Original Work Shadowed Glory (Morningstar V)

Chapter Thirty-Four: Leo/Commander Alice Hagias/Commodore Lafarge

Alice watched the display, refusing to show any sign of her true feelings.

The engagement had turned into a long-range battle of attrition, with the Daybreakers at a profound disadvantage. The enemy had damaged the orbital datanet – she blessed the admiral silently for insisting on working multiple redundancies into the system – and were wearing the defences down, more and more missiles slipping through the point defence and slamming into their targets. A dozen orbital industrial nodes were already gone, along with an asteroid habitat that hosted the rich and powerful – God, she hoped that had been a terrible accident – and a lone orbital battlestation. The rest of the battlestations were taking damage themselves ... oddly, the fleet had been largely spared, but it was only a matter of time until that changed. And then ...

“Sir,” Commander Halgarth said. “The enemy fleet is narrowing the range.”

Admiral Cox looked remarkably unbothered, for someone on the verge of losing the greatest naval battle in history. “We’ll proceed with Telic as soon as the crews are ready to go,” he said. “Fire on my command.”

Commander Halgarth nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Alice sucked in her breath. Telic? She knew much of the admiral’s secrets, but there were all kinds of things – tactics, new weapons. deployment orders – that were well above her pay grade. Had the admiral something up his sleeve? Or was it a desperate bluff ...? She didn’t know. She was just a helpless spectator, watching icons dancing on the display and vanishing into nothingness, trying to forget that each of those icons represented a starship or a space installation crewed by living breathing humans. Her ambitions faded, in the face of the war. It was the oddest engagement in history.

“Telic is ready to go,” Commander Halgarth said. “Sir?”

“Let them get a little closer,” Admiral Cox ordered. “My compliments to Admiral Jameson and he is to commence Operation Panic right away.”

“Yes, sir,” Commander Halgarth said.

Alice listened to the orders as the fleet started to alter course, skimming around the planet and using it as a shield long enough to get out of the gravity trap and escape. It looked like a shameful retreat, the fleet saving what it could and leaving the planet to burn; hopefully, the rebels would accept what they were seeing at face value. They’d want to believe, she was sure, which would make it harder for them to realise the retreat was nothing more than a bluff. Unless it turned into something real ... she ground her teeth in frustration. They’d thought themselves prepared for modern war, but in truth they were learning a great many lessons as they went along.

“Sir, the enemy fleet is still closing,” Commander Halgarth said. “They’re opening fire on the orbital installations.”

“Very good,” Admiral Cox said. He waited a long moment, his eyes never leaving the display. “Proceed with Telic.”

“Aye, sir.”

Alice leaned forward as the display sparked with new icons, hundreds of missiles – a combination of modern and outdated projectiles – seemingly appearing out of nowhere and charging straight at the enemy fleet. Admiral Cox had played his hand well, she acknowledged reluctantly; he’d drawn the enemy in, while their gravity generators pinned them down, and opened fire at dangerously close range. It wasn’t exactly point-blank range, unfortunately, but it was close enough to give the enemy a very hard time indeed.

We didn’t have time to build our own arsenal ships, she told herself. But this is the next besy thing.

“Missiles away, sir,” Commander Halgarth reported. “Impact in seven minutes.”

Admiral Cox smiled. “Signal Admiral Jameson,” he ordered. “He is to reverse course and engage as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir.”

***

For a moment, Leo didn’t believe his eyes.

There were hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of missiles rising from the high orbitals and blasting their way towards the enemy fleet, backed up by countless seeker warheads and ECM drones. A sizable number would be nothing more than sensor ghosts, he was sure – the impossibly high numbers were clear proof some literally didn’t exist – but even if only a tenth of the missiles were real the enemy were fucked. They’d trapped themselves in realspace, pinned themselves down ... after the Battle of Yangtze, in which Admiral Blackthrone’s fleet had been on the receiving end of such a beating, it was exactly what they deserved.

He braced himself as the missiles roared past the gunboats and flew right into the teeth of enemy defences. The risk of friendly fire had never been so high, in a combat zone where decision had to be made at terrifying speed and the slightest mistake could easily prove fatal. If the missiles mistook the gunboats for enemy warships ... he let out a breath, then kicked the drive into high gear as soon as the missiles had flown past the gunboats. The enemy could not be allowed to escape. And unless they were complete idiots, they would deactivate the gravity trap at any moment and run.

“All ships, form up on me,” he ordered. The fleet was reversing course, Admiral Jameson readying himself to bury a knife in the enemy’s back. “Prepare to attack!”

The range closed with terrifying speed, as the missiles plunged through the enemy’s point defence. Some were dangerously outdated, pressed into service as a last-ditch measure ... he cursed under his breath as he noticed the missiles clumping up, the faster ones streaking ahead while the outdated missiles lagged behind. The enemy was adapting faster than he wanted to admit – they’d known arsenal ships existed for years, they’d known it was just a matter of time before Daybreak produced their own – but it wasn’t going to be enough. The first wave of missiles fell on the smaller units like dogs on hares, great explosions pocketing the enemy line as their cruisers and destroyers were wiped from existence. Leo would have gone for the bigger ships, the real threat to Portahaven, but he understood Admiral Cox’s point. Without their point defence units, the enemy ships would be dangerously exposed to Admiral Jameson’s fire.

“All units, full evasive,” he ordered, as they streaked past the enemy shuttles. His guns fired automatically, blasting a number into dust. Others evaded themselves, ignoring the gunboats in a desperate attempt to take out as many missiles as possible. He’d hoped their datanet would go down, when the bigger ships started dying, but it looked as though he was going to be disappointed. The datanet didn’t seem to have been weakened at all. “We’re going right down their throats!”

He flashed past a light cruiser, desperately trying to bring her weapons to bear on the tiny gunboats, and led the way towards a giant battleship. The heavily-armoured ship was firing desperately, plasma blasts and missiles streaking in all directions as it pounded its targets; Leo grinned, savagely, as he led the squadron towards her drive section and fired. The shipkiller flashed towards its target, slamming into the hull ... others followed, adding to the destruction. He had the satisfaction of seeing a gush of superhot plasma bursting out of her drives, suggesting the power cores had been breached. It might not be enough to cripple the target completely, but it should be enough to keep her from fleeing the system. They might complete their mission to capture an enemy datacore after all.

“Target crippled,” Gaby reported.

“Good.” Leo led the way towards the next target, evading all the while. The enemy were alert to the threat now, their point defence zeroing in on the gunboats as the last of Admiral Cox’s missiles died away. The remaining clusters were no great threat, unless the enemy screwed up spectacularly. “Signal the squadron. I want to cripple as many ships as possible.”

“Aye, sir.”

***

Gallardo sat in his chair, watching disaster unfolding in front of him.

The Daybreak Admiral had played him like a puppet, he realised sourly. He’d let Gallardo see what he wanted to see, then waited to strike until success was certain. The missile swarm had practically wiped out his smaller ships, leaving his heavy-hitters exposed to the enemy battleships. The fleet he’d seen retreating was now coming about, bringing its heavy weapons to bear. It wouldn't be as strong as it looked, because it had already expended many of its missiles, but there was just no way to be sure. And ...

Ice prickled down his spine. The Daybreak Admiral was tempting him. He could close the range, the irritating little attack craft notwithstanding, and finish destroying the planet’s industrial facilities. He could do it, at the risk of losing much of his fleet. The temptation warred with the grim awareness he didn’t dare, not when his ships were the largest striking force in the sector. It was bad enough that he’d shot off thousands of missiles, but ... he cursed under his breath, silently conceding defeat. They’d hurt the enemy, and knocked them back on their heels, but there was no hope of destroying the remaining orbital industries or taking the planet. They’d have to settle for a draw.

“Bring the fleet about,” he ordered. Operation Havoc was still underway, devastating the out-system industry. Taking out the cloudscoops would cripple operations, at least until they were replaced ... not enough to be really dangerous, he was sure, but another headache for Daybreak’s planners. “Target the incoming ships, fire on my command.”

Another wave of red icons appeared on the display, the orbital battlestations taking their last shot. Their throw weight was much reduced ... Gallardo wasn’t surprised. They couldn’t have stockpiled many more missiles or they would have fired them as part of the single great salvo. It was what he would have done, if he’d been in their shoes. And yet, with the fleet bearing down on his ships, their intervention might prove decisive.

“Missiles away, sir,” Ransom reported.

Gallardo nodded, tapping his console to bring up the fleet’s status reports. A long drawn-out engagement would suit the enemy more than himself, if the Daybreakers chose to give chase. They knew the arsenal ships were gone now. He could try to trick them into thinking he had more under his command, but he doubted they’d buy it. Their commander was clearly no slouch. Hell, give the haze surrounding the battle zone, there was a very good chance they’d miss the trick completely. That would be ironic.

“Prepare to deactivate the gravity trap,” he ordered. The hell of it was that they’d become victims of their own success. The enemy would have a chance to close the range sharply, once the gravity field was gone, if they acted before he managed to get his ships out. “And launch deception drones on my command.”

“Aye, sir.”

His eyes swept the status display. Seventeen ships were crippled, five incapable of jumping out of the system. He snapped orders, commanding the crews to evacuate before it was too late. The ships would have to be scuttled and quickly, to keep raw data falling into enemy hands ... Gallardo hoped, despite his fears, that any prisoners would be treated well. But Daybreak wasn’t known for anything of the sort.

“Sir, the enemy ships are returning fire,” Ransom reported. “They’re picking up speed.”

“Deactivate the gravity trap,” Gallardo ordered. It was a risk, but one they’d have to take. “If they jump forward, fire at once. Do not wait for orders.”

“Aye, sir.”

Gallardo kept his eye on the sensors, counting down the seconds. It wouldn’t be long now.

And next time, things would be different.

***

“Sir,” Commander Halgarth said. “The enemy fleet is turning away.”

Alice saw Admiral Cox sag, an unhidden expression of relief crossing his face for a long moment before he regained control of himself. He’d gambled, knowing his peers would condemn him without hesitation if they knew what he’d been planning, and he'd won. The battle had been decidedly odd, by modern standards, but who cared? They’d won!”

“Signal Admiral Jameson,” Admiral Cox ordered. He was folding his cards, securing his gains without risking their loss. “He is to continue engaging the enemy with long-range missile fire.”

“Aye, sir,” Commander Halgarth said.

Alice leaned forward, watching the enemy ships fire one last salvo at the orbital defences before they moved out of range. Emergency craft were already coming out of hiding, picking up lifepods and deflecting pieces of debris that would otherwise hit the planet. That was going to be a problem, she was sure. The bigger chunks could be blasted before they fell into the atmosphere, and they would be taken out, but the smaller pieces and clouds of dust would be just as damaging to the environment, in the long run. The clean-up was going to be a nightmare.

And the folks on the ground will go mental when they realise they’re not going to be liberated after all, her thoughts added. The first wave of bombings appeared to have faded away, but there were still riots and uprisings in a dozen cities. The police and militia were completely overwhelmed. That won’t end well for anyone down there.

“Sir,” Commander Halgarth said. “The enemy ships are powering down their gravity fields. Admiral Jameson is requesting permission to close the range.”

Admiral Cox hesitated. Alice could practically see the thoughts crossing his mind. The battle was over. There was no way to keep the enemy from retreating and they’d have little trouble getting out even if Admiral Jameson managed to jump into point-blank range. They’d be able to hammer him too, perhaps even crippling his fleet ... there was a certain elegance, perhaps, in cashing in his chips now, rather than risk turning victory into defeat. And ... if Admiral Jameson struck the killing blow, he’d get the credit. It might cost her patron his sole chance of promotion.

