The White Fleet (Blood on the Stars Book 7) Read online

  “With what?” Bernard looked confused.

  “They’re hurling huge rocks down at your planet…it’s probably the disturbance in the atmosphere that is interfering with your communications.”

  “What do we care if a few space boulders are coming toward the planet. Better than nuclear warheads, at least.”

  “No…it’s not better. You don’t understand the calculations, the kinetic energy a ten-kilometer asteroid can release. It will be like thousands of nuclear detonations…and there may be several dozen projectiles of this nature. It will be Armageddon all across the planet. You have to collect your people now…and get them out of here. Out of the city. If I am right, virtually everything manmade on Barroux will be destroyed, possibly within minutes. Getting to the wilderness is your only hope.”

  Hoover knew he sounded crazy, and he was stunned when Bernard just nodded his assent. Then, the resistance leader turned and shouted for his fighters to get out of the building and form up in the street…and, he shocked Hoover again when he ordered his people to bring Caron with them. Alive.

  Hoover reached down to pick up Breen, just as two of Bernard’s people beat him to it. “Come, Agent Hoover,” Bernard said. “Come with us. My people will carry your associate. We will go to our refuges in the hills outside the city.”

  Hoover just nodded…and then he followed Bernard and the two men carrying Breen out into the street.

  * * *

  Hoover looked down from the high ridgeline, toward the smoldering orange glow that had once been Barroux City. The planet’s capital had escaped a direct hit from one of the asteroid impacts, but that hadn’t spared it from the shockwaves and thermal blasts. The city had become a raging inferno, and it had been reduced utterly to ruins as, Hoover suspected, had just about every other built up area on the planet. Forests all around were on fire as well, the old growth trees now great torches, lighting up the dust-obscured sky…or already reduced to ashes, and ghostly charred stumps projecting a few meters up, where once the great trunks had reached for the sky.

  The resistance hideout had proven to be a lucky spot, one well-situated to offer shelter and protection. The high ridgelines offered significant cover from the blast waves that had leveled the capital. It was also a stroke of luck that no asteroids or fragments had landed anywhere close on the near side of the hills. The sky was as hazy and choked by dust and smoke as it was anywhere, but all things considered, it was just about the best place to be.

  Hoover had been out three times already, a risky move with residual impacts still occurring and roving bands of desperate survivors wandering out from the city. But, he was responsible for the entire Confederation contingent, his own people, and the crew of the last smuggler’s ship who’d been trapped on Barroux by the Union blockade. Somehow, he’d managed to find three of his own people, and four of the ship’s crew, but that left more than twenty missing.

  Bernard had sent out a dozen patrols of his own, and save for the two that hadn’t returned, they all reported the same thing that Hoover had seen. Nothing but blasted ruins, as far as the eye could see.

  A few of the scattered bands of survivors had joined up with the resistance forces, Bernard ordering his people to share their dwindling rations and water supplies with the refugees. Hoover was impressed with the humanity of it all, but he wondered if, for all his blustering about Confederation ideals, he wouldn’t have kept what he had for his own people. There was no way of knowing what food and supplies would be retrievable, and it wouldn’t be long before the stunned groups of survivors turned feral and started killing each other for scraps of stale bread.

  Hoover turned and walked back into the makeshift camp, toward the small shelter Bernard had made his headquarters. He had to have a long talk with the resistance commander. Bernard had been focused on defeating Remy Caron and his people, and now on providing whatever aid he could to the desperate survivors, but there was another problem, one Hoover knew would push Bernard’s fighters to the brink.

  The scouting parties had reported something other than destruction and scattered refugees. Soldiers, heavily armed and armored, moving around the formerly inhabited areas, rounding up any survivors they came into contact with. The descriptions were all the same, black body armor, perfect unison in their marches, long, fully-automatic rifles that also launched grenades.

