A Titan's Vengeance Final
The Great War
Ralph Kern
Published by Ralph Kern, 2020.






This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
A TITAN'S VENGEANCE FINAL
First edition. March 25, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Ralph Kern.
Written by Ralph Kern.




Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Author’s Note





Acknowledgments
Thank you to all the readers who bought, read and reviewed book 1. That you did so, in such numbers, is humbling.
And thanks to Caroline, once again, for putting up with me while I hunkered down on this project.
To Tom Edwards, who created an amazing cover. Steve for his awesome typography. Shay for her editing. Tim and Don, for their great proofing and suggestions.
And a heart-felt thanks to all those who serve.
Mailing List:
www.Ralphkern.com
Facebook:
Facebook: Ralph Kern
Email:
Ralph@Ralphkern.com
Pre-order Book 3 of The Great War here:
A Relentless Fury





Chapter 1
Captain Cutter
Ishtar System – The Sphere – KSS Achilles
The fleet of seventeen immensely powerful warships drove forward on furious plumes of plasma fire. Their destination: a ramshackle collection of girders and old-fashioned modular components which clustered together to form Algon Station. A place which offered harbor for the most destitute of ships, unable to afford the berthing costs of other, more respectable, homes.
And, in a manner of speaking, that was still true for those who had found respite here now. The chaotic lattice-grid arrays, evolved rather than designed for tramp freighters, asteroid miners, and Sphere boats, instead held the shattered remnants of the Orillion Republic Navy’s once proud and powerful fleet.
Captain Hal Cutter looked over the sprawling base through the theater-sized forward screen, a sense of tragic sadness washing through him. The ships of what had once been one of the finest navies in the Arcadian Sector had found refuge here from the Hegemony armies spreading across their worlds. They’d fled far from home, hiding under the shadow of the mysterious, ancient Ishtar Sphere encompassing the system’s primary star.
The bridge staff sat subdued as Captain Hal Cutter looked on, his arms folded. A woman’s face appeared, looming large, obscuring Algon station. Her features should show exhaustion, lined with stress and worry from carrying the weight of a star nation through the most trying of times.
Total war, which spanned the Sector from the skies and space over the capital of the Kingdom to the far side of Hegemony space.
Yet, instead of weariness, her visage showed an icy calm.
Slowly, and with intent, Prime Minister Isabelle Lattimore began speaking, “It is impossible for us, your comrades up to now”—her voice was firm, enunciating every syllable at a measured pace. Cutter had already read the wording. Her speech had been carefully scripted, to cover the government both legally, and politically. There had to be no misunderstanding of what she was saying. Her resolve had to be obvious and clear. That was the only way lives of friendly spacers could be saved—“to allow your fine ships to fall into the power of the Neo Hegemony enemy.”
Lattimore paused a moment, her eyes burning through the display. “We are determined to fight on until the end, and if we win—as we think we shall—we shall never forget that the Orillion Republic was our ally, that our interests are the same as hers, and that our common enemy is the Neo Hegemony.”
Cutter flicked his gaze to the tactical holotank lying recessed in the center of the bridge. The fleet formation began to spread, like a hand grasping over the patchwork of the station. Within the makeshift slips lay four of the Republic’s mighty battleships, five of their destroyers, and a carrier. A force which could change the course of the war... if it fell into the wrong hands.
“Should we conquer, we solemnly declare that we shall restore the greatness and territory of the Republic. For this purpose, we must make sure that the best ships of your navy are not used against us by the common foe.”
KSS Achilles slipped into her position on the right flank of the huge battlecruiser, KSS Cronus, Admiral Rihanna Albright’s sleek flagship. Beyond her, Achilles’s sister ship, Ajax, took the left position. Between them, the two cruisers, Spartan and Knight, and nine accompanying destroyers filled the gaps.
“In these circumstances, the Kingdom Government has instructed me to demand that the Republic Fleet now at Algon Station shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives.” Lattimore stared hard into the camera, leaving no doubt as to her resolution. Cutter shifted his weight to his other foot, his stomach churning. Then remembered himself. Image was everything before the crew, especially when they might be called upon to do something questionable. He clasped his hands behind his back to stop his fidgeting.
This was the moment when they would find out whether they would have to shed blood this day. “Join with us and continue the fight until victory against the Neo Hegemony enemy...or return to Starbase Victory with us under a reduced crew, who would be repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by you, we will restore your ships to the Orillion Republic at the conclusion of the war, or pay full compensation if they are damaged.”
Now it was time for the sweetener; Cutter leaned forward. There was no way in hell any Republic ship would fight against the Hegemony, not after the Neo Executors had let it be known they’d gathered up as many friends and families of the refugee crews as they could find. They would have them installed as “guests” in their facilities before the day was out...an honor from which they would never return.
To the aft of Cronus, another huge ship, the carrier Corvus, began dispensing a blinking line of icons. The transponders were on, blaring the Cyclone torpedo bombers’ presence. Letting the Republic see the launch of even more opponents, hoping that would ease their decision even more.
“Alternately, if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Hegemony lest they break the terms of your armistice, then you must demilitarize to our satisfaction, or perhaps allow your vessels to be entrusted to, say, the Federation and remain safe until the end of the war.”
The Cyclones flocked around their hold points. The ships of the fleet were where they needed to be to rain fire down on the base. Everyone was in position. Everyone was ready to go.
Cutter lowered himself into his seat, his fingers tapping unbidden on the leather of his armrest. The churning in his gut was even worse than during the headlong rush to rescue the expeditionary force from the deathtrap of Port Rorian. Only, this wasn’t nerves. It was shame, for what they were about to do if the Republic’s admiral in charge over there didn’t do what he needed to do to save his spacers’ lives.
“If you refuse these fair offers,” Lattimore’s voice lowered, genuine sorrow lacing her words, “I must with profound regret, require you to scuttle your ships. Finally, failing the above, I have orders from the Kingdom Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into Hegemony—or their allies’—hands.”
The prime minister allowed silence to fill the comm for long seconds. Letting her words settle into the listening ears. This theater was as much for the spacers of the Kingdom fleet as for the enemy. They had to know that the Republic was being given every possible chance. For this, if the Kingdom’s offer was rebuffed, to be the Republic’s fault. For their own consciences, if nothing else. And, Cutter supposed, for historical record.
“You have one hour to state your intentions.”
Lattimore’s face disappeared, replaced by that of Admiral Rihanna Albright, the flag officer in charge of the expedition out here in the Ishtar System.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Albright spoke, and her voice held none of the regret—false or otherwise—that Lattimore’s had contained. Instead, she spoke with utter clarity and conviction. And even, if Cutter was hearing it right, eagerness.
It wasn’t often an admiral got to unleash the firepower of their entire fleet, especially one as impressive as Albright commanded. “This may be a grisly business we are about to undertake. Rest assured, whatever happens this day, the Republic fleet must not fall into Hegemony hands. And we will do whatever it takes to ensure it does not.”
She paused, her eyes boring through the screen, her head aggressively tilted forward as if she were a fighter going into the ring. “If they move without signaling their surrender, then my intention is to open fire. I do not expect delay or hesitation when...if I give that order. They are having their chance as we speak. Whatever happens this day, it’s on them. Albright, out.”
Tap, tap, tap. Cutter’s fingers beat against the armrest. What would he do if faced with an ultimatum like the Pubbys had just received? Sitting, near defenseless, having fled to a strange foreign base. Low on fuel. Low on friends. Still burning with the need to battle against the occupation. Yet knowing that fighting on would mean his wife and child would be consigned to the Neo’s torture chambers and execution rooms as an example to others not to defy the will of the Hegemony.
Tap, tap, tap. But if those ships switched allegiance or were captured and flew under the Hegemony’s flag...then the cost in lives and ships it would take to destroy them in open space—dare he say it, in a fair fight—would be unbearable.
The clock ticked closer to Lattimore’s deadline. Other than the soft chatter from the comm, a melancholy silence reigned over the bridge. Cutter leaned back, his gaze drifting up from the holotank beneath his command podium, showing blinking icons of the ships around Achilles to the huge screen wrapping around the forward section of the oblong-shaped bridge.
Algon Station swept over the Ishtar Dyson Sphere. Half of the massive, ancient artefact was dark while the other side was lit by the distant binary companion to the star within.
What, Cutter mused, would whoever created that huge thing think of humanity and their conflicts? Even this, a war which was quickly ramping up to be the biggest ever to be fought, must seem petty and insignificant for a race which could build an artifact around an entire star.
No matter—they had long gone, leaving their arid desert and cloying jungle-filled legacy behind.
“I’m showing a spike in Republique’s reactor,” Lieutenant Commander Eve Banning suddenly barked, her taut voice breaking through Cutter’s pondering. “And Pride and...all ships, sir. They’re spooling up their fusion reactors, getting ready to move.”
Damn it. Don’t do this. Do not call our bluff. Cutter leaned forward. He felt a tremor reach his hands. He clenched his fist—he’d been in combat before, but this? This was going to be different. This was going to be murder.
Don’t make us do this.
“They’re retracting moorings, sir. I’m showing Republique is activating her EW shroud.” Banning turned to him, her eyes wide. “I have a signal from Admiral Albright.”
This was it. The order he dreaded was about to be spoken. He gave a terse nod.
Albright appeared on his console, the tendons in her neck protruding. Perhaps even she was feeling the tragedy of what was about to happen.
But, her next words were simple, and to the point. “All ships. Open fire.”
Cutter didn’t delay; he turned to Lieutenant Commander Haynes, his gunnery officer. No matter his personal feelings, duty trumped it all. “Open fire. Heavy Pulse. All turrets, go on.”
“Aye aye,” Haynes snapped back.
Thumps resonated through Achilles’s massive hull as her heavy pulse cannons fired. Explosions blossomed over the station, savage in their violence but pinpoint in their accuracy. They weren’t there to destroy the base and kill the scavengers, traders, and families within. They were simply innocent bystanders to what was happening.
No, they were there to destroy their former allies.
Confined to their slips, still preparing to move and unable to bring the full weight of their weapons to bear, the Republic ships took shot after shot. The Cyclone torpedo bombers surged forward. Pouncing on the ships, their own fearsome torpedoes lancing ahead of them, streaking into the once-friendly vessels.
The massive armored frames of the battleships shuddered under the horrendous punishment. Fire and gasses billowed out of the gaping chasms torn in their flanks.
The first died. Republique simply crumbled. She ablated away under the weight of fire as if she were a melting candle. Debris fell off her in the withering fire. A roiling maelstrom of explosions replaced what was once a mighty battleship.
Then her sister ships followed, one after another.
The barrage lasted an hour. Thousands of pulse rounds riddled the vulnerable ships, reducing them to wrecked carcasses, still trapped in their moorings and slips. The proud warships didn’t even have the chance to offer more than a token resistance of the occasional blue bolt of a pulse shot, easily absorbed by the Kingdom vessels’ dispersion shields.
And then the Republic fleet was no more.
Admiral Albright appeared. Her normally aggressive features were subdued. She shook her head slightly, as if even she were saddened by what she had just seen.
“All ships,” she said, “it’s time to go home.”
There was nothing else to say. No verbal backslapping. No gleeful boast of victory. Nothing.
In perfect formation, the Kingdom fleet banked away from Algon Station, the Cyclones swarming back to the flight deck of their carrier.
The Republic ships had been reduced to shattered ruins lodged in the mooring slips which had become their graves.
And nearly thirteen hundred Republic spacers were dead along with their vessels.





Chapter 2
Admiral Sarven
Vadir System – Thoth Shipyard
Admiral Valin Tor Sarven stood, his hands clasped behind his back, staring through the sloped window at the broken gray crags and pitch-black, shadow-filled craters of the asteroid.
The light of the desolate system’s star washed over the surface and through into the room, the red of its glow reflecting the somberness of his mood. Next to him, his captain, Redora Lasik leaned forward, the look of eagerness on her face a complete contrast to the hidden nervousness of his own feelings.
Anytime now, he’d be here. The architect of their current situation, why good boys and girls were being sent into the meat grinder of a war which should never have been waged. Yet, he admitted to himself, the campaigns that had been fought had been the most successful in history.
Flashes of incoming jump drives rippled in space. A dozen. More. The specks of objects poured out of the dissipating cascades of exotic particles.
Wolf space-supremacy fighters, arrayed in tight pairs, streaked over the dark rocky surface of the asteroid’s surface, so close their engine wash kicked the dust up from the surface, leaving billowing clouds which would take days or longer to settle in the low gravity of the asteroid housing Thoth Shipyard.
The elite fighters were guarding against any last-minute security breaches, even out here in one of the most secretive places in the Hegemony. The Kingdom Aerospace Forces would be desperate for the opportunity to be here, to strike against him. The course of the war would be changed in a heartbeat. Or maybe the reports of his ever-increasing paranoia were true. In which case, the fighters were here as much to act as a show of strength for any itinerant officer with aspirations beyond their station.
Perhaps he was the subject of that message.
Sarven gave a scoff. Maybe he was as paranoid as their guest these days. At his barely subdued outburst, Lasik looked at him quizzically, then gave a shrug as if disregarding her commanding officer’s odd ways.
Something bigger arrived amidst another twinkling cascade of exotic particles. A jump-capable troop transport. It was standard, as far as Sarven could see. Nothing special about it, except for what it contained. For whom it contained.
He’d arrived.
Sarven turned on his heels, hooking a finger into the collar of his tight dress uniform to relieve the pressure of the starched material on his throat.
Best behavior, Valin.
“Come, Redora. It’s time to greet our guest.”
***
General Aria Tor Hest sat in the plush leather chair, her chin resting on her fist as she looked through the window of the jump-transport.
Beyond lay an unremarkable gray potato-shaped asteroid, orbiting far from the primary of this barren star system. Even the surface placements—a multitude of which must surely be tracking them—were invisible to the naked eye, and Hest warranted, all but the most powerful of sensors.
The mass rolled gently, their perspective changing as the transport arced around toward its destination. Around them, the lethal Wolf fighters prowled, keeping a watchful eye for enemies, foreign or domestic.
A moment later, the narrow end of the asteroid became visible. Only instead of more rock, there was a dark hole, stretching deep into inky blackness. Chatter washed across the comm. A circle of lights blazed on, chasing the shadows away. More illumination activated, creating lines running deep into the core of the asteroid and showing the course the transport’s pilot must take.
“A magnificent accomplishment. No?” Even sitting just over the central aisle from Revanch, she could barely hear him. His voice was quiet and weak. It was as if he didn’t quite have the nerve to speak up in a group. Or maybe it was a reflection of who, or more accurately what, the man really was—the head of the dreaded Executors. The not-so-secret police of the Neo movement. Resolute in their hunting of Loggists, dissidents, the genetically impure, and those deemed unworthy of a place in the so-called bright future promised by the Neo Galton Hegemony.
Her skin crawled at his mere presence. The contempt she wanted to show nearly crept onto her face, an expression she quickly subdued and replaced with a tolerant smile. People had disappeared for less. She was getting better at hiding her true feelings, but sometimes, just sometimes, she was tempted to show what she really felt for these people.
She turned to him, looking into his watery eyes. Before she could reply, the man sitting next to the head Executor clasped a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward, his eyes locked with a piercing intensity on what was through the window. “Indeed, it is.” His voice was loud, firm, cutting and confident, a marked contrast to Revanch’s. Unlike anyone else in the Hegemony, he was the one person who truly had nothing to fear from the secret policeman. Revanch’s loyalty was utterly unwavering, the Executor holding a devotion for him bordering on religious fanaticism.
The Prime.
He looked unremarkable. His uniform, the plain working rig of the army. The only adornment separating him from a regular officer was a dark sash with a silver broach of the Black Sun glistening on it and a tasteless soul patch of beard on his chin. “This facility is truly a testament to the ingenuity of the Galton people.”
Hest forced herself not to roll her eyes. One of the things she had found strangest about the Prime, now that she was spending more time with the man, was the fact that his public persona matched his private one. He never dropped his impassioned rhetoric. It wasn’t as if he secretly held different views to those he portrayed to the masses—his opinions and policies were untampered by pragmatism even to his most trusted council.
If she didn’t so abhor what the Neo party stood for, she’d actually appreciate that lack of guile, knowing he was no different behind closed doors as when addressing the public. Say what you would about the racist, probably mad bastard, it was no different. Perhaps that was what the Galton people appreciated. Not the message itself, but the honesty behind it.
The transport swept around into the portal. The strips of lights running along the entrance blurred by, a testament to the sheer size of the base and how deep they were going into the bowels of the asteroid.
Suddenly, the transport emerged into a huge chamber hollowed out in the rocky core. It was lit by red floodlights the same color as the star outside, only in here, it gave the impression of heat. As if the place were a forge.
And in a manner of speaking, it was.
An ominous silhouette lay within the space, yet the transport flew so close to it, not all was distinguishable. A wall of battle steel rolled by, occasionally punctuated by the flash of a portal or window. Then the transport rose, swooping under the huge imposing barrel of a main battery cannon, easily twice the length of the jump-transport itself. The big picture was lost in how close they flew to it, but the hints she was seeing spoke of something truly massive and devastatingly powerful.
Silence washed through the transport as the occupants admired the glimpses of what they were looking at.
They careened around the rear of the ship, past the nozzles of engines the size of office blocks before surging up the ship’s monumental flank. Dozens of smaller weapon emplacements flashed by. Flak cannon. Light pulsars and the fearsomely sized secondary batteries.
Even Hest, as cynical and war-weary as she’d grown after the Asteria campaign, couldn’t help but feel a beat of admiration as she looked at the huge beast. The construction of something such as this really was something to be proud of.
“Magnificent,” the Prime uttered, mirroring her thoughts. “Truly, magnificent.”
***
Sarven watched the transport breach the atmosphere field of the docking bay, leaving a shimmering ripple. It slipped across the congested hanger of the huge base on a humming repulsor field and settled to the metal grid of the flight deck.
He gave the chamber one last check. There was no hiding the fact this was a working facility. The banners proudly showing the Black Sun may have hid the worst of the barnacles of equipment adorning the walls and the cranes hanging down, but the smell of industry and the piles of stores marred the vista for the visiting leader of the Hegemony.
Two thousand and sixty-five men and women filled the chamber, standing at ease, arrayed in squares signifying their positions and departments. The white dress uniforms of the officers at the front, the gray of the enlisted. The green of the army contingent. The suits of the civilian contractors who would be joining them on any maiden voyage.
The whine of the transport’s engines spooled down, leaving the huge space silent.
As if to fill the absence of noise, the Senior Warrant Spacer shouted, “Attention!”
As one, the crew snapped their legs together, their heels stomping the deck.
The door of the transport rotated down, turning into a ramp with the ringing thud of metal striking metal. A silhouette appeared in the hatchway.
Two thousand and sixty-four right fists snapped to the left side of their chest. As one, the crew roared the same two words.
“Hail Prime!”
Except Sarven, standing at the head of the company next to his captain, Redora Lasik.
The Prime prowled down the steps, looking left and right, taking in the ship’s company. His eyes locked onto Sarven’s, boring into them as the admiral stood, his hand locked to his forehead in the salute of the old Imperium.
“Admiral.” The Prime stepped in front of him and cocked his head as his small eyes narrowed. “I find my pleasure at your achievements here rapidly turning to displeasure.”
Sarven held the man’s piercing stare as long as he could bear, then motion caught his eyes from the ramp. The slippery eel Revanch stepped down, taking in the scene. His mouth opened in what looked to be a distressed sigh as he saw Sarven standing, frozen in his quaint salute. The secret policeman shook his head, his expression maudlin as if he regretted and was sad at what he was seeing.
“Apologies, my Prime. I simply sought to honor you with tradition.” Sarven snapped his right fist down, then back up with a clenched fist to beat his chest in the approved Neo Hegemony salute.
The Prime’s stern look changed to one of condescending amusement, then he chuckled. “Misjudged, perhaps. We are in a new era, after all.”
“That we are, my Prime.”
“Speaking of which,” the Prime lowered his voice and leaned close. Sarven fought the urge to rock back on his heels, away from him. “I received your memorandum.”
“Sir,” Sarven responded. Try as he might, he couldn’t meet the Prime’s intense gaze. Instead, he locked his eyes on the man’s nose.
“Perhaps now is not the time to discuss it.” The Prime still didn’t return his salute, leaving Sarven and the ship’s company standing, their hands across their chests. “But, I feel your impassioned pleas deserve an immediate response. I will say my opinion has not changed. The Loggists are a blight on the purity of our race. Their cleansing will continue.”
Sarven fought to stop his teeth baring in a snarl. The Prime and his fucking obsession with the Loggists and genetic purity. How that race should be expunged from the galaxy for some perceived failing of a thousand years ago. It was only by Father Terra’s grace that Revanch had not yet unearthed the fact that Sarven’s grandmother was one. If the Executor had, then it was more likely he would find himself in one of the rumored camps than in his current position as an admiral in the Astral.
“In fact”—the Prime tapped a forefinger to his lips thoughtfully—“there is no need to waste time discussing this further. That is my final word.”
With a casual breeziness, the Prime stepped back and bumped his fist to his chest, releasing the crew from their salute. Sarven lowered his hand to behind his back, taking the at ease position.
“Of course, my Prime.” Sarven managed to somehow keep his voice from a frustrated growl as someone else disembarked the transport. He frowned, seeing who it was.
So, the rumors are true. General Aria Tor Hest was accompanying the Prime.
The Prime had adopted the Hero of Asteria as his ward. Promoting her, when some—most likely Revanch—would have had her shot or worse for her defiance of orders, for pressing the attack on the beleaguered Kingdom forces at Port Rorian when she’d been told expressly not to. A pleasant enough reflection on her, that she’d used her initiative to slam home their advantage, perhaps. Except when Sarven’s friend and predecessor, Admiral Karth, had done the same thing—attacking and destroying the Kingdom carrier, Falcon, and her flotilla, in defiance of orders—he’d found himself damn near cashiered, or worse. There was nothing, Sarven had oft ruminated, like the random-seeming offering of punishment and reward to help encourage indecisiveness.
It was something, at least, that the Hegemony hadn’t quite managed to expunge the old guard. People like Sarven, people like Hest and her commanding officer, Galen. If the Hegemony treated their senior military officers like what was happening in the People’s worlds, then they’d have long since been placed against a wall and shot.
Sarven gave a mental shrug. It was welcome, he supposed, to be meeting another genuinely capable combat commander, rather than a Neo sycophant...as seemed to be the norm these days. And, if rumors were true—in some circles, at least—then she was as displeased with the Hegemony leadership and the war as he was. As were others in senior military positions, as well.
Of course, nothing could be proven. No one was willing to be completely honest. Yet. And the fact she’d been promoted might mean one of two things. Either she’d genuinely bought into the Neo cause, or Revanch was taking—on behalf of the Prime—the view he should keep his friends close and his enemies closer.
Regardless, perhaps a conversation awaited with the general. A gentle test to find out if their views really did align.
“Come, my Prime,” Sarven said, putting the thought to one side for the time being. “Refreshments await. I appreciate your journey here to Thoth has been long.”
Sarven turned, gesturing with his hand down the red carpet between the thousands of men and women forming the ship’s company.
All of which had been laid out for the undisputed tyrant of the Neo Hegemony.
***
The red light of the docks spilled into the sumptuously adorned mess. Canap
But Behemoth was the true vision to be admired.
He squatted aggressively in the long cylinder of the docks, now brightly lit. Everything, from the hammerhead of his prow to the massive cluster of engines, shouted “war machine.” Behind him, a second, equally massive vessel could be seen lodged deeper in the dockyards, this one still in the midst of construction. Behemoth’s soon-to-be-named brother-ship.
Captain Lasik animatedly entertained Revanch, apparently unintimidated by the fact a single wrong word would find her with a noose around her neck. She was young. New. Without the protection of decades of service. Maybe she was counting on the fact she was a card-carrying member of the Neo Party to insulate her from such risks. Not something, Sarven understood, anyone should rely on in these uncertain times.
Or, Sarven supposed, perhaps she was simply an Executor. They were everywhere these days. In fact, he eyed the two of them while straining to keep the suspicion from his gaze. It would be faintly ridiculous if Revanch hadn’t placed one of his minions in a senior position on the Hegemony’s brand-new flagship.
And it didn’t get any more senior than the ship’s captain. Except for him, that was. He was under no illusions, knowing that his service, and his popularity with his spacers, were all that protected him. But more and more trusted officers were being replaced by sycophants. And soon, he’d be alone. And vulnerable. Then? Well, if he hadn’t acted by then, then he would likely be a guest of the very man in this room.
“He’s a...useful man to keep around,” a voice murmured in his ear. Turning, he met the bemused gaze of the faintly smiling Prime. “Carrot and Stick, as they say. He provides a healthy sense of fear, which helps harden the resolve of even our occasionally wavering soldiers.”
Sarven flashed a thin smile in return. “And, my Prime, what is the carrot?”
“Why me, of course,” the Prime said as his smile grew to a wide grin. A grin as comforting as that of a hunting shark. “I provide the inspiration. Instill the pride in our soldiers and citizens. A beacon of hope amid the turgid recession our nation finds itself in.”
“Of course.”
“You are still uncertain of me, aren’t you, Valin?” The Prime let the smile drop from his face, to be replaced by a fanatical earnestness. He held his hand up, as if forestalling any response. “We’re not so different, you and I. Both of us fondly remembering the days of the Imperium, for all its flaws. And now, both of us wishing Galton to attain its rightful place as the capital of an empire which will last for all eternity.”
Maybe, Sarven conceded, but not at a cost of our souls. 
“And we will accomplish that, you and I.” The Prime pressed on as he gestured through the window at the bulk of the warship beyond. “And him.”
“One battleship won’t win a war, my Prime,” Sarven said quietly. “Not even this one.”
“No.” The Prime nodded in agreement. “No, it won’t. But knowing how to apply his magnificent power, that is what will win it. The Kingdom is without elegance. They simply rely on their navy’s power and numbers. That has made them sloppy. It’s made them lazy. You, though? You have the luxury of the most powerful warship in the Reach and the ability to pick your fights.”
“Quantity is a quality of its own,” Sarven said, adding belatedly, “my Prime.”
“Perhaps,” the Prime replied. “And perhaps, as important as the devastation this ship will bring forth, will be the message he carries in his mere existence and the resolve of his crew.”
“His existence will be short, if he is cornered,” Sarven replied. “Most powerful or not.”
The smile on the Prime’s face didn’t change an iota, yet it somehow became more calculating.
“Let us move to other topics,” the Prime said. “More inspirational matters.”
He turned to the room, casting a sidelong glance at Sarven as he did.
“Brave spacers of the Hegemony.” The Prime clapped his hands as he addressed the people gathered in the mess. All around the room, the senior officers and civilian invitees paused, some of them with mouths still full of food, yet daring not to chew further. “You have no doubt been eagerly awaiting your orders. The direction of our nation, of me, on how you are to use this magnificent war machine to further the Hegemony and the Neo cause.”
The Prime gestured through the window. “You will take part in Operation River. You will strangle the resistance from the Kingdom. Defeating their convoys. And break their will to fight.”
Looking around the room, his eyes settled on Lasik and he gave a smile, one that seemed genuine. “I am told that some of you are admirably brave. And wish to test our wonderful new machines against the best the Kingdom has to offer. That day may yet come, when this ship, joined by his brothers, will dominate the galaxy. But for now, your task and that of your consort, the heavy cruiser HAS Cerberus, is just as important.”
Theatrically, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a flexi-pad, and unrolled it. He cleared his throat, making it obvious he was going to read what was on the pad word for word. “You are to voyage into the Reach and position yourself in the trade corridor between the Federation and the Kingdom. The objective of the Behemoth is not to defeat enemies of equal strength, but to tie them down in a delaying action while preserving his combat capacity as much as possible, so as to allow Cerberus to get at the merchant ships in the convoy.” The Prime glanced up, apparently making sure he still had everyone’s attention. Of course he did. “The primary target in this operation is the enemy's merchant shipping; enemy warships will be engaged only when that objective makes it necessary and it can be done without excessive risk. Admiral?”
“My Prime?” Sarven lifted his chin, looking at the ruler of his nation.
“Hunt down the enemy’s shipping. Strangle the Kingdom into submission. Then bring my ship, and crew, home victorious.”





Chapter 3
Captain Cutter
Kanth System – KSS Cronus
Captain Cutter tugged his starched black dress uniform taut as he stepped through the hatch into Cronus’s flag mess.
He gave a low whistle as he took the ostentatious chamber in in all of its glory. In the center, a large table dominated the space, set for a sumptuous meal. Around the edges, decorations—holos and watercolors depicting scenes of battles throughout history—were artfully arranged around memorabilia from two decades of cruising the known galaxy. Cronus was as much a projection of diplomatic power as she was a warship. When the Kingdom wanted to show its might, Cronus was the ship which was sent. The prime minister, even the king, had hosted everyone from the President of the Federation to the Chairwoman of the People, and the leader of every significant power between within these gloriously appointed bulkheads.
“Welcome aboard Cronus, Hal.” Admiral Rihanna Albright stood by the entrance greeting her guests, the senior officers of her task force, as they entered.
“A pleasure, ma’am.” Cutter snapped off a crisp salute to her. The woman, as ever, was impeccably turned out. The twinkling board of medals adorning her breast and golden braiding draped over her shoulder would turn a Sphere tin-pot warlord dictator green with envy.
His eyes drifted to the chamber itself.
“I take it this is your first-time aboard Cronus, Hal?” She’d obviously caught his admiring gaze. The fleet was massive and wide ranging these days, stretched across much of known space. To even set eyes on the flagship noteworthy, let alone accompany her into battle. And Achilles, as fine a ship as she was, was stark, utilitarian, and of a different, more modern, age. A total contrast to the cultured elegance he was seeing now.
“Yes, ma’am.” Cutter nodded in appreciation. “She is a beautiful ship.”
“It shows. And yes. Yes, she is. Some might say the symbol of a more civilized time when her mere presence would quell any opponent.” Albright gave a condescending smile as she gestured to a steward. He approached, proffering a tray of flutes to Cutter. “Orillion Champaign. Don’t drink it too quickly. Supplies will run low soon.”
Taking a flute, he fought the urge to roll his eyes at the pompous admiral. The more civilized times she referred to were when the Kingdom brooked no competition. And this ship was designed, from the keel up, to show off the superiority of His Majesty’s Navy. Cutter held his flute up in a cheers, knowing what she wanted to hear, “Here’s to the return to such times.”
“To such times.” Albright clinked her glass to his. He took a sip of the crisp, fizzing wine. Delicious. There was no doubting Orillions knew how to produce it. Anything else was a dim facsimile. “Come, we’re being antisocial.”
She gestured around the room, indicating the other senior officers of the task force. “This is, after all, a time of celebration for a successful operation.”
“That it is,” a voice rumbled. Cutter couldn’t help but give a smile at hearing the aggressive, belligerent tones.
“Admiral Roe, how goes it, sir?” He turned to face the man. Admiral Roe’s left eye still hadn’t replaced with a cybernetic yet following his ship, Sabre, taking a hit during Operation Replevin, the recovery of the expeditionary force from Asteria. Instead, he sported a dashing black patch over it. It was an affectation which served to reinforce the admiral
“You know, Hal.” Roe grinned. “Trying to stay out of trouble.”
“Unsuccessfully, I might add.” Albright’s attempt at a light tone didn’t quite hide her distaste of the bullish man. Roe was a difficult man to actively dislike—his innate charm won people over—but there was no doubt he rubbed the more dogmatic of the senior naval officers the wrong way. And that included Admiral Rihanna Albright, who was as much a traditionalist as they came. She gestured at the seats. “Please, everyone. Take your places.”
Cutter stood behind his chair, between Captain Arthur Phelps, Captain of Cronus, and Captain Delia Sherrington of the battleship Ajax.
“Ladies, gentlemen.” Albright moved to stand at the head of the table. “We have completed a grim business in the Ishtar System. The destruction of the Republic fleet was a terrible, but necessary, action. There is no doubt that had those vessels fallen under Hegemony control, then this war would be infinitely harder for us.”
Cutter stood with the others, trying to keep his own look of distaste from his face. He somehow doubted history would remember the task force’s actions with any acclaim. But the logic was sound. If the Hegemony had seized the four modern Republican battleships and fielded them...well, it still wouldn’t have parity with the Kingdom Navy, but it would have gone a long way toward it. Especially with the Hegemony’s unaccounted for production suggesting they were building their own capital ships somewhere.
“So, therefore”—Albright’s gaze washed over the room, as if daring them to think otherwise—“we must view this week’s events through the lens of what they were. A great victory.”
The looks on his colleagues faces were as sour as his own must have been. A great victory, in most people’s books, was not smashing defenseless ships into clouds of debris in a backwater port at the arse end of the galaxy.
Roe looked as if he were about to say as much, but even he was wise enough to keep his mouth closed. Albright may have tolerated him, especially since his actions over Rorian had caused his star to rise. But that would only go so far.
Algon Station had been a strategic victory. That was the party line. And the one they must all stick to, even when the history books might damn them for what they’d done.
There was no doubt the Kingdom Navy needed a victory. And sorely. With the retreat—sorry, withdrawal—at Port Rorian, and the later loss of the battleship, King’s Challenge, public morale had been hit hard. The reality of her destruction, Cutter admitted, was something else. It removed the ancient ship from the roster. Helping to “streamline” the fleet, and undoubtedly for those in the corridors of power, gave weight to the argument for new capital ship construction. More crucially was the loss of the modern carrier, Falcon, and her escorts a few weeks ago in a savage battle. Something which the Navy was keeping under wraps as much as possible before what was left of morale completely evaporated.
“Please be seated.” The steward drew back Albright’s chair and she settled into it, followed a moment later by everyone else.
A wash of gentle conversation began throughout the room as the stewards busied themselves laying out what appeared to be a thick root vegetable soup and crusty bread which looked, and smelt, as if it had just been baked. The flagship knew how to put on a spread, that was for sure.
“How is your work up going, Hal?” Sherrington asked, dipping a spoon into her bowl.
He returned a rueful smile at her. Achilles — hell the whole line of Vengeance-class battleships — had been fresh out of their shipyards when the Hegemony had swept into the Republic. It was no secret among the fleet that Achilles had suffered more than most trying to get her turrets up to full capability. Still, the “testing” they’d just given them at Ishtar showed the power couplings were taking the load now. “We’re getting there, Delia. How’s Ajax looking?”
“Spick and span,” Sherrington said with a wink.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Cutter smiled back at her. The two of them had always been on the competitive side. From officer school at Hyperion to leapfrogging each other up the ranks. And now, they’d both peaked at roughly the same time, in command of vessels nominally the equal of each other.
“It’s a shitty business, Hal,” Sherrington’s voice lowered. “But I’d rather have tested them under combat conditions here than against some Hegemony warship.”
“Yeah,” Cutter murmured, his briefly bright mood taking a down turn. That was one way to look at it, for sure.
“They’ll sue for peace. Sooner, rather than later.” Cutter’s ears tuned in to Albright presiding at the head of the table. “They know they cannot maintain their momentum.”
“With all due respect, ma’am,” Roe retorted in a tone which suggested that the respect he felt due was not an incredible amount. “You didn’t see the tenacious bastards at Asteria. They gave us a damn good fight there.”
“And maybe if the army hadn’t run away, then we wouldn’t be locked in this stalemate,” Arthur Phelps spoke. His words sent a wave of silence through the room. Cutter shifted uncomfortably in his seat along with the others around the table. A veiled criticism was one thing. But questioning the honor of the army? That was just plain unseemly.
“I’m just saying what everyone—”
“That’s enough, Arthur.” Albright’s tone didn’t quite match her words as she interrupted her captain. She agreed; she was making that much known for damn sure. She just had a veneer of politeness and diplomacy to her.
Cutter shook his head. They hadn’t been there, these armchair officers. They hadn’t flown their ships into the maelstrom over Port Rorian. Seen the advancing hordes of mechs and soldiers. The fighters tearing by. The stealths pouncing on vulnerable ships. Lost Earth only knew how many corpses still floated in that system.
“The Hegemony may have control of Republic space. But consolidating their position is quite another thing,” Albright continued. “It is my belief they have overreached. The whole edifice will crumble. Their successes have been a mix of luck and aggression. That is not sustainable at a strategic level.”
“That luck and aggression cost us King’s Challenge and Falcon,” Roe said with a shrug. “Whatever works, is their view.”
“A dishonorable attack on the Challenge,” Phelps snapped between dabbing his mouth with a napkin. “Sneaking in one of their damnable stealths and destroying a ship at mooring.”
“You mean something like what we just did?” Sherrington’s voice lacked a confrontational tone. She was just stating facts. The recent loss of the battleship King’s Challenge while in dock had sent shockwaves through the fleet. Nearly as much as what had happened in Rorian. A single stealth threading its way through sensor arrays and patrols, then putting a spread of torpedoes into the vulnerable ship and killing 833 men and women.
“We didn’t sneak in,” Phelps retorted, before offering what he probably thought was a conciliatory smile. “Anyway, at least it was that old antique and not one of your Vengeances.”
“I’m sure that’s of paramount reassurance to the families of those spacers,” Sherrington said coldly before taking another spoonful of steaming soup.
“Regardless.” Albright held her hand up, ceasing the verbal sparring. “Despite their successes, mark my words, before too long this war will turn into a matter of mopping up the sad remnants of their overreaching forces.”
“Easy as pie,” Roe said sarcastically.
“It won’t be easy.” Albright looked intently at the rear admiral. “But it will be simple.”
Maybe, Cutter thought, after you’ve fought the damn Neos, you’ll change your opinion on that one.





Chapter 4
Spacer 1st Class Gaddish
Vadir System – HAS Behemoth
Moving berths was something normally done under a cloud. The result of a fight, a petty falling out, or an inability to take care of personal hygiene and an excuse found to move the offensive person. For Spacer First Class Rom Gaddish, though, it was just down to the simple allergies of his bunkmates.
The berth he was being moved to was, Rom Gaddish thought, more spacious than most. He’d give it that. Still, twelve people would be sharing a space not much bigger than the back of an average hover-truck. The central gangway divided two banks of six bunks and the associated brushed-metal lockers and recessed storage compartments.
It was, basically, a very tight fit.
“Who the hell are you, and what on Terra is that?” A man, thickset and all muscles—barely contained within his stained vest—hopped off his bunk, landing on the metal deck with a thud. Gaddish noticed his name emblazoned on his barrel chest: Loctz.
Gaddish took a deep breath. This was always the nervous part of being allocated a new space. Meeting the people whom he’d be living with for the foreseeable future. Finding out whether they’d get on, or be reduced to bickering or fistfights. Even when it came to Gaddish being the designated ward of the...creature, he got no particular say in just where he was going to end up. He was being sent here just because it was one of the few berths left on the ship with a free bunk.
But, as much as he begrudged being forced to move, in the few short days he’d been caring for the angry little bastard hidden inside the carry case in his hands, it had grown on him more than he’d ever thought possible.
He set the case down gently as the others looked at it quizzically.
“So, come on,” Loctz rumbled as he squinted at the carrier. “Who are you?”
Gaddish snapped to some semblance of attention and beat his fist to his breast, something which was greeted with condescending sneers. He let his hand drop. “I’m Spacer First Class Rom Gaddish, Electrics Division.”
“A sparky.” Loctz nodded. His vest was covered in the grease and detritus of someone who spent far too much time crawling through service ducts in one of the more mechanically orientated sections.
“And this”—Gaddish knelt and flipped open the small hatch situated on the front of the case—“is a cat.”
A small furry face looked out of the opening cautiously with wide eyes before taking a quizzical sniff.
“Okay...” The man recoiled with an awed expression on his face. He forced civility into his voice. “You mean you’re the...?”
“Yeah, I’m the ward. The cap’n said so,” Gaddish offered. He plucked the tiny black and white kitten out of the carrier and wrapped it in his arms. The others in the berth clustered around in the tight space. He looked around the cabin for somewhere to place the cat down. He settled on the single made-up bunk. The small animal bounced lightly on the sheets. It looked around uncertainly at the faces clustered around it, standing on all fours. “Apparently, every new ship should have one.”
“Apparently so. It is good luck. So, you a good mouser, eh?” Loctz leaned over the cat, his expression inquisitive. The animal recoiled slightly, giving a soft hiss, causing the big man to give a rumbling chuckle. “Shit. Is angry but cute.”
The others in the berth gathered around, striving to look at the cat with expressions ranging from distaste to smiles. Hesitantly, the black kitten relaxed then curiously sniffed at Loctz’s reaching fingers.
“Anyone got any milk?” Loctz turned to face the others, clapping his hands. Clearly, this was the man in charge of this berth. “Come on. Milk. Now.”
Hastily, one of the ratings opened a lockbox with “coffee supplies” scrawled on it and pulled out a bottle of insta-milk. He poured it onto an abandoned plate, laying it on the bunk. The cat nudged his head forward toward the plate and sniffed uncertainly.
“I’m not sure insta-milk—” Gaddish began. He was positive that was in the notes he’d been provided.
“Bah,” Loctz barked. “It be fine. So, what’s his name?”
“He...he hasn’t got one yet.”
“That is unacceptable. Completely, totally unacceptable.” Loctz cast his eyes into the corner of the room, as if contemplating deeply. “We’re going to win. He needs a name which shows that. Wait, you sure he’s a he?”
“He’s a he,” Gaddish confirmed. He gave an inward wince at his very firm orders to take the poor thing down to the sick bay at six months old. The last thing anyone wanted was for the thing to start spraying everywhere and making the place stink.
“Okay, good. Good.” Loctz nodded sagely. “Winning Will?”
“That’s awful,” Gaddish said, stroking along the lapping cat’s back. He felt the rumble of a purr beneath his fingers.
“Bob Behemoth?”
“Even worse,” a voice called out.
“Triumphant Tim?”
“Errr...” One rating frowned, his disapproval evident, yet the enthusiasm for the vital project of naming the ship’s good luck symbol clearly growing on his berthmates.
“I know,” Loctz said, a sage tilt to his face, as if he’d come to a firm conclusion. “Victorious Vince.”
Gaddish looked around the cabin at the faintly approving tips of the other spacers’ heads. The decision had been taken out his hands, clearly, and Victorious Vince was the favorite. He still didn’t like it, though. Victory was the name of the bastard Kingdom’s main starbase, a fact lost on these people. No, it couldn’t be that. But it could be...
“How about In-Vince-ible?”
“I like it!” Loctz bellowed, slapping Gaddish on the back so hard he was driven forward a step, making the decision for the crew. The whole crew. Not just those in the room. “In-Vince-ible it is.”
The kitten looked up from the saucer imperiously and gave a short yowl before burying his face back in the milk.
Gaddish gave a smile. It looked like the name had everyone’s approval.
“You.” Loctz waved a finger in front of a scrawny looking spacer. “You work in the machine shop. You make a collar. Now!”
The boy swallowed and nodded before hurrying out the room. Loctz might have been gentle seeming to kittens, but it was clear he ruled the berth with an iron fist.
“Good In-Vince-ible.” Loctz knelt down next to the bunk and fussed the kitten roughly on his head. “You’ll help us win this war, no?”
Gaddish took a deep breath. If he’d known it was this easy to win over new berthmates, he’d have always bought a kitten with him to new billets.
***
With a shudder, the huge mooring arms released Behemoth. They retracted, folding back into themselves, leaving the huge battleship floating free within the hellishly lit dock.
Captain Lasik stood, her hands clasped behind her back, her vision washing across the huge bridge before turning to face Admiral Sarven. “Sir, would you like the honor?”
“An honor, indeed, Captain,” Sarven said from where he stood on his command podium. The bridge was set out in the traditional fashion. Below him, officers and enlisted bustled. To the front, a huge screen was set to show the view from the bow. The huge tactical holo-display inset in a pit in the center of the room provided an impressive 3D representation of space around Behemoth. All around the edges were the gunners, systems techs, helm, and others required to keep the vast ship functioning. All were under his ultimate command, but he was a step above such detail and rightly so. To give orders, he had to go through Captain Lasik.
That was the proper way to do things.
And sadly so, he thought at times. The simple joy of commanding a ship in space were some of his happiest memories. “He is your vessel, Captain. Please, take him out.”
“Very well. Helm,” Lasik barked. “Ahead, one quarter station thrusters. Steady as he goes.”
With the faintest of pressures, quickly dissipated by the inertial dampeners, the huge ship pushed forward, accelerating toward freedom from the restrictive confines of the base.
The star-filled puddle which formed the opening of Thoth Shipyard drifted serenely toward the forward-facing screen. Then, in a moment, they were through.
The huge battleship soared out into space, free for the first time since his space trials. Ahead of him lay Cerberus. The sleek, deadly heavy cruiser was a big ship in her own right, yet even she was dwarfed by the Behemoth’s massive space-frame.
“Captain Tillman requests permission to join formation,” the comms officer called.
Which was also proper, Sarven noted. The fact Behemoth was leaving port meant the situation was more the other way around, with Behemoth forming on Cerberus. But then, the battleship was the flagship. He’d provide the datum for this force.
“Permission granted,” Sarven replied. “Tell them to adopt transit formation Alpha.”
On the holo-display, the two powerful vessels crept closer together, Cerberus slotting in before the flagship, the vessel’s powerful engines glowing brightly in the forward view.
Soon, it would be time to undertake the long voyage into the Reach, and complete the Prime’s goal. To hunt down the Hegemony’s enemies in that dark and barren wasteland of lifeless worlds and dull stars.
And to strangle the Kingdom of the supplies it so desperately needed.





