Invasion (Blood on the Stars Book 9) Page 38

  The Battle of Ulion had begun.

  * * *

  “Alright, Lynx…take your people in now. I’ll come in behind you, and, Scimitar, your people will be the third wave.”

  “Roger that, Raptor. We’re inbound now…all torpedoes armed!” “Lynx” Federov’s voice was grim, focused…no different than what Stockton had been hearing for years. The veteran pilot’s tone was all about business, and he suspected most of her pilots doubted she’d ever had a real emotion in her life.

  He knew differently, of course, if only because he’d seen her pissed off and fuming at him a few times. Lynx was cool, calm…she didn’t lose it very often. But, when she did, it was time to run for cover.

  He’d almost decided to lead the first wave himself, but sending Federov in gave him more time to stay back, get a feel for the oncoming formation. He wasn’t sure it would matter much, but target selection was crucial, and the cold hard truth was, there was no way but gut feel to pick out the battleships whose railguns were still operational from those whose main weapons had been knocked offline. If he was going to rely on anyone’s stomach for tactical advice, it was going to be his.

  He’d almost hesitated before assigning “Scimitar” Covington to the final wave. Covington was an ace, a pilot whose list of accomplishments in the last war rivaled Federov’s, and even his own—almost, at least—but he was less familiar with her. They’d served in many of the same battles, of course, but he hadn’t commanded her before, save for the desperate fights of the past few weeks, and he was relying to a large extent on what he knew of her reputation.

  That reputation was of a stone-cold pilot and a leader who inspired her people and drove them to greatness, but for Stockton, hearing something just wasn’t the same as seeing it with his own eyes. Still, it would have to serve. He just didn’t have time to doubt what he knew about Covington. He’d almost put himself in last place, but he didn’t want to be so far behind on the return trip…just in case the flight crews needed a little pressure to turn his ships around faster and get them back out on their second runs.

  He watched as Federov led her huge group of squadrons, a ‘super wing,’ Stockton had dubbed it. She had more than four hundred ships, and Stockton had sent them in against a group of ten enemy battleships. Against any other enemy, he’d have narrowed the attack even further, targeted five, or maybe six of the biggest battlewagons, looking to blast them all to dust. But, that wasn’t how tactics against the Hegemony fleet worked. He had to knock out at least some of their railguns, or their advancing line would be as good as a firing squad for the waiting Confederation ships. That meant his people had to hit each vessel just hard enough to knock out its main guns…before going on to the next. It was as much art form as science, instinct as training. But, it was the only way the fleet was going to put up a serious fight against so overwhelming an enemy.

  One look at the size of the fleet coming on was enough to tell him he had no chance at all of knocking out every one of the heavy weapons, or anything close to that, not even with his own massive force of bombers. But, his people could get a lot of them, and hopefully most of those in the leading line. That would have to be enough. The enemy main guns were fragile systems, clearly reliant on an easily damaged power transmission system, much like the Confederation’s own particle accelerator primaries.

  The situation created a new dynamic. If the enemy could maintain a sizable percentage of their railgun attack capability, they could blast the Confederation ships to scrap. It those deadly weapons were taken out of the mix, the particle accelerators equaled or exceeded the range of the enemy second tier weapons systems, and that swung the balance back toward the Confederation ships, if only for a brief instant before the edge slid back to the Hegemony’s numbers and technology.

  That was all over-simplified, he knew. It depended on maneuver, positioning, formations…and a dozen other factors. In the end, it boiled down to the same conclusion. The fleet didn’t have a chance no matter what he did, not unless Tyler Barron showed up in time. Even then, Stockton had his doubts, as he suspected Admiral Winters did, too.

  So, it came down to two questions. Would Clint Winters throw the dice, commit to an all-in engagement, and bet his fleet that Barron would get there in time?

  Stockton had a good idea of the answer to that question. An officer didn’t end up being called the ‘Sledgehammer’ because he retreated a lot. And, he figured Winters had fallen back just about as much as he had the stomach for.

  Certainly as much as he had the room for. There was nowhere to go from Ulion except to Megara.

  And, the second question. Even if Barron got there in time…would it matter? Would even the combined forces—and two of the best fighting admirals the Confederation had ever produced—be enough to stop the Hegemony juggernaut before it pushed on, straight through to Megara and beyond?

  He thought he knew the answer to that one, too…but he ignored it. It was knowledge without a purpose. He had a job to do, and that was all that mattered.

  * * *

  Olya Federov stared at the symbols displayed on her screen, her eyes narrow, focused. The enemy battleship was huge, almost twenty kilometers in length, and hundreds of millions of tons in mass. It was a killing machine, a gargantuan chunk of steel and titanium and electronics designed for one purpose. To destroy.

  But, it had to get past her before it could destroy anything, her and the forty-three pilots hot on her tail as she blasted in at blistering velocity. She’d held back, directed her other strike teams in first, and then, after she was sure the entire attack force was on target, that none of her groups needed her direction, she led the last three squadrons of veterans right at the giant ship straight ahead.

