Barron needed the new Stockton, the grim leader who’d led the squadrons into battle so many times with relentless intensity. But he missed the young officer he’d once known.

  That Stockton is no more gone than your own younger self. You’ve both become stern old men, hardened by too much death, moving from duty to duty like automatons, never daring to believe that seemingly eternal war could end, that peace could come once again.

  Barron knew how fortunate he was that Stockton had become such a capable leader. The fighter wings had accomplished nothing less than saving the Confederation from utter destruction in the current war. Their status as the only major weapon system the nations of the Rim possessed and the Hegemony did not, made that possible, and ensured that they bore the heaviest part of the load time and time again in battle. The wings had suffered crushing losses, but they had given Barron what he’d needed, enough—if barely so—to keep the fleet in the fight, to save the Confederation from conquest.

  Even to take the offensive for a campaign, to liberate the capital.

  Now, there was another crisis. Barron had interviewed Captain Pilson himself, along with a half dozen of the spacers and officers from Phantara. He’d reviewed the scanner footage, watching more than twenty times as he evaluated the Hegemony’s newest weapon. The Colossus, as they appeared to call it, was vastly stronger than anything the Confederation, or any of its allies, possessed, including the largest fixed fortresses. The power and range of the great ship’s weaponry was nothing short of astonishing.

  The Colossus would obliterate the entire Grand Alliance fleet given the chance, probably all on its own. But it wasn’t on its own. It was surrounded by the Hegemony’s entire invasion fleet, now reinforced after the retreat from Olyus.

  Barron had kept his confidence in check, even after the victory at Megara. There had been celebrations, and a lot of careless talk about turning points and victory. But Barron had known the Hegemony wasn’t done. He doubted his people had even seized the advantage in the conflict. He counted his own casualties, somberly paging through production figures, training rosters, struggling to replace losses, to keep the fleet strong and ready for the next battle he knew would come.

  For the threat he was sure he would face.

  Now it had come, and for all his caution, his focus and unstoppable effort, he found himself stunned, shocked at what the Hegemony had thrown into the fight.

  The enemy had learned from their strategic mistakes, as well. They were no longer moving on the Core systems, the wealthy and populated, but mostly unproductive worlds that were the Confederation’s oldest. They were heading right for the richest part of the Iron Belt, toward the systems that pumped out ships and weapons and supplies to feed the war effort. Barron knew if his people lost too many of the Iron Belt systems, the war was as good as lost.

  But as he’d listened to the chatter in the conference room, the opinions and arguments hurled back and forth, he’d come to his own conclusion. The Hegemony forces weren’t on their current course because they intended to conquer the Iron Belt. They were coming that way because it was one place—perhaps the only place—that Barron would have to defend.

  They didn’t intend to hit the industrial heart of the Confederation. They wanted to destroy the Grand Alliance’s fleet. And, their massive new—warship, fortress, Barron wasn’t sure what to call it—made that seem not only possible, but perhaps unavoidable.

  Unless the squadrons could save the day one more time.

  “Jake…about these double loads…” Barron let his voice trail off. It didn’t take more words to express his concern. Stockton had ordered every bomber in the strike force equipped with the new external mounting systems. Half his ships, at least his Confederation Lightnings, now carried either two plasma torpedoes, or a full dozen cluster bombs. It almost doubled the force’s destructive power, but it rendered the overloaded craft even less maneuverable than they were normally. The squadrons, their evasive capabilities severely reduced, would suffer increased losses as they moved into firing position.

  That meant more pilots would die, but it also meant they were likely to deliver more ordnance. They would hit the enemy formations even harder than they had before. As the words had left his mouth, Barron knew what Stockton’s answer would be. What it had to be.

  “They can handle it, Admiral. I’ll get them through.” After a few seconds of silence, “I’ve been considering doubling up on payloads anyway, but with that thing…” Stockton reached out his arm, a pointless gesture, perhaps, directed as it was, toward nothing in particular, but one whose meaning was all too clear. “…what choice do we have? The wings have to hit that ship, Admiral, and hit it hard. We have to take that thing out before it can close with our battle line. Things were bad enough with the railguns, but we both know the only way we’re going to destroy that is with bombers.”

  Barron hated dumping yet more on Stockton and his beleaguered pilots, but his strike force commander was right. The entire battle plan—assuming the enemy didn’t suddenly cease their apparent advance toward the Iron Belt—was based on massive, overwhelming bombing assaults. Barron had positioned the rest of the fleet far enough back to allow Stockton’s people to return and rearm for a second attack…before the battleships and escorts came into range, and the final stages of the conflict began.

  With any luck, the massive new warship would at least be damaged, its weapons arrays degraded, before it could open fire on Barron’s battleships.

  “We’re assuming, of course, that our guess is correct, that this is the course they will take.” Barron had thought about little else for the past several days. He couldn’t afford any mistakes, not against that thing. There were alternate routes toward the Iron Belt the enemy could take, but all the others were longer, and Barron would have time to redeploy if he’d chosen incorrectly. Barely perhaps, but enough time, nevertheless.

