“Sorry for interrupting, Commander,” he said quietly. “That offer does apply to you too, you know. I think I can handle an FTL dark watch on my own.”
His Navigator turned in her chair, leveling a set of soft brown eyes he’d seen leave a trail of broken hearts across an entire ship on him. Kyle was mostly immune to Pendez’s charms, if not unaware of them.
“It was just girl talk. She,” Pendez nodded to the door where Solace had disappeared, “has no idea what to make of you, you know?”
“Talking about the Captain behind his back? I’m that funny?” Kyle asked dryly.
“No,” she chuckled. “You interrupted us looking at the latest fashion show in Castle City. Some of the outfits they brought out this year…” she shrugged. “Let’s just say with my boobs and Mira’s height, neither of us could pull them off.”
“Fashion show?” Kyle asked, looking askance at Pendez. He could see her following fashion in the Federation’s capital, but the thought didn’t fit with his experience of Mira Solace.
“We spend ninety-plus percent of our time in uniform,” Pendez pointed out. “A girl’s got to feel pretty sometimes – and with her height and skin, the Commander can pull off some outfits that would make me look short and fat.”
Kyle arched an eyebrow at his Navigator, who was in near-perfect physical condition under her curves, and she shook her head at him. They both knew he had no interest, and they both knew there was no appropriate response for him to make.
The conversation itself was a gray area, but it was an FTL dark watch after all.
“I’ll admit, Commander Solace and I have not had much… personal interaction,” Kyle said softly. “I am pleased with our professional relationship, though, and we hardly need to be friends.”
“She’ll get that eventually,” Pendez told him. “But… well, you know her first Captain tried to screw her – in multiple senses, right?”
“That took surprisingly little reading between the lines, yes,” Kyle admitted. “I can also guess that she didn’t report it, since Captain Haliburt still has a ship.”
“Hard to rock the boat when dealing with the Master after God of where you live, boss,” his Navigator told him. “She hasn’t told me much, but I can tell the bastard made several years of her life a living Void. Her captain after that was, well…”
“Jowan Botteril is a skilled, capable officer,” Avalon’s Captain observed dryly. “He also delights in some of the most ancient stereotypes of his orientation in a way that skims the bounds of propriety aboard a warship. He would have been completely unthreatening to her in that sense.”
“And then she has you,” she said softly. “You’re not exactly Navy Standard Issue as Captains go and, like I said, she doesn’t quite know what to make of you.”
“I can’t go easy on her, Maria,” Kyle replied, his voice very soft and serious. “She’s my Executive Officer – and Gods know, she’s damn good at the job.”
“Don’t think you need to go easy on her,” his Navigator replied. “I think you just need to remember where she’s coming from. You may not need to be friends, but from where I’m sitting, you should be. Even…”
She trailed off and then dodged away from Kyle’s glance.
“Even what, Commander?” he asked.
“Partners, sir,” she said finally, though Kyle wasn’t sure that was what she’d originally meant to say. “You need to be partners, sir – because if you are, the Commonwealth is never going to know what hit them.”
13
Amaranthe System
12:00 December 21, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
Even from a full light minute away, the planet Amaranthe looked sick. Diseased. The glass plains that had once been cities glittered in the starlight as Battle Group Seventeen approached from the outer system.
It had been beautiful once, a blue-green jewel of a world that had drawn immigrants from across the galaxy. At the beginning of the last war, the Republic of Amaranthe had been wealthy and powerful with the third-ranked Navy of the Alliance bringing over a dozen starships to the war against the Commonwealth
And then it had been the site of the single largest battle of the war. Fifty-seven capital ships had clashed in orbit while four billion souls watched. The Commonwealth had shattered the Alliance Second Fleet and seized control of Amaranthe orbit.
No-one – including the Commonwealth – seemed to be entirely sure what had happened after that. During the invasion, a series of deadly nano-weapons had been unleashed that had eaten the planet’s largest cities – and over two billion people.
After the Alliance kicked them out of the system in the Second Battle of Amaranthe, a massive relief effort had been launched. One of the sources of the supplies and money that had fuelled it, even before the war ended, had been the Commonwealth.
The Terrans had sworn blind after the war ended that their invasion force hadn’t been equipped with weapons of that type – that the Commonwealth arsenal didn’t even include mass-scale nano-weaponry.
As Kyle understood it, though, they’d basically said ‘we invaded the system, so everything that followed is our fault’ and formally taken responsibility for the atrocity. Billions of Commonwealth Dollars, Federation Stellars, and Imperial Marks had been poured into Amaranthe after the war.
Twenty years later, they had still barely begun rebuilding. The vast fields of nano-forged glass that had once been cities had resisted any attempt to break them up. The orbital infrastructure, destroyed by its own crews and workers to prevent it falling into Commonwealth hands, had only been partially replaced.
Amaranthe had no fleet now, but it didn’t lack defenders. Twelve massive capital ships, six from the Coraline Imperium and six from the Castle Federation, orbited the world. Despite Commonwealth declarations that Amaranthe’s neutrality in the war would be observed, the Alliance would take no chances.
