The strike force was still weak, its numbers severely affected by the losses suffered at Santara. There had been no way to resolve that problem, not in the short time that had been available. He’d transferred what reserves were available, put fleets of newly-manufactured Lightnings into service, but all his efforts had failed to undo the disaster in Santara. The strike force was a pale shadow of what it had been, though, at least this time, the interceptors were ready to meet the Hegemony fighters on more even terms.

  Barron was watching, waiting for the enemy to launch, feeling the tension increase with every passing moment. Still, despite his readiness, he felt some surprise when the first reports came in.

  “Colossus is launching fighters, Admiral. And the enemy battle line is moving forward.”

  Barron disregarded the news about the enemy battleships. They were a threat, certainly, but not one he intended to face. His fleet wasn’t there to fight, not really. They were there to create a diversion, to buy enough time for Sara Eaton and her people to close, and to launch their ship-bomb conglomerations toward Colossus. Even the rescue attempts, the desperate effort to scoop up the lifeboats containing Eaton and her volunteer crews, would be made by escort ships, faster and more maneuverable than the great beasts of the battle line…and more expendable, too.

  No one is expendable, he thought to himself. But he didn’t really believe it. His years at war all screamed to him from his memories, and from his nightmares, contrary images flooded his mind, examples of warriors who’d been left to die, sent to die, all for the greater good. On some level, Barron knew the real question wasn’t who was expendable, but, given a dire enough situation, who wasn’t.

  He was far from confident the rescue ships could succeed, that they could collect Eaton’s survivors and escape the system, but he tried not to think about it. There was nothing he could do, nothing he hadn’t already done, and it wasn’t going to help him to obsess now about whether he was sending Sara Eaton to her death. Such painful exercises served no purpose. If he could destroy Colossus at the cost of every man and woman in his command—himself included—he understood he would do it, that he would have to do it. Risk was no cause to hold back, not when the alternative was disaster and utter defeat for all of his people.

  For everyone on the Rim.

  Still, that didn’t make it any easier.

  Barron watched as the enemy strike force assembled around the massive warship and began to move forward, toward Stockton and the Rim’s fighter wings. The Hegemony approach vector varied a bit from what Barron’s staff had projected, and as he watched them, he felt a tightness in his gut, and a cold realization formed.

  He was about to say something when Atara turned and spoke first. “Admiral Stockton on your line, sir.”

  Stockton knows it…just like you do.

  He shook his head as he tapped the comm unit. “Jake…” He stopped, struggling to force himself to say what he knew he had to say. Then, Stockton rescued him.

  “I need authorization to accelerate and engage, Admiral. Those fighters are…” The strike force commander stopped abruptly, clearly unwilling to mention Eaton’s ships, even over an encrypted, direct line.

  But Barron already knew. The Hegemony squadrons were close to Eaton’s line of approach, too close. If Barron left them alone, two thousand ships strong, all of them scanning the area around their line of advance…

  Around Eaton’s cloaked ships…

  “Go, Jake. But watch your approach velocity. I want you to joust with them, keep them distracted…not dive in for a fight to the finish. When I give the word, I want you to break off and get back here immediately, so keep your velocities and vectors under control. Understood?”

  Barron listened to the silence, extending a bit longer than the transmission time explained. Barron knew Stockton, and he understood his top pilot was seething with rage, desperate to avenge the pilots he’d lost at Santara. Stockton had always been a vicious fighter, and Barron knew every fiber in his body wanted to plunge in, to make the enemy pay for the pilots they’d butchered.

  Barron was completely sure that’s how Stockton felt, if for no other reason than he would have felt no differently in the pilot’s shoes. But there was more at stake than vengeance or pride. The future of the Rim was on the line, and that was above all other considerations.

  The fleet simply couldn’t afford to lose any more pilots than absolutely necessary.

  He was about to repeat what he’d said when the pilot’s response finally came. “Understood, Admiral.” Stockton clearly wasn’t happy with the reality, but Barron could tell from his tone, he would do what he had to do, what he’d been ordered to do.

  “We need those fighters, Jake, remember that. We just can’t afford another round of heavy casualties.” Barron felt a touch of guilt at reminding Stockton how many people had been lost at Santara. He was sure his strike force commander knew the exact tally, probably updated from the latest report of fatalities from the infirmaries, and that the veteran pilot blamed himself, for the double loading of the ships if nothing else. But there was no room for compassion, nor for confusion. Barron had to know Stockton understood him perfectly, and a few seconds later, he did.

  “I know the situation, sir. You can count on me.”

  Barron nodded silently for a few seconds. Then he replied, simply, “I know that, Jake. I’ve always known that.” He cut the line. Now stay focused and come back. I need you. Barron had seen too many pilots killed more by their own distraction and despair than by enemy action, and he couldn’t afford to lose Stockton.

  Then he turned back toward the display, trying to guess just where Eaton’s force was. If they were on schedule, they’d be hitting Colossus in less than twenty minutes.