“Declined,” Admiral Cox said. His tone made it very clear that it wasn’t a debate. “He is to harry the enemy from long range, rather than risk closing up.”

He paused, then continued. “Detail assault shuttles to round up the cripples and take enemy prisoners into custody. Remind the marines that the prisoners are to be treated well, as long as they don’t resist.”

Commander Halgarth looked as if he wanted to argue. Alice didn’t blame him. There wasn’t going to be any shortage of armchair admirals, most having spent time in command chairs themselves, criticising Admiral Cox’s decision. They’d say he could have finished the job and perhaps they’d be right, although the spooks had yet to come up with a proper order of battle for rebel forces. They could be on the verge of wiping them out, if the ships slowly leaving the system were all the rebels had; they could be close to turning victory into defeat, if the rebels had a hell of a lot of other ships. Her eyes lingered on the starchart. She was all too aware the attack they’d beaten off might not be the only attack. If the rebels had attacked the nearest system too, they wouldn’t know about it for days.

“Sir,” Commander Halgarth said. He had the air of a man who knew he was about to find himself trapped between two vastly superior officers, neither known to be fond of disobedience. “Admiral Jameson is repeating his request for permission to close the range.”

Alice saw the brief flash of fury crossing her patron’s face. Orders were orders, particularly when the command datanet was up and running. There was nothing to be gained by repeating them, or asking for a clarification everyone knew was actually a request the admiral reconsider his orders. Admiral Jameson scented a near-complete victory and wanted to grasp the opportunity before it was too late, regardless of the risk. Alice might have agreed with him, if things had been different. But they were what they were.

“Denied,” Admiral Cox said. His voice was very cold. “My orders stand.”

***

“I think we won,” Gaby said. She sounded relieved – and tired. The battle hadn’t lasted that long, but it felt as if they’d been fighting for days. “The enemy fleet is pulling back.”

“Don’t say that too loudly,” Leo said. The enemy might be retreating, clearly preparing to leave, but their point defence gunners didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. They were still firing ... the gunboat squadrons had shattered, pilots flying with whatever wingmen they could muster as they pressed the offensive. He silently blessed himself for insisting on such much cross-training. It might not be perfect, but it was enough to ensure they could stay in the fight. “You never know who might be listening.”

A rebel battlecruiser, smaller than the last one he’d killed, loomed up in front of him. Leo launched his last shipkiller at her, smiling coldly as the missile slammed into her hull. She was clearly tougher than she looked, the warhead barely slowing her down even though it detonated inside her hull. Her point defence didn’t falter at all, even as Leo ran through a series of evasive manoeuvres. She looked ready to pick him off the moment he flew away from her.

An alarm howled. “Sir,” Gaby snapped. “She’s powering up her drive!”

Leo hesitated. Did he dare ... yes. He’d dare. He launched his remaining decoy missiles together, creating an impression of a gunboat fleeing for her life, then slammed the craft into the enemy hull. The drive field wobbled violently as it absolved the impact ... he powered down quickly, all too aware the decoys wouldn’t last long. If the enemy realised he’d attached himself to their hull ...

The alarm howled, again. “Sir!”

“Brace yourself,” Leo snapped. They had only seconds left. There was no time to send a message back to Shadow. Captain Warner had been surprisingly quiet during the battle, but still ... “This is going to be a stunt ...”

The battlecruiser jumped, taking the gunboat with it.

 

Chapter Thirty-Five

“How long do we have to wait here?”

Leo took a breath. Gaby had signed up to fly gunboats, not take part in a demented operation put together on the fly by a commanding officer with something to prove. The gunboats had remarkable endurance for their size, but they weren’t designed for long-term operations without a mothership and it showed. They were just too cramped for them to avoid getting in each other’s personal space and the air, supposedly clean, was starting to turn foul. He was sure he was imagining it – the filters appeared to be in perfect working order – but it didn’t help. It was all too easy to imagine themselves running out of air and choking to death on their own rancid flumes.

“As long as it takes,” he said. The enemy battlecruiser had jumped twice, each jump taking it further from Portahaven and closer to Yangtze, Leo’s old stomping ground. “It depends where they think they’re going.”

He frowned as he studied the display. The enemy ship hadn’t been too badly battered in the fighting, which was fortunate as any repair crews would likely have spotted the gunboat clamped to the battlecruiser’s hull. The tiny craft might be practically invisible on an interplanetary scale, little more than a mote of space dust, but she stood out all too clearly on a much smaller scale. They might not even know they’d been spotted until it was too late. The only confirmation they hadn’t was that the enemy hadn’t already sent marines to storm the gunboat or simply blasted them off their hull.

Gaby scowled. “And can we get home, if we do locate their base?”

Leo shrugged, again. There were several options. He knew more about the black economy in the sector than most Daybreakers, including the names of prominent smugglers who worked for Daybreak. He could make contact with them and get passage home, assuming they stayed bought; he could sneak the gunboat to a smaller world, land somewhere unseen, and make their way back home from there. It wouldn’t be easy, but it wasn’t in him to give up. His lips quirked in dark amusement. Admiral Cox would probably have him arrested for desertion when he made it home.

Which is going to be an interesting legal case, his thoughts pointed out, dryly. He did just win the greatest battle in history.

His lips quirked again. Admiral Cox had played it safe and won. There would be few critiques of his performance, although – politics being politics – it was just a matter of time until the knives came out again. He’d killed hundreds of rebel starships and thousands of rebels and ... Leo was torn between relief, knowing the enemy tide had been stemmed, and irritation it was Admiral Cox who’d won the victory. The prestige he’d get from winning, all the greater because his tactics had flown in the face of accepted military victory, would give him plenty of time to arrange matters to suit himself. And who knew how that would all work out.

An alarm bleeped. The battlecruiser was powering up her drives. Again. Leo braced himself, taking one final look at the starchart to ensure they knew their exact location before the universe vanished in a twist of discomfort that was somehow worse than pain. There was no reason to think the battlecruiser could jump further than her counterparts – distance wasn’t the factor; interstellar astrography was – and yet, the rebel decision to minimise their jump drive baffles bothered him. It made little sense. Sure, they weren’t jumping into a combat zone now – or so he thought – but that didn’t mean they should be torturing their own crews.

Perhaps their drives were more damaged than I’d thought, he mused, although he doubted it. The enemy wouldn’t be jumping at all if they thought their drives were unreliable. There were horror stories about ships that jumped out with damaged drives, never to be seen again, and most were all too true. Or perhaps it’s just some attempt to prove themselves in the face of the enemy.

The display bleeped, then cleared. Leo leaned forward as a dozen or more light codes appeared in front of him, each one larger than anything he’d seen save for an outdated colonist-carrier from the first expansion era. He sucked in his breath in disbelief as more data flowed into the display, noting the strange combination of energy emissions from the vessels and how they suggested a mixture of military and civilian technologies working in unison. It was hard to be sure, given the limitations of passive sensors, but they looked like mobile industrial bases. They made Daybreak’s fleet train look tiny by comparison.

“Fuck,” Gaby breathed. “How big are those things?”

“Huge,” Leo said. There was no technical reason why Daybreak couldn’t build a starship twenty kilometres from bow to stern. It was just pointless. The resources invested in such a ship could build several smaller ships instead, while the immense craft would be easy target for anyone with bad intentions and the weapons to make them a reality. “I think they brought their industrial base with them.”

He tapped the display, trying to run a series of analysis programs. The immense starships were everything from mobile shipyards to production nodes, churning out everything the rebels needed to maintain the offensive. There was little hard data – he had to make guesses about how much of their internal space was dedicated to industrial production – but even using quite conservative estimates it was clear the rebels could maintain their fleet indefinitely. Leo let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, as their battlecruiser altered course to come closer to a mobile shipyard. He’d insisted from the start that the rebels were more than just rebels, that they were a civilisation in their own right, but looking at the proof awed him. He wondered, suddenly, if Gayle was on one of those ships. She’d want to be near the front line, even if she wasn’t in command of the rebel military.

A sudden wave of indecision swept over him. They’d already collected enough data to ensure they wouldn’t be arrested and charged with desertion, when they returned home. Admiral Cox would be glad of the targeting data, allowing him to mount an immediate counteroffensive ... hell, Leo would be happy to carry out the strike alone, with Shadow. But if they stayed, how much more would they learn? They were finally on the verge of getting some hard figures and leaving too early would cost them much ...

The battlecruiser kept moving, gliding into an escort position near the mobile shipyard. Dozens of other ships surrounded the giant craft, which was deploying worker bees to transport supplies to the warships and – presumably – retrieve the wounded. There were a handful of civilian craft to the rear, including one that looked like a liner ... a hospital ship? Leo didn’t know. He didn’t have time to worry about it. The last thing they needed was to be too close to the enemy postion, when the bastards finally noticed their presence.

“Get ready to flash-wake the drive,” Leo ordered. If they were spotted, they were going to have to run and run fast. The rebels had seen the gunboats now. They’d have reprogrammed their point defence to cope. “If they light us up, bring the drive online at once.”

Gaby nodded, her face pale in the dim light. Leo suppressed a smile as he carefully, very carefully, disconnected the gunboat from the enemy battlecruiser. The slightest shift the local environment could draw fire, perhaps would if the rebels were paranoid. There were enough smaller craft buzzing around to conceal their presence, perhaps, but ... he dared not take anything for granted. The gunboat shuddered slightly as he used a tiny gas jet to steer her away from the battlecruiser, hoping and praying they got clear before the battlecruiser altered course. It was vanishingly rare for one starship to ram another by accident – Madeline had done it deliberately, sacrificing her life to save the squadron – but it could happen here if they got unlucky. Of all the ways to go, dying because they’d accidentally steered their way into the path of another starship ...

He kept his face under tight control as more and more data flowed into the sensors. The rebels had brought an entire fleet ... was it their civilisation? They’d assumed they were looking for planets, on the assumption no fleet could remain in space indefinitely, but the rebel ships were big enough to overcome most of the issues caused by long-term deployments. Were they looking for starships instead? His heart sank as he considered the problem. Finding a rebel planet was difficult enough, when the target knew how to hide, but a fleet of starships? It could consist of every starship in the known universe, all blasting space with active sensor pulses, and it would still be impossibly hard to find.

“I’m reading at least three hundred targets,” Gaby said. “There could be more.”

“Three hundred starships to one gunboat,” Leo said. “We’ve got them outnumbered now!”

Gaby shot him a look that suggested she didn’t find his joke very funny. Leo didn’t either. The gunboat was hopelessly outgunned ... his eyes narrowed as he spotted a flight of rebel shuttlecraft leaving the nearest mobile shipyard, heading out on a course that would bring them alarmingly close to their position. Coincidence? Anywhere else, it would be quite unlikely. Here ...

Sweat prickled down his back as the rebel craft approached and swept onwards, passing the gunboat as if they didn’t know she was there ... if it was a trick, Leo reflected, it was a very odd one. No commander worthy of the name would leave an enemy gunboat in place to gather intelligence any longer than absolutely necessary, and if they gave him a hint of warning he’d be able to jump out before it was too late. Unless they didn’t know the gunboats could jump ... did they? They’d killed the ace battlecruiser through jumping and ... it was just possible the rebels hadn’t caught on. Their hard data had to be very limited. They might have assumed the gunboats had sneaked up on the battlecruiser instead.

Gaby cleared her throat. “How long do you intend to stay here?”

