PROLOGUE
Captain Jared Clement of the Rim Confederation Navy gunship Beauregard contemplated his tactical screen. He was alone in his cabin, as was his habit before battle, concentrating and formulating his upcoming strategy.
The tactical screen showed him no love. The fleet of 5 Suns Alliance Navy ships approaching his position over the planet Argyle, and its space station of the same name, had left their positions around the planet Shenghai in the nearby Kemmerine system over thirty-eight light-hours ago. The ships had accelerated impossibly fast, well over twenty-five gs, and had reached a velocity so close to light speed as to be insignificant in its difference in just thirty minutes. Normally acceleration at that speed could only be accomplished by unmanned vessels or weapons. Any human crew would be left as bloody splatters against the walls of the ships, unless there was some mitigating technology perhaps, he suspected, a new propulsion system aboard the 5 Suns Navy vessels.
Clement had heard rumors of inertial dampening technology being developed by the 5 Suns, some sort of projectors that literally distorted space in front of an accelerating ship by pushing out leading gravity waves. Humankind had been pushing at the limits of light speed for decades, and this “rumored” technology was extremely promising. So much so that Clement was fairly sure he was watching it in action for the first time on the tactical screen right in front of him.
Just a light-hour earlier the attacking formation had split into three groups, one each setting course for the three inhabited planets, Helios, Ceta, and Argyle, of the weak orange dwarf Rim star. They were close enough now that Clement could count their numbers: five light cruisers for each of Ceta and Helios, but fifteen reserved for him at Argyle. He’d made no secret of where he was stationed. Now he regretted that decision.
He’d beaten the 5 Suns Navy enough times in the ongoing conflict that it was clear they were going out of their way to finish him and the Beauregard off as quickly and efficiently as they could. As a former 5 Suns Navy officer himself, he was undoubtedly high on their hit list, as was his crew, he reminded himself. And he wasn’t willing to sacrifice them, especially not his XO, who happened to be his former lover, and a native of the planet Helios. Commander Elara DeVore had broken off their relationship when he’d been named captain of the Beauregard, a move he had agreed with from a professional standpoint, if not a personal one. She in turn had agreed to follow him to his new command, but only if they broke off the relationship. It was a high price to pay, but he knew he needed her on his ship. She was still, for him, the most extraordinary woman he had ever met, but the rules were the rules, and Clement had reluctantly accepted her decision more than two years ago. Oh, there had been women since then, but none like Elara DeVore, not even close.
He fingered the rim of his whiskey glass as he tried to work out some kind of tactical strategy that gave them a fighting chance. He could find none. He wanted a drink now, badly, but he repressed the impulse. Alcohol was his personal demon, one he had learned to accept, but he didn’t have to like it.
In response to the approaching flotilla, the Rim Confederation Navy had only their famous gunships. Clement had four here at Argyle, and there were three each at the other planetary defense stations. It wasn’t enough. But it was all they had left. Clement himself had been in charge of the development plans on the gunships, so they were practically designed for him and his style of fighting. The Rim Navy had lost many ships in the last two years, including all of their capital ships in a mistaken attempt to take the space station at the nearby Kemmerine star. For the record, Clement had been against that move, thinking it was likely to sharpen the 5 Suns Navy’s fighting edge. Regrettably, he’d been right. But the “Admirals” in charge of the Rim Navy (former commanders and captains with the 5 Suns Navy before the war) had made their plans and as a good soldier Clement had done his best during the attack.
The only ships to escape Kemmerine that day had been his gunships and a pair of battered destroyers, both of which had to be scuttled on the return trip. It had been a bad day for the Rim, if not a personal victory for him and his tactics. They’d made him Fleet Captain then (he had turned down the offered rank of Admiral) and he’d spent most of the last year preparing the Rim Navy for the inevitable, a full-scale invasion by the 5 Suns. It now appeared this was the day they had dreaded.
