The Phoenix Darkness (57 page)

“This is damn peculiar,” said Raidan. He
wondered if this confirmed his earlier expectation, that Mira had
abandoned the Bridge for now in order to secure Main Engineering
and rally her forces in the lower decks where she might be better
organized and able to overpower the
Harbinger’s
officers,
soldiers, and crew who supported Raidan. That battle likely was
being fought even now.

If so, there was little Raidan could do about
it. He felt a pang of regret for not sending more men with Tristan,
who, no doubt, had run smack into the teeth of Mira and whatever
trap she'd lain. Of course, if anyone could handle it, it would be
Tristan himself. He was fury embodied, with a capacity for
slaughter rivaled by very few, though he managed to keep it in
check with tremendous discipline.

“Nothing here,” sir, said Major Berk, the
highest ranking soldier in the squad Raidan had brought with him.
Major Berk was also the second highest ranking soldier among all
the marine detachments on the
Harbinger
. During the mutiny
at Praxis, and ever since, he’d proven himself deeply loyal to
Raidan.

“Then we’d better take full advantage,” said
Raidan. “Two of you, seal off the Bridge. The rest of you take
those stations. We need to assert control of this ship. Get a
message to the lower decks, let them know we’re in charge, and help
them organize before it’s too late.”

“Aye, sir,” his men took up posts at several
of the
Harbinger’s
terminals. Meanwhile, Raidan hung back,
surveying the Bridge, pistol at the ready, waiting, expecting
something.
Anything
.

“The Bridge is sealed off, sir,” reported one
of the soldiers, a PFC.

“Good; that should stop anyone else from
coming,” said Raidan. Then again, if people were already here in
hiding somewhere, it would make it very difficult for Tristan to
reinforce Raidan, although the way things were looking, odds were
Raidan would need to reinforce Tristan and not the other way
around.

“Comms; see if you can get in touch with Main
Engineering. If Tristan was successful, he should have control of
it by now,” ordered Raidan.

“Aye, sir.” Then, a moment later, “I’m
connected to Main Engineering. The—”

A shot split the air, taking the man in the
forehead. He dropped like a stone, unable to finish his sentence.
Immediately, Raidan scrambled for cover, ordering his men to do the
same.

Shit, someone is here
, he thought.
They seemed to come from everywhere, at least twenty of them, an
overwhelming force against his ten. They came from the CO’s office,
around the corridor, they popped up from hiding places under
various desks on the lower echelon of the Bridge. One even appeared
from under the desk on the highest platform with a scoped rifle and
was swiftly picking off Raidan’s men, who struggled to find cover
and return fire. They were trying to size up their enemies and
determine their positions, meanwhile finding themselves in trouble
because they were taking fire from all sides.

Raidan raised his pistol and took aim at the
sniper. He fired off two quick shots, the second of which took the
man in the head. He doubled over and fell from the platform,
crashing onto the deck.

The gunshots had given away Raidan’s
position, though. He bent down into cover, hiding behind a desk as
bullets slapped into the metal desk and whizzed past him. He knew
he had to move or he was a goner, but to where?

The fighting intensified and he could hear
bodies thudding to the ground in between spurts of automatic small
arms fire.

So Mira had been ready for him after all,
here as well as everywhere else, ready to snipe him, bomb him, and
finally ready to ambush him. And all Raidan had done was to try to
persuade the crew and soldiers to take his side, apparently without
any kind of major success. He hoped he’d had better luck with the
soldiers and crewmen in the lower decks, but that did him precious
little good here and now.

He waited for a lull in the fire coming his
way, then crawled out and moved behind another station to a better
position of cover. In the chaos, he saw several soldiers on the
ground, men and women from both sides. It looked like Raidan’s
people, who'd finally gotten into a decent defensive foothold, had
taken the brunt of the casualties, and it was only a matter of time
before they were cut down.

“We have to unseal the Bridge,” said Raidan
to Major Berk, who was in cover nearby, occasionally popping up and
unloading his carbine at enemy targets, only to drop back into
cover and slap in a new magazine, even if he hadn’t fired his
dry.

