She stopped at the door and sighed loudly. She would wait.

  At least for a little while.

  * * *

  Tyler Barron stared at the display, trying desperately to hide the misery he was feeling. Stockton’s fighters were performing well, tearing into the Hegemony wings with a cold vengeance born of the ordeal they’d endured in Santara. They were taking losses, of course, but they were absolutely gutting the enemy formation. It wouldn’t have much effect on the outcome of the battle, but he still felt satisfaction watching it. The enemy fighters had done their damage already, forcing him to outfit two-thirds of his ships in interceptor mode. The bombers he’d been able to deploy were too few to take on the enemy battle line, much less make a serious run at Colossus and its immense point defense array.

  Perhaps even worse, he’d stripped the most experienced pilots from the bomber squadrons, placing them into interceptors to take on the Hegemony fighters. They had done that, with distinction, but the deployment left the rest of the fleet, his battleships and the various escorts that remained operational, to face both Colossus and the enemy line. It was a hopeless fight, probably against either one, and certainly both. Whatever chance remained, not just for the battle in Lyra, but for the Rim’s very survival, rested with Bryan Rogan and his Marines…and with the best engineer the Confederation service had ever seen.

  It was a grim reality, made all the more crushing by the realization that, even if they were successful, Fritz, Rogan, and the Marines would likely die with Colossus. Barron clung to a hope, fading and tattered, that they would manage to find a way to get out in time…just as some part of him still believed Andi would escape from Dannith and return to him.

  He tended to consider such thoughts pointless in other people, a weakness he’d always resisted in himself. He’d long prided himself on his realism, his ability to see things as they were, upsetting or not. But he’d let that go for the moment. He needed whatever he could get to force himself through the next hours and days, and if self-delusion was part of what got him there, so be it.

  “We just received Admiral Winters’s confirmation, Admiral. All Marines have landed.”

  Barron turned toward Atara, and he nodded. The troopships had made it through. Against all odds, they’d escaped the detection that had spelled doom for Sara Eaton and her people, and they’d docked with the great enemy vessel.

  That was a victory of sorts, or at least the start to one. The Marines were aboard Colossus. That feat alone exceeded his initial expectations, and he wanted to feel some kind of satisfaction. But he knew what lay ahead for Rogan and his people, the odds they would need to overcome to complete their mission…and the even greater obstacles lying between them and an escape from the Hegemony warship. He felt desperation on top of desperation, one level of near-despair building on the one’s that had come before. Even if Colossus was destroyed, at whatever cost to Rogan’s Marines, his people would still have to face the Hegemony fleet…with a bare fraction of the bomber forces they’d deployed in previous battles. He could almost see his ships being torn apart by the deadly railguns, battleships splitting open like eggs, or disappearing in the violent spasms of unleashed fusion.

  “Atara…issue a fleet order. All ships are to decelerate to zero velocity and hold positions.” The fleet had been advancing to distract the enemy, to divert attention from Winters’s troop transports. But the ships had gotten through, the Marines were onboard. There was nothing more Barron could do for Winters, for Rogan. For Anya Fritz. Pushing the fleet forward, toward Colossus wouldn’t accomplish a thing except to put his battleships in desperate danger.

  There was nothing he could do, nothing the fleet could do. Except wait.

  Wait to see if a thousand Marines could do the near-impossible.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Colossus

  Lyra System

  Year of Renewal 266 (321 AC)

  “Redirect all reserves from adjacent sectors. I want them pinned down now!” Illius was a commander with a reputation for coolness under fire, one whose emotions were rarely visible, much less out of control. But he was clearly unnerved as he spoke, and his usual iron discipline was failing him.

  “Yes, Commander.”

  Ilius shook his head angrily. He was upset with himself, and as his mind raced to fill the gaps in his knowledge with fresh analysis, he began to understand just what was happening. Colossus’s scanners had picked up the bomb ships the enemy had used previously, locking on to their massive thruster output, and to the radiation and heavy elements from the warheads themselves. He’d assumed that had discounted the possibility of another stealth assault, that there was no way the enemy was going to sneak anything powerful enough to seriously damage Colossus through the scanner net.

  So, they sent soldiers. They boarded us!

  It seemed almost insane, and yet his thoughts responded caustically, reminding him of the audacity the Rim warriors had displayed in the war. They figured out what happened last time, the vulnerabilities that gave their ships away. So, they sent soldiers this time…and no heavy nukes.

  As he considered the situation, the details filled in. Of course…they came in slowly, with minimal thrust. That is why their fighters launched, why their entire battle line moved forward. Distraction. They wanted us to believe they were throwing all into one, last desperate effort.

  Anything to divert our attention from their real attack…

  And now there were enemy soldiers on Colossus. It seemed impossible, and for all the time Ilius had spent trying to guess what the enemy might do, such a thing had never entered his mind.

  It was desperate, a flailing, wild, low-percentage lunge for victory. And it just might work.