This had all the signs of an end-game maneuver by the 5 Suns Navy, and looking at his tac board, it seemed likely it would succeed despite his best efforts. He contemplated the situation, and briefly considered surrender, but his orders had been clear from Fleet headquarters: fight until you could fight no more. The order was tinted with the likelihood that those admirals were facing the noose for treason soon, but Clement was too good a sailor to do other than what he was ordered to do.
Just then he got the com chime from his bridge and he responded quickly. “Report, XO,” he said.
“Enemy flotilla is decelerating rapidly, estimate eleven minutes until they are able to engage us on the battlefield,” she said. He was amazed at the rapid deceleration he was witnessing, but not surprised. The rumored inertial dampening tech was on full display.
“Eleven minutes? Christ, I find myself longing for the old days when you had a couple of hours to prep for the battlefield,” he said.
“Those days are gone, sir,” she replied, the alarming tone of her voice indicating her desire for him to take control of the situation and start giving orders. He decided he should heed her. He shut down his display and got up to take the nine steps from his cabin to the bridge, a path he might be taking for the last time.
“Order the fleet to accelerate to 0.25 g, maneuvering thrusters only, 0.000086 inclined to the ecliptic. Get us some distance from Argyle Station. Hopefully, that will make them have to adjust their course,” he said as he hit the mechanism and the doors to his cabin parted.
“What about the station? Are we leaving it undefended?” He paused to reconsider.
“No. Tell Captain Cormack to hold back the Antietam, but his orders are not to fight if he is outnumbered. If we don’t give them multiple targets with our gunships they might leave the station intact. Might,” he said.
“Understood, sir.”
A few short steps later and he was on his bridge. The main tactical display showed the glowing dots of the incoming 5 Suns flotilla. The screen was rimmed with a pulsating red light, indicating danger, something Clement already knew.
“Status,” he ordered, standing in front of his tactical station. Each of his bridge crew in turn gave their updates.
“Fifteen 5 Suns Navy light cruisers coming in hot, sir. They’re still decelerating, but estimate they will be at zero within two minutes. Then they will have to shift their flight path to intercept us,” reported DeVore. “It will take about five minutes more for them to catch us on our current course, using conventional thrusters.”
“I don’t think we can count on that, XO, based on what I saw of their crossing speed.”
“The gravity wave technology?”
“Possibly. I just don’t know if they can use it effectively on a short-range battlefield.”
“How long do we continue our burn, sir?” The question came from Mika Ori, the Beauregard’s pilot.
“We don’t, Lieutenant. As soon as they reach zero acceleration I want us moving at forty-five degrees to their position. If they precalculated our course based on our current burn they’ll have to reconfigure. Give them something to think about,” Clement said.
“Looking for the best ground to fight on, sir?” asked Ivan Massif, Ori’s husband and the Beauregard’s navigator. Clement eyed the tall, lanky man.
“Regrettably, there is no ‘best ground’ in this area of space, Ivan. We’ll make two of the forty-five-degree pivots, three minutes apart, then we take our chances.”
“We’re going to attack?” said DeVore. Clement gave her an annoyed look.
“This is most likely our last battle, Commander. I wouldn’t want it any other way, giving them one last bloody nose.”
“But—”
“Commander,” he said, beckoning her to come to his station. She did, reluctantly. He looked into her dark brown eyes, searching for understanding in them, but finding only confusion. He was always an enigma to her, he knew, and that’s what had probably made their relationship work for as long as it did. “XO,” he started in a whispered voice, “if they come after us, then perhaps they’ll go easier on the other ships. I’m hoping this maneuver will save lives.”
“But not ours,” she replied, equally quiet. He looked away from her.
“I’m the Fleet Captain,” he said. “I’m the prize they want.”
“What about the rest of us?”
He gave her a silent nod of affirmation. “I’ll do the best I can,” he whispered. And the conversation was over. She returned to her console, and he continued taking reports.
Thirty seconds from the 5 Suns fleet reaching zero point, he sent out a private com to his navigator and pilot, giving them specific time and instructions on the two burns and the attack vector. Each pinged him with confirmations. They understood. He wouldn’t have to give the orders verbally.
