Normally, that kind of focus was dangerous, but anything that hadn’t been hiding in Aurelius 4A’s shadow would be seen coming—and anything following the Katanas would be caught in the same focused scans.
“We’ve got them dialed in,” Shine said quietly at his shoulder. “Will it be enough?”
“It has to be,” Russell replied harshly.
More icons flashed onto the screen as Tomacino’s people launched their own Javelins, emptying their magazines in less than twenty seconds to send thirty-six missiles into the teeth of the Terrans’ twenty.
Explosions rippled through space as the salvos intersected, three sets of explosions lighting the sky as each of the Federation salvos struck home.
Even with the radar hammering the entire area, the explosions from the last missile intercept faded to reveal far too many surviving missiles. There were a few seconds of silence, then Echo Squadron’s lasers and positron lances ripped into the remaining missiles and lit up a new series of explosions.
The series of fireballs reached a crescendo and then faded away to show only four starfighters remaining—but none of the missiles had made it through.
“Chameleon’s missiles intercepting,” Cosner reported softly.
There were a lot fewer missiles to intercept the incoming weapons this time, though they did better than the Federation crews had any right to expect. Fully half of the second salvo disappeared in the massive fireballs of mutual annihilation.
The last ten missiles bore down on Echo Squadron’s four remaining starfighters and Russell held his breath in horror as their defensive suites reached out and met the incoming.
He waited.
“Breakthrough!” Cosner snapped. “We have two missiles running in—they’re heading for the station!”
That wasn’t a possibility that had occurred to Rokos. Destroying the depot station would kill several thousand TCN personnel—but it would also prevent Chameleon from stealing any more of the vast quantities of munitions and other resources aboard the platform.
It wasn’t the call he would have made, but he could see the logic of the Terran commander. They’d committed to a suicide mission and apparently had decided everyone else got to die as well.
“There has to be something,” he whispered. “Chameleon’s defenses cover the station, right?”
“They should,” Shine agreed. “It depends on… Son of a bitch!”
Both missiles blew apart as something blurred back around.
“Report!” the shift supervisor demanded.
“One of our assault shuttles,” Cosner said slowly. “Navy Chief Poulson piloting. She…got one with the lasers.”
“They’re both gone,” Shine replied, then paused as what Cosner had said caught up. “My Gods.”
“She rammed the other,” the tech said quietly. “There was no one else aboard.”
“What about Echo Squadron?” Russell demanded, his attention turning back to his people as he confirmed the station was safe—the last salvo had run into the solid wall of Chameleon’s missiles, and the Katanas were running from the missiles Taylor had earmarked for them.
“I have…one fighter on the screens,” Cosner reported after a moment of silence. “Flight Lieutenant Volger’s Echo Three, sir. No one else.”
“Please tell me those bastards aren’t getting away,” Russell said, his voice feeling carved from stone.
#
Chapter 31
Aurelius System
20:00 June 6, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon
“There was a four-person flight crew on assault shuttle nine when Chief Poulson realized what was going on,” Chownyk reported quietly to the rest of Chameleon’s senior officers. “There wasn’t even enough time for her to explain what was happening; the gap between the missiles breaking past Echo Squadron and her interception zone was twenty-two seconds.
“Assault shuttles are designed for hostile environments and have seat-by-seat ejection mechanisms for an emergency. Chief Poulson triggered all of them but hers and then went after the missiles.”
The briefing room was silent for a long moment.
“Aurelius Station is not designed for combat,” the XO noted. “While most warships can take several near misses or even a direct hit and stay in action, the depot could not. A single gigaton-range warhead would have vaporized approximately forty percent of the station and killed at least five hundred of our people and most of the Terran prisoners aboard.”
“We lost sixteen people today,” Kyle said grimly. “They sacrificed themselves to save over three thousand. Lieutenant Tomacino knew exactly what he was doing when he put his squadron in front of those missiles. Chief Poulson could have followed orders, evaded action exactly as she was supposed to.”
But she’d had the only armed spacecraft with an interception profile. She’d made the same choice Kyle would have in her place, and he saluted her for it.
“While the files and details will be classified and buried, I’ve recommended all of Tomacino’s flight crew for Stars of Heroism and recommended the Senatorial Medal of Valor for Chief Becca Poulson.”
Flight Lieutenant Vogel and his two crew members would receive the only awards on that list that weren’t posthumous. They were heroes, but the records would be sealed. No one would ever know why those pilots and crew had never come home.
“With the destruction of that patrol, I believe we have accounted for any remaining loose starfighters,” Kyle noted, “but we do have three of our Q-probes sweeping the system for further stragglers. Their vectors will bring them back aboard in twenty-four hours.
“That will guard our back while we finish loading—and when they return, we are leaving this system,” he finished firmly. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“The Scimitars are aboard and being checked out,” Rokos reported. “The last of the Cataphracts were heading into storage as I came over here, and we have two squadrons of the Scimitars ready to deploy. Flight Ops will be ready to go in twenty-four hours.”
