Rogan turned, about to snap out another series of orders when he heard the sound of gunfire down the corridor. He turned, and he looked, tapping his helmet, dropping the small scope down in front of his eyes. He cranked up the magnification, and he stared down the long corridor, watching as a cluster of his Marines fell back, carrying two of their own, wounded at least, and possibly dead.

  The fighting had begun, and he suspected it wouldn’t stop, not before Colossus was destroyed or the Kriegeri had hunted down every one of his Marines.

  * * *

  “Way to fly that thing, Lynx!” Stockton’s eyes were still fixed on his screen, watching as Olya Federov brought her interceptor around, back toward a cluster of Hegemony fighters. Stockton had been worried about his friend, concerned about how well she’d fly after her injuries—and considering the partial status of her recovery. By any normal medical standards, she had no place in the cockpit, but after what he’d just watched, he decided anyone spouting about ‘medical standards’ could shove it. She had six kills already, the last two in an amazing maneuver that saw her fly right by one ship on the way toward one just behind, and spinning around after blasting the first target, taking down the one she’d left behind seconds later. It was beyond textbook, something the instructors at flight school were likely to call impossible.

  But Stockton had just watched it, and that proved surer than anything that is was possible.

  “Thanks, Raptor.” The response brought him down a bit from his high. For all her skill, and the focused intensity of her flying, Federov couldn’t hide the pain and fatigue in her voice. Stockton knew just what an effort she was making, how difficult it was for her to maintain the withering intensity she’d shown. He suspected she was jacked up on stims, too, and he knew she’d pay a price for that later. But, at that moment, she was what he needed, another example to the masses of his pilots new to fighter duels…a stunning image of just what a veteran could do to green enemies.

  Stockton had three kills himself, the first two from his missiles, and the third the result of a well-placed laser hit. He was used to being at the top of the list, the deadliest pilot in space, but he was glad to yield that mantle to Federov.

  Mostly glad. No pilot got as good as Stockton without some ego driving him.

  The fighter combat was raging all around, and the Hegemony pilots were getting a lesson of sorts, one they had escaped at Santara. They’d had their chance to maximize surprise, to take advantage of catching unescorted bombers. Now they were seeing the other side of fighter combat.

  Stockton’s twelve hundred interceptors were outnumbered almost two to one, or at least they had been before they’d torn into the enemy formations. Stockton didn’t know what would happen in the overall battle, whether the desperate attack on Colossus would succeed, or if the fleet could get through the superbattleship’s deadly weapons to engage the Hegemony line…but he knew his people were teaching the Kriegeri pilots just what it felt like to take a good, solid beating. Stockton had hoped for a loss ratio of at least two to one. He’d even dared to imagine three to one. But his pilots had not obliged his numbers. They were taking down almost five of the enemy fighters for every one of their own they lost, and Stockton’s chest swelled with pride. War was terrible, a nightmare that stripped friend from friend, and left desolation and despair in its wake…but he’d be damned if it didn’t often bring out the best in some of its participants.

  This will teach you to get the hell out of the Rim…and stay out!

  Stockton hated the loss and waste of war, but some part of him loved it, too. He was drawn to it, as though it was his home, his natural habitat. He’d never been better at anything in his life than he was behind the controls of his Lightning. He’d never felt more natural anywhere.

  He was deep in the battle, his focus on his wings and on the enemy fighters he was pursuing, the Kriegeri he intended to kill. But he could also see Colossus moving steadily forward. In a few minutes, the massive ship’s point defense would come into range and open up on his formations. His pilots would be bracketed between the enemy squadrons and the withering fire from Colossus’s point defense. And, a few minutes after that, the escort line from the Hegemony fleet would move into the fight.

  We’ve got to break their squadrons by then…

  His people were doing well, exceeding his wildest hopes, but he kept his excitement in check. Nothing that happened in the fighter battle mattered if Bryan Rogan’s Marines didn’t manage to destroy Colossus from the inside. The mission had always seemed hopeless, and as much as it invigorated him to see his people gaining the upper hand, the sense of near-hopelessness was never far away.

  * * *

  “Please, Captain Fritz, stay back. We have to scout the corridor up ahead.”

  Anya Fritz almost told the Marine to shut the hell up, that she’d go wherever the hell she damn well pleased, but she managed to hold it back. She was edgy, scared, and more than anything, focused on her mission, to the exclusion of all else. But she could still see the folly in berating someone whose only offense was trying desperately to keep her alive.

  “I appreciate your concern for me, Sergeant, but we don’t have a second to waste. You know how big this thing is, and we don’t have time to cover more than a small section. I don’t care if every Kriegeri in the Hegemony army is up there, we’ve got to push ahead. If we don’t find someplace to plant the explosives, and soon, we’ve all come here for nothing.”

  And none of us are getting out, no matter how diligently you try to protect me…

  She’d never considered herself the sort to volunteer for suicide missions, but she understood, perhaps even better even than Barron and the command staff did, just how hopeless the fight would be with Colossus in the enemy line. If they didn’t manage to destroy the thing, they were going to lose the war anyway, and Anya Fritz had no desire to survive that kind of nightmare.