Chapter 5
Viper Squadron
Vadir System
The long-range recon Tempest fell unpowered through the widely scattered asteroid belt of the lifeless Vadir System. The hazy red glow of the star washed through Rick’s canopy, subconsciously making even the cool confines of the cockpit feel like a too-warm sauna.
Flight Lieutenant Jason “Rick” Richard’s relationship with recon missions was, by his own admission, complex. It was good to be away from people. Away from the bustle of Starbase Victory, a station now a hive of activity since a war footing had descended. The jostle and banter of the crew rooms, once welcome to him, had become much less so over the past few weeks and months.
Why that that? A few reasons, he supposed. He had rank now. Before, as a flying officer, he was just one of the guys. A simple pilot. His only responsibility had been to take care of himself and his wingmates. Now, as someone who actually had people to look after, people to command, people who looked up to him, life became ironically immeasurably lonelier.
And with Viper Squadron having taken such heavy losses in the battle over Port Rorian, he didn’t even have the recourse of old friends to retreat to. To share a beer with in the mess. When the intensive flying schedule allowed, that was.
So instead, Viper Squadron’s ace pilot, the Reaper of Rorian, the Wolf Hunter—and any one of the other ridiculous names his colleagues had labeled him with—took solace in crewing the lion’s share of his squadron’s assigned recon missions. Away from the pale imitations who’d replaced the real Viper Squadron.
He couldn’t help but give a low, bitter chuckle. The young buck pilots, with their desperate need for heroes in this vicious war...Lost Earth, even his own damn brass wanted someone to pin medals on. He knew the reality. People died, spacers got voided, pilots got shot down. His former CO, Squadron Leader Phil Wainwright, was dead, his fighter disintegrated into chunks of debris over Port Rorian. Sienna Quinn, last seen plunging to the war-torn surface of Asteria, with a flock of Hegemony fighters pursuing her. Soldiers like the young private who’d given his life for Rick’s. Unbidden, their last moments flashed in his mind. A twinge of pain jolted him, as if he’d been electrocuted.
So many gone. Gone and never coming back.
He shook his head, shedding the memory and bottling up the hurt.
And so he was out here, far from home, on a recon mission. His brief had been to keep an eye out for the intel-driven rumors of some Hegemony shipyard in this red-lit desolate system. And that was fine by him. He didn’t have to put on a smart-arse hotshot pilot demeanor when flying solo. He could just be himself.
Rick gave a deep sigh of contentment, or perhaps resignation, as he drifted through the system in the Tempest.
Besides, the kids coming through on the accelerated flight school programs weren’t ready for this kind of thing. To be far out beyond the lines, seeing what they could see. Hoping for some piece of intel which might shape the war. They were too eager to seek their glory in the dogfights which raged every day over New Avalon. They didn’t have the patience for this.
A low warble cut through his lonely introspection. His passive sensors had detected something. Glancing down at his console, he scanned through the data scrolling across it.
Interesting.
The panel showed a composite of thermal readings, visual, EM capture, and anomalous movement against the stellar backdrop.
It was all weak. But it showed that there could be something out there. And not too far off his course as he plunged through the system.
In other words, near where intel thought the Hegemony shipyard was.
He stared at the readouts. Was it enough to fire up his active sensors and risk being spotted here? In of itself, the information suggested no. Whatever it was, it was artificial. But it could just be a private ship out here. Maybe it was a smuggler. Even an unregistered settlement barnacled onto an asteroid or comet arcing through the system unpowered. There were thousands of them in the systems bordering the Arcadian Sector. Even some out in the Reach itself.
But his gut told him it was more. Sometimes, a compromise was the way forward.
With the flick of switches, he powered up the Tempest’s four engines and calculated a course. On his HUD, a digital ladder extended ahead, showing the trajectory he would follow.
Casting aside a final doubt, he throttled up, feeling the pressure mount on his chest before the inertial compensators dampened it. His trajectory ladder nudged onto a course which would take him near the bogey before he cut the engines again.
For the next two hours, his Tempest arced around toward the contact cutting out of the widely spaced asteroids of the belt. Whatever it was, it was roughly on a vector toward the Karnov Boundary headed out toward the Reach. The mostly uninhabited, and uninhabitable, expanse of stars which filled the hundreds of light years between the war-torn Arcadian Sector and the distant Federation.
And every minute, his suspicions grew. Yeah, this may not be the shipyard itself, but they served a purpose, and that pretty much was by definition to produce, or refit, ships.
Was the Hegemony sending something out into the Reach?
What are you?
A stealth? The damn things had been plaguing the shipping the Federation had been sending down the Corridor in support of the Kingdom’s war effort.
A stealth, off-guard, was vulnerable. And easy prey for even a lone Tempest. If the fighter was armed, that was. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. He didn’t even have a peashooter to fire at it in this recon variant he was flying.
Instead, his “Recpest” had been kitted out with sensors and a very expensive long-range double-jump drive. The best Rick would be able to do, would be to call the stealth a nasty name as it sailed by.
C’est la vie. Intelligence won wars, apparently, and that was what he was here to gather. Maybe the geeks back home would extract some useful data out of his sweep.
The blinking light of the bogey crept along the two intersecting vector lines, that of the contact, and his own Tempest creeping closer.
The warble came again. As he watched, the light split into two distinct contacts. One running slightly ahead of the other.
Interesting. There wasn’t just a single object out here. There were two.
Stealths operated in packs, but that was a misnomer. They didn’t hunt in a swarm, or usually operate anywhere physically near each other. They just coordinated to support each other, normally one flushing a target to another group. Or even some giving escorts the runaround while others took out a convoy. These two contacts were operating together in formation.
But then perhaps this was just the SOP for them exiting the system? Leaving together. He could see that would make sense. It would reduce the window of opportunity for a pack to be observed, even though it would increase the chances it would be seen. A compromise of the type which was so prevalent in war.
Maybe that intel would be valuable. After all, if they were to catch a pack in that condition, even a single fighter could devastate it.
Rick clucked his tongue. He’d be closing to visual range soon. And then he could get some answers.
He reached up and tapped his cockpit canopy. A window opened, focusing in on the distant targets.
Two tiny specks resolved themselves, cruising close together. Even from here, their lines didn’t look to be the sleek dark shapes of stealths. They were far blockier, and bulky seeming, in the style of Hegemony Astral warships.
Steadily, the shapes grew. And carried on growing as his Tempest fell toward them.
Lost Earth, they were big. He squinted at his HUD. He checked his distance, and ran a quick calculation on his computer, factoring in for the visual arc. It may have been back of nicostick packet rough working, but it was good enough for right now.
The answer came quickly.
Then he redid the calculation. It had to be wrong.
It came out the same. The bigger contract was over fifteen hundred meters long. And, even from here, he could see it bristled with weapons.
He was looking at a battleship, and not one of those half-sized excuses for capital ships they’d been allowed by the Treaty of Charis. This was an Earth-damned, genuine Hegemony battleship big enough to give even the Kingdom’s largest a run for its money.
And it was headed into the Reach. Finding it there would be a tactical nightmare. Until it pounced on its target.
And whatever that target was, it was going to be savaged.
Intel has to know about this.
Normally, he would have let himself fall further, passing by the ships. Only engaging his jump drive when he was well beyond sensor range of being detected. But that would take hours, possibly a day or longer.
And that would give the fleet that much less time to respond.
His course of action was clear. Besides, it was still a low chance of being detected, especially as those ships were running quiet, without their active sensors probing space around them. He came to a decision.
He had to get back now.
With the flick of switches, Rick powered up his jump drive, and in a burst of exotic particles, disappeared from real space and headed home.





Chapter 6
Admiral Darrow
New Avalon – Admiralty House
The relentless drumming of heavy rain on the hovercar’s roof didn’t quite wash out the thunder of the fighters circling watchfully over the pre-dawn overcast towers and streets of Larnos City.
The First Space Lord, Admiral Jonathan Darrow, sat in the back seat, his eyes scanning over his glowing tablet, taking in a summary of the past evening’s events. The news was depressingly similar to previous days. To previous weeks, in fact. More aerospace raids by ever-swarming fighters and bombers. More damage. More deaths. And more stalemate.
The Hegemony’s attacks were repetitive. Designed as much to wear down morale as to damage and destroy infrastructure and defense. Last night, a weapons factory had been hit. Production of army pulse repeaters had been cut by ten percent in a single fell swoop. But in exchange, they’d lost four Hydra bombers. And likely, some of those who had limped home were going to be good for nothing beyond spare parts due to battle damage.
But then, the Kingdom’s own assaults across the Regis Gap into former Orillion Republic space had destroyed a Hegemony mech factory. Something which even now must be causing tantrums in the halls of power on Galton.
He flicked to the next page of the morning briefing summary.
Interesting.
A confidential report had come in from the Kingdom Aerospace Forces. As he read down the page, he felt his breath catch.
This could be bad news. Very bad news.
He leaned his head back against the headrest, contemplating what he’d just read as the car slid down the gray and wet streets of Larnos, headed toward the imposing turrets of the Admiralty House in the distance.
***
The agenda of the daily senior staff meeting was fixed and ordered for a very good reason, so that nothing was missed. So that everything they needed to cover was covered, and no valuable piece of news wasn’t shared with whoever needed to know.
Today’s though...it was going to be different. The news the KAF had sent through could change everything. It had to be the priority without distraction.
“Please be seated,” Darrow said without preamble as he swept into the room and settled into his seat at the head of the table. With the scraping of chairs, the admirals, officers and senior civil servants sat with him. “We have a lot to cover today, but we’re going to be opening with something off agenda. Captain Martinez?”
“Sir.” Raoul Martinez, the admiralty’s intelligence liaison, frowned as he pressed a forefinger to his lips, collecting his thoughts for a moment. “Our KAF colleagues have been conducting recon flights into Hegemony space over the past few months, seeking targets of opportunity and also trying to fill some of the intelligence gaps we have.”
With a tap on his tablet, a holo of a barren star system appeared, hovering over the table like an orrery. “This is Vadir, situated on the core-ward edge of the Arcadian Sector within the Hegemony’s original territory, but bordering the Reach. It’s not very much to look at in and of itself. A K-type star with no habitable planets, although holding somewhat decent mineral and exotic wealth. From surveys, it was deemed useless by most major powers; there are other, more easily exploitable locations. Or so we thought.”
A window opened on the display. Lines of texts appeared: a log of sightings of Hegemony shipping. “What is interesting about the place, however, is the apparent Hegemony Astral activity. Previous missions have noted a quantity of shipping, disproportionate to what we know to be there.”
“Suggesting,” Admiral Mariana Hanson, head of Naval Logistics, piped up, “that the Hegemony have something significant in-system.”
“That was our thinking.” Martinez nodded. “And why we submitted a recon tasking to the KAF. So they sent in their assets to take a closer look and figure out what they’re doing out there.”
“So, what is it?” Hanson asked, the glow of the spiraling hologrammatic worlds in the barren system reflecting on her face. “A base? A staging area? What? Don’t keep us in suspense here.”
“Our original thought was perhaps a stealth base,” Martinez replied. “Something low key which could service their sorties into the Reach, which would in turn be used to disrupt our shipping.”
“Except, now we don’t think that anymore?”
“No. The base itself, if there is indeed one out there, remains elusive.” Martinez tapped on his tablet, cueing up the next stage of his briefing. “What we have sighted, however, are these.”
The slowly dancing orrery of the system disappeared, replaced by the grainy image of two ships. Even from the distance at which the image had been taken, their menacing lines were obvious. Blocky, but somehow sleek. And massive. The ships exuded a palpable sense of power.
“Well...they don’t look good,” Hanson understated. Massively. Darrow couldn’t help but feel a tug of amusement at the woman’s dry tones.
Cerberus. A Hegemony heavy cruiser. We caught wind of her construction prior to the start of the war.”
“Which,” Captain Martinez cut in, “while not strictly in contravention to the Treaty of Charis, was certainly pushing it to its limits. The Galts were allowed limited construction of warships to protect their interests.”
“And the other?” Colonel Foster, a staff officer who served as the liaison with the Kingdom Marines, asked.
“We don’t know. Not for sure. But we think it is massing in at battleship-size,” Martinez said. “Previous allowed Hegemony capital ship construction has been limited, and they’ve stuck to what they’ve been allowed by the Treaty of Charis there as well. Two pocket battleships, of limited cannon size and low speed. In other words, granted as deterrence rather than for war-fighting ability.”
“That,” Hanson’s voice was sharp as she pointed at the display, “is not a pocket battleship.”
“Indeed it is not,” Martinez agreed. “We’ve been hearing rumors that the Hegemony were having a shot at their own super-heavy unit construction. It fits in with some wilder theories from my intelligence staff who have heard the name Behemoth come up a few times on intercepts. Now we think this could be that ship. And she’s headed into the Reach.”
“A true capital ship?” Hanson mused. “Headed into the Reach? It can only have one objective there.”
“Commerce raiding,” Darrow completed her thought. With the tap of his console, the image swept out, encompassing a vast tract of space. The Reach. Cutting through the center, stretching between the Federation and the Kingdom was a highlighted line. The Corridor. “We are relying on our convoy links to the Federation. Those links are being sorely tested, as is, by the presence of Hegemony stealths operating in the Corridor. The presence of a capital ship in theater could...would break them.”
“That surely makes His Majesty’s Navy’s objective quite simple,” Hanson said pointedly, as she leaned back. As if the debate was done. And in a manner of speaking, it was. They only had one choice before them. “You need to kill her, before she breaks my supply lines.”
“Him,” Martinez said.
“What?” Hanson raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Him. Galt naming conventions for capital ships are male in gender,” Martinez clarified, cocking his head. “Just as a point of interest.”
“He, she, it. I don’t give a shit,” Hanson retorted. “I want that thing dead before it screws with my shipping.”
“Simple to say.” Martinez frowned. “But a battleship and its consort would be a tough nut to crack with anything less than another capital ship.”
Darrow held up a hand. It was time to regain control of the meeting from Hanson. As excellent a logistics controller as she was, she wasn’t a combat commander. “What options do we have?”
“A fortuitous one.” Martinez focused the display back in. Hugging the edge of the Arcadian Sector, midway between the four systems which made up the Kingdom and the mysterious artifact called the Sphere nestled in the Ishtar system, a set of blue lights of Kingdom flotillas pulsed rhythmically. “Admiral Albright’s Operation Trebuchet has been a success. While the fleet has partially disbanded, returning to their normal operations, enough of it is still together to provide a viable, and powerful, force.”
“What do they have left together?” Darrow asked.
“Cronus and Achilles are currently leading a flotilla of two light cruisers and four destroyers,” Martinez replied. “Together, they would have Behemoth and Cerberus outnumbered and outgunned.”
Darrow traced his fingers along the table, regarding the map. Yes, that task force did look as if it had the stones to be able to take on a single battleship and a heavy cruiser. But still, it was cutting it rather too fine for his liking. If they engaged, with the best will in the world, there would be damage. He focused on another group of ships diverging off the flagship’s course. A battleship and a carrier, leading another group of lighter warships. “How soon until Ajax and Corvus could re-join Cronus?”
“If Group Cronus came to a halt, then Group Ajax would re-join in two days.” Martinez frowned. “Then they could push up together. But every moment’s delay widens the search area which Behemoth could be in. I don’t think we can afford to wait.”
Darrow leaned forward and licked his lips. A battlecruiser, the flagship of the Kingdom fleet, no less, and one of the most modern battleships they had, versus a single enemy ship of the line and a cruiser, albeit a heavy one. The odds were surely good, even without Group Ajax.
“Very well, we will redirect Cronus and her group,” Darrow said, inflecting his voice with more resolve than he felt. “Signal Ajax and all other available capital ships to make best speed to assist in the hunt as well. In an ideal world, they’d join up on reaching the area of operation. But I don’t want to delay Admiral Albright in prosecuting the attack at her earliest opportunity. I want Behemoth destroyed.”
Darrow stood, signaling the meeting was over. “And preferably before she can interfere with our supply lines. I’ll give Rihanna the good news and tell her she’s not coming home yet.”





Chapter 7
Captain Cutter
Kanth System – KSS Achilles
Despite, or perhaps even because of, the dubious nature of their mission out to Ishtar, the bustle of the bridge showed the crew was at least happy to be headed home.
“Code yellow flash-traffic from Task Force Actual,” Lieutenant Commander Banning’s voice called across the chatter.
Cutter flicked his eyes across to his executive officer, Hannah Ashford, who lowered her tablet. Code yellow meant something big was afoot, albeit whatever it was, it wasn’t imminently going to ruin their day. “Send it through, Commander.”
Rear Admiral Albright appeared on his console. Her lips were twisted into the makings of a shark’s grin. Whatever was going on, the woman had scented blood. More blood, that was. “Hal, we have new orders.”
“What, no foreplay?” Ashford murmured cuttingly, at least taking the time to ensure the mic was muted.
“Hannah!” Cutter warned. What she could get away with on his bridge was a hell of a lot different than what the vast majority of the Kingdom Navy would think was even remotely close to acceptable. Still, there was a time and a place for that. He liked to have his executive officer challenge his thinking, asking the questions he hadn’t even thought to pose. For the old guard in the Navy, that was very much not the case. That sort of trait brought their authority into question. An executive officer was merely there to execute their commanding officer’s orders.
“Admiralty House reports a Hegemony heavy unit, possibly a battleship, along with an escort entering the Reach,” Albright said. Lost Earth, she didn’t have to sound so damn happy about it. “We’ve been tasked with a hunt and kill mission on him.”
“A Neo heavy?” Ashford asked, the same confusion in her tone that Cutter felt. The two pocket battleships they knew the Neos had were trapped in Hegemony space and monitored tightly. After what they’d done to the Falcon, the moment they set out from under the protection of the Hegemony Aerospace Corps, there would be Kingdom ships ready to meet them. It was long, boring work for those crews. But it did effectively lock them down, turning them from effective combat units to simple fleets-in-being. “Those they do have are hemmed in.”
“Unless it’s something new,” Cutter whispered back.
“Hal, they’re sending us into the Reach. Carte blanche. We hunt down this...this Behemoth, and we don’t stop until he’s floating wreckage.” Albright tilted her chin imperiously. “We’re looking at engaging something which can shoot back here, Hal. This will be the kind of fight we haven’t seen since the First Great War, and I want that ship’s ensign on my trophy wall. I’ll send through the intel for you to have a look at. Albright, out.”
“She’s one eager beaver,” Ashwell murmured.
“Yeah,” Cutter replied, leaning back into his seat. From one perspective, there could be no blaming her. After all, how many opportunities were there for old-fashioned iron-on-iron capital ship action anymore? Not many at all. It simply wasn’t that kind of war. The Astral used their ships conservatively and only when they had a huge advantage.
This was Albright’s chance to be remembered like the heroes of yesteryear. Those like Admiral Tilson of the Battle of Salarn, where his twenty-seven ships of the line utterly defeated thirty-three of the then-antagonistic Orillion Republic. A battle which had won Tilson a statue atop a column in Capital Square.
Albright was ambitious, that was known. She had eyes on Darrow’s job. And she was almost there. Command of Group Cronus was a major step. A significant combat deployment? Tick box. Next, she’d have eyes on her three- then four-star admiral’s epaulettes and a full fleet command, holding there for a year or two to learn the ropes. Then, she’d be marching into the prime minister’s office and demanding a position as the First Space Lady as soon as Darrow had been packed off into retirement.
Of course, that assumed an ideal world scenario. And real life was as different from the ideal world as it was possible to get. The war had gotten in the way of her plans. Darrow was certainly the kind of person who would stick it out. But another combat command for Albright, especially one where she took out an enemy capital ship which could shoot back? That would just about guarantee her a seat at the big table when the coast was clear.
First, though, she had to beat this Behemoth.
Cutter opened a blinking attachment on his console, the intel Albright had promised, and transferred a grainy image of the enemy battleship onto his display. Trailing a finger across the screen, he rotated it. Lost Earth, but it was a mean looking bastard. Long, boxy, with a strange underslung belly where, presumably, even more weapons were situated. All in all, it totaled up to one intimidating ship and a hell of a lot of tonnage.
“I think,” Hannah said from where she stood gazing over his shoulder, “he looks like one hell of a handful.”
“No shit,” he said quietly. Now wasn’t the time to project anything but utter confidence to his subordinates, but Commander Hannah Ashford was something else. She was there to offer sage counsel. And she needed to know what, and how, he was thinking to be able to give advice. “The plus side is they haven’t fielded anything of this size since the First Great War. They can’t have a lot of experience in fighting a major unit.”
“Or it can mean they are taking her out of dock without any preconceptions and are writing their own rulebook,” Ashford mused. “Warfare has changed a lot, and they have a record of knowing just how to get the most out of what they have.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. That was a scary thought. Cutter was, by his own admission, a progressive. He knew how damn effective new technologies were firsthand. The fierce fighting over Asteria had given him a taste of just what jump-capable aerospace fighters could do to a naval vessel. But as far out in the Reach as the likely intercept area was, they’d be well out of range of planet and station-based jump assets and—with Corvus falling far behind—it would be a clash of capital ships. It would be like the good old days that people like Albright looked on with nostalgic fervor.
“And, the last time we fought in capital ship lines was the same time they did,” Ashford continued, reaching over his shoulder and trailing her finger along the image of Behemoth. It turned a full 360 degrees in response, showing the battleship off in all its glory.
That was true as well, Cutter conceded. For all of the Kingdom’s vaunted space-going naval superiority, other than a few abortive skirmishes, there simply had been no major confrontation between heavy units in a generation. The last true battle had been the legendary Battle of Orchan against the old Galton Imperium. And even that had been indecisive, with both sides claiming victory as the shattered fleets slinked to their respective homes.
“Regardless.” Cutter finally shook his head. They could dwell on the past, or they could face up to facts. A single battleship and his heavy cruiser escort was going to be a tough cookie, but they had with them the pride of the Kingdom fleet, Cronus and Achilles herself, with Ajax and Corvus following them up. “We’re going to take on this Behemoth, and that’s that. Let’s get every piece of intel sent across to Mister Haynes. I want him to pour over this image with a magnifying glass. The slightest chink in the armor, the smallest blind spot in the firing arcs. I want us ready to exploit it.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Ashford made to stand and turn. Cutter reached to hold her upper arm. “Hannah, this could be the toughest fight we’ve had yet. I want every advantage. You hear?”
“Loud and clear, sir.” Ashford nodded. “Loud and clear.”
Cutter turned back to the display, staring at the intimidating lines of the enemy ship.
Yeah, you are going to be one tough bastard.





Chapter 8
Leading Spacer Robert Addington
Kanth System – KSS Cronus
“Wrong,” Lieutenant Ellie Grosvenor snapped in barely contained frustration.
Leading Spacer Robert Addington buried his face briefly in his hands. His elbows straddled the tablet containing a complex set of calculus exercises. They were sitting together in her tiny office. Outside the lieutenant’s office windows, the huge throbbing capacitors hung in the cavernous chamber. The place where the power for Bravo turrets was collected, ready to be unleased, hummed and crackled from the intense energies they contained.
“Now try again.” The lieutenant’s voice contained no mercy. Not for the first time, Addington was beginning to regret approaching her. The bright idea of studying for his promotion exams seemed an unbearable burden now. All he really wanted to do was hide away in the mess with his pals, drinking the moonshine from the illicit still one of his buddies had set up, not have his head stuck in math books with his lieutenant, a harsher taskmaster than any found at Victory’s naval school.
“I...can’t.” He stared at the tablet filled with indecipherable numbers and symbols.
With a loud sigh, the lieutenant slid her chair closer as she turned and drew the tablet over to her. “Look, follow me through again.”
With deceptive ease, she began resolving the calculation. Taking the time to explain each step as she did. And then she did it again. And again.
As Addington kept one eye on the tablet screen, he couldn’t help but wonder what she got out of these lessons. He was just a spacer, with delusions of maybe someday passing his petty officer assessment. And that would mean increasing his chances of getting a decent job in the private sector when his enlistment—and the war, of course—was over.
He’d approached his lieutenant and said as much. Next thing he knew, she had ordered him to spend an hour of downtime each day being tutored by her in math, procedure, and law. And that didn’t include the homework she set him. Her pace was relentless, as she well knew. She managed his schedule and workload, after all. The lieutenant must have known that there physically wasn’t enough time in the day to complete all that she set him. Granted, in the short time she’d tutored him, much of the stuff which was incomprehensible to him had begun to, at least, start making sense.
He was grateful, he supposed. The lieutenant was the same age as him, twenty-two, and fresh from the officer training school at Kingdom Naval College Hyperion. She’d thrown herself into her role with gusto, and then, as soon as she’d gripped that, taken on developing her staff—and that included him.
“Your turn,” Grosvenor said, more gently this time, sliding the tablet back to him.
Ok. He cracked his knuckles and leaned forward.
“Stop doing that.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
“It’s very annoying—” The comm chimed and she picked up the headset lying on the table and slipped it over her ear. “Lieutenant Grosvenor.”
Addington watched her nod slightly in response to whatever the other person was saying. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. Yes, I’ll be right there.”
She slipped her headpiece off, a distracted look on her face. “I’m going to have to go now. Lessons are done for tonight.”
“Understood, ma’am,” Addington replied, trying to divine meaning from her face. She didn’t look worried. More perplexed by whatever she’d been told. “Is there something we should know?”
A smile flickered onto her face briefly. “Need to know, spacer. Need to know.”
She turned in her chair and stood. “I want questions five through ten done by this time tomorrow.”
He looked at the complex-looking math problems and swallowed dryly. There went his downtime. But then, he wasn’t going to let her down, either. He suspected the moment he slacked, or got lazy, she’d stop giving up her downtime for him.
She walked out the office, her young face still wearing a distracted expression.
Yeah, he gathered up his things and slipped them into his pack. Something is going on for sure.
Disappointing the lieutenant was one thing. But if whatever was going on bought him a little extra time before his homework was due in, he could cope with that.





Chapter 9
Admiral Sarven
Lennox System – HAS Behemoth
“Vector aligned for Lennox System.” Lasik’s voice was clipped and business-like from where she sat at her command station next to Sarven. “We are at five minutes from the Karnov Boundary.”
“Understood, Captain.” Sarven shut down his war diary with a subdued sigh. Truth be told, there hadn’t been much to record in there.
As with any long journey, the initial enthusiasm for the mission among the crew had begun to dissipate into weariness as they penetrated deeper into the Reach, passing barren lifeless system after barren lifeless system.
The Reach. This area of space was bleak. A vast expanse filled with red giants, with only the occasional station calling itself home for people wanting isolation from the politicking and hubbub of the bigger star nations. It lay between the life-giving stars of the Arcadian Sector and the distant worlds of the huge Federation.
How must it have been, Sarven wondered, to be one of the first exploratory ships pushing out here hundreds of years ago? Not knowing what lay beyond. Then the relief of reaching the warm, resource-rich stars of what was now Federation space and finding a plethora of bountiful worlds ripe for colonization. He sighed again. Invigorating, he supposed. To genuinely be on a mission not of war, but of discovery and exploration. And the reward for those long-gone pioneers? The Federation was one of the wealthiest nations in known space, its economy dwarfing any others, yet isolated by the vastness of the Reach and the even greater emptiness of the Void beyond.
His wistful thoughts turned to a sense of unease. What if the Hegemony won the war in the Arcadian Sector? Would the Prime turn his covetous gaze across the Reach to the Federation? As it was, relations were fraught, although the Federation seemed to accept that their supply ships plying The Corridor were fair game for the Astral if they were supplying the Kingdom.
But, from what he heard, the Hegemony’s new and uncertain ally, the Dawn Empire, was murmuring of turning their cold economic war against the Federation hot. Something which might well drag the Hegemony into a full-scale conflict whether the Prime wanted it or not.
He shook his head, dispelling his maudlin thoughts. That was a worry for tomorrow. For the here and now, he had more immediate concerns.
The Corridor was the path through the Reach—the shortest span, relatively—bringing the bounty of the new worlds to the Sector. Since the start of the war, the Federation had been sending convoys of materials, a supply chain which had to be disrupted. To strangle the resistance out of the Kingdom.
But pickings had been slim. This area was so damn big, the chances were low of stumbling across something as small as a freighter, when considering star system scales, and even when hunting in the relatively narrow Corridor. This was, Sarven knew, one of the reasons why capital ships were optimal. They could put themselves on the likely routes and linger, long past the time a stealth pack would have to go home for resupply and refit.
The lights of the bridge faded to a washed-out blue glow and a chime resonated through the bridge. The signal they would be crossing the Karnov boundary in the next thirty seconds.
He reclined back in his seat. He always hated going hyper. Something, which for a navy man, was as ironic as a wet sailor on a world’s oceans getting seasick. C’est la vie. It was merely his cross to bear, and bear it he did. He braced his hands on his armrests, readying himself.
The front of the bridge stretched away disconcertingly before him. The ship racing forward into the infinity of hyperspace. A fraction of a second later, Sarven’s senses told him he was being catapulted forward, through twelve light years, to catch up with the forward section of the bridge. He turned his head, as he always did. Some kind of instinctive need to check the rear of the vessel was following.
The oblong chamber of the bridge snapped back into its proper shape.
He let out the breath he’d been holding, then glanced around to check no one had noticed. Lasik focused on her console intently, a smirk on her face. She’d seen. Like she had the other times.
“Starfix is...in,” Lasik said, her voice only containing the vaguest residue of the unsettling effect of hyper-travel. “We are in the Lennox system.”
“Excellent.” Sarven nodded, ensuring his voice was composed and hiding his own discomfort. “Please tight-beam Cerberus when she joins us. She is to utilize passives only.”
“It would perhaps, Admiral,” the captain looked up to him, condescension in her voice “be quicker if we were to begin actively scanning for enemy shipping.”
“Thank you for your advice, Captain.” Sarven let the frown show on his face. Lasik was very quick to question his orders. Once again, a symptom of the rot which had infected the ranks of the Hegemony Astral. A rot which had set in since the damn Neos had got their people everywhere. “But, I judge for the moment, the benefits of going undetected outweigh those of not.”
Lasik wasn’t quite fast enough to hide the sneer of disapproval which flickered on her face. Sarven ground his teeth, resisting the urge to call her out publicly on the bridge. Her time would come, of that he was sure.
But they had business to attend to first. “Captain, join me.”
Sarven made his way to the tactical holo. The captain did have a point. They weren’t in the Reach to just skulk around until they ran out of fuel. It was simply that he had a different opinion on how to go about completing their objective. And seeing as he was the admiral? It was his opinion which counted.
With the swipe of a hand, he focused in on the patch of space they were in, containing a speckle of systems, each as inhospitable as the last. A pale ghostly representation of a cylinder thrust through them, within which a few of those stars sat. The Lennox System lay just inside the outer edge of the Corridor, a place from which retreat into the wider Reach would be easy.
“This, captain, is the Corridor.” Sarven gestured, allowing condescension to frost his own words. The woman knew this, of course, but talking to her like a child might help keep her in her place. “Sooner, rather than later, Federation supply ships will pass through here close to our position. We will then pounce and destroy them, in accordance with our orders.”
“Hmm.” Lasik frowned at the display, the animosity she clearly felt for him being replaced by a considering expression. “We are still on the outskirts of the Corridor itself here. It would rely on the coincidence of a convoy randomly jinking into us to get within easy hitting range.”
Sarven nodded. That it would. Convoys tended, by and large, to zigzag through systems as they made the ten- to twelve-light-year leaps a hyper-capable ship could manage, to better evade the stealth packs which infested the Corridor. “Agreed. However, moving into the center would increase the odds of being detected by a patrol.”
“Which is nothing we can’t handle,” Lasik interjected, turning to him. “The Kingdom isn’t using heavy units for escorts. The most we’ll have to deal with are destroyers. Perhaps cruisers, if it’s a particularly large convoy.”
Pursing his lips, Sarven considered the map. She did have a point. The closer they were to the center of the corridor, the better their chances. And yes, his orders were to destroy merchant shipping. But the whole reason he had the force he did at his disposal was so that enemy warships wouldn’t preclude him from completing that objective.
“What if we head into the center of the corridor? Say, to the Hellas system? It’s the closest thing to a bottleneck within this section of the corridor and a virtual guarantee freighters and merchantmen will have to go through there.”
Perhaps, Sarven thought, showing aggression will sate my captain’s bloodlust. Giving a little, just a little, as a compromise might just mean he could put off their inevitable clash.
“A little truculence may well reap us dividends here,” Sarven continued slowly. “But we must remember, we are not here to fight. We are here to hunt.”
“But neither should we duck a fight if it comes looking for us,” Lasik responded. “That is, after all, why Operation River was allocated Behemoth.”
This damn Neo, spoiling for a scrap. “Quite,” he settled on as a response.
He turned and climbed back to his podium and took his seat. “Take us into the Hellas system.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Lasik called after him.
He settled back into his chair as the captain barked orders. In moments, he felt a brief pressure on his chest as the battleship’s huge engines burned, before dampeners smoothed out the forces of acceleration.
The trajectory line on the holo began to twist toward the hyper vector headed to their next destination.
The Hellas system.





Chapter 10
Captain Cutter
Kanth System – KSS Achilles
“So, if you were a betting person?” Cutter’s booted feet were on his ready room desk, allowing himself a moment of relaxation with his executive officer.
Ashford reclined on the couch on one side of the tight cabin, slurping from a steaming mug of tea. “I’m not.”
“Then let me rephrase.” Cutter rolled his eyes. “If you’d been sent into the Reach to hunt for enemy shipping, where would you pitch up?”
“I assume, you mean if I were a bad guy.” Ashford smiled brightly. Damn she was getting pernickety.
“Yes, Hannah,” Cutter said dryly. “If you were the bad guy.”
It was nice, sometimes, to be able to relax. The problem with being the captain was one always had to put one’s best foot forward in public. He always had to look unflappable. And that he always had to have the answer. But here, in the privacy of his office, he could relax. Let his personality out a little. Pick his XO’s brains without worrying it would somehow diminish his authority to the older sweats or young bloods of the crew.
“Well, the Corridor is the only place to go.” Ashford placed her empty mug down on the coffee table as she mused. “The question is where in the Corridor. It’s a damn big place.”
“Go on.” From her expression, it was clear she was working through something in her mind.
Ashford gave a blink, breaking her own concentration and raised an eyebrow as she looked across the cabin at him. “Isn’t it Albright’s staff’s job to think of these things?”
“Albright is many things, but cunning she is not.” Cutter smiled ruefully. “She probably thinks if she shouts loudly enough, Behemoth will come calling for a fight.”
“Come out you, you bar-stad!” Ashford mocked, emphasizing the admiral’s cut-glass accent between a scoff of laughter. The image of Albright bellowing and shouting, like a pub drunk, came unbidden to his mind. “I want to give you a bloody good drubbing!”
Unable to stop himself, Cutter gave a chuckle at the thought. It was an exaggeration, maybe, but not too much of one. From the communiqu
“Seriously though...” Ashford settled for a chuckle herself and then resumed her considering expression. “I would probably put us in the...”
She placed her mug down on the coffee table and picked up her tablet, turning it in her hands the right way up and frowning at it. “Here. The Hellas system. It’s pretty much slap-bang in the center of the Corridor. It’s pretty close to being a pinch point. It provides one of two systems that convoys have to traverse within the twelve-light-year hyper-limit range. Most shipping will come through these on the hyper-vector from Talbot’s Star.
Cutter pursed his lips and gave a nod. That did sound a good call as long as Behemoth’s CO was an aggressive SOB. They had to know there was an increased chance they’d tangle with patrols there. But also, they’d know the biggest ships which actually policed the corridor as standard were of cruiser tonnage, something which would be easily managed by what looked to be Behemoth’s eight heavy pulse cannons.
“Okay, I’ll run it by the admiral,” Cutter decided. “See if she wants to reposition us there.”
***
“Admiral on deck,” Lieutenant Grosvenor bellowed loudly, her voice echoing down the gangways which wove around the huge capacitors of what was quaintly called “The Armory” of Cronus’s Bravo heavy pulse cannon turret.
Addington stood quickly from where he was checking the coupling on Capacitor B2, and drew himself to attention. What on Lost Earth was the admiral doing down here? She was supposed to be on the Flag Bridge. She should be safely out of the way of regular spacers, not down here where the real work was done.
The stern woman prowled, with Captain Phelps trailing her, past the spacers who stood ramrod straight. Theatrically, she pulled out a white glove, snapped it taut before donning it.
She ran a fingertip along the gantry railing and turned her head to stare at Grosvenor, as if to say, “There better not be any dust.”
The lieutenant remained stoically expressionless as the admiral examined her finger closely.
Please don’t let her find anything. He felt a sense of dread burrow into his stomach. But it wasn’t for him; he didn’t want to have let the lieutenant down.
After what seemed an eternity, the admiral gave a satisfied nod. “At ease, everyone.”
Addington relaxed, clasping his hands behind his back as the admiral beckoned for Grosvenor to join her and the captain. Only to feel the dread build again as he saw them heading down the gangway toward him. His neck tightened, causing his jaw to ache.
Please don’t notice me.
The admiral made as if to walk past him. And then, abruptly, came to a stop. She turned and looked up at him, her head only just reaching his shoulder.
“Name?”
“Robert, ma’am. Some call me—” he blurted.
“Robert,” Albright said with a drawn-out sigh. “It is unlikely we are going to be friends, or on first-name terms of any kind. I want your rank and your surname.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Aye aye, ma’am,” Addington stuttered, confused. The woman was practically looking straight at the nametag on his working-rig breast pocket. “I’m SFC—Spacer First Class Addington.”
She nodded sagely, as if divining some meaning from his words. Her eyes flicked down to his tools, neatly arrayed in their open kit. “It looks like you work cleanly. I like that, SFC.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Soon we will be going into battle, and I will need this ship operating at its most efficient. These turrets must be operating at their most efficient,” Albright continued, her head tilted back, eyeballing him. He rocked back on his heels slightly under her belligerent gaze. “And my crew needs to be operating at their most efficient. You’re not going to let the Kingdom down, or your fellow spacers, are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
She looked at him silently for a moment, as if challenging his words. “You’re not going to let me down, are you?”
“No, ma’am,” he repeated with a swallow.
“Good.” She nodded again as she reached up and patted him on the shoulder. “Good lad.”
The admiral turned on her heel and continued down the gantry.
He felt his shoulders slump as she moved away, chattering to Lieutenant Grosvenor as they headed toward another unfortunate spacer. “It’s important one shows interest in the crew. It helps inspire them. Leadership, it’s about being visible and—yes, where needs be—intrusive. You, what’s your name?”
“Millner, ma’am.”
“Rank as well.” The tone of the admiral’s voice showed exasperation.
The sooner the brass retreats back to their areas, the better.





Chapter 11
Admiral Sarven
Hellas System – HAS Behemoth
The trajectory ladder of the two ships reached out toward the rocky world. It was small enough that it couldn’t retain an atmosphere, and fortuitously positioned in its orbit. If a ship tracked a direct course between Talbot’s Star and the Fenix System’s vectors—the quickest route through the corridor at this point—then they would pass within spitting distance of the planet.
Making it a perfect place to lie in wait to ambush for any unfortunate prey that came through.
Over the next hour, Sarven sat watching them descend toward the world. It truly wouldn’t, he supposed, take the brains of a genius to figure out that this was an optimal hiding place. But then, they’d have to know something would be waiting in ambush here first. With a little luck, the first the Kingdom would know of a predator lurking in the Corridor was when they wondered why one of their convoys had been reduced to spinning, shattered wreckage.
“Captain,” he asked. “Has your astrogator established what the lowest orbit we can maintain is?”
“Yes, sir,” Lasik acknowledged. A moment later, a chime came from his console as she sent him the plan. He raised an eyebrow as he saw the altitude they would be circling the planet at. Ten kilometers felt awfully low. Yet, without atmosphere to drag them down, the only real limitation was the geography of the world. What she was proposing would keep them clear of the highest of mountains.
“Very good,” Sarven said as he double-checked the figures himself. “Make it so.”
He reclined back in his seat as he watched through the forward screen as Behemoth, and Cerberus just ahead of him, dove for the planet.
The world swelled and the horizon flattened as they closed. The mountain ranges, canyons, valleys, and craters passing by in a flash below them. Behemoth’s engines fired on automatic, fighting to establish them in a stable orbit.
One that was painfully close to the surface, yet would mean they would be masked from most sensor sweeps.
***
Gaddish dropped another tiny piece of sausage into Vince’s open and eager mouth. Hungrily, the tiny kitten chewed and swallowed it, before looking up eagerly for another with wide, adoring eyes.
“Father Terra,” Loctz moaned. “Have you seen this?”
The big man turned his tablet so his bunkmates could see what was on it. On the display, bare gray mountains whipped by at a dizzying speed.
“What am I looking at?” Gaddish swung around onto his bunk and patted his lap. Vince bounced up onto it, giving the impression he was as curious as Gaddish was. Which was not at all.
“This is the feed from the external cameras.” Loctz’s voice was full of incredulity. “Those crazy bastards in charge look like they’re scraping the surface of this planet...moon...whatever it is.”
Gaddish shrugged as he tickled under Vince’s chin. He trusted they knew what they were doing. That they knew their jobs. Frankly, if they wanted him to worry about it, then they had to pay him an officer’s wage. They weren’t, so he wasn’t.
“I’m glad someone’s calm about all this.” Loctz put the tablet down and turned to stretch out on his rack, the tension in his body still obvious at the sight of them tearing past mountains.
And the funny thing was, he was. Calm, that was. The kitten curled himself up on his legs. A moment later, Gaddish felt the contented vibration of his purrs in his thighs. A contentment that he himself felt, too. Maybe what they say about animals relaxing you is true. 
He slumped back into a semi-seated position, wedged in his bunk space, desperate not to disturb Vince, and cast an eye at the clock. Four hours until his next watch. His back would play hell if he dozed off like this. But so what? His buddy was comfy. And that, bizarrely, was all that mattered to Gaddish these days.
Gently he stroked the tiny creature’s warm back.





Chapter 12
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
“Dowsing rods?” Ashford whispered.
Cutter did his best to focus and ignore his XO’s conspiratorial whisper.
“Come on, skipper, some other form of divination?” Fortunately, they were the only two on the command podium. Not that Ashford would have made such comments if there had been anyone else. She knew when she could talk like this, and when she couldn’t. Well, normally she did. The boredom of the hunt was getting to them all. It made him testy, and her talkative.
“Hannah, if you’re not going to say something important,” Cutter snapped back, equally quietly, “then please don’t say anything at all.”
Against his expectations, Albright had listened to him and brought Group Cronus to the Hellas system. Now, he just needed the damn ship to actually be here. Otherwise, there was a good chance the admiral would never listen to him again. But not before—if he were to hazard a guess—a true finger waving, chewing out, and then writing his name in a book entitled, Officers on My Shit List.
Albright wanted Behemoth. Badly. She’d sent Roe’s destroyers into a wide fan formation, each sending out powerful ripples of sensor pulses in an effort to locate the enemy ship.
If they’d gone to ground, though, they’d have to be dug out of whatever hole they were lodged in. And that would take close flybys of every body and object in the system.
What he’d have given to have the fleet carrier Corvus with them now. They could have cleared the whole system in a few hours, dispatching jump-capable fighters to every planet or asteroid big enough to hide the ship. It would cut down the hunt time dramatically.
But they didn’t. She was two days behind them, and that meant things had to be done slow time.
So, while Roe and his tin cans tried with sensors, the Warrior-class cruisers Spartan and Knight were going to be using somewhat more old-fashioned methods.
***
Addington couldn’t decide if blissful ignorance of what was occurring outside was better than knowing everything. The graphs on his readouts looked good—the power transfer between the fusion core in the center of the ship here to the capacitor, and then up to the turret proper all looked within tolerances.
Trapped here in the cavernous Armory, though, he had no way of knowing whether they were cruising by a planet, in the depths of space, or hurtling into the heart of a sun. The lower decks didn’t need to know and therefore they weren’t told. They didn’t need to be distracted from focusing on their jobs. That was just how it was in the Kingdom Navy. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious. He’d heard rumors. Rumors which had flashed through the ship faster than a QE communication.
“How are we looking, Rob?” Grosvenor asked from behind.
“She’s ticking along just fine, ma’am.” He stepped to one side so she could check his display. “Getting nominal readouts across the board.”
She nodded and tapped her own tablet. Ticking off that Cap Bravo Two had passed its readiness check.
“Ma’am,” Addington began, curiosity finally getting the better of him. “What’s the enemy ship we’re looking for like?”
She lowered her tablet and frowned, whether from being pressed for information by one of her spacers or because of some other reason, he just didn’t know. “Big. Big and tough. Which is why the admiral has been getting somewhat...intrusive with the weapon system status updates.”
“She seems a bit...odd.”
“Spacer!” Grosvenor snapped, her brow furrowing. “Less of that, if you please.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Had he caught a hint of amusement in the woman’s face? Perhaps, perhaps not, but he liked to think he had. He admired and respected the lieutenant. Unlike most officers, she actually seemed like a person. Not too good to talk to the spacers.
“When we engage the enemy, we’re going to need every gun,” Grosvenor continued, whatever flicker of a smile which he might have imagined gone. “And I don’t want my Armory to be the one that lets the ship down.”
“It won’t be, ma’am. We won’t let you down.”
“Good.” Grosvenor smiled at him, this time warmly. “Right, if you’re done monopolizing my time, I have the others to check.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
The woman set off down the gangway, headed toward the other building-sized oblong hanging in the chamber where another spacer would be completing the same repetitive checks he was.
He turned back to his console, tapping at it and beginning another test cycle. Looming above him, the massive machinery of the Armory throbbed, sheer power coursing through it.
And him? He was just a small part of it all. One of the tiny cogs in the war machine which was Cronus.