“You have to get to your office and barricade
yourself there,” said the Major.

“I can’t abandon the fight,” said Raidan,
unwilling to be a coward, especially since every gun and man was
needed in this engagement. “I need to unseal the Bridge so
reinforcements can arrive.”

More gunfire, this time directed their way.
Both of them crouched low as many as a dozen bullets whistled by,
some missing them by mere inches, with others slamming into the
console they were using as cover.

“If you die, then this is all for nothing.
Mira will have what she wants,” said Major Berk. Raidan knew he was
right. Just as he could end this conflict by displaying Mira’s head
on a platter for the whole Organization to see, she could do the
same to him.

“If I sprint for the office, I’ll get cut
down,” said Raidan.

“I’ll lay down covering fire until you’re
safe,” said Major Berk. “We’ll wait until they’re reloading then,
on my signal, you run like hell.”

“Okay,” said Raidan. “What about unlocking
the Bridge?”

“I’ll take care of unsealing the Bridge,”
said Major Berk. “You have one job right now:
survive
!”

Another storm of automatic fire pounded their
position. More shots whistled past or else tore into their cover,
penetrating deeper than before. “They’ve switched to armor piercing
rounds,” said Major Berk. “We can’t stay here any longer.”

After a few more shots there was a lull.
“
Go
. Now!”

Raidan did as he was bid, sprinting out of
cover and toward his office, keeping his head down as he went.
Before he rounded the corner, he heard more whistling bullets whizz
by and slam into the bulkhead next to him, some ricocheting off. He
turned his head to see a man in a naval uniform, one of Mira’s
people, unloading on him with a carbine. Raidan pointed his pistol
at him, even though he was outgunned and exposed, and fired off a
shot. He missed. But the man went down anyway, taking a hit in the
side of the head from Major Burke, the bullet gruesomely ripped
through the man’s left side of his head and exploded out the right.
Raidan had seen ghastlier things, but not many.

He rounded the corner and bolted into his
office, pistol leveled and ready to attack whoever was in there
waiting to ambush him. He knew that, should an ambusher be lying in
wait, no doubt kneeling with crosshairs on the door, Raidan was a
dead man. Most likely he wouldn’t even have the chance to fire his
pistol, but it was a risk he had to take.

As luck would have it, the office had been
cleared out and no one remained inside it. He sealed the door,
knowing the lock would only stall the enemy. He then moved the
cedar desk, which was still flipped over, and pushed it against the
door, leaning it on its side. It would do little to stop a sliding
door from opening, but at least it was one more obstacle for any
invaders to have to deal with.

After that, he knelt down, making himself as
small a target as possible, and pointed his pistol at the door,
listening as the sounds of fighting started to quiet outside the
door. His men were dying, he knew it. And that meant Mira’s people
would come for him any second now.
Dammit, Tristan; you’d better
get here fast
, thought Raidan. And he hoped Major Berk had
succeeded in unsealing the Bridge in time.

***

“General Order to all squadrons,” said
Kalila. She stood at the Tactical command station on the ISS
Black Swan
, along with Captain Adiger and Sir William
Gregory. “Take your positions. The enemy has been spotted. I
repeat, the enemy has been spotted. Estimated time of arrival, ten
minutes.”

Her forces deployed based on a strategy
Captain Adiger and Sir Gregory had devised with some input from
Kalila. Although she wanted to command the battle herself and would
have happily done so alone, she was also not such a fool to ignore
the best advice of her military expert advisors. Upon hearing of
their plan, she approved of it. If all went well, they should take
the enemy by surprise and ambush them. By the time the Rotham fleet
reorganized to counter the multipronged attack, much or most of
them would have been destroyed, leaving the rest to withdraw or
endure the slaughter. Best of all, the defense plan, provided it
worked as intended, should keep Kalila’s casualties to a minimum,
leaving her with enough strength to remain a challenge for Caerwyn
Martel, even though there was no doubt that by the end of this day
his forces would outnumber hers.

