayed silently for just those brief moments, for the time he needed to send the transmission. But he was still in control as he sat there, moments later, waiting to see if the carefully calculated communication beam had been picked up by any of the Highborn ships. His targeting had been meticulously plotted, intended to reach only the Pact forces, but he couldn’t be sure…and he had no idea what to expect if any of the Highborn realized what he had done.

  He didn’t care that much. For perhaps the first time in battle, he wasn’t afraid. At least not for himself. He was ready for death, he’d been ready for it for years…but he wanted to live long enough to know his message had been received and implemented, that it would do some good.

  That before he died, one last time Jake Stockton would help lead his people into battle, even if none of them ever knew what he had done. He didn’t need them to know…nothing could truly make up for what he’d done the past five years anyway. But providing some aid at least would ease his final moments.

  But the Pact wings were coming on exactly as they had been. The changes from implementing the routines wouldn’t be very noticeable yet, but there would be something. There wasn’t.

  He understood.

  They think it’s a trick. Of course, why wouldn’t they?

  He felt the hope he’d fought so hard to gather slipping away. If he couldn’t find some way to convince his old comrades the information he’d sent them was legitimate, he was going to watch them fly into an apocalypse. They knew they were outnumbered, but they weren’t prepared for the upgraded weaponry the Highborn fighters mounted.

  He had to find a way—some way—to convince them. But he had no idea how.

  * * *

  Chronos sat on the bridge of his flagship, silent, almost like a stone statue. He’d said his goodbyes to Akella, and though he’d tried to disguise them—pointlessly, he knew, at least to one of Akella’s intellect—he’d been sure to say all he’d needed to say. Just in case.

  Chronos wasn’t one to expect death in battle, but he knew the math behind the fight just beginning, and also the desperate need for the fleet to hold…somehow. Whatever the cost. The battle would be bloody, and it would be a struggle to the end. Thousands would die. Hundreds of thousands.

  If h
e was one of them, at least he’d said his piece to her, told her what she meant to him.

  The whole thing had seemed strange, unnatural, somehow wrong. Chronos knew that was only his upbringing, the cultural constraints place on Hegemony Masters that still held considerable sway over him. Recreational sexual relationships were perfectly acceptable, as long as no extended emotional attachments developed. The Hegemony’s leaders were expected to mate with multiple partners, to do their part to nurture the upper reaches of the gene pool. Chronos had four children in total, a reasonable if unspectacular number, but Akella only had two. The Hegemony’s Number One had endured considerable criticism for her lack of effort in making additional matches, and while her relationship with Chronos had only begun late in her fertile period, it would be easy for her rivals to blame her lack of children on her feelings for Chronos. He had come to question the Hegemony’s social mores, though he also knew he’d lost his objectivity in the matter. He still believed in the imperative to continue to improve the genetic quality of humanity…but he loved Akella, too.

  “Commander Chronos, Commander Ilius is on your line.”

  Chronos reached down and tapped at the comm controls. “Ilius, old friend. Are your forces ready?” Chronos was leading just over half the Hegemony’s remaining vessels, and Ilius, his longtime comrade, was in command of the rest, off on the far starboard flank.

  “Yes, Chronos…we’re ready.” Ilius could be a grim old warrior at times, but his tone was the very sound of stoic dedication to duty. “I just wanted to check in with you. We have fought together many times. You have ever been my commander, but you are also my friend. Fight well, Chronos, Number Eight of the Hegemony…and make it through this deadly battle. You have much to live for. Your time has not yet come.”

  Chronos felt a sudden tension, a concern at the fatalism in his friend’s tone. Ilius wasn’t a member of the Council, but he was among the top thousand in genetic ranking, a man of thought as well as of war. But he didn’t expect to survive the coming fight, Chronos could tell that much.