He checked the date. Unless the schedule had changed in the last week since he’d left, Gunnery Sergeant Peng Wa would have the night duty. Kyle tapped a series of commands on the flat screen that served as his desktop and computer screen.
“Duty officer,” he said calmly as the junior officer holding down the carrier’s communications center in the middle of the midnight shift appeared on his screen. “I need a Q-com link to Alamo, attention Gunnery Sergeant Peng Wa. She should be on duty.”
“Of course, sir,” the very young-looking Ensign replied. As CAG, Kyle was one of the three officers with full authority for use of the quantum entanglement communications array. “Please hold on one moment.”
Deep in the bowels of the ship, a number of tiny bits were carefully changed. Their entangled pairs, light years away in the Castle system, changed in turn. A routing code told the computers on that end to connect to Alamo, and the data transmitted from Avalon was dutifully and automatically loaded onto the tiny bits in the relay station that linked to Alamo. A re-invention of the ancient concept of the ‘switchboard’ allowed what was, unavoidably, a two-point communications network to reach anywhere and anyone in the Federation.
A few minutes passed, presumably as the Ensign spoke to a similarly junior officer on the battlecruiser, and then the youth re-appeared on Kyle’s screen.
“We have Gunnery Sergeant Peng for you sir,” he reported. “I’m connecting you now.”
The delicately petite features of the hardest-minded and -bodied woman Kyle had ever met appeared on the screen.
“CAG, it’s good to hear from you,” she said cheerfully.
“Gunny, how’s the ship?” Kyle asked. “Remember, I’m not your CAG anymore.”
“And I’m not your Gunny,” Peng Wa replied. “Alamo is holding together just fine. How’s the Navy’s Old Lady?”
Kyle considered for a moment and shrugged. “She’s old,” he said bluntly. “Listen Peng, I need a favor.”
“I still owe you for the Gulf,” she replied. “Shoot.”
The Wing Commander shook his head. “That was my job,” he observed, “but I’ll abuse your goodwill regardless. Did you know a Chief Marshall Hammond aboard Thermopylae?”
Peng’s smile actually managed to widen. He wasn’t quite sure how a woman so small could have a smile so broad – or how a smile so bright could be so shark-like.
“Wait, you’ve got Hammond?” she asked.
“He’s my senior Deck Chief, and there are issues with the Group,” Kyle explained. “I need to know if I can trust him. His last report from Thermopylae was the worst I’ve seen.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?”
Kyle blinked at that. He’d never known Peng to need permission. “Granted,” he answered after a moment.
“Wing Commander Oshawa was an ass,” she explained bluntly. “He ordered Hammond to clear three starfighters he‘d down-checked so they could fly an op, rather than waiting to cycle three birds that had just returned.
“Hammond refused. He’s no respecter of rank without brains, so he wasn’t exactly polite about it – hence the insubordination.”
“Was he right?” Kyle asked quietly.
“I don’t know sir,” Peng admitted. The petite Marine shrugged. “I break heads and shoot pirates, sir, I’m not qualified to judge the flightworthiness of a starfighter.”
“That’s fair, Gunny,” the pilot agreed. “Thank you.”
“I will say though, sir,” the Marine told him, “that when we threw Hammond’s farewell party? The flight crews of those three birds picked up the tab for everyone. They felt they owed him something.”
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
08:15, July 6, 2735 ESMDT
DSC-001 Avalon – Flight Deck
With all the starfighters aboard loaded into the launch tubes, Avalon’s Flight Deck was disturbingly empty to Kyle. The old carrier’s Deck wasn’t much bigger than the Flight Deck aboard his old battlecruiser had been, and his instincts said the entire Deck should be a buzzing hive of activity. SFG-279 aboard the New Amazon Reserve Flotilla Station had the patrol duty for the system, though, and the Falcons that had arrived with the new Wing Commander weren’t scheduled to come aboard for another few hours.
He tracked Hammond down by finding the one part of the two hundred meter long deck that did have activity. A cluster of Spacemen and Petty Officers was gathered around the Deck Control Office, where Hammond was giving directions for final preparations of the deck.
