When the Stars Fade (The Gray Wars) Page 12

  “He was my responsibility, George.”Cameron’s eyes were red and moist.“Any other battle there was someone else in charge. Another officer making all the calls. Not now. I’m the Flight Leader, this is all my fault. Any lives lost are on me.”

  George sighed.“Jesus, man. How many ways can I say it? There was nothing you could do. You made the right call to push forward, we all flew tight as directed. This was just bad luck. We didn’t get a missile warning until the last second.”He guided his fighter close until he could look into his friend’s face.“People are going to die, Cam. You saved more lives that day than we lost. You towed hundreds of people to safety.”He let out an exasperated breath.“You look outside lately? The stars haven’t gone out. Life goes on.”

  Cameron was about to respond when his radio squawked.“Wolfpack, this is Berlin. Is everything all right? We’re seeing collision alerts on the tracker.”

  George shook his head, turning his attention back to the sky around them. Cameron tapped his headset.“Just passed a little close to a debris field. We’re fine.”He looked over at his wingman.“I’m fine, George. But thank you.”He cut the line, whispering to himself.“Until the stars fade.”His left hand found the tiny cross hanging off his flight suit, squeezing it tight.

  A signal lock shook him from his thoughts. Passive radar systems chimed to life, identifying a small blip on the screen only a few kilometers away. Cameron used his left hand to tap commands into the console, pulling the yoke with his right to guide the ship toward the unknown contact.

  “Berlin, this is Wolf One, traffic in the sky.”

  The radio squelched.“Wolf one, Berlin. You are cleared to investigate. Report coordinates on approach. Out.”

  “What do you see?”George asked from his position at Cameron’s four o’clock.

  Cameron squinted, trying to catch a glimpse of the object. Venetian Four hung in the background, an immense green canvas.“Got a hit on passive. Shadow me.”He put his foot to the floor, sending the Phoenix rocketing forward. The ship rumbled and bucked, hitting a sudden wake of particles.“George, how’s your ride?”

  “Choppy. I need to get new shocks.”He checked his computer.“Shit, we’re in a blue box.”

  Cameron activated his net again.“Berlin, Wolf one. We have located a recently closed entrance into Blue Space. Sending coordinates now.”Given the size of the box, it was more than likely that it was a transmission line. Larger ships left wakes that could be followed to the source, in theory. At the very least, they could shoot a probe into the mess of particles and hope it found its way to the other side. Cameron saw a flash of light from the carrier, followed by a small blue puff as the sensor pod chased after the transmission signal.

  Something danced in the faint light ahead, a tumbling silver craft. Cameron and George closed distance, their weapons armed and trained on the unknown object. Vapor leaked from various cracks in the surface, and the hull showed signs of plasma burns.

  “Jesus,”George said.“It’s an ExoPod.”He slowed down, allowing Cameron to take point.“Berlin, Wolf two. We have an escape pod located on our location. Should we wait for rescue?”The tow line on the Phoenix wasn’t designed to drag the larger pod, though it could do in a pinch. Valkyries had the right equipment to bring the ExoPod home safely.

  “Wolf two, Berlin,”the operator said.“Rescue teams are working on the main wreckage. Do you have confirmation of survived crew aboard?”

  George looked out his cockpit toward Cameron, shrugging. He activated his thermal imaging scanner, but the venting gasses from the pod scrambled the signal. White noise flooded the monitor.“I’ve got nothing, Cam.”

  On the other side of the ExoPod, Cameron used his control jets to invert the Phoenix over the escape craft’s door. He moved in close, the glass canopy nearly touching the warped metal hull. Inside the pod, lights flickered as power drained. Vapor left droplets of condensation on the glass; a good sign, all things considered.

  Suddenly, a small hand smacked against the window, smearing the moisture. Cameron nearly leapt back in his seat.“George,”he said.“We’ve got people inside. I just saw a hand.”

  “All stations this net, this is Berlinactual.”Shandras’voice came over the net.“Return to the boat and prepare for immediate action. Tallus is under attack from a large hostile force. The Arlington will stay behind to alert Fleet via FTL before joining the fight. Berlinout.”

