There was nothing Barron could do but wait…and hope he wasn’t watching the end of the Confederation, of the entire Rim. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t survive that final defeat, that he would die in battle before he would yield and become a slave to the Hegemony.

  But now he was preparing to run, to escape alive again, leaving thousands of his spacers dead behind him. He was retreating to try to find a way to stave off final defeat, to prevent a morale breakdown and the surrender he knew the Senate, the industrialists, even many of his own officers would favor when they found out just what had happened.

  What they now faced.

  Barron didn’t know how he would hold off that kind of collapse, but he silently prayed for just one thing, to avoid one terrifying eventuality.

  Don’t make me turn the guns on my own people…

  Because he knew he would do just that if the Senate forced him, if it was the only way to keep the Confederation alive, to avoid surrender and slavery.

  * * *

  “Johannes, stay on those controls. You’re so close…you can make it.” Stockton was hunched forward, his hand gripped around his throttle like skeletal claws. His people had made it back, at least some of them had. He didn’t have exact numbers, not because they weren’t available, but because he’d expressly ordered his AI not to tell him. There would be time for that. Just then, he had more important things to do, like keeping that number as high as possible by guiding in his pilots with damaged ships. He’d gotten at least a dozen in through his personal efforts, men and women he knew in his gut would be dead if he hadn’t directed them step by step into the bays.

  But this was Johannes Trent, a veteran ace and one of his “Four Horsemen.” Alicia Covington had already landed, getting her battered bird in with what had to be about a gram of fuel to spare, and Dirk Timmons was flying around the battle line, doing the same thing Stockton was. Getting rookie pilots into the bays.

  Trent was no rookie. He was one of the best in the fleet, but his ship was a complete wreck, battered by a glancing blow from an enemy laser, and then a partial reactor failure. From what Stockton could see on his instruments, by every reasonable definition, Trent’s ship was unflyable.

  But the hardened warrior was still flying the damned thing. And Stockton was determined to get him into Dauntless’s bay, whatever it took. He’d come close to losing one of key commanders—and one of his very few friends—the year before at Megara. He hadn’t known Trent as long as he had Federov, of course, but he liked the ace pilot, and he’d come to rely heavily on him. And he wasn’t going to let him die, not so close to the flight deck.

  “My stabilizers are shot, Admiral, and I’m coming in too fast. I need to pull off.”

  “No…hold your course. That’s an order.” Stockton snapped out the command almost reflexively. He understood Trent’s impulse, and in most situations, he would agree with the pilot. But there was no time, not just then. Stockton hadn’t been barraged with dire warnings from Dauntless’s bridge, urging him to get his people aboard before the battleship, and all its brethren, made a run for the transit point…but that had only been because Tyler Barron knew Stockton understood those facts, perhaps better than anyone in the fleet.

  If Trent didn’t make it onboard in this attempt, he wouldn’t have time to come around again. He’d end up being left behind. To die. That was close to an indisputable fact.

  “Keep on it, Johannes. You’ve got this. You’re low on power, so you’re going to have to start your final deceleration early, but you’ve got time.” Stockton was no stranger to emergency landings, and he knew the one facing Trent would be a difficult one. He’d always hated assigning percentages to life or death situations, but the thoughts slipped in, nevertheless. A normal pilot might have had one chance in ten, but Trent was one of the fleet’s best. Stockton figured the odds were better than even, maybe even two in three. That was reassuring, perhaps, at a card table when pushing chips to the center, but far less so watching a valued comrade betting his life on the combination of his skills and the battered machinery bringing him home.

  “Is the deck cleared?”

  That wasn’t the kind of thought he wanted in Trent’s head. Stockton had ordered full crash protocols, of course. Taking out a dozen techs and crippling Dauntless’s flight deck wouldn’t bring Trent back if the pilot lost it on the way in and wiped out in the bay. But Stockton wanted Trent’s thoughts on his ship and the landing ahead of him, and nothing else.