“MacArthur! I want your team to check berths seventeen through thirty-two – make sure the new adaptors for power and fuel are set up!” the Senior Chief snapped. “Abdul! Your team can take thirty-three through forty-eight.”
People scattered away from the Chief in clusters, and Hammond turned to a young man who was waiting politely to speak to him. The youth had two silver carets above a set of wings on his collar, marking him as a Junior Space Force Lieutenant, and one of the starfighter pilots.
“Chief, the simulators in the pilot room are down,” the Lieutenant told Hammond. “When are we going to get someone to look at them?”
“They’re not down, Lieutenant Kovalchick,” Hammond said patiently. “They’re turned off – there’s a slight difference. There isn’t much point in you boys and girls flying simulators programmed for Typhoons and Cobras when we’re bringing aboard a full group’s worth of Falcons.”
“That’s just programming, isn’t it?” the Lieutenant asked.
“That’s what I would have thought, until Chief Ambrose nearly blew one up,” the Deck Chief replied. “We’ll have the simulators running by the end of the day Kovalchick,” he promised. “Try reading the tech specs on the Falcons – they’re enough different from the Badger you’ll need the review!”
“That’s not a bad suggestion,” Kyle told Kovalchick, joining the conversation. The dark-haired youth almost leapt out of his skin at realizing his commander was listening in. “I’ll need to review the tech manuals before I jack into one of the Falcons,” he continued, “I flew a Cobra aboard Alamo. The Chief’ll have the simulators up soon, right?” he glanced at Hammond.
“Like I said, Ambrose is working on it,” the Deck Chief confirmed. “I think our simulators are older than the software was coded for, so we’ll need to build in a work-around.”
“Of course, sir, chief,” Kovalchick stammered. He flushed darkly as he threw a quick salute and evaporated from the Flight Deck.
Kyle turned his gaze on Hammond, who was quietly chuckling.
“Something funny, Chief?” he asked.
“Just that Kovalchick is off-duty,” the Chief replied. “He’s bothering me to make it possible for him to do more work. He’s a good kid.”
“Situational awareness needs work,” Kyle observed cheerfully. “Otherwise, sounds promising. Do you have a few minutes for me, Chief?”
“From the moment you read that parchment yesterday until one of us dies, quits, or is promoted off Avalon, you own my life, sir,” Hammond told him. “Plus, the new birds don’t start coming aboard for another two hours, so all I have to do is bark at kids to make sure we don’t hook a fifteen year old adaptor up to a brand new starfighter.”
Kyle glanced around the Deck, and then gestured to the Deck Control Office behind Hammond. From there, they could see the entire Deck and control most things from the consoles, but no-one would be able to hear them. The same soundproofing designed to allow someone to control the Deck from the office also made it impossible to hear anything inside the office unless the intercom was turned on.
Hammond led the way in and shut the door behind them. “Coffee, sir?” he asked, offering Kyle a cup. Once the Wing Commander had taken it, the Senior Chief met his gaze. “What’s up, sir?”
“Trying to get a sense of my most senior Chief, Chief,” Kyle told him quietly. “You served aboard Thermopylae, right? Why were you transferred here?”
“You saw the record,” Hammond said flatly.
It wasn’t a question. “Insubordination, disobedience to orders. If the CAG had pushed it to a Board, he might have been able to kick me out, so the Captain put a black mark in my file and hustled me off to a backwater posting to soothe the man’s ego.”
“What did you do?” Kyle asked.
“We were responsible for security for a Senatorial visit to Phoenix,” Hammond began, waiting for Kyle to nod understanding.
Phoenix was the largest and most important of the single-system polities that made up about a third of the Alliance of Free Stars, a binary star system with three worlds and twelve billion souls. That made her, after the Coraline Imperium and the Castle Federation itself, the third-most important member of the Alliance, and the source of the third largest fleet. The Federation would send any high level government mission on a warship, and that ship had to keep in perfect trim.
