Call to Arms (Blood on the Stars, #2)

by Jay Allan

“I figured it was one of the Archellians. It was bad enough before…but now everybody wants to hear about the battle, about how Dauntless saved Archellia.” Travis walked over and sat on one of the stones near Barron. “And you’re not ready to talk about it.” He nodded. “No, I’m not. And now I wonder how my grandfather put up with it for so long. It’s a story to these people, Atara, something exciting and heroic. But our friends died out there. They died following my orders. Would these Archellians like it if that were the story I told? About the bodies all over the ship? About the blood on the walls, the severed body parts, and the pilots blown to atoms?”

There’s no more time… He took another deep breath and held it, his concentration fixed, unbreakable. He stared at the small dot on the scanner, the enemy fighter seven hundred kilometers ahead. He had to hit now. If he didn’t, it would be too late. He was here to save his comrade, not avenge him.

If the engines were down, or even damaged enough to hinder a retreat, it could be a death sentence for her crew. Surrender wasn’t an option, at least not one she’d consider against an enemy like the Union. She knew enough about Sector Nine and its techniques to be certain of one thing. She’d see her people blasted to atoms in a desperate fight to the finish before she’d risk allowing them to be consigned to the torture chambers and interrogation rooms of the enemy intelligence service.

“Yes, Captain. Commander Merton reports reactor B is nearly critical. Output down to thirty percent, and he might have to shut down even that production.” “Not until that enemy ship is gone, Commander. I don’t care if Commander Merton needs to patch that system together with spit and glue, but he is not to cut power while we are still engaged.”

She considered leaving the fighters behind…they were all going to die anyway. But it wasn’t in her to do that. There were different ways to die, and she’d be damned if she was going to have her pilots’ last thoughts be that she had abandoned them. “Very well, Commander. Commence recovery operations at once…and tell them I want those birds back onboard as quickly as possible.” “Understood.” Then, a few seconds later: “We’re getting transmissions from other squadrons, Captain, fighters from some of the ships that bugged out. All requesting permission to land. Many of them are reporting critical fuel statuses.” Eaton sighed softly to herself. Intrepid was damaged, and the truth was, she had no idea how many fighters her wounded bays could take in. There was some room, she was sure of that, if only because of the losses her own squadrons had taken. As anxious as she was to rejoin the fight, she knew what she had to do. Those pilots out there were her comrades…and those last two squadrons that had shown up had damned sure done their part to take down the last enemy battleship. “Advise landing control they are to accommodate every fighter they possibly can.” “Yes, Captain.” “I mean it, Commander. Every bird they can take. Put them anywhere, but we’re not leaving those pilots out there, out of fuel and with no place to land.”

This was war, shorn of the pretensions of glory and other blandishments humanity had attached to the grim business of killing each other.

Rance Barron had been a great hero, but his stature had also benefitted from a tragic death in battle, followed by decades of retellings of his exploits by worshipful protégés. Such things whitewashed a man’s memory, Holsten knew, carrying away flaws, deficiencies, all the things that made a human being real. Barron had been a great man, there was no question about that, but when he lived he was a man. Now he was a legend.

His first officer was the one best positioned to try and tell him he was crazy. But he wasn’t crazy. The desperation of his plan spawned from that of the situation. The cold truth was there weren’t any good options, at least not any that offered a substantial chance of success. Or of survival.

The situation seemed almost unreal to him. In the Academy they taught doctrine, how to proceed in battle conditions. But his rapidly increasing combat experience was teaching him that much of what he’d learned was useless. It was all well and good to review things under textbook conditions, but he’d found that such situations were shockingly rare in real combat. No Academy class would have discussed two battleships, both battered and depleted, attacking a massive enemy construct, with no idea of the weaponry they’d face and no useful estimate of what it would take to destroy the thing. But this wasn’t a classroom, and the destruction of that supply facility could be the difference between victory and defeat, not just in Varus, but in the entire war. Dauntless and Intrepid had to go in. Barron knew that, and he was sure Eaton did as well.

“Still, I don’t know how they managed to build it. The cost…it must have been almost incalculable.” “At Confederation rates of labor and costs of materials. The Union is not like us, Sara. No doubt, those they conquered were reduced to virtual slavery to build that station. Forget trying to measure that thing in money…the true cost analysis there is one of human misery. How many workers killed, how many lives destroyed. How many millions lived on the brink of starvation so the Presidium could launch its war to conquer the Confederation?”

The problem wasn’t what a scared and mobilized Confederation could achieve when pressed against the wall…it was what a complacent and soft one did between conflicts.

“How did you pull it off with the Senate? I was waiting for word you were arrested.” “I just reasoned with them. Nothing but cold logic.” No one except Holsten himself ever need know the extent of the threats and deals and outright intimidation it had taken to secure the support of enough Senators to ratify what he had done. Fortunately, those who’d screamed the loudest for his blood and expressed the greatest outrage at his ‘betrayal,’ had turned out to be the ones with the longest lists of financial improprieties and illegitimate children and illicit affairs, all neatly categorized and documented in Holsten’s private files.

“Commander Fritz has worked wonders, Captain. It gets old saying it so often, but she really is the closest thing to a miracle worker.” “I think Fritzie would badger a miracle worker to the verge of insanity. All this time together, and I still can’t say for certain that the woman sleeps. Ever.”