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

  * * *

  Grachus felt strange. When she’d taken that final shot, she’d been positive it had finished off that last opponent. Now she wasn’t so sure. The recollections of those seconds gelled in her mind now, solidified. She’d had him dead to rights, but then he did…something. The ship shimmied, at the last second. It wasn’t engine thrust, not anything she’d expected.

  Could he have ejected some of his atmosphere? Just enough to adjust his vector a fraction of a degree? The thought had just popped into her mind, but the more she thought about it, the more she was convinced.

  She sighed to herself, coming face to face with the troubled thoughts in her mind. She’d fought against a number of the Alliance’s enemies, and now, even against former Palatian comrades. But she’d never been pushed as hard as she’d been by these Confeds.

  She’d seen the other Confed coming after her, still out of range when she’d fired her final shot at her opponent. She’d felt the urge to engage the other fighter as soon as possible, an almost overwhelming need to finish things with the ace she knew was truly a match for her. But, she didn’t have enough fuel, and while she couldn’t imagine her approaching enemy did either, that made any fight now a figurative coin toss, to determine who ran out of power first. Grachus took calculated risks, but she didn’t gamble. Especially not now.

  She was still struggling with the realization that she was no longer just a pilot, nor even the leader of a single squadron. She was responsible for hundreds of people here, in Tarantum…and hundreds more with the main fleet, in Pergara. The whole operation was unorthodox, difficult, and extremely complex. The only reason it was happening was because Calavius—the Imperator!—had listened to her plan. He had ordered it implemented, and placed her in charge of all fighter operations. She couldn’t just go get herself killed and leave her pilots leaderless. Vengeance demanded she fight Dauntless and its warriors, and honor compelled her to match against this Confederation ace. But duty stood above all, and she had work to do.

  The fleet was coming, and the motherships for her squadrons with it. Her mission had been to wait here and to slam the door shut on the retreating enemy forces, to slow them and help close the trap that would sign the death warrant of the Gray cause. But Dauntless had interfered again, and she’d been forced to attack early, lest her hiding squadrons be discovered. Now, her ships were depleted, low on fuel and energy.

  Fortunately, she’d planned for the eventuality. There were tankers deep in the dust cloud, hidden beyond easy detection range. She had to get her squadrons back there, and refuel them. It would be chaotic, a difficult operation. Few, if any, of her people had experience with anything of the sort. But, if her squadrons couldn’t get back into the fight in time, the fleeing Gray and Confed ships would escape.

  “All squadrons…disengage. Commence operation Black-Three.” She didn’t suspect the Confeds had a fighter operating on more than fumes right now either, but the codes she’d put in place still made sense. Let them think we’re done, that we’re running off to some pickup point. Then, we’ll hit them again.

  She glanced at the display, at the damage assessments on the two Confed battleships. She couldn’t help but feel disappointment at the data on Dauntless. She’d let herself hope her assaults would finish the old vessel, but despite signs of significant damage, the battleship appeared close to fully operational.

  The other ship was a different story. It was clearly newer, larger, and more powerful than Dauntless…but her squadrons had sliced through its defenders and launched one devastating assault after another. She couldn’t be sure—long range damage assessments were unreliable—but her best guess was her people had come close to taking that ship down.

  She checked the scanners, confirming that her squadrons were executing the order she’d just given. They looked great, their formations perfectly ordered—save for the great gaps in the ranks. She’d taken heavy losses in this battle, especially in the fighting around Dauntless. Her assault squadrons had been gutted trying to get through to Tyler Barron’s ship, and her lost crews joined the ghosts screaming for vengeance against that cursed Confed vessel.

  She would get that vengeance, for Kat, and for the rest of her comrades. But to get to Dauntless, she had to get through its fighters, and that meant first, she had to fight that pilot. He was too good, and he inspired Dauntless’s wings.

  Grachus was methodical, cold, calculating…almost amazingly so for a fighter pilot. She believed in doing her homework, in being ready for what she had to face. And so, she’d studied. Every record she could get on Dauntless, on the fateful battle four years before. Her new rank gave her access to more files than she’d had available before.

  She couldn’t know, not for sure, who this enemy pilot was, or even whether he’d been in the combat at Santis that had claimed Kat. Dauntless had many skilled pilots, then as now. But she had a pretty good hunch. One of Dauntless’s fighters was truly special. He had killed many Alliance pilots at Santis, contributed mightily to Kat’s defeat…and since then he had cut a bloody swath through the Union fighter corps.

  She tried to be cautious, to hold back from making any assumptions when she couldn’t be certain, but somehow now the doubt was gone. She could feel it. She knew her enemy. Knew his name, at least.

  Jake Stockton.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Free Trader Pegasus

  Carnasus System

  Deep in the Badlands

  Year 311 AC

  “It was a big operation down there, Andi. Massive excavation, lots of debris…in orbit, at least. Whoever was down there didn’t want anybody snooping around on the surface. They blasted the whole area with a nuclear barrage, and a dirty one at that. Anybody going down to snoop around would need level one protective gear, and even with that they might need a cleanse when they got back.”