Leo shrugged. The longer they stayed, the greater the chance of being detected. There were just too many active sensor systems sweeping the region, too many starships and shuttlecraft passing nearby for the gunboat to remain undetected indefinitely. The rebels might assume they were safe, which would be a reasonable assumption under normal circumstances, but if Leo was in charge he’d alter their location regularly, just to be sure. It wasn’t entirely impossible to track a starship through multiple jumps ...

“We’ll give it an hour, then slip away,” he said. That was going to be tricky. The gunboat would have to jump out without being detected, without doing anything to even hint at her presence. “And then we’ll report back home.”

He felt deeply, impossibly, tired as they collected more and more data. The shipyards were astonishingly advanced, his sensors telling him things he didn’t want to know about their capabilities. Skilled crewers could make basic repairs fairly quickly, as long as they had the spare parts on hand, and it looked as if the rebels did. He’d wondered, before the war, how the rebels could be sure their new recruits were trustworthy, that one or more of them weren’t spies for their enemies. He knew now. It would be impossible for anyone to get off the mobile shipyards without permission, let alone get a message back home. The rebels didn’t have to worry about security, at least not as much as he’d thought, at long as they were careful.

His mind raced, looking for a way to get out without being detected. If the rebels had no reason to think they’d been tracked down, they’d have no reason to change positions before it was too late. If ... his eyes narrowed as he spotted a trio of starships powering up their drives and heading out of the region, clearly trying to put some space between them and the mobile shipyards before they jumped. Odd, given that the shipyards didn’t have planetary gravity fields, but ... he shook his head and carefully steered the gunboat after them, feeling more sweat soaking his uniform as they crawled towards the edge of the rebel formation. They were moving so slowly ...

“Two more contacts,” Gaby said. “They just brought their drives online.”

Leo swore under his breath, cursing the limits of the passive sensor array. They couldn’t detect anything that wasn’t emitting radiation, which meant as long as the rebels kept their active sensors, drives and communications systems offline there was little hope of enemy detection. He was surprised they hadn’t used an IFF beacon, if nothing else, but the rebel commanders presumably knew where their ships were. Presumably.”

“Watch them,” he said, although he knew it was futile. They were well inside the enemy engagement envelope. They’d be blown away before they had even a hint of warning, if the enemy had caught a sniff of their location and narrowed it down. “If they get too close ...”

“Yes, sir,” Gaby said. “I feel naked.”

“Me too.” Leo shook his head. It felt as if they were barely moving. “I think ...”

He swallowed, hard. He’d been put though a hundred survival simulations at the academy, from basic escape and evasion to survival in harsh and often inhuman environments. One had involved going deep under the water, watching helplessly in a diving cage as sharks and shark-analogues swam around them, their white forms sliding out of the darkness, gliding around the cage and then fading back into the darkness, leaving him and his peers all too aware anything could be out there. He knew how the tiny fishes, the ones that had passed through the bars as though they didn’t exist, had felt now. They were helpless in a sea of predators, unable to even see the hunters before they closed in for the kill. Ice prickled down his spine, making it hard to think. They were in the exact same position.

“Do you think they’re hunting us or just trying to drive us crazy?” Gaby sounded stressed. “Sir?”

“I think they don’t have the slightest idea we’re here,” Leo said. Another set of enemy starships was sweeping past them, so close the crudest point defence weapon could pick them up with ease. “If they did, we’d be dead by now.”

He leaned forward, bracing himself. The enemy craft were clearly preparing to jump. If he timed it right, their jump signature would be shielded by their signature. The enemy shouldn’t know they’d ever been there ... his eyes narrowed, counting down the last few seconds. The enemy drive signature started to flare, then something appeared behind them ... there was no time to check, no time to be sure they’d been detected or not. He hit the drive and then something hit him in the gut and the universe went gray ...

“We’re clear,” Gaby said. She let out an odd little laugh. “I don’t think they saw us.”

Leo frowned, tapping the console to replay the sensor records. It looked as if Gaby was right, but it was impossible to be sure ... the final sensor records could be viewed either way, if he happened to be paranoid. The enemy ship hadn’t opened fire, but they might want to take the gunboat intact instead of blowing her to atoms ...

“I hope not,” he said, finally. “They certainly don’t seem to have followed us.”

Gaby stood and gave him a tight hug, her breasts pushing into his back. Leo gritted his teeth, his body suddenly intent on reminding him just how long it had been ... he shook his head, gently pushing her away. Madeline’s position had been a little uncertain, certainly uncertain enough for him to claim their relationship wasn’t explicitly against regulations, but there was no uncertainty about his relationship with Gaby. She was his subordinate – no ifs, no buts, no candied nuts – and if his enemies got even a hint he’d slept with her his career would be over faster than a peacenik’s chances of being elected to the senate. And hers would likely be over too.

“We’ll be back home soon,” he said. The lockdown was presumably still in place, but he could probably arrange something for her. Or he could turn a blind eye to anything she did in the washroom. One of the little details about life in the academy that somehow never got into any of the books was how often you had to pretend you knew nothing about your barrack mate’s nightly habits, even though everyone knew everyone knew. “And then we’ll see what the admiral has to say.”

Leo pretended not to see her flush as she turned away. She was young, younger than him ... and he was young for his rank. He knew what she’d been feeling. God knew, he’d felt it too, time and time again. Ruth and he might not have wound up in bed together, the first time, if they hadn’t narrowly escaped death and wanted to celebrate being alive. And that had worked out, for a while. He didn’t regret it.

He put the thought out of his mind as he studied the sensor readings. It looked as though they’d gotten away with it. And that meant ... get home, alert the admiral, organise a counterattack ... the war could be on the verge of being won. And that meant ...

We could win this, he thought, coldly. He was too much a professional to believe the rebels had put all their stones in one basket, but losing the mobile shipyards would have to hurt. And that will silence everyone who ever doubted me.

 

Chapter Thirty-Six

“I don’t know if I should reward you for your daring or reprimand you for putting your life in danger,” Admiral Cox said. “Perhaps I should do both.”

Leo said nothing as he stood in front of the admiral’s desk, hands clasped behind his back. The flight home had been tedious rather than hair-raising, the combination of slow but steady jumps and a certain amount of awkwardness making the trip a great deal rougher than it had any right to be. He’d signalled home the moment they’d returned to Portahaven, requesting an immediate meeting with Admiral Cox. Somewhat to his surprise, the admiral had agreed instantly. It hadn’t saved Leo – and Gaby – from being carefully examined by the marines before they were allowed onto the orbital battlestation. It was unlikely, to say the least, that they could have been replaced by exact copies, but the rebels could easily have captured them, reprogrammed them, and sent them back with orders to assassinate the admiral.

“You took one hell of a risk,” Admiral Cox said. “But it did pay off for you.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

“And you brought us some hard data on the enemy,” Admiral Cox said, more to himself than Leo. “The question is, what do we do about it?”

“You attack, sir,” Leo said.

Admiral Cox raised his eyebrows. “I do beg your pardon?”

Leo flushed. “Sir, the rebel fleet is badly battered,” he said. He disliked flattering superior officers, but in this case he’d make an exception. “You beat them soundly. They were forced to retreat. If we attack them now, overrun their positions and destroy their mobile shipyards, we could win the war overnight. Even if they do have a network of conventional shipyards as well as those giant starships, they’d have to fall back once they lost them. This could be our one chance to win the war!”

“And in doing so, take a serious risk,” Admiral Cox pointed out. “The fleet” – he nodded to the display – “our fleet, was badly battered too. We expended countless missiles and other supplies during the battle, supplies that cannot be replaced in a hurry. We’re also in the midst of repairing damaged ships and dealing with the crisis on the planet below. And that means we could easily turn our victory into a defeat.”

“Sir ...” Leo sucked in his breath. “With all due respect, this is the time to attack.”

Admiral Cox coloured, but his voice remained calm. “Can you guarantee that the enemy will not launch a second attack on Portahaven?”

“No, sir,” Leo said. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “But we cannot let this chance pass.”

“And if we lose Portahaven?” Admiral Cox met his eyes. “I understand your thinking, really I do. But we could easily lose more than we gain.”

Leo hesitated, recalling Flower’s words. “Sir, this is your chance,” he said. “Admiral Blackthrone gave his career a fighting chance through launching a counterattack on Yangtze and lifting the siege long enough to lift our people out. You could launch the attack now and end the war, taking your career to heights ...”

“I could also lose,” Admiral Cox pointed out. “I could shorten the war.”

His tone was cool, but there was an edge to it Leo didn’t like. “Is it worth the risk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Really.” Admiral Cox indicated the nearspace display. Hundreds of small craft were flying around, from naval worker bees to civilian transports and shuttles commandeered by the military. Dozens of starships were coming and going, freighter captains trying to make up for lost time while their crews, no doubt, exchanged stories of missiles barely inches from their ships before they jumped out of the combat zone. “How many of those ships carry enemy spies?”

Leo had no answer. The fundamental dilemma hadn’t changed. How could it? There were just too many ships, and too much activity in space, to hide much – if anything – from the rebels. A handful of deep cover agents could keep the system under close watch and there was nothing they could do about it. Admiral Cox had a point. If he dispatched half his fleet to engage the rebels, the rebels might be able to launch a second attack of their own. But Leo was sure they couldn’t. They’d taken too much of a bloody nose.

“If we take the risk and win, great,” Admiral Cox pointed out. “But if we lose ...”

“We won’t,” Leo said. “Sir, with all due respect, this is our chance. Your chance.”

He spoke quickly, before the admiral could interrupt. “We’re already reshuffling ships, sir,” he said. “We can use drones to hide their departure, put the squadron together some distance from Portahaven, then set out at once to attack the enemy base. They weren’t using their gravity traps while we were there, sir, but they’d still need time to power up their jump drives and escape. We could take them. We could win!”

The words hung in the air. He’d tried to sit down and work out the power requirements for a jump field capable of surrounding a twenty kilometre long starship. They were staggering. It wasn’t a major problem, given enough fusion cores, but he’d be very much surprised if the rebels kept their jump drives powered up at all times. If the wear and tear was bad enough for a ship like Waterhen, it would be far worse for a mobile shipyard. The loss of even a handful of drive nodes would tear the ship in half, if they tried to jump.

“You will return to Shadow,” Admiral Cox said, finally. “I will consult with my officers and ...”

“Sir, we have to move now,” Leo said. “Sir ...”

“I will consult with my officers,” Admiral Cox repeated. There was no give in his tone. “Dismissed.”

Leo saluted, then turned and walked out of the office. It was hard to keep his frustration from showing on his face. He’d brought the admiral everything he needed to win the war, or at least give the enemy a bloody nose, but ... he wasn’t biting. Time was ticking away, each second taking the prospect of outright victory further and further away, and there was nothing Leo could do about it. A handful of madcap plans ran through his head – take command of Shadow, attack the enemy on his own – only to be dismissed. He wasn’t in command of the carrier any longer and the plan wouldn’t even get off the ground, let alone all the way to the enemy base.

“That was a remarkable flight,” Alice said. “One for the record books.”

“Yeah.” Leo tried not to scowl at her. It wasn’t her fault that her boss was a dick. Perhaps if Leo had been in his shoes he would have more sympathy for the admiral’s feelings, but he wasn’t and he didn’t. “And yet ...”

He shook his head. “What’s it like on the planet below?”

“Still locked down,” Alice said. “All spaceport strips have been closed and all shore leave has been cancelled. Thousands behind the wire, thousands more dead or in hiding ... not good.”