  But he wasn’t wrong. The enemy would come the way he expected because that’s where his fleet was, and that was what they wanted. They had to know he would throw every bomber he could find at the Colossus, and that told him they thought they could handle it. Perhaps they had more escorts, or enhanced point defense systems he didn’t know about. Whatever it was, he took it as a given Stockton’s people would have a hard time taking on the monster ship, that they would meet perhaps the worst resistance they’d yet encountered. But none of that mattered. There was no choice. The wings had to get to the Colossus, and they had to destroy it.

  Or, at the very least, they had to hit it hard.

  “They’ll be here, Admiral. I can feel them coming.” Barron couldn’t tell how much of Stockton’s claim was in jest and how much the pilot had come to believe he could sense enemy forces approaching from lightyears away. He didn’t care either. After what he’d been through, Jake Stockton was entitled to a touch of eccentricity.

  Besides, there had been times he’d almost believed Stockton could smell hostile forces approaching.

  “Jake, I just wanted to tell you…well, without you and your pilots and all you have done, we never would have…”

  “Admiral Barron…” Atara’s voice blared through the speaker on the desk. The instant he heard her tone, he knew.

  The enemy was there.

  * * *

  “Transferring launch control to strike force command. You may initiate when ready.” Stockton sat in his fighter, his mind in the strange, seemingly contradictory state of calm and edginess that came on him before battle. The veteran inside, the warrior who’d been in a hundred battles, was steely, ready, fully aware that nerves and fear could only get him killed.

  But however many times he’d fought, how many enemies he’d engaged, killed…there was still a tiny bit of the cadet he’d once been within him, just enough to keep a spark of fear ablaze in his mind.

  He’d decided long ago not to fight it. It kept him honest….and just maybe, more than any of his other thoughts and abilities, it had kept him alive.

  “Understood, flight command. Initiating launch sequence in ten seconds.” He felt a twinge at Stara’s voice, and at his clinical, professional response. He’d intended to go see her after he’d met with Admiral Barron, but the Hegemony forces seemed to have other ideas. He knew she’d understand. Stara was no less a warrior than he was. But still, even his cool focus gave way to the thought he dreaded, the realization that if he didn’t return, he would have missed his last chance to see her, to hold her.

  She knows, already. Anything you would have told her…she knows…

  “Grand Alliance strike force…commence launch sequence now.” He gripped the controls of his ship and then he took a deep breath and blasted the engines hard. The thrust threw him back into the cushioning of his seat as the Lightning ripped down the launch tube, accelerating at 20g.

  Stockton had reordered his wings, moved pilots around to fill holes, replace casualties. He’d honed the organizational table a dozen times, reordered the launch sequences, and modified every tactic his people used.

  But one thing stayed the same.

  Jake Stockton launched first.

  Always.

  The battle about to begin would set yet another milestone for him. The largest force he’d ever led, over six thousand bombers. That record was accompanied by one for the number of combatant nations, and of different ship designs in the force. The largest contingent was made up of Confederation Lightnings, the cutting edge in attack craft, but there were squadrons from the Alliance, the Union, and from a dozen tiny principalities out on the Far Rim. He’d done his best to forge them into a single, cohesive force, to bring standards of training and excellence to a high level, but he knew he had clueless rookies out there, stumbling around alongside his hardened veterans.

  But first-timers, or aces with histories tracing back to the Union War, they would do their duty. They knew what was at stake, in the war as a whole…and in the monstrosity they were heading out to face. The Colossus was vastly more powerful than any battleship—than any fleet of battleships—and there wasn’t a doubt in Stockton’s mind the war was as good as lost.

  Unless his people took that thing down.

  He angled his throttle, lining his ship up on the predetermined approach vector. It was much too straightline for his tastes, too predictable. But there was no choice. He had to allow enough time for his ships to get back and rearm for a second strike before the gargantuan enemy vessel could close and ravage the Grand Alliance’s battle line. And, if Captain Pilson and his people had been right—and Stockton believed them completely—Colossus’s main weapons vastly outranged anything the Confeds, or their allies, possessed.

  He brought his ship across at an oblique, moving toward the center of the massive formation still coming together. His wings were launching from more than a hundred platforms, and across forty thousand kilometers of open space, his lines slowly took shape. There were three waves, each of them vast, powerful…and every ship capable of it had been double loaded with bombs and torpedoes. It was the single largest conglomeration of destructive force he had ever seen.

  And he was about to lead it to the enemy. The one hope to destroy the enemy’s monstrous fortress ship. To save the Confederation, and the entire Rim.

  * * *

  “All fleet units to battlestations.” Chronos stood on the bridge of Hegemony’s Glory, holding onto the edge of his chair as the great ship’s engines decelerated hard. It wasn’t time for the battleships to push forward into the fight. Not yet.

  Chronos was the overall theater commander, the officer in charge of the entire war, but just then, he intended to stand aside. Ilius would command the initial fighting, from the vast control center at the core of Colossus. The fleet as a whole would take a secondary role in the coming fight, at least at the outset. Hegemony battleships dueling with their Confederation counterparts would be a bloody affair, but it wouldn’t instill the necessary terror, the abject wave of hopelessness he knew it would take to break the enemy’s will, to compel them to surrender.

