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  He smiled at Lucius. The boy was taller now than his mother had been, and he was starting to fill out. He was less than a year from the Ordeal, and his sister just two years behind him. Another generation to be fed into the fires.

  His eyes caught Ariane. In the fading afternoon light, she was the image of her mother at that age. Vennius allowed himself a memory, and for a moment, he was looking at Kat, and not her daughter. She was just one more part of his life gone now, as most things he valued were. He had wondered more than once if he hadn’t lived longer than a warrior should, if each passing year brought nothing more than a clearer image of all that was no longer there; comrades, loved ones, even easy devotion to the way and the ideals of the Alliance that he now found increasingly difficult to sustain.

  “Lucius, you are the head of the Regullii, one of the greatest Palatian houses. Never forget that.”

  “I won’t, Uncle Tarkus.” Vennius could hear the strength in the boy’s voice, and he knew it had been forged by loss and pain. His father had not long survived his mother, leaving a boy barely ten years of age to stand alone. Vennius had tried to be there, though civil war and the demands of the Imperator’s chair had made it difficult to give the children the time he wished he could.

  “Ariane, I see much of your mother in you. She will be with you, always. Remember who you are, and from whom you come, as you move into womanhood and, as your brother before you, endure the true weight of your position and lineage. You are Patricians, and you will both be warriors. The great name you carry will bring you both great benefits and crushing burdens. The nobility and strength that course through your veins will sustain you, and lead you both to greatness. Remember that, always…both of you.”

  “I will, Uncle Tarkus.” Ariane stood next to her brother, her posture no less that of the warrior, despite the fact that she was at least ten centimeters shorter than Lucius.

  “I will as well, Uncle.” Lucius had much of his grandfather and namesake in him, the same long, light brown hair, the same angular jaw. The elder Lucius had been Vennius’s best friend since childhood, and now it struck him how long it had been since he’d lost the man he’d considered a brother. He had lived too long for a warrior, endured too much loss, and he felt it eating away at him like no enemy had managed in a half century of war.

  “I must go now, children, but you will be well cared for in my absence.”

  Tarkus Vennius, the Imperator of the Alliance, turned and walked slowly toward the door. He didn’t want to leave the children, but there was no choice.

  Once more, Vennius was heading off to war.

  Chapter Twenty

  Transmission from Assault Force Alpha

  We are under attack from all sides. The rebels are heavily armed and well-organized. We need reinforcements immediately. We cannot hold. Repeat, we cannot… – transmission terminated

  Barroux Spaceport

  Barroux, Rhian III

  Union Year 217 (313 AC)

  “Forward! No one escapes!” Remy Caron stood in the center of the maelstrom, thousands of citizens, rebel soldiers now, in name if not yet in training and discipline, screaming and racing forward, gunning down the fleeing Union security troops. There were hundreds dead in the fields around the spaceport and on its tarmacs, more than half of them his own. But the Union forces—the enemy—were surrounded. Some units had tried to surrender, but Remy had been clear to his sub-commanders. No pity for the oppressors. No mercy for those who had come to return his people to near slavery.

  The field was soaked with blood, covered with the dead and the dying. Remy had never imagined himself in such a place. He’d been a meek man, quiet, always trying to stay out of trouble. But watching his family suffer, his wife and his daughter hungry, scared…it had awakened something in him, a rage he hadn’t known existed. Now, he stood in the middle of a nightmare, a storm of death and carnage, and yet he felt invigorated.

  He looked forward, toward the center of the landing area. The surviving Union troops were trying to get back to their ships. “They’re trying to escape. To the ships…take the ships!” He ran forward, toward the closest landing craft, firing as he did. His aim was poor, but he managed to take out one trooper climbing up the side of the lander. A few second later, his soldiers, still more like a raging mob than anything else, reached the ship. The last Union soldiers trying to climb into the vessel suffered a fate worse than being shot. Dozens of hands grabbed each of them, pulling them down under a wild tumult of fists and feet and rifle butts.

  The ships…

  “Take the ships,” he screamed as loudly as he could. “Take the ships intact!”

  He’d rallied as many citizens to the colors as he could, armed them with weapons taken from Union stores, but the greatest weakness had been the fact that his people were stuck on the ground. They couldn’t do anything except wait, and fight like hell to repel any Union invasions. And, even if they repelled every pacification effort, there was no way to stop a frustrated central government from finally blasting the victorious rebels from space. Even a successful rebellion would die in the fires of thermonuclear obliteration.

  But if we can take the orbital defenses…

  Barroux was a sector capital, one fairly close to the border. Remy knew very little about planetary defenses, but he suspected they were substantial. It seemed almost impossible, but if there was some way his forces could take those platforms, man the weapons systems…

  No, there’s no way. Even if we take those ships, we can’t fly them. And how complex are those weapons systems?

  He shook his head, but then he realized he had to try.

  “Take the ships…but spare the pilots and crews.” He turned his head, screaming loudly to the shouting mob. “Pass the word. Take the ships, but leave the crews alive. We need those pilots!”