“No.” Leo wondered, suddenly, if she was still interested. They could go back to her cabin and ... he cut that line of thinking off hard. The admiral had given him his orders and there was no getting around them, not when the admiral was likely looking for an excuse to take an axe to Leo’s career. “Can you arrange a shuttle for me, back to Shadow?”

“Of course,” Alice said. Her fingers danced over her console. “Hatch Thirteen. The pilot will send you and then return home. And good luck!”

Leo sighed, then nodded before making his way down to the hatch. The pilot, thankfully, wasn’t in a talkative mode. He didn’t even engage in the banter Leo had come to expect from pilots who spent their entire lives ferrying people around the high orbitals. It didn’t make Leo feel any better about himself, he noted sourly. The chances of victory were slipping away and the admiral was letting them go ...

Could he be a traitor? The thought shot through Leo’s mind before he could stop it. Admiral Cox was helping the enemy ... a foolish move from an officer too wary to take chances or outright treason? Is he working for the rebels?

He shook his head. Admiral Cox had won the Battle of Portahaven. A rebel spy in such a position would have deliberately lost the engagement, unless it was a four-dimensional chess move that made little sense on paper and even less in the real world. Such tricks belonged in the worlds of science-fantasy thriller novelists, not actual combat. No, the admiral wasn’t a traitor. He was just a fool.

Francis met Leo as soon as he disembarked. “Captain wants to see you,” he said, with unabashed cheer. Leo could tell it was a pose, although he wasn’t sure why. “Now. By now he means now. And I’m supposed to make sure you don’t get lost along the way.”

“Yeah.” Leo eyed him, thoughtfully. “Did Gaby get back alright?”

“She had a few questions to answer, but honestly I think everything was blamed on you.” Francis winked. “The interrogators are such great judges of character.”

“Yeah.” Leo had handled over the sensor records at once, along with his report accepting all responsibility for the madcap plan. Gaby was his subordinate. It was her job to follow his orders. If the admiral found a way to put a knife in Leo’s career, Gaby should be safe. She certainly couldn’t be legally punished for following his orders. They hadn’t been illegal orders. “As long as she’s safe.”

He braced himself as they stopped outside the Ready Room, then pressed his finger against the buzzer. The hatch hissed open at once, revealing the captain sitting behind his desk. Leo stepped inside, frowning inwardly as Frances remained outside. He would have been happier if the XO had been with him, but it seemed it was not to be. Captain Warner clearly didn’t want any witnesses. It boded ill.

Captain Warner was studying a starchart, his expression tight. Leo knew it was a power move, knew it was an attempt to make him irritated, knew ... he couldn’t help feeling a flicker of anger as the captain attempted to show him who was boss. The odds of victory were decreasing with every passing second and the captain was playing power games? Leo silently forgave Admiral Blackthrone everything, for all that he’d tried to do. At least he had known when to go on the offensive.

“Morningstar.” Captain Warner didn’t look up. “What were you thinking?”

“I saw a chance and I took it,” Leo said, flatly.

“You saw a chance,” Captain Warner repeated. “You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have let a gunboat fall into enemy hands. You could have ...”

“None of that happened,” Leo said. He was so done with the captain. “And risk, sir, is our business.”

Captain Warner glowered. “So you took it upon yourself to take such a hellish risk? You could have been killed!”

Leo mentally counted to twenty, then leaned forward. “Sir, I saw a chance and took it. I obtained vital tactical information and conveyed it back to Portahaven, ensuring we could plan a counter-strike that will hopefully cripple the enemy. And Sir ...?”

“Yes?”

“All’s well that ends well,” Leo said. “One way or the other, the mission was a smashing success.”

Captain Warner met his eyes. “You are not to do something that crazy without informing me ahead of time, not again,” he said. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “And what if there is no opportunity?”

“You will inform me,” Captain Warner said. “I don’t like surprises, Commander, and I particularly don’t like them when they come from officers under my command. You took a serious risk, one that could easily have rebounded on me. Not to be repeated. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

“Good.” Captain Warner looked at the terminal. “The admiral has just forwarded his orders. The task force will jump out of the system over the next few hours, assemble two light years from here, and then advance to the enemy base.”

Leo grinned. “He’s attacking!”

“Apparently so,” Captain Warner said. “I do trust the information you brought back is accurate.”

“It is, sir,” Leo said. It wasn’t just his observations. It was everything collected by the gunboat’s passive sensors. “I would stake my career on it.”

“You are,” Captain Warner said. “Return to the flight deck. Plan your operation. Inform me of the details, so I may inform Admiral Cox when the time comes. And if the enemy ships aren’t where you claim, you will not have a second chance.”

Leo said nothing. It was an empty threat. The enemy fleet wasn’t tied to a single location and it could easily be moving now, without ever knowing how close it had come to disaster. No board of inquiry would hold Leo responsible for the squadron losing the enemy ships, if they were gone before the navy arrived. But a full captain could easily find ways to make Leo’s life miserable if he wished.

I proved myself, he thought, with a hint of bitterness. Didn’t I?

“Dismissed,” Captain Warner said. “I’ll speak to you later.”

Leo nodded, then made his way back to the CIC. The gunboat crews were in their ready compartment, waiting for orders. The system had been attacked once and it could easily be attacked again ... Leo was convinced, not for the first time, that something had cracked over the last few months. Daybreak hadn’t fought a full scale war, certainly not one fought out over such a vast region. The mere fact Portahaven had been attacked, no matter that the enemy had been beaten off, was deeply worrying. It was a reminder they weren’t invincible after all. And yet, they had never lost a war. He had no intention of losing this one.

But you’re just a mere commander, his thoughts reminded him. You’re not that important now and you may never be, no matter what you do. And everyone knows it.

He took a moment to scan the room as the pilots and their crews came to attention, then waved them back to their seats. “We will be departing shortly, on a deep-strike mission into enemy held territory,” he said. “Our orders are to hit a planet well behind the lines and give the enemy a bloody nose.”

Leo paused. It was technically true, although he didn’t dare tell them the complete truth until they were underway. Shadow was locked down, but an ingenuous spacer could easily flash a message from ship to ship and if he happened to know just where the enemy had concealed a stealth sensor platform ... it was bad enough Gaby had probably been plagued with questions and demands for answers. She might be better off telling everyone she’d hugged her commanding officer.

“We will commence simulations immediately,” Leo continued. “Those simulations will be general at first, drawing on the latest engagement, and then tightening up once we’re on our way. We won’t get a second chance at this, so we will be practicing time and time again until we’ve covered every possible variable. Do I make myself clear?”

The words hung in the air. Leo looked from face to face, noting who was missing ... four crews gone in the battle, a fifth gravely injured and hastily transported to the medical facilities on the planet below. He felt a stab of guilt at not having been there to pay due to the dead – he assumed Francis had done so, after the engagement had come to an end – even though he knew it was something he hadn’t been able to help. If he’d known them better ... he shook his head. It would only have hurt more.

“To the simulators,” Leo ordered. How many of the youngsters in front of him would be alive, at the end of the week? And why was he thinking of them as young? “Dismissed.”

Francis entered as the pilots left, his mask of fake cheer fading away. “The captain thought you dead.”

“Charming,” Leo muttered. It hadn’t been an unreasonable assumption. The gunboat had seemingly vanished in a flash of light. There hadn’t been anyone close enough to pick out the truth. “Did he raise a glass in my honour, or pass water over my grave?”

Francis shrugged. “I think he was a little relieved,” he said. His face twisted into a humourless smile. “You are a bloody pain in the arse, of course.”

“Same to you,” Leo said, without heat. “Did you put all my stuff away?”

“I thought you wouldn’t die so easily,” Francis said. His smile shifted, just slightly. “You’re too much of a pain to die. That’s what I said, anyway. And I was right.”

He closed his eyes for a long moment. “Leo, I don’t know the full details of this op, but ... how serious is it?”

“Very serious.” Leo couldn’t tell him everything, but he could hint. “It could be decisive.”

“And he wants me in a gunboat,” Francis said. His tone was light, but his eyes were hard. “Good move or not?”

Leo felt his blood run cold. On one hand, they were short of pilots. Francis, whatever else could be said about him, was a superb pilot. He could fill the gap in the roster and do a smashing job of it. But now, with Captain Warner being so ... Leo gritted his teeth. What the hell was going on?

“I don’t know,” he said. Their options for dealing with the situation were limited. He’d have to raise the matter with Flower and see if she had any ideas. “But I think we need to start working on contingency plans.”

 

Chapter Thirty-Seven

There was always something eerie about interstellar space, even though it was little different to interplanetary space. The gulf between the stars felt empty, the handful of starships wholly isolated from civilisation even though they could have jumped to the nearest star system in the blink of an eye. The darkness ebbed and flowed like a living thing, the stars individual pinpricks of light permanently on the verge of being snuffed out. It was an illusion, Leo knew, nothing more than his imagination playing tricks on him. But he still couldn’t help feeling very alone.

The gunboats floated in attack formation, the remainder of the squadron taking up position behind them. Admiral Cox had been reluctant to make a major commitment, apparently, but he had assigned a battlecruiser squadron, two squadrons of heavy cruisers and a pair of makeshift arsenal ships to the operation, under the command of a newly-minted commodore. It was enough firepower to give the rebels a very hard time, even though they would be badly outgunned if the rebels managed to pin them down. The admiral hadn’t made a bad choice, Leo conceded. The assault force was strong enough to do real damage and outrun anything it couldn’t outfight.

His console bleeped. “All units are in position,” Gaby reported. Her tone was crisp, professional. The moment they’d shared, the moment that hadn’t really been a moment at all, had been forgotten by unspoken mutual agreement. “They’ve all checked in.”

Leo nodded, curtly. Francis was out there, Francis and every other trained pilot on Shadow. It boded ill, Leo was sure, although he couldn’t put the churning feeling in his gut out of his mind. He’d be happier if Francis were on the bridge, watching over Captain Warner’s shoulder. At least they’d be someone in place to take command if the shit hit the fan.

And that isn’t something you would have thought a year ago, he reflected, as the console bleeped again. The countdown was about to begin. You’d soon have cut off your own John Thomas than risked putting Francis in command of a ship.

“Signal the flag,” Leo ordered. “We’re ready to jump on command.”

“Aye, sir.”

The console bleeped a third time. “This is Commodore Drayton,” a voice said. Leo had never exchanged words with the commodore, and couldn’t recall ever knowingly seeing him, but Drayton had the great advantage of being neither Admiral Cox nor Captain Warner. The navy didn’t give command of battlecruiser squadrons to timorous men. “We are about to give the enemy a very bloody nose.”

Assuming they haven’t already bugged out, Leo thought. He’d gone through the sensor records time and time again, and the fleet analysts on Portahaven had done the same, and there was nothing to suggest the enemy knew they’d been located ... but it was impossible to be sure. Leo would have changed his position at the slightest hint of an enemy scout ship, if he were in command of a fleet of mobile shipyards, and to hell with anyone who argued otherwise. Better to waste time relocating than being blown away by angry enemy ships.

“This is the first chance we’ve had to hit back – and hard,” Drayton continued. “I expect each and every one of you to live up to the navy’s proudest traditions. Get in fast, hit hard, get out again. Your priority targets are the mobile shipyards” – there was a hint of cold amusement in his voice – “and no starship can do wrong if it fires at the enemy. Today, we make them pay.”

He paused. “We jump in two minutes,” he finished. “On my signal, get in and unleash hell!”