“We had six two-ship flights out at all times, flying Area Space Patrol,” Hammond continued. “But Oshawa forgot to build an allowance for escorting the Senators to and from their meeting – with those trips, we had no safety margin. We had to send out new birds as soon as the current flight came aboard.
“Three of our starfighters had picked up defective parts somewhere along the line, and were showing a frequency mis-harmonic in the mass manipulators,” the Chief continued. “It was within tolerances, but it was a constructive interference – my judgment was that it would progress to being actively dangerous to the ships in under an hour of flight time.”
Kyle shivered. Mass manipulators in close proximity to each other had major issues with frequency interference. It took careful balancing to keep a fighter operating efficiently and safely. A growing mis-harmonic like the one Chief was suggesting would at best leave the fighter stranded without fuel as the manipulators became unable to reduce the ship’s weight to reduce its fuel use. At worst, the mass manipulators would fail to compensate for the starfighters acceleration – a result that was scientifically referred to as ‘spaghettification.’
“And Oshawa?” he asked in the silence Hammond left for the danger to sink in.
“If we didn’t launch those three birds, we’d be down two ASP flights, basically,” the Chief replied carefully. “In front of the Phoenix Space Navy, we’d look like we weren’t able to maintain our own squadrons – or that our CAG was incompetent and couldn’t set up an ASP he could maintain while meeting his other mission reqs, which was the truth. The Captain would have ripped him a new one.
“So he ordered me to remove the grounding and clear the starfighters for action,” Hammond finished, with a shrug. “My response was, well, rude.”
“He want you to clear starfighters to fly that would have been actively dangerous to their crews,” Kyle repeated, wanting to clarify.
“That is correct, sir,” Hammond said flatly.
“Chief, if I ever order you to do that, you have my permission – hell, my order – to be rude in response,” Kyle told his senior non-com softly. Peng’s impression of the man seemed on target – it took a lot of nerve to calmly explain to your new boss why your old boss wanted you off their ship.
“Don’t need your permission, sir,” the Chief told him. “I will not put kids like Kovalchick in danger to make us look good in front of an ally. If we need the birds to stop a Commonwealth fighter strike from killing the ship? I’ll launch ‘em any day – that’s the cost we all signed on for.”
“Indeed,” the Wing Commander agreed softly. “Thank you, Chief. I know what I needed to about you now.”
“And what’s that, sir?”
“That I can trust you with the lives of the men and women under my command,” Kyle stated flatly. “Now, Chief, I need to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer from you.”
“Can’t guarantee you’ll like my answers sir, I’m not one for sugar-coating.”
“Wouldn’t want coating on this, Chief,” Kyle told him. “Ambrose and Miller,” – the other two Space Force Senior Chiefs aboard Avalon – “what’s your opinion of them?”
Hammond looked down into his coffee cup for a long moment. Finally, he took a sip and looked back up at Kyle.
“They’re both solid non-coms, good techs,” he said firmly.
“Good,” Kyle answered. “Would you trust them with the sacred honor of the Force?”
He watched the flippant response die on Hammond’s tongue as he caught the dead-serious tone. The Chief considered for another long moment, and then drained his coffee cup.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I would. What’s this about, CAG?”
“The starfighters should all be aboard by twenty-one hundred hours?” Kyle asked. Hammond nodded. “I’m calling a meeting with all three of you then,” he told the Chief. “Make sure all three of you make it.”
He glanced out at the Flight Deck.
“This ship deserves the best we can give it,” Kyle said quietly. “If you three work with me, I think we can all be worthy of her.”
3
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
12:00 July 6, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Bravo Squadron Leader – Badger-type starfighter
“Bravo Lead to Avalon Flight Control, my board is green,” Flight Commander Michael Stanford reported into the radio, leaning back and connecting the wires from the old starfighter to the dataport on his neck. With a deep inhalation, he allowed his implants to interface with the spaceship.
“Bravo Lead, Avalon Flight,” the Control center replied. “Your flight plan is on file and your fuel tanks show thirty percent. Bravo Squadron is go for launch on your order.”