  To end this cursed war at long last…

  Colossus was tasked with just that purpose, and the coming battle, the Santara system, would be the stage for its grand debut. The Confeds would come on, no doubt with their usual tactics, but this time they would meet something different. Colossus was like nothing they’d fought before. It’s main guns vastly outranged even the railguns of the Hegemony line ships, and it mounted hundreds of point defense turrets, all directed by a customized AI designed solely to target small craft.

  That could very well be enough right there…but Colossus had one more surprise for the enemy, one ready to go, waiting only for Chronos’s command.

  “All ships report full readiness, Commander. Colossus is heading in-system, directly behind its escort screen.” That screen consisted of nearly four hundred frigates and light cruisers, formed up in a tight semi-spherical formation, one the attacking bombers would have to engage—or at least fly through—even to get to Colossus.

  Chronos looked over at the display, at the vast array of bombers, thousands of them, wave after wave, coming on already, launched from extreme range. That, also, had been predictable. The enemy would want enough time to launch a second strike, and that meant sending off the first while the launch platforms were still far to the rear.

  Chronos managed something like a grin as he watched. The enemy wasn’t going to get that second strike in, not if everything went according to plan.

  He looked around the bridge, watching as his officers focused on their tasks, but mostly, he was just trying to pass the time. He looked back at the display, checking the bombing strike’s position, the estimated time until it hit the escort screen…and then Colossus.

  Minutes passed by, each one achingly slow, but finally. Chronos realized the lead elements of the Rim strike force were moving into range of his escorts.

  He issued no orders. His people already knew what to do.

  Point defense batteries erupted from the escorts, sending blistering fire toward the bombers. Flashes of light pulsed out from hundreds of laser turrets, and mag cannon launched expanding clouds of heavy metal particles toward the approaching bombers.

  The Rim forces reacted, hundreds of squadrons breaking into intricate evasive maneuvers. The wild vector and velocity changes saved hundreds of ships from the deadly defensive fire.

  But for hundreds more, it proved inadequate. The rookies, the unskilled, the unlucky, succumbed, their ships blasted to bits, or heavily damaged and knocked out of action. Some of the victims managed to eject, to wait and see if their side prevailed quickly enough to rescue them. Others died immediately, some never even knowing they were hit.

  Two hundred ships vanished in a matter of seconds, but still the vast strike force came on. And, still, the guns of the escorts fired, the death toll growing with each passing second, even as the fighters zipped by and the deadly frigates and cruisers spun around and fired from behind.

  Chronos had come to respect the Confeds, their tenacity, their courage, their skill, and none more than the small craft pilots, the men and women who had so badly savaged his forces, and who had paid a nightmarish price to do it. He was focused above all things on winning the war, ending the carnage…but he took no joy in the deaths of such warriors, enemies or no.

  His eyes moved to the stream of text and numbers on the side of the large screen. The escorts had destroyed or disabled almost five hundred bombers, a horrendous toll on the attackers. Chronos hadn’t dared to expect so many, and, as he his eyes focused on the remaining waves, he could see a sluggishness to their maneuver. Something was different. Perhaps it was just a higher proportion of rookie pilots, but for some reason, the Rim squadrons looked rougher than he’d seen them.

  Even as he felt sorrow for the brave warriors being killed, his lips curling into a carnivorous smile. Whatever it was interfering with the enemy maneuver, it was about to come back at the attackers.

  The enemy ships would enter Colossus’ defensive fire arc in less than fifteen minutes. But first, he had one more surprise for them. It was time.

  He turned toward the comm station. “Get me a line to Commander Ilius, at once.”

  The smile was still on his face when the voice of his second in command poured into his ears.

  “Is it time, Commander?” Ilius’s words were a question, but his tone made it clear he already knew the answer.

  Chronos sat for just a few seconds, and then, he uttered a single word.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Free Trader Pegasus

  Orbiting Planet Dannith

  Ventica System

  Year 321 AC

  “We should have gone back, Andi. We should have gone to warn the fleet.”

  “We can’t go back, not yet. We need more information, some kind of data the fleet can use.” That Tyler can use. “Besides, we’d never get around—or through—that fleet in time. Not without giving our position away.”

  Vig had been making the same argument for days, for more than a week, actually. She understood his rationale, and in some ways, she shared it. But turning around and heading back would have been a pointless effort.

  First, it was highly unlikely Pegasus could have reached the fleet in time to accomplish anything. Tyler had positioned scouts all around the Ventica system, covering every route Hegemony forces might take to hit any area of the Confederation they didn’t already occupy. That meant, he’d know what was coming long before she could reach him and tell him about it.

  Colossus, she thought. The radio intercepts we picked up called it Colossus.

  At least we know what Project Zed means now. And Red Storm, too? Why would it have two code names?

  “But, Andi, how are we going to get that intelligence? We’ve been here for days now. Do you really think we can land without being detected? And even if, through some miracle we do that, how the hell are we going to take off again? Stealth unit or no, they’re sure to pick up the full blast we’ll need to get to escape velocity.”