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18

Forty minutes later Clement was stepping back onto the deck of the Corvallis with Pomeroy in tow. Below him on the planet’s surface, Colonel Lubrov was already getting her settlers out of the bunkers and into the mountain cavern as fast as she could. The base of the hillside had literally opened up, and the opening was so large that they could fit virtually any of their equipment that was mobile inside. It was a movement of tremendous scale; people rushing for shelter, carrying anything they could on their backs. It reminded Clement of a story he had once read as a child about the people of Israel rushing across a sea of water that threatened to envelope them at any moment.

The transports, though, had no real way of taking shelter inside, so Clement ordered their crews back aboard and into space, sending them deeper into the star system and down to the ground on the planet Alphus. If they had any hope of ever getting the settlers safely out of the Trinity system they would have to have those transports.

What was left of his battle fleet was still in orbit over Bellus. It consisted of his two flagship light cruisers, the Corvallis and Yangtze, the lone destroyer Titus, and the three remaining gunships, Antietam, Choctaw, and the Knoxville. His battlecruiser, Agamemnon, was struggling with every orbit to stay afloat. Localized fires had been breaking out more frequently than anticipated and Captain Yan had been forced to evacuate her crew more quickly then she had hoped. It had left them shorthanded, but Clement didn’t know the depth of the crisis until he talked to the Agamemnon’s captain.

“Raise Captain Yan,” he ordered. Pomeroy responded with an affirmative. When he had come aboard Clement had named Corvallis his new flagship, and had regretfully relieved Captain Samkange from his duty as her commanding officer. Samkange would now be serving as his XO, and Clement had brought his own crew from the Beauregard to take the main bridge positions. It wasn’t anything against the Corvallis’ original bridge crew, it was just his own preference to have people he was familiar with in key positions. He also sent Nobli and Tech Reck down to take over the engine room.

When Yan came on the crackly com line, her voice sounded both weary and stressed.

“Admiral,” she said, “I am quite literally fighting fires over here. So if you called for a pep talk . . .”

“I didn’t, Captain. Situation report, please.”

There was a pause and he could hear Yan yelling orders in the background to fire relief crews. Then she came back online. “I’ve got a fire two decks down, Admiral, and it is quite literally out of control. Our situation is critical. Batteries are quickly depleting, and will go under twenty percent power in the next thirty minutes. We’ve managed to get about thirty-five percent of our weapons and ammunition off of the ship, including all the nukes, but the rest is not in my opinion safe anymore. If you bring ships in to dock with us they are as likely to get blown up by our own weapons exploding in the fires as they are by any enemy they may face in the coming hours.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Captain.” Clement took in a deep breath before giving his next orders. “I believe we have done all we can do without risking more lives. Therefore, Captain Yan, I am ordering you to abandon your ship with all possible speed. How many crew do you have left on board?”

“By my best count about one hundred twenty, including the fire crews.”

“Do you have enough escape pods left for all of those sailors?”

“Yes, sir. Most of the crew were able to get off via shuttle transport or are already on board other ships. We’re just down to the bare minimum now.”

“Get your fire crews off right now. Ask your engineers to hold off until the last possible minute. We need to keep those engines running while we collect your crew. I’m also ordering you to take the captain’s shuttle and transport yourself over to the Corvallis with immediate effect.”

“With all due respect, sir, I request permission to stay aboard—”

“Denied.”

“Sir—”

“Denied, Captain. You’re the most important person on that ship. I want you off as soon as we break communication, then I want you on board the Corvallis in ten minutes.”

“Admiral—”

“Yan, we may have to nuke the Agamemnon.”

“Sir . . .” she said, hesitating at that news.

“She’ll be coming around to the light side of the planet in thirty-four minutes. At that time she’ll represent a danger to the planet, and the natives, below. We have multiple nuclear reactors aboard her, and we can’t risk her going down in populated areas. We’ll have to take her out while she’s still on the dark side of the planet, which means we have about nineteen minutes to collect your people and make sure she goes to ground in a safe place. Do you understand your orders, Captain?”

She didn’t respond for a moment, then, “I will see you in ten minutes, Admiral.”

“Good luck, Captain.”

She was good to her word and was on the bridge of the Corvallis nine minutes later. He greeted her with a hug of condolence. “I’m sorry, Yan. I know this isn’t how you wanted your first command to end.”

“No, it isn’t, but we gave them hell, all we had, and we took plenty of them out before they got us.” He pulled back and he looked at her. Her face had smoke stains and smudges on it, her hair was tousled about her head, and her uniform was covered in grease and tiny tears. It was clear she’d been fighting some of the fires herself. Absently, he thought she had never looked more beautiful, but that wasn’t a thought he had time to dwell on. Captain Samkange offered to relinquish the XO’s position to her, but she declined and took an empty chair near the environmental station. She’d be there if they needed her, or if Clement asked for her.

