Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Targets on all screens!” Modesitt snapped. “If it’s armed, take it out! Fire at will!”

  The emergence had been hell, but it had left them with a significant base velocity as they hurtled into the planet’s orbit, Chariot’s positron lances flaring to life as they entered range of the orbital platforms. Antimatter tore through empty space, and the missile and lance platforms started to come apart, dozens of the satellites vaporizing as Chariot charged.

  “Q-probes deployed,” the tactical officer announced. “Relaying data to the one in our cargo bay.”

  The solution to the lack of trust between the Alliance and Terran forces had been simple in the end: a single Alliance q-probe, modified with a tamper-proof self-destruct device, sat inside one of Chariot’s cargo bays. A similar probe sat inside Kodiak’s bays. All of the data from Chariot’s probes was retransmitted at that probe, which then sent it over to Kodiak and Thoth.

  “Shit! We’ve got four corsairs, dead ahead!” Modesitt announced. “Scramble fighters, scramble fighters!”

  Twenty of the tiny craft blasted into space instantly, but the next two squadrons were still loading as Chariot careened into lance range of the three pirate ships.

  Missiles came with her, launched as soon as the probes and sensors had identified the ships, but the raiders had been more awake than many of the defensive platforms. Their own missiles blazed into space and their lances lit up.

  “Hitting the missiles with the override codes.” Chariot’s tactical officer paused. “Got barely half; I think they’re running out of the missiles we gave them.”

  Chariot’s defense could take nine missiles, and the raiders hadn’t even launched fighters. It was a lance duel now, and that wasn’t an environment the strike cruiser was built for. A raider came apart as the Terran ship’s heavier beams hammered them on approach, and then the strike cruiser lurched as a beam struck home.

  “We got the second wave of fighters out—son of a bitch!”

  “What?” Modesitt demanded.

  “We lost the starboard launch tubes,” her XO said in a sick voice. “They took all of Fifth Squadron with them.”

  Chariot lurched again, but the second raider was gone now and their missiles were closing in on the last two, which were now focused on their own defense, desperately firing everything at the missiles. They barely managed to wipe the salvo out, but unfortunately for them, Chariot’s fighters were right behind the missiles.

  Their lances were lighter, but forty of them made short work of the modular warship.

  “Status report,” James demanded as they blasted past the wreckage of the pirate squadron.

  “Fighter launch tubes are gone,” Modesitt reported grimly. “We have four squadrons in space and that’s all we’re getting. Most of our missile launchers are gone. Arsenault!”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Please tell me we can go FTL.”

  “Not yet,” the engineer said grimly. “We’re clear enough to begin repairs, at least until their fighters start catching up.”

  James was watching. The space station was starting to spew fighters like a broken gumball machine. Most were Cobras, but there were plenty of freshly built Katanas in the mix.

  “We’ve got Poseidon,” the tactical officer announced. “Relaying to the Alliance.”

  “All right, Roberts,” the Terran Commodore said softly. “I know you weren’t telling me everything. Show me what you had up your sleeve.”

  It had better be enough. Poseidon was moving away from the shipyard, heading in pursuit of Chariot. She was newer, bigger, and faster. If the Stellar Fox didn’t take her out, James Tecumseh had just doomed his people.

  #

  Vulture Bomber Kodiak Echo Actual

  Michelle Williams had been aboard the old Avalon when they’d ridden the needle into Tranquility to save the day at the start of the war. She had never done it before then and hadn’t done it since, until today.

  A starfighter was about the worst place to be during this kind of flight, with limited air supply and tight spaces that were extremely vulnerable to the warping and twisting inevitable to the process. Theory and her experience alike said that everything would “snap” back into place once the drive field went down, but that didn’t make the actual flight any less painful or terrifying.

  “We have the target coordinates,” Song announced over her implants, the keening of the air around her ripping apart echoing alongside her voice. “Houshian is adjusting to bring us in at a million klicks and two thousand KPS.