“Sir, the Black Watch has requested our IFFs and approach codes,” Kyle’s communications officer reported.
“Send them over,” Kyle confirmed. “They’re expecting us.”
Thanks to the Q-Com, even with a light minute between Avalon and the warships of the Black Watch it only took a few seconds for the exchange to complete.
“Admiral Kato sends his greetings to the Battle Group,” he was informed. “I’m setting up a direct channel between Vice Admiral Tobin and Admiral Kato at their request.”
“Understood.” Kyle continued to watch the ugly splotches on the beautiful planet below.
“Sir, they’re asking if we would like to setup a visit to the Memorial?” his com officer continued. “They can close it to the public for a while if we want.”
A shiver ran through Kyle, and he bowed his head for a long moment.
“Tell them we’d like that, and inform the other ships’ crews once you’ve received confirmation of the timing,” he ordered, slowly raising his head. He thought a command, opening a channel to the Bosun.
“Master Chief, we’re going to have an opportunity for those of the crew that want to visit the Memorial,” he told Belmonte. “Can you check in with the section chiefs and make sure that anyone who wants to be on the list is on it?”
“Yes, sir,” she replied crisply. “I’ll make sure we have enough shuttle flights scheduled.”
“Thank you, Master Chief.” Kyle paused, then sighed softly. “Make sure I’m on the first shuttle, Bosun. I… need to see this.”
Amaranthe System
22:00 December 21, 2735 ESMDT
The Memorial (what had been Verdant City)
Dimitri Tobin had been to the Memorial before, but it still blew his mind. Once, a long time ago, it had been the Republic of Amaranthe battleship Invictus and the harbor of Verdant City, the Republic capital.
Invictus had crashed into one of Amaranthe’s oceans in the battle over the planet, however, and Verdant City had been the site of one of the nano-weapon strikes. So the city had turn
ed into a hundred-kilometer wide plain of gray glass, broken only by the harbor.
After the War, Amaranthe’s leadership had towed the kilometer-long navigation hazard that was the hulk of Invictus into the harbor, anchored it down against the edge of the glass, and removed the handful of zero point cells and positron capacitors the Commonwealth hadn’t ripped out to study. Decontaminated and safed, the hulk had then been used as the backdrop for plaque upon plaque of names. Every individual confirmed dead in the battle. Every individual confirmed or believed dead in the nano-weapon attack.
The names were in a very small font. For all that a kilometer-long hulk provided a lot of space, there were over two billion names listed.
With the Memorial being a kilometer long, it also left a lot of space. They’d shuttled down over four hundred crew members from the Battle Group’s ships in the first wave, but the Admiral had found himself alone as he’d walked further along the glass plain, looking for a specific name.
There. It was where he remembered it from the last time he visited, and Dimitri laid his fingers on the etched letters of Flight Lieutenant Karl Michaels-Tobin. The old wound was mostly healed over now – twenty-plus years, a second marriage and multiple children could do that – but he still remembered.
Dimitri kissed his fingers, then pressed the kiss to the name.
“Never forgotten, my love,” he said quietly. “Never forgotten.”
Looking up from the name of his long-dead husband, Dimitri realized he wasn’t the only member of the crew who’d walked well away from the rest of the party. Kyle was standing near the end of the Memorial, looking away from the wrecked battleship across the featureless glass plain that had been Verdant City.
Curious, Dimitri approached his Flag Captain. The other man seemed to be looking for something… but there wasn’t much out there. The nano-weapon had eaten Verdant City’s famous stone-work along with its people and its skyscrapers. Everywhere the City had stood was just glass, as was a good chunk of what had been the surrounding area.
He found the sight even more depressing than the Memorial itself, so the Admiral tended to avoid looking at it when he visited the Memorial.
“Captain?” he said questioningly, stepping up behind Roberts. “You look like you’re looking for something.”
“I am,” Roberts replied, his voice unusually sad for a man. “Matching up landmarks with some old photos.” After a moment, he pointed. “There, I think.”
Following the line of the Captain’s fingers, Dimitri picked out one of the few features visible around the glass plain – the point where a line of hills ended, cut off by a sheer cliff where the nanites had eaten the soil and stone.
“The hill?” he asked.
“It fits the description,” Roberts said softly. “I think that’s where my father died.”
Dimitri nodded slowly.
“My husband died in orbit,” he confessed quietly. “A suicide strike by the last of our starfighters to try to stop the Commonwealth landing. They failed, obviously.”
“You were here?” Roberts asked, turning back to face the Admiral.
“I was. Junior Tactical Officer aboard the battlecruiser Samson,” Dimitri confirmed. “Karl was one of our pilots – we got married just six months beforehand. We were young, and in love, and determined not to let the war steal it from us.”
The Admiral felt very old and shook his head slowly.
“I didn’t know your father had died here,” he admitted. “I… didn’t realize he was killed in action.”
“It took a few years for his body to catch up,” Roberts said bitterly. “But he died here – died when he watched the nanites eat the people he’d been evacuating along with his entire company of Federation Marines.
“His body caught up the day the war ended, and he swallowed his own gun.”
