“Wait,” Michael said slowly. “Never since? Not even a single date?”
“Not one,” the Captain admitted. “I can recognize when I’m not cut out for something, Michael,” he continued quietly. “Two lives ruined is enough for one lifetime! Give me a battle to plan, a squadron to whip into shape? No worries. Families and relationships?! Ha!”
“Damn.” The two men were silent for a long moment, drinking their excellent wine.
“Of the pair of us, I always figured I was the worse coward,” Stanford finally said bluntly. “I may have run from relationships, but I didn’t slam the door and salt the earth.”
“I’m not afraid,” Kyle protested, but his words fell hollow. “Okay, maybe I am – but it’s not of relationships. I just feel… I don’t know. That I owe her an apology before I could even look at someone else.”
“Now, that I can see being terrifying,” Michael told him. “Like something you’d need a damn good friend backing you up for.”
“Not something I’d ask a friend to do,” Kyle replied.
“Well, I think I just volunteered Kelly and me,” the Wing Commander told him cheerfully. “Once whatever crazy plan you’re cooking up sees off the Commonwealth, we’re probably heading back to Castle, right? We’ll drag you planetside and get your apology out of the way.”
“You have no idea what you’re threatening,” Kyle told him dryly.
“We’ll get you drunk first,” Stanford told him, and Kyle laughed.
“You’re insane. She’d never see it coming,” he told his CAG.
“That’s the point, isn’t it? That’s what you keep teaching us – hit them when they won’t see it coming!”
Kyle stopped, his wine glass half-way to his lips.
“Boss?” Michael asked after a moment.
The Captain took a large swallow, finishing the rest of the wineglass, and slowly stood and turned to face Michael.
“I guess I’m keeping you aboard after all, Michael,” he told the other man.
“Why?” Michael said slowly.
“Because you’re right. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to pull off the crazy stunt I’m planning.”
Tranquility System
06:30 September 20, 2735 ESMDT
DSC-001 Avalon – Flight Country
Michelle was woken up by Flight Commander Rokos sticking his head into her room.
“Rise and shine, Lieutenant,” he boomed. “We need to be in space ASAP – the Captain’s got a plan!”
Michelle forgot that she wasn’t alone in the narrow bunk, and outright tripped over Angela as she attempted to rise, falling flat on her face in front of her squadron commander, completely naked.
“Good morning, Lieutenant Alverez,” Rokos calmly continued, his gaze suddenly fixed on an inexplicably interesting spot on the plain metal walls. “Don’t worry, the wake-up call is only for Michelle – if this goes right, we’ll leave you and the rest of the med-team nice and bored today.”
With a wink and a grin, the big Commander vanished back out the door, re-engaging the privacy lock behind him.
Michelle, blushing bright red, looked back at her lover. Angela was, technically, not supposed to be in her quarters, especially with the ship at active readiness. That regulation was winked at as often as not.
Though not normally, she concluded, quite as literally as today.
“I’ve got to go,” she said quietly. Before she’d even finished speaking, Angela was in her arms, holding her.
“I know,” the nurse told her, following up with a desperate kiss. “I know. Good luck!”
Michelle smiled, a thrill of hope running down her spine.
“If Roberts has a plan, we may not even need luck!”
42
Tranquility System
07:00 September 20, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type command starfighter
Michael Stanford watched as his starfighters drifted out from Avalon’s flight deck in pairs. They had the time to launch slowly today – but not by much.
“You know this plan leaves us with no margin,” he said over his channel to Kyle. The total delta-V carried by a Falcon-type starfighter was difficult to calculate, but it was in the range of point six five of the speed of light.
“If the game were easy, everyone would play,” Kyle told him dryly. “There’s a reason a point three pass is the last resort of the mad and the desperate.”
“Well, we are desperate,” Michael agreed.
“It’s a multiplier, Michael,” his Captain said quietly. “We won’t have surprise – they’ll have seen the entire battle. But if we do this right, we will have shock, and fear – and those are weapons as deadly as any missile or positron lance.”
A ‘point three pass’ meant hitting the enemy at point three cee – roughly ninety thousand kilometers a second, slightly more than a starfighter’s maximum safe velocity. It would take Michael’s starfighters five hours to build up that velocity, and as long to slow down from it again. Avalon had been flying away from the expected arrival point of the Commonwealth carriers for several hours to provide them enough distance to get up to speed.
If they got it right, they would pass through the range of the Commonwealth ships’ weapons in a handful of seconds, firing on computer control as they went. They could destroy the carriers before they even launched their fighters and end the battle in a single pass.
If they failed… all of Michael’s fighters would be heading out-system at a velocity that would take five hours to kill and leave them with almost no fuel. The only thing between any surviving Commonwealth warships and Tranquility would be one crippled carrier.
“They won’t see us coming, boss,” Michael promised. “I just hope Director Richards’ people got their estimate of the emergence loci right – the margin for error is almost as narrow as my fuel reserves.”