  “This is going to get rougher,” the CAG said grimly. “Hang on.”

  Michelle’s personal universe turned inside out, and for several moments, all she saw was light, as if flying into the heart of a sun. When the light faded, the pain began, making the previous discomfort seem almost gentle.

  Even if light was traveling normally to her eyes, which it wasn’t, there’d have been nothing to see with her bomber inside Kodiak’s fighter launch tubes. She hung on to the arms of her pilot’s chair with grim determination as her body tried to tear itself apart and reassemble several times a second for what felt like eternity.

  Then a brick wall slammed into her face, she grabbed a moment’s breath, and her tactical feed updated with their surroundings.

  “Launch! Launch! Launch!” echoed into her ear, the deck officer slamming in the commands to throw her bombers into space, even as she processed that Kodiak had overshot her intended emergence point by a full light-second.

  Forty-eight starfighters, half of them Vulture bombers, blasted into space barely seven hundred thousand kilometers from Poseidon, the battlecruiser in hot pursuit of Chariot and seeming to miss the new threat for several critical seconds.

  “Echo Wing, Fox Three all, Fox Three all!” Michelle snapped as her bombers swung clear of Kodiak. She spun the little ship in space, aligning the four torpedoes on her launch frameworks with the battlecruiser and triggering the launch sequence.

  It wasn’t a perfectly coordinated launch, but between her bombers and Kodiak herself, over a hundred missiles lunged toward Poseidon in under six seconds.

  “Clean launch,” Michelle reported back to Song as the data filtered in. “I have ninety-six, repeat, nine six torpedoes on course, three-minute-forty-second flight time.”

  “All right, Williams,” the CAG responded. “Alpha Wing is launching, Bravo is loading in and Charlie is prepping. Fall back behind Delta Wing and return to Kodiak to rearm. We’re going to need you again before this is done.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As they spoke, another set of forty-eight starfighters blasted into space. With the extra birds from Alexander, it would take two more full launches before all of Kodiak’s fighters were in space, and it wasn’t going to be safe for the bombers to try and land until the launches were complete.

  “Echo Wing, form up on Kodiak and prepare your landing runs,” she ordered. “Keep an eye on your birds, guide them in. We’ll stay out until impact.”

  If nothing else, she wanted to watch the son of a bitch burn with her own eyes.

  #

  Michelle had fought Terran warships. Poseidon was the fourth Hercules-class battlecruiser she’d gone up against since the war began, and her new crews’ reactions were pathetic. Any of the Herculeses she’d faced before would have already had their fighters out before Kodiak jumped in-system and would have turned to face the carrier and the bombers the moment they arrived.

  It might not have saved them, though thirty Katanas would have made one hell of a dent in the torpedoes, but it would still have been competent.

  Almost sixty seconds elapsed before Poseidon even began to adjust course, turning to bring her heavy positron lances to bear on Kodiak. The carrier’s half-megaton-a-second lances couldn’t penetrate the battlecruiser’s deflectors at this range.

  The reverse was not true of Poseidon’s one-point-five-megaton beams, and the fact that it took over two minutes for Poseidon to even start shooting was a damn
ing tale of the conscripts Coati had crewed her with.

  There should have been starfighters in the launch tubes, ready to go the moment there was a threat. There might have been a delay getting the crews for more than the ready squadron up and into space, but that ready squadron should have deployed at least by the time the cruiser opened fire.

  Instead, the torpedoes were less than a minute from impact when the launch tubes flared, throwing two squadrons of Katanas into space…far too late to change the battlecruiser’s fate.

  Beams of positrons flashed past the bombers, reaching out for the carrier that was their way home, but Houshian demonstrated the difference between a veteran of the vicious war with the Commonwealth and a raw recruit with practiced ease.

  Again and again the battlecruiser fired, cycling through all of her massive primary beams as she tried to take down the carrier…and again and again, she missed.