The 5 Suns fleet reached zero deceleration, just one hundred kilometers from Argyle Station in a precision maneuver his ships could never emulate. Three light cruisers immediately broke off from the main fleet and accelerated toward the station and the Antietam.
The rest, twelve ships, started burning their thrusters toward the stationary Rim gunships. He was outnumbered four to one—not bad odds, considering. He looked down at his tac board.
Now, he thought, just as Mika Ori gunned the engines.
Perfect.
They’d been engaged with the 5 Suns Navy cruisers for more than fifteen minutes, and so far, so good. Clement had them scrambling to defend their positions, but he still had one surprise left in his hand of cards. One his crew had practiced, but never executed in battle.
“Inverted C dive, now!” demanded Clement of his pilot.
“Full C dive, aye, sir!” said Mika Ori. She slammed the Beauregard’s chemical infusion drive to the wall, accelerating the ship to over six gravities as they started their dive, pulling them away from the 5 Suns Navy cruiser formation. At this speed, on a crowded battlefield, it had never been tried. The chances of hitting a slice of metal or even colliding with a full ship were high, but Clement believed his ship could carry out the maneuver—and after all, he was her designer. He knew how much she could take, beyond what the specs said.
Some would have called a max-thruster inverted “C” in battle a suicide move. Not Clement. He’d built his ship for just this kind of off-the-books performance. The burn took the Beauregard away from the battlefield in a tight curve, from under the main plane of battle and then up through the battlefield again before his ship dropped back “down” on the enemy from above. No enemy commander would have tried it in one of the clunky 5 Suns Navy cruisers. Hell, no enemy ship could have likely carried it out.
He strained against his acceleration couch, his body squirming inside his g-force dampening suit. The suit at least partially compensated against the forces of inertial gravity. Clement and the rest of his suited bridge crew could still move, just not nimbly or quickly.
He watched on his tactical board as the 5 Suns Navy ships hardly reacted at all. Certainly, no one dared to chase the Beauregard, and most probably thought he was trying to escape. The Rim Confederation Navy was outgunned in this particular encounter, but the Beauregard had a way of evening things up. She was faster, better shielded, and carried enough ordnance to make any 5 Suns Alliance Navy cruiser’s day miserable. And the 5SN relied almost exclusively on their midsized light cruisers to fight the RCN.
The Beauregard reached the apex of its dive (relative to the ecliptic of the Argyle system and the battlefield) and kept burning, powering through the lower arc of the inverted C-curve maneuver. “Cut the engines,” ordered Clement as they reached their max speed of one hundred seventy-five kilometers per second, completing their acceleration and driving back down to the battlefield, nearly ten thousand kilometers distant now. At that speed, they would be back on the invading fleet in slightly less than a minute.
“Prep the scatter mines,” ordered Clement through his pressure suit’s com system.
“We’re ready,” came the response from his engineer, Hassan Nobli, via the com from his engine room. What they were ready with was more than two hundred mobile metal mines armed with .10 kiloton charges that would be released over the battlefield as the Beauregard swept through the multitiered 5 Suns fleet formation. The result would be potentially devastating to the 5 Suns light cruisers, a cloud of death unleashed on the battlefield, enveloping everything in its path. Clement had used these weapons only once before, at the Battle of Kemmerine as a means for his gunships to escape the 5 Suns fleet. But in that case the scatter mines had been used as a rear-guard action while his deployed gunships sped away from the battlefield. They’d never been used in such a high-speed maneuver before.
“I’m detecting unusual EM activity from four of the 5 Suns Alliance cruisers,” came a warning from DeVore.
“Specify, XO,” said Clement.
“I can’t, sir. I’m reading heightened electromagnetic activity on four ships, as I said, sir. Uncertain as to what it means. We still have time to break off the attack and reform with the other gunships,” she said.
Clement thought for a moment, looked up at his tactical board one last time and said, “No. Maintain course and speed.”
No one said anything, least of all DeVore. They had all learned to trust their captain, his instincts and intuitions. They had been fighting together in a civil war for autonomy from the 5 Suns Alliance for the most distant planets in 5 Suns space, the Rim Confederation. But this battle was the biggest of the entire war, a game-ending play by the 5 Suns Navy to finish the costly four-year-old conflict which had seen both sides pushed to their limits.