  Cameron’s hands felt slick with sweat inside his gloves. A whole planet under siege? How big was this armada? It wouldn’t be the first time intelligence severely screwed the pooch, but this task force wasn’t up for a prolonged engagement. Hopefully Tallus had managed to get the rest of its forces into the air.

  “George, cover my six. We’re gonna tow the pod home ourselves.”He didn’t wait for a response. Placing safeties on all weapons systems, he armed the tow cable and fired. A magnetic bolt shot out from underneath his belly, catching just behind the blast shields on the escape craft. When the line drew tight, Cameron flipped his ship around and started a slow acceleration.“Snap a line on the back.”

  “Already on it,”George said. He attached his own cable from behind. If Cameron stopped short, the pod would no longer ram into his engines.“Ready for hard burn. Pod is clear of blast area.”

  “Punch it.”

  Raw fuel dumped into their exhausts and the two craft raced back to the carrier, the crippled pod in tow. Rescue craft left their positions and hurried along to Berlin, flaring their engines as they approached. One by one, the squadrons landed inside the hangar until all were safely aboard. Cameron and George waited for the last Valkyrie to grab the pod before attempting their own landings. Berlin extended two long tubes from her flanks: the Strider sleds. They began to glow as the last fighter arrived.

  The hangar door closed, sealing the area off from the rest of space. Immediately, emergency crews rushed to the escape pod and began pulling apart the hull. The door released with a groan, slamming to the deck with a thud. Medics leapt inside, emerging moments later with a frail form. They laid the injured pilot on the deck and began to resuscitate her. Cameron pushed through the crowd, eager to see if anyone had survived the attack.

  He wove through the growing group of seamen until he saw the docs kneeling on the ground. A thin woman lay unconscious on the deck, blood running from a gash on her forehead. Her left leg was set in a dirty blue cast and she wore the coveralls of a bomber pilot. She was pale, enough so that Cameron thought he must have arrived too late.

  One of the medics reached into the woman’s pocket, pulling out her tags. He read the name and tossed the metal disks aside.“Lieutenant Nuvarian, can you hear me?”His partner continued CPR.“Kaileen, come back to us.”He rolled up her arm, tapped her skin to find a vein, and injected a glowing blue liquid.

  Kaileen sat up suddenly, coughing hard. The crowd cheered, clapping and hollering, while a medic placed a mask over her face and hand pumped oxygen. Slowly she regained color. Her golden eyes darted around as she raced to process her new situation. Panic quickly settled into relief, and she allowed the medics to help her to her feet. With unsteady legs she hobbled to a waiting gurney and laid down again. Immediately, the medical team strapped her in place and placed an IV line in her arm. They wheeled her from the hangar, escorted out by the crowd of pilots and mechanics.

  Cameron reached the front of the throng as it neared the door, and for a moment locked eyes with Kaileen. Her face was ashen and slick with sweat, but she managed half a grin. One of the medics pushed her glossy black hair away from her face and set the mask back down. They whisked her away toward the medical ward.

  George caught up with Cameron at the door, breathless.“Jesus, ain’t we just the big damn heroes.”He noticed his friend staring off at the injured pilot.“Is she gonna be OK?”

  “We’ll see,”Cameron said. He grabbed the wall as a sudden burst of acceleration shook the hangar. Looking out the porthole, he watched the dark void explode into streaks of white li
ght as Berlin tore off toward Tallus. The alarm sounded throughout the ship.

  “Alert,”a mechanical voice announced.“All crew to battle stations. Refit fighters for air-to-air combat. Alert. Tallus planetary defenses report attack from multiple hostile ships. Emergency assistance requested. Alert. Strike Force Tallus no longer reporting.”

  At once, the hangar exploded into frenetic activity. NCOs barked orders over the roar, preventing a chaotic mosh pit from forming. Crew immediately took to the fighters, checking ammunition attachments and applying lubrication to all moving parts. Fighters ran to their craft, hopping inside and beginning function checks. Even though they’d just landed, the redundancy helped prevent an unexpected failure. One-by-one, the vessels were refueled and walked to the rails. In thirty minutes, the entire fighter and bomber wing rested on the magnetic launcher, standing by for deployment.