  Then the crescendo of death crashed down over Poseidon, with dozens of torpedoes surviving the desperate attempts by the starfighters and the cruiser herself to turn back the tide.

  Poseidon was a massive, well-built ship. She would have survived one direct hit, possibly even two or three, or half a dozen near-misses. Over thirty missiles struck home in five seconds, and one of Terra’s most modern battlecruisers disappeared in ball of matter-antimatter annihilation.

  “Echo Actual, this is Kodiak Flight Control,” a voice said in Michelle’s implants as the light from the explosion washed over them. “Starfighter launch is complete; we’re ready to bring your bombers home.

  “Well done, Commander.”

  #

  SC-153 Chariot

  “What. The fuck. Was that?” Modesitt demanded in the stunned silence of Chariot’s bridge.

  James studied the data on the strange fighters a moment longer, noting patterns, manipulator balancing, the many minor details that could be discerned at this distance and used to identify manufacturer.

  “Those, Captain, are why Coati thought we betrayed him,” he said quietly. “I don’t know exactly what kind of missile they fired, but the design is ours. A few modifications, enough to make it easy for me to say they aren’t ours, but close enough to confuse anyone who isn’t from us or the Alliance.”

  “Those missiles had capital-ship warheads and penetrators,” the tactical officer told them. “Launched from a starfighter? This is bad news.”

  “Or would be,” James replied dryly, “if the design wasn’t so blatantly stolen I’m perfectly confident we have something similar. It appears the Alliance has solved our biggest problem for us. Now, I suggest we all focus on staying intact enough that we can still run, seeing as how my last count was, what, two hundred starfighters heading our way?”

  “I’m reading two hundred and ten,” Modesitt said grimly. “Our birds are in the air in defensive formation, but they’ve got sixty Katanas of their own, plus a hundred and fifty Cobras. Arsenault, how are those systems coming?”

  “You’ll have missiles in ten minutes. Every secondary lance we’ve got left around the same time,” the engineer replied. “You’re not getting the big guns back. The power surge from firing the damn things would overload the network.”

  A positron lance was a modified zero-point cell. For every positron it sent into space, an electron went into the ship’s power systems. There was a series of capacitators, distributing busses and smart systems designed to use that power effectively, but with the damage Chariot had taken in this operation, half those systems were held together with duct tape.

  And the last few hits had knocked the duct tape loose.

  “Anti-fighter guns are what I need,” Modesitt told him. “Ten minutes will have to do. We’re all depending on you, Commander. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “I like not being vaporized as much as the next engineer, Skipper. You’ll have those guns.”

  The Captain stepped over next to James, watching the incoming fighters. More starfighters were being launched now, but these were coalescing around the last eight raiders and heading for Kodiak.

  “What about the planet, Commodore?” she asked softly.

  “CIC ran the analysis,” he told her. “We killed almost all of the bombardment platforms. Once his ships are gone, Coati can’t threaten them with annihilation anymore. But…” He shrugged. “We did our part and there’s not much more we can do. Let’s live through this mess.

  “Quebecois Bien’s fate now lies with the Alliance.”

  #

  Chapter 48

  KDX-6647

  04:30 December 17, 2736 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-052 Kodiak

  “Target destroyed,” Sterling announced with satisfaction. “Bombers are rearming for the next strike; the rest of the starfighters are in space.”

  “Rearming will take at least ten minutes,” Taggart warned. “We don’t have the infrastructure in place for a rapid turnaround on them. The torpedoes don’t fit in the arming systems.”

  “We’re going to have to fix that,” Kyle said. “They’re too damned effective for us to wait on that kind of turnaround. What have we still got on the board?”

  “Orbital defenses have been decimated but remain dangerous,” Sterling noted. “Chariot focused on the bombardment platforms, so most of the defense platforms remain. The planet is safe. Us…not so much.