They had seconds now before the Beauregardpierced the positions of the 5 Suns Navy cruisers at blinding speed. Clement watched on his tactical board as the 5SN ships finally began to scramble, looking to get out of range of the gunship’s suicide dive. Near Argyle Station itself, Clement watched the desperate battle between the Rim Navy’s remaining gunships and the 5SN cruisers, a battle the Rim Confederation Navy was losing. This was his biggest play ever, and it had to work.
“Captain!” came DeVore’s warning, a second after Clement saw it. Four 5SN cruisers had formed up in a flat square, a full kilometer on each side, right in the Beauregard’s descending path. They were sacrificing those cruisers . . . but to what end?
At the speed the Beauregard was traveling the metal from the mines would rip through the hulls of the cruisers on kinetic energy alone. But these weapons, which Clement had a hand in creating, were designed to be more powerful than anything else that had been used in the war to date, containing their own propulsion systems and the exploding ordnance.
At ten seconds to contact he ordered the scatter mines released. They swarmed out and accelerated away from the Beauregard, as they were designed to do, seeking out their targets. The four 5 Suns Alliance Navy cruisers didn’t stand a chance against them.
At five seconds to contact he saw their play. An orange-tinted EM field, looking like a waving, beaded carpet, extended between the four ships, forming a perfect one-kilometer-square blanket of electron-charged plasma. The Beauregard had no chance to evade it, no hope of changing course or decelerating to avoid contact.
The scatter mines slammed into the four battle cruisers with devastating effect, sending showers of sparks and flame out into the eternal night of space. For a moment Clement thought they were delivered, but then he saw the awful truth: four probes that were detached from the cruisers had kept the plasma blanket as a fully charged closed circuit.
The Beauregard impacted the plasma, and Clement’s world exploded. The bridge arced and flamed with static energy. It seemed like everything was on fire, including some of the crew. He opened his mouth to give orders but nothing came out, nothing comprehensible at least. His ship rattled and rocked, rolling uncontrollably through space, spinning and decelerating at a frightening clip. The crew were pinned to their acceleration couches again, some of them burning in place. His com filled with their screams of agony and shouts for help. It was an eternity until Clement was strong enough to escape his couch and grab a fire extinguisher. He put out three fires, two of them on members of his crew, charred bodies now, while the rest of the survivors did the same. It was true Hell.
He pulled off his helmet and his lungs filled with the acrid smell of burned flesh and burning equipment. Only a few systems were left operating on the ship, one of them the tactical board. He looked around the bridge. Of his nine bridge officers only himself, DeVore, Mika Ori and Ivan Massif, had survived.
“Show me,” he said to DeVore. She brought up the tactical board.
The four 5SN cruisers spreading the plasma blanket had been destroyed, cut to pieces. Two others were damaged to less than fifty percent tactical efficiency. The rest of the flotilla, six operating cruisers, was intact and closing in on the Beauregard. The remaining Rim gunships had fled, trying to protect Argyle Station. The Antietam was adrift, with heavy damage, knocked out of the battle and sinking into the gravity well of the planet Argyle itself, where she would no doubt burn up. There were nine active cruisers now against just three working gunships, a three-to-one advantage for the 5 Suns Navy, and the Beauregard itself was finished, that much was obvious.
“What did they hit us with?” asked DeVore.
“Some kind of electron-charged plasma weapon. Our own speed through the battlefield displaced enough energy to magnify the blanket’s effect a hundredfold. We’re done,” Clement said.
“If they’d kept to standard tactics we should have gotten half their fleet, at least,” said Ori.
“Yes, we should have,” said Clement. “But they anticipated our move.”
“How?” asked Ori. Clement shook his head.
“Only one way I can think of. They knew what our plan was and how we were going to execute it.” Clement promised himself he would find out who had betrayed him and his crew, and one day enact revenge.