  * * *

  “Alright, bombers stay back. I want all of you on reverse thrust. Bring your velocity down to five hundred kilometers per second. Interceptors, you’re all with me. Those of you who’ve been in dogfights before, it’s time to rouse those memories, recharge the old reflexes. Those who are flying interceptors for the first time in combat, follow the lead of the veterans. And remember, dogfighting is new to all those Kriegeri pilots, too, so stay focused…and remember, it’s time to avenge those we left behind in Santara.”

  Stockton wasn’t sure he should have added that last part, not after Barron’s orders. But the admiral had only restricted how far forward his ships went, how much velocity they built up heading away from the fleet. He hadn’t said a word about the ferocity of the fighting while it lasted, and Stockton intended to make use of every second he had.

  To kill Hegemony pilots. To make them pay for all of his people who’d died at Santara.

  “Here they come…let’s show these bastards what Rim strikefighters can do.” Stockton blasted his own thruster, pushing forward, toward a small cluster of Hegemony ships in the lead of their formation. He didn’t know if the commanders of the enemy strike force were there, but if they were, he was planning to chop the head right off.

  He flipped a pair of switches, arming his ship-to-ship missiles. The Confederation weapons were heavier than the Hegemony rockets, but his ship only carried two, while the enemy craft mounted four. Stockton didn’t care. He was going to blast two ships with his longer-ranged weapons, and then he was going to show those Kriegeri sons of bitches just what a real pilot could do with his lasers.

  He saw a large formation of fighters—his own—coming around, moving toward the Hegemony force’s flank. He knew who it was before he even saw it.

  Warrior…

  Dirk Timmons, once a rival, now one of his closest friends…and the best pilot in the fleet, save perhaps only for Stockton himself.

  And behind the bluster and the cockiness that went with the trade, Stockton knew very well just how valid that ‘perhaps’ was.

  Timmons had his wings accelerating hard. It seemed the officer was ignoring the orders against getting too committed, but Stockton realized at once that the vector against the enemy flank was partially back toward the fleet as well. Timmons was about to hit the enemy hard, and when the order to withdraw came, his ships would be able to quickly bring their vectors around on a course back to the fleet.

  He was obeying the spirit of Barron’s orders, if not the literal words.

  Stockton cursed himself for a moment, wondering if he should have tried something like the with the entire strike force. But he quickly realized, a flanking move couldn’t really work, not without a pinning force in front. Besides, Timmons had most of the real veterans, pilots who’d faced other fighters in melee before. If Stockton had given the rookies complex maneuvers, he would have overloaded them. He needed them focusing on what he’d taught them in the few weeks he’d had to prepare them.

  He needed them to kill Hegemony fighters.

  Stockton’s fingers tightened, and his ship shook once, then a few seconds later, again, as he loosed his two missiles. The Hegemony fighters were bunched together—a rookie mistake, and one he intended to take full advantage of. He might have felt something like sympathy for the Kriegeri in those things, rushed through training, thrown into combat too soon, and about to die at the hands of a hardened veteran.

  He might have, but he didn’t.

  He smiled as he saw the first target disappear, and his grin widened as the second one followed.

  No, he didn’t feel sympathy for the enemy.

  Not one bit.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  CFS Zephyr

  Tellurus System

  Year 321 AC

  Sara Eaton leaned forward, her body tight with tension. Zephyr was close to Colossus, closer than any Confederation vessel had yet come to the Hegemony’s new superweapon. There were eleven other vessels in her small command, each of them accelerating hard toward the monstrous vessel, increasing thrust levels as the distance dropped.

  And everyone onboard each of them as nervous as I am…

  She knew ‘nervous’ was her own internal code, a word that allowed her to avoid admitting to herself that she was terrified. She’d faced deadly danger before, and been scared each time, but there was something different about the current mission. She was staring into the maw of ancient imperial might, of the manifestation of the power mankind had possessed before the Cataclysm, and it felt like looking into the angry eyes of some vengeful, old god.

  The mission had been her idea. She still saw the need for it, and the lack of other alternatives, but now her eyes were opened to the terrible risk, to the almost absurd desperation of the whole thing.

  “Two hundred thousand kilometers, Admiral. Closing at three thousand kilometers per second, and still accelerating. All ships appear to be fully operational.” The officer’s voice betrayed her fear. That didn’t surprise Eaton, and she thought nothing less of her for it. She was just as scared herself. She just hoped she was hiding it better. One of the duties of her rank.

  “Very well. Maintain course and acceleration.” She nodded as she acknowledged the report. ‘Appear to be fully operational’ was far from the specificity and accuracy she usually expected in status reports. But her people were restricted to what their passive scanners showed them. She didn’t dare allow any of her ships to communicate with each other, not even on direct laser comm links, nor to run any active scans. Secrecy was the only thing keeping any of them alive. It was dangerous enough that her ships were blasting their engines at full, but that at least, had been a tradeoff between increasing the risk of detection while reducing the time to close the distance.

  She wondered for a moment, a fleeting instant of weakness, if she’d really had to come at all. There was nothing really to command, not without communications between the ships, and her orders were simple. Basically, to ram the damned thing, or come as close to that as possible. Even the detonations would be controlled by the ships’ AIs.

