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  If the battle was over, who had won?

  He looked up at the darkness overhead—a solid cloud deck masked by darkness. Cloud cover over Haris ran around ninety percent. The skies cleared occasionally, but most of the time they were clouded over. He wished he could see the stars.

  Gray sagged to the ground, his shoulder propping him up against a small boulder. God, he was exhausted! His legs, his whole body ached, and the high gravity had his heart pounding, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

  How long could he survive out here? Theoretically, the e-suit would keep providing him with air, water, and a nanotech-assembled paste that passed more or less plausibly for food, all cycled from the local atmosphere, handfuls of dirt or organic material poured into a hip pocket, and his own wastes. But even the best machines, he knew all too well, had their limits.

  In any case, sooner or later someone would detect him and track him down. The question was whether that someone would be human or…or whatever the Turusch were.

  He shuddered at the thought. Very little was known about the Turusch, about their culture, their biology, their psychology, even their true shape. They were part of the galaxy-spanning empire of the Sh’daar, and they had a military technology equivalent to—or perhaps a little better than—that of the Confederation of Humankind. The scuttlebutt was that the Marines at Mike-Red had managed to capture a few of the bastards, which was why this mission was supposed to be so damned important.

  If the Turusch picked up his come-get-me call, he might be about to see them firsthand.

  Not a pleasant thought. But there was nothing else he could do. If he didn’t start transmitting, he would either die out here or the Turusch would get him, sooner or later. At least if he was broadcasting on the emergency band, there was a chance the Marines would get to him first. Closing his eyes, he focused his thoughts on three discreet mental code groups, then clicked “transmit” on his IHD. The signal was coded, designed to attract the attention of human equipment and to look like noise to the enemy…but no one counted on the Turusch not being able to recognize the signal as artificial, at least.

  The fleet ought to be overhead within another few minutes. That, more than anything else, had decided him on whether or not to trigger the distress beacon. If the Turusch were still up there, they shortly would be too busy to notice a single pilot on the ground.

  Gray wondered if the Dragonfires were still up, still fighting. Hours ago they must have run dry on expendables, but they would be able to restock at the Marine base. Boss Al would be sending them out on CAP over the base, until the battlegroup arrived. And if one of them happened to swing out this way…

  He caught movement, a flash of short infrared sliding across his peripheral vision. Whirling and dropping flat on the ground, he stared into the darkness. Had a Turusch probe, or even a ground patrol, found him already?

  There it was again…another flash of movement. With a miserable sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach, he realized he was seeing a mass of those leaf-shaped gliders, hundreds of them radiating in the infrared and moving straight toward him through the night.

  Gray jerked his laser carbine off his shoulder. The weapon had no stock and, in any case, his helmet would keep him from aiming it by eye. A touch to a pressure plate, however, switched on a targeting reticule in his IHD, a small red circle marking what the weapon’s muzzle was pointed at. A second touch brought up the power, and a reedy tone in his earphone told him the weapon was ready to fire.

  But there were so many of the things! They moved a few at a time, giving the impression of a huge, flat, glowing amoeba creeping over the ground by extending pseudopods ahead of the main body.

  He moved the weapon awkwardly until the targeting reticule was centered on the central mass of creatures, and fired. Infrared vision picked up the flash of the beam as it heated air molecules along its path, though it was invisible at optical wavelengths. The glowing mob of organisms shifted and parted, momentarily becoming two smaller masses with a hot spot between them…but they kept flowing forward, merging and blending until they were a single mass once more.

  He fired again…and then again.

  “I’m not on the fucking menu!” he screamed, and then he was triggering burst after burst of laser fire, the shots becoming wilder and wilder as the gliders started flowing up the sides of the outcrop….

  CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

  Approaching Eta Boötis IV

  2347 hours, TFT

  “Time to normal space transition,” America’s AI said, “in twenty-five seconds.”

