Akella wasn’t crying, but she was close. She’d contemplated her meetings on the journey she’d taken, and she knew, if she didn’t get the vote to go her way, she would, at best, return to Chronos, beaten, to see how much of the fleet sided with him, and with the plan to leave the Hegemony.

  And how many sided with the Council…and remained to be destroyed.

  That was the best she could hope for if the vote went against her. The worst was her own death, and she knew that was a possibility, that or her confinement, which she considered the same thing. She knew the enemy was coming no matter what, and that the Hegemony would be fully occupied. Maybe she couldn’t persuade her people to accept their fate, to fall back with the Confederation and Alliance fleets…but if she couldn’t all that would mean was there were even fewer ships with the last force.

  For an instant, she even hesitated, wondered if it would be better to die there, in defense of the Hegemony, with no chance whatsoever. She knew her people were going to lose anyway…did it really matter if it was a year later.

  Yes, it did matter, if only because of the desperate mission even then underway. She knew there was no hope of victory, not conventionally, not anymore if there ever was. But perhaps the virus would work, perhaps it would kill many of the Highborn. That still seemed almost unreal to her, but she knew it was a possibility, and one reason to strive on, to fight until she was completely beaten.

  Pulcheria looked doubtful during the entire conversation, and her frown remained on her face. But she said, “Akella, I have never seen you quite this way. I doubt your plan…but I will listen. Show me the true state of the fleet, prove to me that the Confeds are demonstrably the most powerful component…and I will consider my position.”

  Akella felt a hope, at least part of one, and it filled her with some kind of excitement. She didn’t know she would gain Pulcheria’s support, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure it would result in her victory. But it was a place to start, and she was going to give it everything she had.

  “Okay, Pulcheria…here are the fleet breakdowns. I want you to pay close attention…”

  * * *

  “What are his chances…really?” Barron stood outside the room, looking in on Stockton, even as the man slept. Stockton had awakened, three times since the surgery, but mostly, he’d been unconscious, and it was starting to worry Barron.

  “Are you asking me what his chances of survival are? I don’t really know, but assuming we got everything out—and although we believe we did, there’s still at least a chance we missed something—I think pretty good. I would have been much lower right after the surgery, but in truth, his body is recovering, if slowly. I’d say seventy percent, at least if we got everything.”

  Barron listened, though he realized he had been asking two questions at the same time. The first one was the obvious one, the one Dr. Jordan had answered. But he also wanted to know what chance, if any, Stockton had of returning to him. Of really returning.

  Of ending up back in a fighter.

  “That is good news, Doctor…but I also need to know what chance there is of his returning…to service.” Barron felt terrible, even as he asked the question. But he needed to know…and he didn’t really believe Stockton had any other thoughts either, at least to whatever extent the man had focused thoughts.

  The doctor didn’t respond right away, and when he did, he was slow. “I just don’t know, Admiral. In theory, there should be no reason he doesn’t…at least nothing medical. At least if he fully recovers. But there are a hundred things that could have gone wrong…and any percentage I gave you would be little more than a guess. I think we should just continue with his treatment, here on Dauntless, if that works for you. In a few weeks, I will be able to give you better information. Probably.”

  Barron didn’t especially like the final word of the answer, but he realized it had been honest. The doctor knew better than he did, and he knew better than someone farther away from the whole thing, but no one actually knew. All he could do was wait…and see.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  CWS Donallus

  Coranus Tylus System

  Year 329 AC (After the Cataclysm)

  Andi watched closely, but she didn’t say a word. She had been quiet, through four planetary operations, and the battles that had preceded each, and she intended to be through the fifth one as well. She’d uttered the orders to attack, but she had been silent since then, even returning two subsequent reports from Tarren with nothing more than a pair of nods.

  She was pleased, at least as much as that was possible. She knew she had by far the easiest sequence of targets, an intentional compensation for her last stop, which was back to the first target. She wondered if she would run into a major fleet there, and if the Highborn would be showing signs of the disease yet. If they weren’t, she knew there was still time, but she would be disappointed too.

  She looked as her ships completed their bombardment, destroying nothing, not even doing any visible damage. The only thing they were dropping was microscopic, but if everything worked as it was supposed to, it would kill all the Highborn present on the planet, wherever they went. And all the Highborn they came into contact with if they left the planet before the disease actually started.

  Atara had been confident, sure for some reason that the formula was right, and that the enemy hadn’t come up with any method to resist…but now, doubts were beginning to develop. She wasn’t exactly of a mind that the plan wouldn’t work, but now that she was closer to finding out, she was less certain.

  “Bombardment complete, Atara…the last ships will be in position in four minutes.”

  She turned and looked at her aide, and she even managed to smile a bit. “Very well, Ross…as soon as the last ships are in position, we take off. Planet six awaits.”

  “Yes. Understood.”

