Storm of Vengeance Read online

  Oh my God…

  * * *

  “All batteries charged and ready, Admiral.”

  West could hear the tension in Avery Sampson’s voice. Hell, the outright fear. It was no shame to admit fear, especially when starting death in the face. West had devised the plan, led her people to this place knowing most of them would die there. But, as ready as she was, as broken by sadness and driven by duty…as ready as she thought she’d been to face her end, she was scared, too.

  But, that didn’t matter. Not now. The battle was almost over, a deadly apocalypse where it was beginning to look like no one would escape. That, she knew, would be a victory of sorts…especially if Josie Strand and the Marines had somehow managed to take down the enemy’s antimatter factory. In one way, that was the part of looming death that troubled her the most…dying without knowing if the plan worked.

  If Earth Two had bought more years of relative safety. More time to prepare for the final battle.

  She tried to take it on faith—she had great respect for Josie Strand—but it had just been too difficult of a mission to assume success. She’d find out what had happened…but only if she was able to lead her people out of the graveyard of a system. And, she just wasn’t sure if that was going to happen.

  “Entering close firing range, Admiral.”

  West listened to Sampson’s words, but she didn’t answer. Not yet. Garret was damaged, at least a third of her crew killed or wounded, a huge section of her sternward side bleeding from a dozen great gashes in her hull. But, she still packed a punch…and Erika West was going to see that power delivered where it would do the most good.

  “Admiral…”

  “Not yet, Avery. We’re going to bring this one in close.”

  Closer than close…

  She watched as the range ticked down. She could feel the tension on the bridge, increasing as the two target ships saw the attack coming at them and opened up with everything they had.

  Garret rocked hard, as much from the wild evasive maneuvers of its advance as the hits the enemy scored. Still, there was damage everywhere, systems blowing out, even one of the batteries West had held back for her broadside blown to scrap along with a big chunk of starboard hull.

  But, still, the admiral stayed firm, her frozen nerves setting an example to her people, a rock they could hold on to as they moved forward. She knew they were all waiting for her to issue the command to fire, but no one said a word…not even when another hit slammed into the battleship’s side and half the bridge lights flickered and went out.

  West sat still, even as the emergency lights snapped on, replacing the lost power feed. The targets were close now, almost unimaginably so. Her eyes were fixed, as the range slipped down below two thousand kilometers…and then to fifteen hundred.

  West had never taken a ship this close to enemies…she’d never even heard of such ranges, save for the few instances of ramming that had gone down in the legends of warfare. But, she was going to go even closer…under one thousand klicks.

  She was counting now, trying to keep track of the enemy guns recharging. Any shot at this range would be devastating, and while she wanted to get as close as possible, she knew Garret had to fire first. She waited, watched…and then she saw the energy spike.

  The enemy preparing to shoot.

  “All batteries…fire.”

  She sat in her chair, watching, waiting…seeing Garret’s great turrets unload on the enemy ships.

  Even as the First Imperium vessels fired their own guns almost simultaneously…

  Erika West saw that her shots had hit—both targets—and she knew their aim had been true. But the incoming fire from the two enemy battleships struck Garret before she could see anything more detailed.

  Her elation gave way almost at once to shock. She’d waited too long striving for a closer in shot, and she’d given the enemy enough chance to fire its own guns. That thought was still in her head, along with the desperate curiosity to know if Garret had taken out its two targets…when a series of structural supports crashed along the port side of the bridge. Erika West looked up an instant before she was buried under it all.

  She lay there, covered in debris, drawing a few ragged breaths through her lungs.

  Then, Erika West, who had fought her enemies without pause for almost seventy years, who had served with Augustus Garret and Terrance Compton—and a host of other heroes—died where she’d always known she would. On the bridge of her flagship.

  * * *

  Compton had heard Avery Sampson’s words over the comm, but try as he might he couldn’t make himself understand, not truly. Admiral West is dead. He replayed the words over and over again, trying to force the meaning into his head. But, it just seemed like gibberish.

  He could hear the tears in Sampson’s voice, the grief coming to the verge of silencing West’s aide in her final duty for the admiral. Compton had wanted to throw the headset down and run from the bridge, to find someplace to hide and wait for the end. But, he couldn’t think of a poorer tribute to Erika West…to the woman who’d put an almost unimaginable amount of faith into him hours before.

  He felt the anger building inside him, a firestorm he knew was growing beyond control. His hands were down at his side, balled up into tight fists, and his head pounded with rage.

  The battle was almost over, and moments before, Compton hadn’t had a sense for which side would win, who would wipe out the enemy while they still had a few ships left. But, that doubt was gone now. He knew the battle was won. West had given her people one last weapon, a deadly tool to use to secure the final triumph.