  “You’re fine, Johannes. If I was on Dauntless now, I’d take a nap in that bay a meter or two in front of your landing point.” A lie, but a well-meaning one. He’d delivered it well, better than he’d expected, but he still didn’t think Trent had bought it. A less-experienced pilot might have, but Johannes Trent knew just what he was facing.

  “Alright, Jake…and, thanks.” The pilot’s voice was edgy, even a touch shaky. Trent was a veteran, but Stockton could tell he was clearly worried.

  No, he was scared.

  “You’ve been through worse than this, Johannes. Just push everything else aside, and land that thing like you’ve done a hundred times.” Confidence was a crucial thing, of course, but Stockton knew equipment was equipment, and if it was too badly damaged to function, even the best pilot who’d ever lived would be in trouble.

  “One minute to entry, Admiral. Firing reverse thrusters now.”

  Stockton remained silent, not wanting to cross over from encouragement to distraction. Trent was a pro, a veteran. He knew what to do. It was time to stay silent and trust his friend’s abilities.

  He watched on the screen, seeing the energy spike as Trent’s thrusters kicked in. The pattern was off—probably because the engines were damaged, the port side firing harder than the starboard. For an instant, Stockton thought Trent was going to lose it, but the pilot managed to correct the imbalance in time, and his ship slipped through the open landing bay doors, wobbling a bit and still moving at too high a speed, but maybe, just maybe, controllable.

  Stockton found himself holding his breath, watching, his body tense. He lost the image as the fighter moved inside Dauntless’s landing bay, and he sat for a few seconds that seemed to drag on into eternity. Then the com crackled, and Stara’s voice came through.

  “He’s in, Jake. It was messy, and we had some damage in the bay, but it’s done. I doubt the ship will ever fly again, but Trent is okay. They’re pulling him out of the cockpit right now. He’s got some cuts and scrapes, and maybe a broken arm, but he’ll be fine.” A pause, very short, and then, “Now get yourself in here, Jake. Now. Use beta bay. Alpha will be closed for a bit while we clean things up.”

  Stockton nodded, and he could feel a smile take over his face. It was fleeting, and the overall gloom of the day quickly reasserted itself. Still, there was always cause to celebrate a friend’s escape from what had seemed like certain death, even on a day when thousands of others had died. But it was a fleeting thing.

  Stockton angled his ship around, realigning toward Dauntless’s beta bay. He was the last one of his people still out, and he took one look behind, into the seemingly endless void of what had been a battlefield. Thirty-four hundred of his pilots were out there, most of them dead, the others floating helplessly, doomed and without hope. It was by far the worst defeat the Confederation’s fighter corps had ever endured, and it had happened on his watch. He had led them all in…and he had brought fewer than half of them back.

  It wasn’t his fault, he knew…but then it was, too. He’d ordered the double loads, and he’d led his people right at the mysterious enemy dreadnought. He hadn’t even considered that the enemy might have developed their own fighters, that they might have waited to deploy them until they would have the most devastating effect.

  He wretched his mind from such thoughts, focused his attention on the task at hand as his ship slipped inside the bay. There was nothing to be gained by worsening the disaster through his own carelessness. He didn’t know what was next, or how he would deal with the shattered remnants of his fighter corps. If it still was his fighter corps. The only thing certain to him was the need to accept full responsibility for the disaster, to go see Tyler Barron…and to offer the admiral is immediate resignation.

  But before any of that, there was one thing he needed to do. He had to shake Johannes Trent’s hand.

  And he had to feel Stara in his arms, even if only for a few fleeting moments before reality’s cold hand grabbed him and drove him to bridge, to stand before Admiral Barron and endure the darkness of accountability for what he’d done.

