She could feel most of the eyes on her bridge looking at her. She understood, but she didn’t let it get to her. She knew what her people had to do to win…or at least to forestall immediate enemy advances, and they were going to do it, whether they liked it or not.

  She just didn’t know if she could push them through, if they could damage enough of the enemy forces. That she wouldn’t know until the battle was almost over.

  If she lived that long.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  CWS Donallus

  Coranus Tylus System

  Year 329 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  Andi watched silently as her ships approached the planet. She knew her list of worlds was the easiest, and she would have argued against it…except its last entry was the original planet, and the attempt to actually take prisoners.

  She wondered whether the enemy would figure out what her people were up to. Almost certainly, she realized, but it would take more time to get the word out to other systems. That gave her an edge, at least at first, and she intended to use it as much as she could. She doubted it would last through all the systems she and the other three fleets were targeting, but then the enemy was forward deployed, and it would probably take considerable time to realize what was happening, and to respond.

  Assuming, of course, the attack was really dangerous, that they had developed the correct formula in their virus, and that the enemy hadn’t managed to find a vaccine or treatment. She knew there were lots of ifs and buts, but she found herself convinced that it would work…at least if they could get it done.

  “We’re in position, Andi…ready to begin bombardment.” Tarren spoke calmly, coolly, but she knew he was as edgy as any of her people. She had more ships than she’d had in the earlier operation, more than she’d ever directly commanded, and she was worried too, and despite her grave pronouncement that the scheme was sure to work, she had plenty of doubts floating around.

  “Begin bombardment.” She spoke calmly, and despite her assurance that the current system was toast—there had been only three small ships stationed there, and her fleet had managed to destroy them without any losses—she was worried about the whole operation.

  “Yes, as you command.”

  She listened to Tarren relay the orders, and perhaps twenty seconds later, her display began to show the preliminaries to the bombardment. Thirty ships were targeting the planet, and the rest were in position around it. The bombardment would take about half an hour to complete, and then her forces would begin their trip to the next world. She didn’t have any real information, but she realized that time was crucial. She’d been worried that her attack on the preliminary world more than a month earlier would generate some kind of action by the enemy, but perhaps it had been too close to the assault. She’d been concerned at first, but now, she assumed that the enemy fleet command had simply been notified that a force of ships had stumbled onto the planet and had fought a battle with the local forces before departing. Perhaps they were just lost, or something similar.

  But whatever had covered her on that first mission, it wouldn’t apply to the dozens of reports that would stream in from the current attacks. She knew the enemy would understand, she just wasn’t sure how long it would take, or how much time would be required to warn—and protect—their systems. Perhaps the forces could complete all their missions before the enemy could mount a real defense. That was the intent, the reason each system had ten target worlds and no more. But to be painfully honest, she had no idea exactly what would happen.

  But she knew her duty, and she struggled with every fiber of her being to consider only that, not to think of Tyler or Cassie, or anything else. Maybe she would be successful and live to rejoin her loved ones…but that had no place right now.

  She watched the bombardment continue, the ships moving according to very specific routines, dropping an almost undetectable sequence of viral infestation. It was more than enough, she knew, if it worked, but she was adhering completely to the sequence. Perhaps later, if she ran into any significant defensive forces, she would lose enough ships that she had to start doing partial runs, but this was the first planet, and she had a full force. Whatever happened tomorrow or next week or the following month, this system would be fully and completely bombed.

  She watched for almost half an hour, and she knew just when she’d get the report.

  “Bombardment complete, Andi…ships are reconfiguring for transit out.”

  She took a deep breath, and she let it out. Then she said, “The fleet will move directly toward transit point two as soon as all ships are in position.” She leaned back and looked forward, but her vision was obscured, by images of Tyler and Cassie. No matter how hard she tried, how much effort she put in, she couldn’t forget about them, not even for a few moments.

  She figured she was stronger because of it…but she realized that was a convenient analysis, too. It was as easy to say she was weaker, that her images of strength were mostly the result of the vastly larger forces she commanded than she had in her days before she’d met Tyler. Or any of a dozen other impressions.

  But as much as she loved him, as despondent as she’d been since her daughter had departed for Megara…she knew she would carry out her duty, however many times her loved ones appeared to her. She had to complete the mission before she could return, and just maybe, it would be successful…and she would prevail.

  And her family could settle down to a normal life.

  * * *

  “Begin bombardment.” Clint Winters sat in his chair, struggling not to rise, not to jump up and join the fight. The first system he’d attacked had been almost too easy, but this one had fourteen enemy ships, more than he’d expected. His own fleet was considerably larger, of course, and it had eliminated the entire Highborn force, but it had lost nine ships of its own. That was too many, far too many for one mission, or even two, counting the first one as well. He hoped it was an exception, that it wasn’t a sign of things to come.