  Hegemony fleet organization was still somewhat of a mystery, but she’d have bet her last credit the behemoth in front of her was some kind of sub-unit flagship. She didn’t know if the enemy called their formations task forces, flotillas, divisions…or any of a thousand other terms, but, a fleet as large as the one still entering the system had to have a fairly complex organizational structure.

  And, if there’s some kind of admiral in there, or a commodore, or whatever they call their flag officers, it would be a nice bonus to take him or her out.

  She had Stockton’s orders, and she wasn’t going to disobey them, nor even interpret them as loosely as Raptor himself had done on more than one occasion. But, she had a gut feel she knew where the control center was, and while it was probably well-protected, if she could hit hard enough right around that spot, just maybe she and her people could scratch Hegemony bigshot off the enemy chain of command.

  She moved her arm, changing her thrust vector, altering her course slightly, and increasing the evasive maneuvering that had so far kept the enemy’s defensive fire mostly at bay. Her eyes darted to the side, checking on her pilots formed up behind her. “Spider, Whirlwind…put some effort into those evasive maneuvers. You rely completely on the AI, and you’re going to get blown to bits.”

  “Roger that, Lynx.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  She shook her head, even as her own hand slid to the left, and a couple seconds later, back to the right. It was easy to lose focus on evasion, to let your thoughts fixate on the target, on the coming attack. That was how pilots ended up dead. She knew she’d lose a lot of people in the battle just beginning, but she was damned sure going to do anything she could to keep the names on that list down to a minimum.

  She swung her arm hard to the side again, and she stared straight ahead, confirming what she already knew. She was under ten thousand kilometers from the target. That was below the old standard range for launching torpedoes, but a new war and a new enemy had spawned new tactics. Without defending interceptors raking the attack formations, the bombers could move to much closer ranges. They had to move in closer. The Hegemony engines were capable of enormous thrust, and their AIs could conduct bewildering evasive moves of their own. A torpedo launched from fifteen or twent
y thousand kilometers had, probably, a one percent chance of hitting. Maybe less.

  One launched from under five thousand upped that number to fifteen percent, or even twenty.

  And, the pilots that had really taken it to the edge, brought their fighters through the dense close-in defensive fire, taking their runs to the very limits of their ability to break off after firing and clear the targets…well, some of those attacks had attained hit percentages north of thirty percent, and, in a few cases, even forty percent.

  That was the kind of damage the bombers had to inflict on the enemy, the number of torpedoes they had to deliver, if they were going to knock out enough main guns to give the Confederation battleships any chance at all in a duel between battle lines.

  Such aggressive attack runs were possible, the previous battles against the Hegemony had proven that, but they came at a cost, too, as Federov was reminded when two of her ships winked off the display, one right after the other. There wasn’t time to check to see if either pilot had ejected, and this deep into the system, in space the enemy would almost certainly control before the fight was over, she wasn’t sure it mattered. She’d never ditched a ship herself, a bit of an odd distinction for a pilot of her considerable experience. She’d brought a couple damaged ships into the bay, including one that burst into flames as soon as it hit the atmosphere inside the ship, but she’d never found herself floating in space, biding her time and hoping for retrieval before her survival gear gave out.

  She’d always considered that just as well. In a situation like this, she was pretty sure she’d prefer to go out in one blaze of glory, rather than floating and considering the virtual hopelessness of her situation while she flipped a metal coin to guess whether she would freeze or run out of air first.

  Neither choice seemed terribly appealing.

  Her fighter was streaking in toward the enemy ship, and the battleship’s defensive fire had increased its intensity significantly. Whatever mystery the small fighter craft had held for the Hegemony forces in the first engagements, it was long gone. The commanders and crews of those ships knew just how deadly her squadrons were, and despite the fact that they seemed to have no equivalent forces themselves to throw into the fight, they had steadily improved the accuracy of their defensive fire. And, there was no getting around the fact that a Lightning outfitted with a bomber kit was a lot less maneuverable than one set up as an interceptor.

  The enemy defensive batteries were powerful, and they were accurate. Clearly, the Hegemony had faced some kind of threat before, some enemy with missiles or another weapon requiring point defense as a counter. The Confederation didn’t use missiles; none of the Rim nations did, save for a few highly specific weapons…and ground bombardment systems, of course.

  The Hegemony doesn’t seem to use missiles either…but those battleships are bristling with small batteries. Somebody out there uses them…or at least did at one time.

  It was the first time her thoughts had gone beyond the immediate threat of the Hegemony, to consider what other powers might exist somewhere beyond. It was something that would have been unthinkable before the White Fleet had shattered centuries of serene confidence that those on the Rim were all that remained of human civilization. Now, it seemed more than possible. It was likely, even, that there was more out there, much more than the Confederation knew about. One question made that seem even more of a virtual certainty, and it hammered the likelihood home like a piledriver.

  Why did the Hegemony have such a vast fleet, when it had almost certainly considered the Rim utterly depopulated? Who had those ships been built to fight?

  It was a troubling thought, but not one she had time for, not six thousand kilometers from her target.