  She turned and faced forward, her eyes focusing on the main display, on the planet she’d just bombarded. She looked at it, completely aware that it would disappear soon enough, that the last of her ships would move far away.

  She looked, wondering what would happen there in the next several months. Would the Highborn all die, even spread the virus to other worlds? Would they be at least concerned, forced to rely on some old treatment they’d developed? It was possible that, even if the enemy had defeated the virus, they would be badly surprised. Perhaps some of their people would die anyway, before the cure was distributed…enough even to make a difference?

  No, she realized. If the enemy had a cure, the best she could hope for was to kill some of the Highborn…but actual victory would require an enemy endlessly open to the attack, not just a few early fatalities. That might be the worst of all possibilities, at least for those who might accept life after defeat. Would the enemy respond with its own change of directive, would they destroy all the worlds they controlled, and all the ones they were going to take?

  But maybe it would work as she’d expected. Perhaps it would sweep away the Highborn, kill them in the hundreds, in the thousands, at a time. She just didn’t know, and she realized her uncertainty was the only way to review the situation. She’d done everything possible to make it function…now it just had to work. And there was nothing she could do in the interim, nothing except wait and see.

  “All ships in position. Ready to initiate thrust.”

  Andi saw that the main screen had gone dark, that its image of the planet had given way to one of the space around it. There hadn’t been any significant enemy forces present, much as there hadn’t been on the past several planets. She knew she had the easiest grouping, and she wondered just how much worse of a time the rest of the force was having. Were they even still operational? She knew the forces had taken as many ships as possible from the main fleet, as many as they thought the primary force could do without, at least in terms of the enemy knowing that they had detached forces. Every functional vessel in the combined navies wasn’t enough to face the enemy, however…no more.

  She wondered what Tyler had done, or more accurately, what he had been forced to do. Had he pulled back to the Confederation, to the final stage of the battle. Or was he still in the Hegemony, holding on, more the result of an enemy pause than anything else?

  Or had he been caught already? Was he dead? Her intellect told her she didn’t know, but her gut believed he was still alive. She just wasn’t sure if it was a genuine belief or just what she needed.

  “All ships…forward at one half thrust. Target, right for transit point two.” She didn’t know what was happening, anywhere but around her fleet. And she barely knew what her force would face. The enemy was focused on its main assault, she was sure of that. But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be forces deployed in the occupied worlds that could give her a fight, even defeat her. Ideally, forty-one planets would be infected when the effort was over…but she knew that depended on a lot, on everything going exactly right. If the enemy caught wind of what they were doing—and the odds of that increased with every planet bombarded—they would likely radically alter their plans.

  And then they would come for the attacking ships…in force.

  She knew they would figure it out…she just had no idea how long that would take, and how much time would be required to shift their plans around, to find the attacking fleets and launch devastating assaults. Maybe, just maybe, it would be after the fleets had all finished, too late to interfere. That had been her assumption earlier, and while it had faded somewhat, it was still there.

  She wasn’t sure whether it was just her belief, or if she was just kidding herself, but she saw no reason to change now.

  * * *

  Tulus looked out, at the world, the fifth one his fleet had attacked. Like all the others, it appeared exactly as it had before his fleet had descended, save only for its defending force of ships. That had been more than he’d encountered before, and if they were all smaller vessels, there were still twenty of them. The fight had been fast, and it had been furious, and while his force had won, it had lost eighteen ships, and many more were damaged. He told himself it was just a coincidence, that if the enemy had truly discovered what he was doing there, they would have sent many more vessels. He knew he was right, that in all probability, the enemy had not pieced together the fleet’s actions—at least not enough that the main fleet had been alerted and responded. Still, perhaps the main fleet hadn’t yet been contacted, but maybe the neighboring systems had been. Perhaps the force he had faced had been reinforced from the adjacent worlds.

  That was possible—likely even—though it didn’t change a thing, certainly not for him, and for his mostly-Alliance force. He was capable of pulling back, barely, but only when his force was too battered to continue…and it wasn’t, not yet.

  “Status?” He basically knew, but he was curious about the details. Part of him didn’t really care, but the part that had been most effected by Tyler Barron was edgy.

  “We’ll be ready to leave in three minutes, sir. All ships have completed bombardment, and they are returning now.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t reply. There was no need for it. The Alliance lord that he was would lead the force, from planet to planet, even if it was battered down so much that it could only partially bombard them. The Confederation part of him, so often in the lead, would fall to second place in this circumstance. It would remain silent. He knew that…even as he also knew his chance of completing his entire mission was virtually zero. He had just about the minimum number of ships he needed to bomb the next planet…which meant, if he lost more than a couple in the next fight, he would already be down to partial bombardments.

  Or, worse, he could run into an enemy force that could take out his entire force. He was heading back now, toward the center of the Hegemony. That didn’t mean he would run into increasingly difficult forces…but it meant that was a dangerous possibility.

