“We also tried to take her alive,” he concluded. “I didn’t choose your sister’s fate, Commander. She did.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Sanchez demanded. “I don’t know why she did it, but I know you think you had no choice. Don’t know if you did or not. But she was my sister.”
She turned her gaze back to Glass.
“Sir, I did not realize that Roberts would be commanding this mission or I would have already withdrawn,” she said flatly. “I would not be able to separate my personal feelings from the performance of the mission. My remaining on the mission would compromise our efficiency and objectives.
“I will prepare a summary of Chameleon’s status for the Captain to review and then I will retire to my quarters and wait for further orders.”
Sanchez snapped a perfect salute to Rondell and Glass, then walked stiffly out of the conference room.
The three men remained silent for several seconds.
“I was not aware that Sanchez had a sister,” Kyle said quietly. “I can’t blame her.”
“Neither can I, though that leaves us with a massive gap in your roster,” Rondell admitted. “We already needed a CAG and a tactical officer for you. I guess we now need an executive officer as well.”
“Let me dig into my contacts,” Chameleon’s Captain-designate replied. “Is there anything else I need to keep in mind right off the bat?”
“Chameleon has almost no munitions aboard, and while the launchers can handle ours, it would undermine the point of the mission to use Federation weapons,” Glass said after a moment’s hesitation. “The pirates who stole her from the Terrans apparently sold off most of her munitions stockpile—she only has one missile per launcher.
“We’ve got a bit more ammunition for the starfighters, but the birds are…well, they’re crap,” the spy admitted. “League sixth-gen birds are closer to our fifth.”
“Great,” Kyle half-groaned. “Please tell me we have a plan for getting some missiles before we go all the way to the heart of the Commonwealth?”
“We do,” Glass confirmed. “But, like most aspects of this operation, we’re keeping it under wraps. I’ll brief you once we’ve left the Castle system.”
“Are you really arguing that I don’t need to know that?” Kyle demanded.
“No, I’m saying you don’t need to know it yet,” the spy replied. “And certainly, for example”—he gestured at the third man in the room—“Captain Rondell doesn’t need to know.
“It’s a covert op, Captain. You’re going to have to get used to a bit more compartmentalization and secrecy than you’re used to. I’d apologize…but we don’t have a choice.
“Terra cannot learn what we’re doing.”
#
Chapter 6
Castle System
09:00 April 28, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Castle Orbit, Station Navy Prime
“What’s the plan looking like for today, Marco?” Wing Commander Russell Rokos asked his minder. The stocky fighter pilot was trying to put a good face on things, but he hated the ringside circus his involvement in the mass rescue at Huī Xing had stuck him in.
Roberts was stuck with the burden of the pyrrhic victory that had followed, but Russell had led the fighter escort that had covered the escape of over a hundred thousand prisoners of war. When those prisoners had started talking to their command structures, governments, and families, Russell Rokos had been available for them to make a hero.
“The ambassador for the Renaissance Trade Factor has invited you to a dinner in your honor at the embassy,” Lieutenant Marco Belmonte replied. The tall and slim public relations officer was a stark contrast to Russell’s own stocky shoulders and average height. “That is at thirteen hundred hours Earth Standard, seven PM New Cardiff time. You’re also on schedule to speak to the flight school entry class at twenty hundred ESM.
“We have a shuttle scheduled for your trip down and back up,” he continued. “Everything should run smoothly.”
Russell sighed and nodded.
“Any idea if I have a chance of ever getting back into a starfighter?” he asked.
“Eventually, I would assume your chances are one hundred percent,” Belmonte replied calmly. “Though you must realize this is also valuable to the war effort.”
“I realize that,” the big man grouched. “I just don’t like it.”
His thoughts were interrupted by a ping in his neural implant informing him he’d received a message from one of the people he’d listed as “High Priority—Always Interrupt.”
He absorbed the message, then turned his attention back to Belmonte. As he was a starfighter pilot, Russell’s interfacing capability with the implants everyone had was well over the ninety-ninth percentile. Belmonte clearly hadn’t even noticed his moment of distraction.
“Captain Roberts wants to meet with me today,” he told Belmonte. “I presume before we make nice with the Factor’s ambassador works best?”
The PR officer took a moment to adjust to the sudden shift in subject, but nodded gamely as he caught up.
“Indeed. If the Captain is aboard Navy Prime, I can have a booking for breakfast for the two of you in the deck two-thirty-six officers’ lounge for ten hundred hours?”
“Do it,” Russell ordered. Sometimes, it was convenient to have a minion.
#
Navy Prime was the centerpiece of Castle’s defenses and the centerpiece of the Castle Federation’s war effort against the Terran Commonwealth. It was a sphere a kilometer in diameter, its surface encrusted with missile launchers, fighter bays, positron lances and defensive lasers.
Its real value, however, lay in the hundreds of decks of administrative offices, thousands of cubic meters of hyper-dense computing circuits, and its links to the heavily defended Q-Com switchboard station that orbited one hundred kilometers behind it. From Navy Prime, the Federation Joint Chiefs of Staff ran the war effort—with a support staff measured in the tens of thousands.