  But in truth, he just didn’t know. He had guessed that the force the enemy had deployed to win the recent battle had at least compelled them to strip their forces…but in truth, he just didn’t know. The enemy could have many times as many ships as they’d used to win at Striker. He didn’t believe that, of course, not when the enemy had been defeated in the previous battle, but he realized he had nothing but meaningless conjecture about what they had, and what they could do.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Winters sat still, barely, as his forces bombarded the surface of the planet. His scanning results were poor, as always when studying Hegemony-held worlds, but they suggested a larger than necessary bombardment. That was intentional, and though he knew that if he continued to lose ships, he would get to the point where he would have to have lesser bombardments, he was determined to do whatever damage he could.

  His eyes were fixed on the display, watching as his ships moved back and forth, spraying the virus all around. He knew the attack would take about thirty-five minutes in total, which wasn’t a long time, certainly not against the context of traveling from system to system. Still, it seemed long, even as he watched, each second passing slowly, and moving into the next one.

  He kept his view, for what seemed like a long time, but when he checked the timer, her realized that less than five minutes had elapsed. He returned his eyes to the display, watching his ships moving about the planet, dropping the hopefully deadly virus everywhere. He’d known all along that the operation was still a guess, that not enough time had passed for the virus to take hold where it had been tested. He’d been leaning toward supporting the operation anyway, once it had proven to be effective…but the enemy had attacked too soon, and that had left no option except to launch the full attack, based on hope only. He knew, if the virus proved ineffective for any reason, the war was as good as over, that it was still the best hope for victory. The only hope.

  His eyes remained fixed on the screen, but his thoughts drifted. He imagined Barron, with what was left of the fleet, pulling back, slowly or quickly, depending on what the enemy did. He wondered about Chronos and Akella, and their efforts with the Council. They were doing what the Council wanted, but would that be enough? If the enemy pushed forward, the fleet would have to withdraw, and if the advance came on quickly, Tyler would have to fall back to the border of the Confederation…leaving the rest of the Hegemony defenseless. Would the Council agree to that? Or would they fight? And if Chronos, Akella, and most of the other senior officers stayed true to their stated positions, would their forces rally to them…or would they rebel against them?

  Vian Tulus was with Tyler to the end, at least. Winters couldn’t see any other alternative to that. Tulus was at Barron’s side, in almost any scenario, but even if he’d been willing to consider any turn of affairs, his forces were too small, and too backward to have any chance on their own.

  Winters knew the only real hope was with him, and with the three other groups…but he wondered how much chance there really was, and how much was just his own invention, and that of his comrades. Maybe the universe wasn’t as it appeared, subject to all sorts of interference. Maybe there was an ordained way things always worked out. That was as much a hopeful burst of thought as it was a negative one, though he saw mostly the downside.

  “Sir…the attack is complete.”

  He heard the sound. He was lost, his thoughts had disappeared into his head, but now he forced them back.

  “Very well, Commander. All ships are to form up…and head to the next system.”

  * * *

  “All ships have reported back, sir. The attack is complete.”

  Vian Tulus sat perfectly erect in his seat, looking neither desperate nor worried. He was both, of course, and the part of him that had learned from Tyler Barron knew that the expedition then underway was the most desperate effort imaginable. Apart from the prospect that the virus was simply wrong, or the potential that the enemy simply had an easy to take medication to stop what had been a deadly assault three centuries before, he knew there were numerous other things that could go wrong. Even if the virus was correct, even if it was still deadly, he knew it was more likely to kill a lot of the enemy…but not all of them. The fleet certainly needed to be hit, and he was hopeful enemy personnel would travel back and forth, including to the ships.

  But that was the purest speculation.

  Even if all of the ships present managed to hit all of their target worlds, and hit them completely, that was still less than half of the occupied worlds…and none of the fleet. Without movement back and forth, the attack would be much like the other operations had been in the war, good…but not good enough.

  “Very well…order all forces to line up. We’ve got another world to hit, so there’s no point wasting time.”

  “Yes, sir!” Tulus commanded all the Alliance ships, and some Confederation ones as well, but the staff on his flagship was all Alliance. He’d come a long way toward seeing things how a Confed would, at least at times, but he was still, in his heart of hearts, an Alliance commander.

  He turned and looked out, watching his people. At one time, he’d considered his Alliance spacers, at least the first order of them, to be unbreakable. They weren’t invincible, though, and he realized that now. He’d come to understand that his people were good, very good…but perhaps not better than the warriors of other nations. And he was sure even the best of his people felt fear, though they might compartmentalize it, and keep it hidden. They were good men and women, of that he was sure. But they were men and women, too.