  He looked down at his timer. Three minutes had passed since he’d checked, and he didn’t feel the need to do it again. He just turned his head slightly and said, “Let’s head to the next planet. Initial thrust at 60% of capacity.”

  “60% thrust, sir. Engaging.”

  He felt the small push of the thrust. His Alliance ships weren’t the equals of either Confederation or Hegemony craft, and he’d come to know very well. Both of those engaged better systems, and they rarely even showed any signs of acceleration, at least when they were operating at full power. His own ships were shielded now too, though that was as much because of technology provided by the Confederation as anything else. Twelve or fifteen years ago, his ships were mostly unshielded, and they traveled at speeds barely half of those they were capable of now. He thought for an instant about the advances his fleet had seen, the fifty or a hundred years forward they had moved in fifteen years…and how they were still behind their allies.

  At least they were allies. Going back another five years, his Alliance thought itself the best, without match. That was foolish, certainly, and also the result of its relative place, on the Far Rim, adjacent only to small entities on the rim of occupied space.

  Still, he promised himself, if the war was won—somehow—he would see that his people reached parity with their neighbors. He turned and looked out at the display, at the whole fleet, and he knew one thing, even if it was mostly the Confederation side of him that truly understood it.

  The mission he was on was the true hope, not that pursued by the remnants of the main fleet with Barron. That was why he had argued for a role in the operation, why he had led one of the forces. Now, he wondered if he would make it back, if he would complete the list of worlds and return…or if he would die out here.

  He just didn’t know.

  * * *

  Stantia looked out at her people, watching as her force completed the fifth assault. She knew she was fortunate to command the fleet, that Ilius would have, almost certainly, had he lived. Stantia was a Master, of course, but she was fairly far down the line, at least among those near the top. Her ranking was in excess of ten thousand, which was not bad in a civilization of nearly three hundred billion, but it wasn’t high enough to justify her position either. But she knew she was Chronos’s most trusted aide now that Ilius was gone, and even if there were ten or twelve others at the same rank, she’d suspected she would be the senior commander’s pick to replace him.

  And she had been.

  That was amazing enough for anyone ranked one thousand, but for someone over ten thousand, it was almost unimaginable. She knew she’d have trouble occupying the role as Chronos’s replacement, that much higher-ranked individuals would argue to push her aside. There had even been some complaining about her assignment to the current mission, but with Chronos insisting, and the realization of just how dangerous it was, she had managed to take the job without too much hassle.

  She looked out at her forces, the only group out of four to consist of Hegemony craft. She’d been a top officer during the war against the Confederation, when the enemy had been clearly outgunned. Even early in the war against the Highborn, the Hegemony had been the superior partner. Put the combination of severe losses, and the staggering construction rate of the Confederation had turned things around. Many of her people argued against it, claiming it was just a temporary situation in the war. They outright refused to accept the Confed’s role as the superior partner. She herself had endured some hassles of her own making the change, but she couldn’t argue with the cold hard numbers…and she wondered how anyone else could.

  “Commander, the fleet has completed the bombardment. We will be ready to push on in five minutes.”

  “Very well, Sebastino…carry on and prepare the fleet to depart.”

  She had led her force through half its targets now, without suffering any terrible damage. She’d lost six ships, and she’d fought against some enemy vessels at each of the five planets she’d attacked. But she knew the last five would be—could be, at the very least—the toughest. The enemy hadn’t seemed to guess what she was doing…though she doubted it would be long before they did. She didn’t think she had any chance at all of finishing the five worlds she had left, not without the enemy realizing what was happening. She just wondered if they would be able to do anything significant before she was done. If they had time, they could mount a defensive force that would obliterate her entire fleet in one battle. But to do that, they had to realize what was going on, and where she would hit next.

  She’d spent a lot of time figuring the answers, and she’d come up with around fifty-fifty. Fifty that she made it back, with losses, but with ten enemy-occupied worlds hit, and fifty that she ran into a large enemy force, that her ships were destroyed…or at least driven off.

  She paid secondary attention to her aide, and to his carrying out of her orders. She trusted Sebastino completely, and she didn’t feel she had to do more than just be there, in case something unexpected happened. Still, she realized she was listening, making sure that everything was going as planned.

  You finished half of the total already…if the rest of the forces have done the same, we’re at the halfway point. If the formula works, and if the enemy doesn’t have a cure…just maybe it won’t matter if you finish. Maybe half is enough.

  She thought about that, wondered if it was right, if half was actually enough…or if the whole thing, all forty-one planets, would be too little. She had no way of knowing, not really. She acknowledged that it would depend on how many Highborn traveled…before realization sprung its own deadly trap.

  Assuming, of course, the enemy didn’t laugh at the effort, and just issue a treatment to everyone infected. The one thing Stantia knew about the virus they were spreading was that it was not quick. It took a period of months before symptoms even appeared…and months more before those infected actually died. Still, it was one hundred percent fatal to any Highborn touched by it, and completely harmless to normal human beings.