  She imagined sitting back in her command chair, on the bridge of her battleship, watching and waiting as Tyler and the others were doing even then. She knew that wasn’t an easy thing to do, either, to sit and wait to see if those you sent forward returned. But as much as a veteran like Eaton tried to push aside the sheer terror, it preyed on her relentlessly. She had gone into battle many times, always knowing the risks. That didn’t mean she wanted to die, or that she wanted any of her people to die.

  But what they were doing just then, the desperate mission they were executing, had to go in, and she would have led it even if she’d know every one of her people would die. There was too much at stake to think of personal fears and desires. The Colossus could destroy every ship in the Rim navies, blast every orbital fortress to rubble from far beyond the range of return fire. For six years, she and her comrades had battled relentlessly, fought to maintain their freedom, to beat back the invader. If she failed, if her desperate attack didn’t destroy the massive superbattleship, all was lost.

  “All lifeboats, power up. All non-essential crew are to board at once.” It was almost time. Time to get her people out.

  Eaton had timed everything perfectly, down to the last second. The boats would begin their escapes with the intrinsic velocities of the ships that launched them. That meant, even after they escaped, her people would be racing toward Colossus at tremendous velocity. The small survival craft lacked the thrust to decelerate significantly, but she’d allowed enough time to alter their vectors, to keep the ships out of the danger zone when the massive warheads went off.

  Just enough.

  “Non-essential personnel boarding now, Admiral.”

  ‘Non-essential’ had a different definition on the current mission than it usually did. There was no one on any of her ships that fit the usual parameters. But now, no one at all was essential, unless they were at the controls, guiding the ships in over the last fifty thousand kilometers. Even that duty would soon be turned over to the AIs, the computers that would bring the ships in on their final approaches, until their final demise in the unimaginable fury the detonations would unleash.

  In a moment or two, she would give the final orders, and the pilots and skeletal engineering teams—and she and her immediate staff—would board the lifeboats as well.

  None of the boats could launch yet, of course, not until the final moment. The small lifeboats would show up on Colossus’s scanners once they cleared the stealth zone, and Eaton had no intentions of taking any chances of giving the enemy time to intercept the incoming bomb ships.

  No matter how tight that made the final escape.

  She could feel the tension building as the ships moved closer and closer to Colossus. She dared to let herself imagine the mission’s success, even to think of a successful escape for her people. A return to her chair, surrounded by her staff and command crew.

  Then she saw a flash on the screen, and she felt as though some phantom hand had reached down her throat and ripped out her insides. The AI was still chewing on the sparse passive scan data, but Eaton knew instantly what had happened.

  Colossus had detected her ships, one of them at least, and opened fire. A quick glance to the display confirmed her fears. Clarkson was gone, obliterated by the immense power of Colossus’s guns at close range.

  She sucked in deep breath, trying to ignore the nausea roiling her stomach.

  There was just one thing she didn’t know. Had Clarkson’s stealth unit failed? Had Colossus just discovered the one ship?

  Or were all her vessels about to be destroyed so close to success.

  So close…

  “Activate AI control. All personnel to the lifeboats. Now!”

  * * *

  ‘Warrior’ Timmons pressed the firing stud, three times in rapid succession, and each shot obliterated a Hegemony fighter. Timmons had watched his people gunned down in Santara, surprised and virtually helpless in their clunky bombers. Now it was payback time.

  It had been years since Timmons had been in a dogfight, and this was his first with his prosthetic legs, but his skill and his reflexes came back quickly. He’d scored half a dozen kills already, something unheard of in the normal annals of fighter versus fighter combat. But it was the first time he’d faced thousands of pilots who’d never fought other interceptors before, and he and his people were giving the still-green Hegemony pilots a lesson in just what properly-equipped veterans could do.

  At least he had veterans throughout his ranks. He couldn’t say that for the entire strike force.

  Jake Stockton had entrusted Timmons with most of the fighter corps’ experienced interceptor pilots, and he knew great responsibility came with that kind of favor. Timmons’ veterans were going to do the most damage to the enemy, and the more ferocious an attack they executed, the more pressure they would take off the less experienced pilots in the other wings…and the more they would distract the enemy to prevent them from finding Admiral Eaton’s cloaked vessels, which was the primary mission, the entire reason the battered strike force had launched.

  Revenge for Santara was strictly a bonus.

  Timmons checked his scanners, his eyes moving to his next target, even as he confirmed there was still no sign of Eaton’s force. Just a few more minutes…then they’ll be there…

  His orders were clear. The instant the bomb carriers detonated, he was to break off, to pull his forces back and return to their base ships. He understood the logic at play. First, a withdrawal would minimize losses among the already-ravaged squadrons, and second, it would draw the enemy fighters away from Colossus—or the position where Colossus had been—and hopefully open the way for the small, swift rescue ships to slip in and retrieve Admiral Eaton and her people from their vulnerable lifeboats.