Stanford re-ran his mental checks on the starfighter. Everything checked out.
“Avalon Control. Launch the Squadron,” he ordered.
A moment later, acceleration slammed him back into his seat. Even with the entirety of the starfighter’s incredible ability to manipulate mass and gravity set to compensate for acceleration, a fraction of a percent of the thousand gravity launch made it through. It lasted mere seconds though, and then Stanford was out in space.
All eight ships had launched simultaneously, and he passed a quick order for the squadron to form on him, eyeing the obsolete ships on his scanners as they gathered around.
The Badger was an older design, a forty-five meter long cylinder with four missile pylons mounted equidistantly around her circumference - the Badger had been the last pylon-based design before they’d moved to internally mounted magazines. For this flight, a transfer from Avalon to the Reserve Flotilla Station, the four pylons were empty and the fuel tanks were only partially filled.
None of the eight ships in his squadron had their full flight crews. Since everyone who flew over to the Station would have to be shuttled back, Stanford had ordered his gunners and flight engineers to remain behind. If some disaster required Bravo Squadron to engage the enemy with their twenty-five kiloton-per-second popguns, the pilots could handle those weapons themselves.
The New Amazon Reserve Flotilla orbited the massive hydrogen gas giant Rio Grande, forty-seven light minutes away from the blazing F4 furnace of New Amazon. Given the orbits, they were currently over fifty light minutes from Nuevo Salvador, the system’s sole inhabited planet.
Avalon, technically the Flotilla’s guardship until she left on her new tour of duty, orbited slightly outside and behind the Flotilla, which put her almost four hundred thousand kilometers from the spindly structure of the Flotilla Station. Two battleships, six cruisers and four deep space carriers orbited with the station, an entire navy for a single system star nation – a rich single system.
These ships were all old, laid down at the end of the war. They’d served dutifully in peace, and then been laid into mothballs, ready for the war that the Federation was afraid would resume at any moment. Four Reserve Flotillas were scattered across the Federation, combined equalling two thirds of the active hulls of the Federation Space Navy, – a security blanket for a nation and its allies all too afraid of
the looming behemoth of the Terran Commonwealth.
Shaking his head to scatter the wool he was gathering, Stanford confirmed his squadron was clear of both the deep space carrier and the massive refit and supply ship Sphinx and Chipmunk that hovered ‘above’ her.
With a silent command to his pilots, the zero point cells were spun up, positrons drawn off and fed into the engine nacelles. Eight blasts of matter-antimatter annihilation threw the old starfighters towards their final home.
At the barely four hundred gravities the old Badgers were limited to, it still only took them ten minutes to cross the distance to the massive cross-shaped structure of the Flotilla Station. Four flight decks, each the size of Avalon’s flight deck and capable of storing six eight-fighter squadrons, defined the shape of the station. Habitat modules, repair gantries and storage containers were linked to the flight decks by personnel tubes and more gantries.
Like any of the Reserve Flotilla Stations, the New Amazon one had been assembled from hundreds of separate pre-fabricated modules, and it showed in the haphazard nature of its construction. The only thing Stanford knew to be certain was that the access to the flight decks was clear.
As the starfighters approached Station, Stanford inched ahead of his squadron by delaying his deceleration by a fraction of a second.
“New Amazon Flotilla Station, this is SFG-001 Bravo Lead,” he reported over the radio. “We are on approach to Flight Deck C, requesting clearance to land.”
“The trap is armed, the deck-center is clear, you have the call Commander,” the Flight Controller replied.
A mental command flicked the full details of his starfighter’s approach vector to the station. Moments later, a tiny adjustment from the side thrusters had aligned the Badger with the center of Flight Deck C, and a burst of thrust from his main engines sent him drifting forward at a handful of meters per second.
Passing through the end of the flight deck, his ship trembled beneath him as the gravity trap caught him. Designed for starfighters arriving at emergency combat speeds, the trap smothered his velocity almost instantly. A second later, the ship trembled again as he passed into the carefully contained atmosphere of the Deck.
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 3