“I’d prefer longer,” Chownyk admitted, “but we already have the munitions we needed aboard. We’re loading food and spare parts at this point. Chameleon still has a lot more cargo capacity than any warship, so it would take us longer to fill her cargo holds than we’ve got.” He shrugged. “We can make twenty-four hours work.”
“Anyone else?” Kyle asked, glancing around at Taylor, Lau and Glass.
“Good,” he concluded. “We are a little over thirteen days from Tau Ceti. We’ll engage in a little bit of deception as we leave, which will bring us up to approximately fourteen days.
“We will not be stopping for long along the way. If there is anything you need to do in real space, it needs to be done in the next twenty-four hours.”
“What about memorial services, sir?” Chownyk asked.
“We don’t have an obelisk aboard,” Kyle replied sadly. Any Castle Federation warship carried a white stone obelisk with the names of every human being who’d died aboard her engraved in it. Having one for Chameleon, however, would have risked betraying her true origins should she fall into Commonwealth hands.
“I’ll talk to the crew come morning,” he promised. “It’s been a rough few days, so I think it’s time we told them our final destination. They need to know—Gods, we all need to know—that this is going to be worth it.”
#
Edvard hadn’t quite fallen asleep when the door to his quarters buzzed for admittance. It was late at night and anything truly urgent should be arriving via implant message with a priority code.
He was seriously considering ignoring it when it buzzed again.
With a sigh, he pulled up the hallway footage and saw Riley standing outside his door, glancing back and forth around the hallway. Sighing again, he pinged the door to let her in and got out of bed.
“What is it, Sandra?” he asked as he stepped out of the sleeping cubicle.
She paused on seeing him and carefull
y looked him up and down, a gesture that made him remember that he slept in shorts.
“Lieutenant?” he said sharply.
“Sorry, sir. Yes, sir,” she replied, yanking her gaze back to his face. “We may have a problem, sir.”
“I’m noticing,” Edvard told her.
“Not that,” Riley replied. To his surprise, he realized she was blushing—and that his own face was growing warm.
“What kind of problem, Sandra?” he asked, throwing his uniform jacket on to cover his torso and reduce the awkwardness of the situation.
“I’m worried one of my friends is about to go off the deep end,” she admitted. “If I’m wrong, even suggesting this could wreck their career. But if I’m right…”
“Last I checked, all of your friends on this ship were covert operators,” Edvard said quietly. “That’s not my idea of people we want ‘going off the deep end’.”
“Well, you’re not a covert operator,” she pointed out, then sighed. “Look, boss…Edvard. I have no illusions here. Lieutenant Riley has a legal and moral obligation to report my suspicions and have my friend arrested.
“But that would destroy them. Completely.”
“So you’re hoping for a compromise of some kind,” he replied. “What do you want from me, Sandra? I am not in the habit of making special cases for my subordinates,” he warned her.
With her in his quarters late at night, he was currently quite aware of how attractive he found her. He still wasn’t going to let that influence his decisions if he possible could.
“I’d hope not,” Riley said. “I want… I need authorization to put together a contingency plan.” She swallowed, then nodded firmly. “MP override access to the ship’s sensor suites and having at least a few of my people on standby at all times.”
Those were relatively small requests. Edvard could guess who Riley was concerned about, and she was right—if they had a serious concern, they did have a legal obligation to detain them. But…
“All right,” he told her. “On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“The instant you have anything beyond a bad feeling, any evidence that anything is actually being planned, we shut her down hard. No second chances, Sandra. Not even first chances. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” she said crisply. “And…thank you, Edvard.”
He flashed her a smile that he knew was not entirely appropriate for their professional relationship.
“Get out of my quarters, Lieutenant Riley.”
#
Kyle sat in the center of the hive of activity that filled Chameleon’s bridge in the morning, watching his crew go about their tasks. Everyone was busy, but there was a subdued tone to the affair as well. It was always harder, he knew, to lose people after the battle was supposed to be won.
He tapped a command, linking him into the ship’s PA system.
“This is the Captain speaking,” he announced, pausing a moment to let people slow down and pay attention.
“This trip has been a series of gut-punches for us all,” he admitted. “We’ve lost a lot of Space Force people and Marines. We lost people aboard Chameleon to the near miss when we took this system, and now Poulson and more fighter crews to the stragglers.
“You all know we’re on a black operation. There will be no obelisk here to carry the names of our lost forward in the memory of the fleet. No records of their heroism. The citations for their awards will be classified until long after we’re all dead.
“Worse, because it’s a black op, you don’t know what’s happening. You’re not sure what Poulson and Tomacino and the others died for.
“We’ve all had our small memorial services for our own immediate comrades, but without the obelisk, we haven’t gathered as a crew to mourn our dead. And that hurts. We’ve lost brothers and sisters, but haven’t stood together as a family to remember them.
“Today, we’re buried in work, making sure Chameleon is ready for what’s to come. Once we’re under way once again, we’ll hold that memorial service, I promise.”