  “The fleet is assembled, your Supremacy. Prepared to depart for the next system.”

  Tulus sat for a moment, no more than ten or fifteen seconds, contemplating. The situation had brought him to a strange place, one he couldn’t understand completely. Did he prefer the idea of fighting conventionally…or of using the virus? He knew there was no real choice now, that there was no way to continue the fighting conventionally, not with the hope of victory. Still, he knew if they had done that, or even if he had stayed with Barron, he might have come to believe there was a way. It was the Alliance part of him, screaming that the ship production, the tactics and strategy would all work out. But he’d not only chosen to support the virus plan, he’d decided to lead one of the forces, and he’d requested that most of the Alliance’s smaller ships be assigned to him. He wasn’t sure which side of him had done more, though he suspected it was the Confederation component more than the Alliance.

  He sighed, softly and mostly unknown to those around him. He’d put the thoughts aside, pushed back against the unknowns. He had a job to do, and that he understood perfectly…whether it worked or not. Then he said, simply, “Full speed ahead…and then jump.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Fleet Base Grimaldi

  Krakus System

  Year 329 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  Admiral Simpson sat in his chair, amid the chaos and wreckage of the station. In the early stages of the battle, the enemy had focused mostly on the fleet, but now an entire unit had moved on the station as well. Grimaldi fired all its weapons, its biggest guns, down to the smallest batteries it possessed. Anything that could fire was firing, but Simpson knew his station would not endure forever. It had survived so far through the brilliant maneuvering of its tiny drives, combined with the fact that the enemy had not focused heavily on it until recently, but now, even with well under one percent of enemy attacks striking, the station had been hit a dozen times in the last twenty minutes. It was starting to lose command of many of its stations, and barely half its weapons—those that had been reconfigured for the current fight, not the original total—were still functional.

  They would all be out in an hour, two at most…assuming the station could endure that long. Which it couldn’t. If the enemy attackers weren’t reinforced, if his fortune—and the engines that supported his limited drive system—held out, he would endure perhaps forty-five minutes. Maybe even less.

  “Withdrawal number 2,” he said, trying hard not to sound depressed. He knew the fight was almost over, but he still wasn’t sure if his people had done enough to render the enemy fleet incapable of further immediate action. It was going to be close, and he knew most of the Confederation’s inner systems had strong fixed defenses, that they required any attacker to possess considerable strength…but he didn’t know if the enemy fleet was going to be battered enough to prevent any further actions.

  “Withdrawal number 2 in action, sir.” He heard Jaymes, and he felt pride in the officer’s inherent strength. He couldn’t tell whether he knew how likely it was he had entered the last hour of his life, though he’d come to respect Jaymes’s intellect far more than he’d ever expected to. He decided that the officer was perfectly aware of the situation…though he wasn’t sure whether Simpson would choose to die there, or whether he would order the withdrawal 3 actions at some point.

  He looked around at the bridge, watching as more than two thirds of the crew got up and moved toward the elevator. Number one withdrawal had been held before the enemy had even reached the station. It was the removal of all non-military personnel. The number two withdrawal was far more severe, and it left only the most vital personnel on the station. Number three, if it came, would be the total abandonment of the facility, though whether that would come, and if it did, whether it would include him, were still questions to be answered.

  His head turned toward the great display. Once, it had been the wonder of Grimaldi, but time had come a considerable way to wear down much of the station’s newness, it’s effect. Still, it was impressive, and it was new, the old one destroyed during the first fight, and replaced almost immediately. It was even bigger than the one it had replaced, and the graphics on it were tighter, sharper.

  He knew the withdrawal order was an admission that he would lose the battle. That was something he had been resigned to do from the beginning, though he shared those thoughts with none of his cohorts. His real goal was to damage the enemy, significantly enough to halt their advance…and he thought he still had time to do that.

  “Maintain full fire…we’re still in this fight, even if we’ve got fewer people.” He sounded good, almost confident, though he knew his order for most of the station’s personnel to evacuate told another story.

  “Yes, sir…all stations remain effective.” Jaymes sounded better than he did, but even in his aide’s voice, he heard something. It wasn’t despair, not exactly, but it was realization. The next hour would tell whether his fleet had damaged the enemy badly enough to prevent an immediate advance…and the odds of it happening seemed just about even.

  Just about even…Simpson remembered the words, and he repeated them to himself five or six times. Just about even…

  No, that’s not good enough…we have to hurt them enough, take them out of the fight…

  “Larson…we have to pick up our rate of fire. Go to one hundred twenty percent.” He said the words, but he almost immediately took them back. Almost.

  “Yes, sir…” Jaymes was nervous before, he was sure of that, but now he was clearly so. “…one hundred twenty percent.”