She reached out to touch the camera recording her.
“I know you can’t tell me much about where you are and what you’re doing,” she said. “But I hope it’s going as smoothly as we can hope. I miss you.”
The message ended, and Kyle considered the wall for a long moment.
That intelligence had fallen into their hands by chance, though Ostrowski had clearly known what it was going to be worth. Just that purchase alone had made their entire mission worthwhile.
Breathing deeply, Kyle clasped his hands and smiled grimly.
Maybe when this was over, he’d take that teaching position Kane had wanted him for and take a quiet few months to overcome his survivor’s guilt. Today, however, his ship was four days from the Aurelius system—and despite his doubts and fears, he was in command.
He owed his people his best, not his drunken misery.
#
Russell gestured Master Chief Petty Officer Adrianna Hanz to the seat across from his desk. The broad-shouldered, squat woman was frankly ugly—an accident with a superheated hydrogen fuel line early in her career had left the right side of her face a mess of scar tissue—but she’d come highly recommended by some of the best Space Force noncommissioned officers he knew.
As the senior Space Force noncom aboard, Hanz was the Deck Chief—she ran everything shipside for the Space Force, a role that often resulted in the senior NCO giving orders to the junior officers who flew the starfighters and ran the Navy logistics team that supported the deck.
“You’ve had two days to look over the upgrade kits Trickster sold us,” he said cheerfully. “What do you think?”
“That anyone who thinks the League are unsophisticated needs to check their assumptions,” Hanz said flatly. “Those kits are slick, sir. Upgrading a positron lance is a tricky business, but the kit is literally plug-and-play. The new mass manipulators just clamp onto the hull, which has to make tuning them a bitch, but the program they provide works like a charm.”
The scarred woman shook her head.
“Even the Cataphract-D is going to come off worse against a Hoplite,” she noted, “but it’s fifteen hundred tons lighter; what do you expect? The D model splits the difference on the lance power and matches the Hoplite for acceleration and deflectors.
“Biggest shortfall remains two missile launchers to the Hoplite’s four and weaker ECM. Our EW software is better and makes up a chunk of the difference, but that kit really does turn the Cataphract into an effective sixth-gen combatant.”
“I hope so,” Russell replied. “We’re going to be taking them up against Scimitars shortly—if we’re lucky. You saw the specs on the Katanas?”
“I did,” Hanz confirmed.
“Your opinion?”
“If we run into Katanas, we’re fucked. The League hasn’t managed to expand the third acceleration plateau any better than anyone else has. Pretty much everyone is pulling five hundred gees now—but the Katana has a much heavier lance and stronger deflectors.
“If you can’t kill them in the missile pass, they’ll shred you in lance range.”
“About what I was figuring,” Russell agreed. “I want you to take a look over the schematics. If you see anything you think I need to know from the technical side of either the Ds or the Katanas, let me know.
“Regardless,” he continued, “we need to get started on the upgrade-kit installation. My understanding is that we’ll be at our hold point for two days, waiting for a gap in the Terrans’ patrol schedule, but that still gives us less than a week to get thirty-five fighters upgraded.”
Hanz simply nodded and gestured to the wallscreen.
“May I, sir?” she asked. “I have a full schedule and upgrade plan ready to go if it works for you.”
Russell blinked. Okay, now he was impressed.
“Show me, Chief.”
#
“L’chaim!”
Edvard stood off to one side with his platoon Lieutenants as the traditional toast echoed through the central chamber of the Marine barracks. He didn’t even know what the toast meant—and he doubted any of his Marines or the black-ops troopers did either.
But it was the toast at the wake after they lost brothers- and sisters-in-arms for the Castle Federation Marines—and the black-ops troopers might not technically be Marines, but they were born from the same traditions.
A dozen of the men and women in the room were still in casts and bandages, nanotech working away to heal their injuries to clear them for action, but tonight was about those who would never join them again. Twenty-six empty chairs formed a closed circle in the center of the room, facing away from the gathering crowd.
As he was the Marine commanding officer, tradition put Edvard in charge of a rather significant supply of approved beer and liquor, and he’d dipped into it heavily for tonight’s wake. While he was sadly certain it wouldn’t be the last time they lost people on this mission, it was the first time this company had been blooded.
“It’s a good group,” Riley said aloud. “We’ve fought and bled together now. Buys a bit of respect both ways with the Marines and my black-ops guys.”
“I wish we’d had a better idea of how to use your people’s skills,” Edvard said quietly. “I don’t see anywhere they could have done better, but your troopers have enough skills and tools my people don’t that it seems almost wasteful to use them as part of the assault force.”
“Better than not using us,” their commander replied. “Judecca didn’t exactly have an opportunity for us to stealth in and infiltrate subtly, after all. We’re trained for assault, and to be honest, that’s what we do most of the time—same as the Marines. We just do it in places the Senate doesn’t like to admit we had people.”
“Setting up to infiltrate you guys would be hard,” Edvard noted. “Alcubierre emergence isn’t exactly quiet, after all.”