  He reached to the side of his headset and tapped the fleetcom channel. “Attention all officers and spacers of the fleet. Admiral West is dead, killed even as she led her ship to take out two enemy battleships. We have served Admiral West, respected her, feared her at times. But, I defy any man or woman of the fleet to say mankind has every produced a greater warrior…or a more resolute defender. Erika West gave her entire life, not just these last few moments, to defend her people…and now it is for us to do one last thing for her.”

  He paused, shaking, with furious rage still pouring from him.

  “They say this war is with a second Regent, one seeking to avenge the destruction of the first. These things think they want vengeance for the Regent? These coldblooded buckets of bolts? Well, I’m no substitute for Erika West, but I know one thing. We can show the Regent and its minions a thing or two about bloody, frozen vengeance. So, forward now, every ship, with whatever power you have left…forward for Admiral West.”

  Compton sat stone-still, his hands clenched tightly into fists.

  “Forward to take our vengeance.”

  Epilogue

  “I wish Erika could have known that her death pushed her people forward that last little bit…that they’d won the battle to claim vengeance for her.” Max Harmon knew Erika West had never complained about the cold attitude with which so many of her comrades had viewed her, but he was just as sure it had always upset her. He wished she had gotten the chance to see the devotion her spacers held for her.

  “I bet she knew, Max…at least on some level. She was a hard woman, strong in a way few people can understand. I think some part of her craved a softer side, but I don’t think it was in her. In the end, we all are what we are…even you, my husband.” Mariko Fujin’s voice was somber. Erika West had been her friend as well as his, and both of them were mourning one last link to their old comrades gone.

  Harmon was grateful, at least, that Raj Chandra had made it back, though his wounds would have him in the hospital for months. The old Pilgrim had experienced a very rough transition to retirement, but Harmon truly hoped it would stick when the officer was discharged and sent back home.

  “I still can’t believe she’s gone.” Josie Strand walked on Harmon’s other side, clearly trying to hold back the tears that threatened to come out every time she talked about West. “She didn’t even tell me what she
was planning, Mr. President. Not until she sent the signal releasing the message hidden in my AI.” A pause. “I never got the chance to speak with her after I knew, to wish her well, to say…”

  Strand never finished what she was saying, but Harmon heard the word anyway. Goodbye.

  “She would be proud of you, Josie…and insufferably pleased with her choice of you to follow in her footsteps. I know it’s hard to see through the losses, but between the two of you and your spacers and Marines, you have not only helped us avoid a trap set by the enemy, but you have sprung our own. The fleet is virtually destroyed, that is true. But, the enemy’s forces are equally devastated, and their antimatter stores have to be depleted. They have some stored in other locations, no doubt, but with luck, not enough to shift the strategic matchup too seriously. For the first time since humanity has faced the First Imperium, we can look to a next struggle that will be fought on something close to equal terms.”

  He stopped walking and took a breath. “We must make the next battle the last. For Erika…and for all the others we’ve lost. This endless war cannot be allowed to go on.”

  They all nodded quietly. Harmon had no doubt they were thinking about lost friends…as he himself would have been, if his thoughts weren’t fixed on a final duty he had to perform, one for a friend who had been lost, but who was now back.

  “I have to go see Nicki,” he said softly. The others all nodded again, and they slowly turned and walked away. All except for Mariko.

  “I don’t know how to tell her, Mariko. For twelve years, Erika sat at her bedside, kept vigil, never gave up on her. Now, against all odds, she is back to us, likely to make something like a full recovery.” He looked at his wife, his eyes wide, the pain in them on full display. “Now, I have to go in there and tell her Erika is gone…that they will never even got a moment together.” Harmon had been a warrior all his life. He’d mourned his father as a teenager and his mother when she’d been left behind on the other side of the Barrier. He’d lost countless friends and comrades, including a second father in Terrance Compton. But, this was the most relentlessly crushing thing he’d ever had to do…and he had no idea what he was going to say.

  Mariko leaned in and hugged him. She’d looked like she was going to say something, but then she just gazed at him, her normally bright and cold eyes cloudy and choked with tears. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. Finally, she just hugged him a second time, and then she turned and walked down the hall, leaving him to his thoughts…and the cold gray door closed in front of him.

  He stayed there—he remembered for how long. Then, finally, he tapped the entry stud and walked into the room.

  * * *

  Graham sat quietly, watching as his companions walked slowly into the room. They’d been welcomed back home as heroes, all of them, and him the most. The battles against the Regent had been cataclysmic, and the losses had gutted Earth Two’s military…but the Regent’s fleet had been annihilated as well, and its antimatter production obliterated. It was widely regarded as a great victory, if a somber and pyrrhic one…and Graham, who might have found himself ostracized and court martialed for risking the transmission of a message to Earth Two, was instead regaled as a hero. He’d received a decoration from President Harmon himself, and his people had all been promised plum assignments as soon as they had rested and recovered…and as soon as the new ships already under construction were ready to receive their crews.

