Empire's Ashes (Blood on the Stars Book 15) Read online

  Above them all loomed Cassie’s father, who, in Andi’s rough calculation, refused the child exactly nothing. She’d worked harder than she ever had in the last years, driven herself to outright exhaustion. But for the first time in her life, she had a family, and for the moment at least, they were all together.

  And in that, she could feel the seeds of new and deeper guilt. The three of them would almost certainly be separated again at some point…but the realization had been growing in her mind that she would have to be the one who left first. She had some idea of the pain that would accompany that necessity, and she’d done all she could to push it from her mind, to enjoy what she had while she could.

  Chapter Three

  120 Million Kilometers from Outpost Seven

  Delta Orion System

  Year 327 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  “All squadrons…break. Prepare to engage enemy fighters.” Contrall was nauseous as her hands moved over her controls, adjusting her course yet again, and confirming what her unsettled gut had already told her.

  The Highborn ships were launching fighters. A lot of fighters.

  There were over a hundred in space already, and they were still pouring out of the forward vessels. And more of the mysterious enemy ships were moving up from the transit points.

  Carriers…those things are carriers…

  She told herself she’d had no way to know, no cause to expect the Highborn might have fighter squadrons.

  Then she told herself that was bullshit.

  You tore them apart at Calpharon, even in defeat. If it hadn’t been for the squadrons, the war would already be over. Why wouldn’t they copy that? They’ve had over three years, almost four, and their tech is half a century ahead of ours, at least. It would have been surprising if they hadn’t done this.

  That last part echoed in her brain. The Highborn tech was well ahead of the Hegemony-Rim coalition’s, and that meant those fighters forming up in front of hers were probably more advanced than her own.

  That’s okay…longer ranges, bigger guns, whatever…fighter combat is about pilot skill and training.

  That was true, to a point. And the Pact forces would have that edge, she was sure of it. Whatever the enemy had done analyzing bits and pieces of wreckage and petabytes of scanner data, perhaps even improving on the design of the Lightning craft, they didn’t have the Rim’s history and tradition of small craft tactics. Their rookie pilots could never match the Rim fighters, and especially not the veterans waiting back at Striker with the main fleets.

  Her people were in trouble, though. For most of its history, Confederation fighter tactics had been mostly about dogfighting, the bulk of squadrons launching as interceptors, with smaller contingents equipped for bombing runs. Then, the war with the Hegemony changed everything. The wings faced an enemy with no small craft of its own…and dogfighting almost vanished from the squadrons’ arsenal.

  The struggle with the Highborn had only continued that trend.

  Until now.

  Contrall faced a stark reality. She had just under a hundred pilots, rookies facing their first combat, and every one of them was in a Lightning fitted out with a cumbersome bombing kit. Worse, they were double loaded with torpedoes.

  “All squadrons…jettison torpedo loads. Prepare for fighter to fighter action.” The words blurted out, driven more by instinct that considered thought. Dropping the payloads was a painful decision. It eliminated any chance of damaging the incoming carriers. But her people weren’t going to get to the carriers, not if they tried to get past the now more than one hundred fifty enemy fighters standing in their way.

  Fighters she could tell from their flight profiles were outfitted as interceptors. Every one of them.

  The bombing kits reduced maneuverability, and dropping the torpedoes would only restore a portion of it. Her people would be at a decided disadvantage in the coming fight, no matter what she did. If they’d been more experienced…veterans of long enough service to remember dogfights with Union squadrons, they might have made up for that. But there weren’t too many pilots with that kind of experience left in the entire fleet, not with the casualty levels of the last ten years of war.

  “Okay, listen up…all of you. You’ve been trained in fighter vs. fighter combat, so you all know what to expect.” That was technically true, but less so in a practical sense than she wished. The Academy program had steadily deemphasized dogfighting in favor of bombing tactics as the Confederation faced enemies without their own fighters, and unescorted attack runs against fleet units became the preeminent role for the wings.

  “Those things…whatever they are, they’re outfitted as interceptors, which means they’re probably going to be faster and more maneuverable than we are.” She paused. The more she thought about the situation, the darker it became. Especially since the second wave of enemy ships appeared to be launching fighters as well. Not many of her people were likely to survive the next hour or two, but any chance they had depended on maintaining some level of morale, some fighting spirit.

  Some hope. Even if it was false.

  “The enemy can copy our fighters, build ships just like ours…” Or better. “…but they can’t match us. Fighter combat is about more than just hardware. You’re all part of a long and proud tradition, an honored corps that has fought wars against the Union, the Hegemony, and now, the Highborn. You are part of that, and the spirits of those who came before are with you now. Stay sharp, remember you probably have a maneuverability disadvantage…but you’ve got lasers, and those pilots have to be unfamiliar with their craft, poorly trained. It’s time to show the Highborn it takes more than technology and factories to produce fighter squadrons!”

