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

  “It’s that important?”

  “You know how close we came to disaster with the pulsar…and I’m sure you remember the planetkiller too. What do you think would happen if the Union were able to find another artifact like those, especially now, when we’re at peace? They’d have all the time they needed to get it back to their space without interference, to study it, replicate it.”

  She just sat silently, taking a deep breath. She still felt an impulse to resist. She understood the importance of what Holsten was asking, but she’d done her part already. The mission to destroy the pulsar would have been impossible without the stealth generator she’d found. She wasn’t a naval officer like Tyler. She didn’t owe the Confederation anything. Certainly nothing more than she’d already given.

  Could she even go back to her old life, wandering seedy spaceport bars, trading for information that was, as often as not, pure fabrication? She remembered the constant caution, the fear that any meeting could turn into an ambush in an instant.

  Most of all, she realized that joining Holsten did not mean going back to the past. Her crew were all wealthy now too, their shares of the proceeds from the stealth generator enough to support them for the rest of their lives in obscene luxury. They were scattered across the Confederation, settled, retired. If she went back, she’d be going back alone. No, she thought. I can’t do it. I’m just having trouble getting used to life here. Things will fall into place.

  But then, she realized part of her wanted to go. The excitement, the purpose…they called to her. She looked around, at the exquisite room she’d created, and she realized how much she missed her cramped cabin on Pegasus. She still had Pegasus. She hadn’t been able to bear the idea of selling her beloved ship, and since she didn’t need the money, she’d kept it. In fact, the old vessel had been upgraded from top to bottom, no expense spared. Her days in that small ship had been full of danger, of hardship. But there was a void in her life now. She was in paradise, living a life few could dream of. And she was unhappy. Her palace had begun to feel too much like a prison.

  And she felt an urge to help Holsten. He’d been more than fair with her in the past, and she owed her prosperity to him, at least in large measure. He could have confiscated the stealth generator as illegal contraband. But he hadn’t. He’d paid her for it, and a fair price too. But was that debt, and her own restlessness, worth upending everything she’d worked so hard for?

  She turned toward Holsten, intending to turn him down. But then she said, “I’ll do it.” She wasn’t sure what made the words come out, and but the instant they did, she felt a burst of excitement that had been gone for too long.

  She was going back to what she did best, back to the rough and tumble frontier, the place where she’d first arrived as a destitute teenager seeking her fortune.

  She was going home.

  Chapter Five

  CFS Dauntless

  Ventica System, Bound for Planet Dannith

  Year 315 AC

  “I want to thank you for the invitation to dinner, Admiral Barron. This mission is a difficult one for a Palatian. I understand the advantages of picking through the rubble of a long-dead civilization, but it is hardly work for warriors such as ourselves.”

  Barron looked across the table at Commander Globus. The Alliance officer wasn’t a bad sort, and Barron had come to genuinely like the man, but he carried his Palatian warrior culture a bit more obviously than Vian Tulus had. Barron knew Globus’s tacit inclusion of him and his people in the comment about warriors was a show of respect…no Palatian would say something like that if he didn’t mean it. Diplomacy, especially when based on false compliments and feigned respect, was not high on the Alliance’s list of competencies, and while Barron knew there had been enough secrecy and backstabbing during the civil war, generally, a Palatian said what he thought. Their honesty could, at times, be a bit brutal to someone used to more…refined…exchanges.

  “A warrior faces danger, Commander. While we are unlikely to encounter enemies of the normal sort, I suspect we will encounter more than enough hazards to sate the warriors’ need.” Barron glanced around the table. This was the sixth dinner he’d held for his top officers aboard Dauntless—though he was still having trouble thinking of his massive new ship by that name—and the fleet hadn’t even left Confederation space yet. It seemed to be going well, and he felt a bit of relief. The first few times he’d hosted both his Confederation people and the top Alliance officers, it had been a bit uncomfortable. The two sides had been allies in the closing stages of the Union War, but the two cultures had considerable differences, ones that seemed more pronounced with his own spacers no longer in their wartime frames of mind. He doubted anyone in a Confederation uniform felt sorrow for the loss of potential combat opportunities.

  “Indeed, Admiral. Very true.”

  Barron knew that Globus understood the strategic need to uncover old technology before the Union or another potential enemy gained an unbeatable edge, but Palatian culture looked down on such peaceful endeavors. The scientists and engineers in the Alliance were ranked substantially below military personnel in social status, and Barron understood that Globus and his people had to fight against the ingrained notion that the mission was somehow…beneath them.

  “Commander Globus, perhaps you could recount for us the conflict against the Krillians. Many of us served closely with Imperator Vennius in the civil war, and I, for one, would be very interested in more details on his last battle. He was a noble warrior. I will always consider him a comrade I was proud to stand beside in battle.”

  Barron watched as Atara Travis spoke. He’d served alongside her for almost ten years now, and he thought of her as his best friend, even as the sister he’d never had. But she still surprised him from time to time with the tact and diplomacy she could produce when the mood hit her. Her request of Globus might seem a bit obvious to him and to the other Confederation officers present, but she’d clearly learned what he had in fighting alongside the Alliance officers. At least as far as he’d been able to detect, Palatians never tired of telling stories of their battles.