  It had been two months since the remnants of the fleet had returned. Strand’s fleet had found that the remnants of West’s force, led back under the command of none other than Terrance Compton II, had arrived just two days before they had. Together, the two forces were barely a tithe of what they had been, though there were damaged and crippled ships slowly limping in behind the main forces that would bolster the numbers somewhat when they arrived.

  Graham had dutifully played the role of the returned hero, accepting medals, even giving speeches on occasion…but now it was time to address another duty, a more vital one.

  He waited as all eleven of his comrades walked in and sat down, the door closing swiftly behind them. It was a risk, of course, gathering so many from Vaughn’s crew in one place. Earth Two, for all the effects of forty years of emphasis on reproduction and population growth, was still a small society, and one where unnoticed seclusion was a difficult thing to find. But, he had to speak with them now. They had been back far too long…and they had work to do.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said, a few seconds after the door closed. “I have kept communication among us to a minimum to date, as a security measure. But we have a purpose, and one that can no longer wait. We must be careful, however, for we cannot succeed if we are suspected.”

  Roland Graham, or at least the part of him that remained true to himself, tried to stop the words from escaping, struggled to assert control over his voice and his actions…but to no avail. He had memories of what had happened, spotty, fuzzy images of what the robots had…done…to him, the pain that even now drove him close to madness just in its recollection. The stark terror of watching the surgical implements moving toward his motionless body, being helpless to even try to move away…

  He remembered the First Imperium ship docking with his crippled vessel, the warbots moving onto the ship. His people had prepared to fight to the last, but the enemy robots had used powerful stun guns, and they’d rendered Vaughn’s survivors unconscious. Graham had been prepared for one last fight—to the death—but he hadn’t even considered capture as a possibility.

  He could hear his voice, the words he was speaking to his companions despite his efforts to stop. He was aware of the nanobots inside him, controlling his actions, some of his thoughts, even, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was trapped, everything that made him who he was held in a section of his mind, as deep and inaccessible as the darkest prison. He could watch…watch himself commit the gravest treason imaginable. But, he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  He could feel the nanobots, or at least the effect they had on his mind. They controlled every external function. He could reel in horror at what he was saying and doing, but he couldn’t stop it, no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was listen, with growing horror.

  “As you are all aware, we have been regaled as heroes by the president and many others. This will be extremely useful. We must make our plans, secure the positions we need to attain our goals. And then, we must strike. The republic feels it has a respite, a period of time before the Regent can renew its attacks…but there are other threats than battlefleets, other ways to bring down Earth Two and its government.”

  * * *

  “Welcome home, Terrance. You did well, beyond even the highest expectations. You should be proud of yourself.” A pause. “I believe your father would have been proud of you, too.”

  Terrance walked into the room, moving up toward the single chair where he’d spent so many hours of his life conversing with a machine that had always told him it wasn’t his father. Now, he looked at the cold metal cylinders, listened to the same voice he’d heard so many thousands of times, and something was different. The magic he had once felt was gone. The entity before him for all its abilities, and all the hours they’d spent together, was just a machine. He’d known that before of course, but now it was clear in ways he hadn’t seen then.

  “It wasn’t…what I thought it would be.”

  “My files on the subject suggest that that war is rarely what humans expect. Some of your father’s early writings suggest rather strongly that he found the entire thing very surprising and difficult to handle at first.”

  Terrance listened to the words, but he found himself restless, impatient. Before he’d left, gone to war, he would have talked for hours to the machine…but now, he felt the urge to leave. He made excuses, not really necessary for an AI, he knew, and he left, finding himself jogging as he moved down the corridor. He’d come back, at least he thought he would, but for now he needed t
o be somewhere else, someplace he could be alone. Where he could think about his father…truly think about the man for the first time.

  His father might be gone, but he still had something to share with his son, something Terrance couldn’t entirely understand yet, but knew he needed. There would be at least one more battle to fight…and Terrance Compton II knew the next time he went to war, the spirit of his father would ride with him.

  To secure the future of Earth Two…or to fall before the enemy. It would be one or the other, he knew. The next fight would be the last, and it would end in victory…or death.

  Crimson Worlds Refugees Concludes With

  Crusade of Vengeance

  (Coming Summer 2018)

  The Crimson Worlds Series

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Marines (Crimson Worlds I)

  The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

  A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)

  The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)

  The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)

  To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)

  The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)

  Even Legends Die (Crimson Worlds VIII)

  The Fall (Crimson Worlds IX)

  Crimson Worlds Successors Trilogy

  MERCS (Successors I)

  The Prisoner of Eldaron (Successors II)

  The Black Flag (Successors III)

  Crimson Worlds Refugees Series

  Into the Darkness (Refugees I)

  Shadows of the Gods (Refugees II)

  Revenge of the Ancients (Refugees III)

  Winds of Vengeance (Refugees IV)

  Storm of Vengeance (Refugees V)

  Crimson Worlds Prequels

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Tombstone (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  Bitter Glory (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)