Leo smiled, silently counting down the seconds as they ticked away. The jump was going to be rough. For the first time in never, they were going to be risking interpenetration ... the odds were still massively against it, Leo had been assured, but it was hard to escape the feeling they were about to run out of luck. Too many starships in too small a region ... very few captains would risk such a jump, not with an entire fleet at stake. But the gunboats were expendable. If a gunboat jumped into a battleship, destroying both craft, Daybreak would consider the exchange rate wholly acceptable.

And they’d be right, Leo mused. The gunboats can be mass-produced in a hurry, once we work out the kinks in the design. It takes nearly nine months to construct a battleship and that is only true if we cut safety regulations to the bone ...

“Thirty seconds,” Gaby said.

Leo nodded. It was rare for small craft to have their own jump drives. The rebels knew about the gunboats now, but did they know they could jump? If not, they might assume Shadow would have to launch the gunboats as soon as she jumped into the system, giving the rebels a few moments to rally and launch a counterattack. Leo’s teeth drew back in a snarl as the remaining seconds ticked away. No military force could remain on permanent readiness forever, even if it expected to be attacked, and the rebels had no reason to think their location had been discovered. He pushed his earlier doubts out of his mind, resting his hands on the console. Ten seconds. Nine. Eight ...

“Brace yourself,” he muttered. “Here we go.”

The gunboat jerked, the stars blinking off and off again in a manner that would have been disturbing if he hadn’t been trying to cope with the jump shock. The display filled with red icons, alarms howling as enemy starships loomed up in front of them. The gunboats were coming in fast ... another alarm howled, an enemy starship vanishing in an explosion that seemed too powerful to be real. One of the gunboats must have materialised inside her, Leo realised dully. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons. They’d work out what had happened very quickly, once the shock wore off, but ...

He snapped commands, throwing the gunboat into a series of evasive manoeuvres. The rebel formation looked scattered, the mobile shipyards scattered across the region in a manner that showed they really hadn’t expected to be attacked. Their ships were coming to battle stations, bringing up their drives and sensors with sluggish determination; their weapons were already sweeping space, their targeting shitty and yet ... there was enough firepower being pumped out to make life difficult for the gunboats. He ignored it, refusing to get sucked into sweeping away the flanking units or targeting the heavy hitters. It was against standard doctrine, but doctrine didn’t apply here. Their targets were the shipyards, not the capital ships.

The display updated rapidly, tactical programs listing targets and assigning them to squadrons. Leo hoped to hell the analysts were correct, when they’d calculated just how much power the rebels would need to jump the mobile shipyards out ... and how long it would take them to bring up their drives. Normally, a force that had been jumped would try to jump out in return, getting clear so they could get back into fighting trim before returning to the engagement, but here ... the rebels were pinned down by their own mobile shipyards, the giant constructions they couldn’t afford to lose. They’d have to stand and fight.

Leo keyed his console. “All ships, engage at will,” he ordered. The rebels had no time to form a flanking wall, no time to put smaller ships between the gunboats and the mobile shipyards. They were caught between two fires, the remainder of the fleet coming out of jump behind them and opening fire ... the ECM wouldn’t fool them for long, but hopefully it would last just long enough to let them strike a killing blow. “I say again, fire at will.”

Francis whooped. “Which one’s Will?”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Any one you like,” he said, as chuckles echoed over the command net. “Just fire at him!”

The gunboats slipped into their separate formations and fell on the mobile shipyards like wolves on sheep. Leo allowed himself a tight smile as the mobile shipyards fought desperately to bring up their point defence, far too limited for a battleship yet alone something much bigger. The rebels had never planned to bring the mobile shipyards into a combat zone, he decided, and assumed such high-value units would always be heavily escorted. They might not have been wrong, he reflected, if the gunboats hadn’t been committed to the attack. Their flankers were reacting well, for crews that had been caught by surprise. It was just a shame they were responding to the wrong threat.

His smile grew wider as the mobile shipyard loomed up in front of him, so immense it could be seen with the naked eye. It was more than just a starship, he reflected; it was a town, a giant mobile settlement capable of travelling from star to star, setting up a series of colonies before finally coming to rest somewhere far beyond the Rim. The rebels could have travelled thousands of light-years from Daybreak with such ships, building their own empire so far away it wouldn’t be found and absorbed for hundreds of years. He felt an odd little pang of guilt at what he was about to do, even though he knew it had to be done. Daybreak had to win the war or everything he’d done, over the past few years, would all be for nothing.

“Missiles locked,” Gaby reported. “Sir?”

“Fire,” Leo ordered.

The gunboat shuddered as she launched her missiles, the remainder of the squadron opening fire a second later. The mobile shipyard was so immense that even nukes couldn’t do much damage, on paper, but Leo was fairly sure her interior was as unarmoured as Shadow’s. Perhaps more so. The shipyard needed vast open spaces to repair starships, spaces that would offer no resistance to nuclear blasts ... he smiled, despite the odd little feeling in his gut, as the first missiles detonated, setting off a chain of explosions that eventually destroyed the entire starship. A handful of lifepods made it clear, nowhere near enough. How many people had he just killed?

A flight of enemy shuttles appeared in front of him, the enemy pilots throwing themselves forward with a bravery he could only admire. They were heedless of their own safety, desperately trying to buy time for the mobile shipyards to power up and escape ... Leo grinned, savagely, as he led the gunboats right through the enemy formation, devastating it with one pass. The shuttles just weren’t designed to engage in dogfights ... he blinked in surprise as he saw an enemy shuttle launch a shipkiller at a trio of gunboats, the blast swatting two of the tiny craft and sending the third spinning helplessly through space. Not a smart tactic most of the time, he thought, but here ... it was effective. And more shuttles were on the way.

Gaby cleared her throat. “Target locked, sir.”

Leo nodded. Three mobile shipyards gone, a fourth badly damaged. Commodore Drayton would blow her away, perhaps through a ballistic missile strike or a mass driver salvo. The enemy would have very real problems spotting the threat, with so many other things happening at the same time. The remaining mobile shipyards were barely moving, even though they knew it was just a matter of time before they were attacked. It was pointless to try. Their acceleration curves were so low they wouldn’t have a hope of getting clear in realspace. Their only hope was to jump out and run.

“We’re going in,” he said, the rest of the gunboats forming up around him. Nine survivors ... better than he’d feared. The enemy knew what was happening now, their flanking units coming up fast ... they were overloading their realspace drives in a desperate bid to shield the mobile shipyards long enough to escape. “All ships, follow me in.”

The gunboat shifted, again, as Leo gunned the engine, steering towards their next target on a course that could only be described as chaotic. They dared not follow anything resembling a predictable path, not when the enemy was so desperate to kill them. Their wall of destroyers blocking the approach was putting out one hell of a lot of fire and Leo couldn’t avoid closing with them, not if he wanted to hit the target before it was too late. He tapped commands into his console, launching his remaining sensor decoys in hopes of distracting the enemy. The range was too short for the decoys to be wholly effective, the gunboats too powerful to pass unnoticed, but it might buy them a few short seconds ...

Light flared outside the porthole, a shot passing so close he honestly thought it had scorched the paint. He’d never seen that before, not outside bad science-fantasy ... he ignored the thought and pushed the engines still further, leading the gunboats through a crack in the enemy’s formation. The rebels had nerve, he noted coldly; they were still firing even through the combat zone was so small there was a very real risk of hitting their own ships. But plasma bolts, lethal to a gunboat, wouldn’t do much damage to a proper warship. The worst they’d do is damage hull-mounted weapons and sensor nodes.

Which would help us a little. Leo smirked. Every little bit helps.

The range closed to its narrowest point, then started to open again. Leo kept dodging as the enemy brought their ships around, a pursuit that would be pointless in open space and yet perhaps not here, where the range was so confined. The rebels ships were still firing, heedless of the risk to the mobile shipyard. Leo nodded coldly, then locked his remaining two missiles on target. The effects would be less dramatic this time, he feared, but a handful of direct hits on the drive section would put the mobile shipyard out of the war.

“Missiles ready, sir,” Gaby said.

“Fire,” Leo ordered.

The gunboat jerked again as she unleashed her missiles, already in sprint mode. The rebels adjusted their fire as the remaining gunboats launched their own missiles, their gunnery crews all too aware of what would happen if – when – those missiles reached their target. Leo snapped orders, taking full advantage of their sudden distraction to get his remaining gunboats out before it was too late. Two more had fallen to enemy fire – a brief check revealed that one had been picked off by plasma fire, the other lost to causes unknown – but the remainder were coming out behind him. He heard someone cheer as the missiles slammed into their target – the rebels, now all too aware of the threat, had managed to take out half the incoming swarm even though they’d been in sprint mode – and crippled her drive section, smashing her jump drive and rear fusion cores beyond all hope of repair. One way or the other, the mobile shipyard was out of the fight.

“She’s launching lifepods,” Gaby noted.

“Smart of them,” Leo said, without heat. Emergency procedures and training drills always left out the emergency, and there was always something that threw even the most well-trained crews for a loop. A minor oversight, something harmless under normal circumstances yet fatal in wartime; a hatch left locked open, perhaps, or a fuel cell in precisely the worst possible place. “They’ll need to get the crews out even if they have to leave the ships.”

“Unless they try to hook up another ship and jump them out,” Gaby pointed out.

Leo shook his head. Sure, it was theoretically possible, but unless the rebels had some kind of super-advanced drive system – one capable of generating a jump field over twenty kilometres in diameter, without reinforcing drive nodes scattered through the system – it wasn’t going to happen. Anything smaller would cut the ship in half, if they were lucky, or atomise both ships if they weren’t. No one would ever know for sure what had happened to them, although there would be some very good guesses. It wouldn’t make any difference.

He put the thought aside as he moved into a patch of clear space, buying a few seconds to check the overall situation. Commodore Drayton had come out of jumpspace as planned, close enough to the enemy fleets to hammer them without coming so close they could hammer him in return. The gunboat attack had caught them completely by surprise, buying time for the squadron to target and cripple as many enemy capital ships as possible. A neat little dilemma for the enemy, Leo noted. If they covered the mobile shipyards, they exposed their heavy-hitters; if they didn’t, they risked losing the war along with the mobile shipyards. Win-win for Daybreak, lose-lose for their enemies ...

“We killed seven mobile shipyards,” Gaby said. “Is that enough?”

“Not even close,” Leo said, keying his console. The rebels were redirecting their shuttlecraft at the battle squadrons, trying to even the score. “Alpha and Beta, return to the barn for resupply. Delta and Gamma, cover the battlecruisers. Don’t let those shuttlecraft get close enough to open fire!”

He grinned as he altered course, heading straight for Shadow. The rebels weren’t trying to pin them in realspace, something that amused him. For once, they were the ones pinned down, held hostage to the continued existence of their mobile shipyards. Of course they wouldn’t want to do anything to convince Commodore Drayton to prolong the engagement. Even if his entire force was wiped out, Daybreak would still come out ahead.

And no one would say boo to us if we broke it off now, he thought. Commodore Drayton was playing matador, closing and opening the range as it suited him. We could call it a victory and we’d be right.

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Gaby said. “The Commodore wants us back out as soon as possible.”

Leo nodded. “Got it.”

 

DAMN! This just keeps getting better and better!

 

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The hatch opened, a moment after they docked. “Get the missile tubes reloaded as quickly as possible,” Leo ordered. A sudden wave of exhaustion fell over him, even through the battle had lasted only ten minutes. It felt as though they’d been fighting for hours. “I think ...”

His console chimed. “Sir,” Lieutenant Drake said. “You’re wanted in the CIC.”