  She’d been looking all around as she moved forward, her eyes searching for clues, heavy conduits, thick radiation-proof doors. Anything that might suggest she was moving toward the reactors, or at least the main engineering spaces.

  She’d studied every scanner report on Colossus she’d been able to lay her hands on, analyzing every exterior detail, trying to ascertain the likely locations of vulnerable systems. Anya Fritz ate, drank, and slept engineering, and she could pick out any internal system on a Confederation ship with the most fleeting glance at the hull. But Colossus was different, the product of a more advanced technology, and a vessel of such scale, she had no real sense of where anything should be.

  So, she’d guessed. Clint Winters had brought the troopships in just where she’d specified, so if they were in the wrong place, it was one hundred percent on her.

  More stress…driving her to find what she’d come to find.

  She’d done the best she could in choosing the boarding points, and she still harbored some hope she’d gotten the Marines aboard close to what they sought. She hadn’t confirmed that yet, but she’d seen some signs of it. Given enough time, she was sure she could root out the main antimatter storage. That wasn’t the important question.

  The crucial unknown was, how much time would she get?

  Not enough to waste while the Marines clear the corridors ahead one at a time…

  She moved forward again, almost feeling the sergeant’s tension. She ignored it, though. It was his problem. Hers was finding something he Marines could blow up, something powerful enough to take the ship with it. And, if she could locate her target near enough to the docking points, just maybe they’d all get a chance to escape before that happened.

  Fritz took another few steps forward, and then she stopped, suddenly.

  She’d heard something. Gunfire. Coming from down the corridor. An instant later, she heard a grunt behind her, and spun around to see one of her Marines falling backwards, blood spraying out from a pair of holes on his chest.

  She hesitated, just for an instant, and then she let her instincts take control and send her diving through an open hatch just to her side…as the corridor erupted in a hail of enemy fire.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  500,000 Kilometers from Colossus

  Lyra System

  Year of Renewal 266 (321 AC)

  “Wings seven and nine, increase forward thrust to maximum. Come around, and try to hit the enemy flank.” Krimack had known there would be a reckoning, that the easy victory surprise had given his wings at Santara would not be repeated. He’d read all the accounts taken from captured Hegemony records, and he knew the Rim forces had a rich history of fighter combat, one that would give them an inevitable advantage when his forces met theirs on closer to equal terms.

  But he hadn’t been prepared for what was happening all around him. The Rim fighters were tearing into his formations, and even outnumbered as they were, they were killing five, even ten of his ships for every one of their own they lost. The sharp edge of their assault was clearly their seasoned veterans, experienced flyers who obliterated his still-raw pilots with maneuvers that seemed almost effortless. He’d held his own, taking down two Rim fighters personally, but most of his people were struggling badly.

  They are dying…

  He still had the numerical advantage, though by less than he’d had when the fight began. He knew it didn’t matter, not really. Not in a strategic sense. The enemy bombers lined up behind their interceptors were dangerous, as always, but they were not sufficient in number to get past the escorts and the withering point defense Colossus could put out, not in sufficient force to threaten the giant ship. His squadrons had done their job simply by being there, by compelling the enemy to outfit most of its already-depleted fighter force as interceptors. The mere existence of the great dogfight had served its purpose.

  But Krimack was still angry, utterly furious at the losses he had suffered. He was determined to hurt the enemy, if not to win the exchange, at least to send the survivors back knowing they’d been in one hell of a fight.

  He brought his ship around with nothing more than a thought. The neural net was a tremendous innovation, or at least it would be when he and his pilots finally adapted to it, and figured out how to really use the thing. It was difficult to employ properly, more because it felt strangely unnatural than for any operational failure. He’d been assured by the research teams that, eventually, it would feel no different to move his fighter around than it did to reach out his hand and grab some object in front of him. He wasn’t sure he believed that, but he could see the potential edge in reaction time. That was something that could make an immense difference in a duel against an enemy interceptor.

  He brought his ship around, partially with thoughts and partially by manhandling the controls. It was clumsy maybe, to mix the two, but it was where he was, midway between conventional pilot and a brain flying the fighter with pure thoughts. His eyes were on the screen, on a pair of interceptors coming in at him. They were accelerating hard, looking very much like their flyers knew what they were doing. Krimack suspected the ships he’d taken down had been flown by relatively inexperienced pilots. He’d watched the moves of some of the enemy veterans, and he knew none of his people—including himself—were ready yet to face them. They needed time. Time to learn, to become used to the fighters…to truly embrace the neural nets. There would be a day, he knew, when the fight would be much more evenly matched, but for the moment, he could see his wings were being routed. They’d had their moment of surprise, and they’d used it to gun down thousands of defenseless bombers. But now they were paying the price, and the Rim pilots were out for blood.