Chapter 13
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
Cutter watched on the holo as the two sleek deadly forms of Spartan and Knight swung through the Hellas system, on course for the next desolate rocky world in their search pattern. The gray of its surface was dimly lit by the pale red binary stars of the Hellas system.
They’d checked other, more far-flung worlds, finding them to be little more than airless balls of rock and metal or swirling gaseous spheres. There had been no sign of their quarry, other than the faintest of wakes from a drive signature, far too dissipated to give an accurate trail. All that showed was something had been through the system but, considering they were in the Corridor, that certainly wasn’t conclusive.
He didn’t like Albright’s plan. The two cruisers may have been fast, even comparatively well-armed and armored for their tonnage, but what if they actually encountered Behemoth and couldn’t withdraw? They wouldn’t last long against a battleship, that was for damn sure. Even Cerberus, whose capability was relatively well known, would give them a run for their money with her thickly armored hide, powerful medium pulse cannons, and an acceleration which was damn impressive. They might be able to take her. But it’d hurt them to do so.
It would have been preferable to have kept the entire task force together. Cleared every hidey-hole in the system in turn with a cohesive force, sufficient to take on the Behemoth if they stumbled on him.
The downside of that, he conceded, was that it would take far longer than they actually had. Every floating rock out here would have to be examined, every world orbited in the hunt, and every hidey-hole scanned. The battleship might not even have been here. And, even if Behemoth was, what if he decided to make a break for it while they were looking in an entirely different place? Then he’d slip away.
So, the plan Albright had come up with was the only one which would work. The destroyers spread thin, to hopefully catch the battleship on sensors and pursue if he ran. The cruisers to go clear the worlds and asteroids. And Cronus and Achilles ready to head straight for him if...no, when he was found.
Still, as Cutter watched the pair of cruisers streaking toward Hellas II, he didn’t like the thought of those ships acting as glorified canaries because if they got themselves cornered, or—just as bad—cornered Behemoth, but didn’t have the ability or delta-v to escape...
Well, if that happened, they’d be in for a very tough time.
***
Commander Lorna Hennessey, captain of the 700-meter long Spartan, watched the cold and dark world roll toward her. It swelled disconcertingly fast on the forward screen as the cruiser, and her consort, raced toward the planet.
“Skipper, we’re gonna be at perigee in twelve minutes,” her helm, Lieutenant Zeke Campbell, turned and called over his shoulder across the low-lit bridge of a ship at Condition Two.
“Thanks, Zeke,” she replied simply. She loved being a cruiser skipper. Battleships, more often than not, were locked in formation under the watchful eye of an admiral. Their role was to be part of a line and bring devastating barrages of raw firepower to bear on their enemy. And as for destroyers? These days, they tended to spend most of their time on convoy or fleet defense. But cruisers? Now they, usually, were allowed a measure of independence which no other tonnage of ship was allowed. They were big enough to fight most of what was out there, and small enough that they had no place rigidly locked in a line of battle. Their orders, more often than not, consisted of a fancy way of saying, “get out there and find trouble. Kick its arse if you can, if you can’t let us know and we’ll send in the big guns.”
But, on this mission, a sense of unease filled her—probably as much to do with the dim red light of the system’s stars washing over the barren expanse influencing her mood than anything tangible.
Or, she ruminated, it could be that Albright seemed intent to use her ship as a canary, something Captain Cutter onboard Achilles had pointed out.
Knight ran parallel to Spartan, in some misguided half-comprise that two cruisers would actually have better odds of survival if they encountered Behemoth than a single ship on her own.
A slightly more cynical way of looking at it? Albright wanted at least one ship to actually survive any engagement and escape to tell the tale.
The horizon of the planet designated Hellas II flattened as they speared low over the surface. They were traveling far too fast to fall into a stable orbit, but the gravity of the world tugged them around nonetheless. Without a layer of atmosphere covering the world, they could have descended so low they could have raced between the crags and canyons of the mountainous surface. It would have been nice to soar as if they were a fighter, threading and weaving like one of the Tempests her husband flew out of Starbase Victory. But, she acknowledged, that was something forever beyond a ship the size of Spartan.
The bridge was tense and silent as Hennessey leaned forward. Her hand gripped her armrests as she sought to pick out the opposition with eyesight alone on the screen before her.
Something niggled at her gut. And one thing she’d learned in fifteen years in the Navy—two of those with her own independent command—was that when her gut told her something, she should damn well listen.
This is it. 
This was the place. Behemoth was here. She knew it. This planet was right in the middle of the Corridor; the shipping lane cut clean through the system. Anything coming in on the vector from Talbot’s Star and wanted to head out toward the Fenix System would pass damn close to this world. Behemoth would be within easy striking range of any ships which passed by. And they had the firepower with them not to have to be too concerned about a patrol stumbling across them. Yes, there were a few other asteroids and one world which were positioned well. But this? This was the best. This had to be it.
That was what her gut was telling her.
“Give me a full active sensor sweep,” she finally decided; the time for sneaking was over. Ordinarily, tactical doctrine in these circumstances was to use passive arrays to at least ascertain a direction as to where the enemy was. And only, if necessary, or if they had obviously been made, give away their own position with a sensor sweep. Normally, the first to see was the first to shoot. But, that probably meant getting too damn close to the huge battleship and even from the grainy, long-range images, it was obvious that the vessel had thick armor and powerful dispersion shields.
And if he was running dark, then the only thing they’d have to go on were thermals and any radiation residue from her engines.
Her executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Wally Sullivan, cast her a sidelong glance, a quizzical expression on his face. “Ma’am, are you sure?”
“If he’s here, he would have likely seen our engine plume incoming half an AU out anyway. If he’s gone to ground, we need to dig him out.”
“But—”
“The response is aye-aye, Mister Sullivan,” Hennessey said sharply. She immediately chided herself. Yeah, she was on edge—they all were—but that wasn’t Sully’s fault.
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
A series of ripples extended out from her ship on the small tactical holo recessed into the deck before her. It was nowhere near the scale of one found on a battleship. More a contrivance for the captain’s convenience and to give at-a-glance situational awareness than direct huge-scale battles. But it was the best tool she had to keep track of what was going on out there.
The first ripples bounced back from the surface of Hellas II racing by, as the ship’s sensors literally reached out blindly for her opponent.
“Where are you?” she muttered.
“Contact,” The sensor officer called sharply, a hint of fear lacing through the professionalism of his tone. The display zoomed in dizzyingly, focusing on two ships orbiting a few scant kilometers above the barren gray surface.
“Call it, SO.” Sullivan snapped.
“I have one ship, no transponder, apparent size 800 meters in length. I call her a heavy cruiser. Probably Cerberus. I have one ship, no transponder, apparent size.... Lost Earth...” The young lieutenant swallowed. “Over 1500 meters in length.”
Sullivan swung around, his eyes wide, a mix of victory and fear. “Ma’am, we have him. Behemoth is here.”
Shit. 
The two cruisers raced toward the enemy vessels orbiting even lower than they were. Hennessey quickly processed their possible escape. If they kept on course, they’d be within Behemoth’s fire envelope for a full six minutes. And that would be terminal for them.
She quickly tapped a calculation into her console. “Helm, give me a full-burn solution on a diverging path, heading relative 110 by 100.” That would send the two cruisers veering away, halving the time they would be under the battleship’s huge guns. “Signal Knight to match our maneuver and immediate execute.”
“110 by 100 full burn and immediate execute, aye!” Campbell shouted, the urgency not lost on him. The nose of the cruiser swung around and up. Then Hennessey felt herself being driven into her seat as the cruiser’s powerful engines ignited and throttled up to full burn. A moment later, the inertial dampeners relieved the pressure on her chest. The physical pressure, at least. The tightness of tension remained, gripping her hard.
On the tactical holo, their projected course began to curve up and away from the menacing ships hugging the world in a hypo-orbit.
“Full EW shroud,” Hennessey snapped. “Every erg you have.”
A hum washed through the bridge. Static lines filled the holo as the ship’s own electromagnetic suite billowed out intense radiation in an attempt to mask her physical presence. It wouldn’t—it couldn’t—hide the wash of their engines. But that was the hand they’d been dealt if they wanted to escape this trap.
Three minutes. The engagement window was down to three minutes before both pairs of ships’ courses put the bulk of the world between them.
Three minutes was a long time when a battleship was angry with you. She knew Spartan’s medium pulse cannons wouldn’t stand a chance of doing more than scratching the paintwork on that monster. She could have a go at firing at Cerberus through the shroud, but frankly, right now, she felt that discretion was the better part of valor. Not to mention, they could use the incoming fire to track back to her position within her EW shroud. Again, something which could be terminal.
With her EW shroud up, the enemy would struggle to lock onto her. Instead, on their sensor displays, a single ship would suddenly become a hazy patch, with the physical vessel hidden somewhere within. Targeting computers would slip and slide over them rather than lock on. But there were ways, in modern space naval combat, of dealing with that. A tactical doctrine which was as unsubtle as it was effective.
Saturation fire.
“Incoming!” The cry across the bridge was full of panic. A blue bolt, near as damn it the size of a pinnace, tore past. Then another. All originating from the huge battleship.
More came, a relentless barrage of pulse blasts. If any single one caught them, they’d be crippled in a single blow. Smaller, but only slightly less powerful shots lanced by. Cerberus opening up with her own still impressive cannons.
“Come on.” Hennessey belatedly leaned forward and grabbed her battlesuit helmet and slid her head into it. She whipped her visor closed. For all the good it would do her if they were caught by one of those heavy pulse cannon rounds. If it grazed them, though, merely holing them instead of destroying the ship in a single shot, then at least she’d survive decompression. Hell, she should have been wearing it in the first place. A mistake she wouldn’t make again.
They had one minute left. One minute of vulnerability, then they were out of this. And safe.
The two cruisers arced their way over the planet, magnificent plumes of white-hot fusion fire washing from their engines, turning the rocky surface molten even as their adversaries diverged off in another direction. The distance between them widening every second.
Thirty seconds.
A bolt of pure energy tore by so close it must have scoured the paintwork from her cruiser’s back.
Ten seconds.
A bolt of pure raw fury screamed silently toward them. Then passed by, bare meters from the starboard flank.
“We’re clear,” Sullivan croaked as if his throat was parched. “Knight is clear also. No damage. Somehow.”
Hennessey slumped in her seat. The engagement, start to finish, had lasted less than a handful of minutes. And must have aged her a dozen years.
That was too damn close.
But, at least they knew where Behemoth was.
And Cronus, the pride of the Kingdom fleet, would advance and show these Hegemony bastards what it truly meant to start a fight with the most powerful navy in the galaxy.
***
They’d been made. And that left him only one choice.
“Captain Lasik,” Sarven called as he watched the two Kingdom cruisers flee, the visible plumes of their engines showing just how hard they were accelerating to get away from Behemoth’s mighty guns. “I think it’s fair to say our cover is blown here. Raise our orbit. We will withdraw to the Tantalus System.”
“Sir,” Lasik acknowledged before barking out orders. For once, it felt, as if she wasn’t questioning his every decision. He suspected the gunnery crews would soon be receiving some choice feedback for their poor performance. And, to be perfectly honest, he didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy for them. The enemy cruisers had quite literally come straight into their firing envelope.
Yes, the two cruisers, which they’d tentatively identified as Warrior-class, had appeared from nowhere, but, by Father Terra, they should have been nothing but spiraling debris crashing down on the barren world below within the first volley. Now the enemy ships were retreating back across space, already signaling their presence to the two large contacts hovering at the frozen edges of the system. Two contacts which undoubtedly had big guns welded to them.
With the faintest of pressure on his chest, Behemoth began to climb away from Hellas II, fighting to escape the gravity well and setting course for the Karnov Boundary, which would take them out of this system.
Hopefully before those big contacts catch up.





Chapter 14
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
The two contacts’ course settled into a line, stretching toward the outskirts of the Hellas System, the vector leading directly toward the Tantalus System. The plumes of the escaping ships’ engines turned the dark side of the world from which they were fleeing to day.
The images from Spartan were, if they were constrained by mere light speed, eight minutes old. Fortunately, the QE comm transmitted it in near as damn it to real time. The problem was, they couldn’t physically move nearly as fast.
“Flash Traffic, Task Force Actual.”
“On my console,” Cutter snapped. It looked like the admiral was about ready to start her metaphorical bellowing at the enemy.
Admiral Albright appeared on his screen, scraping back her hair into a short ponytail as she spoke. Clearly, she’d been caught off guard. Who would have thought? Even Albright had time off from stomping around her ship, shaking her fist. “Hal, Spartan and Knight have located Behemoth and Cerberus.”
“So I see.” Cutter cast an eye on the plot. Yeah, the two enemy vessels were definitely beating feet out of the system. And at an acceleration which belied the size of the battleship. Whoever was in charge over there had decided they didn’t want to fight, was making tracks, and had the means to do so.
“We have limited opportunity to engage them before they escape.” Albright finished putting her hair up and sealed up the front of her battlesuit. “I’m sending you through a maneuvering solution.”
A fleet action message pinged onto his screen and Cutter tapped the envelope icon. Albright’s hastily conceived plan appeared on screen. He watched the graphical representation and gave a sharp intake of breath. Aggressive was an understatement. She really was intending on forcing the enemy to battle.
Inevitability washed over Cutter. This was it. Even with their acceleration, there was little the enemy could do to stop the battle from happening. And, to add to that, Albright certainly wouldn’t call a halt to it; she wanted it too badly. That meant soon, people—probably many people—would be dying. He just had to hope that was going to be more of the Galts than Kingdom spacers.
“The engagement envelope is limited. We’re going to be looking at a full-burn approach with a course correction to cut behind them and allow us to bring our broadside to bear,” Albright spoke quickly, talking him through the plan. “I don’t intend to chase Behemoth across the Reach. We’ll finish this here, Hal, in Hellas.”
“Ma’am.” Cutter moderated his tone. He didn’t want to put his superior on the defensive by acting in an overly plaintive manner, but come on! What she was proposing was on par not with the battles of the First Great War, but with the sailing ships of Lost Earth. Visions of ships hauling alongside each other and giving their opponents a broadside crossed his mind. “Ajax is just over a day behind if she burns ahead of Corvus. We can hang fire, wait for them, and then follow Behemoth with overwhelming force.”
“Captain, I’m not about to let the most powerful Hegemony Astral unit in the galaxy slip from my fingers,” she said sharply. “We will engage her. And we will destroy her with the overwhelming force we already have in this system. Am I understood?”
Short of mutiny, that directive brooked no dissent. Her decision had been made. They were going in. “Yes, ma’am, and aye aye.”
“Hal,” she offered, an olive branch extending the thousands of kilometers between them. “Even at our most pessimistic, we have the throw-weight of munitions to take on Behemoth and Cerberus. We’re going to end this. We’re doing this.”
“Permission to speak freely.”
“Den—” Albright began, then visibly caught herself. “My apologies, Hal. The admiral’s shoulder boards shouldn’t mean I disregard my senior officers’ opinions. Speak.”
“Ma’am.” If time hadn’t been critical, he might have been shocked into silence by her apology. “Cronus and Achilles can deliver a lot of firepower. The enemy? They’re an unknown quantity. But, if we extrapolate from our BBs, Behemoth is going to hurt us even if we do win.”
“But we will win,” Albright said pointedly, an eyebrow arching.
“Yes. We have the throw-weight.” Cutter looked up, contemplating what he was going to say. He was about to firmly plant his ship in harm’s way. To take the beating for Albright’s arrogance. “Look, Achilles is a battleship. She’s built to take hits and still keep fighting. Cronus is a hunter. Built to chase down opponents she can beat and evade those she can’t. Let Achilles go in first. We’ll take the blows. We can take the blows. Keep Cronus hanging back and giving us fire support. That would be the optimal use of what we have here, now, and ready to go.”
“Captain, your sentiments are appreciated, but this is the flagship of His Majesty’s Navy. Cronus will not be relegated to ‘hanging back’ and giving fire support.” Albright had no anger in her voice, but the resolution burned through, clear as day.
Fucking admirals. This Navy needs to get its head out of its arse and start fighting in the real world, not some memory of more glorious times. 
Albright wanted the kill. She wanted Cronus’s round to be the one that pierced the battleship’s reactor. The round which signaled the death knell for that huge ship. She seemed blissfully unaware that those on the other side were unlikely to be willing to play her game. He’d seen firsthand how damn good the Hegemony was. They wouldn’t go down easy.
“That’s understood, ma’am. But—” Cutter continued.
“No buts, Hal,” Albright’s voice grew testy once again. The woman had managed, for her, to muster an unprecedented amount of patience for talking him down. But there were limits. And Cutter had found them. “This discussion is over. Cronus will lead the charge in. Achilles will support. Instruct your helm now.”
He was left with only one response he could give. “Aye aye, ma’am.”
Albright looked down, as if she were reaching for the hang-up button. She paused and looked back up at the camera. “Hal, remember, this isn’t just about delivering victory, it’s about showing we are still dominant. The Kingdom is still dominant. We own space. And no Neo, even in a fancy ship, is going to take it from us. That’s why Cronus, the flagship, is going in first. To deliver that message straight from the king to those filthy Galts.”
“Yeah—” Cutter gritted his teeth at her lecture. Now was not the time.
“There’s a bigger picture, Hal,” Albright softened her voice. Well, she probably thought she had. Instead, it came across as patronizing. “One day, if you manage to get flag rank, you’ll understand there’s a nuance to victory.”
“Understood.” Cutter paused a moment, struggling to resist snapping back at her. His deference for rank battled his frustration with the dogmatic bullshit of the old guard of the Kingdom Navy’s leaders. It lost. “Achilles, out.”
He stabbed his finger onto the touchscreen console, killing the comm link. He could almost picture her seething with rage at being cut off. It may have been petulant, and unprofessional, but it sure was satisfying.
Cutter turned to Ashford, her eyebrows theatrically raised.
“What?” he said angrily, a little too loud.
“Nothing, skipper,” she said, before returning to staring at her own console a little too intently.
“Thought not.” He stood from his seat and addressed the helm. “Mister Singh, I am sending you through a burn and maneuver solution. Please enter it in and execute on Cronus’s mark. For the rest of you? Know this. We’re going up against the largest, most powerful ship the Kingdom has ever faced.”
He paused a moment, letting his gaze wash across them. These brave men and women were going into combat. They needed to know he was confident. That he was sure. And that he could bring them home. “And we are going to win. Set Condition Two throughout the ship.”
On the holo before him, the battleship and battlecruiser charged toward the inner system, flanked, three on each side, by the destroyers of Roe’s squadron. Not that they’d have much of a role in this fight. Their guns were unlikely to even penetrate the beast’s dispersion fields or make a dent in its armor.
Still, in terms of raw numbers, they outnumbered Behemoth and Cerberus by eight units—ten if they counted the two cruisers currently engaged in an extended loop around the inner system to get back in the game—to two.
Why didn’t he feel more optimistic about those odds?
He settled back into his chair. His fingers drumming on the leather armrest.





Chapter 15
Admiral Sarven
Hellas System – HAS Behemoth
“I am showing two large capital-mass ships and multiple smaller contacts, probably destroyer-size, on an intercept course.”
Sarven stared at the holo-display, desperately seeking an opportunity to avoid the fight which thundered inevitably toward them.
Behemoth and Cerberus were charging out of the Hellas System at best acceleration, headed straight toward the Tantalus jump vector. If they could get to that system, they stood a chance of taking advantage of the time between when they transited and the enemy did to sneak away. As soon as they were through the hyper boundary, they could cut thrust, go dark on a vector of their choosing. And the Kingdom would have no clue which way they were headed. From whichever system they picked as their destination from Tantalus, they could cut back into the Corridor and resume the mission they’d been sent all this way for.
But, at the acceleration and vector the enemy were coming in on, Behemoth and Cerberus would be intercepted well short of the Karnov Boundary. The Kingdom ships had cut sharply behind his position and, if they put in a hard burn to wrestle their vector around, then they would be able to keep the engagement window open for the best part of an hour before the two groups of ships shot off in different directions. Try as he might, Sarven could find no way to avoid a fight, or even reduce that window by a significant amount if the Kingdom ships wanted to keep it open.
And that, from her expression, was very much to Captain Lasik’s liking.
She stood at his shoulder, her wolfish smile signaling her utter confidence in her ship and crew. And that was, Sarven conceded, not entirely misplaced. Behemoth was the most modern warship in the Arcadian Sector. His guns and sensors were the most powerful, and all that placed on a heavily armored spaceframe which could out-accelerate and take a heavier beating than his peers in the vaunted Kingdom Navy. Yes, there was no ship he would rather be in when faced with a fight—the issue was his orders weren’t to fight. They were to hunt, and therein lay the difference. He thought back to the wording given by the Prime, seeking any wiggle room.
The objective of the Behemoth is not to defeat enemies of equal strength, but to tie them down in a delaying action while preserving his combat capacity as much as possible.
Sarven shook his head as his mind raced. They weren’t here to engage in the battles of yesteryear. The Astral simply didn’t have the vessels to accept the kind of losses that would entail. They were so far behind the Kingdom in the number of hulls, especially of capital ships, that the loss of even one would be critical for Astral operations. He had to think about the war. About strategy. Not just about each individual battle. That was, after all, what admirals were paid for.
But Lasik’s drive was different. Her job was to consider the tactical situation. Could she beat, or at least fend off what was in front of her? His was to consider the wider implications. What state would they be in following a fight with those vessels? Would they remain combat effective? Whichever way he cut it, against two probable battleships and their destroyer escorts, it was unlikely to be good even if they won. And that put the overall mission at risk.
In some ways, though, the simple law of physics and the constraints of astrography had simplified things immensely for him.
They were going to fight. And there was not much he could do about that. But he did have a choice. He could keep the engagement window relatively short and sharp. The two forces’ vectors would steadily converge, and then—assuming he didn’t cooperate with the Kingdom’s plan for battle and match them—diverge over long minutes before they crept out of range of each other.
So now, it became a question of surviving that short engagement window, and in a good-enough state to continue their mission, which—as much as Lasik may have wished it—wasn’t about going toe-to-toe with the Kingdom’s heavy fleet units for longer than they had to.
“Captain,” he said finally, gesturing at the two menacing icons on the holo. “It seems the decision’s out of our hands. We’re going to fight. I want us to get out of this in a condition where we can still execute Operation River.”
“Admiral.” She bobbed her head in faux deference. She’d undoubtedly done the same calculations as him. She knew battle was coming, and that was why she was so happy. “It would be an honor to test Behemoth against some real opponents.”
Sarven clasped his hands behind his back and gave a thin smile as he shook his head. “The eagerness of the young. Captain, your enthusiasm is to be admired, but glory in battle is not our objective out here in the Reach. We are here to win the war. And that means strangling the Kingdom’s supply lines. Remember that.”
“Of course.” The predatory grin she continued to wear on her face didn’t reassure him, in the slightest, that she gave a single damn about strategy.
***
Spartan and Knight’s vector plot continued to arc around as they frantically fled from the huge battleship and her consort racing out of the system on huge plumes of fire. Neither cruiser was going to be back in time for this fight. And their medium pulse guns would be sorely missed in helping to keep Cerberus tied up, at the very least. As for the destroyers? As brave and feisty as Admiral Roe’s ships were, they’d be butchered in any kind of big gun fight.
Cutter felt a tickle of butterflies in his stomach as the two enemy contacts continued accelerating hard.
Cronus and Achilles swept across the system at breakneck speeds, on a course which would intersect their enemies. Whoever was in charge over there had clearly decided they weren’t going to stick around for a protracted fight, or else they would have come to a heading which would invite it, but they must have known that the two forces clashing was inevitable.
The question was, what was their intention? To simply let that happen and hope they could barrel through the engagement without taking too much damage?
Or did they have some trick up their sleeves to actually win even the short battle which both sides knew must come?
That unknown...that was what worried Cutter. And the one thing he’d learned about the Galts was that they were cunning bastards who didn’t give a crap about consideration toward fairness or tradition. They just cared about winning.
***
“Sir.” The operations officer marched up to where Sarven stood contemplating the display and gave a salute, his fist beating against his battlesuit-clad chest. “The intel cell has completed a preliminary analysis on the incoming contacts. We believe we know who, and what, is approaching.”
Sarven turned, taking in the young lieutenant. The man — a boy really — appeared utterly composed, only the faintest glisten of perspiration on his brow showing the stress he was under. Good lad. “What do we have?”
“Sir, the drive plume, acceleration, and suspected mass of bogey A suggests that it is a Kingdom Vengeance-class. Cross-referencing what we know about the last-known disposition of their heavy units, I would suggest this is Ajax or Achilles returning from their operations against Republic forces in the Ishtar system.”
Sarven pursed his lips and gave a terse nod. A Vengeance-class was a damn fine unit. Although sacrificing some heavy ship pulse cannons for anti-aerospace capability, she would still be very capable in a fight, and a tough nut to crack. “And bogey B?”
“That one was much easier to designate. We’ve been recording her drive emissions for the best part of twenty years. That, sir”—the ops officer gestured at the two blinking icons on the holo with an eager smile—“is Cronus.”
No wonder the boy had a smile. Sarven turned to his captain. She glanced down at him from the command podium and he waved her down. He ignored the flash of annoyance on her face as she marched toward him. “Captain, we have a Vengeance-class here.”
“A tough ship.” She pursed her lips and nodded. “And the other?”
“Cronus.”
She darted a glance between the operations officer and her admiral. He could see from the expression on her face that the same thoughts which crossed his mind had crossed hers. “Confidence level?”
“Seventy-five percent.”
“Thank you. Dismissed.” Sarven inclined his head at the young lieutenant, gesturing him to leave before turning to Lasik. The grin was back on her face, and had progressed from wolfish to full-on shark-like.
“So,” he said, “the Kingdom’s flagship is here.”
“And we’re not facing two battleships at all,” Lasik replied.
“No. We’re not.” Sarven folded his arms. This changed things. Significantly. They were still outmatched in raw firepower. But, in terms of ability to absorb damage? Nowhere near as badly as he’d first thought. “Let’s not get excited. She is still a powerful unit.”
“Yes, but she’s not a battleship. They’re bringing a knife to a gunfight.” Lasik shrugged. “Do they not remember the battle of Orchan?”
Yes, the Kingdom did seem to be somewhat reluctant to learn the lessons of the past. Battlecruisers traded armor for acceleration. They were built and deployed under the principle they had heavy enough guns to destroy anything smaller, and fast enough to escape anything bigger. They were sleek predators. They hunted for enemy ships. Often independently. For a captain, they were the ultimate command. Rarely tied to a line of battle—or at least they shouldn’t be. That was something the Kingdom had tried in the last Great War at the Battle of the Orchan Nebula, an event which should have taught every navy in the galaxy that you don’t bring battlecruisers into a battleship engagement. They had no place in the line of battle. They’d lost three of them there for their trouble.
Yet, here the Kingdom was again. About to make the same mistake.
Yes, the throw-weight in terms of firepower still lay with the Kingdom. But, suddenly the odds for Behemoth and Cerberus weren’t nearly as long.
“Sir,” Lasik said, cutting into his frantic calculations. “We have the opportunity to take out their flagship. We cannot let this slip by.”
Sarven ignored her, still contemplating the news of Cronus’s presence. The vector lines of the two forces crossed in an X-shape; the blinking icons signifying where the actual units were on those lines crept closer and closer to each other. It would not be long before they achieved range. And then, whatever he wanted was irrelevant. He would be committed and reacting.
A Vengeance-class would be a hard vessel to take down. Her armor was heavy. Hell, in their engagement window, they probably didn’t have the time to offer truly crippling damage to her.
But Cronus would be something else. Her much-lighter armor gave her an impressive amount of agility. But they weren’t bringing her into a fight where they would be able to use her acceleration advantage. Even Cerberus’s weaponry, which would do little more than scratch Achilles’s paintwork, would be able to cause damage to her.
And no matter the Prime’s orders, Lasik was right. This was a hell of an opportunity. And Cronus was bringing that opportunity to them on a silver platter.
Suddenly, a switch flicked in Sarven’s mind. The beginnings of a plan. His hope to somehow keep those ships as far from him as possible morphed into quite the opposite. How could he draw them in closer?
***
“Albright’s a fool,” Ashford murmured. The spheres surrounding Cronus and Achilles on the holo-display showed their weapons’ range. And it crept closer to their enemy.
Cutter glanced at her. Ordinarily, it would be proper to rebuke his executive officer for such a comment. The one thing burned into every Kingdom naval officer and spacer was that discipline must be maintained. That was how order was kept, far out in the distant reaches of the galaxy. Right now, though, he agreed with her whole-heartedly. He rested his chin on his clenched first, feeling his teeth grind as he watched the plot.
The two capital ships burned hard toward the intercept point, Cronus falling in ahead of his more heavily armored Achilles. Ahead of them were the two enemy contacts. Both were swathed in their electronic warfare shrouds, indistinguishable from each other as they cut their way across space ahead of them.
Yeah, he kind of got Albright’s point. A short, sharp engagement would give them the possibility of damaging or destroying the enemy before they reached the Karnov Boundary and fled from Hellas to Tantalus. It would take Cronus and Achilles hours to come around and actually match the jump vector to follow them, by which time Behemoth could have escaped or hidden in the comparatively denser system. But the point Ashford was alluding to was the same as the one he’d tried to make to the admiral. Albright should have at least let Achilles go in first and absorb any blows. Because, sure as Lost Earth was out there somewhere, Behemoth wasn’t going to just quietly cruise along accepting damage from them.
“Remind me,” he finally responded to Ashford, “that when I make the heady heights of admiral, to actually listen to my subordinates.”
“We should all live so long,” Ashford replied dryly.
Cutter gave a humorless snort before looking over at the sensor officer. “Anything yet?”
“No, Captain,” Banning answered. “I can’t distinguish between them at this time. Their EW shrouds are identical in emissions.”
“Keep working on it.”
Just one more damn thing making him nervous. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Behemoth’s engineers had probably begrudged getting an “off the shelf” EW suite of the same type which was mounted on Cerberus. And it was probably less effective than a bespoke one would have been. But right here and right now, it meant he had two ships which were giving off the exact same EW shroud. And Banning couldn’t tell the difference between the two. Not until they got much closer, at least, and optics could come into play.
The two pairs of ships drew closer. So close, it would happen any second.
The sphere depicting the extent of their weapons’ range kissed the two blinking icons fleeing the system.
“Sir,” Mister Haynes called, his voice calm in the way only a veteran’s could be. “Cronus is opening fire.”





Chapter 16
SFC Addington
Hellas System – KSS Cronus
“How are we looking?” Lieutenant Grosvenor called from her station in the center of the Armory.
Leading Spacer Addington and his crewmates were at the consoles tending their capacitors. The pair of huge throbbing cylinders towered above them, drawing power into themselves from the vast fusion power plant situated deep in the core of the ship, ready to be conveyed to the turrets atop the battlecruiser’s massive hull.
He always felt nervous around them, as if each of the monolithic structures would somehow be unable to contain the devastating energies within and cataclysmically burst, atomizing everything around them. The positive of that worrying situation was, he supposed, that at least he’d be dead literally before he knew it.
“Report, I said.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Addington focused his attention on his console. Damn, he had to keep his mind from wandering.
Despite the ominous feeling stemming from the building-sized capacitors, they were operating just as they were supposed to. All their readouts were showing they were within normal tolerances. The energy in and out flowed nice and smooth. “We’re looking nominal.”
“Good.” Grosvenor stared up at them. “Because we’re going—”
A siren-like noise rang through the chamber. Along with the rest of his crew, Addington reacted fast. He grabbed his battlesuit helmet from where he’d stowed it and pushed his head into its musty confines. He kept the visor open; he hated the claustrophobic feeling of it being closed.
The whine from the capacitor before him rose in volume. When it reached a volume an octave below deafening, he heard a deep throbbing boom coming from somewhere above. The capacitors reset, the noise disappearing, all their energy surging up into the turret far above his head.
Then the whine started again. Building to another crescendo.
Cronus had opened fire.
And this, Addington realized, was it. They were in combat. And they were fighting for their lives.
***
Cutter watched as the four mighty heavy pulse cannon turrets mounted on Cronus’s hull swung around, targeting her distant opponent, each twin-barreled emplacement capable of delivering massive amounts of firepower.
With a piercingly bright flash, they fired. The eight pulse rounds sped toward the leading vessel in the enemy formation, the one which—if the Hegemony Astral were following their standard formation doctrine—would be Behemoth.
“We now have range.” Haynes turned from the row of officers and enlisted who were his gunnery crew. The normally calm man let excitement thread through his voice. And with good reason, Cutter thought. No matter his misgivings, his ship was going into battle. Doing what she was designed for, and in the manner she was intended to do it. Fighting against another ship of the line. “Alpha and Bravo primary heavy turrets locked on trailing bandit.”
“Shot at your discretion,” Cutter said, fighting to keep his voice calm, firm, and authoritative, as it should be even in this situation. The time for debate was over. Albright had given her orders. And he was to follow them. “On the rear target.”
“Aye aye.” Haynes turned back to his crews and barked, “Shot.”
A series of deep echoing thuds reverberated through the hull, each of Achilles’s forward mounted turrets firing rounds which could reduce an entire city to a smoking crater.
The holo-display showed a ripple of eight dots joining those Cronus had fired. They streaked through the intervening space between the two pairs of ships.
Then, they sailed harmlessly past Behemoth and Cerberus, out into the darkness.
“Clean misses,” Haynes snapped. “Rerunning firing solution.”
Damn it! Cutter felt his lips twist in a snarl. To be expected, though. They were on the outer edge of their effective combat range, although due to the speed of their relative rate of closure, that wouldn’t be the case for long. Achilles was following Cronus in at high velocity. Each shot would be increasingly more accurate.
“Keep the shots coming, Mister Haynes,” Cutter called. “At your best cyclical rate.”
Another ripple of fire erupted from Achilles’s cannons.
Cutter watched the lights streaking through space. Even before they crossed halfway, another volley joined them.
From Cronus, an equally heavy weight of fire slashed out. Horrendous amounts of firepower surged toward the enemy ships.
It was a relentless barrage of sheer energy headed straight toward their targets.
But there was a gaping absence in the situation. Something which bothered the hell out of Cutter.
Why the hell aren’t they firing back?
***
The bolts of devastating energy from Cronus surged past Cerberus. So close that had she actually been the much larger Behemoth, she would have been struck. Another volley, this one from the Vengeance-class, sailed by his ship.
The enemy are splitting their fire.
“Sir?” Lasik swung her chair around and stared at Sarven intensely. “Permission to return fire?”
Sarven leaned back in his chair, watching the two enemy vessels streak in closer. Their intention obvious, to cross the “T” astern of his ships. A maneuver where they could get all of their turrets targeting him. Yet, if Behemoth were to respond and turn to present his own broadsides, then the Kingdom ships would be able to position in response. They would be dictating the battlespace.
His rapidly thought-through plan was to accept the enemy’s maneuver without contesting it, or even firing back. If they scored a hit on Cronus now, and it was bad enough for them to reconsider their attack, she could use her superior acceleration to wrestle her course away from them and pull out of range, an option which was fully available to the Kingdom ships. Yes, that would still be a win, forcing them to withdraw. But there might be a bigger win to be had here.
If they waited just a little longer, then the Kingdom ships would be committed to the engagement window. There would be no escape for the battlecruiser, no matter how hard her engines could accelerate.
Yes, the Kingdom ships may have forced him into this fight, but now he was here. He’d be damned if he was going to lose.
And if one of the scalps could be Cronus herself? All the better.
“Negative, Captain,” he replied calmly. “Hold your fire, and hold your nerve.”
***
Lieutenant Commander Banning frowned hard at the complex schematics on her console.
“Commander,” Commander Ashford called from the podium. “You look troubled.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She glanced up before resuming concentrating on the screen. “Both Cerberus and Behemoth are using the same EW shroud, meaning we can only make an assumption about which is which. But I’m starting to get some resolution on the drive plume. The ship to the rear is definitely wider and running a little hotter.”
“Go on?”
“It’s like it’s trying to drive a bigger ship, but they’re deliberately throttling it to try to match the smaller plume as much as possible.”
That could mean only one thing. 
“You think he’s Behemoth.” Cutter turned to look at her. With the uncertainty the EW shrouds had cloaked the enemy in, Cronus had taken a punt and attacked the lead target, while Achilles had taken on the rear. But, if what Banning was saying was correct, then Achilles’s target was the correct one while Cronus was firing at the small fry. Well, relatively small fry. “How sure are you?”
“Maybe...sixty percent?”
“Balance of probabilities, then. That’s good enough for me. Signal Cronus Actual. Tell them we think they’re attacking the wrong target and tell her to get her fire adjusted,” Cutter called sharply, then remembered himself, and whom he was telling her to address. Albright wouldn’t take “delegating upwards” kindly. “Politely but firmly, of course.”
“Sir,” Banning replied.
“And keep our guns firing.”
Thumps echoed through the hull as the heavy pulse cannons fired again and again, the huge capacitors draining at a prodigious rate.
On the holo, eight blinking dots of a volley reached for the trailing ship. Behemoth, he was damn sure now. They intersected with the ship. And then seven dots continued past, sailing into space beyond.
“We have a confirmed impact,” Haynes shouted, his tone not quite bordering on victorious, but not far off. “Still awaiting damage estimates.”
“First blood, Hannah.” Cutter pumped his fist as cheers erupted through the bridge. “Good work, Mister Haynes. Now do it again.”
Another ripple of thuds washed through the ship.
***
The pulse round slammed into Behemoth’s pinnace bay. The small hanger was a heavily armored box, inset in the side of the vessel. The explosion filled the unoccupied space, vaporizing the jump-capable small craft within, but the majority of the damage was contained by thick bulkheads designed to ward off a crashing shuttle.
Still, the huge vessel shuddered under the blow.
Sarven watched the deluge of incoming fire wash toward them.
“Sir?” Lasik asked...no, implored, the question in her tone obvious. She wanted permission to return the favor. There was no pleasing the bloody Neo. She’d practically begged for a fight, and now he was giving her one. But she wanted it on her terms.
“Hold fire!” Sarven snapped as he watched the plot intently, numbers showing vector, range, and acceleration potential cascaded next to the icon denoting their enemy. Sarven’s practiced eye interpreted them, factoring them into his plan. A little further, and Cronus would be utterly committed. She’d be unable to arc away, or at least not until she’d been under fire.
“But”—he held up a hand to keep her attention— “make sure your gunners work up the firmest firing solutions they can. I want no misses when we do fire this time.”
The four turrets—named Anton, Bruno, Caiser, and Dora—rotated ponderously to aim at their distant, but rapidly closing enemy.
A volley of rounds streaked toward them and the huge ship bucked again. The damage status display taking up one entire wall flashed red near the bow. The image rotated, showing the brutal hit had smashed clean through the prow of the vessel and out the other side. Fortunately, the reason that area wasn’t heavily armored was simply that it wasn’t critical. The damage was minimal. The effect on combat efficacy negligible.
Sarven stared intently at the plot, the numbers creeping closer to what he wanted. Just a little closer. 
***
Cronus and Achilles raced through space, angling themselves to come near broadside to the pair of enemy ships even as their momentum carried them past the stern of the enemy.
Volley after volley reached for the placid enemy ships.
An explosion blossomed amid Behemoth’s array of massive engines. The engine plume spluttered briefly before reigniting, just as powerfully as before.
***
Gaddish felt the air tear him from his feet, sweeping him down the corridor. Toward, presumably, where they’d been holed. He frantically grabbed for a rail, a hatch sill, anything to arrest his motion. Just as suddenly, down the corridor, a thick blast door slammed shut. Cutting them off from the damaged spaces.
“What the fuck?” Loctz bellowed as he flopped to the deck.
“We took a hit.” Gaddish panted, letting his heart rate settle back down.
“You think?” Loctz panted as he climbed to his feet. “Come on, we need to see what that’s done to the electrics.”
Shaking his head, Gaddish picked himself up. They formed part of the ship’s damage control crew. And that meant, when in combat, they had the inglorious job of hanging around until they were told to go fix something.
But he still hadn’t heard the sound of their own weapons firing. Father Terra, they were so big he would have felt those huge guns being unleashed. The fucking captain needs to fucking fight back. 
Or they were all going to die out here in the Reach.
***
The round had slammed into the stern, a lucky shot in the small weak points near the engine nacelles. It had burrowed through the dispersion armor there, slicing through the complex charge lines and pipework conveying fuel from the tanks deep in the core of the ship over to the engines.
A window opened on the damage control board, showing the exterior of the ship. An engineer, undoubtedly trying to divine what harm she was looking at, poured intently over the image. Sarven gave a hiss as he saw a geyser of crystals erupting from the side of the vessel.
“Permission to open fire?” This time, it was not the captain, but a young gunnery officer.
Sarven turned to him, a sharp retort ready. “Lieutenant, I—”
“I’m not letting my ship get shot out from under my arse. Maneuver to present broadside,” Lasik interrupted angrily as she afforded Sarven a glare. It was moving out of his direct control now. If Lasik thought the ship was threatened, she was in her rights to fight it as she wished without fear of repercussions from the admiralty. Legally, anyway. Admirals may be in charge of fleet actions, but this was very soon going to turn into a dogfight. And that was a captain’s jurisdiction. Besides, and more immediately, he’d watched Cronus creep into close-quarters battle range. He’d restrained her for long enough that his plan would succeed. Now, he just needed to unleash her...and Behemoth, of course.
It was time. He nodded.
“Drop shroud, synch with Cerberus, and open fire all turrets!” Lasik roared without delay.
Behemoth’s eight cannons arranged in four turrets of two apiece locked onto Cronus, matched by the eight medium pulse cannons mounted on Cerberus.
As one, they fired. The capacitors transferred massive amounts of energy into the cannon turrets. Then, a deep echoing thumping noise resonated through the ship.
The sixteen streaks of devastatingly powerful energy reached toward the enemy flagship, converging on the pride of the Kingdom fleet.