  * * *

  “Commander, we might be able to engage the enemy battle line before it is able to transit out of the system.” The kiloron’s voice was stern, professional, but Ilius could hear the venom in it, too. The Kriegeri were professionals, trained from childhood to keep their emotions firmly under control, but six years of bloodletting had placed enormous strain on them all. They were beginning to hate their enemies, and in the process, they were becoming more like them, bloodthirsty, often driven by emotion instead of reason. The enemy had killed millions of their comrades, and for many of them, the war had become not a crusade to absorb and protect the Rimdwellers, but one to avenge their own dead.

  That was not good, Ilius knew, even though, when his own guard slipped, he sometimes felt the same way. The whole point of the conflict was to unite the Rimdwellers with the rest of humanity, to forge them all into one. But he couldn’t ignore the rage he’d felt himself, and he’d even seen Chronos’s disciplined mind struggling to keep out the resentment and fury the war had kindled. They had all lost, suffered, shed blood at the hands of the enemy. The reactions were natural enough, but they were also toxic. Such things had helped lead to the Great Death, and brought mankind to the brink of extinction. Humanity would not survive another such disaster. In his more philosophical moments, Ilius wondered if it was too early yet to declare that they had survived the first nightmare. In many ways, it seemed still to be going on.

  “Negative, Kiloron.” There was a heaviness to his response. He wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to condemn the officer for his feelings, but he couldn’t encourage such things either. “Continue recovery operations for the fighter squadrons. We will face the enemy line another day.” It took considerable effort for Ilius not to second his subordinate’s desire and order Colossus forward against the disordered Rim fleet. But the great ship’s purpose wasn’t to destroy the remaining forces of the Rim, nor to blast their defenses and their industry to dust. It was to break them emotionally, to crush their morale, to convince them of the utter pointlessness of further bloody resistance. To achieve that, he had to let them go, to give them a moment of solace, enough time to recover from their shock and to coldly evaluate what they now faced.

  Then they would accept the terms Chronos would offer. They would have to, surely. Any other course of action would be tantamount to suicide. The Rimdwellers were brave and tenacious, certainly, but they weren’t fools. They wouldn’t fight on when they realized there was no chance to win. No chance whatsoever.

  Would they?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Planet Calpharon

  Sigma Nordlin IV

  Year of Renewal 266 (321 AC)

  “The deadly danger we have feared through all living memory has returned, and in all the time since the Others last struck, we have never been as vulnerable as we are now. The conflict on the Rim, as rationally planned and executed as it appeared to be, may now prove to be the source of our doom.” Thantor sat at the opposite end of the table, staring down its full length toward Akella. He was Number Two, the most genetically perfect human being in the galaxy, save only for her. They had position in common, the experience of being held above all others. And something more, a child. Thantor was the father of Akella’s firstborn. But in the Hegemony’s ordered and genetically-focused society, that didn’t mean they were companions, or even friends. Thantor had become her bitter rival over the past few years, and she now saw clearly that he viewed her as the only thing standing between him and the highest posting in the Hegemony.

  Whatever their connections, including many times when he’d been her political ally, and even during the sexual relations that preceded her pregnancy, Akella had never trusted her immediate subordinate. She’d mated with him because of his genes, because it was her sacred duty to achieve the best possible pairings to create the next generation of humanity’s leaders. There was no affection at all between them, not like there was between her and Chronos.

  Not that there need be any. Allowing emotions to interfere with important choices such as breeding selections was the kind of foolishness that had almost destroyed humanity. She understood that, and she believed in it without reservation. Yet, she’d selected Chronos at Number Eight for her second pairing, when she knew both Number Three and Number Seven were available and receptive. That had been an emotional decision, she knew, even if she had convinced herself the differences between two individuals of such lofty statuses were statistically irrelevant. She also knew the problems rarely came at the start of such deviations from orthodoxy, but rather, farther down the sequence of events. It had been a weakness, perhaps a small one, but a chink in her armor she could ill afford. The worst part was, she knew she would make the same choice again if given the opportunity.

