Barron felt the sting of that last blow. Andi was playing dirty, though his realization of that fact didn’t change anything. How could he let her go feeling she lacked his understanding, if not his outright approval?

  “I know all of that is true, Andi…but the thought of you behind enemy lines, hiding from the Kriegeri, relying on old Spacer’s District lowlifes to get information, to stay hidden. Do you realize how dangerous that will be?”

  “And how dangerous is it when you lead Dauntless and the fleet into battle? How many spacers have died in this war?” She was silent, and then her tone deepened. “How close have you come to death?”

  Her words cut deep, striking their mark. He couldn’t argue, nor deny that he’d put her time and time again in the exact position she was putting him. She had endured, and she’d done her best to support his efforts. And, as much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, she was right. They did need intelligence from Dannith. They needed it badly.

  “I understand,” he muttered, his voice soft, subdued.

  Andi lifted her head and turned to look over at him. “You’re okay with my going?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. I’ll never be okay with you going into something like this…but I know why you feel you have to do it.”

  He inhaled a deep breath and the exhale came out as a mournful sigh.

  “Go,” he said, so softly, he wasn’t sure she could have heard it.

  “Go,” he repeated, the volume just a hair above that of the first whisper.

  Letting her go was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and the fear that he’d never see her again was a dark and ominous shadow, blacker than any the enemy had cast over him.

  Chapter Five

  Toscana Ridge

  600 Kilometers South of Troyus City

  Megara, Olyus III

  Year 321 AC

  The Battle of Toscana-Capella

  A pair of hypersonic rockets ripped across the darkening sky, visible only as streaks of glowing, ionized atmosphere as they zipped just over the heads of the crouching Marines and slammed into a hillside half a kilometer behind the lines. A few of the Marines dove lower into their makeshift foxholes and trenches, instinctive but mostly pointless efforts to hide from the deadly ordnance. Most of them stayed firm, however, rigid, grimly aware that no clawed-out ditch in the ground was going to save them from a projectile moving at more than five thousand meters per second. There was no rookie panic in the line, no uncontrolled fear. Many of the Marines had come to Megara less than a year before as new recruits, fresh from makeshift training camps scattered around the Confederation, but they were all veterans now, hardened by months of incessant and brutal combat.

  Bryan Rogan was prone just behind the forward formations, a location that had prompted urges from not one, but three other officers for him to pull back. Rogan was the planetary ground commander, and more than four million Marines looked to him for direction, orders…and inspiration. They were close to victory now, they all knew, but the ones who had been there the longest remembered the dark days at the beginning of the liberation, when barely two hundred fifty thousand of them had fought like wildcats to secure a foothold against almost ten times their number of enemy soldiers.

  Not many of that first wave were still with the colors. Some had been transferred out, for well deserved leave, and others, vastly more in number, were in hospitals on ships and a dozen nearby planets, including Craydon.

  And more than one hundred twenty thousand of them were dead, along with over a million of those who had come after. The fighting had been intense, terrible, and it had scarred every man and women who’d taken part in it, Rogan included. The Marine general had been wounded already when the reconquest operation began, and he had directed those initial battles from a portable field hospital bed, one his Marines carried around the field, to wherever he was needed. He’d been in terrible pain, too weak to stand…but his Marines had gone in, and he’d insisted on going with them, or at least as close to that as he could come.

  He’d been in the thick of the fighting since then, hobbling back and forth along the battle lines, first on a cane, and then unaided, if still a bit wobbly. He’d abused stims and painkillers wildly, done anything he could to keep himself in the field, in action with his Marines. And as those months passed, more and more troop transports and hastily-modified freighters shipped fresh Marines to Megara from every point in the Confederation, fresh meat for the slaughterhouse. Rogan had thrown those rookies right into the fire, with some guilt but no hesitation, and the battle changed gradually from a fight to hang on to a planetary beachhead to a steadily intensifying drive to take back key locations and to break through the Kriegeri defenses on a dozen fronts.

  The cost, the carnage of the desperate battle, had been like nothing most of the Marines fighting had ever seen. But it had been nothing new to Bryan Rogan. He’d seen over a million of his Marines killed in the hopeless attempt to hold the planet two years before. He’d commanded the shattered remnants of that great force, hiding in the ancient ruins, struggling to keep a few thousand of his fighters still under arms.

  Then he’d lost most of the few that had survived in the desperate attack on the enemy communications center. That fight, for all its cost and horror, had at least been a victory of sorts, one that had opened the door for the fleet to reclaim the system, and for his current force to be landed and to begin the grim business of clearing almost three million Kriegeri from Megara.

  Rogan looked out over the field, soon to be further bloodied and torn apart as his forces surged forward, line after line of solemn Marine veterans pushing toward the far hills to drive the enemy from their final stronghold. He knew he should pull back from his current position, that if a random artillery shell or rocket took him out, the disruption to the chain of command and the campaign would be significant. But he’d made a promise to Tyler Barron, a pledge to wrap up the fighting and complete the liberation of Megara as quickly as possible. The current battle along the Toscana hills, and the Capella ridgeline six kilometers to the south, would be the final major attack. When the enemy was broken there, the reconquest of the Confederation’s capital planet would be all but complete.