  He rushed forward himself, racing toward the closest ship. “The pilots…don’t kill the pilots!”

  * * *

  “That damned fool! He’d better hope he gets killed down on Barroux, because nothing that happens to him there will match what I’m going to do to him.” Ricard Lille was absolutely enraged. He was usually a man who held his emotions in check, who controlled himself with great discipline. But he knew how important this mission was, and it had just gotten significantly more difficult. The cause was the usual one. Some idiot’s screwup.

  His orders to General Lisannes had been explicit, and crystal clear. Do nothing. Await his arrival.

  Instead, the damned fool had launched a full-scale ground invasion…and, worse, botched it completely. The reports coming in were sketchy at best, but it was apparent the attack had been a total disaster. Resources were scarce enough already, and Lisannes had thrown away dozens of landing craft, not to mention weapons, ammunition, fuel…and hundreds, perhaps thousands of troops.

  The soldiers were expendable, at least. Lille had eight battalions of Foudre Rouge with him. He had no need of sector security forces. But he did need landing craft and other support resources, and what he most definitely didn’t need was an enemy resupplied with captured ordnance and encouraged by a victory against Union forces.

  Lille was frustrated by the whole situation, and especially by Lisannes’s stupidity, but he knew none of that was the true cause of his edginess. He’d failed in his mission in the Alliance, and failed badly. He’d not only lost the Palatians as potential allies, he’d driven them into the Confederation’s camp. Villieneuve had taken it fairly well, which had been somewhat of a surprise. Lille had even considered assassinating his friend when he’d gotten back from Alliance space…before Villieneuve did the same to him.

  It had been necessity rather than friendship, Lille was sure, that had instead driven the head of Sector Nine to forego retribution and entrust him with another important mission. Villieneuve himself was focused on the pulsar, and on the final push to defeat the Confederation. He was depending on Lille to crush the rebellion on Barroux, before it spread throughout the Union. That would
finally be the end, and Lille knew his purpose was to prevent that disaster from bringing everything down, just as victory was at hand.

  And now this damned fool does this…

  Lille knew Lisannes was to blame for his own idiocy, for ignoring his orders…but he was also well aware that didn’t matter a bit. Villieneuve would not allow a second failure to pass, and that meant Lille had to succeed here or…

  Or what?

  That was the problem. Villieneuve would almost certainly have him killed if he failed on Barroux. He didn’t relish the thought of assassinating Villieneuve first, but he would do it if he had to. Still, that brought its own trouble, beyond regret at killing a friend. Villieneuve’s death would almost certainly ensure the Union’s defeat, and probably its total collapse. And killing his own sponsor and greatest advocate would jeopardize his own position.

  Lille had his contingency plans, of course, escape routes in the event of disaster at home. Still, it would be a fight to survive, and certainly to live in the manner to which he’d become accustomed, if the Union fell.

  No, failure wasn’t an option. He’d been the deadliest assassin in Sector Nine for many years, his operations—until recently—crowned with almost automatic success. He could do this. He had the resources, and he would use them well.

  There is no room for mistakes.

  His Foudre Rouge would land, and they would cut down these rebels. He had no doubt about that. There was unrest throughout the Union, but Barroux was by far the worst. Now, they would be the example. When he was finished with these traitors, no one else would dare to challenge the government’s authority.

  What he would do to Barroux would become the stuff of nightmares, a grim warning to all.

  * * *

  “To the control center.” Remy was leading his people through the corridors of the orbital station. It all seemed surreal. He’d never been more than ten kilometers from the hovel where he’d been born, and his life, until a couple months before, had been one of grim twelve-hour workdays, and fleeting moments spent with his family before exhaustion took him each evening.

  Now, he was a soldier. No, more than a soldier. He was a rebel leader.

  The events of the past two months had unleashed something he’d never known had been inside him, a strength he could never have imagined. He had no training, no experience with military operations…yet he seemed to have a gut feel for what had to be done. And every time he shouted out an unexpected command, led the rebel forces to another victory they hadn’t imagined possible, his stature grew.

  “Take prisoners,” he yelled. “We need them to run this thing for us.” He jogged down the tight corridor, his rifle out in front of him, as his forces surged through the innards of the fortress. The assault had been far easier than he’d expected. His forces had taken most of the landing craft pilots prisoner—they’d been only too ready to give up after they saw what happened to the security forces…and watched Remy’s demonstration.

  He’d had two of the captive pilots shot before the others agreed en masse to follow his commands. Again, he’d surprised himself. It was one thing to become an animal, part of the raging mob, taken by uncontrolled fury, and quite another to stand calmly and order a helpless man to be killed. He’d never have imagined himself capable of such a thing, and yet he’d had no hesitation…and no remorse.

  He’d been scared to death of the stations, about how they would respond to the approaching troopships, but then he realized they’d been built to repel invasions from space. Their weapons were not positioned to fire at craft coming up from the surface. Three of his ships had strayed too far, been destroyed as they slipped into the fields of fire, but the rest made it to their targets. The landings had been difficult ones, of course, and some of the pilots tried to claim it was impossible to force a docking. Remy had found the cold feel of a gun pressed to the head worked wonders at improving their attitudes.