  “Of course, Captain Travis. We all mourn the loss of Imperator Vennius, especially at the hands of the deceitful Krillians. But we can take solace that his death in battle was a heroic one, an epic sacrifice that will immortalize his name and his reign. Our fleet was outnumbered, but Vennius ordered us forward anyway…”

  Barron sat with an attentive look on his face, but it was a façade. He’d heard the retelling of the battle before, several times, enough that he could probably tell it himself. Still, allowing Globus to continue on had its uses. The purpose of the dinner had been the same as the ones that had preceded it, to forge his Confederation and Alliance spacers into a single, unified force. They’d fought together, of course, but the Palatians had been segregated as their own task force, and they’d only fought a single battle. Before that, his forces had been sent to fight in the Alliance civil war, and the burden of merging the diverse groups of fighters into a unified force had fallen on Tarkus Vennius.

  This was different. They were about to head off into deep space, far beyond where any Confederation or Alliance vessel had ever traveled. They would be alone, in a way so profound, it scared Barron when it slipped into his thoughts. They had to be able to count on each other…because there would be no one else there if they ran into trouble.

  Barron looked over at Globus and nodded respectfully. The Palatian was just getting started, he knew. The story would go on for quite some time, through multiple rounds of coffee and after dinner drinks.

  “So, Imperator Vennius commanded the right wing to advance…”

  * * *

  “You’re in direct charge of Dauntless’s systems and maintenance. And damage control, if it comes to that. It’s time for you to step up, Commander, to really take control.” Anya Fritz was staring at Walt Billings, feeling a little guilty for the hard time she was giving him. Billings was a good officer, one who’d
greatly exceeded her initial expectations. He’d had been a bit of a clown at one time, one who’d thought he was funnier than he was. But the realities of combat, and the losses of friends and comrades, had squeezed the excess levity from him, forged him into a strong officer, and a capable one. Billings had learned from her, and he’d become one hell of an engineer in his own right. She was damned proud of him…not that she’d ever let him know that.

  “I understand, Captain. I’ve got everything under control. The teams are organized and ready. This ship is brand new…but we’ve still run diagnostics on a regular schedule. Plus, it’s not like…” Billings let his voice trail off, not finishing what he’d begun to say.

  She knew what he was thinking, what he’d almost said. The war was over. Dauntless was heading off on an exploratory mission. There was a creepy spookiness to plunging into the heart of the dead empire, but the ship’s engineers weren’t likely to face anything like the desperate attempts to restore systems in the middle of battle. If things went well, she and her people would spend most of their time researching old tech finds.

  “Perhaps we should put that to the test, Commander. I think we’ll run some simulated damage drills. Then, we’ll see just how quickly your people can do their jobs.” Fritz was edgy. The war was over, but she was nervous about the mission anyway. The fleet was going to be farther from home than any ships had ventured since the Cataclysm, too far to get any kind of help from the Confederation if something…anything…went badly wrong.

  Fritz was a hard taskmaster, she knew that. She also knew her teams had come up with a variety of nicknames for her over the years. She’d heard some, but she didn’t doubt there were more of them out there. She didn’t really care, especially since her people had always given her their best, however much they grumbled when they thought she wasn’t listening. She figured letting them blow off steam was helpful. She worked her people hard, and they needed some stress relief. A few of the names were even fairly clever.

  “Captain, my people are ready to meet any challenge you put before them.”

  She held back a smile. She was about to let him off the hook, tell him there would be no surprise exercises, but then the doubts she’d been feeling surfaced again. She considered herself as battle-hardened as it was possible to become, but the unknown was terrifying in ways beyond even the hardship of battle. Barron had given her as much freighter space as he could for spare parts and the like, and she’d wracked her brain, trying to come up with anything she might require. If she needed something fifty transits from home and she hadn’t brought it, she was screwed.

  She was also unsettled about her job. Barron had made her chief engineer of the fleet, which made all sorts of sense superficially…but she wasn’t exactly sure what a fleet engineer did. She was used to working a ship’s innards, tracking down damage and problems. Now, she had an office and a big desk near Dauntless’s bridge, and a far hazier picture of just what she was supposed to be doing.

  “Well, we’ll just see how ready you are.” She pulled a tablet from a clip at her waist. “Scenario G4,” she said, looking down at the small screen. She almost felt bad. She’d designed the simulated damage routines herself, and she’d filled them with tricks, engineering complexities guaranteed to drive Billings and his people crazy. There wasn’t a straightforward drill in the group…and G4 was one of the worst.

  “We’re ready, Captain.” Billings sounded confident.

  Good…we’ll see if that lasts.

  * * *

  “I don’t even know why I’m here. There are no enemies out there. What does this fleet need with eight hundred fighters?” Jake Stockton was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling as he’d been doing for the past few hours. He’d never slept very well, but now he simply had too many nightmares waiting for him, too many shadowy faces of friends gone, men and women burned alive in their fighters or blown to atoms deep in space. The price of sleep was just too high.