Chapter 17
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
Cutter watched the searing rounds closing on Cronus, the sense of dread growing in his stomach inversely proportionate to their range from the flagship.
Then relief washed through him as they missed. Barely.
They sliced past Cronus’s flank so close, they must have singed black streaks into the flagship’s paintwork.
Cronus curved up at the tip of a plume of fusion fire, her engines burning hard in an effort to evade the next salvos already coming her way. Dull realization filled him. This was what Behemoth intended from the outset. To sucker them into close range and then smash the battlecruiser to pieces.
Why the hell hadn’t Albright listened to him?
“Mister Haynes,” Cutter called out. “I’m going to need our next shots dead on.”
“Aye, sir.” Mister Haynes marched back and forth behind his gunnery officers, bellowing commands to them.
“Lost Earth, that fire was damn close for their fir—” Ashford began.
Cutter locked his eyes on the holo, watching in horror as another volley of heavy and medium pulse rounds slammed into Cronus’s hide.
A battery of light anti-aerospace pulse guns was replaced by blooms of fire as one explosion after another tore through her flank. Secondary detonations sparkled like daisy chains of firecrackers all around the wounds. A savage reminder that Cronus didn’t carry nearly the thick armor or dispersion shields of a battleship.
“Come on, Albright, get the hell out of there,” Cutter muttered, then gripped his seat as Achilles’s cannons fired, sending another series of thuds resounding through his vessel.
The rounds sliced through space. Achilles’s fanned out wide, sweeping past their target. Another volley from Behemoth slammed into the base of Cronus’s sensor-array tower. Lightning webbed over her hull as her dispersion shields desperately sought to dissipate the energy.
And failed.
The battlecruiser streamed tumbling debris and billowing gasses from her wounds even as she twisted in space, presenting her full broadside to the enemy. Cronus’s cannons swung and locked again on her target. The muzzles flared, sending more rounds toward her adversary.
“Come on, Albright,” he repeated, like a mantra. This was going wrong. Fast. The damage the flagship had sustained in even this short exchange was horrific.
A single round from Behemoth speared into the wounded ship dead center before she could fire another volley. It slammed through the light armor, leaving a crackling, flaming entry wound and cut deep into the core of the vessel.
Cutter leaned forward in his seat. Lost Earth, that looked like one hell of a gut shot. The round had disappeared into the midst of the ship. He looked at Banning. She shook her head even as she pressed her earpiece tightly to the side of her head. He knew she’d be desperately trying to get what information she could from Cronus’s telemetry.
The flagship soared on. Her cannons silent, but the ship holding together.
Maybe it didn’t hit anything vital?
It still didn’t change things, not for Achilles. They had to keep attacking. Her cannons fired. Thumping noises echoed through the bridge.
“Sir, I have a malfunction on Alpha turret,” Haynes shouted, the frustration in his voice obvious. “Power transfer is down. Turret out.”
Lost Earth. The fucking shakedown problems biting us in the ass again. “Very well. Priority repair and keep all others firing.”
He turned his attention back to Cronus. She looked to be off kilter, as if her attitude control was out. She tumbled onto her side, streaming gasses and debris from her wounds.
Come on, Albright. We’re going to need to fight our way out of this mess you got us into. 
“Raise Cronus.”
“Sir,” Banning cried back. “I’m getting no datalinks to her at—”
A geyser of pure unrestrained plasma erupted furiously from the flank of the ship, her fusion reactor breaching catastrophically. For long moments, a furious blowtorch as hot as a sun spewed out from the core of the Kingdom’s flagship.
***
The whole ship shuddered and shifted under Addington’s feet, knocking him to the deck. He looked up at the towering capacitors in raw panic as crackling lightning coursed over them. A klaxon whooped. The one he never thought he would hear outside of drills.
The capacitors were failing. Cataclysmically.
“Evacuate!” Lieutenant Grosvenor hauled him up by his battlesuit. “Come on, spacer. Let’s move. Everyone out. Now. Now. Now!”
The Armory was deep in the core of Cronus, under the Bravo turret. A hundred meters from the exterior of the ship. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have options. The escape capsules were in the base of long shafts stretching out to the hull.
Grosvenor sprinted for the closest, Addington close behind her. Crackling lightning reached out, swatting a spacer ahead of them, screaming, clear off the walkway. He ducked reflexively, his hand warding off the raging power tearing through the chamber, for all the good it would do him if that raw energy hit him.
“Faster,” Grosvenor screamed. The woman reached the hatch leading to the escape pod bay and stood to one side, frantically waving through her crew. “Come on.”
He glanced back as an explosion tore out of the capacitor, sending a blizzard of white-hot ceramic through the chamber. With a groaning creek, the capacitor fell from its supports. The building-sized structure dropped between the gantries, crashing to the deck far below. Raw heat washed out of the massive structures, at such a temperature he could feel it through his battlesuit insulation.
Addington charged through the hatch behind two other spacers, passing his lieutenant. He turned to haul her through just as a wall of fire swept along the walkway, incinerating everything in its path. He ducked behind the hatch frame watching as blowtorch-hot flame surged through.
The lieutenant. She’s still out there.
He turned, trying to see over the rim back through the hatch. He cried out, the heat too fierce to even get a look.
“No!” She was gone. The lieutenant was gone. There was no way she could be alive out there.
Not her. Not one of the good ones. One of the kind ones. He felt a weakness in his knees, as if he wanted to slump to the deck. As if he wanted to just give up. To surrender to the horror and devastation all around him.
No. That wasn’t what she would have wanted. The thought raced through his mind. She would have wanted him to get out, with whomever he could take.
With a trembling hand, he reached up and slapped the hatch control. It slammed shut, cutting off the fire. Two other scared spacers, out of the dozen who had been in the Armory, had made it to the small red-lit escape pod bay.
A deafening boom echoed through the ship, yet it didn’t feel close. And that could only mean it was like this all over the flagship. A maelstrom of fire, death, and destruction. Good Kingdom spacers must be dying everywhere.
They had to move. Picking himself up, he raced through an already open hatch into one of the escape pods and took a seat in the small cylinder. The other spacers piled in and sat in their own seats, facing inward on the small craft.
“Are we it?” One of them, a woman, Sanchez, he thought she was, uttered even as they tugged their harnesses on.
In response, Addington slapped the launch button. The heavy capsule hatch sealed, the sounds of destruction outside reducing instantly in volume to a muffled roar.
He immediately felt himself being slammed back into the seat. Through the small window, the lights running up the shaft accelerated past in a blur. A few seconds later, the pod exploded out into space.
The tiny spacecraft tumbled and rotated. Through the tiny porthole opposite him, he saw a flickering montage of the flagship of the Kingdom Fleet.
“Lost Earth,” he breathed at the destruction he witnessed. Gaping wounds, the edges blackened by heat. Decks, cabins, and spaces exposed to the void. Clouds of debris and bodies billowing out from them.
Then explosions wracking through the ship. A geyser of plasma flame scorching out into space.
Cronus was eviscerated. The hull now nothing but a burning corpse. One which he couldn’t believe that he’d escaped from.
The tiny craft orientated itself and fired its engines again. The stricken battlecruiser disappeared as the pod, under autopilot, sought to escape the death throes of its mothership.





Chapter 18
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
The bridge descended into silence as the officers and crew watched what was happening in muted horror. Cronus had suffered a mortal blow. The Hegemony had scored a perfect shot. A hole-in-one straight through the thin layers of ravaged armor, and into the fusion core of the ship. Unrestrained plasma fountained out of the hole like glorious fireworks. Glorious, that was, if it didn’t mean that nearly fifteen hundred people were dying.
The single blinking icon of an escape pod raced out into space on a plume of fire, its transponder sending a desperate cry for help.
Cutter couldn’t take his eyes off the flagship. There was no recovering from a hit like that. There was no containing that kind of fusion-core breach. It would go up any second—
Cronus exploded catastrophically. A huge blooming flower of fusion flame and debris.
“Lost Earth,” Ashford breathed.
Cutter recoiled in his seat at what he was watching. Cronus was gone. The very ship which signified the Kingdom’s naval power, destroyed with contemptuous ease in just a few volleys. Fourteen hundred and twenty-one men and women? Gone as well. Just like that. At the snap of Behemoth’s commanding officer’s fingers.
The noise of the collision alarm whooped through the bridge. The holo rapidly re-populated with the changing tactical picture. Achilles’s trajectory ladder stretched into the roiling burning maelstrom of destruction which had once been Cronus. And no amount of dispersion shielding or armor would save them from that.
“Mister Singh,” Cutter bellowed to the helmsman as the first hammer blows of debris striking Achilles’s armor resonated through the ship. “Evasive action. At your best discretion. Just get us the hell out of here.”
***
Sarven stood as the chatter on the bridge disappeared. It was as if a switch had been flicked. A shocked silence had replaced the normal bustle of the chamber. The crews’ disbelieving eyes were locked on the expanding cloud of plasma and debris which had once been the pride of the Kingdom’s fleet.
Then, as one, a cheer erupted through the bridge. Officers and crew clapped each other on the back. Even embraced. As if there was not another Father Terra-damned battleship out there with them in its sights.
“Stations!” he roared. Again, the switch was flicked. The crew looked at each other, then up at him sheepishly. He turned his attention back down to the holo.
Their remaining adversary, the battleship, was maneuvering in a desperate attempt to evade the devastation before it. The ship’s motion looked to be driven as much by reaction as intent, curved in even closer toward Behemoth. And further into their firing envelope.
“Captain,” he said, enunciating his words clearly and deliberately. “You know what to do.”
“All weapons. Target the Vengeance-class.” Lasik gave a predatory grin. “Fire!”
Thuds resonated through Behemoth’s hull as her cannons fired again. The gunnery crews operating with renewed eagerness now they’d tasted blood.
Volley after volley raced toward the evading enemy ship.
***
Seven heavy pulse rounds slammed into Achilles, one after another. Lightning coursed over her hull as the dispersion armor desperately sought to dissipate the massive amounts of energy striking the ship. And failed. When the crackling electricity faded, huge craters had been punched into the battleship’s physical armor.
Cutter’s harness automatically tightened, hauling him back into his seat as the whole ship bucked and heaved from the savage blows she was sustaining. Lost Earth, Achilles may have Battleship grade armor and shields, but the punishment Behemoth was giving out was savage and unrelenting. Sparks cascaded from damaged power lines. Consoles exploded as the raw energy channeled into the dispersion grid overloaded it.
“Mister Singh, I want a 180-degree longitudinal roll. Bring our undamaged flank to bear,” he shouted. “Immediate execute.”
He felt dizzy as the ship twisted, his inner ear at odds with the tortured artificial gravity and the obviously out-of-synch inertial dampers.
On the flickering holo, more heavy pulse rounds scythed closer. He gripped his armrest in anticipation of the impact.
The ship shuddered and bucked as she took more punishing hits.
“Sir,” Ashford shouted. “We’ve—”
That was all she managed.
A fireball rolled through the bridge, swatting officers and spacers aside indiscriminately. Cutter twisted down into his seat, flipping his battlesuit visor closed as a wall of flame reached for him. Sending his seat spinning on the command podium.
The blizzard of fire subsided.
Screams and moans of pain filled the bridge. Cutter looked up. He needed a status update and fast. Vents opened in the ceiling. Streamers of flame coursed into them, the ship automatically responding to the fires coursing through her by purging the affected sections’ atmosphere to space. All around, crew desperately slammed their own battlesuit visors down. Or did it for colleagues who were too injured to. A sick feeling filled his stomach, as if he were falling down a high-speed lift. The artificial gravity plates were completely fading.
Mister Haynes rose, flapping in mid-air like a flag, still gripping his console for a moment before plummeting to the rear of the bridge. The flickering, damaged, red battle station lights created a strange strobe effect, combined disconcertingly with the sensation of the gravity generators giving out and the atmosphere within the ship escaping. Every one of Cutter’s senses were thrown out.
Then the grav-gens came back online even as a curtain field activated, sealing the bridge. The crew pinned to the rear bulkhead slammed back to the deck. He watched as Haynes landed headfirst. And remained in a fetal position.
The lighting flickered back on but the holo-display was filled with crackled lines of distortion ripping through it, rendering it unreadable.
Lost Earth, they were blind. And there was still the enemy out there. Eviscerating them. The only difference between them and Cronus was at least they’d died quickly. Cutter was watching his ship being battered into submission.
“Commander Ashford, take gunnery,” Cutter cried out. He doubted Mister Haynes was going to be in a position to enact his orders after the body slamming he’d just taken. “I want us firing.”
The damage-control display came alive just long enough for him to see their main turrets flashing red.
All of them.
Their main batteries were off line.
“Commander Ashford?”
Where the hell was she? She hadn’t acknowledged him. He needed to know what they did have. Glanced over, his breath caught. She lay beneath her chair, blood pouring from rents in her battlesuit.
He fought the instinct to go to his XO even as his ship shuddered under more blows.
“Captain, I don’t think we’re going to be able to return fire,” Banning shouted. Damn, she was a good officer. She’d seen that Ashford hadn’t been able to respond and had taken it on herself to find the answers that he needed. “I’m showing primaries are down. Secondary batteries look online but—”
“They’ll do nothing against that damn ship,” Cutter finished her sentence. The holo-display flickered and resolved itself again. The pair of menacing ships hung in view. They were still traveling fast, their course slowly diverging again from Achilles’s.
Another volley, by Lost Earth’s own grace, flashed by without hitting.
His heart sank. They were out of the fight. With no heavy cannons, they may as well be throwing spitballs at the flank of the enemy ship. The secondaries just didn’t have the throw-weight to make this an even fight.
A sickening feeling filled his stomach. The Kingdom Navy didn’t retreat. It didn’t surrender. It didn’t lose. He knew he wasn’t one of the old guard, one of the arrogant ones like Albright but still, centuries of tradition weren’t forgotten in a moment.
But to stay, to fight? That would kill them all.
“Commander Banning,” he said, looking around the bridge. It was a devastated mess. “Back to your station. I need you to go to full EW shroud. Turn it up to eleven out of ten. Mister Singh, best speed and course to increase our divergence from those two ships. Gunners, hold your fire. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Aye aye.”
The EW shroud expanded, spoofing the enemies’ targeting but rendering their own targeting solutions near useless through the thick fields of static. Not that they had any big cannons to use on the enemy, anyway. The secondaries would do nothing more than aid Behemoth’s targeting solution as she sought them in the shroud.
Cutter felt himself being driven back into his seat. This time, the inertial compensators took long seconds to disperse the effects of acceleration from the thankfully intact engines. The huge ship angled away from the enemy battleship and heavy cruiser, seeking to escape.
***
“The Vengeance-class is breaking off, sir,” Lasik shouted.
Sarven nodded and allowed himself a smile. By any measure, this had been a resounding victory for the Hegemony Astral. A battlecruiser destroyed. And the flagship of the Kingdom Navy, no less. Another one of their battleships driven skulking away with her tail between her legs.
Heavy pulse rounds speared into the EW shroud which the enemy ship had cloaked itself in, her trajectory peeling her away from Behemoth and her consort. Behind her, a twinkling trail of gas and debris from the gaping wounds Behemoth’s cannons had opened in her flank. Even further back, the expanding ruins of the huge battlecruiser.
“Helm,” Lasik bellowed. “Give me a maneuvering solution to prolong the engagement window and pursue. I want a second kill.”
Sarven held his hand up. “Belay that.”
“Sir?”
He watched the battleship’s course begin to diverge, taking her further and further from their own. To come about would not be a simple matter; they’d have to wrestle their own vector back around to match the Kingdom ship, a process which would take hours at their current rate of divergence. Then, unless their prey chose to actually turn and engage them, they’d be forced in a long stern chase while Father Terra only knew how many Kingdom ships descended on the Hellas system.
No, they’d won here. Now was not the time to push their luck.
They needed to withdraw and reposition. And, of course, to take stock. To see what that hit had done to their engines. The preliminary damage report showed they were leaking fuel from somewhere. He needed to know if that could be staunched, and if what was left was enough to continue their original mission. The real reason they were out here in the Reach.
“No, Captain,” Sarven said, “Signal Cerberus. We are pushing on to Tantalus. Best acceleration.”
“But?” Lasik gestured at the holo in incredulity, the fuzzy, shimmering cloud hiding the enemy ship pulling further and further away. “We can take them.”
“Captain.” Her constant questioning of his orders was truly testing his patience. “Unlike Cronus, that is a battleship and as such, she can absorb much more damage. I am not going to waste fuel and time on picking away at her when we could be better employed on our original mission. Now, let us resume course to Tantalus.”
Lasik’s expression ran the gamut between disappointment and fury.
“Acknowledge my orders,” Sarven said in a clipped voice.
“Aye aye, sir,” Lasik growled through gritted teeth as she turned to give the orders to her helm. “Resume course to Tantalus.”





Chapter 19
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
The last volley of blue pulse rounds flashed past the retreating Achilles. They’d come close. Damn close. But, after long, tense minutes, their course had angled them out of range of Behemoth’s vicious cannons and to safety.
Cutter released his death grip on his armrests and looked around the somber bridge. The crew wore expressions ranging from shock to defeat. More than one of them had cuts and burns from the firestorm which had torn through the bridge. Their battlesuits a tattered mess.
And many were dead.
He looked at the stain where Ashford’s body had been. Her wounds from the sheet of flame which had raged through the bridge had left her face unrecognizable. Somehow, that was even worse. As if it wasn’t just her life which had been taken, but her essence, too. He lowered his eyes.
No. I can’t dwell or grieve. Not now. Not yet. 
The corpsmen had taken the injured and dead away, even as they’d fled from Behemoth’s brutal follow-up attacks. Thankfully, the enemy had chosen not to turn in pursuit, to keep the engagement window open for as long as they could. Why? He didn’t know. Maybe they’d hurt the ship more than they thought. Maybe it was just they wanted to continue their mission. It didn’t matter for the moment.
What did matter was getting the ship back into some kind of order. He glanced around the bridge at the crew. Each and every one had a maudlin expression on their faces. They’d been soundly defeated. Not even the loss of the King’s Challenge or the aerospace carrier, Falcon, over the previous months had resulted in so many dead in a single loss.
The pride of the Kingdom fleet was a slowly dissipating cloud of gas and debris. The only survivors, in a tiny escape pod currently being recovered by one of Roe’s destroyers which, even now, was swinging back around to pick them up.
But Achilles had her own problems and it was time to take stock. They’d been hit, and hit hard. The sheer power of Behemoth’s guns had been truly shocking and had rung the hull like it had been a bell.
Pursing his lips, he thought for a moment. Technically, Lieutenant Commander Haynes was the next unrestricted line officer in the chain of command to pick up Hannah’s job, but he needed someone on the damaged turrets who could get them back in order. And, frankly, he needed his best gunner on the job if... when... they went another round with Behemoth. Equally, the other senior line officers had their own jobs to do as well right now, ones he could ill afford to be neglected or relegated to juniors.
In the end, there was only one choice, one senior officer with the seniority, the skills, and the training to take on the role.
“Commander Banning.” He crooked his finger, gesturing her over. She stood from her chair and jogged up the stairs to the podium. “Eva, I’m going to need you to pick up some of Han— Commander Ashford’s jobs for me.”
“Understood, sir.” The young woman swallowed and nodded. “I mean, aye aye, sir.”
“You’ll do good,” Cutter said, gesturing at Ashford’s flame-scorched console. “Get yourself logged on to the coordination center. Weapons, propulsions, environmental, medical. The works.”
The woman gingerly stepped around the brown stain on the floor, sitting and then pulling the console in. She rapidly began tapping at it. Getting herself on-line even as he focused on charting their route, seeing where their headlong, and initially random, flight from Behemoth was taking them. And what they’d have to do to get back into business.
They were barreling out of the system, their course on a tangent to that of Behemoth’s. He rubbed his chin. The sheer scale of the disaster was overwhelming. Almost paralyzing. And he had over fifteen hundred crew looking to him for guidance and reassurance.
“Sir, I have initial top-level report.”
“Go on.” Cutter squeezed his eyes briefly closed. This was it. The scores on the doors, he thought bitterly.
“Thirteen dead. Nine wounded. Main turrets are showing malfunctions or damage, and currently inoperable. At least six secondaries gone and some more of the anti-aerospace turrets. Multiple hull breaches—”
“The list goes on.” Cutter sighed.
“Yes sir, the list goes on,” Ashford confirmed.
“Engines?” They didn’t look to have taken a hit, but there was a hell of a lot upstream of just the nozzles which could have affected them.
“That’s the good news.” Banning’s expression was still a dour contrast to her words. “We have full acceleration and burn.”
“Sensors?”
“Again, looks like they’re operable,” Banning said. “We can see what’s out there.”
“Good.” At least they had something. The holo may have been a flickering mess, but that looked more like a hardware problem on the shattered bridge. From what he could see on the fuzzy, crackling display, Behemoth had still chosen not to burn her engines to keep the engagement window open. It looked like he was content to let the distance open up and continue fleeing toward the Tantalus hyper vector. A small mercy, at least.
Now there was just the matter of deciding what they were going to do next. With Albright gone, the next in the chain of command in the flotilla was Admiral Roe, commander of the destroyer flotilla. A man Cutter had followed to hell and back during the horrendous Port Rorian recovery operation. He turned to Banning. “Get me Roe.”
A moment later, the admiral’s flickering visage appeared on the stuttering display. Even his normally belligerent demeanor looked to have been knocked out of him. His expression hovered somewhere between anger and sorrow.
It may have been a big navy but, in a lot of ways it was a small galaxy. They all knew someone who was—had been—on Cronus.
“Hal.” He shook his head. “This is a fine mess.”
“An understatement, sir.” Cutter nodded.
Roe gave a long sigh, looking down for a moment. Mustering his thoughts. The weight of command wasn’t something he would shrug off, but still, having it forced onto one’s shoulders so quickly would shock even the steeliest of commanders. “Can you fight?”
“Not yet.” Cutter shook his head. “Hopefully, we’ll have our main batteries back online in a few hours. But here and now, not a chance. And we have dead.”
“Understood, son.” Roe looked pensive for a long moment. Cutter glanced at the holo-display. Between the crackling distortions, he could just make out the two enemy ships at the Karnov Boundary. They’d be transiting to Tantalus within minutes.
And from there, they would be lost. The next time they’d be seen was when they pounced on an unsuspecting convoy. And more good spacers, and even civilians, would die.
They couldn’t allow that. That ship would butcher anything in its way. Like it had butchered Cronus.
“Sir, we can’t fight yet.” He couldn’t believe he was doing this. About to offer to leap into the fire again. “But we are still the closest units. If we lose Behemoth, we may not regain her before she happens on a target.”
Roe nodded in agreement, crossing his arms, a hint of his old fire in his face. “What do you propose?”
Cutter smiled, reassured. The mere fact he’d asked that question showed he was cut from a different cloth than Albright. As much as it pained him to speak ill of the dead, there was no doubt she’d played her hand badly. And that had killed a lot of people. “We have sensors and we can still track him. We follow at a safe distance and keep out of the engagement window and keep position and vector updates coming for when Ajax, Corvus, and the rest of the fleet arrive.”
“And let them help clean up this mess.” He gave another nod and looked out the holo at him. “Okay, just to make it official, I’m assuming command of the force as of 0632 hours standard.”
“Aye, sir.” Cutter flashed a glance at Banning. She tapped Ashford’s...at her console. “I acknowledge your lawful authority and it’s noted in our log.”
“We’ll come about and track him,” Roe said decisively. “But, as per your thoughts, we are not going to engage until we have heavy fire support.”
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Cutter gave a brief humorless chuckle. Roe was a tin can man, through and through. He thought destroyers were the answers to all of the Navy’s problems. “Not going to try to take her with your DESRON?”
“Not a bloody chance, Hal.” Roe returned a thin smile, or perhaps it was a grimace. “Not with what I just saw. This is going to be a fight for the big gun ships.”
“That it is, sir.” Cutter nodded. “That it is.”
“Right.” Roe gave a weary sigh. “I suppose someone needs to let Admiralty House know what just happened out here. I’m going to QE ’em and give them the news.”
“Sir.” Lost Earth, the admiralty was undoubtedly going to have some very searching questions. And quite rightly so. But here and now, with his deck still stained with blood, he wasn’t sure if he would be up for answering them without showing his frustrated rage.
“Roe, out.”
The admiral disappeared as Cutter leaned back.
What a disaster. 
What an absolute bloody disaster. 





Chapter 20
Admiral Darrow
New Avalon – The War Rooms
When Darrow had commed the prime minister’s PA, telling him he needed to speak to her urgently, he’d been told she was in an equally urgent meeting and unavailable. No amount of pleading and cajoling had convinced the obtuse bastard otherwise. Rather than waste any more time, he’d jumped in his car and drove the five minutes to the nondescript entrance of the underground, heavily armored War Rooms in person.
This was news which could not wait. No matter which officious idiot tried to get in his way.
“Sir.” The harassed, and very young-looking private, stood before the sturdy metal door, holding out his hand in a vain effort to ward off Admiral Darrow. His tone had an overture of pleading to it which said that he knew he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And, in a manner of speaking, he was. His lawful order, to act as security for the prime minster herself, to let no one in who wasn’t authorized, contesting with the fact it was the First Space Lord himself who was trying to get that unauthorized access. “I just can’t let you through without clearance.”
Darrow prowled toward the man and the entrance of the prime minister’s suite of rooms in the dour underground tunnels of the War Rooms, which now doubled as the symbolic seat of government for the Kingdom. He’d effectively been reduced to banging on the door, wanting to be let in like some kind of bloody street urchin.
“Son, I am the First Space Lord. Now, move out of the way or I will have you shot.” Darrow immediately wished he could take back the words on seeing the young man blanch. And even more so when he saw, on the man’s breast, the recently minted Badge of Rorian. This poor boy had already been through more than most people saw in a lifetime, having been plucked from the fires of that hellhole. Now he was being treated with disdain by his leaders. And for doing his sworn duty, no less.
“I can’t.” The private swallowed. He couldn’t have been much more than eighteen years old.
“Look, I have news of the gravest kind for the prime minister.” Darrow moderated his voice, letting it soften. He couldn’t apologize, that would just be unbecoming, but he hoped the private would be able to read between the lines. “It’s critical to the war effort.”
The private closed his eyes briefly, a single bead of sweat trickling down his face.
“Boy, you know how bad it is out there, don’t you?” Darrow let his eyes flick deliberately down to the badge on his chest. “Better than most, I’d warrant. This is just as bad. With the potential to get worse if we don’t act quickly.”
The private’s resistance crumbled. He nodded and stepped aside from the black door leading to the most powerful office in the Kingdom.
Darrow marched through the door, not even pausing to look at the obstructive personal assistant, already standing in protest in the prime minister’s antechamber. Darrow ignored the pompous idiot, not even giving the courtesy of looking his way. The damn REMF was probably drunk on his own power, granting access to the prime minister like she was his to bestow. Instead, Darrow walked straight through into the prime minister’s austere, steelcrete-clad wartime office.
Still, some efforts had been taken to make the place...hospitable. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with real books, some of which—if rumor was correct—had come from Lost Earth herself on the colony ships.
The prime minister sat at her imposing wooden desk. On the surface, tiny toy-sized figures were sitting around a glowing blue table. The prime minister was midway through a holo-conference. On seeing Darrow, she held up her hand, silencing the others.
“Admiral, I trust the reasons, for what was undoubtedly steamrolling your way past my guard and personal assistant, are extraordinarily good.”
“They weren’t being overly cooperative when I told them I needed to see you urgently.” Darrow flicked his eyes at the collection of figures. Some he recognized as captains of industry, others were heads of vast farming empires. A reminder that wars weren’t just fought on the battlefields. “I need to speak to you. In private.”
Latimer raised an eyebrow before turning back. “Ladies, gentlemen, I will be a few minutes.”
She tapped a button on her desk, and the figures disappeared. “Okay, what has you so worked up, Jonathan?”
“Madam,” Darrow said, then paused. Now he was here, he almost wished he didn’t have to deliver the news. He swallowed down what felt to be a full-sized apple lodged in his throat. “It’s Cronus.”
“What about her?” Lattimore asked, rotating in her chair and steepling her fingertips together. “Come on, man. Spit it out.”
“We lost her.”
“Please tell me you mean that literally,” Lattimore said. Not a trace of levity to her voice, despite her words. “And that you intend to find her in the last place you looked.”
“The Behemoth. She took down Cronus, and all hands...bar three who managed to get to a life pod.”
“Lost Earth.” Lattimore’s face drained of color as the full weight of Darrow’s words slammed into her. “How many?”
“Fourteen hundred and eighteen souls.” The number was horrendous. But the symbolism of losing Cronus herself? Just as bad. The latest, and worst in a series of military disasters which started with Asteria.
“And the ship which was with Cronus? Achilles, was it?” Lattimore swallowed. “What’s her status?”
“Intact, but she lost another thirteen in the fighting.”
“Tell me,” Lattimore said slowly, her voice going from shocked to dangerous. “That Achilles returned the favor and destroyed that bastard ship.”
“No, ma’am.” Darrow shook his head. “She was forced to break engagement and withdraw.”
“Break engagement and withdraw?” Lattimore’s voice grew low and dark as she repeated his words. That was just the most telling sign of her displeasure. The fact she hadn’t even offered him a seat was a testament to her agitation. “And, why on Lost Earth did they not press the engagement? Their orders were to destroy that fucking ship.”
“Ma’am, they took heavy fire,” Darrow said, forcing his voice to hold a placatory calm. “They look a lot of damage. Their bridge was hit hard.”
“Those bloody Vengeance-class are the most powerful units we have. One of the most powerful in space, I’d wager. And rather than use it, they bloody withdrew?” Lattimore’s voice rose in pitch and volume with each word.
“Ma’am—”
“Who the hell is in command of Achilles?” Lattimore’s face grew red in direct proportion to her rage. “Hal Cutter, still?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Darrow said warily. He was about to get the full force of one of Lattimore’s legendary rants. “He did—”
“He’s a fucking coward!” Lattimore shouted. Darrow rocked back on his haunches before her explosive wrath. She’d always been prone to tantrums, sudden surges of rage, but this was shaping up to be the worst he’d ever witnessed. She suddenly stood, knocking her chair over, and began pacing back and forth, her trembling hands clenching and unclenching in sheer fury. “We have the greatest navy in the galaxy and he ran from a fight?”
“Behemoth had hit them hard.”
“Hard?” she spat. “Then why the fuck didn’t he hit back harder?”
“Madam—”
“I want him court-martialed when he comes back. Dereliction of duty, no...” She turned toward Darrow and prowled around the desk to him, a trembling pointed finger an inch away from his nose. “Treason. I want him shot. You hear me? Shot. We do not back off. We—”
“Madam!” Darrow’s voice was just below shouting back at the prime minister. Her eyes snapped to his, her glare locking on him. Did she think he wasn’t angry and in mourning for his friends and colleagues aboard Cronus? Well, he was. But you didn’t see him losing it. And now wasn’t the time to play the nine-o’clock jury. Not while good men and women were fighting for their lives out in the Reach. Something in his expression must have cut through Lattimore’s wrath. The rage on her face didn’t quite dissipate, but the red faded slightly from her cheeks.
“I want him court-martialed, at the least,” Lattimore growled, but without the feeling of a moment before.
“Madam,” Darrow repeated, letting his tone soften. “Hal did the right thing. Achilles had taken a beating. If he hadn’t backed down, then we would have lost her, too. There would be twice as many dead.”
“Someone needs to pay, Jonathan,” Lattimore said, her voice more matter-of-fact. Her tantrums tended to be legendary in their wrath but burnt out quickly. Some had even suggested she suffered from bi-polar disorder. If she did, Darrow had never heard anything of it but rumor. But now, if Darrow knew his prime minister at all, she was moving into the calculating phase. The trait which made her such a coldly effective wartime leader. “Parliament will demand it. And for good—”
“Let me be clear.” Darrow had never interrupted the former First Space Lady, and now prime minister, before. It wasn’t something he considered conducive to his career, but they needed to cut to business. And he only had one card to play. “If you court-martial Captain Cutter, my resignation will be on your desk.”
Lattimore rocked back on her heels. For a long, worrying moment, he wondered if she would take that deal. Then she shook her head, turned, and picked up her chair. Righting it, she lowered herself into it, and placed her hands on her desk. Composing herself. Ten long seconds must have ticked by before she looked up. “The loss of Cronus, Jonathan. It cannot go unanswered. Whatever it takes, Behemoth must be destroyed. And immediately.”
Darrow nodded. “I understand and agree completely.”
Taking a deep breath, Lattimore closed her eyes for a moment. Then they flashed open. Darrow could see the leader he knew and respected was back, the furious demon of moments ago exorcised. The “Black Dog” as she’d been known to apologetically call it to confidantes who had fled before her wrath. She gestured at the seat opposite her and Darrow took it. “What units do we have in the area to support Achilles?”
“The battleship Ajax and the Carrier Corvus are racing to re-join Achilles. I have already sent flash traffic for Orestes to be released from her zonal defense position and make best speed to the area.”
“Jonathan, it’s not often I’m going to give you a completely blank check, but you have one now. If you have anything else squirreled down the back of the sofa, dispatch it, too.”
Darrow puffed out his cheeks as he weighed up what he had available. He could, perhaps should, strip out the home fleet. But the payoff would be leaving the home systems vulnerable. No, as much as he wanted Behemoth dead, he had to face the possibility this was nothing more than an elaborate distraction.
“I think I can spare one more battleship from the home fleet while still being able to mount something close to an effective defense. I’m thinking Odysseus and her flotilla.”
“Do it. I’ll talk to Lady Miles about stepping up her aerospace defense patrols to fill the gap the fleet’s absence will leave.”
“That would be...helpful,” Darrow concurred. As reluctant as he was to pull his heavy units away, at least the Aerospace Forces would, or at least should, step up their game—as grueling as that may prove to be for the already thinly stretched pilots and support crews. “They’ll get him, madam. They’ll get the Behemoth.”
“No, Jonathan.” Lattimore stared him in the eye with fierce intensity. “You’ll get him. I want you out there, in the Reach. You have four capital ships, a carrier, and Lost Earth only knows how many escorts. That’s a good chunk of your bloody fleet in one place. You will take personal ownership of this and you’re not to come back until Behemoth is nothing but wreckage. Am I understood?”
Darrow gave a thin smile. “I’ll be on a fast dispatch within the hour, madam.”
“Good.” Lattimore gave a long sigh, the energy expenditure of her rage making her laconic. “May Lost Earth guide you home.”
“And you, madam.” Snapping sharply to attention, he gave a salute before turning on his heel to leave.





Chapter 21
Captain Cutter
Hellas System – KSS Achilles
With a pair of flashes and the scattering of exotic particles, the two distant icons symbolizing Behemoth and her consort disappeared.
“Vector confirmed.” Banning’s bruised face looked up toward the command podium. Now the swelling to her face had come out, and it looked as if she’d gone three rounds with a prizefighter in the seedier side of Victory’s docklands. “They’ve made the jump to Tantalus.”
Cutter nodded. His eyes kept wandering to the stain on the command podium. He shook his head. His executive officer. His friend, or the closest thing a captain had on a ship, was gone. He wanted to mourn. To shut himself away and grieve.
He took a deep breath. Except, he didn’t have that luxury. Over fifteen hundred men and women depended on him keeping his shit together. And that was just those here, aboard his ship. If he wasn’t at one hundred percent, uncounted more spacers could fall prey to their enemy if they escaped and resumed their mission.
The air of the bridge still stank of a cloying cocktail of ozone, smoke, and the metallic twang of blood. The damage had been brutal, but at least the intermittent surges and cutouts afflicting the artificial gravity plating had settled. It was disconcerting how badly that affected him. It gave the sensation of being on a roller coaster, even when still. The inner ear at odds with what he was seeing. The hits the ship had sustained had been devastating, even for a battleship’s thick hide. But, the damage itself hadn’t been show stopping. The crew had worked desperately to get everything they could up and running.
And they’d succeeded magnificently.
Achilles was looping around, striving to get back on the vector to pursue Behemoth into the Tantalus System while on the interstellar display, a collection of icons showed that Ajax, Corvus, and a small collection of other vessels crept through the Fenix System. They had adjusted course, taking the corner off and making for the Tantalus System at maximum burn to intercept.
And QE flash traffic from the admiralty had informed him that even more ships were on the way led by the battleships Odysseus and Orestes.
Along with Admiral Darrow himself.
The old man was coming to take personal ownership of the hunt. He couldn’t recall last time a First Space Lord or Lady had gone into combat so directly. Their rank had pushed them well beyond having to get their hands dirty—directly, at least. Operational command was far beyond them. Their battlefields lay in the halls of power, plotting grand strategy and scrounging for money and hulls from a recalcitrant government.
It was reassuring, he supposed, that at least this time, the top brass were willing to place themselves in harm’s way along with everyone else. For them not to do so had been a gripe for the lower echelons for as long as there had been a military. It had been the same since the settlement of this sector by the colony ships of Lost Earth. Hell, it probably had been the same on the homeworld of humanity itself in the days of spear-throwing cavemen.
“Shall I signal a halt to Group Cro— Group Achilles, Captain?” Banning, like the rest of the crew, had been subdued since the battle. Everyone had been introspective as Achilles curved her vector around. Thinking, undoubtedly, of lost friends. And just how close they’d been to joining them.
They could follow Behemoth within four hours into Tantalus. The rest of the hunter-killer squadron that had been pulled together was scattered into three distinct flotillas. The one small plus point was they could potentially still get support from Corvus’s jump-capable fighters.
A churning sensation of raw fear filled his guts at the thought of going up against Behemoth again. The temptation to let one of the other flotillas take the lead, going against the enemy, was near irresistible. But waiting—delaying—could cost them the hunt. Behemoth could have been halfway toward another jump vector in that time, or gone to ground somewhere in the relatively dense—for the Reach anyway—Tantalus System and never be found.
No, they had to follow. And sooner, rather than later.
“Negative, Commander,” Cutter replied, swallowing down his fear. Doing his damn best to portray the visage of a calm and collected warrior. “Get us onto the Tantalus vector PDQ. I want us snapping at his heels.”
“I don’t think we’re in much of a position to snap, sir,” Banning started, as if she’d spoken out of turn. And in a manner of speaking, she had.
Cutter squeezed his eyes closed for a second. That would have been exactly what Hannah would have said.
It was no bad thing. Not at all.
“Barking then, Commander.” He gave a slight smile.
“Aye aye.” Banning returned it thinly.
The new executive officer gave the command. Achilles, and the rest of the smaller ships of what had been Group Cronus, continued their turn to get on the vector for Tantalus.
***
The boat bay was as scarred as the rest of the ship. Against one bulkhead, the paintwork was blackened—a fire had somehow washed through, even among the flame-resistant material of the chamber, marring the clean lines.
Thirteen coffins sat in the center of the room. Each draped with the royal red and crown of the Kingdom flag.
One containing Hannah Ashford.
Cutter stood still in his dress uniform, hands clasped before him. The ostentatious braiding and gold leaf highlighting the black tunic seeming grotesque when faced with his ship’s dead. Yet, it was the right thing to do. To take the fifteen minutes to slip it on. To honor them properly. He was surrounded by the few hundred out of the ship’s company whom they could spare amid the desperate repair work which it felt like every inch of the ship required.
He turned and nodded at Commander Horatio Garcia, Pastor of Lost Earth.
Clearing his throat, the priest stepped forward, his own dress uniform’s breast bearing a pin. The stylized blue and white olive branch and Lost Earth globe of the Une.
“Children of Lost Earth,” the man said, his voice tremulous with emotion. “We stand here today in the mists of sadness. A sadness which here, and now, might seem an impenetrable fog. But, children, I urge you to look hard, and you may see just the faintest beacon of light in the darkness. That is Lost Earth calling to you. Signaling to take you into her embrace. As we see that light, what do we say to the mother planet which gave birth to humanity?”
“We give thanks,” the ship’s company chanted loudly in response to the prayer.
Garcia stepped forward, turned, and walked down the line of coffins. “You may be sad, that these are now gone from here. Your friends, your brothers and sisters in arms. But do not be. Rejoice, for they have merely set forth, maybe by a few days, hopefully by many years, toward that beacon before you. And,” the pastor turned, mustering a warm smile through the sadness. “They will have the hearth burning for when it is your turn to join them on Lost Earth. What would you say to them when you see their welcoming expression?”
“We give thanks.”
“Yes, we do.” Pastor Garcia’s pacing brought him around a position next to Cutter.
“Thank you, Pastor Garcia.” Cutter marched forward, then sharply about-turned. “These brave spacers’ mortal remains will be returned to their homes and families. And we will protect them until that happens. Am I understood?”
“Aye aye, sir.” The cry was deafening as it echoed through the cavernous space.
“Good. Now, dismissed. We have lot of work to do.”
***
Addington had seen the corpsman, who’d applied a dermopatch to a burn on his brow he hadn’t even realized he had sustained. Afterward, he—along with the other two survivors—had been moved, by pinnace, from Spartan to Achilles, ostensibly so they could be debriefed. And simply because there was more room on the battleship than the confines of a cruiser.
He’d been led through the corridors and chambers. They were modern and clean in many places, tarnished by battle in others, yet the sense of newness was beyond doubt. There was no sign of decades of upgrades and equipment barnacled onto her bulkheads which was—had been—so prevalent throughout Cronus.
But, she also didn’t feel like she had the same depth of character. There weren’t the touches of ornate detail to her. Achilles, in contrast to Cronus, was built in the most efficient way possible to deliver firepower to the places where she was ordered.
He’d found himself in his own small stateroom, though—one normally reserved for visiting dignitaries. A luxury on a warship, even one of this size, where the norm was for spacers to berth together. Hell, on the stealths in the Kingdom Navy, and on some of the smaller and older destroyers, it wasn’t unusual to hot bunk. The thought of that, swapping into a bunk recently vacated by a sweaty, and probably smelly, spacer was something which used to send shudders down his spine. At a guess, the quartermaster on Achilles had decided that they’d been through enough, having been cramped in a tiny escape pod.
He heard a chime, and looked up from the slim rack he sat upon. “Yeah.”
The door slid open. A pastor in dress uniform walked in, the symbol of the Une on his breast and commander’s epaulettes on his shoulders. The man portrayed the picture of calm so common among the devout. Addington quickly pulled himself off the bunk and drew to attention. “Sir.”
“At ease.” The pastor’s hand fluttered, wafting away the formality. He relaxed, following the older man’s gestures to sit back on the bunk. “Robert, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pastor, my child. I am Pastor Garcia. I’m visiting in my capacity as a minister of Lost Earth,” the officer gently corrected. His gaze turned to a chair under a thin desk. “May I?”
Addington nodded, his hands clasped in his lap.
“I am here to offer what I can.” The pastor sat, clearing his throat as he did. “Any comfort or succor which you might feel necessary. Tell me, are your needs being met? You are being looked after? Being fed? The basics?”
“I am, Pastor.” Addington looked up. Behind the officer, a mirror screen was mounted on the wall. His eyes were bloodshot. Whether because of burst blood vessels from the high-G burn of the pod’s escape, or the tears he had shed, he didn’t know. It was probably a combination of both.
“Good.” The man gave a kindly smile. “Then perhaps we might turn to spiritual matters?”
“Pastor, I am not of the faith. Not really, anyway.” Addington’s throat was dry. “I mean, I celebrate colonization day—”
“But then, doesn’t everyone?” Garcia chuckled.
“Right.” Addington nodded.
“Regardless,” Garcia continued. “Whether you are of the faith, of another entirely or none, it is my job—my calling—to help in any way I can. You are sad. You lost your friends. Your companions. You may feel you wish to talk about it. You may feel you don’t.”
“I don’t think, sir... I mean, Pastor, that I do.”
“And that is fine, too. But if I may, let me just sit with you for a while.” The man pulled out a tablet and laid it on the narrow desk and turned to it. “I have a little work to catch up on and this is a nice room to do it in. But, should you feel the need to talk, I will be here.”
Addington swung his legs up onto the bunk, lying back. Who the hell was he to tell a commander, and a pastor at that, to get the hell lost? Still, he just wanted to be on his own. To think about what happened. To understand what happened.
The minister quietly began tapping away on his tablet.
All those people dead, on Cronus. Fifteen hundred of them. From the admiral to the lieutenant to the most junior of spacers. Lost Earth, the lieutenant. Unbidden, he felt a soft groan escape his lips. She hadn’t deserved to die. Not like that. Not swept away by a wall of fire a few meters away from the pod which should have been her escape. Why had she stopped to gesture her people through? If she hadn’t, she’d have made it.
She should have made it.
A wracking sob spasmed though his body. She’d been so kind. Given him her own time. An hour every day to aid him with his studies. How many others was she doing that with? And for no reward beyond wanting to help.
“My child...” Garcia turned from his tablet and smiled gently at him. “It’s okay.”
Giving a sniff, Addington drew his sleeve across his nose, leaving a disgusting smear of snot on the cuff. “She didn’t deserve to die. None of them did.”
“No, no they did not.”
“We didn’t even know what we were fighting down there.” The words continued. A flurry emerging from him now that the dam had burst. “No one tells you, not down in the Armory. You’re just told to keep the capacitors working. To keep them powering the guns. That’s all a fight is, to us. Making sure a fucking...sorry, Pastor, I mean a stupid graph climbs and then discharges smoothly. That’s what a war is to me. A graph going up and down. Not enemy people we’re trying to kill. I don’t even know who they are.”
Garcia had turned fully toward him. His hands were clasped serenely before him. Every iota of attention focused on him.
“Then we were hit.” He gestured hopelessly. “I think. They don’t tell us these things. We’re just there, in the guts of the ship. And next thing, the evacuation alarm is going off and we run. The lieutenant is just ahead of me. She could have gone through the hatch. It could have been her sitting here. Instead—”
Another sob heaved through his body. “Instead, she turns and waves us through. Making sure all of her crew got through before her. And I did. I got through and then...and then...”
He couldn’t continue, instead he pushed his head into his hands. His shoulders bobbing up and down. The tears flowing freely.
“It’s okay, my child. Let it out.”
He felt a hand resting on the top of his head. Not pressing down. Not in blessing. Just a reminder, even with his head buried in his hands, there was someone else there. Someone listening. He recoiled, looking up, shrugging it off. “I hate them for what they did, Pastor. I hate them.”
“There is too much hate in this galaxy already, child.” Garcia said quietly. “But you are to do your duty. As your Lieutenant...”
“Lieutenant Grosvenor.”
“As your Lieutenant Grosvenor did,” Garcia continued. “We will fight the Neo menace. To the end, if we need to. We will kill them, and they will kill us. But at some point, when we defeat them—and I believe with all my soul we will—we will need to offer the soldiers and spacers who are merely their tools the hand of mercy. A little comfort. Remember that, and that is what I think your Lieutenant Grosvenor would want, too.”
“I don’t think I ever will.”
“This, child, this grieving is merely the start of the process of healing. Not the end in of itself.” Garcia returned to his seat. “Now tell me a little about this lieutenant who meant so much to you.”
Addington was quiet for a moment, searching his thoughts. “She hadn’t been in the Navy very long. Not really...”