He went to the tactical board again and checked his ship’s course and speed, and the status of the remainder of the Rim Confederation fleet. The Beauregard was rapidly decelerating. The remaining gunships protecting Argyle itself were in the process of surrendering. Argyle Station had already fallen. If this scene was being repeated at Ceta and Helios then not only was the battle over, the war was too.
“We should consider surrendering,” stated DeVore.
“Should we?” said Clement, then he turned to Ori. “Mika, can you give me one-quarter speed on the chemical thrusters?” She nodded.
“I’ll try, sir.”
The Beauregard’s thrusters groaned and moaned but eventually she started moving again at the pilot’s command. They had been drifting in the general direction of Argyle 4, a twenty-kilometer-wide rock that passed as a moon of Argyle. Clement set his direction there.
“What are you doing?” asked DeVore.
“We may be beaten but we’re still Rim Confederation Navy. They want my ship for a trophy. The Beauregard has kicked more 5 Suns Navy ass in this system than any other ship we’ve had in the entire war. They’ll want her so they can scrape her insides for every bloody secret she has. But I’m not going to let them,” he said, defiant.
“You’re scuttling her?” said DeVore.
“I am,” he replied without looking up from his board.
“But sir—”
“They’re not getting their grubby hands on my ship, Elara!” he snapped. “All of you to the rescue pods, that’s an order,” Clement said, then he sounded the general alarm, and called down to Hassan Nobli, his closest friend on the ship, besides DeVore, of course. “Get off the ship, Nobli. I’m going to scuttle her.”
“If you’re going down with her I am too!” insisted Nobli through the com.
“Evac now, Hassan. That’s an order. That alarm is for you too.” There was a moment’s silence, then Nobli said, “Aye, sir. It’s been a pleasure serving with you.”
“It damn well hasn’t, and you know it. We were never close. You were only my friend for the drinking,” he said.
“Understood, sir,” came Nobli’s reluctant reply, indicating he had absorbed his cover story for the 5 Suns Navy interrogations that would likely follow their capture.
Clement cut the line.
The evacuations aboard the rest of the ship started almost immediately. When he was satisfied the bulk of the surviving crew was free of the ship and the rest would surely be gone in the next few minutes, he personally fired the thrusters a second time on a collision vector toward Argyle 4.
“Mika, Ivan, off with you,” he said. “I don’t need anyone to help me fly my ship into an asteroid.”
“I want to stay with you, sir,” Ori protested. Clement shook his head.
“Not possible. Now get to a pod and get off my ship, both of you. That’s an order.” And probably my last as captain of this ship, he thought. Ori and Massif saluted sharply and then they were off to one of the three bridge escape pods. One of them was damaged beyond repair, but Clement watched as they boarded another pod and a second later they were gone. There was one rescue pod left with a capacity of two people.
Alarms blared as the emergency lights flickered amongst the still burning fires and system circuit overloads. Clement looked around his smashed bridge. DeVore came up and wrapped her arm in his, taking hold of his hand.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you are notgoing to go down with this ship,” she said to him. He looked at her. A loyal comrade, his most trusted advisor, his lost love, and his friend. He smiled weakly.
“No, I’m not,” he admitted. He checked the vector of the Beauregard one more time, satisfied she would meet her end on Argyle 4 and not fall into the hands of the 5SN, then he let DeVore lead him by the hand to the last escape pod. He unlocked it and pushed her through, then, after a moment’s hesitation, he stepped off of his Rim Confederation Navy command for the last time and into the rescue pod. This, he was sure, would be his last commission, in any navy.
They both strapped in and Clement donned his helmet again before he switched on the IFF beacon that would identify them to the enemy. In his final act as captain, he hit the activation button and the rescue pod explosively accelerated away from the Beauregard. He felt the pain of loss, of losing his ship, but also a sense of relief that the long, uphill climb was finally over. He was embarrassed that he felt that way.
Six minutes of silence later he watched his ship crash onto the surface of Argyle 4, scraping a scar across its already ugly face. Four minutes after that and they were in the shadow of a 5 Suns Alliance Navy light cruiser.
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