When the clock reached seventeen minutes to the light side of the planet, Clement had the rescue of the escape pods suspended. There was no more time, and all of the escape pods seemed to have been accounted for. Clement asked Samkange to get a count of the crew recovered, then turned his attention to the sagging battlecruiser. Agamemnon was deorbiting much more rapidly than before. There was no engine crew to fight fires and man the propulsion. She was sinking like a broken old sea liner going down below the ocean waters of Earth. The projections showed her crash into the planet at a good one hundred thirty kilometers into the light side of Bellus, which they could not allow. There was a very good chance her nuclear materials would spread upon impact and poison both the land and the people below. He had to act now.

“Helmsman,” he said to Mika Ori formally, “lock missiles onto the Agamemnon.”

“Aye, sir,” she said, with more than a bit of sadness in her voice. Clement called down to the missile room, making sure they had loaded two nuclear-tipped missiles into the launch tubes. It might have been overkill considering the condition of Agamemnon, but he couldn’t really take the chance she would go down in a populated area. He ordered firing control locked in to his console.

“Stand to orders,” he said, and all the crew on the bridge rose to attention. The main view display showed the Agamemnon listing and burning. She was dying, and Clement had to help her on her way. “Present arms!” The bridge crew raised their hands in salute.

Clement’s hand reached down to the firing icon. “Fire,” he said, while depressing the icon.

The two missiles launched out of the port and starboard launch tubes of the Corvallis. It took them a good ten seconds to reach their target, which was agonizing to watch. The crew all held their salutes to the end. When it came, there was a blinding flash of orange and white light as Agamemnon disintegrated in the nuclear heat of the exploding warheads.

The fire remained for only a few seconds before small pieces of the once great battlecruiser fell, streaking into the atmosphere, burning up as they went.

“All hands, return to stations.”

Then he sat down in his command chair, and sighed heavily.


By this time the tactical screens had shown the Solar League fleet in motion, diving in toward Bellus at a high angle of inclination. This attack pattern indicated that they would sweep down on the planet at rapid speed, scattering any remaining ships in their path. Clement had no intention of leaving any of his ships over Bellus, and he had already ordered Captain Son in the Yangtze and the sole remaining destroyer Titus, plus the ten grounded transports to the orbit of the inner habitable planet of Alphus. There they were to maintain orbit until they were either confronted by the enemy or their surrender was demanded. In the latter case, he had left orders that they were to surrender unconditionally, with no loss of life risked. Clement himself had stayed aboard Corvallis in a last stand defense over the planet below. They still had four nuclear warheads and he intended to use them if he had to, even if that wouldn’t change the ultimate outcome at all. All he could do was to hope the nukes could slow the incoming enemy down and give Mary and the Trinity natives time to reactivate the planetary defense grid.

What was clear, though, was that the enemy fleet had rallied without its ostensible commander, Elara DeVore. Her shuttle was still alone along its preset course to the gas planet Trinity-6, where a small contingent of support craft had been left behind by the attacking fleet. The main formation of the fleet had, in fact, already passed DeVore’s position, and by now they had surely shared communications. The answer to Clement’s overture to the Solar League was evident in their actions. They were planning to take Bellus by force, and whatever influence DeVore had over the fleet was now clearly gone. The Ark ship was in the midst of the fleet, protected on all sides by her heavy cruisers. When they arrived over Bellus he expected a demand for their immediate surrender, and Clement would give it to them if only to save lives. But the fact was they would probably end up becoming slaves of the Solar League, no longer having the choice of free will over their own lives.

The only chance Clement could see for a positive outcome was if Mary was able to get the planetary defense system back online. It was barely three hours now until forward units of the enemy fleet arrived, and an hour before that Mary would have to make her life-altering decision of merging with the planetary artificial intelligence in order to activate the defense grid. And even if she was able to do that, there was no guarantee she could complete the repairs in time to stop the Solar League takeover of Trinity and the enslavement of all of her children, native and migrant alike.

Clement gathered his command crew in the Corvallis’ conference room for one last strategy session. When everyone was seated Clement started in immediately. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have four nuclear warheads left and only this ship to protect Bellus and its people. I can think of only one strategy, and admittedly that is no winning strategy, it’s only a rearguard action while we get our transports safely to Alphus. I want your opinions, and none of you are allowed to keep those to yourself. If you have any ideas, any thoughts at all, I want to hear them and that is an order,” he said.