Chapter 22
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
Sarven stared blankly at his ready room’s console screen, frustrated at his lack of ability to articulate what had just happened in the Hellas System. His war diary barely contained anything beyond ensuring the positioning updates had been automatically uploaded. But, unlike Lasik’s log, this document was also there to record his opinions, as well as raw facts. A journal, of a kind, which his peers and future generations could use to guide their thinking. He didn’t like to think of himself as an arrogant man, no matter what people whispered when they thought he wasn’t listening. But still, it was strange, and humbling, to think that future generations of young officers in training could be reviewing this, striving to divine some meaning from it. Father Terra, they’d probably be writing essays on it. Like he’d had to at the War College when he’d reviewed the diaries of the magnificent Imperium commanders of the First Great War.
He gave a sigh of frustration and leaned back in his chair. To think, the events of these days would be thought of like those of the Battle of Orchan.
His orders hadn’t even considered the possibility of such an overwhelming victory. Cronus had gone down like a boxer with a glass jaw. Replays had shown the heavy pulse round slamming into her mid-point and burrowing deep. The only conclusion was it had hit the fusion core forming the heart of the ship. That was most certainly what it looked like. The containment field had struggled for long seconds to retrain the titanic energies within, then finally gave in. A geyser of plasma had erupted, flaring from her flank.
And then she’d died.
A single escape pod, transponder bleeping, had contained the only survivors. He didn’t know how many had been huddled inside. But even a glimpse said it was unlikely to be more than a handful, and a small one at that.
Then they’d turned their attention on the Vengeance-class battleship. The same replays had finally given her a name. Achilles. One of the few new ships in the Kingdom’s aging fleet.
Should he have continued the attack on Achilles? Maybe. She had been hurt. Badly. But a battleship’s thick-armored hide would have been much tougher to crack than the sleek and ultimately vulnerable battlecruiser. They were designed to take blows. Although, he had been a little surprised at how quickly her cannons had silenced. Another freak shot? Maybe. The seasoned spacer in him suggested something else. The Vengeance-classes were new. Undoubtedly untested in the kind of battle they’d just faced. As was Behemoth. But there was a difference. He felt a smile touch his lips. Galton production quality control was second to none. When she left the Thule Shipyards, she was expected to be in peak condition. The Kingdom took a different view, trading production speed for quality and hoping they could work out the kinks later.
He gave a mental shrug. Each had their advantages, he supposed. It meant the Kingdom had many more hulls. Something the Hegemony would never be able to match, especially now that they’d lost forever the Republic ships they’d hoped to seize at Ishtar, thanks to the Kingdom’s merciless pragmatism.
Sarven frowned as he typed a few words on the console, then just as quickly deleted them. It was the situation here and now he had to focus on. Especially with the fact they’d sensed new Kingdom units moving in pursuit.
The Prime’s orders had been clear. And he was a fickle man and could be devilishly inconsistent. For all that he appeared to have forgiven General Tor Hest for her rumored defiance of his orders at Port Rorian, even promoted her to his special council of advisors, he couldn’t count on that being the case with him. Hell, his very own friend, Admiral Karth, had been sacked for the defiance of orders which had led to the destruction of the Kingdom Carrier Falcon and a pair of destroyers a few months ago. Another stunning victory, yet one not rewarded, but punished. There may have been...extenuating circumstances with that one, though. Villers Karth shared the same loathing as Sarven for the Neo party. Except he hid it even less.
He shook his head. Second-guessing himself and what the Prime would say or do would achieve nothing. By any measure, they had won in Hellas. And he had kept rigidly to the Prime’s orders as he did so.
Besides, even this short, vicious but victorious engagement had cost them dearly. The blow to their engines had caused a leak which was still spewing precious fuel from ruptured lines, and to compound things, completely severed the connection to their number three fuel tank. From early assessment, it looked as if it would be a dry dock job to repair the damage. But here and now, that meant they were running on less than fifty percent fuel capacity.
And he had another problem. One that was more than merely hardware. One he had to grip. Now.
With a tired sigh, he keyed his console. “Captain Lasik, please come to my ready room.”
He didn’t wait for a reply, instead shutting down his war diary and awaiting the chime of his door. Or not, as the case might be if she chose to continue being difficult.
He tapped his fingers on the desk for what felt like long minutes.
Then he heard the low note of someone requesting entry.
He stood, turning to face the tactical display adorning his bulkhead, showing the ellipses of worlds’ orbits and the blinking icons of his ships sneaking along their course amid them. With a tug, he straightened his uniform before clasping his hands behind his back. “Enter.”
He didn’t turn to acknowledge his captain, instead, letting his eyes roam over the spiraling representation of the Tantalus System on his screen.
The silence stretched on.
“Sir,” Lasik finally spoke. “I am somewhat busy. If you have—”
“We come from different eras, you and I.” Sarven allowed his eyebrow to raise as he turned to her. She stood at ease, her hands clasped behind her back. “I, from the days of the Imperium Navy, and you from this new stage of Galton’s history.”
“Yes, we do.” Lasik relaxed from her stance and, unprompted, walked over to the leather couch lining one bulkhead and sat.
“I don’t recall inviting you to sit, Captain.”
“And I don’t recall asking for permission.” Lasik let a pause drag on for a second or two. “Sir.”
Sarven gave a dry, humorless snort and returned to his seat. Fucking Neos and their little power plays. How pathetic when at war with a deadly foe. He relaxed back into his seat, clasping his hands across his trim belly. “I may as well be a relic of Father Terra as far as you’re concerned, hadn’t I?”
“You, and your kind, are obsolete in this new galaxy.” Lasik reclined back, fighting too hard to give the impression of casual indifference to his presence. “The Prime, and the Neo party, have accomplished more in a few months than you and your ilk accomplished in the whole of the Great War...the First Great War, that is. And with far less, I might add.”
“Perhaps, Captain,” Sarven conceded. That was true, taking the Orillion Republic. The spaying, for the time being at least, of the Kingdom’s armies. “But our victories, as stunning and as surprising as they are to both enemies and ourselves, are unsustainable. We are striking far and fast, without consolidating our position. And what has been taken today can be lost, just as easily tomorrow.”
“You are trying to justify, Admiral, your hesitation in destroying Achilles.” The contempt in Lasik’s tone was thinly veiled. “An opportunity which may not come so readily again. I’m sure the Prime will find your lack of resolve...interesting.”
“My orders, and therefore your orders, Captain”—the insubordinate little jackass had finally broken through. She needed putting in place. His voice grew testy—“are quite clear. Our mission is not to take on enemy warships. We’re here for merchant shipping, and targets of opportunity.”
“Achilles was a target of opportunity.”
“Enough!” Sarven shouted, slamming his fist against the desk surface. “I tire of accounting for myself to you. I am an admiral, and you are my fucking captain. I give strategic direction. You turn that direction into suitable tactics to accomplish my intended goal, and nothing more.”
Lasik went red, her mouth twisting in a sneer. “Why, of course.”
She stood, straightening her uniform. “I must return to the bridge.”
“I did not dismiss you, Captain.”
“No.” Lasik turned back to him briefly. “No, you did not.”
She went to the door, waving her hand in front of the sensor. It slid open. “I will accomplish your strategic direction, as I should. I will also give feedback to my friends in the Neo Party of your reluctance to do what it takes to win this war.”
“Captain, we have to survive what is coming for us,” Sarven lowered his voice. “Because rest assured, the Kingdom will want revenge, and won’t stop until they get it. Even now, they are descending upon us.”
“Let them come.” Lasik’s lips curled into a sneer of contempt. Whether of him, or their enemy, he couldn’t tell. Likely, it was both. “Behemoth will be ready.”
The hatch slid shut behind her, leaving him alone in his office with his thoughts.
Fucking Neos. Instead of celebrating one of the most stunning victories so far in this damn war, he was left with a bitter taste in his mouth while trying to rein in his own captain.
How times had changed. In the First War, such rank insubordination would have been met with being summarily executed, perhaps even with his own pistol.
He pulled the bottom drawer of his desk open and, instead of a pistol, fished out a bottle of whisky. He poured a glass with rage-trembling hands.
Why was he doing this, out here? For them? A cause he didnutchers.
He knocked back the glass of amber liquid in one gulp. Scowling, he set the glass down.
“Nation before party.” He turned to the Black Sun icon of the Neo Party adorning the bulkhead and snapped off a disparaging salute in the old Imperium style. “Nation before party.”
Because he sure as hell wasn’t fighting for those bastard Neos.





Chapter 23
Lieutenant Commander Faraday
Fenix System – KSS Corvus
Corvus’s attack pilots had been given the mushroom treatment. They’d been kept in the dark and fed on shit. To be fair to the intel cell, the rumors and reports coming from Group Cronus had been sporadic, confusing, unbelievable, and hadn’t been confirmed.
Except now they had been, and they were far worse than anyone expected. It was time to let the rest of the squadron know exactly what they were going up against.
Lieutenant Commander Rose Faraday stepped up to the briefing lectern, set to one side of the small stage at the front of the darkened briefing room.
On the screen to her left, a 3D representation of the crest of the 825th Naval Aerospace Squadron slowly rotated. A clawed, aggressive-looking eagle overlaid a planet, and circled beneath were the words of their moto: Nothing Stops Us.
“Ladies, Gentlemen,” Faraday began. She could still feel the stomach-churning loss at the news she had just heard. News which was unthinkable. How on Lost Earth it had happened was a question which would have to wait. A question, she suspected, that would haunt the admiralty for years to come. The matter to grip now was doing what they could to make it right. “You are all undoubtedly wondering what necessitated Corvus’s change of course and want to know why we’re not going home yet.”
She took a deep breath as she let her gaze wash across the shadowy figures of the pilots sitting in the darkened room. “The following is stamped Top Secret. Until the brass figure out just how they’re going to release it to the public, you keep your mouths shut.”
The crest disappeared, replaced by camera footage, a tag indicating it was filmed from the perspective of the battleship KSS Achilles. In the center of the shot lay the sleek, muscular lines of a battlecruiser they all recognized, Cronus. The pride of the fleet exchanged flashes of powerful pulse cannon fire with a distant target. The battle looked furious. The huge ship was unleashing massive amounts of firepower on something. And that something was firing back.
Faraday had seen the footage already, felt the shock that she knew everyone in this room would soon feel. Now, she leaned forward on the lectern, watching her pilots, wanting to see their reactions to what was about to come. The first, professional interest quickly changed to confusion and alarm. They’d spotted the burning debris streaming from the wounds the 1200-meter-long ship had already sustained.
Then came the gasps. Someone even let out an audible moan of sympathetic pain. Just as she had when Captain Bardon had shown her that final heavy pulse round slam into Cronus’s hull. The geyser of pure fusion fire spilling out of her in response. And then the inevitable explosion.
She remained silent. Letting them dwell on what they had just watched for a moment. Capital ships weren’t supposed to be lost. They weren’t just metal and cannon. They were symbols of power. As indestructible as the institution of the monarchy. They were the very foundations of the Kingdom’s naval might.
The public and the Kingdom Navy had justified to themselves the loss of the ancient King’s Challenge three months ago. That had been a sneak attack. A lone stealth managing to work its way inside Starbase Victory’s cordon and torpedoing the battleship when she was at rest. A dishonorable attack on an old capital ship which, had the war not happened, would likely have been placed on the decommissioning list anyway. But this? This was losing one in combat, where she should have been in a position to excel against her opponent.
When in their element, the destruction of these ships was unthinkable. It was like watching Larnos city disappear in the hell storm of nuclear fire. Unbelievable. Yet they’d just witnessed the death of one. And the flagship, no less. A vessel most in this room had seen on holos cruising throughout the known galaxy, representing the Kingdom or leading the massive fleet parades so beloved by the public and by the Navy.
“This has to be bullshit,” Lieutenant Evan Pierce finally called out, his voice laced with anger.
“I wish it was,” Faraday replied. “At approximately 0600 hours yesterday, Cronus was destroyed. There were only three survivors, all of whom have been recovered.”
“What the hell did this?” another pilot, Lieutenant Sampson, asked, incredulity in his voice. The footage had been raw, there to make a point rather than give actual information, the view of the other ship non-existent.
“This.” Tapping the lectern, the view changed. The imposing digital recreation of a battleship appeared. Heavy, bulky, and box-like. Not sleek and refined like the Kingdom’s ships. Scale bars appeared, and one of the audience, Sampson—she thought it was again—gave a low whistle. “This is the HAS Behemoth, believed to be a new class of battleship developed by the Hegemony Astral. Length is estimated to be at around 1.5 kilometers. The intel cell has been picking over what footage and data we have. He—and to be clear, Galton convention is that capital ships are male—has an acceleration which matches,” she winced as she corrected herself, “matched Cronus’s. He’s believed to be packing eight heavy pulse cannons, and sport at least twelve medium pulse cannons as his secondary battery along with several dozen anti-aerospace emplacements of various types. Despite his acceleration, he looks to be protected by battleship-level armor and dispersion shields. In other words, he’s as fast as a BC, and as tough as a BB.”
“I’m guessing you ain’t telling us this to satisfy our idle curiosity?” Sampson asked, leaning back and crossing his leg. A casual pose and tone, which didn’t match the fierce intensity in his eyes. After what they’d just seen, they were all hungry for revenge.
“No.” Faraday turned to Sampson, giving a feral smile. “I am not. Corvus and Ajax, and the eight-twenty-fifth, of course, have been tasked to re-join Achilles. We’re going to be hunting the Behemoth down, along with Orestes and Odysseus, who are also coming along to the dance. Even Admiral Darrow wants a piece of this big bastard.”
“Shit,” Pierce uttered. “That’s near as damn it a third of the capital fleet.”
“Yes, it is.” She nodded. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen so many heavy units gathered for a single purpose. Not outside of a fleet review, that was for sure. “Don’t underestimate just how badly the admiralty want that ship dead. As for us, we need to be ready to go on a moment’s notice. If the fleet scouts spot him, sense him, or just get a feeling in their gut he’s around, then we need to slow him down enough for them to catch up.”
“Now you’re talking,” Sutherland growled.
That’s my boys and girls, Faraday thought. They weren’t going to get mad, but they sure as hell were going to get even. Everyone knew someone on Cronus.
“Until then, we have two singular purposes in life.” She came around the lectern and leaned back on it. “To get on the sims and practice our capital ship assault tactics. But also to make sure we’re rested enough to go in at one hundred percent when the call comes. Am I understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilots chorused.





Chapter 24
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
“Captain.”
Sarven marched onto the bridge. Lasik nodded her head in the briefest of salutations, and a sneer she couldn’t quite hide on her face. He felt grim amusement wash through him. Hopefully, she would be professional enough to at least subdue the full magnitude of the disdain between them when among the crew. Hopefully, he would, too.
“Admiral.” She gestured at ship’s status board. On it, a chart containing four bars. One was dipping low into the red. The tank which had been holed and vomited precious fuel into space. Two others hovered at three quarters. The final bar, tank three, was nearly full. “We have an issue. Our fuel situation is, while not quite critical, certainly headed that way.”
“We’ve had no success with the repairs to the number three tank linkages?” The full tank was a frustrating tease. The battle damage given by Achilles hadn’t damaged the tank itself, but it had destroyed the complex array of piping servicing it. The power core couldn’t draw on it, neither could they shift the fuel into the other usable tanks using the rebalancing pumping systems.
Lasik shook her head. “The transfer lines are a mess. We’d almost be better off just voiding the tank to reduce our mass.”
Yes, and increasing acceleration. A good idea, if not for the fact Sarven, due to his flag rank, was privy to the unredacted information on just how much refined HE3 the Hegemony didn’t have. Fuel supplies were a concern across the board, and Behemoth’s current situation was simply a microcosm of that. The nation didn’t have nearly as much as an outside observer might think they had.
The Hegemony’s fuel situation would undoubtedly come and bite them all in the ass if the war drew on. It was fine having all these glorious war machines. But if they were running on fumes, then they’d be stuck in base and that was just the same as if they didn’t have them in the first damn place.
“Captain, as much as I agree that would be the most immediately logical thing to do, I am somewhat loath to consign good fuel to the void if there is the possibility of transporting it home for salvage.”
“Very well.” Lasik nodded..
She knows the Hegemony’s current fuel situation or else she would have fought that more. The advantage to jettisoning it is too great. He answered his own pondering question without thought. She’s probably heard through her connections in the party on just how dry the Hegemony really is.
Fortunately, Operation River had priority with what the Hegemony did have.
“However...” Sarven regarded the holo. Behemoth and Cerberus crept along their vector between the swirling planets of the Tantalus System. “With some distance between ourselves and the Kingdom forces undoubtedly hunting us, it is time to use the opportunity to rendezvous with one of our fuelers. We need to replenish what we lost in battle.”
“Understood.” Lasik pressed a forefinger to her lips as the holo zoomed out dizzyingly fast. The system reduced to a single point of light in the midst of a cloud of others. A softly glowing sphere appeared around Tantalus, denoting the maximum extent of hyper-jump range, around twelve light years in a single bound.
Brackets appeared around four of neighboring stars, only one of which was within the sphere.
“Assuming it made it, we have a fueler here, in the Borath System.” Lasik pointed at one unremarkable speck of light. “Servicing a stealth pack which is operating there.”
Borath would be a good call. One of the last things Behemoth’s sensors had picked up in the Hellas system, before they’d jumped out, was Achilles coming about, making to pursue. There was only one reason it would do that—it had support coming and felt, if not confident in engaging, then content in the fact it wouldn’t be suicide to keep them under pressure should they turn around and go for her. The Borath System was also closer to the Arcadian Sector proper. If push came to shove, they’d be at extreme fighter jump range of the bases the Hegemony Aerospace Corps had set up in the burning embers of the Orillion Republic.
“The stealths there can also provide us with a measure of cover—” Lasik began.
“I doubt it,” Sarven interrupted with a shake of his head. To the stealths, the issue wasn’t the capital ship dogging their tails. It was the agile destroyers accompanying, with the equipment, means, and training to take them down. “It is very unlikely they would wish to tangle with the escorts. Certainly not a flotilla the size Achilles’s has with her.”
But, it would be negligent not to consider what opportunity came from their presence in Borath. Stealths were incredibly lethal killing machines. But they were opportunistic hunters who avoided anything which looked to be a fair fight. They certainly weren’t built for the kind of brawls which the Behemoth would be bringing their way. On the other hand, their presence would make the Kingdom fleet very wary. It would force them to draw their destroyers close in as a screen lest the stealths snuck in and were able to attack the big ships. That would surely give Behemoth more opportunity to flee from under their noses.
“They’ll leave us to fight the Kingdom alone?” Lasik asked, a frown across her face.
Sarven gave a shrug. Not through disinterest, though. The simple answer was he didn’t know. He wasn’t in their chain of command. “This war is bigger than any single ship. We, Behemoth and Cerberus, have to assume we are on our own out here. But pulling the Kingdom flotilla into a stealth hunting ground would make them nervous.”
Lasik’s frown deepened, and she gave a terse nod. “Understood.”
“Captain,” the sensor officer called. “Inbound hyper signature from Hellas. Awaiting confirmation of ID.”
The holo slammed back down to the tactical system view. A ripple of exotic particles emanated from the Karnov Boundary on the Hellas vector which they had transited through.
“Achilles,” Lasik muttered.
More ripples came, the rest of the flotilla arriving. They were too far to see which ship was which. But it didn’t matter. There were nine incoming ships. Their entire flotilla was here.
“Captain,” Sarven lowered his voice. For some preposterous reason, the thought that if he spoke too loudly, the Kingdom would somehow hear flashed across his mind. Ridiculous, of course. “Set course for Borath. Quietly as we can, lest we attract unwanted attention. The best-case scenario is we simply sneak out.”
More ripples washed across the Karnov Boundary of Tantalus, nearly a third of the way around the circumference of the system. This time, from the direction of the Fenix System. By unhappy coincidence, the light and wash of exotic particles from their hyper drives only just having reached them here, as if emphasizing the point that they were being hunted. “Sir, more signatures. This time from the Fenix System. Unknown types, but the hyper signature suggests probably more capital ships.”
And so it begins. Sarven exchanged a look with Lasik. These contacts must have arrived hours ago and driven in toward them.
There was no hungry smile on her face this time. Instead, he saw her swallowing as if her throat had suddenly gone dry.
As had his.
She was beginning to realize what he had when he’d first seen Cronus die. That they may well have bitten off more than they could chew.
That the Kingdom wouldn’t simply let the loss of their flagship go unpunished.





Chapter 25
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
The front of the bridge snapped back into place as they re-entered real-space, leaving his gut a quivering mess.
“Star fix in,” Banning called, undaunted by the translation. In fact, she looked to be one of the lucky ones for whom translation was little more unsettling than standing up too quickly. “I can confirm. We are in the Tantalus System.”
“Noted,” Cutter looked down at the holo. It rapidly began populating; a huge star burned at the center of the system. Its red mottled surface sent wispy loops of plasma far out into space. Baked rocky worlds orbited close in, while further out spiraled a vast gas giant, one so large it must have only just fallen short of collapsing into becoming a star itself. The system was relatively dense—for one in the Reach, that was. Hell, before the star turned into a red giant, it may have been one of those few which hosted a habitable world in this patch of space. But that would have been a long time ago, eons before humans arrived in this region. As of the here and now, it simply meant it had a hell of a lot of places to hide.
A staccato of flashes rippled around them. Spartan and Knight swept into real-space flanking the battleship, along with Roe’s destroyer squadron.
“Any sign of Behemoth?” Cutter called.
“Nothing, sir.”
Cutter gave an exhalation of relief. The worst-case scenario would have been if the enemy had doubled back, waiting for them in ambush by the incoming vector from Hellas. That was why he’d taken the rare step of bringing Achilles through first. At least they would have stood a chance of surviving the initial onslaught. They could have soaked up the firepower while the rest of the flotilla slammed back into real-space. And got stuck into the battle.
Instead, the enemy ships must have opted to continue fleeing deeper into the system, the huge battleship and his consort’s EW shroud down to be as stealthy as possible.
“Very well,” Cutter said, hating himself for the feeling of coward-like relief coursing through him. “Signal Admiral Roe. He’s good to commence his search pattern, at his discretion.”
He clasped his hands behind his back as his stared down at the holo, trying to attain inspiration from its softly glowing lines.
Now for the tough part. Finding the damn ship. And hoping, somehow, that they spotted it first. Because the other way around could well be terminal. Spartan and Knight’s adventures in the Hellas System had more than proven that.
As he watched, a mass of icons blinked to life on the edge of the system. First the gray of unidentified bogeys. A moment later, they flickered to the blue of friendly.
“Sir, IFF challenge and acceptance,” Banning called as she looked down at her console. “I am getting a QE from Ajax and Corvus. They’re here, sir. Captain Sherrington is requesting to speak.”
Cutter smiled. Suddenly, it didn’t seem nearly as lonely out here in the Reach. Ajax, Achilles’s sister ship had just doubled their firepower in the Tantalus System. And Corvus and her dozens of aerospace fighters and bombers added even more weight to the Kingdom forces in system. And that was before their escorting cruisers and destroyers were taken into account.
Yes, Behemoth’s opportunity to defeat them in detail had passed. The next time they met, that bastard ship would feel the full weight of the Kingdom descend upon them. And more were on the way. An avalanche of metal and cannon was coming for him.
Settling into his seat, he tapped his console, bringing up a small window of Ajax’s commanding officer, Captain Sherrington. “Delia, am I glad to see you.”
“Likewise.” Sherrington’s face was lined with concern. “Awful news, Hal. The loss of Cronus has hit us all hard over here. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you, to have had to see that happen before your eyes.”
An image of the pillar of burning fusion fire erupting from the flagship’s flank entered his mind’s eye unbidden. “We lost a lot of good spacers, Delia.”
She nodded sadly. “That we did. How’s Achilles bearing up?”
“We took a good beating, but we’ve got what we can in order. Main thing is we’ve got our guns back.”
“Those damn turrets,” Sherrington said, only without the dry humor of their last meeting.
“Those damn turrets,” Cutter confirmed. The Vengeance-class turrets were a nightmare of complex machinery. Something which had shown up in the shakedown cruises. Only the damn war had broken out before they could actually do anything about that.
“Well, Hal, we’ve got a lot of folk coming to this party. Home fleet’s been stripped and we have more heavy fleet units on route and, not to mention, Old Man Darrow himself is headed over, wanting to take personal command.”
“So I hear,” Cutter said. “Any idea of where he’s going to pitch up?”
“Nope, but if I were you, I’d clear out one of your state rooms.” Sherrington’s smile turned warm. “Because, I suspect he’s going to want to get aboard the ship which is most likely to engage.”
Cutter glanced at the holo. Behemoth had to be in the segment of the system closest to Achilles. “And that’s going to be us.”
“You’ll get your pound of flesh, Hal.” Sherrington nodded in agreement. “By hook or by crook. Just make sure you don’t finish that bastard off before we get there.”
“Sir,” Banning leaned over his shoulder, interrupting his response. “Captain.”
“Hello, Eve.” Sherrington grinned up out of the screen. He was dimly aware the two knew each other from a previous posting on Saracen. Something which had made his ears burn when their paths had crossed.
“We have another QE from Odysseus and Orestes.” Banning’s face grew to a smile as she interrupted. “They’ve arrived.”
Cutter grinned at his fellow captain. “Well, I think it’s time to speak to Rudolph and Sandra. Soon we can start digging that big bastard out of whatever hole it’s in.”
“Oh, I agree.” Sherrington grinned back, the hint of mischief back in her eyes. “And just because you’re closer doesn’t mean I’m not going to pull out all the stops to get joined up with you. We all want a piece of that ship for what he did.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Delia.”





Chapter 26
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
There must be a way out of here. 
Sarven glared at the plot, hoping something—anything—would present itself to him. Tantalus had turned from merely being a passage to the Borath System and escape, to a corner into which they’d been backed.
Behind them, Achilles and her retinue of cruisers and destroyers prowled forward. The enemy ships were at enough of a tangent from their course to suggest they hadn’t been spotted, yet, but still, they were far too close for comfort.
At roughly a third around the circumference of the system were another group of contacts, including two large ships. If their intelligence was correct, this group was likely led by the battleship Ajax. The other major unit with her was probably the aerospace carrier Corvus. That added a whole new set of problems. Not only would they be hunted by warships, they would have the carrier’s lethal fighters and torpedo bombers to contend with, too.
And from another direction, another cluster of contacts had entered the system. Being reduced to passives meant they hadn’t been able to get a solid read on them yet but, considering the sensor blasts coming from them could likely fry an egg on his ship’s hull from four AU away, they had to be heavy fleet units. If he were a betting man, they would be a flotilla formed from elements stripped out of the Kingdom’s home fleet. The only plus—they were still far out and poorly positioned.
That group of ships would certainly also be built around battleships. Diomedes, maybe? Odysseus perhaps. Sarven gave a mental shrug. It didn’t really matter, those ships were all of the same class. What did matter is that the vise was closing in around them. Whichever way Behemoth turned, there was a force to meet him which could at least match his own.
Sarven gritted his teeth in frustration. They were so damn close. If they could just slip out and get to Borath. The stealth pack operating in the area would slow down any pursuit just by virtue of the Kingdom not wanting to lose another heavy unit to a lucky—or skillful—shot by one of the aggressive vessels if they weren’t careful. Not to mention, they’d be at extreme range for fighter and bomber support from the Aerospace Corps. Squadrons of attacking Raptors and Wolfs would truly make the Kingdom Navy nervous and go a long way toward leveling the playing field.
“Captain.” He flicked his head, gesturing Lasik over. The woman lowered her tablet and stepped in. “It seems you will get your opportunity to fight soon.”
Lasik gave a nod, then the slightest hint of a swallow.
How things change, little Neo, when you are the one who is hunted. Sarven couldn’t help but let a thin smile cross his face. The wall of crushing battle-steel cruising toward them had given the woman pause, knocking the insubordination out of her. For now. And indeed, the picture looked bleak. Surrounded and hunted by an enemy which surely wanted nothing more than their total destruction for what they’d done to their flagship.
“But we have the luxury of choosing which fight,” he continued, turning to the plot and gesturing, pointing to the two latest interlopers into the system. “This group appears to be built around two heavy units. We have no way of knowing what they are. My guess is elements of the home fleet, and that means they are the freshest and most well provisioned.”
“That would seem a logical assumption, Admiral,” she said quietly with a nod.
“In other words, not one, but two tough nuts to crack,” Sarven continued, “And, as such, we will not be engaging them.”
His captain was unable to hide a flicker of relief as he lowered his hand, pointing next at Ajax and Corvus. “Likewise, Ajax is likely low on fuel returning from the Ishtar System, assuming she hasn’t met a Kingdom fueler, but she is undamaged. The fact that she has a carrier with her, and we are currently lacking in aerospace support makes facing her...unpalatable.”
“Which leaves—”
“Drawing in Achilles and her escorts for another round.”
“It would be...good to pick up our unfinished business.” Lasik nodded, a hint of her old fire in her voice.
“Maybe. But I don’t intend our objective to merely be to go out in a blaze of glory,” Sarven said. “If detached and able to go to full burn, Cerberus can just make it out of Tantalus and into Borath before the net closes.”
Lasik stared at the plot for a long moment. “They can. But we can’t.”
“Possibly. Or should I say, probably,” Sarven corrected. “We will have to fight our way out. But I don’t intend for it to be a suicide mission.”
“Then perhaps we should keep Cerberus with us.”
“No,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Whichever way we turn, we’re facing heavy ships. I would love to say it was skill or judgement which saved Cerberus from damage when we faced Cronus and Achilles, but I suspect luck was more a factor. This is not a fight for a cruiser, even a heavy one. We detach her, and maybe she can slip back to Hegemony space for re-tasking.”
“While we face all that alone.” Lasik gestured uncomfortably at the plot. Silly little Neo. What had she expected when they killed the enemy’s flagship? For them to roll over?
Sarven stepped around to his console and scribed a course with his forefinger. The plot replicated it, a line extending through space back in the direction they’d come, and then curving around to a gas giant nestled in the frozen reaches of the outer system.
“As I say, I don’t intend for this to be a suicide mission.” Sarven continued sketching on the holo, showing the woman his plan. “We have an obligation to save this vessel, if we can. And I have some thoughts on completing this objective...”
***
What’s happening up there? Gaddish fussed with In-Vince-ible on his bunk, snatching a few brief hours of allocated rest time. The kitten purred relentlessly, sending a vibration through the bunk. Gaddish envied Vince. He truly had no cares in the world beyond whether he got fed and stroked. He tickled under the cat’s chin, and Vince lifted his head imperiously in response.
The euphoria which had washed through the ship following their victory against the Kingdom flagship had dissipated into nervous energy. The officers he’d seen were on edge, the crew overhearing snatches of conversation about the Kingdom bringing entire fleets in to hunt them down. To kill them.
For them though, the spacers, they weren’t told anything officially. It was like the officers thought they weren’t interested. Or didn’t need to know. Operational security, or something. Gaddish let out a snort of nervous laughter, causing Vince to start. He gently soothed him with a stroke to the top of his head. Who were they supposed to tell out here in the Reach? How would a spy get the comms off?
No, it was just some faint sense of superiority from the brass that the crew should be kept in the dark. Holding it over the lower decks that they were privileged with information a simple, honest, spacer wasn’t.
And that meant the first time he’d know they were in combat would be when he once again heard the noise of Behemoth’s mighty guns firing. Or felt enemy pulse rounds slamming into the ship’s hull.
Was it any wonder he, and many of the other crew, hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours? The nervous energy crackling through the ship could power it, if it could have been harnessed.
“It’s okay, Vince,” he cooed again, stroking the tiny, vibrating, and content, creature. “It’ll all be okay.”





Chapter 27
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
“He’s out there,” Cutter murmured to himself as he took a sip on his coffee. “Somewhere.”
A star system, any star system, was a big place, and Tantalus more complicated with its abundance of worlds and moons than the majority in this barren expanse of space.
Achilles and her consorts reached out with their powerful sensors, but to Cutter’s mind, it was little more effective than shining a flashlight around a dark room in a haunted house, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of the monster hiding within. The downside was that whatever was in the room would be able to see the flashlight beam hunting around for it and track it back to its source.
And if the monster was really smart, it would be able to figure out a lot of information from the light, including how powerful the beam was. The shape of the lens it came from. And all of that might tell them who, and what, held the torch.
Maybe they’d get lucky. Their beam would land on Behemoth’s hull, lighting it up in all of its glory. Or maybe the enemy commanding officer would decide they wanted to switch from passive to active sensors to give them a better sight picture of the Kingdom forces in the system. Something which would give them away in a heartbeat. The full might of the fleet would descend upon them, and destroy them.
He suspected whoever was in charge over there wouldn’t do that, though. That would be tantamount to holding up a sign saying, “here I am; come and get me.”
He took another sip from his coffee mug as he stared at the display. Trying to divine some hint of where their foe was. What would he do in Behemoth’s position? What could he turn to his advantage? How could he beat his hunters? He knew the enemy was cunning and smart. Whoever was in command over there wasn’t just a good tactical commander, they had a grip on strategy. That was the real reason why they hadn’t pressed the attack on Achilles, because they were thinking of the big picture. That of completing their mission. Simply notching up another kill wasn’t it.
Yeah, the commanding officer over there was smart. And that made them dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Not just for this battle, but for the entire war.
But that didn’t change anything. There was a price to be paid. For the loss of Cronus. And for killing her crew.
We’ll find him. We’ll find him, and we’ll kill him.
The man who was joining them would ensure that took place. By any means.
***
“Standby for jump, Admiral,” the pilot called from where he sat in front of Darrow in the cramped confines of the pinnace.
The craft was little more than a bulbous crew compartment mounted on a fuselage. An oversized engine sat behind along with a set of jettisonable and disposable jump drives. A simple ship. But perfect for its purpose—to convey people through the sector quickly. What it wasn’t, most assuredly, was built for comfort.
Even toilet breaks were done in the euphemistically entitled “crew-relief bags,” something the pilot, a very young-looking lieutenant, had the good grace to studiously ignore when the admiral had to partake.
But, despite the indignity of pissing through a tube into a bag, it was good to be away from the stuffiness of Admiralty House and the War Rooms. Instead, he was out in the Reach, about to take command of a fleet again. The kind of direct command he hadn’t had the opportunity for in years. And while he would have wished for better circumstances than those which had brought him out here, he was glad to at least be joining the men and women under his command. Sharing the same dangers and yes, hopefully sharing in the same glory.
The thrill of taking part in the hunt.
The thrill of battle.
A flash of light. A swirling Catherine wheel of dissipating exotic particles.
With the thud of detonating explosive bolts, one of the disposable jump drives detached and tumbled away, end over end.
The single red giant star smoldering at the heart of the system was dull and old. Its baleful light painted the interior of the cockpit in a dull orange.
“We’ve arrived in Tantalus, Admiral.” The pilot turned his helmeted head, looking back at him. “I’m just waiting for fleet position and vector updates before heading to the final rendezvous.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
He’d used the long hours of transit time to think hard about where he should position himself. Odyssey and Orestes were leading the most powerful contingent of hunters. The two huge battleships were fresh, and if circumstances allowed, he would use them in the ensuing battle. Ajax and Corvus, a mix of battleship and carrier, were the next most significant. With the carrier’s complement of aerospace fighters and bombers, that was the most flexible of his flotillas.
But Achilles and her group had faced the enemy in combat. And whichever way it was cut, whatever maneuvers the Hegemony ships had pulled, they were also the closest. There was also the not-insignificant matter that the crew had the most experience in dealing with Behemoth. If anyone was going to give it to him straight, it was going to be Hal Cutter. The man had a reputation of somehow having shed the dogmatic mannerisms of the majority of the fleet’s senior captains. He needed that insight into the enemy which could only be gained through hard experience.
The decision was easy. If anyone was going to stumble on Behemoth, it would be the same ship which had taken a beating the first time.
And if any ship deserved the attention of the senior officer in His Majesty’s Navy, it was that one.
The pilot’s bulbous helmet obscured the bottom half of the cockpit HUD, but from what Darrow could see of the display over his shoulder, it began filling with icons. Tantalus was getting busy. Four battleships. A carrier. Nearly two dozen smaller ships. Here, in this system, was the greatest concentration of the Kingdom’s military might to have deployed outside the home systems since the First Great War.
“Jump drive tuned, Admiral,” the pilot’s voice broke through his musing. “Still want to go to Achilles?”
“By all means and at best speed.”
Darrow saw the pilot taping at his HUD. With a chirp, a box appeared around the icon denoting Achilles. The system analyzed the battleship’s velocity and fed the information through to the pinnace’s navigation computer. “Jump engine tuning.”
“Then let’s get going, son.” Darrow leaned back in his seat. “Engage at will.”
A bar slowly crept up the display as the jump drive calculated the pinnace’s relative vector with that of Achilles’s and synchronized them. A necessary step in FTL travel. It would be all well and good to appear next to their destination ship. But if their velocity was radically different, then they would simply speed off into the dark.
A few moments later, there was a chime as the drive signaled it was ready.
The back of the pilot’s seat was sucked away to infinity. A fraction of a second later, Admiral Darrow snapped forward, catching up with it.
“We’re matched on vector,” the pilot said, a distracted lilt to his tone. The jump drive had successfully planted them in the vicinity of Achilles.
“You really don’t need to keep me updated.” Darrow smiled. The poor pilot was probably used to ferrying around the brass. After all, that was what these high-speed pinnaces were built for. But, there was brass, and there was brass. Had Darrow had to carry around the then First Space Lord, or Lady, as it had been back when he was this pilot’s age, he certainly would have been shitting himself.
But it was all relative.
He’d felt the same way when first meeting the prime minister. After all, she was notoriously quick to anger, as her tantrum against Hal Cutter proved.
With a thump which resonated through the seat, another hideously expensive disposable jump engine detached and tumbled away from the pinnace into the darkness.
The stars in front of the canopy swept to the left as the small craft rotated in space. A moment later, the vast bulk of a battleship slid into view.
Darrow and the pilot both gave an audible gasp. Nearly in unison. The once-proud battleship sported the wounds of its battles. The prow was horrifically burned and scarred, presumably from when she had plunged through the fires of Cronus’s destruction. Massive craters pitted her hull, a testament to the sheer firepower Behemoth had unleashed on her.
“Oh, Rihanna,” Darrow breathed, shaking his head in dismay. If this was the damage to a battleship’s thickly armored hide, then the battlecruiser Cronus hadn’t stood a chance. His old acquaintance, Rihanna Albright, probably had only seconds to realize how badly she’d been outgunned. The only thing he could hope for her was that her death had been fast. Not locked in a spinning piece of debris, waiting for air to run out. The worst nightmare of any spacer.
“Take us in, son,” he said quietly.
The pinnace arced around toward the center of the battleship. Her thick shuttle bay doors, nestled between banks of guns, slid open to greet them. The pinnace pushed forward into the light washing out from the interior of the scarred ship.
***
The boatswain pressed the bo’sun’s whistle to his lips and gave a note, changing pitch upward after a second.
The pinnace filled the boat bay as Cutter smoothed his battlesuit down. It felt somehow wrong for him to greet an admiral in working rig, but frankly, the only time he’d had to devote to ceremonial matters, he had given over to the funeral. Something far more fitting for his scant time than merely saying “hello.” Besides, when that damn ship could reappear at any time, he wanted to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
From the little he knew of Darrow, the man would accept that, even though he was from the old guard of officers.
The pinnace’s cockpit canopy rose, and the closest to a party of “side boys”—spacers designated to fulfill the semblance of ceremonial duties—he could afford to allow pushed a set of metal stairs forward to abut the craft’s fuselage.
The flight-suit clad admiral pulled himself out the cockpit and looked around with a stern gaze before his eyes locked on Cutter. He trotted down the metal stairs and approached, snapping into a parade-perfect salute which Cutter returned as crisply as he could.
“Permission to come aboard, Captain?”
“Granted, sir.”
Darrow’s hand dropped, his expression softening as the admiral reached for his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Lost Earth, Hal. She’s taken a beating.”
“She has.” Cutter turned, releasing himself from under the firm grip and gestured toward the hatch inset into a fire-blackened bulkhead. “It’s been a bad few days for the Navy.”
Darrow nodded as he began walking toward the hatch. “I’m here to make sure that’s put right.”
Cutter fell in next to the most senior officer in the Navy, gently ushering him along the corridors in the right direction toward the bridge. “It seems...odd, for the First Space Lord to take such a personal hand in this.”
“Let’s just say, the First Space Lord has to follow orders, too.” Darrow gave a thin smile. “Especially when it is straight from the prime minister. She wants this situation resolved. And quickly.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do.” Cutter felt testiness creep into his voice. What the hell did the brass think they were doing out here? On a pleasure cruise?
Darrow darted a look at him and Cutter took a deep breath, anticipating a rebuke.
“The loss of Cronus will hit the nation hard, Hal.” Darrow’s voice was gentle.
“It’s hitting us hard, too.”
“And I get that, Hal.” Darrow came to a halt, Cutter continuing for a step or two before realizing he had. He turned on his heel to find the First Space Lord staring into his eyes. “I have a carte blanche. Every resource we have available is tasked with the single purpose of hunting down Behemoth. Make no mistake, he will be killed.”
“As long as Achilles gets a piece of that,” Cutter responded, “I’m happy, sir.”
“That’s my boy. Now is not the time to lose fighting spirit. To succumb to despair.” Darrow gave a brief flash of a smile before resuming his pace toward the bridge. “You know the prime minister wanted you cashiered.”
“What?” The word was a knife, stabbing into his gut. Who in their right mind would want a senior officer cashiered at a time like this time unless...
“She said you were a coward for turning Achilles away,” Darrow continued, his words a volley as unrelenting as any Behemoth had delivered. “For not finishing the job.”
“I had no fucking guns!” Cutter felt his voice raise one octave below a shout. A crewman coming down the corridor in the opposite direction started, almost comedically, his pace becoming uncertain as he approached his two superior officers. “What did she want me to do...glare at them? We would have been—”
“I know. I told her,” Darrow interrupted, “that if she cashiered you, then my resignation would be on her desk, in the same envelope.”
“Really?” Cutter turned slightly, letting the nervous crewman slip by.
“Don’t worry, she saw sense,” Darrow replied. “In fact, she almost had the good grace to look sheepish.”
“I hope she bloody did,” Cutter muttered.
“Well, not quite, but she did take it back. I tell you this not to piss you off, but to illustrate how passionately the prime minister—the whole Kingdom—feels about this. And to illustrate the depths of my confidence in you. Look, son. What you faced was an unwinnable situation. I get that. The prime minister gets that now, but she’s under a lot of pressure. The nation will demand blood for what happened, whether that be Behemoth, or a sacrifice of one of our own. One way or another, we have to satisfy that thirst for vengeance. At least with me here, you’ll be insulated now. When we kill him, you’ll all be heroes. If he slips away, then I’ll be the one who’ll go home and face the music.”
“Still sounds pretty damn unfair to me,” Cutter muttered.
“Welcome to the wonderful world of politics, son.” Darrow scowled, the distaste obvious in his expression. “So, bottom-line, I need you to find me that ship or I’ll be losing my job and paycheck. And, let me tell you this, Mrs. Darrow has very expensive tastes.”
Cutter couldn’t help but let out a snort of amusement. Damn, but the man had charisma. No wonder he’d gotten as far as he had in the Navy.
They stepped through into one of the fire-blackened carriages of the huge ship’s internal transportation system. A moment later, the small car surged forward, racing along the innards and guts of the vessel.
“How’s the crew taking it?”
“As well as can be expected, sir.”
“Not well at all?”
“They’ll do their job, if that’s what you’re asking, sir,” Cutter replied. “That’s what they’re here for.”
The small speaker inset in the carriage’s bulkhead gave a chime. They’d arrived. The doors swept open and they stepped into the short corridor leading to the bridge.
A few paces more and Cutter had returned to where he should be. The nerve center of the ship. And now the hunt for their quarry.
In the center of the chamber, the holo-display twinkled an orrery representation of the Tantalus System in its pit.
“I suspected, sir, that without your staff, you would feel better positioned here, rather than on the flag bridge?”
“A good call.” Darrow nodded as he looked around the chamber. The plethora of displays and holos would confuse a layman. A seasoned spacer like Darrow would pick things up very quickly, he imagined.
Cutter gestured at a chair. Her chair. “Sir, my XO station is currently...unoccupied. The console there can be used to give yourself an overview of ship status and that of the rest of the fleet.”
“Thank you.” Darrow lowered himself onto the seat. “And my condolences.”
Cutter pursed his lips, sitting next to the admiral. The man stared at him, as if he wanted to say something more. Instead, he gave a little shake of his head, as if disregarding it.
“I have intel. Pertinent intel. We think we know who is in command over there.” Darrow fished a secure key from around his neck and slipped it into the receptacle.
On Cutter’s screen, a picture of a stern man appeared, dressed in the black uniform of the Hegemony Astral. Gold braiding and medals filled his chest.
“This, Hal, is Admiral Valin Tor Sarven. The face of the enemy,” Darrow said. “And let me tell you, he is one canny sonovabitch...”





