The colossus, p.12
The Colossus, page 12
part #12 of Blood on the Stars Series
Chronos knew the power of Colossus. As Number Eight and a member of the Council, he’d been aware of Project Zed since its beginning, long before the war with the Rimdwellers had begun. The ship had been found more than twenty years before, floating dead in space, yet another piece of imperial debris, an ancient ruin drifting through the darkness. It had been damaged, but close inspection confirmed it to be the single best-preserved imperial artifact ever retrieved. The technology was advanced, far beyond even Hegemony science, but two decades of relentless effort had succeeded in restoring the vessel to functionality. Some of that work had been research, learning to repair and utilize old imperial technology. More, even, had involved adapting Hegemony science to fill the gaps, replacing damaged imperial systems with inferior, but still effective, Hegemonic replacements.
The result was an amalgam of imperial and Hegemony technology, and as vast and powerful as the restored ship’s systems were, Chrono knew its power had only been partially recovered. Inside its vast hull, there were seemingly endless empty corridors, unused chambers, ancient imperial equipment and mysterious systems that remained dark as they still defied the efforts of Hegemony scientists to uncover their secrets. Colossus was the most powerful thing in known space, yet barely half its potential strength had yet been tapped.
The decision to deploy the great vessel in its current condition had been a difficult one, and Chrono knew Akella had pushed the orders through. The ship had never been intended for use on the Rim. It was the Hegemony’s secret weapon, the core of its efforts to prepare to face the Others, if and when that shadowy threat returned. Chronos knew he had to use the giant vessel to great effect, and do it quickly. He’d never been among those fearful of the Others, but now he realized, the sooner Colossus was back protecting the core side of the Hegemony, the better he would feel.
He inhaled deeply, and he straightened himself in his chair, his back like a ramrod. It was almost time. He knew very well the effectiveness of the enemy’s small craft, the deadly destruction they had unleashed on Hegemony battle lines. But Colossus was different. Its defensive array was incredibly vast, hundreds of point defense turrets positioned all along the vast hull. Those guns would tear into the approaching bombers. They would exact a terrible toll. But the rows of gun emplacements weren’t the only danger waiting for the approaching Rim bombers.
Not this time.
* * *
“I know these things handle like pigs, with the doubled payloads and all, but that doesn’t mean we just ignore evasive maneuvers. Stay focused, all of you, dammit, and pay attention. I don’t even want to think about the defensive array that thing has. If you fly straight into it, you might as well shoot yourselves right now, and save everybody the trouble.”
Stockton was mad, enraged at the losses his people had suffered coming through the enemy’s escort line. Part of that fury was directed at his pilots—especially the newbs who clearly hadn’t listened well enough when he’d pounded the idea of evasive flight plans into their heads. He hadn’t had time to review the formation statuses closely enough to be sure, but he figured a large percentage of the losses had been among those raw recruits. That had been inevitable, to a point, but he’d trained the new squadrons, repeated his lessons ruthlessly, ran them through endless exercises. He’d let himself believe his tireless efforts would cut down on the horrifying losses among the green pilots, and he was furious at the realization that almost none of it seemed to have accomplished anything.
There was more to his fury, though. He was pushing his own guilt away…and onto the rookies. He had ordered the ships doubled loaded with bombs, all of them, and he knew very well the reduced maneuverability had affected the loss ratios. He would punish himself later for that, but in that moment, he was taking it out on his pilots.
“Stay sharp. We’ve got to hit that thing hard. And I mean hard!” He kicked up his thrust to maximum power even as he finished speaking, blasting his ship out well in front of the formation. It was dangerous, foolhardy even, to expose himself so far out, alone in the front, but his wings had never faced a more important fight, and he wanted them to see their leader taking them in.
Morale would be crucial in the coming moments. He needed his pilots to stay focused, even as they endured the withering fire he knew was coming. Colossus was immense. He had no idea how many hits it would take to seriously damage it, or to destroy it.
Or if his wings could even take the thing down.
And it was just a guess how much anti-fighter firepower the behemoth packed.
His eyes darted down to his controls, checking quickly on the distance to the target. He could only speculate on the range of the Colossus’s defensive batteries, but he figured the shit could hit the fan just about any time.
He was focused, however, and he had managed to keep his fear and uncertainty mostly at bay. Still, the slickness inside his flight suit and the row of beaded sweat along his forehead suggested his efforts hadn’t been entirely successful.
He’d seen the video Captain Pilson and his people had brought back, and he’d reviewed Anya Fritz’s preliminary range and power estimates on Colossus’s main weapons. He was no expert on capital ship power comparisons, but what he did know left little doubt.
That thing would savage the fleet if it got into range.
He tried to tell himself an all-out attack by the combined force of battleships might succeed, but he didn’t really believe it. And such a sacrificial assault, even if, through some miracle, it succeeded, would leave the Hegemony fleet untouched and ready to move forward virtually unopposed.
