The Last Stand Read online

  Wheeler glanced at her comms officer and then back at Etherus.

  “It’s not over yet,” he said, and with that, he faded from sight, vanishing into thin air just as he had appeared.

  Wheeler whirled around to face Lieutenant Sebal. “Have our fleet make a line!” she ordered. “The fastest ships go through first.”

  “Aye, Admiral!”

  “And get the Halcyon to dispatch a wing of fighters for us. I’d rather not go into battle without a fighter screen again.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  Aboard the Etherian Ship, Veritus

  Tyra listened quietly to Etherus’s speech. He’d instructed New Earth and its fleet to hold the wormhole again, but this time from the other side. Lucien was en route to the Forge, on his way to destroy it with whatever sympathetic forces he’d encountered beyond the Red Line.

  “You knew this would happen,” Tyra said.

  Etherus cocked his head, and a small smile graced his lips. “Knew what would happen, Tyra?”

  “You knew Colonel Drask would betray us. You wanted the Faros to cross the Red Line, so you could trap them inside and cut them off from defending the Forge.”

  Etherus inclined his head to that. “Yes.”

  Tyra frowned. “Why wait for a mutiny? Why not just tell us what to do?”

  “The Faros had to believe your resistance and subsequent surrender was real, or else they would have seen the trap.”

  Tyra wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but she decided not to argue about it. It was a waste of time to argue over what they could have done differently. “I guess you want us to join the rest of the fleet at the wormhole.”

  “No.” Etherus shook his head, and suddenly he looked grim. “I want you to know that there’s hope.”

  “What?” Tyra blinked, confused by the sudden change in his tone. “Why so fatalistic?”

  “Because they’re here,” Etherus said, and with that, his presence faded from the bridge.

  An alert chimed somewhere on the bridge, and Tyra spun around to see the holo dome flashing all around them with ships jumping in.

  “Helm, get us out of here!”

  Lieutenant Argos turned from his control station, his dark features drawn with grave lines and his indigo eyes wide with terror. “I can’t. Their jamming fields are overlapping us on all sides. We’re surrounded.”

  * * *

  Aboard the Separatist Fleet

  Lucien stepped through a pair of massive doors onto the bridge of the sphere ship. More crab-like guards swiveled to face them as they walked through. Dead ahead lay a vast, curving holoscreen, littered with windows and panels of data floating over a backdrop of stars. Abaddon sat in the center of the bridge, at what was apparently the only control station. His hands danced in the air in front of the screen, as if he were conducting a symphony. As he did so, the data rearranged itself, with some windows minimizing, and others appearing to take their place.

  They approached his control station together, and Abaddon swiveled his chair to face them. “Good, you are here. We’re just about to execute our final jump to reach the Forge.”

  Garek nodded to the curving holoscreen. “And what are we supposed to do? Stand here and watch?”

  “If you like. I thought you might appreciate an update,” Abaddon replied.

  At that, the doors of the bridge slid shut, sealing them inside. Lucien turned and saw that the crab-like guards had stayed inside the doors. Making sure I don’t renege on my end of the deal?

  Looking away, Lucien nodded to Abaddon. “I’m ready.”

  “Good,” Abaddon replied. “Executing jump...”

  The stars on the holoscreen flashed white, and when they returned, Lucien saw a luminous, translucent golden cube in the center of the display. “Is that the Forge?” he asked, pointing to it.

  “Yes,” Abaddon replied. He waved his hands at the holoscreen, and suddenly the stars and the Forge were crowded out by thousands of pairs of red brackets, each one denoting the location of an enemy ship.

  “That’s a large fleet...” Addy said.

  “Those are just the ships in range of us,” Abaddon replied. He waved his hands again, and suddenly it was hard to see through all of the red. “That’s all of them.”

  “There must be tens of thousands of them!” Garek said. “You only have sixty-seven ships. There’s no way we can win this.”

  “Sixty-seven very large ships, plus supporting vessels,” Abaddon corrected.