Chapter 28
Captain Hennessey
Tantalus System – KSS Spartan
The atmosphere on Spartan’s bridge was tense, and thick enough to cut with a knife. The red battle station lamps gave the room a hellish appearance. The crew were clad in their battlesuits, they even had their visors down, something which added to their discomfort. Yet everyone had seen how quickly, and with what savage ferocity, a ship of the size and scale of Behemoth could turn and bring to bear.
After all, they’d had a front-row view of what that vessel had done to a ship immensely more powerful than a cruiser like Spartan.
Through the clear toughened glass of their helmets, every person’s face glistened with nervous perspiration.
Hennessey was damn sure her blood pressure must be sky high. Days of living on the edge, in the “red zone” they called it, knowing there was a monster out in the darkness somewhere that wanted to—and could—kill them.
The cruisers were again out in front of Achilles and her escorting destroyers. Beating the bushes, so to speak, to see whether there were any snakes hiding in the foliage.
She was under no illusions, with Behemoth running quiet, and with Spartan’s sensors dialed up to full. The likelihood was their enemy would see them first, and greet them with a volley of heavy pulse rounds, any one of which could split her hull. There was a damn good chance she’d be dead moments after they detected the first volley of incoming weapons fire.
Maybe she should rename her proud ship Canary. That would be far more fitting than her ship’s own name.
How would it happen? How would she die? Heavy pulse rounds slamming into Spartan’s hull? A rent appearing in the bulkhead? The vacuum wrenching her out into space. Or would it be immolation in fire or seething energy? Worst, to her mind, maybe somehow the bridge would maintain integrity for a little while as the ship came apart around her. She’d be left to drift. Her battlesuit running out of power and air. No rescue on the way. Dying slowly, and knowing it.
Would she end it? Lift her visor and let the void take her? Or would she cling on to hope until the end?
She leaned back in her seat, forcing the maudlin thoughts from her mind as she stared at the holo. She had a job to do, and that was that.
They were closing fast on Tantalus I. The blackened rocky cinder of a world orbited close to the star, so near it felt like the wispy loops of plasma emanating from the surface would reach up and swat them out of space.
“Where are you?” she murmured, for what must have been the tenth time in a day.
The sleek cruiser, along with her sister ship, Knight, swept deeper into the system, lancing toward the planet. The wounded Achilles followed in the gaseous wake of their fusion drives.
Suddenly, an alarm whooped through the bridge and Hennessey glanced down at her console. Her E-warfare suite spiked off the charts as a stream of powerful radiation slammed into Spartan’s hull.
“Contact!” the tactical officer cried. “I have a Quebec-type search sensor hitting the hull.” The alarm changed tone, becoming more insistent. He turned, fear in his expression. “I now have a targeting sensor.”
No shit. 
“Give me a position and prepare for evasive maneuvers.” Hennessey drew her seat’s harness around her, giving at least some buffer for high-G maneuvers which the inertial dampeners couldn’t compensate for. “And button up, people.”
The display rushed in, focusing on the source of the sensor beam. A distant contact ahead grew to become Behemoth. He turned broadside relative to the cruiser, even as the ship let its momentum keep him moving. The massive vessel arced low over the surface of the rolling, blackened, rocky world.
Hennessey winced. At this angle, Behemoth was presenting each and every one of the formidable weapons he had.
The first pulse fire flashed past Spartan.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Hennessey shouted. This was going to be happening too fast to micro-manage her helm. She needed him reacting faster than she could order him. “Max burn, best discretion, helm. And get our EW shroud up.”
She felt herself being pushed back into her seat as Spartan’s engines fired. Hard. They angled them down, fighting against her own momentum to get the bulk of the world between them and the massive battleship.
“Knight is evading, too,” her executive officer cried out. She watched Spartan’s sister ship desperately seeking to escape. “Achilles is engaging.”
Huge blue bolts of heavy pulse rounds flashed by Spartan from behind, tearing back toward Behemoth. The cruisers were between the two, their powerful engines firing at full burn in a desperate attempt to get out from between the two battleships dueling at what must have been their maximum range. Quite literally, Spartan was locked between a rock and a hard place. And that wasn’t somewhere she could survive for long.
Spartan’s vector curved around lower, the horizon crept sickeningly up the main viewscreen as they closed dizzyingly on Tantalus I. Behind her, Achilles had come to a dead-acceleration, clearly not wanting to get any closer than she had to in her battered state. Heavy pulse rounds plunged toward Behemoth, even as she returned fire with her own powerful volleys.
The Hegemony battleship slipped behind the crater-strewn horizon of the world, out of view relative to the cruiser’s position.
Hennessey let the pounding of her heart subside. She felt a bead of sweat trickle from her brow. From where they were, she could see Achilles still firing at her enemy from her higher altitude. Sending a magnificent blue light show of heavy pulse rounds toward the unseen target.
Letting out a long breath, she finally recovered the ability to speak again. “Okay, helm, I want you to take us wide of Tantalus I. I want to get our eyes back on that damn ship but for the love of Lost Earth, let’s keep some range from them.”
They’d survived again. But, as her heart rate settled into some semblance of normality, or as normal as it had been since this damn hunt had started, something niggled. Just why had Behemoth opened up? It wasn’t as if he had particularly sought any kind of decisive engagement. The enemy ship could have kept the engagement window open for a little longer. Kept the fire going against the two cruisers. Maybe even secured a kill shot.
It hadn’t.
She frowned as Spartan climbed up into a polar orbit. Was he just warning them off? Telling them to keep their distance? Or had that little...scuffle served another purpose?





Chapter 29
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
The maneuver had been perfectly timed.
The final flashes of weapons fire swept past them as Behemoth and Cerberus slipped behind Tantalus I relative to the approaching enemy fleet. As soon as the heavy cruiser had disappeared from view of the enemy’s sensors, she had burned hard. The ship’s powerful engines shunted them onto a radically new heading before shutting down. As had Behemoth’s, but with just enough of a difference to leave the two warships coasting unpowered on diverging courses.
Cerberus, even now, sped away, headed into the chromosphere of the star. There she’d be hidden by the burning streamers of plasma looping from its mottled surface. Cerberus’s captain had orders to flee through the system, slipping between the two encroaching groups of ships while running silent. The heavy cruiser would then turn in a long loop and pick its way back into Hegemony space using whichever vector looked the clearest.
Then, maybe, she could come back to the Reach. Come back and complete their mission.
From what he could see, Group Achilles was nearly following Behemoth and completely out of position to intercept Cerberus. Sarven gave a smile. At least something was going to be salvaged from this. Cerberus would be able to continue home. Maybe the Kingdom forces in-system would split and pursue her when she lit up her drive. Perhaps, if he was feeling really optimistic, Cerberus would even stumble on an unguarded convoy on the way.
Sarven felt a weary sense of satisfaction. He’d done his duty. Saved at least one ship; preserved what he could of the mission.
Now, all that was left was to see if he could save this one.
Behemoth’s own course around Tantalus I had swung her onto a heading which would intersect with the giant gaseous fourth planet.
The bridge was quiet and subdued. The perspiration-slickened faces of the crew shone in the dim battle lights. Sarven saw more than one of them casting nervous glances at their comrades.
That these brave boys and girls had won a magnificent victory was beyond doubt but, as Sarven considered the plot, the repercussions were that the Kingdom was not holding back. Four battleships hunting them, a carrier, and—at last confirmed count—ten cruisers and fifteen destroyers in system. That meant there were undoubtedly more out there running quiet. Probably many more. A tonnage the Kingdom admiralty surely would never have authorized before the destruction of Cronus. Even the Kingdom, with their vast fleet, couldn’t spare this many ships on a whim.
It was unbelievable. A quarter of the Kingdom’s total fleet – and nearly a third of their capital ships - were here, in Tantalus. Hunting for them. What hubris of the Hegemony, and officers like Lasik, to think they could match the Kingdom in terms of raw naval might.
“We’re not going to get out of this, are we?” The last of Captain Lasik’s belligerence had faded as Cerberus had withdrawn. The ship’s morale somehow dissipating proportionate to how far their consort was. They were truly alone out here now.
Perhaps he should have moved non-essential personnel onto the cruiser. Taken steps to guarantee as many survived what was sure to come as possible.
But his duty was also to fight the ship as hard as he could. Besides, they weren’t at the stage where this was a complete suicide mission. Not yet, anyway. If there was still the possibility of success, then he had to seize it.
“We’ll see, Captain.” He turned to the woman. She was afraid. Like all bullies—and as a Neo, the one thing he was sure of about the woman was that she was a bully—when faced with someone, something bigger, the edifice came crumbling down. He had to give something to her. To be the bigger person. He reached across, squeezing her arm. “We will find a way, Captain.”
She swallowed, giving a nod. Then her face composed itself. He fought the urge to shake his head. A true warrior of the old Galton Imperium would never have allowed their stoicism to break down.
Far behind them, Sarven watched on the plot as the cluster of icons symbolizing Group Achilles swung out from behind the planet. Behemoth’s passive arrays picked up sensors desperately searching for them. The flotilla spread like a fan as they hunted for a sign of what heading the battleship, and Cerberus, had come out on.
It’s worked, for the time being, Sarven thought. They’ve lost us.
Even at his most optimistic, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out on which vector they’d fled. But, every second of divergence was more time the enemy would have to make up. And a better chance they could slip out of the system on the Borath vector.
Achilles slowly diverged away, her escorting ships gathered around her protectively.
But two ships remained following them. Pretty much dead on.
Sarven frowned as Behemoth’s sensors registered an engine flare behind him. Their pursuers were accelerating.
From what he could tell, it was the pair of cruisers which had dogged at his heels for what felt like an eternity. And they were steadily closing. It would only be a matter of time before those ships caught up with them and reported where they were.





Chapter 30
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
“Where are you?” Darrow asked the question which had been very much on Cutter’s mind in the hours since the last engagement and—it wasn’t too much of a leap to suggest—on the minds of every other member of Achilles’s 1571 crewmembers. And most likely the tens of thousands of other Kingdom spacers currently in system hunting this quarry...this Admiral Sarven.
The battle over Tantalus I had been short, sharp, and utterly inconclusive, with neither side scoring a hit. It seemed strange, to Cutter, that their adversary had given himself away, though. Attacking from range, and in a maneuvering condition from which he knew he wouldn’t be able to fight long enough for the battle to be resolved. The one thing he did know from his dossier was that Sarven was smart. Smart, tough, and thoughtful. Not scared to attack, but a big thinker, too. Someone who always acted with cold calculation. He hadn’t come about on a whim. He had a reason for it. Some kind of game plan.
But then, he’d gone dark again. Slipping into the night. Their sensors degraded from the proximity to the system’s bloated sun.
The plot was a mishmash of vector lines. The three primary groups centered on heavy units, each of whom were surrounded by a halo of lighter cruisers and destroyers. The enemy was bracketed. Sarven must have known that.
So what would he do now?
“Engine flare!” Banning’s voice was practically a yelp as the holo-display automatically focused in to a place from the position of the last battle. The size of the plume eclipsed the ship which was its source. It began accelerating, its course obvious. He was headed out of the system.
“Give me a read. Is that Behemoth?” Cutter snapped as the battle lamps dimmed back to red.
He exchanged a brief look with his admiral. The question on the old man’s face was the same as he knew his must have worn. And spoke volumes.
This doesn’t feel right. Why would he give away his position now? 
“Commander, give me an analysis on that engine flare. I want to know whether that’s Behemoth or not, and now,” Cutter snapped. He stood and stepped forward to the railing circling the edge of the command podium, Darrow following a moment later, and leaned forward to overlook the holo.
The engine flare looked perfectly timed. It would slip past Group Ajax and reach the Karnov Boundary heading toward the Fenix System. From there, it could easily sidestep and head back into the Reach or cut back to Hegemony space.
“That isn’t Behemoth.” Darrow shook his head, his voice full of a calm authority.
“Sir,” Banning called a moment later. “Sensor readings suggest plume size and target acceleration correspond to the Cerberus.”
That confirmed that. The enemy cruiser was fleeing, using its higher acceleration to evade them. The question was, was this a full-scale rout. Or part of a planned withdrawal?
“Damn it,” Cutter breathed. There was no way any warship would catch up, except maybe the destroyer Rapier, far out on Ajax’s flank. It would be suicide for the light ship to engage a heavy cruiser. Unless they could get her some backup, that was. “Can we get some of Corvus’s aerospace forces out there?”
Darrow stood, his mouth pressing into the knuckles of his fist. He looked over at Banning after a second. “How long until Cerberus reaches the Karnov Boundary?”
“At her current rate of acceleration, she’ll transition in...” Banning tapped at her console. ”Thirty-two minutes on the Fenix System’s transition vector.”
Cutter winced as he did the same calculations Darrow undoubtedly was. Corvus could launch two of her Cyclone torpedo bombers every, what? Two minutes? Against a heavy cruiser, sporting a decent set of anti-aerospace weapons, they wouldn’t want to go up with anything less than a full squadron of fourteen craft. With a little standard operational delay, fifteen minutes to get up. Another fifteen minutes to form up and tune the jump drives. That’d leave two minutes to actually get in there and hit Cerberus.
It was too tight. They would barely have time to position for an attack run.
Darrow frowned then shook his head, turning away from the holo. “No, we’ll save it for Behemoth.”
“Sir, we should at least try.”
“She’ll come again, Hal.” Darrow said, his voice growing firmer as his decision solidified in his mind.
“It just rubs me the wrong way, letting her get away, sir.”
“You and me both, son,” Darrow said. “But remember, we have a bigger prize in this system. I’m half-tempted to conjecture Cerberus lit up her drive in the hope of pulling us out of position. And if so, she’s wanting to pull us out of said position for a reason. The logical explanation is so Behemoth can slip away, too.”
“Group Ajax can still come around and chase that cruiser into Fenix.”
“No,” Darrow said quietly. Then repeated himself firmly, his decision made. “Behemoth is too tough a customer. If we start splitting our forces, then Behemoth may well get past us. Lost Earth, he may have a chance of downing another capital ship if they can manipulate a situation where we go one-on-one again.”
The admiral was right, Cutter knew, but.... “Don’t ask me to like it.”
Darrow turned and raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t asking. Our mission, my mission, is the destruction of Behemoth. I will not become distracted from that purpose by chasing some cruiser.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The question is, where is Behemoth?” Darrow’s gaze fell back to the holo-display. The dashed line showing the Karnov Boundary in this system fell just outside the fourth planet, a vast gas giant with a swirling, storm-filled surface.
“Well, she has two choices. Hide in system somewhere—”
“No,” Darrow shook his head. “Sarven knows it would be only a matter of time before we happen across her. Then the game is up. No, at the moment he’s running quiet on a ballistic trajectory heading out-system.”
“Okay then, a different question. Sarven is either intending to shake us and proceed deeper into the Reach, and position himself back in the Corridor to continue his mission...”
“In which case, he’ll be intending on reuniting with Cerberus to do so.” Darrow nodded.
“Or retreat back toward the Arcadian Sector, back into Hegemony space and safety.”
“We did her some damage, sirs,” Banning spoke up, her voice nervous at addressing the senior officer in the Navy. Since Darrow had arrived, she’d been relegated to standing attentively at the base of the podium. “She was certainly bleeding a lot of fuel after we fought in Hellas.”
“So, even if he gets to the Corridor, he won’t have the endurance to stay there long without fueler support. Which he can’t count on,” Cutter continued the thought.
“So.” Darrow gestured at the display. “The only transition points for stars within hyper range are Borath, Luxus, Hellas, and back to Fenix. Hellas leads back toward the open Reach, so he’ll probably not want to go that way if he’s running on fumes.”
“And besides, we’re effectively blocking Hellas. Group Odysseus can easily position to block Luxus. Ajax has Fenix covered. That leaves Borath.” Cutter clicked his tongue in his mouth, distilling down the myriad ship positions on the Holo in his mind. “But then we have Sabre’s group on the direct path between Tantalus I and Borath—”
“Meaning they’re going a different route.” Darrow stepped up to the holo control console abutting the railing around the main display and scribed on it with his forefinger. Through the ethereal lights of the holo, a line mirrored Darrow’s motion, mimicking what the admiral was doing. It extended from Tantalus I, scribing a wobbled line around to the gas giant lying fourth out. It swung around again on reaching the planet, and reached out-system in the direction of Borath. “The only option which doesn’t entail too many major burns we could detect from halfway across the system is to slingshot around Tantalus IV. Behemoth is somewhere on that line.”
Darrow looked up. A pair of icons blinked, more or less following the vector. Spartan and Knight. Damn, those ships had a habit of being in the right place. “Signal Captain Hennessey. I want her to go to full burn along that course.”
“Aye, sir,” Banning said.
“Needless to say, I want her to find Behemoth, not engage her.” Darrow turned to Cutter. “That will be up to us, the big guns.”





Chapter 31
Commander Hennessey
Tantalus System – KSS Spartan
Hennessey licked her dry lips as the orders came through. Once again, they were to push ahead of the fleet, this time along Behemoth’s suspected track. She had checked, and rechecked the figures. If this was their plan, then whoever had come up with it was good—and devilishly cunning. They had burned when out of view of the fleet behind the star’s innermost planet, slipping onto a heading for Tantalus IV, where its massive gravity well would slingshot them around. That maneuver, like something from the depths of humankind’s spacefaring history, would put them on a heading which would take them between the incoming Kingdom ships and onto the vector for the Borath System.
With all the Kingdom forces concentrated here, in Tantalus, it would mean there was nothing to stop Behemoth. She would escape.
“We’ve got our orders.” Hennessey looked up, addressing her exhausted, battle-weary crew on the dimly lit bridge. “We are to increase to maximum burn. The brass’s best guess is that big bastard lies somewhere along the track we’re roughly following. We need to find him.”
Her XO frowned, his brow glistening with perspiration. Lost Earth, the whole bridge stank of fear and tension. Two close calls would do that to a crew. They were frayed, on edge. And needed respite. Except she didn’t have any to give. “Ma’am, we’re fried. We ne—”
“People,” she interrupted him gently. “I’ve asked a lot of you. The Navy’s asked a lot of you. And the Kingdom has, too. But we need to finish what we started back in Hellas. If the Behemoth gets away, then those on Cronus died in vain. We can’t let that happen. We won’t let that happen.”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” the XO said, his voice tired. Hennessey knew it wasn’t an inspirational speech. Hell, as exhausted as they were, she was more so. At least she’d been ensuring they’d been given breaks. She’d barely moved from the bridge in days.
“We find them,” Hennessey continued. “And we call in the cavalry. We’ve got a quarter of the fleet here. Nearly a third of the heavy units. They can come and do what needs to be done. Then our job is over and we can all go home.”
The muted responses from her bridge crew weren’t exactly filled with enthusiasm, but more than one of them had a faint gallow’s grin to them.
Once again, these brave boys and girls were being sent forward. To hunt a monster which had brought down a ship many times Spartan’s size.
“Execute.”
She felt herself being pushed back into the padding of her seat as Spartan’s powerful engines throttled up.
***
With a flash of light, and a cascade of twinkling exotic particles, Cerberus jumped.
Sarven relaxed back into his chair, a weight easing from his mind.
Over thirteen hundred men and women, and a Hegemony Astral heavy cruiser had escaped the death trap which Tantalus had become. He’d half expected, and half hoped, that the Kingdom would have turned to pursue. Even if just with a portion of the huge fleet they had gathered here.
That might have left a clear gap for Behemoth to slip out through. Instead, whoever was in command had held their discipline and kept their focus. There was still a chance to slip through, but the realist in him knew they would be forced to engage. Group Achilles was more or less still on his heels, and Group Ajax and the third contingent were closing the vise.
Kudos to you, he silently addressed the unknown commanding officer of the massive fleet gathered in this system. You know where the real prize lies. 
A chime echoed through the bridge. Sarven glanced at the display. What the hell was it now? It wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility the Kingdom had more ships in-system than what Behemoth had picked up. A probability, in fact. They weren’t the only ones with the ability to run quietly.
“We’re getting increased engine plumes on the two cruisers on our track,” Lasik said. Her voice had become dry and emotionless. She’d retreated deeper and deeper into herself as she’d learned the true magnitude of what faced them here. Her arrogance had dispelled as millions of tons of battle-steel descended on them. “They must have us.”
Sarven fought to keep the sneer from his face. These young Neos. Just fucking bullies. As soon as they realize they’re out of their depth, all their bluster, fancy uniforms and jackboots end up meaning nothing.
“No, they do not.” It was up to him to remain the calm in this storm. He may not like Lasik, but it was his job to try to bring them all home. Sarven gestured at the holo. A hatched line stretched toward Tantalus IV, and behind it, two icons of the enemy ships seemingly pursued. But, it was the other ships he was interested in and what they were doing, or in this case, weren’t doing yet. “Their other forces are not repositioning. They are exploring a lead, an idea, or an instinct from whoever is in command there.”
“Well, whoever that is, is on the right damn track,” Lasik said.
“It’s a good assumption for them to make.”
The two cruisers powered forward. Ripples emanated from them, showing their powerful sensors reaching out. At the rate of closure, it was going to be less than an hour before the enemy pulled into effective detection range for a ship running quiet.
Still, if they went to full burn, combined with a slingshot maneuver, they may still just slip out. Those two cruisers would be exchanging fire with them in a stern chase, not that he was too worried about them. Their medium pulse cannons might do some damage if they hit something vital, but they were more likely to be wary of getting into a duel with a battleship. It would be near suicide for them.
What did worry him was the undoubted aerospace attack which would quickly follow. And the final run to the Karnov Boundary where they’d be exchanging fire with the third group, which could just about make the intercept. If that group contained battleships, then they doubtless would be able to do some real damage.
Over the next hour, the two cruisers increased their velocity. They’d throttled up to what must have been max burn. The first glancing brushes of sensor sweeps grazed Behemoth’s hull.
Whatever happened now, they were moments away from detection. They’d probably sensed there was something ahead already, even if they hadn’t confirmed it yet.
There was no point in delaying any longer, Sarven realized. It was inevitable. “Captain, go to battle alert.”
The bridge lighting faded from yellow to the hellish red of a ship at general quarters.
“We will continue to run quiet until the last possible moment. As soon as we are detected, I want to throttle up the main engines to the maximum possible while still capitalizing on the slingshot maneuver toward Borath.” Sarven stood straight, striving to give a sense of calm authority. He inclined his head at his captain, gesturing her over. “I also think it prudent if the crew were perhaps to be given the opportunity to record messages for transmission. They will each be allowed three minutes to do so. And then, we will transmit in batch as soon as we confirm they have a lock on us.”
“You don’t think we’ll make it, do you?” Lasik asked quietly.
“I think it may soon be time to pay the price for the Kingdom’s loss,” Sarven responded. “Perhaps if we hadn’t been so successful, they would not have committed such forces to the hunt. It is of no matter now. We will still fight, but the odds...they are getting long, are they not?”
“Yes, they are, sir.” The woman sounded almost deferential, for the first time since he’d met her. She had wanted the glory, but the responsibility for the loss? Not so much.
“I will be in my day room,” he replied. “I have a message of my own to compose.”
***
“I have something.” The sensor officer sent the readings to Hennessey’s console. A return. Small, but solid. And traveling on the track suggested by Darrow, careening toward the gas giant. Either an asteroid had somehow managed to have the incredible good fortune to—in defiance of orbital mechanics—swing around the first world and slingshot its way toward the fourth on exactly the heading they were looking on...
Or that small return was Spartan’s sensors bouncing off the hull of their quarry.
“Signal, Achilles. We have—”
“Ma’am,” the sensor officer’s voice was urgent. “I am monitoring a comms burst from that object. I am calling the contact as Behemoth.”
A surge of elation racked through her exhausted body. And of fear. There was only one reason they’d transmit in the clear like that. They knew they’d been made.
“Understood. Signal Knight. We are going to maneuver plan Able One.”
She felt a pressure on her chest as Spartan fired her powerful engines again. This time pushing her above the plane of the ecliptic, while Knight swept down and below. They would continue, roughly, on their quarry’s vector. But she sure as hell wasn’t going to cruise straight up Behemoth’s tailpipe if she didn’t have to.
The two ships diverged from the path, like hunting cheetahs racing around their prey.
“Ma’am, I have Admiral Darrow on the link.”
“Put him through.”
“Captain,” Darrow began. “Good work. You are to continue monitoring and tracking. I want you glued on Behemoth, but do not engage.”
“I’m not planning to,” Hennessey acknowledged with a wry grin.
Darrow returned it. “Not until we soften him up first, at least.”





Chapter 32
Lieutenant Commander Faraday
Tantalus System – 825th Squadron
Lieutenant Commander Rose Faraday’s Cyclone torpedo bomber rocked forward on its landing gear as she smoothly drove the throttle forward with her left hand. The rumble of her torpedo bomber’s four powerful RS-14 Thunderhead engines resonated through the cockpit. Before her, the flight deck stretched as if to infinity. The Cyclone squatted on a crackling, sparking electromagnetic catapult rail. Energy coursed through it, and built to a crescendo.
Time to earn our pay.
“Release,” the voice of the launch control officer was tinny in her ear.
With a whine, the catapult violently hauled the heavy craft forward, even as the engines pushed. She felt herself being slammed back into her seat. Hard.
The spotlights imbedded in a line along the flight deck became a blur as she accelerated, faster than her inertial compensators could account for, toward the shimmer of the atmosphere field.
The Cyclone erupted out of the carrier, and she pulled up and around as she was supposed to, clearing for the next torpedo bomber to emerge.
She soared away from the huge imposing cylinder of Corvus, looking over toward the rectangle of the flight deck visible in her bow. Another rugged-looking Cyclone shot out. The launch crew would already be cycling the next two torpedo bombers onto the launch rail, ready to spit them out into space.
Unlike the massive battleship running alongside her, Ajax, Corvus had one purpose, and one purpose only. To provide home to craft like hers far from the bases and stations throughout the Kingdom, letting them deploy into any theater in which they had enemies that needed defeating. She, and the pilots who would form up around her, were the reason for the carrier’s existence. An awe-inspiring thought that the kilometer-long ship was there merely for them to be chauffeured around in.
“Eight Two Five - Eight, fail check.”
Lost Earth. She rolled her eyes. Another Cyclone had gone down. The damn things were getting old and cranky. They were well past their service life. Hell, they were near obsolete when they were first fielded.
It was a total contrast to the robust Tempests those glory kids in the KAF were flying. What she’d give to get her hands on them. And she soon would. The Navy was due its first batch of carrier variant Tempests—Carpests, as they’d already been nicknamed—within months. But that was for tomorrow. Right now, they had thirteen of the older Cyclones which had passed checks to go in and deliver their payloads of torpedoes into this monster.
“825th, those slack-arse spacers have finally found us our target.” There had been no time for a specific briefing. The situation was far too fluid for that. She was going to have to make up the plan, and their orders, quite literally on the fly. “And now want us to go sort out their problem for ’em. We’ll form up, then we’re going to remind that garbage scow why the Kingdom Navy don’t take no shit from some Galton rust bucket.”
She keyed her console. Corvus relayed the data, which Spartan had been hungrily acquiring. Most crucially, the huge ship’s vector. The jump drive gave a rumble as it began spooling, synching the small attack craft onto Behemoth’s direction and velocity.
A digital bar on her display steadily climbed, going from red and through to yellow.
She glanced at her plot. Her squadron had slotted into position. The thirteen of them which had made it out into space, that was. They quickly formed into a line abreast formation.
“On my mark.” Faraday checked over her bird one more time. This was going to be as quicktime as it got. Everything looked in order. No warnings showed on her console.
It looked good.
She heard a beep and looked down. The bar on her console had crept into the green. The drive had spooled up and was tuned to their target. They’d be dumped out of the jump, already traveling on their prey’s vector.
“Three, two, one, execute.”
With a ripple of flashes, Corvus, Ajax, and the rest of the flotilla disappeared.
A bloated mass replaced it, the swirling mottled clouds of a vast gas giant—Tantalus IV.
The world visibly swelled from the speed with which they were approaching. A tiny speck crossed the horizon, hugging close to the upper layers of the world’s atmosphere. Faraday reached up and tapped her cockpit canopy. A box image appeared on the smart glass and steadily focused in on it.
The view zoomed closer, revealing it for what it was. A huge ship streaked through the mountainous cloud layers of the planet, so low that it was actually creating a contrail.
Behemoth.
“I’ve got eyes on the target,” she said, somehow forcing her voice to remain calm. Lost Earth, that thing was big. “All Cyclones, follow me in.”
Pushing across on her yoke, she drove her throttle forward. Her Cyclone began to arc around, offsetting the approach. There would be no point delivering their torpedoes into the ship’s drive plume. They’d be incinerated long before they got anywhere near it.
No, if they wanted to hit this big sonovabitch, it had to be in its flank.
“Hold your fire till I say,” she called.
A chorus of acknowledgments rippled through her comm. She thundered down toward Behemoth’s altitude, getting so low that the tops of the clouds whipping by below were scraping the belly of her Cyclone. The cockpit rocked and rattled as the winds lashed violently at her bird.
Her threat detectors warbled. She flashed a glance down at her systems console and gritted her teeth.
A targeting radar had found her, and the game was on.





Chapter 33
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
Behemoth vibrated as she streaked low through the atmosphere of the huge gas giant at half burn, the best they could manage and still keep their maneuvering solution on track. The planet’s immense gravity would haul them inexorably around and, when the moment was right, they’d throttle up their engines to full. The huge ship would surge out of Tantalus IV’s orbit on a course which would let them slip between the approaching groups of enemy ships and onto the Borath jump vector.
That was the plan, anyway.
“We have thirteen attack craft. Probably Cyclone torpedo bombers,” the tactical officer cried out even as the alert klaxons began whooping.
Sarven bared his teeth, fighting against giving a rebuke at the young officer’s panicked tone. Instead, he dug from his memory what he knew about their latest adversary.
Cyclone torpedo bombers. Small attack craft designed to carry a single torpedo each. They were old, by the standards of jump fighter and bomber standards, anyway, and they weren’t designed for subtlety or flashy tactics. Instead, their attacks relied on barreling through an enemy’s defenses.
And that, Sarven observed, as he watched the swarm of icons denoting their attackers’ sweep around, was what they intended. They had curved around, coming in broadside to the ship, letting their momentum sideslip them along Behemoth’s vector.
“Captain,” he snapped, turning to Lasik. “Full-defense authority. I want those craft shot out of my skies. And your helm has the discretion to maneuver to evade as they see fit.”
“Aye aye,” Lasik said, her voice quiet and subdued, as if all emotion had drained out of it. “Gunnery crews, Triple A as you achieve range.”
On the wireframe arms graphic, the ship’s forty-four anti-aerospace weapons flickered from green to yellow as they were unsafed, ready to unleash a hell storm of flak and light pulse fire.
The holo zoomed in, presenting the only tactical picture any of them cared about right there and then. Three concentric spheres appeared around Behemoth. The longer-range flak batteries. The mid-range light pulse cannons, and the short-range point defense guns.
“Captain.” Sarven leaned back in his chair. Once again, direct control was out of his hands and thrust into hers. “Defend this ship.”
***
They’re low.
The Cyclones had swept around, racing toward the charging enemy from an angle, so low the horizon of the vast world had flattened. The huge ship streaked through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant, the bow shock battering the towering ochre clouds aside. Behind Behemoth, the plume from the battleship’s engines created a kilometer-long blowtorch across the muddy red and yellow skies, adding more tumultuous chaos to the vortex created by his passage.
Faraday’s torpedo bomber rocked and bucked, the dark clouds racing by below giving a true feeling of the speed she was traveling. It was a total contrast to the normal smooth, almost motionless feeling of traversing through space, where there were no reference points for the eye to hook into.
A cracking, violent explosion bloomed just off her Cyclone’s nose. Then another. She heard a sharp pinging noise wash across her canopy.
“We’re taking flak.” Grimacing, she braced herself for the inevitable as explosions erupted around her. If one of the blossoms of fire and shrapnel found her, would she even know? It would be so fast, she doubted it. Or at least she hoped that would be the case. Just as likely, she would live to spiral down into the clouds below in a crippled bird. She’d have long moments to realize she was about to be crushed by the titanic pressures found at the heart of a gas giant.
Damn she hated flak. It was impossible even to evade. The very nature of the weapon system creating a random spread of fire, the idea to create a wall of destruction only the craziest of pilots would fly through. She was just as safe, or more accurately, unsafe, going straight and level as jinking randomly.
She glanced to her right. A Cyclone running alongside smashed through an expanding cloud of shrapnel. It blew through, its space frame ragged and tattered, blackened by the fire.
“Sampson?” she said, her voice clipped and tight as concern stabbed through her. “What’s your status?”
A pained groan came through the comm. “I’m okay, boss.”
He doesn’t sound it. “How’s your bird?”
“I’m showing a shitload of system failures,” he said, his voice giving away it was more than just his Cyclone which was wounded. “I ain’t got my torp anymore.”
“Okay, break off,” Faraday called. “Get out of here.”
“Sorry, boss.” The damaged Cyclone twisted away, its engine spluttering as it sought to flee the explosion-filled approach and the clutches of the gas giant’s gravity well.
And then they were down to twelve.
Then eleven, as another Cyclone took a near miss, shearing a wing clean off. The craft spiraled out of formation, escaping from the melee trailing smoke and debris.
Streamers of pulse cannon fire lashed out from Behemoth as they streaked closer, sweeping in fans before her. The squadron had entered light pulse cannon range, adding to the chaos and explosions which filled the horizon.
Her Cyclone bucked as fire slammed into the fuselage. A warble came through her helmet as her damage control systems registered a savage series of hits.
She didn’t even have a chance to check her systems console when her Cyclone bucked violently as a flak round exploded next to her. The star of a hole appeared in her cockpit canopy. The atmosphere, as ethereal as it was at this altitude, rushed through, slamming her head back into the seat as it roared inside. She felt a sharp pain in her shoulder. An alarm beeped urgently. She looked down. A patch of red stained the shoulder of her flight suit, bubbles of blood streaming from it, then freezing into dark marbles. She grabbed a can of suit sealant and sprayed it over, patching the tear in her suit and then the canopy, for good measure.
She took a couple of seconds, all she could spare, to rotate her shoulder and flex it experimentally as she looked at her canopy warily. Agony tore through her. But it still moved; she still had a semblance of control over her limb. And, thank Lost Earth, it looked like the thick-plated steelglass would hold.
And that meant she was still in the game. She could move, but damn it hurt.
She looked down at her cracked console. Her torp status was still green. She still had a live fish. And she was going to take it in. All the way, if she had to.
Relative rate of closure was down to two kilometers per second and she was only twenty out now. The huge enemy ship easily visible to the naked eye as a massive, imposing metal beast surging through the planet’s atmosphere. More fire joined the deluge, the even lighter point defense guns sending streaking lines toward her battered squadron. She winced as she heard the hammer blows of fire striking her fuselage.
The crosshairs on her flickering HUD danced over the target, then flashed. She was locked on.
“Fish away.”
The other ten remaining Cyclone pilots echoed her cry. Before them, the sleek torpedoes raced forward, line abreast like their launching craft.
***
“Torpedoes incoming!” the tactical officer bellowed even as he recoiled into his seat, as if physically backing away from the icons of the projectiles coming for them.
Sarven gave a breath, gripping his armrests as he watched the eleven torpedoes streak toward Behemoth in a fan of inbound destruction. Behind them, their launching Cyclones broke in a starburst, free to evade the withering fire. One after another came a red flash as they jumped back to their distant carrier.
He felt a pressure on his chest as the helmsman tried to evade. Using what little time and maneuverability he had to try to slip between the torpedoes of the spread.
The beeping of the threat warning increased in frequency, becoming more urgent as the torpedoes quickly closed on them.
In a flash, one streaked by just before Behemoth’s boxy bow. Then another.
Were they going to get lucky? A sense of hope, that even as he thought it, he knew was a lie washed through him.
The ship seemed to shift to the left. The few crew on the bridge still standing were knocked from their feet. The damage board flashed red on the thick armor near the bow. For the briefest second, Sarven felt relief. If they were going to be hit, that was the place.
Father Terra might have just smiled on them.
Then the ship bucked as if it had slammed into a wall.
He felt himself jammed forward against his harness, the straps cutting in so deep they must have bruised his chest.
“Report,” Lasik’s voice was somewhere between a shout and a scream.
Sarven shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. The whole engine array flickered between yellow and red, as if trying to decide just how badly they had been hit. Then the more in-depth report came in.
The damage control display rotated and focused in, the main fuel feeds a ragged mess. All of them, from the look of things.
“We’ve lost the main engines, ma’am,” the damage control officer shouted urgently. “I have an overheat in one, two, three...shit! All of them. We need to shut them down.”
Sarven watched the other torpedoes flash past to their stern. Some incinerated in Behemoth’s spluttering drive plume. Damn it, in contrast to the first blow, the second had hit them in just about the worst place it could, near where Achilles had already struck them and caused such damage.
Alarms whooped. The engine temperature and pressure readings raced far above nominal and into the red. If they didn’t shut them down now, then they’d lose them for good. Maybe lose the ship, too, if—when—the engines blew.
“Captain?”
“We’ve got to keep them burning,” Lasik turned to him, fear in her eyes. “We have to—”
“Captain,” he repeated. Then he shook his head. It was over. “It’s okay, Captain. It’s okay.”
She swallowed, then looked forward blankly. “Helm, power down.”
Sarven watched the trajectory plot automatically adjust as the engines throttled down. Instead of the line extending up and out toward the Borath jump vector, it looped around and back toward Tantalus IV in a long, elliptical orbit.
They were trapped here, around this world.
And if they didn’t get the engines back up and running, then they were as good as dead as the Kingdom battleships closed in on them. The orbit of this world would become their graveyard.
More detail reached the damage control displays, showing just how horrifically they’d been mauled. Sarven shook his head. It would take all the miracles that Father Terra could bestow to get their drive working again.
“Captain, silence all the alarms. I can’t hear myself think.” Sarven stood and leaned on the railing surrounding his station. All around the bridge, the crew looked drawn, pale. The inevitability of their situation apparent to all, from lowest spacer to Captain Lasik herself. It was obvious.
Sarven turned back to the plot. Achilles and Ajax now joined together and, surrounded by a swarm of destroyers, bore down on Tantalus IV. At opposite poles, in high orbit, the two cruisers which had shadowed them lurked, undoubtedly ready to get their revenge for the times they’d been chased away.
He tightened his grip on the railing. How to maintain what last vestiges of honor the Hegemony had left them with? An overwhelming urge filled him. Why not just strike Behemoth’s colors? Surrender. Scuttle the ship. Let the men and women of his command live.
The Kingdom weren’t bastards to their prisoners, not like the Neos or the distant Dawn Empire lying far beyond the Federation. The mysterious nation the Prime was whispering sweet nothings to.
Maybe...no. He swallowed down the momentary weakness. That he hated the fucking Neos didn’t detract from the fact he was Galton born and bred, charged with protecting and defending her, no matter who was in power.
Nation before Party.
Perhaps demonstrating to the Kingdom the resolve of Galton’s sons and daughters would give pause to this cursed war. Maybe, if they could show the Kingdom the price they’d have to pay, there would be more efforts toward a peace. To stop even more dying in the days and years to come.
Maybe that was Behemoth’s true purpose and the sacrifice they would all have to make here and today.
Maybe that would mean their deaths would accomplish something.
Yes, Sarven thought, he knew what he had to do. To send a message that would be understood by all loud and clear.
“Open a QE channel home,” Sarven addressed Lasik, allowing his voice to carry across the bridge, and letting his resolve build.
A chime rang out across the bridge.
“Channel open.”
He let his gaze wash across the scared young men and women. Then his resolve hardened. He would be clear, concise. Laconic like the heroes of the Imperium would have been. “Ship unmaneuverable. We will fight to the last round.”
He couldn’t help but allow bitterness to fill his next words. “Long live the Prime.”
Because we certainly won’t be living long.
He lowered himself into his seat, before slowly spinning in it to face Lasik. “For what it’s worth, commence repair efforts on the engines. Meanwhile, I want every weapon capacitor primed and ready.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He stared at the holo, surprised at the lack of animosity he felt for the enemy which was coming for them. He would go down honorably, not sniveling and spitting in anger like a fucking wet Neo having a tantrum.
A steely resolve crossed his face.
Now, let’s see just what this ship can take.





Chapter 34
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
A cheer erupted through Achilles’s bridge as a devastating explosion rolled over Behemoth’s hindquarter. Her engine plume spluttered and faded.
Darrow turned to Cutter and gave a thin smile. He returned it, unable to stop himself from adding teeth. The beast had had its tendons cut and he smelt blood. Now it was time for the hunters to pounce. Time for them to get their revenge.
He glanced at Lieutenant Commander Banning. “Give me a revised trajectory.”
On the holo, the course of Behemoth reached out from the stricken ship, extending far from the gas giant toward the Borath jump vector. As he watched, the blinking hatched line curved back on itself, turning into an extended ellipse, the course of the ship swooping around past the world’s retinue of moons in a long, flattened loop.
“She’s caught in an elliptical orbit, sir,” Banning called.
“Is it stable?” Or, the more pertinent question Cutter was asking, were orbital mechanics going to do their work for them and the gas giant drag the wounded beast into its maw?
After a moment of regarding her console, Banning gave a nod. “Looks like it. His perigee will be low, probably just skimming the Karman line, maybe even lower. But it’ll hold. For a few days, at least.”
And, if the dossier on the enemy admiral was even half-accurate, then that would be more than long enough for Sarven to come up with a way out. “A damn shame. It would have been nice if Tantalus IV had done its job for us.”
Cutter folded his arms and looked at the smiling Admiral Darrow. And no wonder he was. Their prey was trapped until they could get their engines back up and running. An opportunity he was sure no one in the fleet was inclined to give.
“How soon until Odysseus and Orestes get here?” Darrow addressed Banning, the smile dropping as business took over from elation.
“They’re still pushing in from out-system,” Banning replied. “At least twenty hours.”
“ETA for our arrival into effective weapons range?”
“Three for max burn single pass attack—”
“We’re not going to beat that thing into submission with a single pass.” Darrow held his hand up, forestalling that plan. “I want a zero-zero engagement estimate.”
“With a deceleration into combat range...five, sir.” To Cutter, Banning looked unable to hide her nervousness at the thought. And it was no small wonder. Darrow was asking for Achilles to be brought in to close range with no residual velocity. To haul up next to the enemy battleship.
Darrow pursed his lips as he reviewed the maneuvering solution blinking into existence on the holo. “Any assessment on the damage to Behemoth?”
“No, sir.” Banning shook her head. “She could be powering up as we speak, or she could be knocked out for good. There’s simply no way to know.”
“So, they could get their engines back online at any time.” Darrow didn’t ask it as a question. The admiral pressed a forefinger to his lips in internal deliberation.
Cutter knew what was coming next. Darrow had no choice. If Behemoth came back alive again, then he would make another play to flee. Their quarry would have another opportunity to escape. The man in command over there, Sarven, was wily and switched on. To give him the slightest of opportunity, to ease the pressure on them, might be all it took for them to slip away or do more harm.
And of no small concern, Cutter flicked his eyes down to his console, their fuel was getting damn low. The cruise out to the Ishtar System and back, and then the hunt for Behemoth had eaten away at it. If they got caught in another stern chase, there was a very good chance they would run dry of fuel. With Corvus reporting her compliment of fighter bombers had been badly mauled from their attack run and unable to sortie until repairs had been completed, they would have no way of maintaining the attack.
No, this was it. He was sure the order was going to come.
“Tell Odysseus and Orestes to make best possible speed.” Darrow came to a decision. “But we’re going in as soon as Ajax can form up on us.”
Cutter nodded. “Spartan and Knight are also positioned; their firepower may help.”
“Agreed.” Darrow nodded back. “The more the merrier in this fight, but they are to bombard from extreme weapon range. I don’t want them attracting any fire.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Darrow paused a moment, then tapped his console. “Pastor Garcia? Please attend the bridge.”
Without waiting for a reply, he signed off the intercom and leaned back in his seat. “Hal, once this begins...”
“I know, sir.” Cutter felt a tickle of butterflies reach his belly. The initial excitement of disabling their enemy turned to pre-battle nerves as he knew what had to come next. “We keep going. This doesn’t end until it ends.”
“And not a second before.” Darrow stared forward at the trapped, stricken enemy ship. It was creeping toward apogee—the point where it would be furthest from the planet. Shortly after, it would swoop back down toward the surface. “At the very least, we need to ensure it doesn’t leave this orbit. That, even if we fail, the ship is so badly hurt Odysseus and Orestes can mop up when they arrive.”
Cutter frowned. That was the harsh truth. Just because the damn thing couldn’t move, didn’t mean it was without teeth. The vast ship’s massive guns were just as potent as they’d ever been.
Over long minutes, the distant world grew in size in the fore display, even as on the tactical holo, they watched Behemoth soar higher and higher in its unpowered orbit. At any moment, Cutter expected to see the ignition of the ship’s engines, pushing the vessel far out into space and restarting the chase.
“Sir.” The deep, somber voice of Pastor Garcia announced the priest’s arrival.
“Pastor,” Darrow nodded in greeting. “Shortly we are going into combat, and I will say a few words beforehand. If you please, a prayer might help settle the crew’s nerves.”
“Of course, Admiral.” The man reached to his breast, squeezing the badge of the Une between his thumb and forefinger.
“Thank you, Pastor.” Darrow turned back to Cutter. “Captain, give me the ship.”
“Sir,” he tapped his console and nodded at the admiral.
A chime rang out across the bridge. And across every corridor, cabin, room, and hold in his mighty vessel.
“Men and women of the Achilles.” Darrow stood, his hands clasped behind his back. “Shortly, we will be engaging our enemy. The enemy who so grievously wounded the Kingdom. Who grievously wounded you. They are injured and trapped here in Tantalus. But make no mistake, a cornered beast is the most dangerous.”
Darrow lowered his head briefly. “They have asked for no quarter. Nor do we expect them to give it. Behemoth destroyed the pride of the Kingdom fleet and we will take our revenge. Whatever happens this day, the Hegemony warship will not be going home. Do you all understand?”
“Yes, sir!” the men and women of the bridge cried out in an impressive chorus. And Cutter knew that same cry would be washing through the entire vessel.
Darrow nodded, in apparent satisfaction. “Pastor Garcia?”
The priest stepped up onto the podium, twisting between his thumb and forefinger the ancient blue and white icon of Earth, the Une, on his breast—the white of the lost world’s nations taken from above the planet’s North Pole, the whole tiny map surrounded by the crossed branches of an olive tree. He clasped his hands in front of his belly and lowered his head, along with Cutter and the rest of the crew.
Cutter lowered his head, clasping his hands before him. He wasn’t religious. Not by a long shot. But, right now, he would take any help he could get.
“Lost Earth, who alone nurtured humanity and will shine bright until day and night come to an end. Grant us, your children and your fleet, your harbor and protection,” Pastor Garcia’s voice rang out. “We give thanks.”
“We give thanks.” The words echoed around the bridge and ship.
Cutter looked up and around, blinking. It was time.
“I want every weapon primed and ready to go,” he barked out through the silence. “Engines are to be prepared for full combat maneuvering. Every watt of power not used for those two purposes or life support is to be directed into the dispersion grid.”
“Aye aye.”
“Mister Haynes,” Cutter addressed his gunnery officer. “No matter what, those guns are to be kept firing. I don’t care how you do it, keep them going.”
“Aye aye.” The gunnery officer grinned.
“Pastor?” Darrow looked at the commander, a hint of a wry smile on his face. “If you’d be so kind?”
“For what we are about to receive,” the Priest replied in the customary fashion of ships of the line going into battle, “May we be truly grateful.”
Cutter couldn’t resist a chuckle at the dry humor of the prayer which had followed them from the seas of Lost Earth to the depths of space. He looked around his bridge, taking in the crew and officers. They were exhausted. Angry. Hungering for revenge.
And confident in their demeanor. They would win. He was damn sure of it.
This won’t be like the last time. Not at all.