  Lafarge was looking at her screen as Merrick spoke, watching the image from one of the drones she’d sent down. Pegasus had launched four, but the first three had flown too close to intense hotspots, and the radiation had scrambled their systems. She’d managed to pull the last one back, but the downside of that was data was limited to what the device could gather from ten thousand meters above the site.

  “Careful with that drone, Vig. We’ve only got four left, and we’re going to need them if we find what we’re after.” Or should I burn them on this? Is what we’re looking for as important as…whatever this was?

  “Got it, Andi. I’ll keep it at ten-k, at least until we’ve got all we can get from there. Then, maybe we’ll ease it in, see what other data we can collect before it gets fried.”

  “Good.” Her thoughts were focused on the planet below, on her wild guesses about what had happened there. She hadn’t expected to find anything at all this far out. Nor could she guess with any level of fact-based reliability. But despite all of that, she was still certain. The Union had been there.

  And they took something significant with them. They weren’t here digging for rock samples.

  She felt the urge to order Vig to set a course back to the Confederation, to warn Admiral Striker. She shook her head, still trying to understand how she’d gotten where she had over the last two years. A Confederation admiral as a trusted friend, a captain—no, commodore now—as a lover. Lafarge had spent most of her adult life dodging naval officers and other government officials. She liked Striker, and her feelings for Barron were still there, but she still couldn’t quite reconcile with having one foot in the harsh light of the navy—and the regulations and government interference that entailed—and the other in the shadowy world of Badlands rogues and adventurers. She’d always had a clear idea of who she was and what she believed, but for the first time, cracks had begun to appear in that certainty.

  “Any guesses, Vig?”

  “On what they pulled out of there?” Her friend turned and looked across Pegasus’s cramped bridge toward her. “No idea. Nothing to even base a guess on. It could be nothing. Maybe they just dug
and didn’t find anything.”

  “And they unleashed a couple hundred megatons of thermonuclear bombs to cover up the dirt they disturbed?” Her words were directed at Merrick, but they worked on her own doubts as well. She’d been thinking the same thing, that perhaps the Union had been out here on a fruitless chase. The truth was, most Badlands tips turned out to be a waste of time. But the bombardment told her they were trying to hide something.

  And that means they found something. Something important.

  Damn.

  “We’ll collect as much data as we can, Vig…and then we have to make a decision. Do we turn back, warn the authorities that the Union was out here, and that they likely found something significant? Or do we track down what we’re out here looking for?”

  Merrick hesitated for a few seconds. “Andi, assuming we were willing to give up our own quest, what would we say when we got back? We think the Union might have found something in the Badlands? It’s not like we know anything. For that matter, who would we tell? Are we talking about risking our lives with another unauthorized visit to Grimaldi in the hope that Admiral Striker is there and we can reach him?”

  Lafarge nodded slowly. “You’re right, Vig. Part of me feels like we should report this…but report what? Chances are, no one would listen to us. And even if they did, what could they do about it? We don’t know where the ships that were here are now. We have no idea what they found.” She paused. “It’s important information in a sense, but also in a way, useless. At least unless we can learn more.”

  “If we try to land anywhere within a hundred kilometers of those hotspots, we’ll risk frying the navcom. We could end up stranded…or worse.” Merrick shook his head slowly. “There’s no way to get more information, Andi. Not with what we’ve got here. We don’t have the protective gear we’d need, even if we landed far away and headed in on foot. And, chances are there’s nothing to find anyway. You don’t blast something that hard so you leave meaningful clues behind.”

  Lafarge looked back at her screen. The data from the drone was still coming in, but it wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. If she had the resources to truly explore this site, she probably would have done it. But there was nothing to be gained staying, and nothing material to report, even if she managed to reach Admiral Striker.

  “All right, Vig. Let’s bring that drone in a bit closer and see if we can get anything else before we lose it.”

  Merrick turned and flipped a pair of switches. “Done, Andi.”

  She leaned back and sighed. “Meanwhile, let’s get ready to blast out of orbit. I’ve been studying the charts, and it looks like the inner transwarp link is our best bet. Lay in a direct course.”

  “On it.”

  She took a last look at the screen, watching as a stream of closer-ranged, but essentially unchanged, data scrolled down, stopping perhaps half a minute later when the link to the probe was lost. Then she turned back to her navigation charts.

  * * *

  “Minister Villieneuve, welcome home, sir. It is a joy to see you.” Pierre Coulette was clearly on his best behavior, his fawning tone bordering on obsequious. He was wearing an exquisite suit, perfectly pressed, a hypersilk blend that likely cost ten times what the average citizen of the Union earned in a year.

  Villieneuve just nodded. He was tired, and his head was pounding. He despised space travel, and this had been the longest trip he’d ever taken. He was so happy to be back on the firm ground of the capital, he was even willing to overlook whatever mischief and self-dealing Coulette had been up to in his absence.