  The bracket pairs diminished in number, once again focusing only on the ones in range of their guns. A second later, hundreds of bright blue lasers shot out to all sides, vectoring in on three of the enemy ships.

  Those ships answered, firing back with an equal number of red lasers. Lucien blinked against the glare and watched tiny clouds of silver specks swarm out toward the enemy fleet—friendly fighter squadrons, he realized—followed by larger supporting vessels.

  The battle is on, Lucien thought. “We should call for reinforcements from our people,” he said, turning to Abaddon. “How far are we from the Red Line?”

  “Close enough, but comms can’t penetrate the Red Line,” Abaddon replied.

  “Right.” Lucien grimaced, remembering that restriction.

  “We might have ships waiting outside the Red Line to hear us,” Garek said. “We have to at least try contacting them.”

  “Even if you do make contact, they’ll never arrive in time to help us. It took us a week to get here, and my vessels can calculate quantum jumps a lot faster than most of yours.”

  “The Lost Fleet is fast enough to make it here,” Addy said.

  “The lost...?”

  “A fleet of a thousand Etherian ships we found out here in Farosien space.”

  “Aha,” Abaddon replied.

  “They can calculate a billion light years per day,” Addy said.

  “Then they’ll still arrive in a week,” Abaddon replied. “They are no faster than my ships. By then this battle will already be decided one way or the other.”

  Lucien fidgeted, his hands clenching and un-clenching with restless energy as he watched the battle unfold. Their fighters met the enemy’s fighters and lit up the void with needle-thin lasers and streaking missiles. Thumb-sized explosions flowered, peppering the darkness with fire.

  “There has to be something we can do,” Garek said.

  “There is,” Abaddon replied. “You can let me concentrate.”

  Chapter 26

  Aboard the Etherian Ship, Veritus

  “What do you think you are doing?” Tyra demanded. “We surrendered.”

  “Drop your shields and power down your engines,” Abaddon replied. His glowing blue gaze was sharp and filled with deadly intent.

  “What for?” Tyra asked, still playing dumb.

  “We’re coming aboard. You and your crew are now prisoners of war,” he replied, his teeth flashing white in a predatory sneer.

  “If you don’t honor our surrender, my people will fight to the death.”

  Abaddon shrugged. “That will save me the trouble of executing them.”

  Tyra bristled. “Is that what we can look forward to if we stand down and allow ourselves to be captured? Execution?”

  “That depends on your god. He can either save you, or he can save himself and his precious city. Now lower your shields, or we’ll lower them for you.”

  Tyra considered letting Abaddon make good on that threat, but it was too risky. Her ships were badly outnumbered, and too many people would die in the fighting. “What guarantees do we have that you won’t simply kill us, anyway?”

  “None, but you have my guarantee that you will die much sooner if you don’t surrender now. I’ll make an example of your ship and destroy it.”

  Tyra took a deep breath. “Very well. We’ll lower our shields.”

  Abaddon smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. I’ll see you soon.”

  With that, his face disappeared from the h
olo dome, and Tyra dropped her gaze to address her crew. All of them were already looking to her, their eyes wide and expressions uncertain.

  “Engineering—drop our shields. Helm, kill the engines.”

  “Aye, ma’am...” Lieutenant Argos reluctantly replied from the helm. Shades of his reluctance were mirrored on each of the other crew member’s faces.

  Tyra met each of their gazes in turn. “Etherus told us there’s hope, that all we have to do is buy time. So let’s do that, and let’s hold onto that hope. I don’t think these Faros know yet that the Forge is in danger. No signals can get through the interdiction field, so unless new ships come through the wormhole carrying news of the assault with them, the Faros’ entire fleet will remain oblivious to the threat. The longer it takes for news to reach them, the longer our fleet will have to get through the wormhole and defend it from the other side.”