He shifted his weight in his chair, trying to get comfortable, but nothing could make that happen under the conditions they faced. He started in again. “My current plan is to take Corvallis out toward the enemy fleet and unload our four nukes at them, then retreat as swiftly as we can. I’ve identified what appear to be three heavy cruisers that by configuration look like they would be command and control ships. If that is, in fact, the case it’s possible we could knock out enough of their communications to confuse them for a while.”

Yan spoke first. “How long is ‘a while,’ Admiral?”

“My estimate is twenty to thirty minutes.”

“And what would that time buy us?”

“Time to retreat back to Bellus, disembark our command staff on the last shuttle, and for Corvallis to then retreat and join the remaining ships in orbit around Alphus.”

“With all due respect, sir, Corvallis wants to stay in orbit here, defending the camp,” cut in Captain Samkange.

“I appreciate that, Captain, but my orders are for you to join the other ships. We need to protect those transports, as it’s possible the enemy may allow the migrant settlers to leave at some point in the future. We’ll need those ships and at least one of your cruisers with a LEAP drive to make that trip home.”

“But what if they attack Bellus with full forces? Should we quietly surrender to them then?”

“In that case, Captain, if you see Bellus being attacked, your orders will be to take your remaining ships, including the transports, exit the Trinity system and return home to Kemmerine at best possible speed.”

Samkange was uncomfortable with this strategy, and it showed in his posture as he turned to face Clement more directly. “Sir, I have to protest this course of action. Those settlers came here because they couldn’t survive in the Five Suns anymore. They have no other home.”

“If we take the transports away—” started Mika Ori.

Clement cut in. “The simple fact is that we don’t have time to get them off the planet or I would send them all back now. The choice between returning home or being slaves of the Solar League here at Trinity doesn’t seem to be much of a choice.”

At that Hassan Nobli spoke up from the far end of the table. “There is one more possibility, Admiral, but it’s not a pleasant one.”

Clement shifted in his chair. “I’m open to hear it, Hassan.”

Nobli started in, very slowly and deliberately. “This ship has a functioning LEAP reactor. As far as we know an active LEAP reactor is the most powerful potential weapon in the universe.”

Clement cut him off right there. “This ship is not equipped to use a LEAP reactor in that way. The Beauregard was the only ship in the fleet equipped with the MAD capability.”

“You’re right, Jared, but I wasn’t thinking of using the reactor the same way as we used it on the Beauregard.”

Clement hesitated a moment before answering. “Then spill it, Engineer,” he said.

“We know from the Beauregard’s destruction that releasing LEAP energy into normal space can create a massively destructive reaction. If we were to use the Corvallis for this purpose, it’s quite possible her reactor explosion could be large enough to destroy the entire enemy fleet.”

“And likely half the planet,” said Yan sharply.

Nobli eyed her over the top of his glasses. “From the Beauregard’s explosion we can determine that the blast range of a cracked reactor is about 0.0025 AUs. Now, that’s not very much in terms of the space between the Trinity planets, which as we know are packed in tight together. In fact, if we get far enough away from Bellus we’ll have plenty of room to make sure the planets stay safe, but it would certainly be a big enough explosion to completely destroy their fleet in the current configuration they are in. The rub, however, is we would have to get moving now in order to meet the enemy fleet and execute this maneuver out in ‘safe’ space.”

“So we’d be committing suicide,” said Yan. Nobli merely nodded his head in response. She turned to Clement. “Admiral, you can’t possibly be considering this course of action.”

Clement looked around the room at each of their faces. Young or old, he could tell by looking into their eyes that they were all committed, and that they would follow his orders, even to their deaths. That was not a path he was willing to take.

“I’ve been in wars before. I’ve seen many people die, most of them at my command. I’m not prepared to ask this crew or these settlers to take any such risk. We’ve already lost one of our most precious young souls in Kayla Adebayor. I’m not willing to sacrifice any more. This idea is rejected. I’d like any additional thoughts on my initial proposal of action.”

Ivan Massif cleared his throat before speaking up. “Sir, have you considered that your rearguard action might actually make things worse? Possibly angering the Solar League people to the point that they seek retribution from among our settlers, our ships, or even the natives?”

“That’s a possibility we would have to weigh against what we would gain by delaying them.”

Yan spoke up again. “I’m just not sure why exactly we’re trying to gain a little bit of time in exchange for possibly angering the enemy to the point that they take it out on us or our people. And by our people I mean all of us, including the natives.”

Clement looked down at his wristwatch. “In another forty-five minutes the native woman Mary will have reached a point where she has determined that the planetary defense systems cannot be repaired by ‘external’ means. I’m trying to buy her as much time as I can, and maybe a little extra, before she’s forced to take her next steps.”

“Which are?” All the faces at the table turned toward Clement then.