  The Kriegeri dug in on the low hills facing Rogan’s army were the last of the major formations still in action. There were small teams dug in all around the planet, no doubt, probably hundreds of them, and it would be months, if not years, before the killing stopped completely on Megara. But once the enemy forces over on the Capella were defeated, Rogan’s work would be done. He could turn the mopping up over to his subordinates, and he could go wherever Barron needed him next.

  He didn’t know where that would be, but he knew the admiral would almost certainly need him somewhere. There was only one thing he knew with greater certainty than that.

  When Tyler Barron called, he would be there.

  * * *

  “Get your heads down, now!” Dylan Ward had one hand on top of his helmet, holding it in place. It was annoying, especially in the middle of a battle, but considering the chunk of shrapnel that had sliced his chinstrap would have taken his head off instead if it had been a few centimeters closer, he’d decided he could tolerate the inconvenience.

  Ward’s major’s insignia had been sparkling new just hours before, but his battalion had been deep in the middle of the shit since morning, and now everything was filthy, just like his uniform, covered in mud and blood and God knew what else.

  He held his assault rifle in his other hand. This was no fight for an officer to prance around with only a sidearm, and besides, the less he looked like a figure of significant rank, the better. The Marines on Megara had come to both hate and respect the Kriegeri snipers. Some fool running around with a pistol in his hand and visibly shouting out orders was just asking for a quick headshot.

  He tapped at the small comm unit hanging from his helmet. “All company commanders, stay on your Marines. I see too many heads begging to get taken off. I want everybody low, hugging dirt, and I mean now.”

  He took his own orders, and he dropped down himself, crouching forward to keep his own head below the small berm his Marines were using as cover. They had started the day as the attackers, but now they were getting hit from all sides. The Kriegeri were counterattacking like wild demons, coming at his shrinking command from three sides. He knew his people had just drawn the short straw, that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The enemy was desperate, but they weren’t strong enough for this kind of massive push all along the line. Ward knew exactly what they were doing. They were trying to break through his lines, to escape from the trap General Rogan had set for them.

  And he was far from sure his people could stop them.

  The enemy’s escaping wouldn’t change the outcome of the battle for Megara, not in the end. But if they could scatter, spread out and dig in, they would extend the bloody job of pacifying the planet. Ward knew Rogan wanted them stopped cold, that he wanted the bulk of the fighting to end right there, on the Capella Ridge.

  The newly minted major couldn’t guarantee his Marines could hold long enough, but was damned sure if they didn’t, none of them were going to leave their assigned spot.

  His eyes darted up as he saw a pair of airships diving hard from the sky. He knew they were friendlies—the last of the Kriegeri airpower had been suppressed months before, mostly by strike wings launched from orbiting battleships. Still, he had an edgy feeling, until he saw the two birds loosing their rockets on the enemy position. They were hitting the Kriegeri rear areas, which was just as well, since the enemy front line was too damned close to his own people for him to want to see ordnance coming down all around.

  Friendly fire killed just as effectively as enemy action.

  His eyes caught movement to the front, and he froze for a few seconds, staring, trying to get a feel for what he was seeing.

  The enemy. They were coming…and in force.

  “Here they come, Marines. You all know what to do.” He was shouting into his comm, and to the two dozen or so of his people close enough to hear him directly. “We stand here, remember that. Whatever happens, they don’t get us off this hill.” That was the kind of thing that was easy to say, and more difficult to execute, especially if following the command meant every Marine in his battalion died. But he wanted his people fighting with every scrap of fierce determination they could muster. If death was the only alternative to defeat, then, as far as he was concerned, so be it.

  He swung his own rifle around, bringing it to bear. He couldn’t see the enemy yet, not through the dusky haze. The Kriegeri had chosen their moment well, and he knew they would make the most of the poor visibility, get as close as they could to his line before his people pinpointed them.

  General Rogan had deployed scanners, of course, but the Kriegeri had their jammers operating on full, and they’d bombarded the main field with radioactive isotopes to further degrade the Marines’ ability to track them. It was a dangerous and dirty way to fight, and he knew running through the nightmare they’d created on the field would not be without cost. His own radiation detectors had gone off half a dozen times, and he guessed the levels in the low-lying areas were three or four times greater than on the ridge. The Kriegeri would have some cover for their attack, but any survivors of the battle were going to be dealing with radiation sickness when it was done.

  Ward listened, trying to block out the noise of his troops, every sound but those the enemy was making. He thought he had a fix on them. They were close, maybe a half kilometer away, he guessed.

  Well within range…

  “All units, target range zero point five kilometers, directly to the front. Open fire!”