Tranquility Intelligence had narrowed the carriers’ expected emergence to a roughly half light minute radius sphere and a ten minute window. Michael and Kyle had set the attack vector to allow them double both the space and time they could cover, but if they missed, it would be worse than if they’d never tried at all.
“We’ll be behind you the whole way,” Kyle told him. “We’ll pick up anyone who falters.”
Michael nodded silently, watching the last of Foxtrot Squadron’s fighters drift out and form up.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said finally. “I never thought I’d say this, but let’s hope the Commonwealth is punctual!”
“Good luck, CAG,” Avalon’s Captain told him.
Tranquility System
012:00 September 20, 2735 ESMDT
SFG-001 Alpha Six – Falcon-type starfighter
There was something energizing about being able to point a starfighter at a target and open the engines all the way up. Cee-fractional encounters weren’t rare in fighter combat, though they were unusual enough that having two of them in as many weeks was unexpected.
What was rare was for a fighter strike to have the time to build up a significant fraction of lightspeed under their own power. A starship would emerge from Alcubierre drive into a system at a relatively low velocity, but at a distance that only left a few hours to close with a world. Those few hours weren’t enough to build up velocities of nearly a hundred thousand kilometers a second.
Inside the starfighter, there was no real sensation of speed or even acceleration, but Michelle still wore a broad grin as the indicator showing her velocity relative to Tranquility’s star ticked over ninety thousand KPS.
“All ships, suspend acceleration.”
With a mostly exaggerated sigh, Michelle cut the engines. The plume of annihilating matter and antimatter behind her flickered and faded to vacuum. Around her, the rest of SFG-001 did the same, leaving the forty-three starfighters hurtling through space at an almost unimaginable velocity.
She checked her sensors, focusing the fighter’s passive scanners on the reg
ion of space they expected the Commonwealth carriers to appear in. Unless the enemy appeared in the exact middle of the target zone, the starfighters would need to maneuver to close, but they’d still have only seconds to react.
The clock ticked down to zero. The Commonwealth should arrive sometime in the next twenty minutes, and SFG-001 was in position to hit them anywhere in the expected zone once they did.
Michelle bared her teeth in what might charitably be called a smile.
Now, where were they?
Tranquility System
012:30 September 20, 2735 ESMDT
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type command starfighter
The Commonwealth reinforcements were late.
Stanford cursed silently.
They should never have trusted what they knew to be second-tier crews to have left on time!
Now he watched as the maneuver cone of his starfighter group began to narrow. The edge of the target zone was already out of reach – even missiles wouldn’t be able to change vectors enough to hit the carriers if they emerged there.
“All starfighters,” he opened the channel. “Prep missiles for immediate launch and code for computer control. We’re in the zone, we won’t have time to fire ourselves.”
Or to engage with positron lances, the most reliable ship-killer his people had. A handful of his people might get their antimatter beams on target, but for most, missiles would be all they’d be able to contribute.
More precious seconds ticked by, and Michael cursed himself for ever agreeing to this idea – and Roberts for ever even suggesting it.
“Emergence!” his gunner shouted, and the starfighter lurched as the missiles suddenly blasted away.
The two carriers erupted into space almost dead center in the target zone – which put them barely a hundred thousand kilometers ahead of Michael’s ships, and about as far ‘up’ from them. None of his ships could bear on them with positron lances, and they were past them in barely a second.
In that second, forty-three fighters launched a hundred and seventy-two missiles, blazing in on their targets with blinding speed.
The two carriers had clearly heard about the fate of the first battle group. They emerged into the system with every sensor on full power, sweeping the space around them with radar, lidar, and every scanner man had yet invented.
Missile defenses began firing the instant the missiles launched: lasers, counter-missiles, even the lighter positron beams sweeping across space.
Dozens of missiles exploded, bursts of radiation that blinded Michael’s sensors even as he strained to follow his strike in. Linked in to his computers, the second and a half flight time stretched out as he watched the trail of explosions reach across space and slam into the closer carrier.
That Commonwealth ship came apart in a blast of flame and radiation that blinded his sensors for a moment that seemed to last an eternity.
When the sensors finally cleared, several lengthy seconds later, for a moment all he saw was wreckage and he began to breathe a sigh of relief.
Then the vectors shifted, ever-so-slightly, and he saw Tranquility’s doom emerging from the cloud of debris and radiation.
The second carrier had survived.
43
Tranquility System
12:45 September 20, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Secondary Control
Secondary Control was silent as the data feeds streamed in from both SFG-001 and the Q-com equipped drones following behind them at a more sedate pace.
For a few minutes, the carrier had drifted and Kyle had hoped that they’d managed to carry the day after all, but then they’d began to launch starfighters.
Now, the Commonwealth ship’s full complement of a hundred starfighters was in space, blazing after Stanford’s fighter group. It would take them hours to catch up, but catch up they would. The ensuing battle would likely be a shock for the Commonwealth, as the seventh generation Falcons were more than a match for the Scimitars one for one.
