“Richardson has served in their Navy for fifteen years,” Snapes continued. “His last duty prior to command of Triumphant was commanding a guardship squadron at the New Krishna Navy Base. While on assignment there, he picked up no less than three reprimands for the use of excessive force to keep civilians away from the Navy Base.”
“Before anyone leaps to conclusions, by Commonwealth standards that basically means he fired a warning shot,” Tobin pointed out. “At least in their own territory, they’re damned careful of their force levels.”
“Indeed,” Snapes allowed. “The most important detail of his service at New Krishna for our purposes, however, is that is where he met his wife.”
Kyle had a sudden sinking feeling as he realized where this was going, and the Intel Officer nodded as she saw the officers catching the hint.
“He and Commander Janet Richardson were married a little less than a year ago,” she said quietly. “Commander Richardson was the Executive Officer of the battleship Saint Christopher, which was destroyed at Kematian. At the last information from Kematian authorities, we have definitely identified all officers retrieved from the escape pods.
“Commander Richardson was not one of them. She died with her ship.”
“That justifies nothing,” Tobin snapped, the Admiral then looking somewhat abashedly around the room.
“No-one is saying it does, sir,” Kyle said gently. “But understanding what drove our enemy to this kind of vicious stupidity helps us catch him.”
“Agreed,” Snapes replied. “My guess is that what we saw in Kematian was the result of a moment of bloodlust, revenge, and mob mentality on the bridge of a modern warship.
“Our reports are that Walkingstick has been apprised of what happened by the transport captains. It is extraordinarily unlikely that he will let this stand.”
“I have no intention of trusting Walkingstick to handle justice for Kematian,” Tobin said grimly. “We’ll burn this Richardson before he makes it home.”
“We need to be prepared for Richardson to react in ways we might not regard as rational, sir,” Snapes told the Admiral. “We can all-but-assume he had some form of psychotic break – and his crew went along with him.
“This is a man who has already demonstrated a willingness to commit mass murder, with a crew that has already followed him into the worst crime they could commit.
“What is that man going to do when we call on him to surrender?” she asked softly. “Hell, what is he going to do if the Commonwealth calls on him to surrender? He’ll know as well as I do that anyone who takes him is going to shoot him.”
“This could get very ugly, very fast,” Solace said softly. “If he decides he can’t go home, and the Alliance is to blame for his wife’s death… Triumphant is a modern battleship. With nothing to lose, they could do a lot of damage before we bring them down.”
“Then let’s make damn sure we bring him down first,” Tobin rumbled. “Starting here, in KG-779.”
KG-779 System
07:15 January 7, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
“We have full shutdown,” Pendez reported. “Class Ones are on cooldown, all stabilizers are powered down and safed. We have entered the KG-779 system.”
“Thank you,” Kyle told her, studying his implant and the screens around him. They were currently showing the computer’s estimate of where the system’s trio of lonely planets were and not much else.
KG-779 was an old, dying, star. It had one rocky planet too close in to be of use, and two massive gas giants who had, according to the astronomers’ best guess, eaten each other’s moons over the eons.
“Commander Anderson?”
“Passives are pulling in data now,” his Tactical Officer replied. “We’ll have updated details… now.”
The data being fed to his optic nerve by his implant updated, a ripple spreading through the image of the solar system as the computer processed the light it was receiving. As ships appeared, the system tagged each one with the age of the light they were seeing – without Q-probes they were limited to old-fashioned speed of light.
“What are they doing?” he heard Solace ask aloud.
He was wondering the same thing. There were four ships on the screens – Triumphant and the three assault transports she’d been escorting at Kematian. The three transports were together and moving fast. They were already a full light hour into the system and dropping into the gravity well at almost three hundred gravities.
Triumphant was well behind them, still in a region where they could enter Alcubierre Drive if they wanted, but also on a vector that would stop any attempt by the transports to leave.
“If I didn’t know better, and I’m not sure I do right now,” Kyle responded brightly, “I’d say the transports are running from Triumphant, and that Richardson is trying to keep them trapped in the system while keeping his options open.”
“Well, he’s a lot closer to us than the transports are,” Solace pointed out. “They won’t see us for an hour – he’ll see us in ten minutes.”
“Anderson. If we fire now how close will our missiles be when he sees us?”
“Still basically ten light minutes away, sir,” the redheaded officer replied. “To hit him at this range, we’d need an extended ballistic leg – we’re talking multiple hour flight time.” Anderson shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but unless they want a fight, there’s no way we can engage them before they jump out.”
“I figured,” Kyle noted. “Commander Pendez, take us after him anyway. Let’s not push the engines though – let’s save our sprint for when we have a chance of catching the bastard.”
The big carrier smoothly set into motion, a soft trembling running through her hull as the mass manipulators offset her acceleration.
“Vector our probes in as close as possible, Commander,” he told Anderson softly. “I want the best sensor data we can get when he goes FTL.”