  He followed his own order, blasting three round bursts, his sights set for exactly five hundred meters. He maintained that fire, dropping the range every ten seconds or so. It was frustrating, not knowing if his people were hitting the enemy, causing any damage, but it was all he could do.

  Then, suddenly, he could see them, the Kriegeri, marching forward, as relentless as usual. But their line was irregular, and even as troops from behind raced forward to fill the gaps, he could see that his Marines had already taken their toll.

  “Keep it on them, Marines. At two hundred meters, switch to full auto. We’re gonna take these bastards down, every damned one of them!” The excitement in his tone was for his peoples’ benefit, mostly. But he was beginning to work himself up, too. He fired, and then again, each time dropping one enemy soldier.

  He hated the Kriegeri, despised them as his enemy, as the monsters who had killed more of his friends than he dared to count. But it was impossible not to respect them. Their skill, their unfailing courage…they had proven themselves the equals of his own people.

  Though no real Marine could entirely admit any enemy was quite a match.

  He switched to automatic, and he watched as dozens of the enemy fell under the relentless fire of his Marines. Hundreds. The field was covered with bodies, but even as entire sections of the line were cut down, reserves moved forward to take their places. The enemy showed no fear, no failure of morale. They were fighting a losing effort, and even if they prevailed against Ward and his forces, their time was limited, their fates sealed. The Confederation—no, the Grand Alliance, he reminded himself—fleet held the space around the planet, and the liberation forces on Megara outnumbered the shattered remnants of the Hegemony’s once mighty invasion force.

  What dedication, what incredibly bravery…

  Despite his hatred, he felt loss at so many fighters being cut down. It was such…waste.

  Why did they come here? Why did they start this war?

  He didn’t have answers to questions like that, and it wasn’t his place to try to formulate them. He was there for one reason, and that needed all his attention. Even as he watched his Marines cut down so many of the enemy, he came to a cold realization.

  They’re going to make it up the hill. They’re not going to stop.

  He popped out a spent clip and slammed a new one in place. The enemy was less than a hundred meters away, and they were returning fire now. A dozen or more of his Marines had been hit already, and he pulled his hand toward the comm unit, intending to shout out yet another reminder to watch their cover.

  But it was too late for that. The Kriegeri were going to reach his line any second.

  “Prepare to defend yourselves,” he shouted into the comm, even as he saw a dark wave of Kriegeri lurching up the hill, and over the small berm. He fired wildly, gunning down as many as he could, and then he swung his rifle up, as one of the enemy was suddenly in front of him, bringing his own weapon down like a club.

  Chapter Six

  CFS Dauntless

  Orbiting Megara

  Olyus III

  Year 321 AC

  “I have a bad feeling, Clint. We got more of a respite than I’d dared to expect after Megara, but we know something was coming, and I think we can safely say, it’s coming soon. We just don’t know what the hell it is.” Tyler Barron was sitting behind his desk, looking across at Clint Winters. His number two had become one of his closest friends, and somewhat of a confidante. The two of them, and Atara Travis—one of the two people he trusted most—were alone in his office, reviewing the latest intelligence reports. He was giving it his all to stay focused, to keep his mind off Andi, and what she was planning to do. He’d agreed to let her go, but every fiber in him was straining, desperate to take that back, to stop her from leaving, somehow.

  Nothing less than the survival of the Confederation and the future of hundreds of billions of people would have been important enough to tear his mind from worrying about her, but fortunately—if that word could be considered appropriate—that’s just what was in front of him.

  “I just wish we knew more, Ty. I agree something is coming. I haven’t slept in weeks, at least not for more than an hour at a time. I’ve been tossing and turning and wondering what the hell Project Zed could be, or Red Storm. I’ve gone over every scouting report, every shred of intel Gary Holsten has provided. But we’ve still got nothing more than a bunch of wild guesses.”

  Barron winced, hoping neither of his companions noticed. The lack of decent intel was exactly the impetus for Andi’s mission to Dannith. He couldn’t argue it wasn’t important, even downright crucial to find out more, before it was too late. He couldn’t even make a decent case that Andi wasn’t the best one to go, the most qualified and experienced on Dannith and its underworld and the network of lowlifes that inhabited it. Those were just the kind of resources that might be useful to an intelligence operation, assuming, of course, the creatures in places like the Spacer’s District had managed to slither into some dark place to survive the occupation. He knew no one else was better qualified, if only because he’d wracked his brain trying to come up with someone or something, any way at all he could make a case to keep her from going.

  But there was nothing.

  “Our experiences with the Hegemony have taught us not to underestimate them. So, the best we can do is to assume we’re going to face something we haven’t before. A new fleet, different types of ships, something. And lacking any more detailed information, the best we can do is to bring the fleet to full alert and move it forward…to some chosen system, someplace we think they will come, where we can meet them—when they unleash Project Zed and Red Storm, whatever they are. In the end, we’re going to have to fight whatever they’ve got, so there’s no point in sitting here complaining about what we don’t know.”