  Koenig leaned back in his couch on its raised platform in the middle of CIC, letting his gaze shift from station to station. The men and women in the pit all leaned back, their virtual instrumentation hovering in front of them, glowing in the muted lighting of the compartment. The tac display showed America’s calculated position relative to both Ea Boötis and Eta Boötis IV; they would be emerging above Eta Boötis’s night side, between twenty and fifty thousand kilometers out.

  But calculating precisely where a starship would emerge from the bubble of the Alcubierre Drive always entailed far more guesswork than navigators or ship captains generally cared to think about. There was even a chance—an infinitesimally small one—that one of the battlegroup’s ships would slam into the planet while still moving faster than light. The ship itself, of course, cocooned in its bubble of spacetime, wouldn’t be involved in the collision directly. Only the leading edge of warped space enclosing it would actually intersect with the planet. But that intersection could disrupt the planetary crust, and the ship would be dumped into the middle of the chaos that ensued.

  The ship would almost certainly be destroyed, and the disruption to the planet’s crust might finish off the Marines where the Turusch bombardment had failed.

  Koenig wondered if the Turusch ever used the Alcubierre Effect to destroy planets…and if the battlegroup would find Eta Boötis IV still intact when they broke out of warp.

  They would know in another few seconds….

  Those seconds dwindled away, and precisely on schedule America’s AI triggered a warpfield collapse.

  Light, twisted into a circular rainbow by spacetime shear effect, exploded outward as the field evaporated. America’s true velocity relative to the space around it was only a few meters per second, and as the spacetime bubble opened, her effective velocity dropped from just over c to almost nothing in a literal flash of tortured photons. To an observer outside, space seemed to open, a circular starbow unfolded from within, and the ship emerged with stately grace into normal space.

  From inside the ship, the stars, for just an instant, assumed the characteristic starbow encircling the vessel forward, then shifted back into more familiar patterns.

  Eta Boötis glowed hot and yellow orange almost directly ahead, with its fourth planet a slender, silver-yellow crescent bowed away from the star just beside the glare. A readout on his virtual display showed they’d emerged 38,000 kilometers out from the planet’s night side—bang on-target. On the tactical display above the pit, red points of light began winking on in rapid-fire succession, starting close to the green-lit globe marking the planet and extending farther and farther out as America’s sensor suites picked up EM returns and emissions from other ships near the planet. The ship’s AI identified the signals as quickly as they came in, then plotted positions and vectors on the display.

  A solitary blue light winked on against the planet’s night side. The Marine perimeter, at least, was still intact.

  Koenig breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that. The mission had not been launched in vain after all.

  All of the lights marking spacecraft, however, were red—enemy ships. None were blue. Either the fighter strike had been wiped out in the attack hours before, they’d been disabled and drifted clear of battlespace, or they were down on the planet’s surface.

  Other lights were coming on now—yellow ones—indicating unidentified targets. Most of those would
be disabled ships—hulks, critically damaged vessels, or even large chunks of debris. The Dragonfires, Koenig noted, had made a definite impression on the Turusch; there could be no doubt about that.

  And even as he watched, the first pair of blue fighters emerged from America’s twin launch tubes at nearly 170 meters per second. The first pair was followed by a second, and then a third. VFA-49, the Star Tigers, began arrowing into the heart of the Turusch fleet.

  At the same time, other fighters were emerging from the drop tubes circling America’s spine. As the carrier rotated on its axis, creating spin gravity for her crew, centripetal force flung the fighters of VFA-42, the Nighthawks, clear of the shadow of America’s forward shield and into space with a relatively sedate velocity of five meters per second.

  In seconds, a cloud of gravfighters began to encircle the carrier, moving outward.

  “We’re counting thirty-four active Turusch capital ships,” Commander Craig told him. “Eight more appear to be heavily damaged, but still have active power sources.” She hesitated. “Lots of fighters…but we’re not picking up any friendlies.”