  Assuming it wasn’t too bad…

  He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that Coulette could shift in an instant from an attentive and admiring subordinate to a dark figure standing over his corpse, blood-soaked blade in hand. Villieneuve had no illusions about what drove people, and he strove to keep that understanding always foremost in his thoughts. The human mind ached to believe…in people, causes, trust. People were so easily lied to because they longed for what they were told to be true. Villieneuve had long ago sworn to himself he would never fall into that trap. He would recognize corruption, see it wherever it lurked—which was everywhere—and he would use it to his advantage.

  Corruption was rampant in the Union, of course, but he knew it was nearly as endemic in places like the Confederation or Alliance, nations that considered themselves purer in such ways. As it no doubt was in the old empire. Likely that is what led to the demise of that great polity…as it has with every nation that has ever existed.

  Villieneuve had worked harder, pushed farther, to drive the Union to total hegemony than any government minister anywhere. But it was nothing so childish as patriotism that pushed him, nor any unrealistic beliefs that the Union would stand forever. His lust for power, if less overt and blatant than those of some of his peers, was centered on himself. The Union government was his means to an end. If it couldn’t prevail in its current form, he would gladly see it changed to something more successful.

  The Confederation was a threat to the Union, and the Union was the basis of his own power and position. Therefore, the Confederation had to be subjugated, the danger it represented neutralized. It was that simple. He’d tried a number of strategies to attain that goal to date, all unsuccessful. This time he had sought a new kind of ally, not the unreliability of foreign warriors bound to service by treaties, but the fearsome technology of a long-dead empire.

  And he’d done it.

  The shipment was unloading even as he stood there, bound for the secret facility he’d prepared. He had found what he’d sought, but it wasn’t ready. Not yet. There was work to do…and he had to address the issue of a power source. The device required antimatter, in quantities orders of magnitude beyond that he could obtain. But energy was energy, and he was sure his engineers could adapt fusion power to the role.

  That’s a lot of fusion…dozens of reactors, even hundreds…

  He’d been preoccupied with the power, even as the small team of researchers he’d brought with him had recited the myriad of other problems to be solved. But he wasn’t going to allow that to stop him, not this close to finding the way.

  To winning the war.

  I will see it built, however massive a chain of reactors we need. Then we will deploy this device…and the Confeds will fall. They have no defense against this onslaught.

  He turned away from his fawning companion. “See that this entire area is closed off, Coulette. No one, I mean no one, gets in here without my express authorization.” He swung his head around, glaring back toward the minister. “Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  That means you too, Coulette.

  Villieneuve sighed. He’d already set up his own security. If Coulette snooped around too much, he’d disappear. There could be no slip ups now. Not this close to victory.

  * * *

  Lafarge was watching as the system data came in. Pegasus had just emerged from the transit point, and her systems were still coming back online. The early information was promising. Lafarge had done her best to calculate the location, to make sense out of the clues her people were following. Her best guess had been this would be the system, but she wasn’t going to let herself believe it, not until she was sure.

  Her thoughts kept drifting back several systems, to the site of the Union expedition. She still had no real evidence it had been the Union, but she didn’t have any doubts either. She’d been second-guessing her decision to move on…she should have explored the planet more aggressively, she should have gone back and told Admiral Striker. But the answers were still the same. She didn’t have the equipment to inspect the radioactive hell the Union bombardment had left behind, and she didn’t have anything useful to tell Striker either. What would I have said? The Union is up to something, but I don’t know what?

  “I think this is it, Andi.” Merrick’s voice was crisp, focused. Her first officer seemed less troubled by the decision to move
on. Just as you would have been before…

  She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. She found herself astride two worlds, half of her still an outlaw at heart, and the other half now neck deep in Confederation business. Her people had stuck with her, spent most of the past two years pursuing ventures that, with the exception of the payment from Admiral Striker, had been essentially profitless. That wasn’t what they’d signed on for, and she knew they had stayed purely out of loyalty to her. But now it was time for her to return to her roots, to come through for her crew. Her friends.

  “Let’s hope, Vig. We could use the payday. The site is supposed to be on planet number three, so let’s get over there and get some close-in scans. We’re still just guessing we’re in the right place, so let’s run down the checklist before we pop any champagne corks.”

  “You got it, Andi.” Merrick turned toward his workstation. “Locking in course toward planet three, fifty percent thrust.” A few seconds later: “Ready.”

  Lafarge looked at the screen, and the system details continuing to appear as her active scanners blasted out on full power.

  “Let’s go,” she said, feeling a touch of the old explorer’s excitement. I’m back, she thought. The old Andi Lafarge.

  But there were doubts still lurking, and a feeling in the pit of her stomach that whatever the Union had been up to, she hadn’t heard the last of it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  CFS Dauntless

  Tarantum System

  Year 311 AC

  Alarms were wailing all over Dauntless’s Alpha flight deck. Fighters were coming in, landing any way they could amid the twisted wreckage and firefighting equipment cluttering the normally wide open area.

  Stockton saw that there were no fires still raging, though the sections of melted and rehardened metal told him there had been conflagrations there. He wondered what herculean efforts Dauntless’s damage control teams had made to suppress the fires…to keep the bays open.