“On it. We’ve got six Q-probes heading his way at five hundred gravities, and two more dropping in on the transports.”
“Should we be doing something about those, sir?” Solace asked quietly.
“I’d love to,” Kyle acknowledged, “but there’s nobody closer than Kematian, and they’re a little busy. We could force them to surrender with Stanford’s fighters, but then we’d have to fly escort to take them anywhere useful.”
“Which is not happening, Captain, Commander,” Tobin interjected. “Those assault troops are useless without starships to clear their way into a system. I’m more concerned about taking out a modern battleship and avenging Kematian than neutralizing a few dozen thousand troops, when the Commonwealth has literally millions of soldiers to send.”
“He’s right, Commander,” Kyle told her. “The Commonwealth is far more restricted in terms of transport and spaceborne firepower than they are in ground troops. Some of their occupation garrisons are over a million strong. Those transports almost have more strategic value than the thirty thousand troops aboard.”
“Besides, let’s be honest, this whole trip is about revenge, not strategy,” the Admiral pointed out. “Our job is to blow Triumphant to hell and make it damned clear no one gets away with what they did.”
That was enough to silence both the bridge and flag deck for several minutes. Then, finally, Anderson sighed aloud.
“There we go,” he said. “Right on schedule – emergence plus twenty minutes.”
A moment later, Kyle saw what his officer had seen. Triumphant had – roughly ten minutes ago now – rotated in space and set course outwards at two hundred plus gravities.
“How close do our probes need to be for us to nail down his escape vector?”
“We either need a probe within two light minute for an exact reading, or three at least a light minute apart from each other to triangulate,” Anderson told him. “Close or wide – we need another thirty minutes for wide – or almost two hours to get a probe close enough.”
“You’ve
got Q-probes going for both?”
“Of course,” the Tactical Officer sounded almost offended, which Kyle gave him. He was micro-managing.
Seconds ticked away as Kyle watched Triumphant on the display. The battleship was flying directly away from them, which wasn’t going to take them anywhere. It was almost as if they weren’t quite sure where to go.
“He’s running scared,” Avalon’s Captain said quietly. “No idea where to go.”
“Ten more minutes,” Anderson replied. “I hope he stays…”
“Damn,” Solace cursed, interrupting the junior officer. “There he goes.”
On the screen, Triumphant’s crew had made up their mind where they were going. Her headlong flight from Avalon stopped as she rotated in space. A moment later, she vanished in a bright blue blast of Cherenkov radiation.
“Anderson?” Kyle asked softly.
“They jumped too soon, sir,” the other man admitted. “I don’t have an exact vector.”
26
KG-779 System
08:00 January 7, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Flag Deck
“That’s not acceptable, Commander,” Dimitri snapped, staring at the screen showing him the bridge in shock. “We did not chase them this far to lose them now!”
“I didn’t say we’d lost them,” Anderson objected. “I said we don’t have an exact vector. I’m running the analysis of where they could be headed now.”
Dimitri waited impatiently. They’d been prepared to pursue if Triumphant had already left; how long could it take to track them when they’d been right there?
“This isn’t good,” Avalon’s Tactical Officer finally admitted. “Depending on how far they’re going, the vector gives me twenty-two systems – most in Commonwealth space.”
Opening his mouth to start cursing, the Admiral paused, took a deep breath, and forced himself to count to ten. By the time he was done, Captain Roberts was speaking.
“What I’m hearing is: we need more data,” the Captain said far more cheerfully than Dimitri found believable. “Tell me what you need, James – we are bringing this bastard down.”
“Old light, sir,” Anderson replied instantly. “We need to jump out ahead of the light of their Alcubierre jump and setup a set of widely dispersed probes. It… will take some time.”
“We still have a five percent edge in FTL acceleration on them,” Roberts pointed out, as much to Dimitri as Anderson, the Vice Admiral suspected.
“Better we’re late to the right system and have to chase them again, then we end up a dozen light years or more away from them,” he finally rumbled. “Get on it, Roberts. I want these sons of bitches.”
“You and everyone else on this ship, sir,” Roberts replied.
Dimitri grumpily allowed the Captain and his bridge crew to get to work, pulling up Anderson’s data himself.
The Tactical Officer wasn’t wrong on how wide a net they’d cast. With the Q-probes and Avalon as distant as they’d been, there was a fifteen degree by fifteen degree cone in which Triumphant could have actually jumped to FTL.
Most of that cone was in Commonwealth space. There were systems in the list whose defenses they couldn’t risk taking Avalon in against – though those were all weeks and weeks away.
He didn’t like the delay, but Roberts was right. They needed more data. There was no way in Hell he was going to let Richardson get away.
“We are launching a new set of Q-probes now,” Anderson announced.
A forty-five minute Alcubierre jump had put Avalon two light hours out from Triumphant’s exit point. Dimitri watched as another set of four Q-Com equipped probes shot into space.