“Merging her body, and her consciousness, with the planetary AI in order to conduct the repairs. Based on her timeline, she would need about two hours from the beginning of that process to reboot the planetary defense system and put it into operation.”

“If she has to do it, then she has to do it, right?”

Clement looked directly at Yan. “I don’t think you understand, Captain. If she does this it can never be reversed. She will become one with the Machine, and she will lose her consciousness, her very being, forever. For however long she lives, she will cease to be herself, and be only the Machine.”

Yan and Clement locked eyes.

“Then let me be the first to propose that we abandon the rearguard attack plan based on the possibility that it will anger our opponents, who have an overwhelming military advantage over us,” she said. “And let Mary make her own decision about defending her planet. After all, it is hers much more than it is ours.”

“True enough.” Clement looked around the table one last time. “Are there any of you who disagree with Captain Yan’s proposal to abandon the nuclear rearguard action?” Again, looking from face to face he could find no hint of disagreement among them. It was clear; they all wanted to minimize bloodshed and protect as many of the civilians as they could.

“I’ll take that as consensus,” stated Clement, “and although I am the commander of this mission and have full authority to act on my own, I acknowledge your experience and your wisdom in this matter. We will stand down and hope that the planetary defense grid can be reactivated by the native Mary. In lieu of that happening, I will send out a longwave communication toward the enemy fleet, indicating our surrender and asking them to give quarter to all our ships at the planet Alphus.”

He stood up and they joined him. “It has been an honor serving with each and every one of you. I now turn command of this vessel back over to its captain, Harry Samkange. I and the rest of my crew from both the Beauregard and the Agamemnon will return to the planet’s surface on the shuttle to lend whatever assistance we can to the transition. Thank you all, and may God bless you,” he said.


Fifteen minutes later and Clement had finished conveying the unconditional surrender of the Five Suns fleet to the Solar League ships. Even with the four-minute delay taken into account, he didn’t wait for a response, and none came. He, Yan, and Mika were the last to board the shuttle, which Ori quickly detached from the Corvallis on its way down to the surface of Bellus. In the back the rest of his crew sat quiet and unhappy, but he could do nothing to cheer their spirits.

Captain Samkange moved his ship off toward Alphus as quickly as he could go. As the transport shuttle fell from the sky, Clement wondered if he should have sent the Navy ships at Alphus back home immediately to warn Kemmerine that an invading force from Earth had taken the Trinity system. It would likely make little difference if the Solar League decided to attack, as he had essentially left Kemmerine Station undefended with his expedition. Any attempt to take the station by the Solar League fleet would be unstoppable.

As he stared out a porthole in the pilot’s nest, Yan, still dressed in her tattered uniform, unbuckled her safety belt and pulled herself across the cabin (in zero-g) to eventually sit next to him and buckle herself in again. She sat with him silently for a few moments as he continued to stare out the window, hand to his chin.

“There really wasn’t much else you could do,” she said quietly. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “This was an unwinnable situation from the beginning. Perhaps we never should have fought in the first place.”

Clement finally turned to her. “Oh, I’m convinced fighting was the right thing to do. This Solar League, whatever that actually is, is coming at an unarmed planet at a high rate of speed with the full power of its force bearing down on us. They’ve had my surrender message for thirty minutes now, well beyond the normal time delay, and they’ve said nothing nor made any move to stand down from their attack. It seems to me more and more likely they are determined to sweep our forces and our influence over Trinity completely away from the face of this system. That could mean the harshest possible outcome for our people. We were the only ones that have the technology and the weapons to resist them, unless by some miracle Mary can get the defense grid working again.”

“What do you think the odds are of that happening?”

He looked down at his watch again. “I would say very low. The natives have been at this themselves for the better part of the day with no progress reported. My guess is that the system failed some time ago, and that the Makers either never bothered to return to fix it or they simply don’t exist anymore. They could have been wiped from the galaxy a long time ago, we just don’t know it yet. But pinning the defense of an entire star system on one young girl seems unlikely to give us the positive outcome we want.”

A look of concern came across Yan’s face. “Our people are protected by the Hill Place pyramid now. Do you think we’ll be able to fight them off on the ground?”

Clement shook his head. “I just don’t know. Twelve hundred trained Marines against thousands of heavily armed soldiers with total air superiority, nuclear weapons, and advanced

ground-based vehicles would say otherwise. But while we have time there is always some glimmer of hope.” He leaned back in his couch, closing his eyes then and letting out a large sigh. Whether it was in relief or despair, Yan couldn’t tell. She took his hand in hers and gripped it tightly, then she laid back as well, closing her eyes as the transport rocked and rolled its way to the ground.


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