Leo blinked. “Order Flight Lieutenant Yang to report to my gunboat,” he said, silently congratulating himself for ensuring the crews were all cross-trained. It was going to be a problem – Yang and Gaby hadn’t flown together before, as far as he knew – but there was nothing he could do about it. Gaby couldn’t take the gunboat out alone and Leo had no way to know when he’d be permitted to return to his craft. “I’ll be along in a moment.”

His eyes narrowed as he stepped through the hatch and onto the ship. The crews were moving fast, but not fast enough. They’d drilled endlessly, practicing reloading the gunboats time and time again ... it was a difficult task, with the small craft being on the hull instead of passing through a hangar before returning to space, yet not an insurmountable one. He’d certainly forced the crews to go through it again and again. And yet, they weren’t hurrying now. A dull shudder ran through the ship, a grim reminder the battle was far from over. The rebels had probably worked out that Shadow was the carrier, if they hadn’t already known. They’d have tracked the birds back to their nest.

His mode darkened as he made his way to the CIC. The display was a blaze of red and green icons, the rebel fleet finally turning to challenge the intruders as the mobile shipyards staggered under the gunboat assault. Four left, two badly damaged. It was time for another jump assault, never mind the ever-growing number of flanking units trying to cover the mobile shipyards. He wanted to recall Francis, rearm his gunboats and add them to his roster for one final strike. They could retreat afterwards, cashing in their chips and leaving the enemy to lick their wounds. And it would be one hell of a victory.

“Get the gunboats back out there as soon as possible,” he snapped. “What’s the delay?”

Another shudder ran through the starship. The enemy shuttles were surging forwards, heedless of risk. Leo cursed under his breath as they launched shipkiller missiles, their warheads too light to do real harm to a battleship and yet perfectly capable of blowing Shadow into atoms. The point defence was struggling to intercept, even through the missiles had been launched from well outside sprint mode range. It looked as though they were about to pay for their own lack of flanking units. Leo cursed under his breath. Daybreak had built too many battleships and battlecruisers and too few flankers. And there was no time to correct that error.

We need to cannon up more smaller ships, Leo thought. Admiral Blackthrone had seen the problem and tried to find a way to deal with it. But do we have time to do it ...?

He cursed under his breath as the remaining missiles reached their targets, the starship shuddering under the impact. Damage alerts flashed up in front of his eyes ... they’d been lucky, very lucky, that they’d spent so much time preparing for internal damage. The makeshift armour had taken the brunt of the blow, barely enough to save them. If the warhead had detonated inside the ship.

“Orders from the flag, sir,” Lieutenant Braxton said. “We’re to take out the remaining mobile shipyards as soon as possible, then move up in support of the fleet.”

An uneasy feeling was starting to gnaw at Leo’s gut. The captain should be obeying orders and yet ... he was hesitating. His ship hadn’t been that badly damaged ... they’d been lucky the missiles hadn’t detonated anywhere near the gunboat hatches. He should be directing an immediate launch, then reaming Francis so the final strike went in with all the force it could muster. But instead, he was doing nothing. It wasn’t a good sign.

He keyed his console. They were running out of time, the rebels forming up and preparing to close the range. Pointless now, but ... maybe not. It might pay off for them if they did manage to take out the remaining mobile shipyards. The rebels wouldn’t be held hostage to their continued existence if their existence was already over. Ironically, it would likely give the rebels a chance to hit back. It wouldn’t make much difference in the long run, but who knew?

Flower stepped into the CIC, her face grim. “Leo, you need to get to the bridge. Now.”

Leo glanced at her, then nodded curtly and headed for the hatch. Flower had agreed to keep an eye on Captain Warner, but she wasn’t a bridge officer – at least on paper – and the permissions Leo had given her had been quietly rescinded and erased before Captain Warner realised they existed. They would have been too hard to explain if he had noticed them. He checked his pistol automatically, sweat prickling down his back. No matter the outcome, this could go hellishly wrong.

“Stay back,” he said, as Flower started to follow him. “If things go badly wrong ...”

He cursed under his breath. He had no plan, no band of loyal followers ... Flower and Francis were the only ones he could count on, and the irony of that chilled him, and Francis was out in space. He’d be safe enough, probably, but ... Leo forced himself to keep walking, running through his options one by one. There weren’t many that wouldn’t result in a short court martial – the shortest formality on record – followed by execution.

The marine at the hatch stepped aside when Leo arrived and pressed his hand against the scanner. There was a long pause, long enough to make Leo fear the worst, before the hatch hissed open. Leo stepped inside, his eyes flickering from side to side. His officers looked worried and Captain Warner ... Leo sucked in his breath. The captain was pale and sweating, his hands shaking as he stared at the display, barely noticing Leo’s arrival. His hesitance had turned to outright cowardice, revealing the softness at the very core of his being. A good officer in his place, perhaps, but not one suited to command.

Lieutenant Bruce Hoss turned to face the captain. “Sir, Commodore Drayton is ordering an immediate strike!”

Captain Warner hesitated, visibly. “The gunboats are being expanded ...”

Leo stepped forward, gritting his teeth. “Sir, we can still lose this,” he said. “We have to take out the remaining mobile shipyards now, before they can escape.”

The captain rounded on him. “I didn’t call you to the bridge,” he snapped. The display bleeped an alert. The enemy capital ships had just launched a salvo of missiles. “Get back to your station ...”

Alarms howled. “Sir,” Lieutenant-Commander Keith Hickson snapped. “We have a flight of incoming shuttlecraft!”

Leo raised his voice. “Divert point defence to take them out, now,” he snapped. It would cause confusion, to hear orders from two different officers, but ... he had drilled the crew extensively. “Don’t let them get close enough to fire!”

He cursed under his breath as the range closed, once again. The first missile strike had opened a blind spot in Shadow’s defences and the rebels were taking ruthless advantage, coming up in the one zone they couldn’t be tracked and targeted properly until it was too late. The captain needed to issue orders and ...

“Launch sensor drones, deploy them to bulk out our datanet grid,” he added. The beancounters would whine, but hopefully he’d be alive to hear them. “And then ...”

Captain Warner found his voice. “I am in command of this ship, Commander, and you will ...”

“Then tell them to launch the drones now,” Leo snapped. The enemy were getting closer. “Get the gunboats out now, before they blow them off the hull!”

“Sir,” Hickson said. “The rebel craft are opening fire!”

“Rotate the ship,” Leo snapped. It was chancy, but it would give them a chance. “And get those gunboats out ...”

“You are not in command here,” Captain Warner snapped. His hand dropped to his belt. “This is mutiny!”

And a proper commanding officer would have called for the marines on even the slightest suspicion of mutiny, Leo thought. Not tried to protest ...

“You will ...”

Leo spoke over him. “Captain Warner, under Naval Regulation” – his mind stopped, unable to recall the precise details – “under regulations, I am formally relieving you of command. Stand down now. The admiral will decide our fate afterwards ...”

Captain Warner froze, his face a rictus of emotions Leo didn’t want to look at too closely. Fear, fear and relief and horror and a burgeoning realisation his career was probably over no matter what Admiral Cox said. He’d frozen up under fire, a serious offense even if he’d recovered himself – and he hadn’t. And now he was facing something that could easily be construed as a mutiny. Leo would have been sorrier for him if the entire ship hadn’t been at risk.

A missile slammed into the hull. Leo heard the ship screaming in agony, metal tearing as the bomb-pumped laser burnt its way through the armour and stabbed deep into her guts. They were lucky the blast hadn’t taken out something vital, but even so ... the damage was bad enough to make it hard to make repairs in the middle of a combat zone. The damage control teams would do what they could, but the damage was mounting up so rapidly they’d likely be overwhelmed.

“Belay that order,” Captain Warner managed. “Bring up the jump drive. Prepare to jump!”

Leo stared at him, honestly shocked. If Shadow had been alone, with nothing riding on the engagement beyond her own existence, the captain’s order would have made sense. There was no point in playing out a losing hand, particularly as they’d already completed their mission. But now, with a handful of mobile shipyards still in play and an entire task force depending on their support, the order was worse than useless. It was actively disastrous.

He found his voice. “Captain, you have been relieved. Stand down and ...”

Captain Warner started to draw his pistol. Leo hit him, knocking the captain down with a single blow. Horror washed through him, a sudden awareness that he might just have crossed the line. The captain’s person was supposed to be sacrosanct. To lay hands on a commanding officer could lead to a permanent sentence to a penal colony – or death. That had been drilled into him, back at the Academy. And yet, he’d just knocked out his commanding officer ...

There was no time to worry about it. He raised his voice, addressing the room. “I am formally assuming command of Shadow,” he said. His voice didn’t waver, much to his relief. “If any of you wish to object, say so now and it will be noted in the log. Beyond that ... any attempt to undermine my command will be regarded as mutiny and treated accordingly.”

He paused. No one spoke. Leo wasn’t sure if he should advise them to file complaints or not. The crew knew him ... he’d been their commander, at least for a while. And Captain Warner had disgraced himself. But just where was Leo in the chain of command? It was arguable that Hickson, not Leo, was the next in line? Captain Warner had never bothered to solve the problems Admiral Cox caused when Leo had been effectively demoted, not even bothered to clarify the command confusion that would likely have occurred, sooner or later. It worked in his favour, he supposed. No one would be quite sure which way to jump, so they’d go along with him.

The thought mocked him as he took the command chair. “Get the captain to sickbay,” Leo ordered. “Quickly!”

He gritted his teeth. The nasty part of his mind insisted he should kill the man now, before he woke and tried to regain command ... no. That would be a step too far. Reliving the captain, punching out the captain, murdering the unconscious captain ... the only question would be precisely what they’d put on the execution warrant before he was put in front of a wall and shot. He tapped his console, sending an order to the ship’s doctor to keep the captain sedated until the fighting was over. Commodore Drayton would have something to say, when he heard the news, and so would Admiral Cox ... Leo shook his head. He couldn’t afford to worry about it now.

And no one can say Francis was involved in the mutiny, if mutiny it was, Leo mused. He can take command and get us home once the battle is over.

“Get the remaining gunboats out now,” he snapped. “Hurry!”

He glanced at the status display, cursing under his breath. The full extent of the damage was unknown, suggesting the datanet within the affected sectors was gone. The sensors in the surrounding compartments were reporting air leaks and power glitches ... Leo cursed again. That didn’t look good. Their internal safeguards were failing one by one. Thankfully, the crew was already largely in shipsuits and the compartments had been evacuated. They’d have to improve the design, before the official carriers came into service.

“Gunboats ready to launch,” Hickson reported.

“Get them out now,” Leo snarled. “Now!”

He calmed himself with an effort. There was no time for hesitation any longer. The commodore was probably on the verge of ordering Captain Warner relieved anyway ... Leo wondered, briefly, if it was possible to fudge the recordings to suggest he’d been only following orders. Probably not, unless the entire ship was destroyed along with all hands. The investigators would go through the recordings with a fine-toothed comb, until all doubt was removed and he stood naked before them, a hero or a villain with nothing in between. They might have to do it posthumously, if he died in the fighting, but they’d do it. Leo had no doubt of it.

“Sir,” Hickson said. “The gunboats are on their way.”

“Order Alpha and Beta to strike their assigned targets, then move to cover the battle squadron,” Leo said. “Recall Delta and Gamma, reload their tubes and get them back out there as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Hickson said.

And don’t tell Francis anything of what’s happened here, Leo thought. Francis needed plausible deniability. He didn’t need to be in a position where both leaving Leo in command or relieving him could easily lead to utter disaster, depending on who won the political struggle back home. But that isn’t something I can say out loud, is it?