Chapter 35
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
There was no reason for stealth anymore. Behemoth’s sensors stretched out, their sheer power enough to raise the hull temperature of any ship they fell on.
Lasik stepped over to Sarven. The tendons on her neck protruded, a sign of her stress and fear. “Engineering estimates repairs will be completed in ten hours.”
He nodded. So that was it. Unless, for whatever reason, the Kingdom forces advancing in a tide of steel hesitated, then the battle was inevitable. And the outcome beyond doubt.
“Thank you, Captain.”
The woman looked drawn and exhausted. They all were. Six destroyers now shadowed Behemoth’s orbit, having sped to them at best acceleration. The two cruisers which had harried them so relentlessly sat above the poles of the world, ready to pounce on them at any time.
But most worryingly, the two enemy battleships had formed up, tracking inbound with menacing purpose. Their intent was as clear as the power of their deceleration burns. They were coming in for a zero-zero intercept. They wanted to finish this. Here, in orbit around this gaseous world in the middle of nowhere.
They would not—could not—risk Behemoth completing repairs, so they would attack. The question was, would they wait for the other flotilla even now approaching from the outskirts of the system? If they did, there might be a small opportunity for his crippled ship to make another attempt at fleeing.
He gave a light snort. He was moving into the realms of wishful thinking now. Whoever was in command over there would not chance that. Not with their prey now at their mercy. Achilles and Ajax between them had enough firepower to do the job. He knew it, and so would they. Even if he somehow fended them off, he could envisage no way in which Behemoth wouldn’t be badly damaged. Then the other group of ships driving in-system would finish what they had started.
Sarven paced around the holo-tank, running his hand along the railing surrounding it. His crew’s eyes were red-rimmed with fatigue. He nodded in greeting as each sought to meet his gaze. Just as quickly, they averted their defeated eyes. They knew it. They all knew it. It was over.
“Sir,” a loud voice called. “Sir!”
A man stood from his console, his battlesuit unzipped and clutching a tablet. Gritting his teeth, Sarven fought down an admonishment. “Yes, lieutenant?”
“I have an encrypted QE signal from fleet command.” Was that a glimmer of hope Sarven detected in the young man’s expression? “They’ve...they’ve ordered the Borath System Wolf Pack to relocate here.”
Captain Lasik darted a glance at him.
They were getting reinforcements? Father Terra only knew how many stealths were in the Borath Wolf Pack. It could be one, or it could be a dozen or more. Stealth dispositions were amongst the most secret of information in the Astral, and frankly, Sarven wasn’t on the list to know. The fact he was even aware, from conversations with his peers, there was a pack in the Borath System would likely constitute a gross lack of operational security.
But an indeterminate number of stealths coming in-system would make even the fearsome force arrayed against them nervous. At the least, rather than an aggressive attack, it would have to be at a more slow, measured advance lest a stealth sneak through their lines and torpedo a capital ship.
“What’s the transit time?” Sarven asked, his voice louder than intended.
“Unknown, sir. It depends on their disposition, whether the Commander of Stealths in Borath wants to form up, or have his units make best speed—”
“Lieutenant, last time I checked, I’m an admiral,” Sarven snapped, impatient at the prevarication. “I know these things; give me a best and worst case.”
“Apologies, Admiral.” The lieutenant didn’t even have the grace to look sheepish as he rapidly did the calculations. “Assuming best case, and if Borath had a picket stealth near the hyper vector to Tantalus, then the first could enter the system at any time.”
Sarven turned to Lasik. The captain’s teeth were bared. A dangerous flash of hope glistened in her eyes.
Even a single stealth in-system might give pause to the Kingdom. A silent killer positioning to take a shot at one of the battleships. Oh, it would be a suicide mission for whoever was in command of the tiny craft, the torpedo as likely to hit the warship’s thick armor as anything vital. The stealth would be pounced on by the escorts. The small, slow, and vulnerable warship hunted and destroyed mercilessly.
But then both sides had learned that a lucky shot could change the course of a battle—even a war—over the past few days. For the Kingdom, the expanding cloud of wreckage drifting in the Hellas System which had once been their flagship illustrated the point perfectly. And the fact that Behemoth was locked in orbit, with horrifically mangled engines, around this world with only attitude control thrusters was a reminder for the Hegemony Astral.
They just had to hope that they could fend off the King—
“Torpedoes. Incoming,” the sensor officer barked, even as she drew a harness around her shoulders in anticipation.
On the holo-display, the icons depicting the destroyers disgorged a swarm of flashing dots. Ship-to-ship torpedoes surged downward on a course for them.
Sarven ran and climbed the three stairs to his command podium, Lasik following in his wake. He pulled on his helmet, sealing it and preparing for the battle to come.
It looked like the Kingdom wasn’t going to give them the time to wait for the reinforcements.
They were attacking now.
The torpedoes streaked down toward them, even as the huge battleships advanced closer and closer, approaching extreme firing range.





Chapter 36
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
Two dozen heavy torpedoes speared their way toward the wounded enemy battleship on rumbling columns of fire. They fanned out in a spread, seeking to bracket Behemoth, and, of course, pummel him into submission.
The beeps coming over the bridge’s speakers increased in frequency as the torpedoes approached their target. They streaked closer and closer. The noise became a single note.
Behemoth rotated on his still-intact maneuvering engines far more agilely than a ship of his size should have been able to, coming bow-on to the incoming. On the holo, a blurry sphere appeared around the ship, a shroud of jamming emanating from the warship’s powerful electronic warfare suite, masking him somewhere within.
The torpedoes flashed by, plunging down into the misty clouds of the planet.
“Want your pound of flesh, Hal?” Darrow had taken Commander Ashford’s station, the old man obviously having no desire to miss out on a front seat of the action. Cutter winced. What he’d have given to have his XO here. To share this with her. To have her by his side again.
Instead, he responded, forcing the emotion from his voice. “Aye, sir.”
This wasn’t going to be a job which could be accomplished from high orbit and with torpedoes. The distance was too great. The destroyers, staying well out of range of the battleship’s mighty guns, turned the weapons designed more for knife-fight range into dumb rockets. Even if they had the torpedo stores for saturation fire in sufficient quantity, Behemoth still retained enough maneuvering ability that they could throw munitions down the gravity well all day toward the ship, and accomplish nothing.
Beyond drain their morale, that was. And exhaust what must be an already fatigued ship and crew.
But they didn’t have enough torpedoes to do even that. One or two more decent-sized volleys was all they had left.
So, Cutter supposed, they were going to have to do this the hard way. And that meant getting toe-to-toe with that big bastard. Doing things like in the days of the Kingdom versus the Galton Imperium at the Battle of Orchan.
“Then let’s commence.” Darrow took a deep breath, his chest swelling. Then he turned to Cutter and bellowed, “Plan Able Four. Execute.”
Achilles, with her sister ship, Ajax squatting line abreast thundered silently through space, descending down into Tantalus IV’s gravity well and toward their stricken enemy. Steadily, they began to diverge. To take the enemy from both sides in a vise of steel.
The red spheres of the Kingdom’s gunnery range and the enemies kissed, then steadily blurred together. They were in range and Achilles was locked on.
“Fire!” Cutter shouted, the frustration of days, and the heartache of the loss of Cronus and her crew being channeled into that single word.
A ripple of deep thumps washed through the bridge as Achilles’s heavy pulse cannons fired. Red dots raced toward Behemoth on the holo, soon joined by those from her sister ship. A moment later, Spartan and Knight opened up from their high orbits with their far smaller, yet still-vicious cannons.
The main viewscreen focused in, showing the rounds plunging past the enemy, flashing toward the turbulent clouds of the world beyond, their aim skewed by the EW shroud Behemoth covered himself with.
“All turrets, fire as able,” Cutter urged. Mister Haynes turned and nodded his still-battered and puffy face up at him even as he paced behind his gunners. The man had a personal score to settle, the energy in his movements unable to be restrained in a harnessed seat.
Volley after volley of pulse rounds raced down range. Literally, raining fire down on the enemy ship.
“You know,” Darrow sat next to him. A picture of a calm and composed commanding officer, his voice was almost conversational. “The worst bit about being an admiral is fighting the urge to jump in and start giving orders once things go tactical like this.”
“It’s not easy for a captain, either,” Cutter responded. He knew full well what the old admiral meant. “All I want to do is go sit at a gunnery console and take control of the weapons station myself.”
“Sadly, that’s not what we’re paid for, son,” the admiral replied. “Not anymore, anyway.”
“Incoming!”
With a ripple of flashes, Behemoth’s massive guns opened fire. The pulse rounds, each the size of a small shuttle, streaked by, her hellishly accurate weapons nearly scoring a hit on the first volley even through Behemoth’s own EW Shroud. A testament to the targeting software and skill of the gunners.
***
“RCS, full 180, bring turret Anton and turret Bruno to bear and fire,” Lasik shouted. Pulse fire rained down on Behemoth from the two battleships pursuing them.
The huge planet swelled as Behemoth swung back in their orbit toward it, gathering speed as he did. Pulse rounds flashed by, some sizzling into the cloud layer below. The massive energies released causing vast rippling explosions through the atmosphere. A spectacular show, Sarven thought in a moment of distraction, if they weren’t under attack.
Behemoth shuddered as a series of rounds slammed into his armored flank, even as he turned to bring his main batteries to face toward the enemy. Klaxons warbled, the damage control systems seeking to find what had been done to the ship.
“I want those damn guns firing!” Lasik bellowed. The woman had given up the security of being harnessed into her seat. Instead, she paced behind her gunners, the only station worth a damn on the ship until they could get the engines fully back up and running.
Thuds rippled through the ship as Behemoth answered his attackers with his own huge cannons.
The Kingdom battleships, Achilles and Ajax, burned hard, catching up with them, their turrets flaring as they fired again and again at what must have been their best cyclical rate. To Sarven, the ships were channeling sheer rage through their weapons systems.
The bridge shuddered again. The lights flickered as the dispersion shields strived to dissipate the massive energies of the incoming rounds, sending lightning webbing over Behemoth’s hull.
With a ripple of thumps, the four cannons of the Anton and Bruno turrets fired again. Their sheer power sent a vibration through the ship which Sarven felt in his chest.
The rounds tore past Achilles’s explosion-blackened bow. The ship still bore the scars from her consort’s destruction, so close it had scorched her paintwork. A rarity in modern space combat.
The bridge rocked and shuddered. Sparks rained down in a furious cascade from an overloaded powerline. Another hit.
Father Terra, the ancestors have turned their favor from us and gifted it to the Kingdom, Sarven thought. He strove to swallow down the fear coursing through his body, threatening to overwhelm him.
It was his duty to face what was to come with stoicism. With honor. Like the heroes of the old Imperium.
That was all he had left now.
The hellish accuracy which Behemoth had shown against Cronus was eclipsed by what they were witnessing here. The furious Kingdom was slamming round after round into them with cold, clinical rage. The sheer weight of their fire made the EW shroud more a hindrance to Behemoth than to their enemy.
Boom. The ship shifted to one side. A console exploded, sending a crewman flying like a rag doll across the bridge. In his stomach, Sarven felt the sickening sensation of the artificial gravity giving way to weightlessness for a churning moment before it surged to life again. Sarven instinctively grabbed his armrest, his very instincts and inner ear telling him he was on a roller coaster racing up and down a track. A feeling made even worse by the sight on the forward screen of the gas giant ballooning in size as they plunged toward the vast world.
Behemoth’s guns answered, the dots crossing the distance between the ship and Achilles. Rounds slammed into the enemy battleship’s thick hide. Explosions blossomed on her hull, their ferocity obscuring half the hull under fire and crackling energy.





Chapter 37
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
“Minimal damage,” Banning shouted, unable to keep the thrill of fear and eagerness from her voice.
The energy of the heavy pulse round dispersed in a ripple of lightning over the dispersion shields overlaying the battleship’s thick armor. Still, enough sheer kinetic energy remained for it to penetrate, scouring Achilles’s already battle-scarred flank.
Achilles’s cannons roared silently in the vacuum of space, relentlessly hurling pulse rounds back at Behemoth in a sleet of fire.
The Kingdom battleships advanced, slowly catching up with the monster before them, even as all three of the gigantic ships dove into the tenuous outer reaches of Tantalus IV’s atmosphere. The bloated clouds rolled by below, lightning coursing through the huge stacks. In forty minutes, they’d reach perigee; the closest point to this gassy world. They’d be so low, they’d be between the very tops of the roiling clouds themselves, each dwarfing even the huge vessels. From above, Spartan and Knight rained fire down on Behemoth with a withering deluge with their medium pulse cannons.
Another ripple of thuds coursed through the ship, the huge cannons firing again. And then again.
It seemed unbelievable that the Behemoth could take such a beating as was being laid down by the Kingdom vessels. But she withstood it. Energy crackled, dancing in webbed lightning over his hull. Explosions dug deep craters in his armor, leaving brutal welts and craters.
And yet the ship kept firing.
To Cutter, it was a reminder and a testament to the sheer amount of abuse a capital ship was designed to take. Unlike Cronus, a hunter trading armor for increased acceleration, battleships were floating fortresses. Built from the keel up to give and take damage.
Ajax had nearly drawn broadside with Behemoth. More pulse fire erupted from the Kingdom battleship, slamming into Behemoth. A daisy chain of explosions tore down his armored flank, wiping away a whole swathe of secondary weapon emplacements.
“Inform Spartan and Knight to descend. They’re losing efficacy in their weapons accuracy staying up there,” Darrow addressed Banning, his voice calm. “I want them in on the fight.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Banning hunkered over her comm, barking orders at the two cruisers.
“Lost Earth, we wouldn’t want to steal Captain Hennessey’s fun,” Cutter muttered.
“Damn right,” Darrow murmured in response. “From what I know of the woman, she wouldn’t be happy about that at all.”
About as happy as Admiral Roe would be missing out on all this. But then, as Achilles shuddered under another volley of blows, a destroyer, or even a squadron of them, wouldn’t last even a few moments in such a savage, unrelenting place as between dueling capital ships.
On the holo, the two cruisers throttled up rapidly. The sleek ships accelerated down toward the orange cloud layers. All the while on the holo, the blinking specks of their weapons fire streaked ahead of them, heralding their arrival.
A staccato of explosions riddled the Behemoth, nearly eclipsing her from view under their fire. Lightning coursed over the ship’s dispersion grid as it desperately sought to dissipate the vast energies being pumped into it from the weapons of the two battleships and the pair of cruisers battering them.
The display had a strange beauty to it, Cutter thought. Except lost amid that destruction, people were dying.
***
Sarven gripped his seat, the bridge juddering and shaking horrendously from the savage beating and the world’s atmosphere tugging at them from below. Even through the meters-thick physical armor of her hull, Sarven could physically hear the impact of the dozens of weapons striking them.
The ship bucked, the harness cutting deep into Sarven’s shoulders. A few medics, unsecured—tending the crew’s injuries—crashed up into the deckhead above. The artificial gravity system surged randomly, slamming them back down under at least two gravities. He winced at the audible crack of bones being broken and the whimpers of injured spacers.
The damage control schematic of the battleship didn’t show a single green area. Her one-and-a-half-kilometer-long space frame was swathed in amber warnings of damage or the blood red of destroyed sections.
As he watched, a flurry of pulse rounds slammed into one of the primary turrets, Anton. It flashed, a gaping wound where the massive cannons once were. The lieutenant commanding the battery gave a guttural cry of rage, dismay, or frustration. Or maybe it was sympathetic pain, as if the once mighty turret which was his ward had been a part of his very body, and been hacked off.
Sparks cascaded down over the flickering distorted tactical holo, showing the dispersion shield network was channeling massive amounts of energy even here, finding anywhere to transfer the ergs it was striving to absorb.
Another horrendous crash resonated through the ship. A stanchion erupted from the bulkhead, smashing through the bridge and grazing Captain Lasik’s helmet, knocking her to the deck. Turret Bruno flashed yellow, the powerlines running to the weapon severed, or just completely destroyed. Even the damage control center wasn’t able to keep up with updates.
“Bring our stern around,” Lasik croaked through a cracked visor as she picked herself up. “I want Caiser and Dora trained on Achilles. And get me a report on bringing Bruno back up.”
Sarven gripped the seat armrests. He was an admiral without a fleet now. A mere spectator in this horrific battle. A faint sense of admiration grew in him again for the Neo captain, shrugging off what must have been a horrific blow to her head. Funny, he thought, what went unprompted through one’s mind in battle. 
With a judder, the battleship began swinging around, fighting to get his two operational turrets trained on the enemy ship even as they struggled to get the broadsides of their secondaries into play.
“All secondaries,” Lasik shouted. “Fire at will!”
But the Kingdom battleships were positioned to respond in kind. The deluge of fire pouring from the enemy redoubled as their medium pulse cannons entered the fray.
The staccato of lighter thuds washed through the bridge, far more numerous than the booming reports of the primaries.
And on the screen, blue pulse rounds streaked up at their enemy, interspersed with the heavier bolts of the main guns. A veritable storm of fire shredding back and forth.
***
Pulse fire rained out from Behemoth’s secondary broadside. His smaller medium guns, and even his anti-aerospace armament, sought them.
Achilles shuddered and rocked under the fire.
Cutter winced as he looked at the damage control board, seeing the ripple of impacts from the lighter weapons. Yet, as impressive as those weapons were, as much as a fine display as they made...
They couldn’t make a difference to the outcome. Not really. This wasn’t like last time. Cronus had gone down like a boxer with a glass jaw. That wouldn’t be the case with Achilles or Ajax. Not this time, anyway.
“Come on you stupid bastards,” Cutter muttered. They had to know it was over. That they couldn’t beat the Kingdom forces. Not anymore. “Strike your damn colors.”
Achilles and Ajax had crept well into their own secondary battery position, each ship bringing sixteen new guns into the fray. The smaller, but still-potent cannons boomed. From Behemoth, the favor was returned, its own secondaries flashing toward them. The bridge shook as the dispersion shields were flayed under the constant barrage.
Every square meter of Behemoth was covered in fire or lightning. Roiling clouds of venting atmosphere and gasses joined the clouds racing past. If the ship was the Kingdom’s prey, then it was bleeding out.
The whole vessel streaked like a comet as it sank deeper into the atmosphere, the sheer temperature of the hull’s passage igniting the tenuous gasses of the vast world.
But still his guns fired, the EM shroud still active. Behemoth was still a potent enemy, despite everything hitting it.
Cutter shook his head. He couldn’t remember a time in the history books when a ship had taken such damage and kept fighting. Kept resisting. It wasn’t shrugging off the damage, that was clear. The ship was absorbing it. And somehow still firing back.
“Would you?” Darrow asked Cutter, his voice quiet and only for his ears. “Would you keep fighting as hard?”
“I don’t know,” he replied honestly. And he didn’t. The commander of Behemoth knew they were dead. It just seemed like sheer spite they were trying to take down Achilles, too.
The enemy couldn’t win this fight. Hell, at this point, there wasn’t even much chance of them doing significant damage. But they were fighting anyway.
As if to emphasize the point, a heavy pulse round surged out of the cacophony of explosions obscuring Behemoth’s hull, slamming into Achilles, lightning crackled back over the ship.
The ship bucked violently, a shower of sparks rained down from the deck head, a strange fireworks show erupting on the bridge.
“Report!” Cutter shouted. It wasn’t lost on him. Behemoth was focusing everything they had on Achilles. Perhaps due to some misguided notion of finishing what they had started in the Hellas System.
Banning scanned her console for a few moments. “We just lost an energy sink in the dispersion grid. Sir, it blew. Initial reports indicate three crew next to it when it went up.”
Bastards! He didn’t need to ask. An energy sink going up was a violent, explosive event. And that meant those three people were dead.
“From secondary damage, we have at least two wounded.”
“Understood.” Cutter gave a shuddering sigh. More gone. More who wouldn’t go home. More letters to write when this business was done.
“Lost Earth.” Pastor Garcia gripped the railing surrounding the command podium with white-knuckled hands and his bottom lip tremulous at the fury being unleashed. “How many must die this day?”
Behemoth’s stubbornness wasn’t just killing them, it was killing his crew, too. People who didn’t need to die. And for nothing. There was no way Behemoth could win now.
A deep anger surged through him.
Strike your damn colors, he silently raged. You’ve done enough harm.
No one heard his, or the Pastor’s, wish. Not Behemoth’s officers and not his crew. People who were probably just frantically doing their jobs, lost in the bowels of that ship amid explosions and decompressing compartments.
Just surrender, you idiots, he raged silently. Don’t kill your people and mine just for the damn Neos.
***
A long tortured moan tore through the ship. The death call of a grievously wounded beast.
“Shut down those fucking gravity plates,” Lasik barked.
The intermittent surge and fade to the plates were causing more distraction and risk of injury than simply operating in zero-G, something any spacer was, or at least should be, adept in.
Sarven looked around the bridge. Streamers of flames surged through the vents, sucked out into the void of space and preventing them from taking hold. The cries of the injured echoed through the bridge even as sparks rained across the chamber and consoles exploded in flurries of glass and plastic.
“I have a malfunction in Dora.”
Before anyone could stop the turret from firing, it exploded, sending the ship heaving again. The sad remains of wreckage tumbled end-over-end out into the rushing upper atmosphere of Tantalus IV, beginning its long plummet to oblivion. Sarven quickly processed what had happened. The round struck the inside of the crooked battle-damaged barrel, destroying it from within, tearing the huge turret from its mount.
Sarven looked at the cracked damage board just in time to feel another grinding shudder wash through the hull. More wounds flashed a bloody red.
They were running out of options. And fast. His idea of going down in a blaze of glory being reduced to being kicked over and over while he was on his knees. This was starting to look less like a noble sacrifice and more like a lynching by the vengeful ships of the Kingdom fleet.
He wavered. Was he right to kill his people? Or, was it more important to deliver a message?
Baring his teeth, he looked at Lasik. The question in her eyes was obvious. Should we surrender?
“No,” Sarven uttered, coming to a decision and answering the unasked question, knowing he was damning his crew to oblivion in this system, far from their homes. “We must show them our resolve. There is one way to end this war sooner, and that is to demonstrate to the Kingdom the price we will pay for victory.”
“We can do no more good here,” Lasik said, a hint of the old fire in her eyes. Sarven felt something close to approval. The question was, did she care for the crew? Or just for herself?
It didn’t matter. Not really. It was Galton that mattered. And if she cared for their homeworld, she would continue doing what he ordered. And that was to, “Continue firing.”
For a long moment, Lasik stood on the shuddering bridge, silhouetted by explosions. Would she follow his orders? Do what was needed to be done to show both sides this war simply wasn’t worth it? That it was a waste of the next generation of men and women, just to sate the egos of the ruling classes of both nations?
Or, a little less generously, that the fucking Neos should secure their bullshit before they overstretched themselves and lost everything.
The very structure of Behemoth groaned. Operation River had become a micro representation of the war. What it would become for the Hegemony. For all the nations of the Arcadian Sector. An early crushing victory by the forces of the Neos. But then, transforming into something else. A long grinding conflict.
And if the Federation or the People were to take the side of the Kingdom? It was something not beyond the realms of possibility. Then an irresistible onslaught would descend upon them, not just of ships. But soldiers, mechs, and aerospace fighters.
He didn’t care about the Neos, even the Hegemony. But Galton herself would be left in ruins. A worse state than the end of the first war.
Something had to be done to break that possible future. And Sarven resolved to do his part in that. The secret communiqu
He looked up over the devastated bridge. At the scared and hurting spacers. And then at his captain, the arrogant Neo who demonstrated the bizarreness of that fanatical belief system.
“Continue firing until the end.”





Chapter 38
Captain Cutter
Tantalus System – KSS Achilles
“Please, Admiral.” Behind Pastor Garcia’s visor, his eyes glistened. His voice implored. The admiral’s face was steely. Resolved. So he turned to Cutter. “Captain, please. Please, just stop.”
He couldn’t bring himself to say anything, his throat feeling dry at what he was seeing. He shook his head in response at the man’s imploring face. No, Pastor. We cannot.
Behemoth was a tattered, ragged ruin. The occasional glimpse of her hull beneath the energy coursing over her and the bloom of erupting explosions revealed a twisted, blackened mess. Most of the surface structures were gone under the mauling the warship had received, but the cylinder of his armored core was intact. A testament to how thick, and how tough, the mighty battleship’s armor was.
The ship streaked through the clouds of the upper atmosphere, surrounded by the embers of his own debris.
But he was still functional, somehow. His EM shroud still up and operational. The last primary turret still firing devastating heavy pulse rounds at the battered Kingdom fleet. The secondaries, what was left of them, still defiantly sending sporadic volleys.
“They’re done,” Garcia pleaded.
Admiral Darrow sat in the executive officer’s chair, his face resolute, his voice ice cold. “Pastor, this business will be done when it’s done. As long as they keep firing, then so shall we.”
Cutter frowned. Whoever was over there must have known there was no way to wrestle victory here anymore. There was no miracle which could come save them. Yet, they were still fighting. From Behemoth’s few surviving weapons, fire still flickered out. But it couldn’t match what even Achilles alone was still bringing to bear, let alone what Ajax, Spartan, and Knight were unleashing.
He expected to feel glee. To feel happy at the inevitable destruction of the enemy who had done such harm.
Instead, he felt nothing but the hollow of sensation of waste for the young lives lost he was witness to.
Behemoth’s last primary turret disappeared in a flash of light. The few remaining secondaries still spat fire, so ineffective it would barely concern one of the cruisers, let alone the battleships.
“They can’t harm us anymore,” Garcia urged, defying protocol and gripping the admiral’s shoulder. “Demand their surrender. They will surely give it.”
Darrow didn’t respond, not even to the insult of touching a senior officer unbidden. Instead, he just stared at the damaged ship before them on the fore display.
“Captain?” Garcia turned back to Cutter, his voice desperate. “Do something.”
The men and women of Behemoth had killed over fifteen hundred people on Cronus. They’d killed Hannah Ashford and his crew. But that had been battle. Whatever this had become, it wasn’t battle anymore.
It was sending a message.
The Neos needed to know the Kingdom’s resolution in this war. They needed to know that the Kingdom would win. They’d always win, no matter the price they had to pay.
And, if Admiral Sarven, or whoever was left alive in command on Behemoth, thought showing their resolve would give pause to the Kingdom, then they had sorely misjudged them.
“I’m sorry, Pastor,” Cutter answered for the admiral. He turned to his gunnery officer. “Mister Haynes, continue firing until we’re dry. That ship is to be reduced to embers.”
“Aye aye, sir,” the gunnery officer said with a swallow. He felt it, too, as Cutter looked at his crew. They all felt the same. Haynes turned back to his crew, relaying his captain’s orders. Except now, the eager enthusiasm had waned. They were doing it because it needed to be done.
It wouldn’t be their lack of determination which would silence the Kingdom’s guns. But, as Cutter glanced at the blinking displays of his console, it might be the fact they were running damn low on charge.
***
The last few secondary cannons spat rounds at the two battleships. Flashes of pulse fire reached up for the enemy, even as the deluge descended back on them.
Through the static-laden displays, Sarven saw Ajax come about. A pair of bright flashes erupted—torpedo drives, if he wasn’t mistaken. The sensor arrays were little more than slag and he was unable to discern for sure.
He gave a grim smile. If they were resorting to torpedoes in this kind of battle, then their capacitors must be running low. He’d never known it before. Ships quite literally shooting themselves dry of charge.
A faint sense of pride swelled. And Behemoth had taken it. He’d had taken it all. That was Galton engineering at its finest.
One of the torpedoes slammed into the ship’s flank, burrowing deep before exploding. Doing little but churning up already ravaged sections of armor.
Sarven looked around the flame-scorched debris-strewn bridge. Sparks showered from ruptured, overloaded power lines. Most, if not all consoles were crackling ruins. The whole room flickered light and dark from strobing illumination panels.
As they’d lost their systems, the surviving bridge crew had huddled together, not leaving their stations, not abandoning their duties, but left with nothing to do but give what small aid they could to injured comrades.
Another thump resonated through the ship. A torpedo, perhaps. Who knew anymore? It didn’t even matter. Even the damage control systems were a wreck.
Sarven looked into the wide, scared eyes of the crew. None had broken. They’d all done their duties, even here, to the very precipice of the end. Next to him, Lasik reclined in her chair, seeming to be resting. It was only the bubbles of blood floating from the rents in her suit which told a different story.
Groaning, he reached for her wrist. The small display on her cracked arm console showed what he suspected—there were no life signs.
He turned his gaze back to the crew. A young spacer, no more than a child really, looked up at him. A mix of determination and fear in his wide eyes.
Good lad.
His resolution to show the Kingdom the price they must pay for victory flickered and died along with the hope on the man’s—the boy’s—face.
To what end now to let him die?
No end.
The ship shuddered again. More of the secondary batteries flashing red and dying.
He wasn’t a Neo. Lives meant something to him. These children, here on his ship. Those at home on Galton. Those even now fighting under their Neo overlords on the far-flung battlefields of this new, Great War. Who would protect them? Who would do what was right by them?
He came to a decision. They’d done enough. They had to have done enough. If their message hadn’t been received by the Kingdom, then it never would be.
Tapping his console, he brought up the ship-wide channel. Lines of static crossed his screen, the systems heavily damaged.
“All hands, you have fought bravely. We have accomplished more than ever expected. The destruction of the pride of the Kingdom fleet. We have evaded and eluded the best they could throw at us in revenge. But now is the time to leave.” He lowered his head. Another groaning shudder resonated through the ship. “Senior officers are to ensure scuttling charges are manually activated and slaved to my command console. Everyone else, abandon ship.”
With a whoop, the evacuation alarm blared out.
The crew, as one, pulled their way through the floating debris clouding the bridge toward the nearest escape capsules.
Sarven sighed and leaned back in his seat as he watched the huge gas giant rolling by beneath the ship on the flickering, cracked forward display.
In moments, he was alone on the sparking, horrendously damaged bridge.
And he had every intention of staying.





Chapter 39
Spacer 1st Class Gaddish
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
Gaddish dragged himself down the airless shattered corridor, one clasping hand after another, pausing only to push aside floating corpses and debris. The lights flickered, died before coming to life again in a surreal strobe-like effect. He groaned in both sympathy and disgust as a floating orb of blood from a distended corpse broke over his suit, the viscous substance splattering and clinging to his body.
The whoop of the evacuation alarm resonated in his helmet, adding urgency to his movement. His friends, his crewmates had all made their way to whatever escape pods they could. Maybe the shafts extending out through the hull, designed to accommodate the small evacuation capsules, would be clear and debris-free. But for many of them, the pods would smash into the wreckage which clogged them, consigning the crew to a slow death.
The ship gave a shudder. A fireball raced down the corridor toward him. He tucked his head into his shoulders as it did. He gasped as the force slammed him into a broken stanchion behind. His back would be a mass of purple bruises, he knew, but he was alive. And he could still move. That’s what counted.
And more importantly, he couldn’t quit. Not now.
Groaning in pain, he pulled himself forward on whatever handholds he could grab and turned down the sub corridor of his berth.
All this for a damn cat.
He must be insane. Even Loctz had stared at him in disbelief when he’d told the big, burly man that he was going back for Vince. Then he’d shrugged, and turned to make his own way to the nearest escape pod, muttering about how crazy Gaddish was.
The rational side to him knew he should just leave the damn thing. Every second he stayed on this death trap was another second he could die. When the abandon ship alarm went off, you were supposed to drop whatever you were doing and go. Not head back through the exploding, smashed wreckage of a ship. That was just insane.
He didn’t care.
Gaddish reached his berth and looked through the small porthole into the space beyond. The cabin still looked airtight. He turned back, slapping the button to close the sub-corridor hatch. With a grinding rumble it sealed, turning the small corridor into an airlock. He slapped his berth door open, the air rushing out to fill both spaces.
Vince wouldn’t like that, not one bit. His ears had probably popped. But better that than being dead.
He slid open his battlesuit’s visor and grabbed the cat carrier even as he looked around the small mess. “Where are you? Where are you, boy?”
Ducking his head, urgently clicking his tongue and making kissing noises, he darted a look under the bunks. “Come on, Vince, stop fucking around!”
There, under one of the sheets, was a small shivering lump. Tugging back the material, he saw the terrified feline, gripping the bunk with claws extended.
“There you are, boy.” Grabbing the cat in both hands, keeping the scrabbling claws from his face, he gave a pecking kiss to the top of its head before ignobly throwing him in the carrier and closing the hatch. A green light flashed on the side; the small unit had its own life support. He didn’t know how long it would last, but considering the state of Behemoth, probably longer than the ship. With the swipe of a hand, he swept his own visor shut. His suit gave a chime as it regained integrity.
Pulling the carry case behind him, he batted aside the floating sheet and fled the berth, trying desperately to remember the way to the nearest evac pods.
The ship rumbled again. Whether from something hitting him again, or something exploding within, who knew? It didn’t make a difference anymore. It was obvious Behemoth was dead. It just didn’t know it yet.
Spotting a green arrow, Gaddish gave a sigh of relief. That would show him the way to the pods. “It’s okay, boy. We’ll be okay.”
He wasn’t sure who he was trying to reassure. Himself, or the damn cat. Not that the creature would be able to hear him in the carrier. He checked himself. Not that the stupid animal would understand him even if it could hear him.
He reached a long debris-strewn bay lined with thick, imposing hatches on both sides. The evac station.
Damn it, all the hatches were clamped shut, the pods already gone. He looked up and down the bay, striving to remember where the next closest were. The corridor the green arrows pointed toward as an alternative was clogged with debris. Another exit was filled with a spurting blowtorch-like flame erupting from broken piping, which looked easily harsh enough to cut through his suit material.
And there was nothing the way he’d come.
“Shit.” Plan B, then. He hauled himself to a hatch and looked through the small porthole. The escape pod was still in there, the window of the pod and the hatch misaligned, as if it hadn’t gotten more than a few centimeters before striking an obstruction or somehow getting wedged in. A terrified face was visible. A fist beat silently on the window.
He tapped on the pad. Nothing. With the pod jammed in there, the hatch refused to open. There was simply no way to open the thick door at this stage of the launch procedure without an industrial cutting laser. The escape pod was the woman’s coffin now. The best she could hope for was a quick death when the ship came apart.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed to her. There was nothing he could do. The young spacer’s beating on the hatch became more frantic. Tears streamed down her face. Closing his eyes briefly, he moved on, going to the next hatch and trying to put her frantic face out of his mind. This one looked clear. And with the pod gone, it would open. The empty shaft was designed to be an alternative method of escape for those in suits.
He tapped the side of the escape hatch. The doors silently juddered apart in the airless environment, revealing a dark tunnel. Pulling Vince’s carrier behind him, he hauled himself up the tube the pod would have traveled through. Far in the distance, he saw a small, strobing, speck of light. Freedom and escape from this cursed ship.
Pulling along the ladder inset in the shaft with one hand, he climbed up the tunnel, pausing in dread every time he felt another thump or shudder resonate through the hull. The whole damn thing could come apart at any time. Or the shaft could take a hit and be filled with debris like that poor woman’s. And then he and Vince would be trapped here, in this claustrophobic pit.
Gaddish renewed his efforts, tugging. Pulling. Knowing the cat within the carrier would be wailing in fear as he did. Wailing in fear like he felt like doing himself.
And then he was there.
“Father Terra!” he moaned in relief.
He’d emerged from the escape shaft onto the surface of the ship. Before him, the vast racing horizon of the gas giant. He turned to look around him. The hull stretched into the distance, every part of it he could see blackened and scarred. Still, enemy pulse rounds slammed into it, sending tremors through the hull. Debris and gas streamed off it, while explosions, surreal in their silence, erupted randomly.
Bracing himself with one hand, the cat carrier in the other, he ducked down. And then, with all of his strength, launched himself up and away from the ship.
“We’re out, Vince. We’re out.”
He flopped around, turning to look back at the ship. The once-proud ship that had now been battered into a twisted hunk of sparking, exploding metal. More and more revealed itself as he drifted further away. The thought that anyone could have survived from that nightmare seemed impossible.
But they had. Him and In-Vince-ible.
That damn cat had really earned his name today.
He slowly rotated, the cat carrier hugged to his body, and pressed a button on his battlesuit’s wrist console activating his emergency transponder.
Of course, they’d have to get picked up before his or Vince’s life support ran dry.
Or they plummeted into the roiling, angry clouds below.
Or a random pulse round caught them.
Yeah, maybe he shouldn’t count his chickens—there were still a lot of ways to die.





Chapter 40
Admiral Sarven
Tantalus System – HAS Behemoth
The rocking, shuddering bridge was empty. Except for the many dead, that was. And except for Admiral Valin Sarven.
Sparks erupted from damage powerlines, creating a strange cascade before being sucked out of the bridge in spectacular displays. What little atmosphere was left was pulled relentlessly from the ship, both from the vacuum fire suppression system, and from the gaping wounds and chasms beaten into the hull.
Sarven remained sitting, harnessed into his seat. The artificial gravity had long since given out. The holo was a tattered mess of flashing, damaged components, the forward screen flickering to life every few seconds. Sometimes it showed a stop-motion image of weapons fire slamming into the view, and at other times, the display activated long enough to show what was going on in real-time. Briefly that was, before it died again.
Was the sickening feeling in his stomach a perfectly natural reaction to being in freefall? He hoped so. But just as likely it was fear, too. Knowing that the end was soon coming. That oblivion and the void would claim him.
Behemoth heaved again. The ship taking more fire. He gave a sad smile. They were just wasting charge now. Not that he could surrender, even if he wanted to. The damage to the controls meant he couldn’t signal the white flag or give the universal sign of “striking the colors” by powering all remaining systems down. Last time he’d managed to get a clear view, he thought he’d seen some of his own secondary batteries still defiantly firing back, likely under the manual control of brave spacers who had ignored—or simply hadn’t received—the orders to evacuate. He couldn’t even tell them to cease-fire. To flee. The internal comm systems were so badly torn up.
And, if they didn’t stop firing, then neither would the Kingdom ships. And it wouldn’t be a war crime if they didn’t relent.
Sarven looked down. It was done. They were done. Everyone who could get off, would have done so by now. Anyone left would never be able to escape anyway. His only duty was now to ensure that the Kingdom didn’t have a wreck to pick over. To learn the Hegemony’s secrets and to dissect the huge carcass of the vessel.
With a trembling finger, he tapped on the console.
Enter code to activate self-destruct.
He gave a random chuckle as he tapped in the twenty-digit code. A good thing he wasn’t under duress, he thought ironically.
A red message flashed.
Link to computer core down.
He gave a growl. Even the self-destruct system had been battered into submission. The wiping of the ship’s computer core was one of the first and most fundamental parts of scuttling the ship, lest their enemies manage to learn the Hegemony’s secrets if they happened upon it in the cloud of wreckage his ship would soon become. Without the ability to wipe it, the expectation was a crewman would be ordered down to the core. With a sledgehammer, if need be.
Except he couldn’t order anyone to do that with the comms so badly shattered.
Perhaps there were other options, though. He swiped the self-destruct menu from his console screen.
The limited maneuvering options he had available at his station appeared. Most selections were blocked out in gray to show the thrusters and engines which they commanded were damaged or destroyed.
He only had a scant few secondary, even tertiary, engines left. Nowhere near the power of his main drive. Normally they were used for fine maneuvering and station keeping.
But then, he didn’t need much. Just enough to send the ship a little lower, where the world they orbited could do the job the self-destruct systems couldn’t. He quickly tapped in an engine-burn solution.
He glanced up as the ship rocked again. The main screen jarring to activation. Before Behemoth, Achilles had turned near broad side, crossing the “T” of his ship. Both enemy ships were circling like predators finishing off their prey. The battleship’s huge turrets swung around. A flurry of weapons fire raced toward the screen from his enemy’s secondary batteries.
Somehow the screen remained active as the muzzles of the main cannons flared. The blue flashes grew in size as they lanced toward him.
He stabbed his finger quickly on his console as the heavy rounds raced closer. The few thrusters still working sputtered to life, doing their best to drive the ship down into the swirling atmosphere of the gas giant the ship swung ever lower over.
He relaxed back, his duty done as the pulse rounds struck the ship.
The bridge heaved and bucked violently. If anything, worse than before.
And the last thing Sarven saw was an explosion billowing through the screen and swelling out quickly to swallow him.
***
The ship was near blasted clean of structures on her surface yet beneath, the heavily armored subframe appeared almost intact between the blooms of explosions. A testament to the engineering of the ship. The last of the secondary batteries died, leaving the ship soaring over the clouds of Tantalus IV shrouded in its own debris and roiling escaped gasses.
Escape pods erupted from her flank in an intermittent staccato broadside. With a wave of weary grimness, Cutter could see there were far too few to account for what must have been a huge crew complement.
There had to have been thousands aboard that ship. And hundreds, if that, had made it to escape pods. Or even more desperately, he saw, had flung themselves from the ship, only protected from the void by their thin battlesuits.
And then, from a few points, he saw the cones of small drives firing along what was left of the ship’s hull.
“Sir,” Banning said quietly, her voice subdued. The adrenaline of combat had dissipated for them all as their enemy had been beaten over and over. “I am showing a course change. It’s minor, probably secondary maneuvering thrusters. But enough. They’re going down into the atmosphere.”
To be expected. Cutter sighed as he mustered a nod of acknowledgement for the report. It would be whoever was in charge over there’s final duty. It was what he would have been expected to do under these same circumstances.
Pastor Garcia stood, his mouth opening. Cutter didn’t need to hear what he was going to say. He knew it would be a plea to save the crew.
“It’s okay, Pastor.” Darrow held up his hand. The admiral turned to Cutter. “If you would be so kind, all ships are to engage in search and rescue operations. Priority on the free-floaters. Escape pods next.”
He nodded again, this time in agreement. The thought of escaping a ship, protected only by a thin battlesuit, filled most spacers with a sense of dread. For most, it just would mean their deaths would be prolonged, and soaring so close to the upper atmosphere of the huge gas giant could only make you feel even more vulnerable. At least those in the escape pods had some semblance of control of their destiny.
“Sir,” Banning’s voice was an urgent cry, a contrast to the weary exhaustion of a moment ago. “I have a trace contact.”
Cutter looked at her. She was worried, that was for damn sure. The holo-display zoomed out, Tantalus IV reducing to small sphere surrounded by its far-flung orrery of moons.
A red dot pulsed threateningly, but still far out from the planet in high orbit. “Assessment?”
“Something just sent out a sensor pulse. Single ping. It’s got to be—”
“A stealth,” Cutter growled. Just when they had victory in hand, and now they had a goddamn stealth lurking. And if there was one, there would be others.
“Signal the destroyers. They are to form a tight picket. Spartan and Knight are to commence search and rescue along with us,” Darrow snapped.
“Sir.” Cutter gestured at his console. Darrow leaned forward and frowned at it. Their fuel levels from all the combat maneuvering they’d been doing was getting low. And with a stealth pack operating in the area, he sure as hell wasn’t comfortable bringing a fueler in to replenish them. He flicked his eyes to the weapons overview. Charge wasn’t looking great on the guns, either. They’d damn near shot themselves dry.
“We’ll do a single pass for survivors in the worst condition and then we will withdraw,” Darrow decided quietly. “If the stealths know they still have free-floaters and pods out there, they may reprioritize from an attack run.”
It was cold, and it was calculating, but it made sense. If the stealths were busy engaging in search and rescue for their own, then it would mean they wouldn’t be gunning for them.
Cutter squinted at the display. “Mister Singh, take us closer to Behemoth. Looks like we have a hell of a lot of free-floaters out there.”
A few more escape pods fled the savaged Behemoth, even as she dipped lower toward the turbulent clouds of the upper atmosphere, the four Kingdom ships detailed to the rescue attempt surging closer. The six destroyers accompanying them formed themselves into a shield between the heavier ships and where the contact had been, a physical screen to ward off the enemy.
The capital ship descended toward the murky ochre horizon, toward the poor, vulnerable survivors.