  She moved her hand slightly, her finger over the firing stud, even as she jerked her hand hard to the side, one last evasive move before she came in on her final approach.

  She could see the flashes on her screen, enemy defensive fire, coming much closer now, as she cut her wild moves and bored in, straight, targeting her torpedo. It was the most dangerous moment of her attack. The torpedo would leave her fighter with the same velocity and vector the craft itself had, and at such close range, there wasn’t time for the weapon to implement much in the way of a course chance. She had to launch the warhead almost directly on target, and that left her badly exposed the enemy fire for a few seconds.

  Her finger tightened, and she felt the jolt in her ship as the weapon disengaged from the bomb bay, and blasted off toward the target.

  The target…she was less than two thousand kilometers away, insanely close by any rational standard of space combat. Her arm pulled back hard, blasting her engines to clear the hulking mass of metal up ahead. She felt the engines responding, for an instant…and then her ship shook hard, and it went into a violent spin.

  She’d been hit, that was immediately obvious. She was also still alive, at least at that moment.

  She looked down, her hands moving over her controls, trying to get an idea of how bad the hit had been. The enemy ship was just ahead…but she could see she’d gotten just enough thrust to clear it. Even as she worked her controls, and realized most of her instruments were dead, she saw the vast metal hull of the Hegemony ship. Her scanners were down, but she was so close, she had clear visuals. Her best guess was, she’d come within a kilometer of the vast battleship, and maybe closer.

  She could feel the sweat pouring down her body, the fear gripping her from head to toe. She’d always had the kind of grim confidence the very best pilots shared, but now she knew she was in trouble.

  She moved her hand, flipping the switch to engage the damage control circuits. Nothing.

  “Are you there?” she asked the AI, not really expecting a response…and not getting one.

  Damn…

  She turned and pulled the cover off one of the control boxes. Her ship was as close to dead as it could be without being…well, dead. She still had life support, but when she checked, she saw that was running off of tanks and battery power. Her reactor was shut down, her engine power gone. There was no quick fix, she knew immediately, no part she could repair herself from inside the cockpit. Her fighter was done, finished, and, even if it could be repaired, it would take a week in the bay.

  She laughed, a bitter recognition of the irony after her earlier thoughts. Twelve years in the fighter corps, eight of them—nine now—at war, and she’d never had to eject.

  Until now.

  It was a lesson in humility.

  She pulled her hand up, ready to activate her survival suit. Her other arm moved to the side, ready to trigger the eject system. Then, she hesitated for a few seconds.

  Her ship was on a straight, ballistic course, with no thrust available to alter its vector. The only reason she hadn’t been blown to bits yet, she was sure, was that the enemy scanners had determined she wasn’t a threat, at least not while waves of armed bombers were still coming on. That wouldn’t last, of course. As soon as the final waves finished their runs, the enemy would pick off the cripples. The fighters had taken a terrible toll in the war so far, and she couldn’t imagine the Hegemony forces would miss the chance to blast any of them they could to dust.

  It would be an easier way to die, certainly a faster one. She’d imagined her death before—she suspected every pilot had—and never once had that image been of floating in frigid nothingness, choking on her last gasps of air as the brutal cold vied with suffocation to take her.

  Stay…die in the cockpit…

  She almost gave in to the thoughts, to the voice calling to her from within. But, Olya Federov was a fighter, and as much as she’d never imagined herself suffocating in her survival gear, what she’d never even been able to conceive was giving up, surrendering…accepting death while there was even the slightest chance of survival.

  She slammed down her helmet’s visor, and she reached out and pulled the lever, blowing the cockpit open and jettisoning her out into space.

  No…no surrender.
Never. Death may take me, but I will leave claw marks around the pit before it drags me down.

  If they want me in Hell, they’ll have to come and pull me there.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Occupation Headquarters

  Port Royal City

  Planet Dannith, Ventica III

  Year 317 AC

  “Colonel, we have had many conversations, you and I, and I think you will agree with me that you have been treated well.” Carmetia sat across a table from Blanth. As always, she’d sent the guards away, and the two sat alone. He was glad in a way, that the cyborgs—and that’s what he considered them, whatever Carmetia and the other Hegemony officials called them—were gone. They gave him the willies. Still, he found it rather unsettling that the apparently unarmed Master was so utterly unconcerned about what an unrestrained Confederation Marine might try.

  Are they really that capable? He despised the idea of eugenic controls of the sort practiced in the Hegemony, but he couldn’t argue with certain aspects of the results the enemy appeared to have attained. His uncle owned a horse farm back on Guilford, and there was no question that careful pairings had produced faster, stronger, and healthier stock. It was uncomfortable to think of people in those terms, but was there really such a difference?

  “Yes.” Blanth’s answer was a grudging one, and he found it annoying to have to reassure his jailor for not torturing him or inflicting whatever nasty surprises might have awaited him—might still await him.

  “I do not wish to see you harmed, nor any of your people. Unfortunately, that is a goal that is rapidly escaping my grasp.”