“Stealth requires making the bastards see what they expect instead of what’s there,” Riley told him. “With a ship like Chameleon, it’s easier than it might be. Right IFF code, a cargo shuttle—there’s a reason we have some bog-standard Commonwealth-built cargo shuttles aboard—we can pull off a lot.”
“IFF codes only get us so far when everyone is announcing their arrival by Q-Com, but…that still gives me ideas.”
“Good,” the Lieutenant replied. “Sometimes, a frontal assault in battle armor is all we’ve got, sir, but”—she gestured at the circle of chairs—“I really don’t like it.”
“Neither do I, Lieutenant Riley. Neither do I.”
#
Russell woke up in the middle of the night, to the eerie sensation of knowing someone was in his room.
An implant command brought up the lights and he found himself looking directly at Laura Cavendish, less than fifty centimeters from his bed. He even managed to have his hand on the gun in the bed’s built-in holster before his brain caught up with the fact that she was naked.
“What are you doing, Cavendish?” he demanded, carefully controlling an overly enthused libido and focusing his gaze above her right shoulder instead of her perky but probably not augmented chest. Thankfully, modern nanites came along with the ability to intentionally implement the effects of a cold shower without the shower.
An effect she promptly undermined by grabbing his hand and placing it on her breast.
“I’ve seen you looking at me,” she whispered. “And I want my command back. I think we can make a fair exchange, don’t you?”
Russell sighed and reclaimed his hand as swiftly as he could.
“Get dressed, Commander,” he ordered flatly. “Firstly, what you are suggesting is a violation of the Articles. Secondly, I don’t know what you’ve ‘seen’, but I’m married and you’re not my type.
“I prefer women I’m less likely to wake up knifed by the morning after,” he finished dryly. Cavendish remained stubbornly naked, subtly adjusting her position in a way that was giving the nanites in his system the worst workout he remembered them having.
>
“Commander. Laura,” he conceded. “Get dressed and have a seat.”
She waited another ten seconds as he silently stared over her shoulder, then sighed and slipped her shipsuit back on.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“To do my job and bring as many of my people home alive as I can,” he told her. “To do that, I need to trust the people under my command. None of your actions to date suggest that I can trust you—and this bullshit doesn’t help your case!”
The dark-haired woman was silent for several seconds.
“I’ve worked for Glass before,” she said quietly. “Under his direct command. I don’t know why he’s trying to convince everyone in this mission that he’s a civilian, but he’s a Navy Intelligence Admiral and in my chain of command.”
It was as close to an apology as he was likely to actually get, and he gave her a short nod in acknowledgment.
“He still isn’t in your chain of command for this mission,” he pointed out. “And you disobeyed orders to return to base until we threatened to fire on you. And your stunt is why those pirates jumped at Judecca Station.
“I grounded you for a reason, Commander. You need to earn back my trust, and trying to seduce me is not the way to do it.
“Am I clear?”
Somehow, he managed full command voice despite wearing a pair of shorts and sitting upright in his bed. With a swallow of air, Cavendish nodded her understanding.
“Good. Now get out of my quarters,” he ordered.
As the outer door to his rooms closed behind her, the CAG sighed and locked it with an implant command. He wasn’t surprised to confirm that it had been locked; that just hadn’t slowed Cavendish down.
No wonder the Navy-issue officer’s bed came with a built-in holster.
#
Chapter 22
Deep Space, One Light-month from Aurelius System
10:00 June 3, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon
“Stand by for fighter launch,” Taylor announced into the quiet of Chameleon’s bridge. “Fighter wing deploying in thirty seconds.”
Everyone aboard the bridge was linked into the same network, but the warning was still useful if someone was focusing on different tasks or, indeed, wasn’t involved in the upcoming starfighter test at all.
Kyle was paying attention to the test, but he was also reviewing the scans of the old light they were picking up from their target. Everything they saw out of Aurelius right now was a month out of date, but that didn’t mean it was valueless.
They now knew, for example, that Ostrowski’s information on the layout and position of the seven space stations that made up the depot was completely accurate. Hopefully, the crime lord’s data on the defenses and patrols was as accurate.
Chameleon didn’t have the firepower to take on a warship except by complete surprise. It would make their life a lot easier if the two-day gap they’d found in the patrol schedule actually existed.
“Fighter launch commencing…now,” the tactical officer announced crisply, and Kyle turned his attention back to the matter at hand.
Ten Cataphract-D starfighters shot into space, engines lighting off as soon as they were twenty kilometers clear of the ship and assuming a loose formation heading away from the Q-Ship.
A second flight of ten starfighters followed, then a third…and then a final flight of a mere five spacecraft, a permanent reminder of Chameleon’s fighter losses in New Edmonton.
“All fighters are running clean and clear, Commander Rokos,” Taylor told the CAG. “I’m reading five hundred gees across the board, no concerns showing in the pulse patterns or exhaust signatures.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Rokos replied. “Now could I pretty please have some target drones?”
Shaking his head, Kyle made a “go ahead” gesture to Taylor.
“One hundred and sixty-five new playmates heading your way,” she told Rokos. “Play rough if you need to, CAG, but remember: that’s it, we don’t have any more.”