  Bernard’s people didn’t recognize the soldiers by sight, not outfitted in their full combat garb as they were, but Hoover did. The descriptions left no doubt in his mind. He knew who the soldiers were…and he knew the resistance warriors would know them, too, as soon as he spoke their name.

  Foudre Rouge.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  CFS Dauntless

  Zed-11 System

  Year 315 AC

  Barron walked slowly across the catwalk, looking out over the open area of Dauntless’s main engineering section. The immense reactors that powered the enormous vessel were situation just below, and the engines that produced its thrust lay to the aft. It was a larger space by far than that on the previous Dauntless, and better laid out, too. His old ship had served well, and he would never forget her…but the class had been a little haphazard in its design, and decades of service and refits to bring the old girl up to modern standards had created somewhat of a chaotic rabbit warren of passageways and access tubes.

  The new ship was like the old in one important way, now, however. Everywhere Barron looked, he could see the scars of battle, the pristine shininess of a new vessel gone. Burnt out equipment, gashes in the bulkhead, even a blackened area where an internal fire had gotten out of control…they all served to mark the new Dauntless as a veteran of battle.

  Some of his people had died in that fight…and that was something always at the forefront of his mind. Dauntless had suffered thirty-one fatalities in the two battles against the Hegemony forces, and for all the pain that caused, he knew the flagship had escaped lightly. Beyond the six battleships and fourteen escort ships destroyed outright in the battle, most with the loss of all hands, the majority of the other ships had suffered losses far in excess of Dauntless’s.

  Cilian Globus’s Alliance ships had probably taken the worst of it. He’d lost one of his four battleships outright, but each of the other three had taken major damage, with no fewer than two hundred dead on any of them. Globus had pushed his vessels hard, driven them almost to hull to hull contact, pouncing on the enemy battleships hard on the heels of Stockton’s bombing runs.

  Barron was grateful for the heroism of his Alliance comrades, and for the courage all his people had displayed. But, he knew the victory—if he could convince himself to call such a bloody nightmare a victory—was owed almost entirely to Jake Stockton and his pilots.

  Stockton had led his disordered and disorganized wings against the enemy battleline at the height of the deadly struggle, and he’d sent them in, wave after wave, closing beyond point-blank range and planting their plasma torpedoes right into the guts of the Hegemony ships. The squadrons had been nothing short of heroic…including one pilot, a Lieutenant Eve Grenner, who had taken her damaged ship and blasted it right for one of the enemy battleships, activating the plasma torpedo stuck in her bomb bay and slamming into the Hegemony vessel as a sphere of pure energy. Barron had noted the act of heroism, and he’d used his semi-viceregal powers as head of the White Fleet to posthumously award her the Confederation Star, all the while thinking how meaningless such gestures really were in the wake of a fine comrade’s death.

  The Hegemony fleet had finally had enough, and its battered remains turned and fled…and then, Barron had done something that still gnawed at him. He immediately ordered his ships to pursue, to maintain contact by any means possible, and to make sure not a single enemy ship escaped, whatever the cost. He suspected the order, and the intensity with which it had been given, had increased Globus’s already lofty respect for him, but there was more than honor and vengeance in his reasoning. Indeed, vengeance meant almost nothing to him, n
ot now…only the weight of the reality that he’d found a deadly new enemy, a grave threat to the Confederation, and to all the other Rim nations.

  It was that reality, and his realization of how difficult it would be to fight the war that was likely coming, that had spurred him to mercilessly hunt down and destroy the enemy survivors. His ships had been at a disadvantage in thrust, weapon power, AI sophistication…almost everything that affected the outcome of a battle. Save for the fighters. Barron had no idea of the enemy’s communications potential, no way of knowing what information had already been transmitted up the line. But, he did know, that in any way possible, he needed to maintain the mystery of the fighter squadrons, to prevent new enemy forces from studying what had happened, and developing tactics to counter the wings. It was the only choice that made sense.