Tobin looked back to the cliff, and a vivid image of standing just past that line and watching the men and women you commanded and the innocents you were trying to protect dissolve into glass.
“My god,” he whispered.
“They quote the number a lot,” Roberts said softly, “that we only had seven post-traumatic suicides out of seventy million men and women sent to war. Only seven. It doesn’t sound so wonderful when it was your family.”
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Dimitri told him. He laid his hand on the other man’s shoulder and squeezed gently – a moment of compassion neither would have allowed anywhere else. “I didn’t know.”
“You’re not supposed to,” the Captain told him with a snort. “You know, I’ve never been here. Twenty and more years since he died, and I’ve never been here to see where.
“But with the war back on…”
“I’ve visited here before, to remember Karl,” Dimitri said quietly. “But I agree. It seemed… necessary to come by again.”
Across the glass plains where a city had died, the two men watched the sun set, each alone with their grief – but stronger for facing it together.
14
Amaranthe System
08:00 December 21, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Main Flight Deck
Stanford watched the four Falcons of the overnight Carrier Space Patrol make their landings with a practiced eye. All four flight crews had done a good job of reducing velocity before entering the deck, and the carrier’s carefully positioned mass manipulators did the rest of the job of bringing them to a halt.
They floated in the center of the deck, outside the gravity field, for a few seconds before telescoping arms reached out to grab the six thousand ton craft and drag them to their bays. Even as the old ships returned, his implant informed him that the new CSP had been launched from the forward launch tubes.
Avalon’s relatively paltry commitment to Amaranthe’s defense remained intact. Those four fighters would hold station on the big carrier, watching for anything unusual and adding another set of eyes to the net.
Between the Black Watch’s three carriers and orbital launch platforms, the Watch had almost sixty starfighters in space at any moment. None of the starfighters in the convoy’s freighters were headed here – though his implant was also showing him the engine tests of the Gallant the Republic Defense Force had chosen to check out before firing up all thirty.
Once the fighters were down, the deck was quiet. Stanford stood on the edge, watching the limited bustle of necessary maintenance checks and preparations while drinking his coffee. It was quiet enough he spotted the stocky, gray-haired, shape of Master Chief Marshall Hammond approaching him from over a hundred meters away.
The old Chief was well past sixty, and had been in the Castle Federation Space Force for as long as the Force had existed. There was no sign of age or wear to the man as he ably dodged his way down the deck to join the CAG in his quiet corner.
“Ekaterina took a micro-meteorite hit,” he said gruffly. “Nothing serious, but Bravo-Five-Four is down for at least a day while we check it out for hidden damage.”
“Understood,” Michael said quietly. He had no doubt that the starfighter could fly and fight even with a small hole in it – Falcons were as tough as the rest of the breed – but there was no reason to risk it in a system as well-defended as Amaranthe.
“Anything else I should know, Marshall?” he asked. He’d learned to rely on his senior NCOs to have a pulse on the officers and men of his starfighter group. Learned it, in fact, from Kyle Roberts before injury had taken away the other man’s ability to fly.
Hammond sighed.
“All the ships are checking out except Bravo-Five-Four. No more fights – the flag staff seems to have figured out insulting the Captain where anyone who flew for him can hear them is a dumb idea. Everything seems perfectly ship-shape, boss.”
Michael waited. He recognized the opening sigh,
“There’s rumors,” the Chief finally said. “Nothing I’ve been able to pin down or even find specific people involved, but rumors.”
“Am I goi
ng to have to drag this out of you, Chief?” the CAG asked calmly.
“Rumor,” he emphasized the word again, “is that the Admiral’s Chief of Staff is sounding out people. Specifically, new people – ones who didn’t serve on the old Avalon. Not a morale-check mission, not… anything like I’ve ever heard of.”
“Sounding them out about what?” Michael asked. For the Admiral’s staff to be talking to his people without even informing him was concerning, though rumors were hardly enough for him to raise a complaint over it.
“I can’t be certain,” Hammond warned. “But it sounded like she was trying to find people who… were more loyal to the Federation than to the Captain, if you catch my drift, sir.”
Vice Commodore Michael Stanford inhaled sharply, turning to face his senior Non-Commissioned Officer squarely for the first time since they’d started speaking.
“That’s a dangerous accusation, Master Chief,” he told Hammond.
“That’s why I can’t say I’m certain,” the older man said gruffly. “No-one she’s spoken to has come to me – I’m only getting rumors of what other people have seen and overheard. Reading between the lines, sir, I’d say that she’s checking to be sure that our pilots would follow the Admiral’s orders over the Captain’s.”
That, Michael reflected, was at least not outright mutiny. It was out of line, but it wasn’t quite a crime.
“That’s you giving the benefit of the doubt, isn’t it?” he said aloud.
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you were feeling more cynical?”
“I’d say the Admiral was trying to recruit a starfighter force that would follow his orders against the Captain.”
Hammond was surprisingly calm for having announced he suspected the Battle Group’s Commanding Officer of fomenting rebellion aboard his flagship.
“Right,” Michael said quietly. “If you have any appointments for the next few hours, Chief, clear them.”
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 42