  “Very well,” Koenig said. “Captain Buchanan? You may accelerate and engage as soon as all of our fighters are clear.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  If the initial numbers were to be believed, the Dragonfires had destroyed at least thirteen Turusch warships, and damaged eight more, a very respectable showing for just twelve gravfighters. Data tags alongside the slowly drifting red icons in the display showed that several of the remaining enemy vessels were damaged as well.

  That gave the America battlegroup a decent chance against the survivors of the Turusch fleet, chances better than even, at any rate. A lot would depend on how prepared the enemy was for the Confederation fleet’s arrival.

  He’d not expected to see any Dragonfires in the battlespace, not after nine hours. He just hoped that most of them had been able to win through to the Marine perimeter on the planet.

  Blue Omega One

  VFA-44 Dragonfires

  Battlespace Eta Boötis IV

  2352 hours, TFT

  “All Blue Omegas are in position and ready for boost,” Commander Allyn said. “We’ll take our count from you.”

  “Copy that, Blue One,” the voice of a Marine in MEF HQ Operations Control replied. “The shield is coming down in five…four…three…two…one…mark!”

  The five gravfighters were already airborne, configured for atmospheric flight and floating vertical, their noses aimed at the night sky just south of the zenith. As the shield section flicked off, the fighters began accelerating, a slight ripple preceding them as artificial singularities winked into place. Within seconds, they were shrieking skyward. A thick cloud of vapor engulfed each as it lanced toward heaven, stretching out behind and forming a cone shape as the Starhawks went supersonic, then vanishing as they went hypersonic seconds later. Behind and below, the Marine shields switched back on and the base lights vanished.

  “Hey Skipper?” Tucker, Blue Eight, called. “I’m getting an EDS here. AI says it’s Prim!”

  Allyn glanced at her virtual com suite display, saw the wink of a contact light, with bearing and range. So Prim had survived! Or, at least, the emergency distress beacon built into his e-suit was still functioning, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing.

  “Got it,” she said, patching the signal through back to MED HQ.

  “Shouldn’t I go back down and try to find him?”

  Katie Tucker was Prim’s wing. Of course she wanted to cover her partner. “Negative, Tuck,” she replied. “The Marines’ll take care of him.” If they can, she added to herself, but she didn’t speak the thought aloud.

  “Yeah, we got other Tushies to fry,” Blue Five put in. “Let’s do it!”

  On Allyn’s tactical display, six Turusch capital ships and a score of fighters were picked out by red icons above Eta Boötis IV. All were under acceleration, and appeared to be outbound from the planet’s night side. She extended the range on her display, and the blue icons of the emerging carrier battlegroup winked on.

  The five surviving Blue Omega fighters had pulled several two-ship patrols in the time since they’d arrived at Mike-Red, aimed mostly at keeping the Turusch at a respectful distance. The bombardment of the Marine perimeter had all but stopped. With Blue Omega’s arrival, the enemy had known that the battlegroup would be on the way, and they’d obviously been preparing for its arrival, the Marines on-planet now a far lower priority than the approaching Confederation fleet.

  The overall tactical situation offered the handful of Starhawks on the surface of Eta Boötis IV a rare opportunity. With the America battlegroup emerging from metaspace off the planet’s dark side, the Turusch fleet was swinging about and accelerating to meet it…and in the process turning their backs on Allyn and the remnants of her squadron.

  White light blossomed, startling and stark against the night. The Tushies hadn’t entirely forgotten the base, or the fighters hidden there. “Everyone okay?” she called as the crackle of EM static faded.

  “Blue Eight, okay!”

  “Blue Five, still here.”

  “Blue Six. Got a little crisp there for a sec, but okay.”

  “Blue Three. Rog.”

  The black bulk of Eta Boötis’s night side dropped away as the five Blue Omegas streaked out of the turbulent atmosphere.

  “Okay, children,” Allyn told the others. “Let’s put them where they count!”