  It was also a choice that had cost him hundreds more of his own people, and three more of his ships. But, as far as the fleet’s scanners could determine, the pursuit, which stretched to the transit point and into the Zed-12 system, had been a success. Not a single Hegemony ship escaped.

  “We’ve got crews working around the clock, Admiral. We’ve got thrust up to seventy percent. I’ll deny I said it if you tell anyone else, but in a pinch, I think I can get you eighty. The primaries are still out, but I think we’ll have them up and running by tomorrow. Three of the secondary turrets are still out. I think we’ll have two of them online by around the time the primaries are back. The third’s pretty much done, at least this side of spacedock.” Fritz had come walking down the catwalk from the other direction.

  “Well done, Fritzie, as always.” Barron’s tone was a bit distracted. He’d seen the remains of the crew from that last turret, at least the blackened bits of goo that was all that had been left of them. “I appreciate your diving in on Dauntless’s repairs, but I need you to keep the damage control crews on the other ships working at something like your normal amazing pace, too.

  “I’m on it, sir. We should have every ship in the fleet at least reasonably operational within thirty-six hours.”

  “That’s good, Fritzie…do anything you can to keep us to that schedule…or even shorten it. I’d like to get out of here before any new enemy forces show up.”

  “I’ll see to it, sir. I’ll even try to get that thirty-six down below thirty.”

  “Watch out, Fritzie…you know once you put something like that in my head, I’m going to hold you to it.”

  She smiled.

  She knew he would hold her to it. He didn’t doubt it for a second. And, he’d have bet his last credit on her beating thirty hours.

  * * *

  “Is that a power surge at the transit point?” Buck Horace was pacing across Kraken’s bridge. His ship was back in Zed-12, on patrol again, there to warn the fleet if more enemy forces arrived. It had been quiet, not so much as an errant meteor slipping through any of the system’s transit points. Horace knew the withdrawal orders could come at any time. The landing parties had been retrieved, and the post-battle repairs were almost completed enough to allow the fleet to head back home, bringing the news of another enemy—and possibly another war—back to Megara. But, he was determined not to let his guard drop, not for an instant. Not until his ship was back in Zed-11.

  “It appears to be normal fluctuation, sir. Strong, but within typical parameters.”

  Horace’s response was something between muttering and a grunt. He was considered a grouchy old cuss, to put it lightly, and he’d run his spacers on Kraken harder than he had his cadets at the Academy, who had, over the years, piled up an impressive list of names for him. He knew a lot of them, but he was smart enough to guess he hadn’t heard them all.

  His people on Kraken were no doubt tired, but most of them had quickly become devoted to the captain who’d shown them just how good they could be. They could complain about him, quietly grumble when he wasn’t around, but God help some loudmouth from another ship who had anything negative to say about the old man.

  “I want the scanners focused on that point, Lieutenant.” A pause. “And, I want a short spread of drones launched.” He knew they all probably thought he was being paranoid—and maybe he was—but Kraken was about to leave the system, and the fleet was preparing for the voyage back home. And, in his experience, that was the kind of time when things went to crap.

  “Yes, Captain.” A moment later. “Drones, ready to launch.”

  “Launch…lock on to them as soon as they are clear, and feed the data to my station.” He walked back across the bridge, dropping hard into his chair.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Horace reached out, punched at the controls below his small screen. Barron would send word soon, he was sure of it…the orders for Kraken to return and rejoin the fleet for the journey home. But, until then, he was going to watch that transit point like a hawk.

  * * *

  Barron stood outside the entrance to sickbay, struggling to make himself step through the doorway. He’d been to see Atara every day since the landing parties had been certified free of the disease and shuttled back up to the fleet. But, each of those days, the few minutes he’d spent at her side—blissfully, he’d been too busy to stay for longer—had been a torment. Atara Travis had been one of the strongest, most alive people he’d ever known, and it was difficult beyond words to watch her lying in a coma, motionless inside her frigid medpod.