Chapter 41
Spacer 1st Class Gaddish
Tantalus System – Free Floating over Tantalus IV
Gaddish clutched the cat carrier to his chest. He tumbled end-over-end, out of control, unable to orientate himself. The huge bloated world below swept dizzyingly by. The red and ochre thunderheads of mountainous clouds reached up for him as he rushed past, seemingly so close that he could reach out and touch them.
“It’s okay, Vince, it’s okay,” Gaddish whispered. There was no comms link to the carry case, no way to reassure the small, probably terrified animal within. But he needed to say it anyway. Maybe the creature had some kind of subliminal sense. Maybe Vince could just tell he was sending calming thoughts to him. Maybe that would help.
He felt thumps through the thin wall of the cat carrier, the cat undoubtedly ricocheting around in a mad panic.
I guess not.
The horribly damaged ship swept back into view, surrounded by streamers of debris and venting gasses. Above Behemoth, two ships, nearly as big, prowled, and two additional smaller cruisers hovered.
He shook his head in dismay. His vessel, the one which a week ago—when setting out from Thoth—was pristine. New. It had seemed indestructible. He didn’t know whether he had believed in everything the Neos had said. Not really. But when he had first cast eyes on the vessel, that was when he knew that they could win this war they’d been forced into by the Republic, the People, the Kingdom and, of course, the Loggists.
Now, the ship had been beaten into a shattered wreck.
He continued spinning. Each time he caught a glimpse, the battered ship had sunk even lower into the clouds. So low, it was ploughing through them. They reached up over the hull, turning it to a dark silhouette running under the surface, as if he was a giant sea creature, steadily sinking beneath the water.
And then it disappeared from view. A moment later, a subdued pulse of light as Behemoth’s fusion reactor gave way to the immense pressures of the gas giant’s atmosphere. A tumultuous ripple expanded through the clouds of the world.
“It’s okay, Vince,” he repeated, wrapping his arms around the case tighter. “It’s okay.”
***
The shockwave of Behemoth’s destruction faded to nothing. Forever.
It was done. Cutter leaned back in his chair, exhausted. The events of the past few days crashed down on him. The horror of watching Cronus’s evisceration. The long hunt. The final battle. It had all taken its toll.
But he couldn’t relax. Not yet.
He pulled himself back upright using his armrests as more ripples washed over the tactical holo. More sensor pulses had been detected. And from more than one source. The stealths were positioning themselves for the hunt. It would only be a matter of time before they struck.
Simple economics suggested the stealth skippers would take the opportunity to stick a torpedo into a battleship. It was worth the horrendous risk to them. Especially when the Kingdom destroyer screen was so small.
He shook his head, and that wasn’t their only problem. The fleet was going to be on fumes by the time they got back to Kingdom space. Spending the time involved in a duel with the stealths out there left the ships with the very real danger they’d end up stranded in the Reach. The stealths would be able to pick them off at their leisure. Or, if they were cunning, wait until fuelers arrived and take out both the warships and the supply train.
He hated to pull back, to leave the Hegemony spacers to their fates, or the unknowable scruples of the stealth captains. It went against his instincts as a spacer, even if they were the enemy.
“Order all ships to form up,” Darrow spoke slowly. “We are withdrawing.”
“But there are still men and women out there.” Garcia gestured at the screen. A cloud of debris still floated, like driftwood on a sea even though the ship itself had slipped into the depths. Orbiting wreckage, bodies, and people—still alive, for the moment—in their battlesuits. “They need our help.”
“Pastor.” Darrow gave a long, weary sigh. “There will be a lot more spacers floating out there if we stay. Perhaps some of ours. An engagement with a stealth pack is not something we need or want right now. If the Astral wants to mount a rescue, then they’re welcome to.”
“Do you swear to grant free passage for them to mount a rescue unmolested?” The pastor rotated his Une between a thumb and forefinger.
Darrow opened his mouth, a sharp expression on his face, as if wanted to tell this meddling pastor that he didn’t have to account for himself. That he was an admiral—the First Space Lord, no less. But as he watched, Cutter saw the admiral’s face softening. Perhaps in response to the glisten of tears unshed filling Garcia’s eyes, or his face which held an intense earnestness. Or perhaps, it was just his old schooling. Treat the clergy with respect.
Whichever it was, the admiral’s snappy comeback dissipated before he spoke it. Reaching up, he gripped the pastor’s shoulder.
“Make no mistake, if any stealth even looks at us the wrong way, I’ll do what it takes to protect this fleet. But if they don’t, then they will go, as you say, unmolested.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
“Hal, we will offer them as much time as we can.” Darrow sighed as he looked at his captain. “But, only a single pass. I want to leave this place. And soon.”
***
“Flash traffic from Fleet Actual. It’s time.” The comms officer’s tired voice crossed the bridge. “We’re to rendezvous on Achilles and withdraw.”
Hennessey nodded. On the main screen, a transponder pulsed. So near, yet the spacer vanishingly small against the backdrop of the planet racing beneath. The poor bastard was in a decaying orbit. Chances were, he or she wouldn’t last until the stealths arrived.
They’d already picked up two dozen scared men and women. Shivering with fear in a cargo bay, awaiting their fate.
“Understood, Lieutenant.”
She tapped her armrest. She should just leave that person to it. They’d been involved in the destruction of Cronus. The death of over fifteen hundred of her comrades. Friends. Hell, even a few old lovers, were among the dead. It wasn’t worth delaying for someone like that.
But...
But screw it. Chances were, this was some lower decks spacer with as much say in what happened as the ship’s chef did on Spartan.
“ETA until we complete SAR on the target ahead?”
“Seven minutes until rendezvous.”
“I’ll take it.” Hennessey nodded, letting her exhausted head rest back on the seat. “We’ll pick up this last one before breaking off.”
The transponder pulse grew closer, the battlesuited figure spinning dizzyingly, clutching at something bulky in its arms.
“What is that?” Hennessey frowned as she leaned forward, as if to better discern what they were holding.
“Some idiot who probably ignored orders to not take anything with him.” Her XO tapped at his console, increasing the magnification. The image zoomed closer. Whatever it was, he could barely wrap his arm around it.
“I’m getting inclined to leave this one,” Hennessey murmured as she raised an eyebrow. “That could be a bomb or anything.”
“Surely not even the Galts would lower themselves to that,” her XO replied.
“Maybe the Neos would, though,” Hennessey noted. Those pricks didn’t seem to think anything was beneath them. Even something as wrong as ambushing a ship giving aid.
“That’s no bomb they’re carrying.” Her comms officer stood, squinting at the screen, confusion on his face. “That looks like a pet carrier to me. You know, one of those rated for space.”
“You are shitting me?” Hennessey felt her lips curl as she enunciated every syllable. A pet carrier? You couldn’t make this up. 
The one thing constant in war, was that truth was stranger than fiction.
***
He continued rotating. At first, the ship appeared as a toy. Tiny, backdropped by the angry red horizon of the world.
Every revolution, the ship appeared bigger. Growing and growing in stop motion. Until it loomed over him.
Somewhere near the midsection of the ship, a Kingdom cruiser, if he wasn’t mistaken, a bay door opened. A shining beacon of illumination greeted him.
Rescue!
“We’ve made it, boy,” he whispered. The thrashing from within the carry case subsided, as if the creature could sense safety approaching. “We’ve made it, Vince.”
At this moment in time, he didn’t care one bit whether it was the Astral or the Kingdom. He’d live another day. Vince would live another day. And both parts of that were all that mattered.
The hatch grew larger, the gaping maw stretching around him. Then the whole ship slowed to a crawl, relative to his position. The effort seemed bizarre—the cruiser adjusting its velocity to him, not the other way around.
He slipped through the open hatch, feeling himself arcing down as he was caught by the ship’s artificial gravity, still clutching the carrier. He plopped down on his bottom on the hard metal deck. A rush of air entered the room.
Then another hatch opened. A squad of armored Kingdom Marines charged in, weapons pointed at him.
“Drop the fucking case,” one snarled in coarse, broken Galtese. “Hands on your head. Do it now.”
Slowly, gently, Gaddish placed the cat carrier to one side, then put his hands on top of his helmet, fingers entwined. The last thing he wanted was for these jumpy Marines to begin getting nervous.
One of the Marines stepped forward, roughly clapping bindings on his wrists and pulling his helmet off before thrusting him face down onto the cold metal-gridded deck.
One of the Marines spoke in Avalonish, too fast for Gaddish to catch every word. But he caught enough. “Check,” “box,” then “overboard.”
“No!” Gaddish shouted, writhing and twisting in his cuffs. He hadn’t stumbled halfway through an exploding ship to rescue Vince just for him to be thrown off the ship. “No. Please. No.”
One of the Marines waved a sensor wand over the carry case. The telltale lights stayed green. As they should, considering the only thing in there was a scared feline, not a case full of HiEx. He desperately tried to remember his Avalonish. Rifling through his memory, he found something. “Dog. My dog. In box.”
He twisted awkwardly onto his side, turning his head to look into the black hole of the Marine’s rifle’s muzzle pointed at his head. “Please. Just dog. Not boom.”
Gaddish couldn’t see the Marine’s face behind the opaque black visor of his combat armor. But he could sense the man raising a questioning eyebrow behind it.
“Ross?” the marine’s metallic tinged voice said. “Apparently there’s a dog in there.”
“Something is moving in there, Sarge,” another equally machine-like voice responded. “It’s pissed off, whatever it is.”
“Okay.” The Marine inclined his head. “Open it up, but carefully.”
Twisting the other way, Gaddish watched the Marine working on the hatch of the carry case. A moment later, he opened it and reached in and pulled out a scared, thrashing creature.
“Errr, Sergeant?”
The hissing and spitting form of Vince looked beyond angry.
“That,” the Sergeant spoke clearly and slowly, enunciating every word as he walked over and took the furious Vince in one armored gauntlet. “You lyin’ Neo bastard, is a cat, not a dog.”
He returned and lowered to a knee next to Gaddish, proffering it as if giving proof.
“Ah, cat.” Gaddish offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile as he shrugged in his cuffs. “My Avalonish. It not so good.”
“Get him to the brig.” The Marine stood and thrust mewling feline at one of his men. “And he can take his damn cat with him.”





Chapter 42
Viper Squadron
New Avalon Orbit – Starbase Victory
Flight Lieutenant Jason “Rick” Richards sat on a bench in Vista Park, squeezing the bridge of his nose. Really, he should have headed straight back to his rack and caught a few precious hours of sleep. Instead, he’d just wanted to see something, anything other than the inside of his cockpit or the plain ceiling and walls of the bachelor officer’s quarters which was his home.
The paved paths of the park were nearly empty, except for the occasional uniform-clad serviceperson. The grassy fields and sports pitches were devoid of noisy playing children, who’d been shipped in industrial quantities planetside to places where they were safe—safer, that was.
The past few days had been grueling as the Kingdom Aerospace Forces had filled the gaps left when a good portion of the home fleet had sortied. He didn’t know why. The newsnet couldn’t give a reason. As it shouldn’t, if operational security was at risk. Loose lips voids ships, after all. They’d all had that drummed into them.
He’d lay odds on the reason, though. The imposing battleship he’d seen the Hegemony Astral dispatch from their shipyard in the Vadir system. The Navy couldn’t stand for something like that big bastard roaming free. They had to go bring it down. That was obvious.
A movement drew his eyes to the right of the vast picture window curving around one edge of the park. The view overlooked the Navy’s mooring spoke stretching out from the main hull of Starbase Victory. The prow of a massive ship swept across the view. He stood with shock as he saw the heat-blackened bow. Each of the pockmarks littering it would be the size of his Tempest fighter. The beginning of the ship’s name appeared in view—Ach—the rest of the lettering obscured by a huge crater punched in her side.
As the ship rolled by, the full extent of the brutal damage she had sustained became evident.
It seemed like every inch of her armor bore scars of savage impact wounds. The sheer firepower it would take to do such harm to a battleship’s thick hide was ridiculous.
Yeah, whatever had happened out there...wherever she’d been...the Navy had really earned their keep.
***
Starbase Victory. Home.
The weariness that washed over him was near overwhelming. The temptation, like when running a marathon, to simply slow on seeing the finishing line. To just walk over it. Or in this case, simply retreat to his quarters and fall asleep and let others handle the mundanities of docking the mammoth ship.
And when he woke, he would magically be in his quarters in the arms of his wife, Iona. Their new baby cooing softly in a cot at the foot of the bed. A dangerous temptation. To bypass his duty.
He shook his head. No!
“We are cleared for Dry Dock Four.” Banning’s voice was as tired as he felt. Yet, here she was, still battling through. Like all of them were. She turned, the faintest hint of a smile on her exhausted face. “We’ve got the VIP treatment.”
“Call it an admiral’s prerogative.” Darrow sat crosslegged in the XO’s chair. “I think we’re going to need Achilles back up and running sooner rather than later.”
On the Navy spoke, a huge door slowly opened, revealing the blazing lights of a floodlit hanger. A grappling arm articulated toward them and opened, ready to greet the wounded ship and guide her into the cavernous bay.
Meter by meter, the ship slid into the dry dock. The ship rocked as the arms clamped gently onto the ship’s jackpoints, areas where she could be safely secured, and drew her down into Victory’s protective embrace. Then the doors closed, sealing Achilles in the starbase.
“Secure down,” Banning called from where she stood behind him. He felt a sense of tired satisfaction; the young woman had more than stepped up to the role of executive officer. “Bring fusion reactor to standby. All weapon capacitors are to be discharged into Victory’s grid. Prepare the—”
He let the business of bringing Achilles down from cruise mode wash over him. They were home, that’s what counted. And now it was just the admin of letting the ship have a well-earned rest.
Creaks and groans echoed through the ship as the bay pressurized, filling the cavernous space with atmosphere. Soon, Cutter knew, scaffolding would be erected around his ship and thousands of dockworkers would be laboring over every inch of her battered hull.
To get her fighting fit again. Because, soon, he was sure, they would be called into battle again. And Achilles had to be ready.
But there were those who wouldn’t be joining them. And they were in sixteen coffins in the hold.
Including her. Hannah Ashford. His right hand. She’d been his XO since he’d taken command of Achilles. And the next time he went into battle, he’d be without her.
They all would.
And she wasn’t the only one. Thousands more floated in the Hellas and Tantalus Systems. Both Kingdom and Hegemony. Many of their bodies would never be recovered, forever floating out there in the darkness, forever looking at the stars with eyes frozen to ice or crushed in the depths of the gas giant where the final battle had taken place.
From the fifteen hundred aboard Cronus, only three had come home. And from—as they’d learned from the survivors—the more than two thousand crew on Behemoth, a mere hundred and nine had been recovered before the fleet had withdrawn. Who knew how many more the stealths had picked up? But the tiny attack crafts couldn’t hold very many, surely nothing like the huge ship had contained.
The butcher’s bill from these few days had been horrendous. On both sides.
He’d winced when he’d reviewed the systems for his log. Between Achilles, Ajax, Spartan, and Knight, they had fired over 2700 rounds at Behemoth. With around 400 slamming into him. And still, the battleship’s structure had remained largely intact, only the final dive into the murky depths having killed him in the end. The thought of engaging a fleet of ships of the same class filled him with a sense of dread.
And rumor had it, that out in the far reaches of the Void, the Dawn Empire were fielding ships even larger and more powerful than anything the Kingdom or the Hegemony had dreamt of.
Cutter cast it from his mind. That was for the admiralty to consider. And the politicians, too. At the moment, his enemy was far closer and more immediate.
The Dawn Empire was a problem for another day.
For now, all Cutter wanted to do was spend time with his wife and child.





Chapter 43
SFC Addington
Starbase Victory – Regis System
“I want to see them,” Addington said, belatedly adding, “Sir.”
The deck officer glared at him for a moment, indignation on his face, before his expression softened. Clearly being one of three survivors from Cronus afforded a lot of slack.
“Why?” The man turned, waving through another hover-dolly laden with parts and supplies headed back onto Achilles. Vital components which would be used to begin the long process of repair.
“They killed my friends,” Addington said coldly. “Lots of them. I want to see who did it. Who killed them. Sir.”
An image of the kind Lieutenant Grosvenor flashed in his mind, unbidden. The hours she had put into tutoring him when she didn’t have to. His bunkmates. Everyone he knew in the Navy. Dead. By the Neo’s hands.
“A batch will be unloaded from Spartan in about an hour,” the officer said, and he clasped Addington’s arm briefly. “Do yourself a favor, son. Don’t put faces to them.”
Addington looked down. The only way to obliterate the faces of those he lost would be if they were replaced by someone to hate. The people who’d killed them. He was sure of that. “I have to.”
Nodding, the officer then inclined his head at the exit. “Slip twelve’s loading dock.”
***
The cruiser’s storage bay had been emptied of everything, leaving the miserable survivors of Behemoth to sit on the cold metal decking.
Gaddish clutched the purring kitten to his chest, scratching his furred neck as he leaned against the bulkhead. Occasionally, he buried his lips to Vince’s young brow, drawing comfort from his small warm form.
The hatch rumbled open and another squad of armored Kingdom Marines filed in, their menacing rifles at port arms.
“Stand up.” The voice was metallic and menacing.
Cradling Vince in one arm, Gaddish pushed himself to his feet to stand with the collection of bedraggled spacers. The survivors of Behemoth’s destruction.
He fell in behind the Marines as they marched him and his shipmates down the corridors to the same loading dock they’d been picked up in. This time, it looked to have been mated to an access tube. In moments, they had passed through into a huge crate-filled loading dock. He blinked as he looked around, realizing the space was too large to be within the cruiser’s hull. They’d arrived at their destination. Or, at the least, the first port of call on a route which would lead to a POW camp or jail. He felt the flicker of butterflies within his stomach as the Marines formed a circle around them, their rifles ready to snap into their shoulders at a second’s notice.
“It’s okay, Vince,” he whispered over and over. A sickening feeling filled his gut. What would happen to him? Gaddish felt a tear trickle down his face. He just wanted to go home. To leave all this behind. The kitten twisted in his arms and let out a mewl, sensing his distress.
Behind the Marines, a man stood. His face had a dermopatch on it, as if he’d been burned. He stepped closer, standing next to one of their guards, surveying them with an empty cold look.
“Under Article Seventeen of the Charis Accords, you are now considered prisoners of war,” One of the Marines bellowed in Galtese, his voice loud and clear. “You will be treated humanely. The Galactic Cross will be informed, and relay to your next of kin news of your capture as per the rules of war. You will be given adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical attention. You will—”
Gaddish let the man’s voice wash over him, relaying their apparent rights and entitlements as he hugged his kitten tighter.
All this was fine, but what would happen to Vince? He may be protected. But the cat? What POW camp would allow him to keep him? They’d kill him. They’d put him down. Or just eat him. Who knew what these Kingdom folk were like?
This cat wasn’t just a cat, it was his friend. And he wasn’t going to let that happen. Even if it meant he would never see him again. He needed to find him a protector. A guardian. Someone from among these whom he could show that Vince was a person...well, as much a person as a cat could be.
Someone who would understand.
A fellow spacer?
Stepping forward, clutching the kitten out in his arms, he walked to the injured crewman watching them. One of the Marines stepped around, his rifle drawing up to his shoulder. Not threatening, at least not yet, just letting him know one wrong move would be the end of him.
He thrust Vince out to the spacer. “Please.”
***
The sad collection of Hegemony spacers gathered in the loading dock wasn’t anything like what Addington had expected. In fact, barring the different hue to their battlesuits, they looked just like Kingdom spacers.
They weren’t sitting there scowling at their captors. There was no snarling or trying to fight their way out. It would have been better if they had. He wanted to shout at them. Spit on them. Blame them for the loss of the Cronus and all of his friends.
Instead, they looked terrified.
One of them stood up, clutching something in his arms, and walked toward him. The man’s face was grease stained. His uniform filthy and his steps trepidant.
He thrust a furry...thing into his face and Addington retreated a step, taken aback, his hands automatically raising to ward whatever the hell it was away.
“Please,” the man said.
He looked closer. It was a cat...more of a kitten, really. The slits of its eyes were wide, its face darting around, as if it were trying to take in everything at once.
“Please,” the man repeated, the tone of his voice the typical guttural of Galtese. “He friend. He no die.”
The man thrust the kitten forward again. This time a Marine intervened, moving to step between them, his rifle aiming at the Galt’s chest. “Back off, dirty Neo.”
“No Neo.” The man stepped back, shaking his head, still proffering the kitten even as he backpedaled. “Please. Take Vince. In-Vince-ible his name. Vince. Please look after.”
Addington looked between the Marine and the Hegemony spacer. With a quick motion, he twisted around the soldier and grabbed the kitten out of the spacer’s arms, taking it into his own. He felt anger build up for what these bastards had been party to. What they’d done. The murder of his friends.
“This thing is important to you? It’s special to you?”
“Yes. Important. Special.” The man nodded enthusiastically.
“Then maybe,” Addington snapped, casting around for words. “Maybe I’ll put him in the garbage disposal, huh? Maybe I’ll just space him. Maybe I’ll...”
The kitten snuggled against his shoulder. He felt the small creature purring there. Already content, even after only a few seconds. His hand reached up automatically, gently clutching the small furry head to him.
He looked up at the Hegemony spacer and the anger washed out of him.
“No. Please,” the man murmured. “Vince. Please.”
Addington tried to curl his lips into a snarl. It was impossible, as he felt the vibrations of the cat’s—of Vince’s—purrs. He felt his other arm curl automatically, protectively, around the small creature. Hugging it against his chest.
He glanced up, seeing the look of horror in the Galt’s eyes. They stared at each other for a moment that stretched into eternity.
“Please?”
Addington gave a jerking nod. His enemy returned it, and pressed his eyes closed in relief.
Then Addington turned and fled from the bay, brushing past the bemused Marines, the small creature cradled tightly in his arms.
Reaching the corridor, out of sight of anyone, he sank to his knees, his face buried in the animal’s back. Heaving sobs wracked through his body as he repeatedly cooed between them, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”





Chapter 44
Admiral Darrow
New Avalon – Larnos City
“It’s done.”
Ordinarily, Darrow would have stopped at his grace-and-favor apartment secreted in Larnos City’s central district for a shower before coming into the prime minister’s War Room’s office. Turning up tired and sweaty just didn’t seem like the done thing.
Frankly, though, he was too exhausted to care. He’d commandeered the first shuttle down, plunging down through the thick, cloud-filled atmosphere of New Avalon, and put down at the military field just outside the capital city.
Lattimore gestured absently at the seat opposite as she continued typing on her console, and he dropped into it. If it bothered her, his perhaps over-familiarity, then she didn’t show it.
“And finished.” She finally drew back from the desk, turning her full attention to him, her gaze sanguine. “As the Spartans of Lost Earth used to say, ‘on your shield or with it.’ I’m glad you came back with it, Jonathan.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Darrow murmured as he nodded in acknowledgement. “It was certainly a fierce fight.”
“I’ve seen the footage.” She leaned down slightly. He heard the noise of a drawer opening, and a bottle of single malt and two glasses appeared. The liquid glugged out of the bottle as she poured at least triple measures. “That big bastard could certainly take a pounding.”
Darrow reached across and swept the glass into his hand. Pausing only to clink it against Lattimore’s, he downed it in a single gulp. The burning fluid seemed to track every branch of his lungs, a satisfying pain coursing through him.
The prime minister raised an eyebrow, and wordlessly topped him off. Clearly, she was in the mood to afford some slack. And while she was in said mood...
“Madam, about Hal Cutter...”
“Relax, Admiral.” Lattimore took a more measured mouthful of her glass, wincing slightly as she swallowed it down. “My...condemnation of the man may have been a little on the premature side. Something I believe doubly so after seeing just how much abuse that ship could take. Sometimes, just sometimes mind you, decisiveness can be a burden.”
“That is a relief, madam.” Darrow nodded, this time merely sipping on his whisky.
Lattimore rose from her desk and gestured at the wall. The wooden paneling cunningly retracted into itself, revealing a floor-to-ceiling map of space centered on the Kingdom. The Arcadian Sector was nearly completely covered in red, with only the occasional blue specks of besieged Kingdom strongholds in the Elent Passage and the Talos Rift. Banners showed the location of significant military formations. Many of them gathered on the edge of what had once been Republic Space.
“This war, Jon, has grown to be a test of wills.” She gave a sigh. “Frankly, I didn’t like what I saw from the crew of Behemoth. Their...determination was unsettling.”
“No more unsettling than they would have found our own.” Darrow joined her. Seeing the war in this format emphasized just how lonely the Kingdom was. Yes, the Neo forces might be spread thin within the sector, but the reports trickling out were that their sheer ruthless brutality was keeping order on the occupied worlds. People were being summarily executed or made to disappear for the slightest hint of sedition or insurrection. And their families, too. The once-proud Republic had been neutered by the oldest and simplest of threats—we will kill you, and everyone you care about if you defy us.
Just as unsettling were the reports of persecution. The Loggists, being taken from their beds at night, along with the lame, the sick—those who were considered to be somehow impure under the tenets of the Neo ideology.
And there was no end in sight. The Kingdom might, through a quirk of astrogation, be defended from the kind of invasion that the rest of the Arcadian Sector had fallen to. But it was only a matter of time, unless something changed, before the Hegemony pulled together the lift capacity to strike at the Kingdom itself.
“How go your negotiations with the Federation and the People?” Darrow asked as he clasped his hands behind his back.
Lattimore gave a snort and rolled her eyes. “The Federation’s appetite for war is non-existent. For them, this conflict is far from home.” She gave a dismissive wave. “A matter of local concern. Or so their official party line goes.”
“It will be of their concern should the whole of the sector fall.”
Lattimore nodded. “Something President Hughson understands, even if his electorate doesn’t. Some happy news for you is that as of yesterday, he informed me that he managed to release fifty ships under the destroyers-for-bases program which has been giving our respective ambassadors headaches.”
“As much as giving up territory rubs me the wrong way, there’s no doubt those tin cans would be...welcome,” Darrow conceded. Although, of course, that raised the tiny problem of crewing that many new ships. But, that was a problem he could live with. Even if he parked them in orbit with nothing but a skeleton gunnery crew aboard, he’d pull some use out of them.
“And, they will continue anti-stealth operations in their half of the Reach, as well as providing us material support, assuming we can get the convoys through. A matter your recent actions have made much easier.” Lattimore waved her hand across the map, causing it to scroll to the opposite side of the sector from the Reach. “The Chairwoman of the People has proven somewhat more stubborn and intransigent in their position.”
“She wants to keep to the terms of their non-aggression pact?”
“Foolishly, some might think. When one of the Neo Party’s stated aims is to take their worlds, and they have demonstrated the aggression and perhaps ability to do so.”
Darrow gave a shrug. Not through disinterest, but simple weariness. “Well, I for one, would be happy when they stop messing around and go do it. The opening of a second front would ease the pressure on us immeasurably.”
“And if they win? Then they will have just quadrupled the amount of stars they own. Including many with mature, developed HE3 refining facilities ” Lattimore turned from the map and sighed. “Whether we try to wait them out, wait for help, or mount an attack, it has become clear to me that we can’t do this alone.”
“So what are our options? Surrender?” Darrow didn’t ask the question seriously. And the snort from Lattimore told him she hadn’t taken it as such.
“We’re not surrendering, Jon. But it does feel as if we’re waiting for a miracle.” She downed her glass and wiped the back of her sleeve across her lips. “Or a monumental screw-up on their behalf.”
***
“Hal!” Iona Cutter grabbed him, taking him into her arms. Behind her, from within the lounge of their quarters, he could hear the gurgle of their child. Carter, Carter Harold Cutter.
He rained quick, pecking kisses on his wife, before pushing past her, keeping one of her hands in his, pulling her in with him.
Dropping to his knees next to the crib, he looked at their content child, pawing at a dangling mobile of spaceships.
Damn, it was good to be home. He felt his wife gripping his shoulder, as if she didn’t want to break physical contact even for a second.
Surely she would have seen the state of Achilles when the battered ship had pulled in. Seen but known that, for the moment, there were more important things for him to see and talk about than what had happened.
Like, “So, how’s he been while I’ve been away?”
His wife leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “Like his father, dear. Very smelly when it comes to potty time.”
“That’s my boy.” He reached down into the cot and caressed his son’s smooth, chubby cheeks. “That’s my boy.”
***
“Yeah?” The duty petty officer in Starbase Victory’s transit accommodation reception didn’t look up from his screen. Whatever he was watching was clearly more fascinating than booking in the next person to take a billet.
Spacer First Class Addington had been led from one place to another, in a whirlwind of being debriefed and given a new kit before being sent over to the transit mess to get some sleep. His only possessions in the world had been newly gifted to him, and were crammed into the standard-issue duffel bag now by his feet.
“I have a ticket, PO.” He pulled his tablet out his pocket and swiped it across.
“Fine.” The petty officer nodded, and flicked his eyes up at him briefly before tapping on his console. He pursed his lips. “Mess Three. Looks like the ticket gives you a single quarter.”
“PO,” Addington acknowledged and picked up his duffel. He started walking down the corridor.
“Hey,” the glorified receptionist called from behind. “What on Lost Earth is that?”
Addington looked down at his duffel, at the small head poking out of the slightly unzipped end, an inquisitive look on the small kitten’s face.
“You can’t bring that thing in here.”
Turning back, Addington looked at the now-standing man, indignation on his face. For a moment, that was. Something in his expression caused the senior enlisted to take a step back.
“Petty officer,” Addington said quietly. “I was on Cronus.”
“Right,” the man said weakly in response. “Right. Just...you know. Make sure you clean up after it.”
“Him, PO,” Addington said. “His name is Vince. In-Vince-ible.”
He turned and made his tired way along the whitewashed door-lined corridor, eager to rest.
With his new, perpetually purring, friend.





Chapter 45
General Hest
Galton
The Prime stood at the plotting table, surrounded by his most senior officers, the illumination of the strategic holo eerily underlighting his face. He regarded the dispositions of the Hegemony’s forces with a cocked head and pursed lips.
“The loss of Behemoth, while troubling, does simplify matters for us,” the Prime spoke slowly, as if reassuring himself as much as those in the darkened room.
Hest kept her gaze locked on the map. Not wanting to look up lest her disdain for the Prime and his number two, Revanch, was too obvious on her face. The “troubling” loss of Behemoth had cost the lives of over two thousand spacers. The stealth pack which had descended on the site of the battle had rescued just five. Through what was left of the tattered diplomatic channels between the Kingdom and the Hegemony, she knew a hundred and nine more had been rescued by the Kingdom fleet.
“The invasion of the People’s worlds is our priority, and their subjugation our destiny. Not the needless engagement of a nation who should be our ally,” the Prime continued, his clear, confident voice full of his own self-grandeur. “But in order to do that, we must adequately plan for between here and there.”
To think, the top leadership all here in one location. The Hegemony could be crippled in a heartbeat. Hest felt her fist clench. Perhaps it should be done, considering what this idiot was proposing now. One thing was for sure—the military needed to take back control of military matters and then they might have a chance of success. The Prime had been a mere foot soldier in the First Great War—a corporal. He had as much knowledge of how grand strategy worked as a baker.
Yet, Hest conceded as she half-listened to him drone on, through a mix of luck and aggression, he had somehow accomplished more than all the generals and admirals of the First War.
“The establishment of the aerospace bases on Asteria will enable us to keep the pressure on the Kingdom while we complete a redeployment ready for opening a front against the People’s worlds.” Aerospace Marshal Portris had taken over. The overweight man tapped the former Republic system closest to New Avalon. A spinning orrery appeared, focused on the world they had conquered. Icons pinging into existence, showing the newly formed Aerospace Corps bases. Hundreds, if not thousands of fighters and bombers staged out of there, relentlessly keeping the pressure on the beleaguered Kingdom. “We can continue our bombing campaigns undaunted.”
“Thank you, Marshal.” The Prime leaned forward, planting both hands on the table. He appeared to compose himself for a moment. “And our fuel reserves to support this effort?”
“Inadequate for sustaining both fronts.” Marshal Richter Galen stood, his arms folded. “I urge the Prime to reconsider what he is proposing. We can service one objective, or the other. And neither should be underestimated.”
“Your lack of confidence in the Neo cause is troubling,” Revanch hissed. Hest felt a shudder course through her body at this snake of a man.
Galen squeezed his eyes closed for a brief moment. Visibly steeling himself.
Say it, Hest silently screamed at him. Say you’re fucking mad if you want to go against two powerful nations. At the same time. The Kingdom, on its own, was no second-rate power to be crushed underfoot. Yet the Prime was dismissing them as such. And as for the People? Madness.
Yet the marshal remained silent.
“I think Richter may have a point.” The Prime lay a reassuring hand on his attack dog’s shoulder. “The acquisition of more fuel would help our esteemed cause.”
He turned his gaze back on the chart, pondering it.
“It’s simple,” he continued with a smile, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “If fuel is short, then we must acquire more fuel.”
Very observant of you, Hest thought as he tapped on the chart. It swept out from Asteria, swinging dizzyingly before rushing in to focus on the patch of space surrounded by the shattered Republic, the Iconian Regime’s worlds and the Ishtar Sphere itself. The Talos Rift. A major thoroughfare of shipping, the site of ancient battlegrounds, and of modern trade. Kingdom strongholds blinked blue, each spiting the most determined efforts of the Hegemony to unseat them. And each providing a base from which the Kingdom struck at the tankers hauling precious fuel from the resource-rich ancient Dyson Sphere to the Hegemony’s stockpiles.
“I think it’s time,” the Prime said, “with our new Iconian allies, to assert our control of the Rift. To capitalize on our new...coalition. We must open up our supply lines, once and for all, and give our forces the precious lifeblood they’ll need for what is to come.”
He looked around, the sycophants in the room grinning enthusiastically like the lapdogs they were, the older guard merely nodding. It was, truth be told, far more measured an approach than Hest expected.
And one which seemed not just achievable with the forces they had available to descend on the Kingdom’s bases, but held a near guarantee of success.
“Marshal Portris?” The man looked up at his name, his jowls quivering. “I give you responsibility for taking the lead on this. Speak to your counterparts in the Iconian Regime and pull a plan together.”
“Thank you, my Prime.” Portris stood a little straighter, his huge belly pressing against the edge of the table. “I will crush the Kingdom forces in the area.”
Hopefully, not just by sitting on them. Hest caught Galen’s eyes, a twinkle of amusement cutting between them through the grimness they both felt. Clearly, the same thought had occurred to him.
“Good.” The Prime clapped his hands together. “You will present a battle plan within three days.”
***
The transport set down on the private pad of the Tor Hest estate. The moment the hatch opened, her son and daughter were released by Wilhelm. They charged forward and clanged up the ramp.
Hest grunted in mock pain as the boy and girl slammed into her, each wrapping an arm around her pantaloons-clad thighs. She kept a grip on her briefcase with one hand, ruffling their hair in turn with the other, and shuffled forward to give her husband a kiss on the cheek.
“How was it, my dear?”
“The debates of high command is like the making of sausages,” Hest said, striving to force humor into her voice which she didn’t feel. “The less you know about the process, the more you respect the result.”
Wilhelm gave a tolerant smile and gestured inside. He knew not to press too deeply. One of the reasons she loved him so. He was a simple farmer; war was something which belonged under her purview. “Come, my dear. Dinner awaits.”
Following her husband and scampering children down the flagstone path and through into the huge atrium of her manor, she inclined her head at the dining room. “I’m just going to freshen up.”
“Don’t be long,” Wilhelm said sternly, making to follow Greta and Arnold through the imposing arch into the dining hall. He paused before reaching it, turned and looked at her. “By the way, a courier brought this. They said to give it to you directly.”
He tossed an object at her, and she deftly caught it in one hand. She opened her palm. A memory crystal. She shrugged and pocketed it. “Thank you. I will be there momentarily.”
She climbed the sweeping stairway, passing her bedchambers, and headed into the wood-trimmed ornateness of her office. There was only one last little bit of business to attend to first, then she could shed her army dress uniform.
Seeing the children always reassured her. Helped her cast aside her doubts and worries of this damnable war. And the physical manifestation of that was when home, she locked her briefcase away. Hiding it out of sight, and out of mind.
The safe lodged in her bookshelf read her face and biometrics, discerning she wasn’t under duress, and popped open. It would do no good to not be fastidious with the information she was entrusted with. Especially when that information included the top-secret plans for the forthcoming Talos Rift campaign.
Slamming the door closed, she turned, realizing the memory crystal was still in her pocket.
It can wait, she thought, even as her body’s autopilot took her to her desk and slotted it into the reader.
Damn, to be so...diligent. I’ll just see who sent it.
On the small holo, a tiny figure she recognized sat at an equally small desk. The holo flickered and crackled. She cocked her head, hearing the whine of the anti-listening device modulation.
“General Tor Hest.” Admiral Sarven? Why did she have a message from him? “If you are receiving this, then I am dead and Behemoth is no more. That gives me a certain amount of leeway, some might say, to speak my mind.”
Frowning, she moved around her chair and lowered herself onto it.
“When I saw you at Thoth Shipyard, I formed the opinion we both might question the course our leaders have put us on. This bloody, senseless war against the Kingdom. The Prime’s desire to turn his attention to the People. And it will only be so long before the Dawn Empire seeks to force the Federation to battle, too, and that will undoubtedly draw us in. The known galaxy, Aria, will soon be aflame. All of it.”
The figure paused, as if composing its thoughts. “We are on this road now. And we, the old guard, may not have wanted it, but this is the hand we’ve been dealt.”
The figure paused again, then appeared to look up straight at her. “It is clear to me, the current leadership lacks the competence to win this war. That means, it is up to us to do what must be done to do so. I think you’ll find more likeminded people out there, Aria, and—”
Hest felt her heart beating even faster. What he was suggesting was treason. Anti-listening modulation or not, the mere possession of this crystal would likely result in her and her whole family disappearing into one of Revanch’s execution chambers.
“We—you now, you and a few others—are the only people who can, if not win, then at least not lose. That must be our focus at any—”
Her hand reached for the crystal, tugging it out of its receptacle. She cast it to the floor, grinding the crystal under her boot’s heel until it was little more than powder.
She cast her eyes around her study, feeling a fear like no other course through her belly. Revanch’s Executors could be anywhere, Father Terra, probably everywhere in their paranoia. The office of one of the Hegemony’s generals was likely one of the first places they had bugged.
She should report this, this sedition, before they found out she’d received this message.
Standing, she straightened her uniform and nodded to herself. Yes, she’d do the right thing. She’d report this. For herself, for Galton. For Wilhelm, Greta, and Arnold.
Tomorrow.
Maybe.
THE END OF BOOK 2 OF THE GREAT WAR
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Author’s Note
The Battle of the Denmark Strait, involving the destruction of HMS Hood and the subsequent hunt for the KMS Bismarck, culminated in his sinking on Tuesday 27th May, 1941, and resulted in the deaths of over 3700 sailors on both sides.
Whilst this story draws some closer direct parallels with actual people than Rain of Fire, it should be considered as inspired by rather than a blow-by-blow account transferred to a Military SF setting. For example, in the timeline of this series, the attack on Mers-el-Kebir takes place before the Battle of the Denmark Strait. This is a narrative decision which I will own that enabled me to cover both events.
The battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, under the command of Admiral GHood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. On paper, this was more than sufficient to take on the Kriegsmarine force. In practice, a battlecruiser trades armor for speed, and that cost her severely in this battle. After the fifth salvo of the savage battle, a round penetrated Hood’s armor and struck her ammunition store. The damage was catastrophic. Moments later, she was gone, taking all but three of her 1419 crew with her.
Prince of Wales, a new ship suffering from frequent malfunctions in her turrets, was forced to withdraw. But not before a round slammed into her bridge, killing everyone but Captain Leach and one other. In return, three hits were struck on Bismarck, flooding his fuel stores.
As the damaged Prince of Wales strove to track Bismarck, every available ship was dispatched to the area. In total, six battleships and battlecruisers, two carriers, thirteen cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers were sent to hunt Bismarck down.
Bismarck, knowing he was low on fuel and dangerously close to being cornered, turned to engage the pursuing Prince of Wales again. Heavy fire was exchanged. Only this was a decoy, allowing Prinz Eugen to flee the area. Bismarck fled again and a frantic search ensued for the battleship, which despite his fuel woes, was dangerously close to escaping. Prince of Wales again engaged at long range, but to no effect. The carrier Victorious launched a series of airstrikes against the ship, despite heavy defensive fire, ultimately damaging his rudder and forcing Bismarck into a long turn, allowing the Royal Navy to catch up.
Much of the Royal Navy fleet was running low on fuel by this time, but the battleships King George V and Rodney, along with the cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire, began pummeling the now-crippled ship. In total, 2800 shells were fired—of which 400 hit—showing just how much punishment the massive ship could take.
Bismarck sank, leaving 400 people still in the water. Rescue efforts commenced, but were halted when lookouts spotted what they suspected was a U-boat. 114 sailors were saved out of a crew of 2200.
When I set out on this project, one of the challenges is that a war is a wide-ranging event, involving many elements and many people. While initially, I had the intention of keeping as faithful to real events as possible, I soon learned that would entail changing characters and ships every book. I have taken the decision to simplify this.
Achilles especially is representative of that. Her role in the previous book was that provided by the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Calcutta. This time, she has taken the role of the Battleship HMS Prince of Wales and then the HMS King George V. This is a narrative decision which I will own, as it allows me to use the same characters, and we can see them develop throughout the series rather than introducing new ones for each book.
John Leach
The captain of the HMS Prince of Wales provides the inspiration for Captain Hal Cutter. It is true that when Churchill first learned of Hood’s destruction, that in a fit of rage, he ordered his court-martial. This was very quickly rescinded and may have been a symptom of the highs and lows of the bipolar disorder he suffered from.
Admiral G
The inspiration for Admiral Valin Tor Sarven, Gategic genius. That is not to say he was not a fearsome foe of the Allies, despite these beliefs. Like many of the old guard, it is suspected that he simply felt that he would have done a better job than the Nazi sycophants. It is perhaps fortunate that he was restrained by his orders as, if he and his ship had been given free reign, he may have prolonged or altered the course of the war significantly as the Royal Navy had to force more ships into hunter-killer squadrons, and ensure convoys had much heavier defenses.
Unsinkable Sam (In-Vince-ible)
Unsinkable Sam, also called Oskar, was a cat who belonged to an unknown sailor aboard Bismarck. He was found amid the wreckage by the destroyer HMS Cossack and went on to serve as the ship’s mascot until she was destroyed by a German U-boat.
Surviving this, Sam was adopted by sailors on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal when again, she was torpedoed. Unsinkable Sam was found clinging to the wreckage and said to be “angry but unharmed.”
Somewhat wisely, Sam decided to retire from shipborne duty and spent the rest of his days on land.





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