Invasion (Blood on the Stars Book 9) Read online

  He started at the display, relying mostly on the scanner’s accuracy, but his eyes darted up a few times, looking right at the docking appendage he had targeted and letting a bit of his gut feel slip into the equation.

  The portal looked good. A bit scarred and pitted, perhaps, but as far as he could tell, there was no reason to expect it wouldn’t function. His Lightning wasn’t a large enough ship to connect to the universal docking ring, so the best he could hope for was to get right up against the thing and latch on with his connectors. That would mean taking the last few meters to the airlock—and back again, assuming he survived long enough to worry about the return trip—through open space.

  His survival gear would protect him long enough in the vacuum, and even inside the station if there was no operational life support . The whole thing seemed insane, but he didn’t have a choice…so he didn’t waste time thinking about the odds.

  He nudged the ship closer, and then, when he was just about two and a half meters out, he pressed the button that fired the connectors. He watched the two thin cables fire out toward the refining station…and affix their magnetic ends to the hull.

  His ship was in place. At least, it wouldn’t float away while he was inside looking for fuel. He slid his helmet into place, and hit the small control that inflated his emergency gear. A quick turn of the small nob at his waist, and he could hear the sound of air flowing. He was breathing from his portable supply now, and he reached down to the controls and pulled a lever to evacuate the cockpit.

  Ten seconds later, the inside of his ship was a frigid, airless vacuum, just like the space outside. He popped the cockpit shell, and he unbuckled his harness.

  He was edgy. No, he was scared. For all his endless hours in a fighter, Stockton had always detested spacewalking. But his mind was focused, and he ignored the sweat already beginning to turn the inside of his suit slick and uncomfortable.

  He climbed along the outside of his ship, grabbing onto a variety of hull protrusions, until he reached the tethering line holding the ship to the station. Then he pulled himself along toward the metal hull of the station, and he slid to the side, grabbing onto two handholds surrounding the airlock.

  Now, if the doors worked, if the outer compartment was vacuum, if a hundred other things went the way he needed them to…he would be on his way inside.

  * * *

  “The enemy fortifications around the planet have been neutralized, Commander. The defense capabilities of the partially restored fortifications were far below those engaged in the previous encounter. As always, the enemy small craft proved to be difficult to contain, and we lost three additional heavy units, with eight more suffering significant damage. The ground assault forces are on alert, awaiting your command to commence landings.”

  Chronos sat on a raised platform centered in the large chamber. His sanctum lay at the very core of the Hegemony’s largest vessel, a monstrous ship that was larger than the greatest dreadnoughts in the fleet’s vast battle lines. He was known to all those beneath him by his designation, Number Eight, though at that moment, he was also “Commander,” the Master entrusted with the total command of the Grand Fleet.

  “Very well, Venticles. You may begin the landings at once. Make it clear to all officers…we are not here to commit genocide. The newly discovered survivors on the Rim constitute the most massive pool of new genetic material. We are here to lead these people. They must be taught to respect the natural order, but there are to be no nuclear assaults without my express permission, and no unnecessary destruction of the planet’s physical infrastructure.” A short pause. “Understood?”

  The tall, dark haired man standing before Chronos bowed forward. “Understood, Commander.”

  Chronos gestured, a sign that the Kriegeri was permitted to leave. Chronos had been somewhat surprised when Akella had named him fleet commander. The two had served on the Council of Ten together for many years, during which time she had steadfastly retained her ranking of Number One, while Chronos had slid from Five to Eight. The appearance of new members was a testament to the success of the Hegemony’s breeding programs, and the continued development of the species. Chronos celebrated the advancement of his people into a race with the intelligence, wisdom, and power to endure…but it was difficult to reconcile with dropping in rank, seeing his own genetic rating slip in overall position.

  He had had his clashes with Akella, disagreements on various policy decisions, but in truth, he was quite fond of the Hegemony’s ruler. He had even considered approaching her to propose a pairing, a breeding between the two of them to produce a child, but she had always shown an almost scandalous disinterest in reproduction. Then, suddenly, she had announced she was pregnant, from a coupling with Number Two…it was a pairing he could not match, despite being genetically superior to all but seven other humans in the galaxy. He suspected she knew of his interest in her, and at first, he took her choice of Number Two as a slight…though, he had come to realize it had simply been the best choice available to her.

  Akella’s support of his assignment to the fleet suggested no animosity, and he fancied perhaps there would be another opportunity, possibly after the Rim dwellers were pacified. Akella was expected to produce many more children, and she would almost certainly want to mix her genetic matchups to increase the chances of producing a truly exceptional successor.

  He looked up, watching Venticles leave the room, the massive floor to ceiling doors sliding shut behind him. The aide was not a Master, he was Kriegeri. It was odd for a Master of so lofty a position as Chronos’s to choose an Inferior as his top aide, but Venticles had served him well for many years. The Kriegeri was at the very top of his class, not far from Master status himself, and he had won Chronos’s devotion in perhaps the oldest of ways.

  He had saved the commander’s life.