  Cameron saw George a row ahead and to the right of his position on the line. Small mechanical brakes held his Phoenix on the charged rail, preventing him from a catastrophic merging of his fighter with the Seed bomber in front. The entire carrier shook as they increased speed even more, racing toward an unknown force. With each passing minute, Cameron’s heart beat faster. He’d reread the briefing from the Fade, but none of it added up. He figured that, in ten minutes, he’d have his answers.

  One way or another.

  - IX -

  A beam of orange light shot out through space, tearing into a fleeing Tallus ship. The lance cut through hull plating without resistance, bisecting the craft in seconds. Oxygen tanks erupted, fueling an explosion that killed all aboard. Its target destroyed, the Boxti Ion Frigate continued to hunt. Spreading its mechanical arms wide, like a spider descending on prey, the craft surged forward.

  The attack was well in hand. Only minutes after arrival, all twenty frigates, coordinating a continent-wide attack, had fired a blistering volley of ionized plasma down onto the planet’s surface. Concentrating on New Freeman, the rain of fire set buildings ablaze and destroyed key launch pads and hangars. When the carrier arrived, most of the Terran resistance had been put down. Now, aided by Y fighters, the alien armada began the systematic destruction of the colony.

  Boxti bombers, fat craft with stubby wings, charged down into the atmosphere to carpet-bomb the city. Whole blocks disappeared in fire and smoke; the screams of the dying drowned out by the deafening explosions. Across the continent, military and civilian shuttles launched toward the sky in a desperate attempt at escape. They were caught in the blockade, torn apart by an impenetrable wall of frigates and fighters.

  Another lance of plasma shot down into the city, destroying a launch pad and killing hundreds of pilots and ground crew. Planetary defenses were gone, the cannons on the ground silent and broken. Save the soft crump that punctuated every explosion, Tallus was dying with barely a whimper.

  * * * * *

  On the far side of the planet, hidden from view, Tallus Node Bravo watched in horror. Rebecca and her crew used what remained of the Observer network to place the images of New Freeman’s final hours on the monitors in the main capsule. In her heart, Rebecca knew her husband was already dead. She would always put one camera on her house while away, just to remind her of home. The screen now showed a wall of flame eating away at the entire neighborhood. She tried to pretend she hadn’t seen her daughter walking home hours before, that Natalie hadn’t been inside the house when the attack began.

  The crew was beyond panicking. There was simply no point in it. If they wanted to survive, they had to stay quiet. After some effort, they moved from orbit to a stationary position, using the planet’s curvature to mask the node’s signal. They recorded everything, thinking the footage might help the military once they came and calmed the situation. It was a thin ray of hope, but it was all they had. Tallus hadn’t been able to so much as damage a single fighter during the opening engagement. Dozens of frigates jumped into system and, without warning, fired into the city using ion cannons. The Boxti had quickly engaged and destroyed what remained of the planet’s strike force. Now the aliens were mopping up.

  The radio squawked, causing all aboard to cry out. Rebecca grabbed the mic and tried to keep her voice steady.“Last calling station, this is Tallus Node Bravo. Respond.”

  The silence dragged on, and she worried they had imagined the sound.“This is Tallus Node Bravo. Anyone respond.”She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear swelling large enough to float free from her cheek.“Please.”

  “Tallus Node, this is TFC Berlin. We are on approach to your location, please activate entrance sequencing.”

  For a moment no one moved, then the station erupted into cheers, crewmembers hugging and crying and kissing. Rebecca dialed in the start-up sequence for the nav-buoy with shaking hands. In theory, the carrier could slow to normal speeds on its own, but the trajectory would be almost impossible to gauge. It made the trip significantly safer to have someone on the other end controlling the approach.

  Small unmanned pods flickered to life and located the incoming vessels. Seconds later, a lone warship popped into existence, its hull groaning from the sudden and dramatic decrease in speed. More followed. Destroyers and frigates took position on either side of the station, awaiting the arrival of Berlin. Engines flared as the main drives came online, releasing streams of blue fire from behind the rockets. Escort craft, lithe Sparrows, launched from the smaller warships and took up their stations.