  Heads bobbed, and a few officers murmured their agreement, but Lieutenant Teranik wasn’t so easily convinced. She spoke up from the comms station: “What if Abaddon starts executing us to prove his intentions to Etherus? None of us have resurrection data anymore. We won’t be coming back if we die.”

  “Discussing options here is pointless. We don’t actually have a choice,” Lieutenant Argos said quietly from the helm. “You heard him. We either allow ourselves to be captured and hope Abaddon takes his time executing us, or he’ll destroy the Veritus now, and we’ll all die anyway. We have to trust that Etherus has a plan. Maybe he can resurrect us from our souls?”

  Tyra grimaced. That was a long shot, and she still wasn’t convinced that they even had souls. “We should all be there to greet the Faros when they come aboard.” Nodding to the ship’s sensor operator, she went on, “Figure out which hangar they’re headed for and get ready to meet them there.”

  “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Lieutenant Argos you have the conn. I’m going to see my children. Let me know which hangar to meet you all in.”

  “Aye,” Argos replied from the helm.

  Tyra turned and strode for the stairs leading down from the bridge. She now regretted her decision to recall Brak with her children. They would have been far better off staying in hiding with him aboard that shuttle.

  Regret is a hole in the head, she thought. Hindsight wasn’t going to do her any good now. Maybe she could hide them away somewhere on board the ship so that the Faros wouldn’t find them.

  Tyra nodded to herself as she breezed through the doors of the bridge. At this point that was their best chance, but if Atara really was still infected with Abaddon’s consciousness, then she might give away their hiding place.

  She’d have to split her children up and take Atara with her to meet the Faros, but then Atara would know that Theola and Brak were missing, and she’d give them away.

  Tyra’s heart felt heavy as she left the bridge. Surely Etherus wouldn’t allow her children to be executed by the Faros. He had to have some larger plan in all of this, some way to prevent the loss of innocent life.

  Despite her lifelong skepticism toward humanity’s benevolent ruler, Tyra now found herself hoping and praying that he really was the deity he claimed to be, because only a real god could save them now.

  * * *

  The Lost Etherian Fleet

  Admiral Wheeler’s ship was one of the first in her fleet to go through the wormhole, since she couldn’t command the fleet without at least being in comms contact. Fortunately, the other side of the wormhole remained clear until the first hundred of her ships were through. Unfortunately, the first Faro fleet that arrived on approach to the wormhole had more than twice as many ships as her own.

  The Faros barreled on toward her, unconcerned by Admiral Wheeler’s presence, but as more of her ships piled through the wormhole, adding to her numbers and tipping the balance of power in her favor, her comms panel lit up with an incoming message.

  “We’re being hailed, Admiral,” Roth Sebal announced from the comms.

  “I see it. Put it up on the holo dome.” Wheeler replied.

  One of the Abaddon clones appeared. “I was told that you had surrendered,” he said.

  “Strange...” Wheeler replied, shaking her head. “That doesn’t sound like something I would do.”

  “You are blocking our way. Either you move your vessels, or they will be destroyed.”

  “May I suggest a third course of action?” Wheeler asked.

  “And that would be?”

  “Go frek yourself.”

  Abaddon’s eyes flashed, and Wheeler abruptly ended the connection from her end. A self-satisfied smirk graced her lips, and she nodded to her new first officer and gunnery chief, Major Calla Ward. “Ready weapons,” she said.

  “Aye,” Ward replied. “Standing by to reach firing range.”

  It took fully half an hour for the two fleets to reach weapons range, by which point Wheeler had almost all of her ships through the wormhole.

  Now the Faros were badly outnumbered. She watched their ships explode one after another on the battle grid as lasers and missiles streaked between the two fleets. Her ships’ shields were far stronger, and this time she had a fighter screen, so she was able to rotate the smaller vessels behind her lines when their shields weakened.

  At some point the Faros’ strategy changed from fighting a war of attrition to making a suicide run through her formation to get to the wormhole.