  Chronos believed in genetics as steadfastly as any of his people, but he valued loyalty and trustworthiness as well, and he had given his retainer much cause to remain faithful over the years, not the least of which was arranging two pairings for the Kriegeri that had produced children very likely to attain Master class upon coming of age.

  Chronos was glad to have Venticles with him, for despite the gulf between their stations he knew the aide would always be honest with him. He was confident in his abilities and experience, but he suspected the conquest of the Rim would be no easy task, and one made all the more difficult if he surrounded himself with sycophants and failed to view reality through a clear lens. Venticles would be of great help in that regard.

  There was another reason for him to stay focused, to lead his forces with sober thought and great care. Akella had dispatched almost the entire Reserve to the Grand Fleet. The heart of the Hegemony lay open, nearly undefended, and Chronos knew he had to bring the Rim under control and return as quickly as possible. Speed took precedence over normal tactical considerations, and he had to keep his forces moving, destroy any hope the Rim dwellers had of victory, and secure their submission.

  Fortunately, he believed he had the resources to do just that. He stared straight ahead, his eyes unmoving as his fingers tapped at the small comm controls on his chair.

  “Venticles…”

  “Yes, Commander?” The response on the comm was immediate, sharp and crisp as always.

  “One other thing. Send an order back through the entry tube. The fleet train is to advance and commence transiting at once.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Chronos did not know much yet about the logistics of his adversaries, but he understood his own perfectly. The fleet train was the fruit of his own labors, the resource he had insisted on relentlessly until his fellow Council members agreed and authorized the commitment of resources for its creation.

  He did not have time for the usual methods of invasion, for delays while he scavenged for fuel, built support facilities, and waited for damaged ships to filter back down the lines for repairs.

  He had not come to fight a conventiona
l war. He had come to strike the head from his target.

  And that was precisely what he intended to do.

  * * *

  “Forget what Cantor says, Luther. You know as well as I do, there’s not a chance in hell we can hold conventional defensive lines anywhere on the planet. You saw the size of that fleet. The Hegemony forces will control every urban and industrialized area within two days of landing, three tops. In a week, they’ll have everything that isn’t dug in and hidden.” Steven Blanth was a Marine, a colonel who, until he’d somehow ended up in de facto command of the first defense of the planet, had been a mere captain. Despite the shaky legitimacy of the promotion Admiral Winters had given him, there hadn’t been the slightest question raised against his command status, not even by the planet’s annoying and interfering Administrator, Walter Cantor. Luther Holcott had been as rigid as the rest of the Marine officer corps in accepting the garrison commander and following his orders to the letter.

  Blanth had been considering the forces at his disposal, and how to accomplish the impossible against a force he was certain would be almost unbeatable. He was lucky to have the forces he did, but the more he reviewed the list of units in his command, the more he realized there was just no way to hold the planet.

  It wasn’t a very neat organizational chart he’d managed to concoct, but the forces charged with defending Dannith wouldn’t have fit into a well-organized structure no matter how many times he’d rearranged things. He had two divisions, one that had been torn to pieces in the first invasion, and despite patching the gaps as aggressively as possible, was still understrength in virtually every area. The second was worse, a jumbled mess of a formation thrown together from every formation on the frontier that Clint Winters had been able to raid. Blanth wouldn’t have said that shipboard contingents, recalled retirees, and small clusters of other troops drawn from a hundred different places couldn’t fight like hell—they were all Marines, after all—but he was about to face off against possibly the most powerful land forces the Confederation had ever faced. He would have loved it if even a fraction of his new forces had fought together before.

  “I know you’re right, Colonel, but…” Luther Holcott was one of the three Marine majors on the planet, and he served as Blanth’s informal second in command. He’d been pensive, slow to respond, and he didn’t finish the reply once he’d begun. He just stood quietly for a moment, until Blanth spoke again.

  “That’s it, Luther. It doesn’t feel right, not to a Marine. We want to fight. We want to meet them at their beachheads and show them what Confederation leathernecks can do. But we’re not just Marines…we’re the only defense this planet has, and we won’t do anything for these people by getting ourselves wiped out in three days. We need to dig in, hold out…and yes, hide.” He paused, having no easier time saying what he just had than any Marine would have. “These people haven’t come for Dannith…they’ve come for the whole Confederation. They’ll be smarting from their first attempt, and you can be sure they won’t underestimate us again. They’ll land massive forces…and you saw those tanks yourself. There’s no way we can stop them.”

  “So, we just sit in the hills until they hunt us down? Make do with hitting a few supply convoys? What good does that do?”

  “We survive. Until our chance to hit them on more even terms.”

  Holcott looked back, clearly confused.

  “Listen to me. The Hegemony is clearly strong, their forces massive…but they have to deal with the whole Confederation. They’ll want Dannith secure, but what kind of force will it take to subdue a planet like Santarus, much less a Core world like Ulion or Megara?” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “They’ll land an overwhelming force, because they’ll remember last time and they want to crush us. But no matter how big that fleet is, my bet is they’re going to need to pull a lot of those forces back and reorganize them to hit the next target. If we can keep our units more or less intact, bide our time…they might start dropping down to garrison levels.” Blanth paused, and then he turned and looked toward the other Marine. “And then we hit them…and we show them what a bunch of really pissed Marines can do.”