  He suspected the tactic would work on the station crews as well, assuming his people could gain control without killing them all. He’d struggled to form his mob of factory workers into something more closely resembling a real army. He’d made some progress, but enforcing restraint was an area where he’d seen limited success. The rebellion was still running mostly on rage, and the flood of anger pouring out of his abused and oppressed comrades tended to manifest in brutality and violence.

  “To the control center…and remember, we need the crews alive!”

  At least some of them…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Formara System

  “The Bottleneck”

  313 AC

  Barron sat in his command chair, eyes focused on the still-blank display. His ship’s systems were scrambled, all of them, the standard result of a journey through the strange, poorly understood, alternate space that made faster-than-light travel possible. Every system but the stealth generator.

  Anya Fritz had suspected that the ancient technology was shielded against the effects of alien space. The mysterious device was a product of the same society that had conceived and built the transit points themselves, and sitting exposed to enemy scanners right in front of the point would have rendered much of the utility of a stealth generator useless. Still, he hadn’t quite believed the thing would keep his ship hidden immediately after a transit, not until they’d tested it. Twice.

  It had worked both times, and now, it seemed, a third. Dauntless was in the Formara system. The Bottleneck. The enemy stronghold.

  Her scanners were still down, and the low power passive units would only pick up a small portion of what was out there. Anything firing thrusters or running the reactors at a reasonable level would be visible, but ships operating on low power might not. Still, none of that mattered. Dauntless had come for one enemy construct and one alone, and that would surely show up.

  “As soon as we have power…” He’d been speaking to Commander Travis, but just then the display began to reboot, the blackness of the dead screen replaced with solid white, and then an interference pattern for a few seconds, as scanning data slowly began to pour in. He stared, watching, waiting, and then he saw it. It was back from the point, deep into the system. Just where it was supposed to be, where Stockton’s last scouting report had placed it.

  The pulsar.

  There were other contacts, dozens of them, well over a hundred, more. Battleships, positioned in front of the pulsar, surrounded by their escorts. It looked like the entire Union fleet, formed up and ready for battle.

  Barron felt a cold feeling between his shoulders. He had to drive right through that battle line, right past the battleships, every one of which was as well-armed as Dauntless, or at least close.

  He sat and stared at the screen, looking for any indication Dauntless had been detected. Then, he realized he had been holding his breath, and he inhaled deeply. Nothing. No reaction. As far as his people had been able to tell, the stealth generator actually shielded even the energy spike that normally preceded a ship’s emergence from the transit point.

  The bridge was quiet, his officers practically whispering to each other. He realized he’d been doing the same, a natural instinct, he supposed, when sneaking past such an imposing force. An unnecessary one, too. His people could have screamed at the top of their lungs, played music loudly enough to shatter their eardrums, and it wouldn’t have made a difference, not across millions of kilometers of vacuum. But Dauntless’s crew was focused, every one of them fully aware of how vital a mission they were on…and of the odds standing against them.

  “Fritzie, how’s the generator look?” Barron leaned down over his comm. He had it set on a direct line to Fritz. He’d always kept in close touch with his chief engineer in battle, but this time she held the mission’s success almost totally in her hands.

  “It looks perfect, sir. We had a little wobble in the energy levels back in the previous system, but it seems to have cleared up completely. All tests check. Generator operating normally. Dauntless appears to be undet
ectable.” A slight hesitation in her voice told him she was as skeptical as always. To Anya Fritz there were only two statuses…active problems, and problems waiting to happen.

  “Well, I can confirm that those Union ships don’t seem to be reacting. So far, so good. Let’s get some thrust going, Fritzie…slow at first. Give me ten percent, course directly toward the pulsar.” Barron and his people had tested the stealth generator every way they could on the trip to the Bottleneck, but this was the only one that counted.

  He’d conceived the plan, convinced Striker to authorize it, worked tirelessly to prepare for it, but now he looked out at the might of the Union forces, and he felt uncertain. Had he been crazy? Was this really possible? Or had he just re-formed his crew to lead them on a mission almost guaranteed to kill them all?

  * * *

  Villieneuve stood on Chevalier’s bridge, just outside the admiral’s office. He’d planned to watch the battle from one of the planetary fortresses, but in the end, he’d decided to command from the fleet flagship itself. It was more dangerous, closer to the action, but Villieneuve was no coward…and he understood just how crucial this fight would be. His forces would hold the Bottleneck, he was confident of that much. The pulsar would ravage the Confederation fleet, gutting its great battleships like a chef cracking eggs. If any of the enemy line got into range of his own ships, it would be a vastly reduced and heavily battered shadow of the force that had arrived at the Bottleneck, one his fleet could easily dispatch. His concern wasn’t winning the battle, it was the magnitude of that victory. Was Admiral Striker truly desperate enough to send his fleet into such a reckless attack?