  Colossus was almost invulnerable to external attack, its weapons vast and irresistible, its fighter squadrons and massive point defense array ready to counter the tactics the enemy had used so often against the Hegemony’s battle line. But inside, the great ship was vulnerable. It was vast, dwarfing the battleships of the line, but it had been rushed into service, and great sections of it remained inoperative. The network of functioning intraship transit lines was a skeletal framework. Entire sections of the ship could only be reached on foot, through kilometer after kilometer of seemingly endless corridor.

  Transferring troops to threatened areas would be a nightmare, and, perhaps worse, Ilius didn’t have that many soldiers onboard. Colossus, when completed, would have carried a virtual army, tens or hundreds of thousands strong, along with landing craft , heavy weapons, and vast storehouses of ordnance and supplies.

  But Colossus wasn’t finished, and perhaps worse, the vast manpower shortages plaguing the entire operation on the Rim had not spared the great ship. Ilius had less than three thousand combat Kriegeri aboard, and many of them were dozens of kilometers from the threatened areas. He’d already sent in all the force he had near the boarding points, but at best, he would be feeding in small groups of reinforcements as they were able to reach the threatened zones. For the time being, until he could move a large number of units through endless mazes of internal corridors, the invading enemy might even enjoy numerical superiority at the points of contact.

  That was a deadly danger, all the more because he’d analyzed the Rim attack plan, the locations where their landers had breached the hull. He didn’t see how they could possibly have any real intelligence on the ship’s layout, but whoever had chosen the incursion points either knew their stuff, or they were lucky as hell. His last reports showed Confederation Marine forces moving down no fewer than three vital corridors. They were less than a thousand meters from two different antimatter storage facilities, either one of which was large enough to destroy the entire ship if containment was breached.

  The facts in his mind crystalized quickly, the enemy’s plan becoming suddenly clear to him. That’s why they’re here. They’re going to sabotage the containment systems and try to destroy the ship from inside.

  “Commander, Kiloron Krimack reports his forces are unable to prevent enemy bombers from penetrating to attack range.”

  Ilius turned back toward the main display, shifting his attention with some difficulty from his dread at the boarding force. The enemy bombing attack was unimportant, more diversion. The real danger was in the ship already. “Activate all point defense batteries. Prepare to open fire as soon as the enemy wings move into range.”

  The enemy’s shrunken bomber force would never get past Colossus’s heavy defensive fire, at least not in sufficient strength to inflict serious damage on the behemoth. The imperial steel armor would present a strong defense to the enemy bombs and torpedoes. They would find it much more difficult to badly damage Colossus than they did with the line battleships.

  Still, he wasn’t going to take any chances.

  “All escorts are to advance and form a line fifty thousand kilometers in front of Colossus, and prepare to receive incoming bombers.”

  Ilius could hear the acknowledgements in the background, but his attention was already diverted, focused once again on the schematics of the giant warship, and on the updated reports of enemy movements. He shook his head as he stared down at the maze of corridors. His mind was full of questions. How did they know we’re so undercrewed? The Hegemony’s manpower shortage was the result of a combination of factors, available shipping, poor planning, and casualties, especially the three million Kriegeri left behind on Megara. It was possible, he supposed, that the enemy had simply guessed that Colossus might be operating with a skeleton crew, that the monstrous ship would be especially low on combat troops. The losses at Megara, and the garrisons on Ulion and Dannith—and a dozen other occupied planets—added up to a considerable number of troops. It was possible, he supposed, that the enemy had simply guessed. But that seemed a tenuous basis for such an all-out assault.

  Sending Colossus with so small a defensive contingent hadn’t seemed overly dangerous to him when the decision had been made, but the enemy now seemed almost prescient in their approach to engaging the great vessel. They’d found a weakness, possibly the only one Colossus had. Their attack was a desperate attempt, and they still faced long odds. But the tension twisting his guts into knots was telling him something else. There was a danger, and he had to do something, anything, to contain it. Immediately.

  He jumped up suddenly, and he turned to face the next senior officer on the bridge. “You have command, Kiloron. Monitor all incoming fighter squadrons, and manage our point defense array. Not one of those attack ships gets through to launch, is that understood?”

  “Yes, Megaron.” The veteran Kriegeri’s voice displayed determination, but also some level of doubt. The Rimdwellers had pulled off far too many desperate operations, and no one who had battled them for the past six years could afford cockiness.

  “When the escort line is in position, link them in with our battle net, and coordinate all fire from here. And, right now, I want every laser turret fire arc analyzed. All turrets with fields of fire on the docked enemy ships, are to establish target locks, and prepare to open fire.”

  “Megaron, those ships are attached to the hull. Even with the most precise targeting…”

  “You have your orders, Kiloron. Destroy those ships. Without regard to damage caused to Colossus.” The superbattleship was enormous, and Ilius was willing to inflict a few minor hits in order to blow away the troop carriers affixed to the hull. Anything to disrupt the boarders, to weaken their attack, to cut them off from whatever reserves, supplies, and support they possessed.

  “Yes, Megaron, identifying all applicable weapons stations now.” A few seconds of silence, then the officer saw Ilius walking toward the hatch leading off the bridge. “Megaron?”