The gunboats flickered and vanished, jumping freely now that particular cat was out of the bag. For a second, from the rebel point of view, each craft would appear to be in two places at once, at least until their sensors caught up. Not long enough to do more than sow a little confusion, but ... it might just be enough. A rebel starship exploded violently, for no apparent reason ... another interpenetration. The remainder seemed to stagger, their sensors battered by the immense discharge, allowing the gunboats to race past them and close on their targets. One mobile shipyard tried to jump, vanishing inside a jump field of staggering proportions; the others fought valiantly, picking off four gunboats, but uselessly. The missiles slammed home, setting off chains of explosions that wiped out all three mobile shipyards. There were only a handful of survivors, their lifepods drifting in the remains of their ships.

The rebels will pick them up, Leo told himself. We’re not planning to hold the battlefield.

Someone cheered, behind him. Leo nodded in agreement. The mission was completed now, completed and done. They could bring up their own jump drives and escape, leaving the rebels licking their wounds. Their capital ships hadn’t been as badly hurt as Leo had hoped, but without the mobile shipyards and stockpiles of munitions they relied upon to keep their ships supplied their threat level was sharply reduced. The squadron had set out to buy time and it had succeeded magnificently. It was time to cash in their chips and escape.

“Sir, the gunboats have rearmed,” Hickson informed him. There was nothing in his tone to suggest Francis knew what was going on. That was a relief. At least one of them would be spared court martial. “They’re returning to open space.”

Leo nodded, coldly. The rebels would have to recover their shuttles before they jumped, unless they wanted to leave the small craft behind. The gunboats didn’t have that weakness. They hadn’t had anything like enough time to come up with more than a handful of contingency plans, but the ones they had were more than enough. The gunboats would jump under their own power and link up with the carrier at the RV point.

“Good,” he said. The rebels were getting organised, their shuttles sweeping forward with their heavy-hitters bringing up the rear. They weren’t bringing up their gravity traps, which puzzled him. Their only hope of evening the score was destroying Commodore Drayton’s force and if they wanted to do that they had to pin the ships in realspace. The commodore had ordered his fleet into a standard defensive pattern, clearly preparing to retreat, while there was something oddly familiar about the rebel pattern. “What are they doing ...?”

Understanding clicked. “Raise the flag now,” he snapped. Of course the pattern looked familiar. He’d used it himself. A crazy idea, a madcap plan ... their one hope for a victory that wouldn’t taste of ashes in their mouth. “They’re microjumping!”

The display flared with red light. It was too late.

 

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“They’re right on top of us,” Hickson snapped. “Sir ...”

“Order the gunboats to provide cover,” Leo said. The rebels would need a second or two to recover from their jump, but that wouldn’t be very long at all. “Prepare to fall back.”

His mind raced. The rebels had closed the range sharply, gambling their missiles and energy weapons could wipe out the Daybreakers before they managed to jump out and run. Not a bad tactic under normal circumstances, but it would have cost them badly in any case and with the gunboats having jump drives of their own there was no need to decide between abandoning the gunboats and taking time to recover them. The gunboats were already deploying to serve as makeshift point defence platforms, the datanet weaving them together into a single entity. The squadron might be dangerously short of flankers, but she wasn’t undefended.

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Hoss said. “All ships are to fall back, aiming for clear space.”

“Understood,” Leo said. The commodore clearly had something in mind. There was no point in doing anything, but cycling the drives and retreating. The mission had been accomplished and they didn’t need to give the rebels a chance to turn it into a draw. “Helm, take us into our slot, as ordered.”

“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Richardson said.

Leo studied the display for a long moment. The rebels had risked a jump at speed – their crews had to be vomiting on the decks, which might explain their seeming reluctance to capitalise on their brief advantage – but the squadron was slowly coming about, ramping up its drives for a chase. The enemy was being offered a perfect opportunity to pin them down and shoot them to bits, something that bothered him. They hadn’t brought the gravity trap online yet, but it was only a matter of time until they did. And then the task force would be in deep shit.

The display sparkled with red icons as the enemy fleet belched a giant volley, aimed right at his ships. There were more than there should be, he noted ... clearly, the rebels had started deploying external missile racks. The concept had fallen out of fashion as FTL technology improved, but using it when you could lock your target out of FTL made a certain kind of sense. Or they might have constructed a missile-heavy battleship class. Daybreak had never seen the need, when firing overwhelming barrages had been little more than a waste of good missiles, but now ... he pushed the thought aside as the enemy missiles closed rapidly. This was going to hurt.

“Missiles entering gunboat engagement range now,” Hickson reported.

Leo nodded. The gunboat crews knew better than to wait for orders, with so many missiles bearing down on the squadron. Hundreds of missiles vanished from the display, hundreds more kept coming ... Leo cursed under his breath, even as more were wiped out by carefully-coordinated point defence fire. The commodore really should be jumping out at this point, not fighting an engagement that played solidly to his enemy’s strengths. It was odd, to say the least. Unless his objective was to force the enemy to expend their missiles. Theoretically, a missile could be recovered and replenished; practically, it wasn’t always possible.

He barely heard Hickson’s report as the surviving missiles entered their terminal attack phase. They flew into a web of point defence and sensor ghosts, a handful being picked off and a handful more being diverted onto decoys and expending themselves uselessly; the remainder slammed home, bomb-pumped lasers digging deep into their target hulls and nuclear warheads detonating inside their defences. A handful of ships staggered under enemy fire, two vanishing inside clouds of boiling plasma; the remainder kept going, the datanet updating rapidly to ensure the point defence remained live. It had done well, Leo noted, but the fight was very far from over. Each lost starship meant a reduction in their ability to defend themselves.

“The enemy are launching a second barrage,” Hickson reported. An alarm sounded. “They’re bringing up the gravity trap!”

Leo cursed under his breath. “Orders from the flag?”

“No change,” Hickson said.

“Bring up the jump drive, be ready to run,” Leo ordered. The techs weren’t sure how strong the gravity trap needed to be before the field was inescapable and he didn’t want to test their theories, such as they were, with an actual starship. Even a weak gravity field could keep them from jumping, if they were unlucky, or send them randomly spinning across the galaxy, so far from their homeworld there’d be no hope of ever returning. “Jump us out on the commodore’s command.”

His eyes narrowed as the command failed to come. He tapped his console, bringing up the tactical display and running through a series of projections. The battlecruisers and heavy cruisers would be able to outrun the enemy, given time, but they were going to be within the enemy engagement range far too long to guarantee anything. There was a very real risk they’d be blown away before the enemy gave up and let them go ... and Shadow, of course, couldn’t match a battlecruiser’s speed. She was going to be left behind in the next ten minutes or so, even if he put the most favourable variables into the projections. The real world was rarely so obliging. The rebels would have to be incredibly incompetent for them to escape.

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Hoss said. “They’ve located the gravity trap starships.”

Leo leaned forward, interested. They were far too close to the enemy ships for anyone’s peace of mind, but that did ensure they got accurate sensor readings. The ebb and flow of the gravity fields were hard to follow – the gravity generators were working in unison, their individual fields blurring together into a single field – yet there were all sorts of options for picking them apart, given a good vantage point. The commodore had deployed so many sensor drones that the beancounters were going to want to have a few words with him, if they survived. Leo’s lips twitched. They’d lose a great deal more if the entire squadron was wiped out.

The enemy’s second volley, weaker than the first, swept past the gunboats and threw itself on its targets. The battlecruisers shuddered under their fire, oddly scattershot for a professional military ... Leo suspected the rebels were trying to cripple as many ships as possible, so they could be mopped up later, rather than simply destroying them outright. Not a poor tactic, he supposed. It wasn’t as if they wouldn’t have time.

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Hickson said. “The gunboats are to engage the gravity ships on the flag’s command.”

Leo gritted his teeth. The gravity generators were at the rear of the enemy formation. The gunboats would either have to blaze past the flankers, which would cost them, or circle around the enemy fleet. The latter would be all too revealing. The enemy would have no trouble tracking the gunboats and redeploying their ships to block their advance ... was the commodore trying to disrupt the enemy formation or did he have something else up his sleeve? Leo hoped so. The tactic made no sense otherwise. A sudden pang shot through him. Francis was out there, taking the risks Leo should have been taking ...

The display flared with light. Green light. For a horrible moment, Leo thought he was about to bear witness to the worst friendly fair incident in history. There were thousands of missiles streaming out of nowhere, roaring past the Daybreakers and throwing themselves at the enemy flankers. Understanding came a second later; the commodore had positioned his arsenal ships carefully, luring the enemy into a trap because their commanders thought they had all the cards. And now ...

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Hoss said. “The gunboats are to engage their targets.”

“Send them in,” Leo ordered.

He leaned forward, keeping his face under tight control as the missile swarm roared past the gunboats and slammed right into the enemy flankers. Dozens of destroyers and frigates, nowhere near as tough as battleships or heavy cruisers, were wiped from existence, their hulls vaporised in a colossal display of overkill. The commodore wasn’t taking any chances, Leo noted coldly, as the enemy flankers reeled under the hammering. They wouldn’t be able to keep the gunboats from reaching their targets now.

“They’re passing through the engagement envelop now,” Hickson said. “They’re going in!”

Leo nodded, feeling a twinge of envy as Francis led his squadron towards the enemy ship and opened fire. He should be out there, blowing away enemy ships ... he winced inwardly as he recalled what he’d done, relieving a commanding officer in the middle of an engagement. It was quite possible he’d never see command again, when all was said and done. The Admiralty might be reluctant to risk a court martial, under the circumstances, but they had plenty of other ways to sideline him. They might just send him to an isolated asteroid mining centre and ...

He put the thought out of his mind as the gunboats completed their strike and fell back. The enemy were rapidly reorganising their formations, launching missiles at the squadron as it picked up speed. They didn’t seem inclined to engage the gunboats ... Leo guessed they’d run some calculations and worked out, roughly, just how many missiles the gunboats could carry. The tiny craft weren’t harmless without them, but ... they lacked the ability to threaten a capital ship.

“Signal from the flag, sir,” Hickson said. “All ships are to jump in one minute.”

Leo nodded, watching as the enemy missiles streaked closer. Their fleet was bleeding, plasma streaming from a dozen starships, but it was still powerful. A gunboat vanished from the display, picked off by a lucky shot or simple accident; the remainder kept going, dodging enemy fire as they made their way back to the mothership. There was no time for them to dock, but they didn’t need to. They could jump on their own.

His lips twisted. The engagement might cost him, professionally, but it had already cost the enemy far more. Their mobile shipyards were gone, their missile stocks depleted ... overall, Daybreak had scored a major victory. It might even prove to be decisive. And to think Admiral Cox hadn’t wanted to launch the mission at all ...

The timer reached zero. Leo spoke with quiet authority. “Jump.”

Shadow shuddered, the universe seeming to grow dim as she jumped. The display went blank, then slowly came back to life. Leo braced himself, half-expecting the enemy to follow them. The Admiral had used his ECM ruthlessly, but there were limits to what could be hidden from enemy sensors at such close range. They might just take the risk of trying to catch the retreating ships with their pants down ... he let out a breath as nothing materialised on the display. They were clear. For now.

“Recall the gunboats.” Leo was suddenly very tired. “Order Commander Blackthrone to report to the Ready Room, immediately; inform Commander Richards that he is to assume command of the squadrons and get them rearmed as quickly as possible.”

“Aye, sir,” Hoss said.