There were no civilian promenades or restaurants aboard Navy Prime. Even more than the shipyard complexes it shared its orbit with, Prime was a purely military facility. There were, however, hundreds of mess halls and officers’ lounges.
Each lounge had their own reputations and specialties and the best often booked up weeks in advance. The 236 officers’ lounge wasn’t the best place on the station for breakfast—but it was in the top ten, and Belmonte had managed to grab a table for two on an hour’s notice.
Russell was impressed.
He waved Roberts over to the table as he spotted the big Captain entering the lounge, rising to greet the other man with a firm handshake.
Russell shared his ex-Captain’s immense build but lacked about fifteen centimeters of height versus the immense officer.
“I have a slew of diplomatic bullshit to get through later today,” he told his former Captain. “I have a lot more sympathy for your tour as the ‘Stellar Fox’ now than I ever thought I would!”
“Oh, dear Gods, does it suck,” Roberts agreed fervently. “I can see the value, but that does not mean that most of us enjoy it. I’m glad to see you made it back in one piece with them all, though.”
“Wasn’t fun,” Russell replied. “Those ships were not designed for the number of people we had crammed into them. Even the Marine transports stank by the time we made it to Alizon.”
“Didn’t have a choice. Those were the ships we had.”
“So those were the ships we used,” the Wing Commander confirmed. “What do you need, skipper?”
“I’m not your skipper right now, Russell,” Roberts pointed out. “I don’t, officially, even have a command.”
That “officially” spoke volumes, though, and Russell perked up.
“So, what do you need?”
“A CAG,” the Captain replied. “One able to go on a mission without leaving someone else in the lurch. A black mission. One that will never officially have happened.”
�
�How’d you get tied up in something that black?” Russell asked quietly, glancing around to be sure no one was overhearing them. Navy Prime’s officers’ lounges were designed for this kind of conversation, though, with high-backed booths and strategically positioned white noise generators.
“It was that or a desk,” Kyle Roberts explained cheerfully. “It won’t be an easy op, Commander,” he continued. “I can’t tell you much, but I can warn you that you won’t be flying Falcons, and you’ll be taking on an already-existing wing.”
“Can you get me out of the PR grind?” Russell asked.
“I checked in on that before I even called you,” his old Captain said with a chuckle. “If you’re in, we’ll scoop you out of that in about forty-eight hours.”
“You should have led with that,” the CAG replied. “I’m in.”
#
Exiting the lounge after breakfast, Kyle found himself immediately flanked by the two women in black, unmarked shipsuits who’d accompanied him from the Redoubt. While the black-ops troopers were present for his security, he was sure they were also there to make sure he didn’t break the confidentiality agreements he’d made.
“Please tell me you two ate,” he asked them as they headed to his next meeting.
“The lounge is familiar with bodyguards,” the senior of the two women said calmly. “They brought us breakfast.”
Outside of Navy facilities, Kyle had a Marine protective detail. He didn’t normally have Marine bodyguards inside Navy stations or aboard ship, but he would have changed that policy on his own even if Glass hadn’t imposed the pair of black-clad Amazons on him. Getting stabbed wasn’t something he wanted to get used to.
“Good,” he told the troopers. “We’ve still got a busy time ahead of us and I wouldn’t want either of the badass women they assigned to guard me deciding they need to eat a passerby for sustenance.”
That got a smirk out of both of them—and a thorough double-take from a Navy Lieutenant Commander heading the opposite direction.
“We’re meeting Mason at the deck one-seven-five shuttle bay,” he reminded them. “Let’s get moving.”
#
Mason looked better than she had even a few days before, though part of that might be that Kyle hadn’t just got himself stabbed before meeting up with her. She looked much more relaxed as they met over coffee at another officers’ lounge.
“Did you decide what you’re doing with that package?” Kyle asked her.
“Not yet,” she admitted. “Knowing…knowing that he was thinking of that possibility, of us. It helps. I’ve had the samples stored groundside in a proper facility. They’ll be there when I decide.” She smiled sadly. “It’s almost as though he’ll be there when I decide.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted you to rush the decision,” he told her. “You know that.”
“I do,” Mason agreed. She glanced at the two bodyguards at the next table over. “I’m guessing that this isn’t entirely a social call, what with the shadows and all.”
“I’d have Marines if I didn’t have them after what happened the other day,” Kyle admitted. “But yeah, I’m after more than a coffee.”
“What do you need?” she asked.
“I have a command,” he told her quietly. “It’s all hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger crap, but I have a command. I need an XO, one I can trust. You were the first to come to mind.”
Kelly Mason paused, silent in thought for a long moment.
“I’ve only been on Sunset for six months,” she said quietly. “Leaving them in the lurch wouldn’t feel right. I’m guessing this is volunteer-only?”
“Yeah,” Kyle admitted, wracking his brain for arguments.
“Then I don’t,” she said simply. “I can’t leave my ship in the lurch just because you ask, Kyle. Holding her together is my job, after all.”
“I hate to say any ship is more or less important than any other,” he replied, “but Sunset is a Home Fleet cruiser. We’re…we’re going back to the front, I can’t say more than that, but this mission is a lot more important than holding down the fort here!
