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

  She more or less ignored the wave of acknowledgements. She knew her people would do what she’d ordered. They were Alliance warriors, after all.

  “Force A with me, full thrusters…now.” She led her makeshift squadron forward, directly toward the ships launched from Dauntless. She wanted to engage them as far from the bomber attack as possible. The quicker she tied up these veteran pilots, the better chance her strike had of reaching the other ship.

  She watched the small group of fighters ahead. There was one ship out in front. The leader?

  Her eyes zeroed in on him. She didn’t know if it was Stockton, but whoever it was, she was sure he was dangerous. She angled the thruster, adjusting her vector, heading right for that ship.

  Right for the leader…

  * * *

  “I don’t have to tell you why we’re out here, Eagles. You all know. You know your duty to the Confederation, to Dauntless, your comrades…” Jamison paused before he finished his sentence, feeling a twinge of guilt that the sincerity he truly felt was also tinged with a bit of opportunism. “…and you know your duty to Warrior.” He told himself Timmons would have been the first to use something like that to drive his people. It was true, he knew that, but it only partially salved his guilt.

  He watched the Alliance fighters coming right at his tiny formation. He’d expected to be outnumbered badly, at least until Stockton got the Blues launched, but the Alliance force had split. He’d felt relief when he saw the maneuver, followed by a tightness inside when he thought about Illustrious. It wasn’t his job to keep track of the fleet’s capital ships, but it was no secret that Dauntless’s companion vessel was in bad shape, barely limping along. And its fighters, including the scant half-dozen that had managed to launch, were his problem. Commodore Barron had put him in command of every fighter in the expeditionary force, and that meant he was responsible for those six…well, they weren’t quite rookies anymore, perhaps, but they weren’t a match for the Alliance pilots either.

  He’d ordered them to stay in tight, to wait for more ships to launch, and to sit and defend against any approaching bombers until then. But with no interceptors deployed forward to strip the incoming assault ships of their escorts, the enemy bombers would be protected all the way in. He’d only counted five bombers, but against a shattered battleship shielded by inexperienced and outnumbered fighters, five just might be enough.

  There’s nothing you can do, not now.

  He thought about sending half his ships toward Illustrious, but that would leave him outnumbered again, with no reserves to defend Dauntless against any waves of Alliance fighters lined up behind the vanguard. No, Illustrious and her scant combat space patrol were on their own, at least for now.

  “Arm missiles…let’s not take these fighters coming in for granted.” Timmons’s Eagles were no less confident—cocky, some would say—than Stockton’s Blues. But Jamison had seen these Alliance squadrons in action too many times.

  “Missiles armed.”

  “We’re ready, Thunder.”

  The acknowledgements were quick and sharp. The Eagles were ready…and the enemy ships were just about to enter range.

  * * *

  “Watch your evasive maneuvers. These Confed missiles are good for four and a half minutes, even five. You’ve got to keep your distance as long as possible.” Grachus was mad. She could feel the heat around her collar, the flush in her cheeks. Two of her people were dead already, victims of the Confederation missile barrage. She’d figured her people were well prepped to evade missile attacks…she’d spent what little time they’d had to train for the mission going over evasive maneuvers. But the Confed missiles were far nastier than the Alliance’s, and this squadron was clearly a crack formation. The combination of the two was costing her pilots dearly, and she didn’t like it.

  She swung hard on her throttle, trying to shake the warhead on her own tail. She wasn’t panicking, but she was a little nervous. She’d evaded two of the weapons already, but this one had been fired by her chosen target, the pilot she was now sure was in command of the enemy force, if he was not Stockton himself. Her adversary knew his stuff, and he’d closed to much shorter range before loosing the missile on her tail.

  She pulled the throttle hard to the starboard, and then down, directing her thrust vector deep into the Z plane. There was science to evading missiles, but to an ace pilot like herself—and whoever launched this missile—there was art to it as well. The AI directing the missile’s guidance system was hampered by the miniscule delays in transmission of scanner data. When her ship, ten thousand kilometers ahead of the missile, changed its thrust vector, it took a fifteenth of a second for that data to be scanned and returned to the AI. That didn’t sound like much, but it was something for a pilot to work with. Combined with the fact that the AI, any AI, would ultimately make logical choices in pursuing its target, it made a form of controlled chaos the best way to stay alive in the cockpit. At least when running from a missile.

  She glanced down at the small timer on her screen, counting down the seconds of fuel remaining in the missile on her tail. It was an estimate at best, highly dependent on her AI’s guesses at the thrust levels and fuel consumption of the weapon. But at least it gave her an idea…thirty-four seconds when her eyes focused on the display.

  She could survive that long, she was pretty sure. She could probably make it another fifty seconds, perhaps even a minute total. But that was about the outer limit. The missile had vastly higher acceleration than her fighter, and it would stay on her until it ran out of fuel, or destroyed her.

  There was another problem, one potentially as dangerous. A Confed fighter, the one she’d targeted as the leader…was heading right toward her. Normally, in an even exchange, both sides would be equally distracted evading missiles, but her makeshift refueling and rearming setup in the dust cloud did not include heavy weapon resupply. She had one freighter, and a partial round of reloads for her bombers, but her fighters had only been refueled, their laser batteries quickly recharged.