  He’d been as quiet and still as he’d been able to manage as he counted the minutes until morning. There was no point in waking up Stara just because of his own insomnia. But, now he could hear her stirring, and he knew she was awake.

  “How can anyone know what we’re going to need? Nobody’s ever done anything like this before. We’ll certainly have more than enough scouting duty for the squadrons.” Stara Sinclair was awake, but it was clear from her tone she was barely awake.

  “Scouting missions, yes, but we’ve got two-thirds of the crack squadrons in the fleet with us. A hundred ships could handle routine sweeps, certainly two hundred. And prowling around empty systems doesn’t require a pack of aces with twenty kills apiece.”

  “Well, I’d wager the fleet’s as big as it is as much because some of the higher ups want to protect a portion of the fleet from the downsizing going on. It’s hard for even a pacifist Senator to argue that we don’t need to take old tech more seriously than before…and the fleet is a place to stash ships that will be outside the cost-cutters’ reach. I’m sure that’s true for the squadrons, too.” She paused, putting her hand over her mouth to cover a yawn. “And, I’m glad you’re here…because I’m here. Would you really like to go a year or more without seeing me?” There was a playful tone to her words, but Stockton took them to heart.

  Stara had moved into his quarters, more or less completely, if unofficially. It was a scenario that would have terrified the younger Stockton in a way no enemy gunning for him ever had, but now, he realized, he was not only happy to have her there…he was uncomfortable when she wasn’t around. Stockton was one of the navy’s most renowned officers, and no one would say he couldn’t face whatever came at him by himself. But he was well-aware of the scars he carried now. War, especially the way he fought it, left its marks in more ways than one, and Stara’s presence helped. She calmed him, softened the screams of the dead.

  “No, I wouldn’t want to go a year without seeing you. But maybe we both should be back on Megara. Or at Grimaldi.”

  “Would you really want Admiral Barron to go on this journey without you? I don’t believe that, not for a minute. I just think you like to complain.” She grabbed one of the pillows and gently hit him with it. Then, she got up and walked over toward the small head. “I’d love to sit here and listen to you complain, my dear, but unlike you, I’ve got work to do. I’m on duty in thirty minutes.” She slipped through the small doorway, and he heard the shower come on.

  He knew she wasn’t kidding about having work to do. Stara had run Dauntless’s—the old Dauntless’s—flight operations during the last few years of the war, but Admiral Barron had since promoted her. She was now the fleet small craft operations officer, which made her responsible for not only the massed fighter squadrons, but also the enormous array of shuttles, gigs, and pinnaces locked in the landing bays, waiting to explore any intriguing worlds the expedition found.

  It was a massive job, and while his, as fleet fighter commander, was no less vast, it was far less likely to come into play. His squadrons would pull long-range patrols, and likely they would make the first sweeps over any dead imperial worlds. But that was nothing to Stockton’s battle-hardened sensibilities, and he wondered if he’d have to program his AI to keep him awake in the cockpit.

  Stockton slid out of bed. His own duty period didn’t begin for a few hours, but his chances of getting any more sleep were nil, so he figured he might as well get up.

  He looked around the cabin. It wasn’t exactly large, not by planet-side standards at least, but it was nearly double the size of his cramped quarters on the old Dauntless. The new ship was magnificent by any standards, yet he found himself missing the old Dauntless and her dingy, gray corridors. He’d walked those hallways for seven years, alongside friends and colleagues he’d never forget.

  The truth was, he felt lost. The pressure of combat was gone, and now he had far too much time to think about the losses suffered in the war, the comrades he’d lost. He’d almost resigned his commission, but he had no ide
a what else he could do, and in the end, he couldn’t leave Stara. Perhaps he could have persuaded her to retire with him, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to suggest it, not when he had no idea where they would go or what they would do.

  He took a deep breath and stood up, walking over toward the small built-in console. He’d tossed his jacket there the night before. His eyes went right to the insignia, to the four platinum circlets on the collar.

  Captain. It was a rank he’d never expected to attain, one that seemed almost out of reach for a wildcat pilot, like himself. He knew he’d earned it, at least on one level. He’d fought hard during the war, and he’d been in the center of the conflict’s greatest battles. But it troubled him, too.

  He’d had a hard enough time stepping into Kyle Jamison’s shoes, assuming the rank his old commander had held. Now, he’d reached a level his friend, and to a great extent, his mentor, had never held. He realized he had to go on, to accept the deaths of Jamison and so many other friends. He had to do it for Stara, and because Kyle and his other lost comrades would have wanted him to.

  He knew what he had to do…he just didn’t know how to do it.

  Chapter Six

  Pamphlet Posted Outside Factory 19A6

  Workers of Barroux, there have been several instances of disorder and work stoppages at factories around the city. This disloyalty was instigated by dissident groups, criminals seeking to stand in the way of the Revolution. This morning, sixty-three of these traitors were executed in Freedom Square. The Revolution is yours, fellow citizens, and we can tolerate no interference from those seeking to further their own interests at the expense of Barroux’s workers. We will show no mercy to those who oppose the Revolution. Those who fight us must be destroyed. Our cause is righteous, and the future is ours. —Remy Caron, First Protector of the People