  She smiled for a moment. Her words had come out better than she’d hoped, and she believed they would help her people, keep up their courage, allow them to do their very best to strike at whatever the enemy was sending at them.

  Her little speech hadn’t been good enough, though, to fool herself, and the grin quickly faded from her face. She reached out, exhaling hard as she flipped a series of switches, activating her comm and linking it directly with the outpost command. She was still trying to tell herself some of her people would make it through, but it was proving to be a hard sell. At least she could get a nonstop feed of information to the outpost. Giving Admiral Barron as much information on the new enemy fighters would accomplish more for the war effort than anything her doomed squadrons did in the next few hours.

  Commander St. James would see the scanner data got back to fleet command…before he died too.

  * * *

  “Definitely fighters, Commander. Over three hundred so far. And there are still enemy units coming through the point.”

  St. James leaned back in his chair, trying to look like anything but a man who’d just been punched in the gut. Trying, but not necessarily succeeding.

  The scanner profile of the enemy incursion didn’t suggest a massive invasion, at least not according to the AI, which assigned a ninety-one percent probability to its analysis. That was good news, at least in the greater scheme of things. Though, it was still possible a massive invasion fleet was simply waiting in the next system.

  The bad news was more abundant. Major invasion or not, the enemy force already in the system was more than powerful enough to blast Outpost Seven to plasma, along with every ship in the small support fleet posted to aid in its defense. It wasn’t even going to be close, not if any of those Highborn ships packed the weaponry he’d seen at Calpharon.

  The strange thing was, his own imminent destruction and that of all his people wasn’t the worst news. The Highborn had fighters. That was the shock, the deadly surprise that meant, not only would he and his people die in the fight just beginning, but they would do it knowing whatever chances the Pact had of defeating the enemy had just dropped through the floor. Most of the tactical doctrine developed for the war was based on fighter-bomber operations. But the Pact had just lost its monopoly…and it remained
to be seen how many fighters the Highborn had managed to build.

  And how good they were.

  He’d get an answer to that question, at least, before the enemy reached the station. Commander Contrall’s people were about to engage. Or be engaged? He wasn’t sure which was the correct terminology. Save for a few encounters with Hegemony squadrons late in the war between those powers, it had been a decade since the Confederation wings had fought any major battles against opposing small craft.

  “I want all weapons systems checked and rechecked, Lieutenant. And feed all scanner data to the gunnery stations. I want targeting updated in real time as those ships approach.” That assumed the outpost would even get off any shots before it was destroyed. There were all kinds of rumors flying around about new systems, weapons in development to increase the fleet’s combat strength—including shadowy whispers of a new superbattleship class under development somewhere in the Iron Belt. But the outposts had been hastily assembled, and their technology levels, save for some upgraded scanning and comm systems, were pretty much prewar Confed norms.

  Which meant the Highborn ships could stop well out of St. James’s range and blast the outpost to scrap.

  He watched as the two fighter wings closed on each other. He felt a few bursts of excitement, a sense of rooting for his people, almost willing them to teach the enemy a lesson, to show them what flying really looked like. But Contrall’s people were outnumbered three to one, and they were stuck in clumsy bombers.

  And the enemy wings looked awfully good as they approached, their formations crisp and ordered. He wanted to assume the lack of enemy experience would be a huge factor in the coming fight, but he knew very little about the Highborn, and even less about those who manned their ships. Thralls, he’d heard they were called.

  He’d also heard they were humans who served the Highborn, and even worshipping them as gods. He didn’t want to believe that, but some part of him whispered deep in his mind that it was likely the truth.

  “We’re getting a comm beam from Commander Contrall, sir. No message as of yet.”

  St. James understood immediately. Contrall was a veteran, and a courageous warrior. She understood just how important it would be to get any information on the enemy fighters back to Admiral Barron.

  And she also understands how likely it is that none of her people are going to make it back to provide those reports directly.

  “Hold the last two pairs of drones, Lieutenant. Download any transmissions from Commander Control directly into the comm units’ memory banks.” He didn’t even need to see it himself. If he somehow survived what was coming, he would analyze every aspect of just what the Pact was about to face.

  But that was tomorrow’s problem, assuming there was a tomorrow. Just then, something else was on his mind, something pressing, a dire need coming from the deepest depths of his consciousness.

  Hurting the enemy. Killing as many of the bastards as he could before his people all died in the ruins of the outpost.

  * * *

  Contrall squeezed her fingers on the firing stud, her face twisted into an angry, vengeful grimace. She barely had half her people left. The enemy fighters had been armed with ship to ship missiles, much like the ones Confederation interceptors carried. Her bombers had none, and that meant they had to endure the preliminary attack, doing the best they could to evade the incoming death with their bulky and unresponsive craft.

  Some of her pilots had managed to evade, and two had actually taken out approaching missiles with their lasers, good shooting by any measure. But they had drawn no blood in exchange for their losses, and an enemy advantage of three to one was now one of six to one.