  He knew he should be grateful she was alive…if ‘alive’ was even how he’d characterize her condition. Doc Weldon had all but assured him his friend would be dead by now, but she’d clung stubbornly to life, shocking Dauntless’s entire medical team. Weldon finally changed his prediction, removing the projected death sentence, though he was very clear he didn’t expect her to improve much either. ‘It’s a possibility’…that’s what Weldon had told Barron when the admiral had asked about her chances of recovering. There are many words whose meaning varied considerably with the tone behind them, and Weldon’s ‘possibility’ was heavily shadowed by doubt.

  He was about to step through the hatch when a large man came out, walking slowly and supporting himself with a cane. “Admiral,” he said, struggling to quickly straighten his posture.

  “At ease, Bryan…please. The last thing I want is to see you tumbling over trying to salute or something.” Rogan had always been very formal in Barron’s presence, and even then, barely able to stand, he was the same old Marine he’d been years before, when a new captain showed up to take command of a ship called Dauntless.

  “Yes, sir.” Rogan’s voice was stronger than it had been two days earlier, when Barron had last talked to him. The Marine still looked a bit shaky, but Doc Weldon had assured him Rogan was completely recovered from the disease. His lingering weakness had more to do with his extended stretch in cryostasis than with the pathogen that had come so close to killing him. “Are you here to see Captain Travis, Admiral?”

  Barron nodded. “Yes…I’m not sure it helps anything, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t get down here at least once a day.”

  “It helps, sir. I’m sure it does.”

  “Thank you, Bryan.” His first thought was that Rogan was trying to humor him, to make him feel a little bit better. But, then he remembered who he was talking to. Bryan Rogan was the straightest, most honest person Barron had ever known…and realizing that made him feel a little better. “I think you should go get some rest, Bryan. I need you back, as soon as possible.”

  “I’m ready, sir…for whatever you need.”

  Barron looked at the Marine, barely able to hold himself up with the cane…and then he realized Rogan was dead serious. “I know that, Bryan.” Barron managed a smile. “Now, go get some rest.”

  He stood where he was for a few more seconds, and then he slipped into sickbay. Weldon was standing in the main room, issuing orders to a group of medtechs. He turned as soon as he realized Barron was there.

  “Any changes, Doc?” Barron already knew the answer from Weldon’s expression.
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  “Nothing, sir. But no worsening, either. Which, considering the circumstances, is its own bit of good news.

  Barron wasn’t sure he bought the doctor’s positive spin, but he just nodded, and then he walked across the room and slipped into the small alcove that held Travis in her medpod.

  She looked the same as she had every time he’d come, still, lifeless. She was alive, he knew that much, at least, but each time he came and saw her in the same state, he lost a little more hope.

  “Atara…I’m so sorry I let you go down there in my place…” He knew there was no logic to the statement. In all likelihood, he lacked her natural immunity…and that meant he would have died with all the others. In one sense, it had been a stroke of fortune that she had been part of the landing party, that her natural resistance to the disease was able to save hundreds of her comrades.

  Just, please, not at the cost of her own life…

  He moved next to the pod, reaching out, putting his hand on the cold glass. There was nothing he could do, nothing to say. All he could do was be there, even though he knew she couldn’t tell. Her brain function was still active, but she was deep in a coma.

  He sat for a while, ten minutes, twenty…he lost a sense of it. Then, Weldon came in. “Admiral, it’s the control center. They need to speak with you.” Weldon’s voice was deadly serious. “Now.”

  Barron leapt up and jogged out into the main room, leaning over the comm. “Barron here.”

  “Admiral…” It was Sonya Eaton’s voice…and there was definitely something wrong. “Captain Horace just transited back from Zed-12, sir. Kraken picked up enemy forces entering from the system’s alpha transit point. He reports…” She paused, and Barron’s blood went cold. “…he reports it appears to be a larger force than the previous one.” Barron heard the words, but he grappled with the true understanding of what they meant. Larger than the previous one?