He had to destroy the monster ship, and he had to do it now. Even if he did, the fleet faced a deadly fight against the enemy battle line. With Colossus still in the mix, the fight would be over before it began.
“With me, all of you. Kick up forward thrust to full. We’re going right through the defensive envelope…and then we’re going to show that thing just what bombers can do.”
* * *
Ilius stood in the center of Colossus’s control room. The space was vast, and his command staff occupied less than half of it. Unlike the rambling, unrepaired sections throughout the giant vessel, the bridge had been fully updated, and rows of sparkling Hegemony workstations, both occupied and unoccupied, sat in serried ranks.
There were more than five thousand bombers closing on his ship, and veteran that he was, Ilius couldn’t help but feel a coldness inside. He’d faced too many Rim attack wings, seen firsthand just what they had done, even to the large and powerful battleships of the Hegemony line.
The escorts had done well, about on par with his expectations, and Colossus’s point defense array would slice even deeper into the enemy formations. But bombers were difficult to target with ship-mounted weapons, and he knew thousands of them would get through any barrage, however well-executed.
Any enemy that closed to close attach range faced their own challenges, of course. Colossus was immense, and its armor dwarfed anything he’d seen on another warship. The enemy’s bombs and torpedoes, which had so savaged the Hegemony’s battleships in past fights, would have a much harder time drawing blood.
But the incoming strike force was vast. Ilius didn’t know if even Colossus could stand up to that kind of assault on its own, if the vast belts of imperial alloy in the armor could withstand such enormous numbers of warheads slamming into the hull.
And he wasn’t going to find out. Not this time.
Project Zed had been in the works for decades, its deployment to the Rim War just happenstance. But Ilius had something else, something devised purely for use against the Rim dwellers. Something that would change the course of the war, perhaps no less than Colossus itself.
He stood stone still, wishing he could contact Chronos, that he could shift the burden of the momentous orders to the fleet’s supreme commander. Ilius had never been one to shirk from responsibility, but he knew the stakes in the campaign that had just begun, and he was well aware of the importance of the new weapon, one with great promise, but also one that was untested.
But tested or not, it was time. Time to unleash Red Storm.
He turned toward the tactical station, his eyes cold, focused. “Kiloron, activate Red Storm.”
“Yes, Commander.”
Ilius took a deep breath, his mind wandering, deep within Colossus, to the sections now spurring into frenzied action. He understood the gravity of the orders he’d just given, and the importance of what was about to happen.
His eyes moved back to the display, to the hordes of enemy bombers still moving directly for Colossus.
Yes…it is time.
* * *
“Admiral…I think my scanners are malfunctioning.” Alicia Covington’s voice was halting, shaky. In all the combats he’d fought with her, Stockton had never detected the slightest fear in her.
Until that moment.
He looked down at his own scanner as he replied. “Captain, I don’t know what’s happening with your scanners, but this thing’s so damned big, you should be…” His voice stopped cold.
There was something on his screen, too. Something unknown, unexpected.
His hands moved over the controls, increasing power to the scanners and engaging the AI. Something was appearing next to Colossus. Had there been some kind of ships tucked behind, more escorts hiding in the great vessel’s shadow?
No…they’re not big enough. They almost look like…
His blood froze.
He lurched back, sitting rigid like a statue, unable to pull his eyes from his screen as his hands raced across his controls.
No…no, it can’t be…
“Admiral…” Covington again, but a few seconds later Timmons came on the line as well.
“Raptor, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Dirk Timmons was another hardcore veteran, perhaps the best pilot on the Rim after Stockton. But in that instant, he sounded like a rookie fresh out of flight school, shaken and uncertain.
Stockton’s comm pinged again, half a dozen times, then a dozen…wing commanders, squadron leaders, worried pilots all trying to reach him, to tell him what he already knew.
What he was struggling to face, to accept.
Then his hand moved down to the controls, and he flipped the comm to the general frequency.
“All squadrons, break off at once. Decelerate at full and come around to head back to the fleet.”
But even as he said the words, he knew it was too late. His bombers were coming in at better than five thousand kilometers per second. Even at full thrust, they’d be almost on top of Colossus before they managed to reverse their vectors.
But he didn’t know what else to do, so he just repeated the orders.
“All squadrons, abort. Repeat, abort. Return to base at maximum thrust.”
Even as he spoke, his eyes were fixed, immovable, locked on the small screen.
Watching fighters pouring out of Colossus.
Row after row of fighters, hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Chapter Fifteen
Planet Calpharon
Sigma Nordlin IV
Year of Renewal 266 (321 AC)
Akella walked down the hallway that connected the section of the massive palace that contained her quarters with the wing that housed her offices. She was dressed casually, neither in her uniform, nor the formal suit she often wore to work. Akella had never subscribed to the idea that she should dress how society expected, behave how she was supposed to behave. She’d exhibited that rebellious streak in a number of ways since she’d ascended to the position of the Hegemony’s Number One, nowhere more profoundly than in her disregard for what most people considered her obligation to bear five or six, or more, children. That had been less a deliberate refusal than the result of the pressures of her office, but she’d still heard her fair share of complaints about it—and ignored them all. That, at least, was an important matter, at the core of the Hegemony’s purpose to sustain and advance strong genetic lines. The clothing she wore in her own palace was not. Anyone who was going to object to her rushing to deal with an emergency without first dressing as some expected of Number One of the Hegemony could shove it hard and deep.