He sighed.
“We’ll hold it because we may not get another chance, people,” he warned them. “From here we are going to the heart of the Commonwealth, to challenge the defenses of the Tau Ceti Naval Yards.
“The Terrans are developing a new type of starfighter weapon, one that could leave us outclassed as well as outnumbered,” he said grimly. “If Walkingstick gets these weapons without us knowing what we’re facing, he may cut all the way to Castle before we can stop him.
“No other ship can do this, and I’d have no other crew aboard her when we strike at the heart of the Commonwealth,” Kyle continued fiercely. “The Federation and the Alliance are relying on us to learn everything we can—and to put the fear of the night in the Commonwealth.
“Today, their leaders look to the stars and are confident that all humanity will be unified and kneel to Terra—to them! When we’re done, they’ll look to the stars and wonder where the next attack is coming from!”
#
Chapter 32
Aurelius System
21:00 June 7, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon
Kyle leaned back in his seat and tried not to openly heave a sigh of relief as Chameleon pulled away from the Aurelius Depot. He’d been reasonably confident there were no more straggler patrols hanging around the system, but the five starfighters they had missed had extracted far too high a toll.
As the Q-ship passed the one-light-second mark, Kyle gave Taylor a silent nod.
Several seconds later, the light from a series of massive explosions reached them. They had rigged every single one of the ancillary stations and cargo pods to detonate—after carefully evacuating them.
The primary depot station remained intact, though it had deep wounds carved into its hull where Kyle’s people had removed the vaults of valuables—and later destroyed its weapons to make sure there were no clever ideas as Chameleon withdrew.
The rest of the depot, still containing billions of Federation stellars’ worth of supplies, came apart in a blaze of multi-gigaton antimatter warheads that almost certainly flash-blinded any sensors they’d missed when they’d crippled the station.
“What a waste,” Kyle said aloud. “We could have rearmed an entire fleet from those supplies.”
“So could the Commonwealth,” Glass noted.
“The plan was mine, Mister Glass,” the Q-ship’s Captain reminded him with a smile. “I don’t regret it for a moment. It’s still a waste.”
“Indeed. If Trickster’s forces hadn’t been crippled by betrayal, I would have suggested inviting them to come take their pick,” the spy said. “It would have had risks, of course, but the backup might have been useful.”
“The risks would have outweighed the benefits,” Kyle replied. “And that was before their organization decided to start shooting at itself.”
Turning away from the spy, he studied their course outsystem.
“Commander Lau,” he barked. “Do have our course?”
“Yes,” the navigator replied. “Twelve-hour detour. Thirteen-day, ten-hour flight to Tau Ceti.”
Lau’s terseness technically bordered on insubordination, though Kyle was mostly used to it by now.
“Take us out, Commander Lau,” Kyle ordered. “Warp space at your discretion once we’re clear of the gravity wells.”
#
When they went FTL an hour later, Kyle was in his office and did allow himself to sigh in relief.
Aurelius had turned out well, but it had been a near-run thing. Their plan had been predicated on potential cut-outs and risk reduction…and had promptly blown up in their face when they’d run into an unexpected patrol.
“I see you’re as pleased to see the end of that system as I am,” Glass noted. The spy had his feet propped up on the second chair in front of Kyle’s desk as he sipped at one of the Captain’s beers. “I have to apologize, Captain—not knowing they had Katan
as falls on me, not you.”
“Given that we didn’t know the Katana existed until Ostrowski sold us that data, I’d say we have a bigger intelligence failure than that,” Kyle pointed out. “What I’m hearing from the front is that if we hadn’t sent in that warning, Walkingstick would have jumped our fleets with the Katana before anyone expected it.”
“We did know the Katana existed,” Glass corrected. “But it was supposed to be six months from deployment. Part of the original plan for this operation was to find and destroy the first few production lines to delay that further.” He shrugged. “We gave up on that before you were recruited for this op,” he noted dryly. “You’re right that we should have known they were being deployed, though,” he admitted. “I raised the same point to Admiral O’Neill rather, ah, forcefully. We have agents and spy ships in the Commonwealth, and so do our allies. We should not have been surprised by a mass deployment of new starfighters.”
Admiral Jacqueline O’Neill was the uniformed commander of the Federation’s Joint Department of Intelligence or JD-Intel. If Glass was directly talking to her—and with enough comfort to do so “forcefully”—that placed him higher in JD-Intel’s hierarchy than his usual presentation suggested.
It wasn’t the first such clue and Kyle filed it away in the back of his mind.
“So, what happened?” he asked.
“We’re not sure, but we think the TCN’s weapons development team pulled a fast one on us,” Glass said after a long swallow of beer. “They’ve been running both starfighter and starship development in the Monroe system for fifteen years. They kept up enough of a show of starfighter prototypes and tests to keep our attention focused, while actually completing the Katana project and starting this new starfighter project somewhere else.
“We don’t know where,” he admitted. “We’re not even sure when they made the shift, but we have people trying to backtrack it all now.
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