Leo let out a long breath. The commodore didn’t know what had happened on Shadow. How could he? But it was just a matter of time before he started asking questions ... hell, that wasn’t going to be a problem. There would be a lot more questions when they returned to Portahaven. Admiral Cox was going to have one hell of a dilemma, when he found out the truth. There was nothing he could do that wouldn’t make him look bad. And yet ...

He felt too tired to care, as he forced himself to attend to the duties of a commanding officer, checking the reports from the damage control teams and assigning priorities for repairs while they were still on the move. The hull would have to be patched up and the interior repressurised ... there wasn’t much more they could do, without a proper shipyard. Shadow would be out of the fight, until she was repaired and her stockpiles replenished. Losing nine gunboats cut her striking power right down to the bone.

His wristcom bleeped. Francis was in the Ready Room.

“Commander Hickson, you have the bridge,” Leo said. He stood slowly, taking one last look at the nearspace display. The enemy was nowhere to be seen. “Inform me if anything changes.”

“Yes, sir,” Hickson said.

Leo nodded, then made his way through the hatch and into the Ready Room. Francis looked exhausted, his blond hair matted with sweat and his too-handsome face pale and wan. Leo couldn’t help wondering just how many times they could kiss death and walk away alive ... sooner or later, their luck would run out and they’d die. He told himself he was being maudlin, as he poured water for them both and passed one to Francis. He’d never coped well after battles, when the high wore off and the costs of war lay revealed.

“Leo,” Francis said. “What happened?”

“I relieved Captain Warner of command,” Leo said. He ran through a brief outline of everything that had happened since he’d returned to the ship. “And now you have to relieve me.”

Francis blinked. “Leo ...”

“You have no choice,” Leo said. A year ago, Francis would have been champing at the bit to relieve Leo ... and put a knife in his back while he was at it. Now ... it was a marvel how far they’d come. “You’re the ship’s XO.”

“I’m not sure I want any of this on me,” Francis said.

“Do you think I do?” Leo caught himself. They had to act before Commodore Drayton started asking awkward questions, or issuing orders that would confuse the situation still further. “You’re the XO. My relief of the captain doesn’t make me the captain. Not legally. I have to hand command over to you, then you need to relieve me.”

He scowled, inwardly. The regs were a little vague on precisely what was supposed to happen under the circumstances. Leo wasn’t the XO, which meant command had to be passed to the officer who was next in the chain of command. He’d looked it up, weeks ago, and found no useful precedents. The only incident that came even remotely close to their case was a captain on an asteroid miner who’d tried to command while drunk and that hadn’t been in the middle of a battle. But one thing was clear. He couldn’t keep the command once the next officer in line arrived.

“Fuck.” Francis sipped his water. “Leo, this could end very badly.”

“For me, yeah,” Leo said. There was no point in denying it. If the matter was brought before a board of inquiry, his career was likely over even if he was formally acquitted. Few captains would want to take a chance on an officer who’d relieved his previous commander. “You don’t have to go down with me.”

“I should,” Francis said. “I did discuss the issue with you ...”

“You’re going to be needed,” Leo said. “There aren’t many officers with gunboat experience, not yet. The navy needs you more than it needs me.”

“If you say so,” Francis said. “Leo, I ... for what it’s worth, I’ll do what I can for you.”

“Thanks.” Leo shook his head. “Do something for Commodore Drayton. He handled the battle very well.”

Francis nodded, humourlessly. “If you want, I will,” he said. “I might not be doing him any favours, though.”

“It’ll be worse for him if I write the recommendation,” Leo said. Junior officers rarely had any input into promotions for their seniors, although long-serving NCOs were sometimes consulted when the promotions board was discussing particularly iffy officers. “Perhaps I should badmouth him instead.”

“Bad idea,” Francis said. “Someone might take you literally.”

He leaned forward. “We may as well get it over with,” he added, his voice becoming stiffly formal. “Leo Morningstar. I am relieving you of your post and confining you to quarters until we return to Portahaven. You may not communicate with anyone outside your quarters without prior permission, although you may receive guests if anyone chooses to visit. I suggest you spend the time writing down a full account of the affair, including all justifications for your actions. Once we return, the matter will be handed over to senior authority.”

Leo nodded, curtly. “Understood.”

Francis hesitated. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You deserve better.”

Leo raised his eyebrows. There had been a time when Francis looked for excuses to assign demerits, simply to make Leo’s life miserable. “My. You have changed.”

“It’s called growing up,” Francis said. His face slipped into a leer that looked oddly out of place on his face. “I highly recommend it.”

Leo had to smile, despite the situation. “Get my people home,” he said. “And good luck.”

He felt a twinge of bitterness as he saluted, then turned and headed for the hatch. Francis’s involvement in the whole affair was likely to go unnoticed, unless the investigators kept poking and prodding until they uncovered the whole story. Would they? The whole affair would be hellishly embarrassing, something better handled quickly and quietly ... Leo wondered, idly, just what Admiral Cox would do. The smart move would be to quietly approve Leo’s actions, but that would mean disowning Commander Warner. And disowning a client was a good way to ensure the rest of your clients started looking for new patrons.

But we won the battle, he told himself, as he reached his quarters. The rebels had been knocked back hard, the navy would have time to take the offensive ... it might not be the beginning of the end, but it sure as hell was the end of the beginning. And that is all that matters, in the end.

 

Chapter Forty

Two hours after Shadow returned to Portahaven, the marines arrived to escort Leo to the orbital battlestation.

Leo didn’t make any attempt to resist, as they scanned his body for unpleasant surprises and then marched him down to the shuttle hatch. They didn’t bother to cuff or shackle him, but Leo had no doubt escape was impossible even if he’d been inclined to try. He saw no one on the ship, no one on the shuttle ... he wondered, not for the first time, if Admiral Cox had had a chance to read his report. Two hours wasn’t very long in the grand scheme of things, all the more so as the admiral wouldn’t have spent all that time reading the reports and mission logs. How could he?

His mind raced as he sat in the shuttle, waiting for the craft to complete her flight. The portholes were sealed and there was no display, making it impossible for him to see what was going on in the high orbitals. A great deal of repair work, he guessed, along with preparations to mount a counteroffensive as soon as possible. Adniral Cox might be a careful officer, not prone to rash moves, but with the rebels smacked back so hard even he would see thge value of going on the offensive. Leo wondered, morbidly, if he’d be around to see it. Admiral Cox could easily wash his hands of the whole affair by sending Leo back to Daybreak on the grounds he was too involved to be a fair judge. He’d probably get plaudits for it too.

The marines said nothing as Leo was marched through a series of cleared corridors and into the antechamber. Alice shot him an unreadable look as she opened the hatch, revealing Admiral Cox and a second officer, an admiral Leo didn’t recognise. He looked younger than Admiral Cox, wearing a privately-tailored uniform that drew the eye ... he looked like an admiral who had stepped off the holovid and straight into the real world. His mannerisms, however, marked him as a real officer. He hadn’t spoken a word and yet Leo could feel his charisma.

“Commander Morningstar,” Admiral Cox said, as the hatch hissed closed behind Leo. “This is Admiral Lloyd Bridges, newly-assigned commander of the First Strike Force.”

Leo saluted. “Sir.”

Admiral Cox motioned for Leo to sit, then leaned forward. “Why did you relieve Captain Warner of his command?”

“Because he panicked in the face of the enemy,” Leo said, flatly. There was no point in trying to sugarcoat the affair. “His hesitation cost lives, sir, and could have cost us the battle.”

“I see.” Admiral Cox said. “And then you kept Captain Warner sedated until you returned to Portahaven?”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. It had technically been Francis’s decision, on the grounds he’d been in command when the doctor had asked for clarifying orders, but he saw no reason to bring that to the admiral’s attention. Allowing Captain Warner to wake would have made a murky situation even more murky. “I felt it was for the best.”

Admiral Bridges chuckled. “Decisive. I like that.”

Admiral Cox’s face flickered. “Quite.”

His eyes met Leo’s. “Do you have anything you wish to say, before we decide how to address the situation?”

Leo looked back at him, evenly. “No, sir.”

“I see,” Admiral Cox said. “For the record, the files will be returned to Daybreak for a proper investigation. The Admiralty will decide if it wishes to convene a Board of Inquiry into the whole affair or let the matter pass without comment. Under the circumstances, you will not be relieved of your post – relieved further, I should say – nor will you face any sort of formal discipline until the matter is decided one way or the other. You will be informed when they happens.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. It was more than he’d expected, although it wasn’t a guarantee he’d be allowed to return to Shadow ... or go anywhere, really. The admiral could easily assign him to a paper-pushing post, if he wished, or find some other use for him. “I understand.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Admiral Cox said. “Captain Warner has been reassigned to Portahaven. You are to have no contact with him, whatsoever, until the matter is resolved. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Admiral Cox exchanged a long look with his counterpart, then shrugged. “Admiral?”

Admiral Bridges leaned forward. “The question of precisely who was in command of Shadow was returned to Daybreak,” he said. “The officers commanding the gunboat project were outraged to hear that you’d been relieved of command. They filed angry complaints with the Admiralty, which wasn’t best pleased to hear of it either, and I was ordered to return you to the command chair when my task force reached Portahaven. If your mission had been delayed for a few days, you would have been in command when Commodore Drayton assaulted the rebel fleet.”

Leo’s eyes twitched. “There was no time to waste.”

“No,” Admiral Bridges agreed. “I approve wholeheartedly of your arguments. You were quite right to argue we needed to act now, and it clearly worked out for the best. The rebels have taken a bloody nose, thanks to you, and my fleet will be capitalising on it as soon as possible.”

He indicated the starchart. “We’re going back to the Yangtze Sector,” he added. “And you will be a part of it.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. “As commander of Shadow?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Admiral Bridges said. “There are political issues – not your fault, for once – that need to be addressed. Given your ... unorthodox... career path, you may find yourself in a different place. Rest assured, it will give you a chance to help me win the war and carry your career to the very highest levels.”

Leo blinked. Help you win the war?

Admiral Cox looked disapproving. “This is not the time,” he said. Leo had the impression it wasn’t the first time they’d had the argument. “We need to repair the fleet before going on the offensive.”

“This is the only time,” Admiral Bridges countered. “We may never get this chance again.”

He looked at Leo. “Return to Shadow. Assume command. We’ve brought you additional gunboats and trained crew, repair your ship and prepare for combat operations on a massive scale. Once the ship is ready to depart, contact me. I’ll give you your orders then.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

Admiral Bridges strode out of the compartment, leaving Leo and Admiral Cox alone.

“I don’t normally give advice to young officers with more stubbornness and determination than common sense,” Admiral Cox said. “I relieved you of your command because I believed you were not mature enough to handle it, and I stand by that judgement. Captain Warner’s ... failures do not change that in any measurable way.”

Leo gritted his teeth, but said nothing.

“You want to go on the offensive,” Admiral Cox added. “I do not blame you. You’re young and you think you can do anything, if you approach the matter with enthusiasm. You chaff against my more conservative inclinations, understandably so. You want to get out there and get stuck into the enemy. Again, I do not blame you.

“But I advise you to be careful, because there is more at stake than you know. And Admiral Bridges does not have your best interests in mind.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d think about it later. “May I report back to my ship?”

The admiral’s eyes narrowed, but his voice was very calm. “Dismissed, Commander,” he said. “And for what it’s worth, I wish you the very best of luck.”

It was a worrying statement. But Leo was too elated by his return to command to care.

End of Book V

Leo Morningstar Will Return In

Fighting Glory

Coming Soon!

 

Damn good read and I hate to see it come to an end, but Fighting Glory should be just as good, can't wait!