  She’d brought the problem down on herself, she knew. Concern that the fighter was Stockton’s had sent her heading right for it, signaling a challenge she should have held until the enemy had expended its missiles. Now, she had to stay out of range of the fighter and the missile it had launched, an extra degree of difficulty she didn’t need right now.

  She pushed the throttle hard forward, decelerating at full thrust. The missile went zipping by, its AI reacting slowly to the sudden and unpredictable move. Now, she hit her positioning jets, spinning the ship around and blasting her engines hard on a vector almost perpendicular to her current course.

  The timer had hit zero, but her scanners were still picking up output from the missiles engines. Damn. She’d gained a jump on the enemy fighter, at least, her sudden deceleration increasing the estimated time until firing range by a few seconds…possibly very precious seconds. But the missile was still trying to kill her.

  She changed her course again, but even as she did, her AI gave her the report she’d been waiting for. The missile’s engines had shut down. It was still moving, very quickly indeed, but it couldn’t change course anymore. Unless she crossed its path, at exactly the right time—something shockingly unlikely, even by accident—the weapon was no longer a threat.

  The missiles had hurt her people though, badly. Four of her ships were down, and only one of those showed any signs of a successful ditch. That left eight ships besides her own, at least for a while. Her second wave was ten minutes behind the first, give or take, and unless Dauntless managed to launch more fighters in that time, its arrival would give her forces an overwhelming advantage.

  Her eyes narrowed on the small blip, the fighter that was coming toward her. Her people knew what to do, and they could handle being outnumbered for a while, even against one of Dauntless’s crack squadrons. She had her own job to do. She flipped up the small cover on the throttle, exposing the firing stud. She reached down, hitting the row o
f switches that opened the power conduits and armed her heavy laser cannon.

  She watched the enemy ship approaching, her stare cold, focused.

  She had a job to do.

  * * *

  “Launch a spread of scanner buoys toward Illustrious. I want to see close up what’s going on there.” Barron sat motionless in his chair, fighting off the growing tension he felt. The Alliance fighters heading toward the immense battleship had just cut through the tiny space patrol Hachet had managed to launch, and the small group of bombers they were escorting was now heading into launch range.

  “Launching, sir. Tying in data readout to main display.”

  Illustrious’s defensive batteries were firing, but between damage to the weapons themselves and to the reactors and power lines feeding them energy, only a few guns were active. With some luck, the inexperienced gunners firing them might score a hit, but they were never going to take down all five ships, since the attackers were covered by unopposed interceptors.

  Barron didn’t expect much from Illustrious’s evasive maneuvers either. With Captain Reardon wounded and the inexperienced Hachet in command, the situation would have been dire enough with fully-operational engines, but the ship was lucky to have twenty percent output, and even that could fail at any time.

  Shit. Barron didn’t know what to do. He’d been trying to come up with a plan, and he’d hounded Stara Sinclair three or four times, demanding updates and urging her to find ways to cut time from the refit schedule. She’d humored him, but Barron knew full well, in spite of his pointless inquiries, that his launch operations, run as they were by the brilliant Sinclair and the force of nature known as Chief Nick Evans, Dauntless’s legendary flight deck chief, would move at the maximum possible speed whether he spoke a word or not.

  It didn’t matter anymore, at least not for Illustrious. Even if Sinclair and Evans got every ship launched in the next ten seconds, an impossibility of course, it was too late to get to the other battleship, at least before the torpedo attack was long over.

  He had to do the one thing he always found hardest. Sit and watch…and hope for the best. And try to ignore the feeling growing colder inside him.

  He turned away, focused on the dogfight in front of Dauntless. The Eagles were putting up a ferocious fight against what was clearly a force of veteran enemy fighters. They’d scored with their missiles, and they’d held the upper hand since…but the enemy had another group of ships closing fast.

  He looked at the chronometer, remembering the last update Sinclair had given him. The enemy fighters would get there before Blue squadron. The tide would turn again, to the enemy this time, and those fresh Alliance fighters would have perhaps six minutes, maybe eight, to wipe out the rest of the Eagles before Blue squadron got to the party.

  Barron felt sick—about his fighters suffering so badly, about the danger Illustrious was in—but he also knew he was getting his job done. The fleet units fleeing across the system were safe, for the moment at least. All but one wounded ship, one of Commander Mellus’s, which had fallen behind. Barron’s gut told him that ship was finished, that there wasn’t a chance it would stay ahead of its pursuers. But the rest of the fleet was getting through, and for all the losses and the destruction, Dauntless and Illustrious were holding back the enemy’s encircling force, keeping the trap from slamming shut. The rendezvous with Mellus had proven to be a disaster, and almost certainly the result another information leak. But if Tulus’s ships could escape, with even a portion of Mellus’s fleet, total catastrophe could still be averted.