  Berlin finally arrived from its stride, twin engines pulsing white hot from the effort. The carrier immediately charged forward, its entourage falling into place. Ahead of the strike group, still wreaking a terrible vengeance on the planet, the Boxti fleet took no notice of the approaching menace.

  Inside Berlin, Shandras calmly issued orders to his officers, sending out messages to the various ships in the line. He had three class-two destroyers, two missile frigates and five anti-fighter frigates. The fighter escort provided close-in defense and surgical strike capabilities, but even with the element of surprise the Terrans were entering a one-sided battle. Aside from the Boxti carrier and the frigates, there were almost a hundred fighters in the sky. The odds were not evenly stacked by a far margin.

  Newman called out his own orders to the SP fighters before returning to his post. He longed to ride out into the fray. His flight wings seemed to have collected dust over the last year, sitting behind a desk at Luna. The job paid extravagantly well, better in fact than his post on Titan, but there was no excitement. He pushed the thought aside. The last month had given him more excitement than he’d ever wanted. If he survived this war, he promised to find a particularly dull way to spend the rest of his life. Something where getting up to use the toilet was a considerable physical exertion.

  “Captain,”the Executive Officer said.“Enemy frigates have formed a blockade over New Freeman. Nothing’s able to get in or out. They’re jamming communication, but I can see plenty of signals on the net before they get cut off. If we can buy them some time, maybe a few shuttles can get away.”

  “Enemy carrier has us on passive. About a hundred eyes just looked our way.”The young Lieutenant at the defensive station looked toward Captain Shandras.“Should we launch the fighters, sir?”

  Shandras fondled a small charm in his pocket. It was a memento from his wife, long since passed. The plastic ballerina figurine reminded him of her motto to never rush in. He let out a deep breath and looked forward at the monitors as he spoke.“Alert all fighters for launch. Close in distance with that carrier and have the destroyers target the nearest frigates first. I want all missile batteries to build a wall of fire between the planet and those ships.”He turned to Newman.“SP will focus on the fighters and bombers. Once the skies are clear, we’ll escort the survivors to Tallus Node for immediate exit from the system. We need to save as many as we can.”

  The crew jumped to the orders, relaying them to the other warships and fighters down below. Newman quickly briefed his pilots and provided coordinates for anticipated su
rvivors. In the hangar, Cameron briefed the rest of Wolfpack. Though plussed up by Echo flight, the fighters only counted for eight ships. Cameron divided his group in half, with the newer pilots taking escort duty while the veterans would play defense. Even with the reserves, Berlincould only field a third of the enemy’s numbers.

  “Standing by to launch,”George said over the net.

  Cameron gripped the cross on his flight suit, whispering the prayer he said every time he went out. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for thou art with me. He closed his eyes and waited for the order. The vibrations from the MagRail trickled up his spine, joining the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He cracked his knuckles, anticipating the call.

  Slowly, the strike group closed with the enemy.

  - X -

  “What is it?”Alexander asked. Walker stood in the doorway, his face pale. The five-star flag officer walked in on shaky legs, and an aide quickly pulled a chair out. Taking a seat, he drank from his water glass until he seemed to regain composure. Alexander felt as though someone were squeezing his heart. Walker had earned his position crushing a planetary rebellion. He had won a Colonial Medallion for single-handedly blocking the invasion of Titan Academy. There was video evidence that he had killed a man with his bare hands. And now here he sat, shaking like a leaf.

  Admiral Walker had disappeared for ten minutes after receiving an urgent line from Terra Node. His face had been grim, a sign the High Chancellor found unnerving. As the tension finally reached a breaking point, he spoke. No one breathed until he was finished.

  “I’ve just received an FTL signal from the TFF Arlington. Tallus strike group engaged a small scouting party of Boxti craft. It was summarily destroyed, with not a single enemy casualty to show.”The assembled staff murmured, confused.“After the fight, the Boxti launched a counterattack on Tallus. Arlingtondidn’t have numbers, but the report from Tallus Node was a little less than two dozen frigates and a carrier. That may seem like better odds than we faced here not three days ago, but something’s changed. Arlington sent along the black boxes from several craft left over in the Valley of Giants. The news is...troubling.