Kalila deployed a third of her fighting force
in front of the primary planet to augment the system’s own
defenses. Together, they were a force of one-hundred-twenty ships,
including eighty battleships and forty smaller ships: destroyers,
sentry ships, sloops, interceptors, and frigates. Not a pathetic
force by any means, especially with the help of the local starbase
and its defense platforms, but altogether insufficient to stop a
Rotham fleet which included a minimum of four-hundred warships.
She, and her advisors, expected the Rotham fleet to enter the
system in a tight, compact, fast formation, surrounding and
protecting their troop transports while blitzing directly for the
system’s defenses. The augmented defense force would be
approximately the response the Rotham would expect and they would
engage it as fast as they could, knowing they would prevail through
sheer overwhelming force.

However, Kalila had another three hundred
warships ready to engage the Rotham fleet, which she chose to
conceal. The larger ships with the best shields and strongest
sublight drives were to hold position in low orbit in the system’s
two large gas giants. The thick atmospheres and storm conditions
would disguise their presence from any normal scans. There was a
risk placing her ships there, and she expected to lose a handful of
them, but the opportunity to conceal them in such a strategically
useful position was too good to pass up. Then, her fastest ships,
destroyers, interceptors, and so on, were positioned on the far
side of the star, opposite where they expected the Rotham fleet to
arrive from alteredspace. Then, once the Rotham fleet had gone for
the bait, blitzing to attack the local defense force, the fast
ships would swoop around the star and engage the overly tight
Rotham formation. As they did, the battleships and heavy cruisers
would emerge from the gas giants and join the battle. Together,
these additional forces would pincer the enemy fleet.

If Calvin’s intelligence was good, and she
had every reason to believe it was, the enemy’s tight, fast
formation would be extremely vulnerable to such an attack. They
would sustain brutal losses before being able to adapt to what was
effectively heavy fire from three different sides.

As she watched the many lights on the many 3D
displays before her, her ships moving rapidly to their positions,
she felt an overwhelming sense of excitement. She was anxious,
worried for her people and naturally paranoid their intelligence
had been bad, and concerned the Rotham would smell the trap from a
klik away, but she knew these fears were irrational. She was eager
for the battle to be joined because, by all rights, they should be
eviscerated by her forces. It would be a great victory, and one the
citizens of the Empire would not soon forget. Although she stood to
lose Ophiuchus system, Caerwyn Martel, who’d refused to participate
in the defense, stood to lose much more: the respect of his own
people.

“To all squadrons and all ships, this is your
queen,” she said, as they took their positions. All ships were on
Condition One alert, including the ISS
Black Swan,
which was
taking its chances inside the atmosphere of the gas supergiant
Epsilonia, along with most of her battleships. The Bridge was
filled with officers, all of them at action stations and ready for
a fight.

“I address you now, as we prepare for battle,
to remind you of the noble cause we are fighting for. This is for
not just our beloved Empire, but for our family, our friends, our
mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, and most of all for
our children. Let us preserve a future for them, one safe and full
of hope, by showing our enemies abroad what happens when they
choose to invade our realm.

“Let us cast them back, bloodied and beaten,
as an example to the rest of the galaxy that we, humanity, will not
crumble, nor shall we fall. But instead we will prevail, forever
triumphant, as our enemies flee or fall to our swords. I have come
among you, to join the battle as your queen, to live and die among
you all. To lay down before our Empire and for our people, my honor
and my blood, no matter the price or consequence. Caerwyn would
have you believe I am weak and feeble, a mere woman prone to bouts
of insanity, but these are lies. For I have the heart of a true
monarch, something he lacks, else he would be here to defend our
people.

“I think foul scorn upon the Rotham who would
dare invade our realm, and as honor requires, I have taken up arms
among you all as your Admiral, your Judge, and she who will reward
acts of gallantry and bold sacrifice in the field of battle! Every
man or woman on each ship here, by virtue of being present, already
deserves princely rewards, riches, crowns and whatever the galaxy
might give you. You have my word that once I ascend my father’s
throne and our Empire is again restored, I shall duly pay you all
that is owed.