  She tried to ignore that fact. At some point, it didn’t matter. If she’d had veterans, pilots with some dogfighting experience, she might have held off a raw enemy force three times the size of her own, but six to one was another matter. Besides, her pilots weren’t veterans, they were rookies too, and even more so when it came to battling enemy fighters.

  She realized as she stared at her screen that she had not conducted one exercise on dogfighting since taking command of the wing. That had made sense at the time, but as she sat there, bringing her clunky bomber around, trying to lock on one of the Highborn fighters, she felt fury rising inside her. Rage at the enemy, of course, but even more, at herself. The Hegemony had copied Confederation fighters, and if that had come too late in the war between the two now-allied powers, it should have been a lesson, a warning. But it hadn’t even occurred to her. All she’d been able to think about was honing her raw pilots into a force that could deliver devastating bomber strikes to Highborn vessels.

  Now, she realized, the Confederation, which had once mastered the art of dogfighting, was going to have to relearn that legacy.

  Quickly.

  She brought her ship around, nudging the controls, redirecting her thrust in a combination of evasive maneuver and honing in on her target. She was an experienced pilot, with years of combat under her belt, but truth be told, she had the same zero kills as every pilot under her command. She’d seen service in the final battles of the Union war, but she hadn’t managed to take down an enemy fighter. And she hadn’t flown an interceptor in ten years.

  She remembered the final engagement of the Union War, the astonishing display of Jake Stockton leading his pilot into the fight. Raptor had scored six kills that day, almost rewriting the book on dogfighting in front of his astonished and worshipful squadrons.

  But Stockton was gone, just one more grievous loss the fleet had faced. Raptor’s death had almost cut the heart out of the fighter corps, and if it hadn’t been for Reg Griffin, and for an almost insatiable craving to avenge their lost leader, Contrall doubted the squadrons’ morale could ever have recovered. They would never forget their legendary commander…but they would go on as he would have wanted. They would fight in his honor, and they would extract a vengeance on the enemy that defied imagining.

  And that will start here…

  She tightened her finger again, and she watched as the laser pulses flashed across her screen…and her target vanished.

  She was stunned, staring in a state of near shock, and it took her a few seconds to realize what had happened. She’d destroyed an enemy fighter. She had a kill.

  She turned her head abruptly, a startled expression on her face as she jerked her hand to the side and watched as a lance of laser energy ripped by…right through the space her ship had occupied an instant before.

  There were enemy fighters everywhere, their formation expanding, coming around on both sides in a flanking maneuver. The Highborn pilots were far better than she’d expected. There was still some sluggishness, at least in the intricacies of close combat, but the order of the enemy ranks, the way they were deployed along the line of attack…it was almost inexplicable, as though the Highborn knew not only how the Confederation squadrons attacked their capital ships, but also how they had fought against Union fighters in their past wars.

  She wondered if they could have found some kind of old Confederation footage, data files on dogfighting tactics or something of the sort. But there was no way. The battle lines hadn’t come anywhere near Confederation space, not yet at least. And, save for a few engagements with Hegemony fighters, it had been more than a decade since Confed wings had fought major battles against enemy squadrons.

  But how then? How could they have learned such complex tactics?

  She moved her arm again, increasing the frequency of her evasion efforts. Even as she did, three of her ships blinked off her screen in rapid succession. She took a deep breath, willing herself to focus, to fight off the grimness trying to consume her. She was more certain than ever that her squadrons were doomed, that Outpost Seven was as good as finished.

  But she was just as sure she was going to take down as many enemy fighters as she could before they got her. She might die in Delta Orion, but if she did, she was determined to set an example for the thousands of pilots who would f
ace the new Highborn threat. She would take down five of the enemy ships.

  She would die as an ace.

  Chapter Four

  Reconstructed Hall of the People

  Liberte City

  Planet Montmirail, Ghassara IV

  Union Year 231 (327 AC)

  “It is good to see you, Admiral. You have done well, better than I could have hoped. You are a hero of the Union, and I will see that you are rewarded with the honors you so richly deserve.” Sandrine Ciara was meticulously dressed, looking in every way, the calm, rational head of state.

  “It is my pleasure, First Citizen. We meet in far better circumstances than prevailed the last time we were together. Though, even then, we had much cause for optimism. But, please, do not heap your praise on me. It is my privilege to lead our forces, and it is they who deserve recognition, the men and women in the Union’s uniform, those serving in our victorious fleets…and those lost.”

  “Of course, Admiral…and we will see to it that all those who have fought are well and truly recognized for their patriotism.” Ciara paused and then added, “And we will make certain the families of those killed in our noble struggle are cared for.” There was a slight change in tone, and Denisov felt as though he was being humored, managed. He wasn’t naïve enough to imagine Ciara gave a shit about the families of those who had died fighting for her, but he still fancied that he would retain enough influence to see that she followed through.