  “Surprise, you freaking Tush bastards!” Lieutenant Tucker called over the tac channel. “Omega Eight, target lock! And Fox One!”

  Allyn was already targeting a Sierra-class cruiser, eight thousand kilometers ahead. “Omega One! Target lock! Fox One!”

  The Krait slid off the rail and through the momentary puckered opening in the Starhawk’s smoothly shifting surface and vanished into the distance. Seconds later, it detonated against the Sierra’s screens with a swelling, nuclear fireball…but Allyn was already breaking right and high, targeting another enemy vessel.

  Then the Tush fighters were closing on them from three directions, swinging around and back to engage the sudden pop-up strike from the planet’s surface. The five Confederation fighters went into the merge accelerating hard, engaging the fighters with particle beams and KK cannon, saving the heavy-hitting Kraits for capital ship targets.

  For the next several seconds, the combat was a confused blur of fast-moving ships, black space, and fireballs. Twice, Allyn’s Starhawk AI intervened to throw the ship one way or the other to avoid hurtling pieces of white-hot debris. She saw her CPG beam spear through an oncoming Toad just ahead, and then the sky lit up with an eye-searing explosion, pelting her outer hull with high-velocity bits of shrapnel. Warning tones sounded in her ear as gravitic missiles locked on and accelerated toward her. Sand canisters thumped into the void, blocking the enemy thrusts.

  Ahead, two massive battlefleets engaged….

  CIC, TC/USNA CVS America

  Battlespace Eta Boötis IV

  2354 hours, TFT

  “Main spinal mount!” Captain Buchanan called from the bridge, “Fire!”

  On the tactical display, a beam of white light snapped out from the icon of the America, connecting the carrier momentarily with an Alpha-class Turusch line battleship—a small asteroid ten times the length of the carrier and bristling with weapon mounts. Its pitted outer surface was pocked and splotched in places by white-hot craters where Confederation weapons had already and repeatedly struck home.

  Screens and displays within CIC showed the unfolding fleet action from dozens of different perspectives, the scenes relayed to the battlegroup flag by sensor drones scattered across the battlespace. America’s spinal mount PBP fired a proton beam invisible to the eye or to drone cameras, but it impacted the Turusch shields at energies of up to 1.15 TeV.

  Most of that kinetic energy was splashed aside by bent-space shields or electromagnetic screens, but enough leaked through to melt shield proje
ctors set into the asteroid warship’s surface.

  And when enough shield projectors were knocked out, the target became vulnerable….

  At this point, Koenig’s role was more that of observer than of military commander. He could suggest strategy and coordination with the other ships of the battlegroup, but Buchanan was captain of the America, the one fighting the ship.

  In fact, he thought with a touch of bemusement, the engagement already had become far too big, too fast, and too spread out for any human mind to grasp it, much less control what was happening. America’s AI was running tracking and targeting, firing the weapons, maintaining screens and shields.

  All twenty-six of the other Confederation ships in the battlegroup had emerged from Alcubierre Drive and were accelerating now, swiftly building up to combat velocities. The railgun cruiser Kinkaid had fallen into position one hundred kilometers abeam of the America, and was joining her considerable firepower to that of America’s main gun. The Kinky pounded at the asteroid warship, now just eighteen thousand kilometers ahead, with kinetic-kill slugs accelerated at five hundred gravities down its kilometer-long superconductor rail.

  “Admiral!” Hughes, the CIC tac evaluator, called out, excited. “We’re picking up fighters. Our fighters, coming up from the planet behind the Trash fleet!”

  “How many?” he snapped.

  There was an agonizing pause. “Five. Just five. But…”

  “Synch their data inks with ours,” Koenig said, interrupting. “Coordinate their attacks with ours.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  There’d be time to count the losses later…and to mourn them. Right now, the god of battles had offered the Confederation fleet a singular opportunity, and he was going to take the fullest possible advantage of it.