“Plus”—he glanced over at the bodyguards—“I’m only so sure I can trust even our Intelligence people. I’m walking into a snake pit, Kelly, and I’m bringing half of the snakes with me. I need someone I can trust at my right hand.”
She was shaking her head as he spoke.
“I can’t, Kyle. You’re going to walk into the heart of the fire—it’s what you do! You’ve walked out every time before, but I can’t be sure you’ll walk out this time. And, well.” She shrugged helplessly. “If I walk in there with you and don’t walk out, then I never get to decide about Michael’s child.
“The Navy will still send me to war sooner or later,” she continued. “And I’ll go. But I’m not sticking into my head into the fire next to you, Kyle. I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
He sighed.
“Fair enough, I suppose,” he allowed. “It’s not like we can order you to volunteer.”
“If you got JD-Personnel to sign off, they could order me to go, but I’m not volunteering. Anything else I can do to help, I will, but I’m not going with you,” she said, her tone final.
“Got a suggestion for a tactical officer?” he said hopefully, mostly joking. His own list for that role was nonexistent, but he was hoping Glass or Rondell would come up with someone.
“I do, actually,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Our ATO”—assistant tactical officer—“is due for her second gold circle. She’s the type that might be brilliant but hasn’t had a chance to show it yet. Even if she isn’t, she’s damn capable and looking for a role where she can earn herself some…attention.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jenny Taylor,” Mason told him. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s getting bumped to Commander the moment we have another ship to put her on. She’ll volunteer—and twice as fast if I tell her the Stellar Fox is in command.”
“I don’t have a lot of options,” Kyle admitted. “Talk to her and let me know.”
#
Taking over one of the designated “hotel” offices left empty for officers passing through the Navy’s HQ to use, Kyle waited impatiently while his escort checked that the communications linkage was clear of bugs and monitoring programs.
“You’re clean,” she reported.
“Thank you.” He linked his implant into the setup and flipped a video channel onto the wallscreen.
One of Navy Prime’s ubiquitous Junior Lieutenants popped up on the screen.
“Navy Prime Off-Station Communications; please authenticate ID and state your request,” she said calmly.
“This is Captain Kyle Roberts,” he told her while simultaneously flashing his ID code from his implant. “I need access to a Q-Com channel for a self-directed connection, please.”
“Understood, Captain Roberts. Connecting you in to the Q-Com and switching you over.”
The earnest young woman disappeared, replaced by an interface screen that Kyle was only partially familiar with. Fortunately, his implant had the instructions, and he followed those quickly as he input the code to connect him with Glass at the Redoubt.
“Captain Roberts, how are you making out?” the old man asked as he appeared on the viewscreen.
“Not bad,” Kyle replied. “Rokos has signed on as CAG. Mason wasn’t interested, but she found us a tactical officer. I’ve got a few people I can reach out to fill the XO slot still, but I’m wondering if Rondell came up with anyone.”
“He did,” Glass told him. “The ATO from Rondell’s last ship is just finishing up a round of medical leave. Maxim Chownyk is the man’s name; he was XO on Corona last. Barely made it off the battleship alive.”
“How’s his mental?” Kyle asked carefully. Corona had been Vice Admiral Tobin’s flagship before Avalon—and Tobin had ended up on medical relief while flying his flag from Kyle’s ship.
“Not perfect, according to his shrink,” the spy adm
itted, “but he’s itching to get back into action and volunteered. You’ll meet him on the Redoubt, unless you want to veto him?”
Kyle considered his own list of potential execs, all of whom were already on warships somewhere.
“No, I’ll take him,” he decided. “Anything else?”
“Just one thing,” Glass told him. “Your Marine company commander got tied up in paperwork and is still on Castle. It would save time if he can hitch a ride with you. You know him—Lieutenant Major Edvard Hansen.”
“Hansen volunteered for this?” Kyle asked. “I’m going to owe the man a beer.” He’d already sent Hansen into a few more hells than he liked, but the Marine was good at his job.
“Toss him one on the shuttle flight. I want you back on the Redoubt as soon as possible. I’ll you in on details once you’re back, but it looks like we’re going to need to accelerate our launch.”
#
Chapter 7
Castle System
16:00 April 28, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon, Gawain Orbit
Wing Commander Russell Rokos regarded with scant favor the starfighters neatly stacked along Chameleon’s flight deck. He’d been flying the Federation’s new Falcon starfighters since their first major deployment aboard Avalon’s predecessor ship.
The Falcon was a seventh-generation starfighter and generally regarded as one of the best seventh-generation birds so far.
The Cataphract that the Stellar League had put into commission fifteen years ago was…not so well regarded. It was a sixteen-meter-long cylinder, four and a half meters in diameter, with a lance along the spine and launchers that basically dropped missiles into space and let them fend for themselves.
Its engines sucked, pulling fifty gravities less than a Falcon. Its electromagnetic deflectors sucked. Its positron lance sucked, barely sixty percent of the strength of the Falcon’s weapon.
Q-Ship Chameleon Page 4