  “Your conclusions are valid, Thantor, as always, though I submit it is far too early to speak of doom. Master Josias’s expedition met with disaster, and we have no alternate explanation for what threat fell on his fleet. But that, in and of itself, is no conclusive proof that the Others have returned. We have sent four more expeditions to the subject area, and none have encountered any material threats. We must consider these facts as well, before we reach any hasty conclusions.” Her words were for public consumption. She didn’t have a doubt in her mind the Others had returned. The only force ever to threaten the Hegemony with total destruction. She’d feared their return her entire adult life, but only as she sat there, did she realize she’d never truly believed it would happen. At least not in her lifetime. She was still struggling with realization, with true comprehension of what likely faced them all.

  “We hear your words, Number One, and we all respect your intellect. Yet, I must ask my colleagues on this Council, what else could have so obliterated a Hegemony fleet? And, what are we to do now, with so many of our forces committed to the seemingly endless conflict on the Rim?” Thantor was pushing her hard, and it was pissing her off. She’d long known her old breeding partner coveted her position, that he was jealous over his own Number Two status. Why is he coming at me so hard? The Test is the Test…he can only take my place if I am driven out in disgrace.

  Such action was unprecedented in Hegemony history, and it would take a nearly unanimous vote of the Council even to begin such momentous proceedings. What are you up to, Thantor?

  “The action on the Rim is not elective in nature, Number Two. We live by laws and first among those is our sacred duty to shepherd and protect humanity. There are hundreds of billions of people on the Rim, a vast concentration of population that defies any previous knowledge or expectations. I will acknowledge that the conflict had proven more difficult to conclude than we had hoped at first, but I maintain that any other choice but to pursue assimilation would have been unthinkable, and a sacrilegious violation of our primary purpose.” She wished she felt as certain as she sounded, but in truth, she was almost overcome with doubts. Had she erred in sending the fleet to assault the Rim? Had she allowed her feelings for Chronos to color her decisions in dispatching reinforcements?

  “And if the Others have returned, as it appears to me, they have, what will become of our sacred purpose, or indeed, of the Hegemony itself? Your pursuit of our central mission may well have led us to utter ruin.”

  Akella barely restrained her anger. Thantor was making a move against her, and it triggered immense rage inside her. She’d never even wanted to be Number One, but the Test didn’t lie…and it hadn’t given her a choice. Her genes had brought her ability and privilege, but they had also built a prison for her. She was obligated to hold her post, to assume the duty her bloodlines placed on her. She had never craved power, never sought to rise to the top of the Council. But she had no more choice in that than any who’d come before her, and if Thantor thought she was going to let him use a desperate threat to the Hegemony as a political tool to topple her, he was badly mistaken.

  “First, we do not know the Others have returned…” She said it again, but she still didn’t believe it. “…and, the sacred duty of the Hegemony is not a choice. There was no option regarding the Rim. We did there only what we had to do. What we were compelled to do, regardless of risk or cost.”

  “And what do you propose now, Number One, if, indeed, the old enemy has returned? Withdraw the fleets from the Rim, reduced in strength as they are? Order the Colossus back, so soon after committing it to the conflict there? And what of this previously unknown population on the Rim, which now, still unassimilated, can only be considered an active enemy? What will they do if we withdraw to face the Others? Will we faced invasion on two fronts?”

  Akella was furious, but she held it back. She knew Thantor was trying to discredit her, to lay the groundwork for a move against her at some point. That didn’t mean there was no truth to what he said, of course, but she wasn’t going to do his work for him by losing her composure in front of the other Council members.

  She had nothing material to offer anyway. There were no good options. She was hopeful Colossus would end the war on the Rim, soon enough to make a difference, but how long could she risk leaving the massive warship there? Josias was a fool, but he’d had thousands of officers and crews under him, and many of them were veterans and distinguished professionals. Something had destroyed them, obliterated the entire force, almost without a trace.