  “I’m going down to the threatened sectors. I’m going to direct the fight against these boarders myself, firsthand. See to the point defense efforts…and blast those troopships as soon as fire locks are established.”

  Ilius could see the horrified look on the officer’s face, but he ignored it. Wherever those enemy Marines were on his ship, that was where the true threat lay, not with the approaching bombers. He was sure of that. And there was no one he trusted more than himself to handle it, to see that the enemy Marines were driven back.

  Before it was too late.

  * * *

  “Please, Captain Fritz, stay in the center. We don’t know what’s up ahead, and we can’t take any chances.” Garret Simonsen was Bryan Rogan’s chief aide. The general had detached him, with explicit orders, she suspected, to do whatever he had to do to keep her alive. Fritz didn’t object to that goal, of course, at least not in its essence. But she was uncomfortable being treated like something special, even though he knew she was, at least in terms of the current operation. No one was more likely to sniff out what they were looking for, the vulnerability they needed to destroy the vast ship. The small bombs the Marines had been able to bring onboard weren’t going to do a damned thing to Colossus as a whole, not unless she found an antimatter storage tank or a reactor for them to take out. Something that could unleash a chain reaction of sorts, and obliterate the monster ship.

  She understood the Marines’ concern, their protectiveness, however uncomfortable it made her. She’d already been wounded once. The hit hadn’t been in a vital enough area to truly threaten her life, but it had been enough to add an unwelcome and pronounced jab of pain to just about every step she took.

  She was well aware of the danger, and of her own role in seeing the mission to a successful conclusion. Still, she didn’t like the thought of Marines sacrificing themselves to protect her, and she knew very well they would do just that if the situation arose. That fact, the grim understanding that if she didn’t listen, if she took too many chances, she would endanger her protectors as much as herself, ate away at her.

  The idea of getting a Marine killed because she was rushing forward, denying them enough time to advance with care, was an upsetting one, but she also knew they didn’t have—couldn’t possibly have—much time to complete the mission. Every Kriegeri soldier on Colossus was probably heading their way, and even if Andi Lafarge’s intelligence was entirely correct, she couldn’t imagine the enemy soldiers aboard still didn’t outnumber the Marines.

  The fleet was in danger, too. Barron would have to make a run for it soon, or he would be committed to a decisive battle in Lyra, one he was very likely to lose. That thought cut through Fritz like a razor-sharp blade, and she quickened her pace again, gritted her teeth against the pain. She said, calmly but resolutely, “Major, we don’t have time to be careful. We’ve got to find what we’re looking for, and we’ve got to do it soon. I appreciate your attempts to protect me, but we don’t have time for that either.” She pushed forward, shoving the two Marines in front of her to the side, and she walked down the corridor.

  Simonsen lurched forward, barely managing to position himself in front of her, even as he waved for the Marines on either side to pick up their pace and keep up with their charge.

  Fritz’s attention had already turned toward the corridor, and the compartments on either side. She had some idea that they were heading in the right direction. At least the conduits along the edge of the ceiling looked a lot like heavy power transmission lines. That was far from definitive, of course, but it was a damned sight better than nothing. Which is what she’d had a few minutes before. Her eyes followed the line of large steel pipes, down the hallway, and around an intersection to the right.

  But this thing’s huge. Those conduits could go on for kilometers, even if we’re going in the right direction. Still, her instincts told her they were close. She’d have preferred a map or some kind of reliable hard data, but her gut had come through for her before, especially on engineering matters. There were worse things for her to trust.

  She glanced down at the portable scanner she carried, looking for signs of radiation or energy output nearby. She wasn’t surprised that it showed nothing at all. The old imperial metals Colossus had been built from were highly resistant to scanner beams, especially from a unit as small and low-power as the one she had with her. One of the Marines carried a larger semi-portable setup, and she almost stopped and told Simonsen to set it up. But she knew they were as short of time as they were reliable information, and besides, her gut told her even the larger unit would come up blank.

  She took another half dozen steps forward, and then she heard something. An explosion, from behind, back toward the docked troopships. The bombers? Attacking already?

  The thought popped into her mind, but almost as quickly, she pushed it aside. It was too soon. The bombing wings couldn’t possibly have gotten into launch range, not yet. But what then?

  Another rumble rolled down the corridor, and she could feel vibrations under her feet. Something had hit Colossus. She had no idea what it could be, but any doubt was banished from her mind when she felt her survival suit tighten, the high-tech fabric expanding to adjust internal pressure, even as the visor on her helmet slammed shut. She could feel the supplemental oxygen flowing, the cool air giving her a quick energy boost as she inhaled deeply.

  She looked down at the gauge strapped to her arm, but she already knew what had happened. Something had hit Colossus…hard enough to penetrate the hull and create a localized loss of pressure and atmosphere.

  That might be useful…any Kriegeri sent down here without survival suits will be stuck until they’re properly equipped.

  She turned toward Simonsen, tapping to activate her external speaker. But before she could say anything, a Marine came running down the corridor, shouting as he approached the group.