  “What are they doing?” Wheeler wondered aloud, shaking her head. Even if they got through to the other side, they’d just be destroyed by New Earth’s facets and fleet. They had to know that, so why were they making a mad dash for the wormhole?

  The Faro ships raced ahead at full throttle, heedless of the fact that they were outnumbered and flying ever deeper into her formation. She watched her battleships and dreadnoughts cut down six ships simultaneously while another ten raced by, just seconds from reaching the wormhole.

  Then, suddenly, Wheeler realized what they were after: they must have learned about the threat to the Forge, and now they wanted to cross the wormhole so that they could get a message through to the rest of their fleet and call for reinforcements.

  “Concentrate fire on the lead ships!” Wheeler said. “We don’t want any of them getting through.”

  Even if they did, it would still take the Faros’ fleet half a day to get back from the Holy City, and by then all of New Earth’s forces would be through. It would be too late to stop them from bottling the Faros inside the Red Line.

  Admiral Wheeler gave a predatory smile, watching as the lead ships in the enemy fleet were cut down before they could enter the wormhole.

  “Nice try,” she murmured.

  “Admiral, we’re being hailed by the Derringer,” Lieutenant Sebal said from the comms.

  “One of ours...?” Wheeler asked, already scanning her displays to locate the ship.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Patch them through to the holo dome.”

  “Aye.”

  A split second later, a harried looking man appeared, wearing a black with white trim Captain’s uniform. “Yes?”

  “Admiral, we have an urgent message from the Halcyon. The facets of New Earth can’t cross the wormhole. The throat is too narrow.”

  Wheeler felt her eyes widen with that revelation. There were half a million facets, and each of them was home to hundreds of millions of people. If they couldn’t get them to safety, this entire plan was bust. Surely Etherus didn’t mean for them to leave all of their civilians at Abaddon’s mercy in order to keep the Faros from sending their fleets to defend the Forge...

  “Have they tried contacting Etherus?”

  “They’re working on it, but there’s been no reply, and there is some concern that the Faros will eavesdrop on our comms. If they do...”

  “They might find out what we’re up to and come running to stop us,” Wheeler supplied.

  The captain of the Derringer nodded.

  Wheeler shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if they f
ind out. They’re half a day from the wormhole and the Red Line, and besides, if Etherus drops the interdiction field for us, we can jump our entire fleet across in a matter of seconds, facets and all.”

  “Surely Etherus already knows that,” the captain of the Derringer replied.

  “Surely...” Wheeler agreed. So why hasn’t he dropped the interdiction field? Or appeared again to tell us he’s about to do so? A moment later, she answered her own question. “If he drops the interdiction field now, the Faros inside the Red Line will find out that the Forge is under attack, and they’ll all come running. He’s trying to buy us some extra time.”

  The captain of the Derringer nodded. “That’s what the High Praetor suggested.”

  “Timing is everything. We have to trust that Etherus will drop the interdiction field when the timing is right.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A flash of light drew Wheeler’s gaze back to the battle grid, and she saw another Faro fleet appear to reinforce the last one. This time Wheeler’s fleet was outnumbered. She looked back up to the holo dome with a grimace and said, “Form up, Captain. We’ve got company.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” he replied.

  Chapter 27

  Aboard the Etherian Ship, Veritus

  Tyra stood with her entire ship’s crew in the Veritus’s starboard amidships hangar bay, watching as a procession of just three Faros approached. One of them wore gray robes and a glowing golden crown, marking him as one of the Abaddons, while the other two sported bald blue heads and black robes. Elementals, Tyra decided with an accompanying frown. They’d boarded her ship with just three Faros to take more than a hundred humans prisoner. This was yet another symptom of the Faros’ arrogance.

  As per Tyra’s orders, none of her crew were armed, which was a good thing, since someone might have taken the fact that they outnumbered the Faros so badly as an invitation to resist. Even bare-handed as they were, that was a risk, Tyra realized, as she glanced around at the belligerent expressions on the faces of the officers and Marines standing behind her.