  He swung around, overruling his instinct to face the approaching fighters. It was a hit to his pride to back down, but he was Kriegeri, and nothing came before discipline. If his wings were to gain parity with their foes, and even one day best them, they had to survive, endure long enough to develop the skills and reflexes they would need. Focus, intellect, good decision-making…all of those traits contributed to survival prospects.

  Uncontrolled pride, on the other hand, led to death more often than not, and there was no place for it in the Hegemony battle plan. Kriegeri existed to fight, to serve. Dying pointlessly would be a failure of his purpose, his mission.

  Still, he looked at the two small specks, even as they became ever more distant. Next time, he thought to himself, as he pulled away as quickly as he could. He’d been a creature of duty his entire life, and he knew what was expected of him. Getting himself killed going up against enemy aces wasn’t it.

  But there would be another day.

  * * *

  Anya Fritz bit down hard, her hand wet and warm as she held it tightly over the wound. She’d taken a round in the side, not critical, she thought, as she looked down and made a snap judgment.

  But damn it hurts…

  She leaned back against the wall, gulping a few breaths of air and trying to put the pain out of her mind. She knew she should get out of the corridor, dive into the room off to the side, but she still hesitated. She’d been in desperate danger before, braved radiation leaks, exploding conduits, laser pulses larger than her body cutting through a ship’s hull…but this was her first real firefight.

  She’d wondered how deep into Colossus they’d get before the Kriegeri came to stop them. Now, she had her answer. Not very far.

  She staggered to the side, toward the open hatch, even as more Marines pushed past her, moving forward toward the sounds of fighting—now two-sided—coming from up ahead. She was about halfway in when she felt an arm grab her and shove her the rest of the way. She stumbled, barely catching herself, and as her head came around, she saw Bryan Rogan’s face looking at her.

  “Stay here, Captain…please. I know we don’t have time to waste, but getting yourself killed isn’t going to help. You’re the only one with a real chance to find what we need.” He turned toward the corridor and shouted, “Medic!” and then he spun back around toward Fritz. “We’ll have that corridor clear in a few minutes. It’s just one patrol group up there, no more than six or eight Kriegeri. I can’t vouch for how long it will be before we’ve got a thousand down here, but so far, the security looks like something we can handle.” He paused, looking at the wound on her side. “As long as we’re careful. Please, Captain…you have to listen to me. We’re done, finished without you. So, remember that, and stay back a little. You’re the only one we can’t lose and still complete the mission. If you want to get yourself killed, wait until you find us a good place to set the charges, okay?”

  Fritz stared back at the Marine, seeing the strange look on his face and realizing his words hadn’t come out exactly as he’d intended. She almost laughed. Hell, she did laugh, at least enough to send a shudder of pain down her side.

  “Okay, Bryan. Understood.” Anya Fritz had a reputation for impatience, and for driving those under her command hard. But she had known Rogan for a long time, since their days on the old Dauntless, and he was one of the few people she actually listened to.

  Rogan nodded and turned back toward the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he raced back out into the corridor, squeezing past the medic and directing the man toward Fritz as he did.

  The med tech walked over and dropped down next to her, his eyes focused on the bloody stain on her tunic. He reached down, pulling away the fabric, and unzipping the survival suit underneath. He looked at the wound. “Okay…it seems pretty clean. The projectile went in and right back out. Didn’t hit anything vital. I’ll give you something for the pain, and then I’ll seal it, so you don’t lose any more blood.”

  “No painkiller. No drugs at all. I need to stay alert, Lieutenant.” Fritz wasn’t exactly looking forward to feeling everything the tech was about to do in full intensity, but she’d be damned if she’d allow any chance of the fleet being destroyed because her mind was less than razor sharp.

  “Okay, I can give you a local. It’ll knock out most of the discomfort, and it won’t affect your thinking at all.” The tech didn’t even wait for an answer. He pulled out an injector and gave her a shot, just below the wound. She felt a pinch, and more pain as he started working on the wound itself. And then, nothing. Numbness, relief.

  She sighed softly, realizing only then just how distracted she’d been by the pain. She sat still, quiet, unmoving, as the tech dressed the wound and sealed it. She hated the loss of the time, but it wouldn’t do her any good to rush out into the raging firefight in the hall, and even less if she bled to death before she found what she was looking for.

  “Okay, Captain, that should hold for now. I’d say go easy on it for a while, but considering the circumstances, just try not to tear it all the way open.”

  She could feel a little pressure, but nothing too bad.

  Fritz nodded. “Thanks, Lieutenant. It’s much better.” She started to get up, but then she stopped halfway, slowing down and moving with greater care. She needed all she had, and she wasn’t going to get it if she ripped the wound open and bled like a faucet.

  She walked over to the door, pausing just before she stepped back out of the room. She was impatient, tense, anxious to get started tracking down Colossus’s reactors and antimatter. But Rogan was right, she wasn’t going to accomplish anything if she got herself killed. She didn’t like being second guessed about engineering matters, and she imagined Rogan didn’t care for it much more regarding combat. He was the expert, there to open the way, to get her where she had to go, and all she could do by not listening to him was mess things up.