This set wouldn’t be any more retrievable than the last set, putting the cost of just the self-destructed Q-probes into the hundred million Stellar range. Cheap compared to even a starfighter, the Q-probes still cost more than capital ship missiles.
All four probes shot away from the carrier at five hundred gravities. With an hour and a quarter to get into position, the little robotic ships would give Avalon a set of triangulation points over twelve light minutes apart.
Time ticked by slowly. The top shift was on both the bridge and flag deck, and they went about their tasks quietly, despite the ratcheting tension.
Dimitri tried not to grumble openly, though he was certain his ill-concealed impatience wasn’t helping anyone’s tension. He kept reviewing the list of potential systems that Anderson had identified, trying to guess which system Richardson would have fled to.
Even assuming he’d stay inside the operational zone of the fleet fighting against the Alliance, there were still too many options. They needed this data.
His understanding was that, knowing the exact time and place of the Triumphant’s entry jump to faster-than-light, this process was now only a question of time. They knew where and when they could pick up the energy signature of the battleship’s Alcubierre-Stetson activation, and they had the drones spread wide enough to triangulate.
The thought of failure, however, was unacceptable. Dimitri Tobin had seen too many atrocities over the years. Justice had been done for most of them, but he was sick at heart from what he’d seen, what the Alliance had lost to the Commonwealth’s determination to unify humanity.
If they didn’t identify the Triumphant’s destination, he would take Avalon and start sweeping every possible system. There was only so far the Commonwealth ship could go, after all.
“We should be picking up their jump signature shortly,” Anderson murmured, loud enough that everyone in both rooms heard him. The tension instantly ratcheted up, with everyone focusing on the sensor displays around them.
“You’re not going to see much, people,” Captain Roberts told his crew with a laugh. “From this far away, it’s a pretty small burst of light.”
Even as he finished speaking, there it was. Dimitri had the section of space it would appear in marked on the display in his implant and it highlighted the flash as it appeared.
Dimitri’s attention focused on Commander James Anderson. Everyone else was looking at the redheaded young man as well, but he was ignoring them all, focusing on both the physical console in front of him and the information running through his implant.
Finally, Anderson leaned back and flashed a bright smile back at Captain Roberts.
“We’ve got them, sir,” he announced. “They’re en route to Alizon. ETA six days, twenty hours.”
“Pendez?” Roberts asked immediately.
Dimitri turned his attention to the Navigator, who was already working through the course.
“If we get underway ASAP, our ETA at one point oh five is six days, eighteen hours,” she announced.
“Are we certain they’re headed to Alizon?” Dimitri asked, the risk of losing his prey still top of his mind.
“Changing vector while under A-S drive is functionally impossible, sir,” Pendez replied. “You can change your acceleration, but not your direction.”
“There’s nothing on their direct line for about two hundred light years, and that star is an uninhabited red giant system past the other side of the Commonwealth,” Anderson added. “Alizon’s our system, sir.”
“Snapes,” Dimitri turned to his Intelligence Officer. “What do we know about what the Commonwealth has done since taking Alizon?”
The system was an Alliance member that had fallen in the first wave of attacks Walkingstick had launched. While it had been taken by a task group of two battleships and two carriers, all of those ships were known to have been at the Battle of Midori.
“Not much, sir,” Snapes admitted. “We know they have an occupation garrison and have moved in a number of orbital platforms. We only have visual on the exterior of the platforms, though, and Intel isn’t sure if they’re fighter bases or just a logistics depot.”
“What about starships?” Roberts asked.
“No idea, sir,” she told him. “Walkingstick has been moving his forces around to kee
p our intelligence guessing – it’s unlikely Alizon has more than one warship in the system though.”
“A logistics depot and at most a single ship and some starfighters to protect it,” Avalon’s Captain murmured. “I think Richardson is playing for time. If the Commonwealth will take him back, it lets him find that out without his risking his ship.”
“And if they won’t, he can take the supplies he’ll need to operate independently by force,” Dimitri concluded. “Captain Roberts?”
Roberts flashed a brightly cheerful smile at his Admiral.
“We’re on our way,” he told Dimitri. “Anderson, blow the Q-probes. Once we’ve confirmed destruction of the probes via lightspeed scanners, you may warp space at your discretion.”
27
Deep Space, en route to Alizon System
19:00 January 9, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Atrium
Kyle had read the pages and pages of text, across hundreds of design and engineering articles, in which Castle Federation warship designers justified, excused, and allowed for the green space atrium they insisted on installing on their ships.
It served as a reserve source of oxygen. It added a clean feel to the air that no artificial filters could replicate. It was necessary for the crew’s morale.
Most of these arguments had some degree of truth to them, but he suspect it all boiled down to one key factor those articles carefully didn’t mention: tradition.
The colony ship Guinevere that had carried the first colonists on their two-year Alcubierre-Stetson drive voyage to the Castle system had been built around an atrium to keep the colonists sane, so all large ships built by Castle and her daughter systems would have an atrium.
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 51