  Barron watched as the transmissions from the scanner buoys updated the scene around Illustrious, sharpening the focus and increasing the detail on the display. The bombers were piloted by crack veterans, he could see that immediately. Their formation was tight, their maneuvers perfectly synchronized. Without interceptors to worry about, or even much in the way of defensive laser turrets, they could focus on their approach vector, lining up for a perfect launch.

  And that was just what they did. They came in on a final zigzag approach, taking no chances with Illustrious’s few remaining guns, and then they adjusted their vectors, blasting on hard, straight for the stricken ship.

  Their launches were synchronized almost as one, and the five torpedoes came in on perfect lines, a web of mutually-supporting courses. A fully-operational vessel might have evaded most of them, perhaps even all. But Illustrious’s shattered engines could never get the job done. Hachet might evade two of the plasmas, maybe even three, if he over-performed. But whatever happened, Barron knew in his gut Illustrious was in trouble.

  “Commodore…”

  Barron turned his head, glancing back at the long-range display. He knew before looking. It was Mellus’s injured vessel. It had fallen back farther, and the pursuing battleships were opening fire. They were still at long range, and they hadn’t scored a hit yet, but any hope Barron had nursed for a miracle was gone. That ship was doomed.

  He looked back at the main display, wincing as the five weapons approaching Illustrious activated their reactors and converted themselves to plasma. The balls of pure energy were approaching the undefended ship at close to 0.1c. That gave Hachet and his people less than thirty seconds to evade.

  The engines fired up, the scans reporting the increased energy level, but the instant Barron saw it, his heart sank. Illustrious’s engines weren’t at twenty percent, they were at less than ten percent power. The ship was moving, its angles of thrust carefully chosen, but there just wasn’t enough thrust to get it done.

  The first plasma hit, less than one hundred meters from the ship’s aft, tearing into the port engine and knocking out what little maneuvering capability the ship still had.

  Then two more slammed, one right behind the other, into the mid-section. One of the landing bays was nearly torn clean off the ship, and a gaping hole opened in the outer hull, exposing a dozen internal compartments to the ravages of space.

  Barron let out a short breath as one of the plasmas sailed by, missing the target by a few hundred meters. But the last one hit hard. It slammed into the top of the ship, tearing away a large portion of the superstructure, along with huge sections of the ship itself.

  Dauntless’s bridge was silent, its crew mesmerized by the nightmare engulfing their companion vessel. Data was coming in from the scanner buoys, but the feeds from Illustrious herself were dead. Barron knew immediately, more from instinct and feel than analysis. Illustrious was mortally wounded.

  “Commander, fleet order to Illustrious. Abandon ship.” Years at war had taught Barron a valuable lesson. In battle, there was no time for indecision, for wishful thinking. Illustrious was done. There was no way she was going to survive what had just happened to her. But her people could still be saved.

  Some of them, at least.

  Barron had no idea how many were dead already. Hundreds, certainly. But the dead were dead, and Barron’s concern now was for the living.

  “No response, sir. All comm channels are dead.”

  Barron shook his head in frustration. He wasn’t surprised…actually, he suspected very little was functioning on Illustrious right now. But Hachet had almost no combat command experience, and he’d never faced a situation like this. Would he take it on himself to order an evacuation or would he command his people to stay at their doomed stations?

  “Keep trying, Commander. Maybe they’ll get an emergency channel back online.” “Maybe” wasn’t a word Barron liked to consider part of his command vocabulary. But it was all he had right now.

  “Contact flight control. See if we can launch rescue boats to…” Barron’s words stopped abruptly, his eyes fixed on the image of Illustrious on the display. The first explosion was large, from deep within the vessel, a billowing blast that tore a massive hole right through the center. The second and third followed almost immediately just forward and rear of the initial explosion.

  The ship was torn open, a cross-section of a dozen decks exposed, shattered bi
ts of equipment pouring out into the vacuum, along with, Barron knew, bodies of her crew. Another series of explosions erupted, and the great ship began to split fully into two pieces, the force from the blast pushing them apart, tearing at the few structural components that still held them together.

  Barron’s eyes were locked, immovable as he watched the tortured death struggle of the great battleship. Then the spine snapped, and two halves of what had once been the greatest war machine ever produced in the Confederation, drifted apart from each other. Dauntless’s scanners reported the rapidly dwindling—and then exhausted—energy of the ship, and within a few seconds there was nothing left. Nothing but two chunks of dead metal, plastic, debris, a grim, frozen tomb for the men and women who had fought inside her.

  “Scan for lifeboats or escape pods.”

  Barron sat motionless as Travis responded, “Yes, sir,” and turned to her board to follow the order. He let her do it, but even though he’d given the command, he knew it was a waste of time. He already knew the answer.

  Chapter Twenty

  Interplanetary Space

  Tarantum System

  Year 311 AC

  “Keep working, all of you. Illustrious will still be gone after we get these squadrons launched. Plenty of time to pay your respects an’ cry in your beer then.” Chief Evans’s voice was raw, demanding…and yet somehow compassionate as well. His snarling tones had been reverberating off the walls and rafters of the great launch bay as he drove Dauntless’s exhausted flight teams, trying to keep their thoughts off the demise of their companion ship.