  “All of that appears to be automated, though, with the majority of the manned platforms all around the shipyard, which is still fortified to hell and back,” he continued. “I’m reading upward of two hundred starfighters going after Chariot, but that leaves another two hundred—a quarter of them Katanas—playing watchdog over the shipyard.

  “They’ve pulled the last of the corsairs in close and have the yard locked down tight. We’ve got them contained, but…”

  “But that is one hell of a tough nut to crack,” Kyle agreed. “Houshian, keep us moving; I don’t want them having clever ideas about long-range missile fire.”

  He studied the tactical feed. The planet was almost a secondary concern; if they took control of the shipyard, the planet would fall into their hands by default. The shipyard, however…

  “What’s Thoth’s ETA?” he asked softly.

  “Five minutes,” Taggart replied. “You have a plan?”

  “More like a thought,” Kyle admitted. “These folks know how many ships we have. They’re going to be watching for her and half-expecting a sucker punch.”

  “Show them what they’re expecting and punch them in the back of the head while they’re looking that way?” Taggart suggested.

  “Something like that. Get me von Lambert on the com.”

  #

  Coati reached out before von Lambert arrived, an omnidirectional radio transmission of the strange pirate broadcast to the entire star system. The pirate sat on the edge of a command chair, his strangely scaled skin and gemlike eyes glittering in the harsh light, his hair a folded-over mohawk glittering in rainbow hues as he glared at the camera.

  “I know who you are, Captain Roberts,” he hissed. “You must think you have struck a grand blow for freedom here, but you have no idea. No idea of what the worlds you have allied with have done to this sector, of the lifeblood they have drained from world after world to fuel their greed.

  “And now you come to crush our hopes for freedom. You shall not succeed! The defenders of this world stand ready to throw back your pathetic ships. The destruction of Poseidon is a setback, but make no mistake: my people stand ready to duplicate her a dozen times over.

  “You shall not conquer here!”

  The image faded and Kyle snorted.

  “Anyone buy that pile of bullshit?” he asked. Chuckles from around his bridge were the answer. The Free Trade Zone was far from perfect and the Alliance knew damn well there’d been abuses, but Coati was no liberator.

  “Record to send back to him, if you please, Jamison,” he instructed, then leaned into the camera.

  “I know who you are, Antonio Coat
i, son of Giorgio Coati,” he told the pirate. “I know what blood drips from your hands and what violence you have wrought on the systems around us and on the world beneath us.

  “Your day ends here. The punishment for your crimes is due. Surrender, Commodore Coati, and spare the poor bastards you have forced to fight for you.”

  “Ready to go,” Jamison reported.

  “Send it.”

  A timer on Kyle’s tactical feed counted down the seconds until Thoth’s arrival. Unless Coati responded quickly, the Imperial cruiser would arrive before the pirate’s response did.

  “Missile launch!” Sterling announced. “I have Terran Stormwinds on the scopes, minimum two hundred inbound.”

  Kyle whistled silently. It seemed Coati was responding quickly, after all.

  “Pass the targets to Song and spin up the defense lasers,” he ordered. “We’ll weather the storm; hopefully, Thoth won’t have to.”

  “What about our strike?” Song demanded.

  “Wait to see how they respond,” Kyle replied. “We have to live before we can attack.”

  The starfighters were moving, spreading out in a defensive formation that would give them the best angles on the incoming missiles. Beyond them, a sudden blue streak of Cherenkov radiation backlit the entire shipyard and its fortifications—and then resolved into the kilometer-long mass of the Coraline Imperium strike cruiser Thoth.

  Fighters blasted clear of the cruiser the moment it exited warped space, followed seconds later by missiles, pre-targeted based on the data from Kodiak’s q-probes. They needed to be, as Thoth had misjudged the jump and emerged between Kodiak and the shipyards.

  And in front of the missiles Coati had just launched at Kodiak. The presence of the strike cruiser triggered a second salvo, this one from the smaller—but far more numerous—fighter missile launchers.