“All squadrons, this is the CAG,” he announced over the channel as Kyle listened in. “See the spread of toys falling out of the cargo hatch? Give them about two minutes to get clear of Chameleon, and then we get to go play.
“I’m designating two for each of you,” he continued. “Hunt them down and take them out with the new lances. I have full interlocks turned on, but play carefully anyway. This is a test; we don’t want to lose anyone.”
Full interlocks had to be physically activated before the fighter left the flight deck and basically acted as reverse IFF: if the positron lance wasn’t pointing at something tagged in the system as a target, it would not fire.
The courses Taylor had programmed into the drones would also help reduce the risk of friendly fire, but they were running a weapons test in the middle of nowhere. Everything they could do to reduce risks was a good thing.
#
“Your assessment, Commander?” Kyle asked as they gathered in Chameleon’s conference room several hours later.
“I know we prefer to replace the entire starfighter,” Rokos noted gruffly, “but those upgrade kits are effective tech. We found a few glitches that Hanz’s crews are working through as we speak, but while none of the fighters were glitch-free, all are combat-capable.”
“You’d be prepared to back them against Scimitars?”
“The Scimitar was never a particularly effective starfighter,” the CAG pointed out. “It served well against single systems and second-rate powers who didn’t have comparable fighter tech. They couldn’t go one to one with our old Cobras, let alone the Falcons and the rest of the seventh-gen birds.
“The League, on the other, has its notorious collection of issues. The people at New Athens Arms who designed the Cataphract and the Hoplite actually had more combat hours to analyze for their designs than we did.”
The broad-shouldered pilot shrugged.
“In many senses, the Hoplite is a better starfighter than the Cobra, almost closer to our seventh-gen ships. The Cataphract-D is roughly comparable to the Cobra once the upgrades are in—and everyone in my Wing has flown Cobras.”
“Good,” Kyle concluded. A thought and an unnecessary gesture brought up a three-dimensional hologram of the Aurelius system in the middle of the conference room. With no habitable worlds, nothing even worth the effort of terraforming, the only reason the binary system had ever even been visited was to investigate the Aurelius Pair: two tidally locked gas giants, close enough that they were forever exchanging atmosphere.
That had been a sufficient astronomical curiosity to get the system a name and a few initial expeditions. The unspoken hope that perhaps the Pair had created an environment hospitable to human life had been proven rapidly wrong, though one of the shared moons did have an atmosphere and the beginning of a thriving bacteria biosphere.
There’d even been a research station above the Pair for about sixty years. It was long gone now, the derelict wreckage dropped into the Pair twenty years ago.
But Aurelius had remained. A central system on the Commonwealth’s spinward flank, where the Terrans ran up against the League, the Pair offered a prime opportunity for refueling, and the shared collection of moons included some easily accessible transuranics.
So, the Terran Commonwealth Navy had used the Aurelius Pair as the anchor for a semi-covert supply depot. It wasn’t a fleet base, lacking in any ability to refit or repair ships, but it had stockpiles to resupply munitions, food, fuel—anything a ship patrolling the border or entering League space could need.
“The Aurelius system, people,” Kyle told them. “I hope everyone’s reviewed the files Ostrowski gave us. Officially, it’s here to support Navy patrols on their spinward frontier. In practice, this is the main basing facility for every covert and black op the Terrans launch into the League.”
“Are they sending a lot of those?” Chownyk asked.
“Enough,” Glass replied. “Certainly, Dictator Perik
los claims that the League was funding and arming his enemies to prevent the League getting truly solidified. It would be…consistent. Especially given that Periklos was armed and funded by the Commonwealth to remove a planetary government that was being uncooperative to Terran interests.
“The League is big enough and, just barely, unified enough to be too big of a pill for the Committee on Human Unification to set their eyes on just yet,” the spy continued. “Periklos increasing that unity, whatever the galaxy thinks of his methods, is the exact opposite of what Terra wants. They’ve been trying to destabilize the League for a century.”
Kyle smiled mirthlessly.
“A history of mutual aggravation our mission is intended to ignite,” he admitted to his staff. “The League is as large as the entire Alliance. We have better tech and are better organized, but they’re still the second-largest single polity in human space. Adding them to our corner could change the entire course of this war.
“Which brings us back to Aurelius,” he continued. “The condottieri and pirates know it has to exist, but most of them don’t have Ostrowski’s data. They’ve been surprisingly successful at keeping it covert.
“Doing so, however, has required them to keep the warship presence in the system surprisingly light. According to the schedule we’ve bought, there are warships in the system less than half of the time.”
The hologram zoomed in on the Pair at his mental command, highlighting the collections of platforms in high orbit of the two gas giants.
“My main concerned with his data, however, is that it’s very clearly wrong on the defenses,” Kyle said quietly, highlighting four of the twelve platforms and a scattering of satellites. “The data shows two Zion-class fighter defense platforms, hosting a hundred Scimitars between them. Maybe a few missile satellites, but no further defenses.
“CIC has identified four Zion-class platforms and about sixty mixed defensive satellites, missile launchers and lance platforms. That’s a lot of firepower, people. More than Chameleon can handle in a straight-up fight, but we’re flying a Q-ship for a reason.
Q-Ship Chameleon Page 14