She was being followed, as always, by her inseparable guards, and she knew better than to try to convince them she was safe enough in the palace. They were elite Kriegeri, sworn to defend her with their lives, and they took that vow very seriously.
She’d been spending less time with her staff attending to affairs of state in the months since she’d returned from the Rim. That was natural enough, of course, since she’d given birth less than four months before, to her second child, and from the confluence of her age and the events closing in on her, very possibly her last. There were scientific methods, of course, ways to extend her fertility, but Hegemonic law outright banned most such procedures. The rules of the Hegemony were rooted in an acute awareness of the mistakes of the past, and the terrible consequences they had visited on mankind. Genetic engineering of any kind, save only for careful selection of pairs for natural conception, violated the most sacred of Hegemonic laws. Such practices, allowed to spiral wildly out of control, had come close to exterminating humanity, and the society Akella led was dedicated above all to preventing the horrors of the past from recurring.
But post-pregnancy and the desire to spend time with her newborn had been only one of her reasons she had embraced an increased level of seclusion. She had others.
Her visit to the Rim front had left her profoundly shaken. She had presided, during her years as Number One, over a number of minor absorption conflicts, seen a half dozen systems taken into the Hegemony’s all-embracing arms. But she had never even imagined anything remotely like the nightmare on the Rim. She’d read all the reports, of course, seen the casualty lists, but seeing the severity of the losses first hand, witnessing the savagery of the fighting…it had left her troubled, and deeply uncertain. The enemy’s surprise attack to reclaim their capital—when she herself had been there—had shaken her confidence that the Hegemony forces would prevail, at least in any kind of reasonable time and at an acceptable cost.
Her uncertainty extended not just about what to do, or how to proceed on the Rim… but also about the very nature of the Hegemony’s most sacred duty. To unite and defend all humanity. To prevent another nightmare like the Great Death.
She’d always believed in that utterly, accepted it as her solemn charge as the ruler of the Hegemony. She was descended, as most Hegemony residents were, from just such a people, inhabitants a system that was invaded and conquered, and then taken into the Hegemonic structure. She had been a child then, but she remembered it all well. There had been no reprisals, no punitive actions against the conquered. Once her people had ceased resistance, they became citizens of the Hegemony, and the ones whose genetic ratings qualified them became Masters, with all the rights and opportunities such individuals possessed anywhere. She herself, had even risen to the highest position, solely on the basis of her genetic rating, with no prejudice whatsoever against her place of birth.
But now she had doubts about the system over which she presided, at least about the compulsion to absorb all other humans. Her world was better off, certainly, as were most of those she could easily name. But how many people could she justify killing in the name of protecting the survivors before such a high sounding calling lost all meaning? How much relentless death and slaughter was too much?
She knew that every battle, every bloody massacre, every Rimdweller sobbing over the loss of a loved one—only increased and hardened the rage and bitterness among those the Hegemony sought to ‘protect.’ How was she going to bring the Rim into the fold, integrate them into Hegemonic society, when her people had become the blackest of enemies in the minds of the populace?
Such thoughts had plagued her since she’d returned, weighing even on her happiness at the birth of her daughter. She wasn’t accustomed to uncertainty, to flat out not knowing what to do, and she found it profoundly disconcerting. All she could do was hope that Colossus was able to break the will of the Rimdwellers and bring a swift end to the war. Perhaps then, the healing could begin. It might be too late for those who’d fought, who’d borne the brunt of the war, to ever integrate fully, but the young would be educated in Hegemonic tradition and law, and raised to be loyal citizens. If it took a generation, even two, to fully absorb the Rim, so be it.
She’d done all she could to aid in that endeavor, ordering Colossus to the Rim, consenting to concessions in the terms Chronos was authorized to offer the Confeds and their allies. The changes were revolutionary, borderline sacrilegious even, and she knew they would cause an outright scandal on Calpharon and among the ruling Council when they became public. But such were the burdens of war, and she would face all of that when it was necessary. If it was necessary.
But just then, she had other problems, concerns that threatened to overwhelm even her worries about the war on the Rim.
The report had been a short one, concise. Successor had entered the capital system, and it was even then moving toward Calpharon. The ship was clearly badly damaged, and it had failed to respond to multiple contact attempts. Akella had ordered it intercepted and boarded at once. Most likely, she suspected, the ship’s silence was the result of a malfunction. It wasn’t the lack of normal communications that bothered her so much as the rest of the damage the ship had clearly taken. No matter how hard she’d tried to explain that to herself, she could only come up with one explanation. One that terrified her.