Two to one odds, however, meant that SFG-001 was doomed. Whatever starfighters remained would return to their carrier, re-arm, and then finish off the damaged Avalon and seize Tranquility’s orbitals.
“She’s moving again, sir,” Li reported. “Damned slow – I’m reading antimatter thrust but only twenty-five gravities.”
Kyle nodded, staring at the screen in front of him as if some miracle would emerge from its stark graphical presentation of the star system.
The Commonwealth ship was ignoring Avalon. Slow as her acceleration was, she was using it to follow her starfighters to pick them up once they’d blown away Avalon’s starfighters. The other captain had drawn the right conclusions from the desperate strike Kyle had launched.
Twenty-five gravities was blood in the water. If the carrier was badly damaged enough that she could pull barely ten percent of her rated acceleration, it was a surprise she could launch at all. Old and damaged as she was, Avalon could still pull two hundred gravities.
If Kyle had had a single positron lance or missile left, his response would have been obvious – close and attempt to destroy the other carrier. Faced with any credible threat to their only way home, the starfighters would surrender with the carrier.
Even a single missile…
“Ensign Li,” he said softly. “Throw their two-hour maneuver zone on the display.”
The young officer paused in surprise and then obeyed. An orange cone expanded out from the damaged Commonwealth carrier, showing all possible paths they could follow at twenty five gravities. It was a wide zone, as their vector was currently towards Tranquility, but it was rapidly shrinking towards SFG-001 and their pursuers.
“Assume they’re being gentle on their engines and can at least triple their acceleration if pushed,” the Captain instructed, a plan – an insane plan – starting to take form in his mind.
The zone expanded into an elongated oval, shading out a large portion of the display.
“Lieutenant Ivanov,” Kyle addressed Pendez’s assistant, his Navigator having thankfully been convinced to go the surface with the rest of the wounded. “Show me our two-hour zone.”
It took a moment, and a dark green ovoid extended out from Avalon’s current course. They couldn’t go backwards, not with a velocity already over ten percent of the speed of light, but they could shape their forward vector almost any way they wanted.
The entire orange zone was inside the green zone. If Kyle had any weapons to engage with, they couldn’t escape him.
“Second-tier crews,” he said softly. “And a second-tier captain. He’s no expert at starfighter tactics.”
“Sir?” Ivanov asked.
“You never send all of your starfighters off in a single strike,” Kyle told him. “Not unless you’re desperate – or inexperienced. Our friend over there,” he gestured at the icon of the Commonwealth carrier, “has assumed we wouldn’t have launched the strike we did unless we were helpless, so he’s ignoring us.”
“But in his position, I’d have held back at least one squadron,” he continued. “His starfighters are already far enough away they couldn’t intercept us before we reached him.”
“Before we reached him, sir?” Li asked. “He’s right – we have no weapons!”
“But we have eight times his acceleration, slightly more mass in half the size, and a point one cee velocity advantage,” Kyle pointed out. “Lieutenant Ivanov, please set a maximum velocity physical intercept course for that carrier.”
“Sir?”
“A ramming course,” Senior Fleet Commander Kyle Roberts clarified softly. “Set it to auto-update, then slave your console to mine and get to an escape pod.”
Ivanov swallowed as Kyle activated the all hands channel.
“All hands, this is Acting Captain Roberts,” he told his people. “I am setting a course that will take us directly at the surviving Commonwealth vessel. If we can eliminate her, we save Tranquility – regardless of the cost.�
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He let that sink in for a long moment.
“All personnel not directly essential to the operations of Avalon’s engines and defenses are to report to escape pods immediately,” he ordered.
“God speed you,” he finished quietly.
Secondary Control was silent again for a long minute.
“Course is set, sir,” Ivanov said aloud. “Request permission to remain aboard, sir.”
“Denied, Lieutenant,” Kyle told him calmly. “I flew starfighters for ten years, I think I can guide the Old Lady the rest of the way.”
He looked around his bridge crew. Kelly was staring at him in shock, her eyes dark with worry for her lover with the starfighters. Li was just plain in shock. Ivanov looked determined, despite having just set a suicide course for his ship.
“I can take this the rest of the way,” he repeated. “All of you, get the hell off my ship.”
“I’ve rigged the main positron capacitors,” Wong told Kyle. “Uploading the command sequence to your datapad. Blow them, and Avalon turns into a giant shotgun blast in the sky.”
The engineer paused.
“I’d wait as late as possible to use it, though,” he pointed out. “Hell, I’d send a computer to do this, boss.”
“There’s a reason we don’t run starfighters with just computers, Alistair,” Kyle reminded him. “Too predictable. I doubt they’ve got much left in terms of on-board weapons, but if I’m doing this, I want to carry it all the way.”
Wong sighed.
“Yeah. I figured whatever stunt you’d pull wouldn’t involve us running away,” he continued drily, “so I moved all of the remaining electromagnetic deflectors to the front of the ship. They’ll have a hell of a time hitting you with lances, and you’ve got some anti-missile lasers. We’ve set them to automatic, but they should stop at least a few birds.”
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 32