  He stared at his second-in-command. “And if they underestimate us again, maybe we can retake Dannith…and create a real problem for them, one that will force them to halt their advances into Confederation space.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Variag System

  Two Transits from Archellia

  Year 317 AC

  “Keep those formations tight, all of you. These aren’t Union pilots with two weeks of training, they’re Confederation officers, just like you…and they’ll eat your lunch if you let them.” Johannes Trent sat in the cockpit of his Lightning, watching as the distance between his squadrons and those they were facing off against dropped steadily. There had been blood spilled already in the tragic fighting between Tyler Barron and whatever forces were calling the shots on Megara, but things were about to escalate massively. The forces squared off against each other were significant battle fleets, and almost eight hundred fighters were about to engage each other. And for all his comments about poorly trained Union pilots, most of those following him now were just as green.

  Fortunately, so were their opponents. If either side had possessed a decent contingent of veterans from the war, the fight in Variag would have been a short one indeed, at least in terms of the fighter duel. With hundreds of rookies facing off, it was hard to know what might happen. They could fly around, ineffectually missing each other.

  Or it could be a bloodbath.

  Trent tried to remain focused. A former Confederation comrade could take him out as easily as a Union ace, and he had to watch his squadrons, keep as close an eye on them as possible and direct the inexperienced pilots the best he could. He doubted he could prevent all the mistakes they might make, but even cutting off a few would save some lives.

  How did this happen? He still couldn’t believe the Confederation was plunging into civil war. He’d rallied to Barron without hesitation, but since then, he’d tried to tell himself the situation was a misunderstanding that would eventually be cleared up before there was any real fighting. Now he realized there just was no other way to look at it. Tyler Barron might have been a fugitive when he’d escaped from Megara, but now he was the leader of a large faction, with a dozen battleships and more than fifty escorts under his command, and Trent was about to lead his squadrons into battle.

  The Confederation had gone down the same path as the Union and the Alliance, and now it was about to tear itself apart. It seemed unreal, impossible. And yet, it was unfolding before him.

  “All right, let’s go. All squadrons, you’ve got your attack vectors. Stick to the plan, and keep your eyes open.” His focus snapped into place as he saw the range display tick its way down to fifteen thousand kilometers. He reached out to his controls, and flipped the arming switches. His two missiles were ready, and his lasers were charged.

  He was tempted to hold back the missiles, but his interceptor would handle like a pig with the heavy weapons still in place. Not as badly as a bomber loaded down with a plasma torpedo, but bad enough. Which was why he’d ordered all his squadrons to launch their missiles at their initial targets. Three quarters of his Lightnings were outfitted as interceptors, and behind the semi-circular formation, he’d positioned his seven squadrons of torpedo-armed bombers.

  The interceptors were there to kill their fellow pilots…but the bombers were ship killers, and he knew he had to get them through, while cutting off the enemy’s torpedo-armed ships.

  His eyes narrowed, staring at the screen, checking the newest scans of the approaching enemy.

  And they are the enemy now, whatever they were before this moment…

  Admiral Whitten’s strike force outnumbered his squadrons by about a hundred ships…but from the uneven look of the approaching waves, he figured he could make up the difference with well-executed tactics. Whoever was commanding Whitten’s
wings didn’t look like he knew what he was doing.

  His eyes moved across his screen, all along the front of the enemy formations. He was waiting…waiting for the oncoming fighters to open fire. He had orders to hold back his own attacks, to wait until the opposing forces fired.

  It was the worst order he’d ever heard, one he’d been most tempted to ignore, to disobey outright. It was a command to surrender the initiative, to hand his adversaries a huge advantage in the opening stages of the fight.

  But he understood it, too…and what Tyler Barron was trying to achieve.

  He waited, watching, feeling the tension grow. Perhaps the opposing pilots would accept Barron’s offer and withdraw from the fight. The seconds passed, and for an instant, he almost believed they would.

  Then, he saw a single rocket launch, far down the line from his position. And, seconds later, at least a dozen more.

  Barron’s orders had been not to engage any ship that hadn’t fired, but Trent knew that was impossible. No doubt, there were pilots out there who wouldn’t engage…but if they were still in the formation, Trent was going to attack them. There was no other way. The pilots in Whitten’s wings who had launched had answered Barron for all of their comrades. The fight was on.

  “All right…they’ve launched. Let’s go in and finish this. All squadrons…attack!”

  Trent picked out a fighter in the lead of the enemy formation, and he tapped the throttle, massaging his vector, coming right at the target. He flipped on the targeting computer, and watched as the lines came together, the AI calculating his vessel’s velocity and course with that of the chosen enemy fighter. The computer had done all it could, and he added his own instincts, his guess at what the targeted ship might do once he launched.