Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon

by Glynn Stewart

  Edvard said nothing. There wasn’t much for him to say.

  “If it helps you, Lieutenant Major, you should know that we captured two of the pirate ships,” the XO told him. “One of them is what we thought it was—a Commonwealth Blackbeard-class Q-ship. We took it, we keep it. Your men don’t hear that, understand me? That we have that ship is now classified, and my understanding is that Command has plans for her.

  “Plans our Marines’ deaths made possible,” Brahm concluded. “We don’t always know the answers, son. We don’t always know why we send our men to their deaths, and that’s the nature of war. But we do our job. Can you?”

  “Do the job, sir?” Edvard asked. “Yes, sir. We’re Castle’s damned Marines, after all.”

  22:30 February 21, 2736 ESMDT

  AT-032 Chimera, Bravo Company Barracks

  “Gunny,” Edvard greeted his senior NCO quietly when he found Gunnery Sergeant Jonas Ramirez waiting for him outside his company barracks. Ramirez was a dark-skinned weasel of a man, wiry and fast, but also smart as a whip and honest as a rock. “How’re the troops?”

  “Grieving,” Ramirez said shortly. “Maybe…half a dozen of them have lost a comrade-in-arms before.”

  Edvard looked at the door leading into the central bay for his Marines’ barracks. It wasn’t that thick of a door. He should have heard something from the other side, unless his Marines were being unusually quiet.

  “It hurts,” he agreed. “How’re you doing, Gunny?”

  “Millie was a good trooper, El-Maj,” Ramirez replied. “Well liked. Even I am going to miss her.”

  The Lieutenant Major nodded and sighed slowly.

  “Time to do the job,” he half-whispered, and heard the Gunny chuckle.

  “And this is why I’m a Gunny and you’re the Lieutenant Major,” Ramirez told him. “Right behind you, sir.”

  That cracked the last of Edvard’s hesitance and he opened the door, marching into the center of the bay linking his Marines’ berths. Four corridors spread out from that bay—three holding a platoon’s squad bays, the fourth holding the headquarters section and the officers’ quarters. The Federation Marines didn’t believe in separating their officers and men much, though the officers’ quarters did have another exit.

  “Atten-hut!” Edvard bellowed, his implants projecting his voice and linking into the barracks’ PA system. “Bravo Company Headquarters Section, front and center!”

  Suddenly, his men were scrambling. As soon as most of the headquarters section’s twenty men were close to position, the company commander continued the sequence.

  “Alpha Platoon, fall in! Bravo Platoon, fall in! Charlie Platoon, fall in! Bravo Company—attention!”

  As his men fell into ranks—the central bay held the lockers for their gear and acted as their briefing room and main pre-prep area for missions, it was big enough for all two hundred of his people—Edvard Hansen studied his Marines.

  None were in uniform. About half were still in the skintight black bodysuits they wore under their armor. At least a third were at one stage or another of being drunk or stoned. Only combat implants and training were keeping them all upright and in something resembling attention.

  “We lost one of our own today,” Edvard told them. “You all know that. You’re wondering if it was worth it—what could possibly have been worth Millicent Ivanovich’s life?”

  He stalked forward, eyeing the surprisingly neat formation and meeting many of his people’s eyes directly.

  “One million, one hundred and twelve thousand, four hundred and ninety-two civilians,” he told them simply. “That’s how many people are still alive aboard Morrison Hab today—alive, above all other reasons, because when Third Battalion of the One Oh Third was told to take that power facility before the pirates could blow it, we did so.”

  Spines straightened throughout the room and he knew he’d hit his mark.

  “Lance Corporal Ivanovich was a Marine, ladies and gentlemen,” he reminded them. “She volunteered, same as the rest of us. She put herself between the innocent and those who would do them harm—and she died protecting them.

  “That’s the job,” he told them. “We are Castle Federation Marines, and you knew when you signed on that you were damned for a ten-year term.”

  That managed to get a few chuckles out of his people.

  “Millie died doing the job,” Edvard said. “A lot of us will before this is over. The reason we got rushed off of Morrison Hab is that Command needs us at the front—backstopping the Navy as they punch holes in Walkingstick’s battle plans and take back our systems.”

  He surveyed his people again.

  “Now, the Navy and the Space Force can blow starships to hell and seize the high orbitals, but we all know to take and hold ground, you need boots on it. We’re going to be those boots. So, hold your heads high, Marines, because Command knows that we are the best they’d got—and they’re sending us to where they need the best!”

  Ramirez started the wolf howl from behind Edvard, but he wasn’t sure that the officers and NCOs picked it up first. It took seconds before two hundred howls filled the barracks, and only Edvard’s implants could save his hearing.

  8

  Alizon System

  08:00 February 28, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Captain’s Office

  “Hi, Dad!” Jacob Kerensky waved wildly into the recording camera. In theory, Kyle could communicate instantly with his family via the Q-Com network, but this close to the front, policy dictated otherwise. He could get around that—rank had its privileges, after all—but even now, his communication with his son was…awkward.

  “We spent a whole class today on the war and the first carriers,” the twelve-year-old boy continued excitedly. “I mean, we all saw Avalon last year, but, well, she looked a lot different before she got all shot up!”

  Kyle winced. He’d exerted some of those privileges of rank to get Jacob’s class right next to the old Avalon when she was being assessed for whether she would be scrapped. His nightmares happily reminded him of how the old ship, the very first space carrier of the new era, had acquired the holes and scars Jacob was talking about.

  His son happily babbled on about school for another ten minutes, and Kyle marveled at the resiliency of youth. For the first eleven years of Jacob’s life, Kyle had been completely absent. He had, quite literally, run away and joined the Space Force when he’d found out his girlfriend’s implant had failed and she was unexpectedly pregnant.

  She’d done well for herself, as he was reminded as Doctor Lisa Kerensky finally inserted herself into the feed.

  “All right, Jacob,” the lanky blond woman said with a smile. “You do realize your father covered all of this in the Academy, right?”

  “Well…maybe, but it’s soo cool!”

  Kyle couldn’t help but smile at Jacob’s enthusiasm. The thought of his son following him into the military terrified him, but given the boy’s current interests, it was seeming more and more likely.

  “Go get ready for bed, dear,” Doctor Kerensky told her son. “Your grandmother is coming by soon.”

  “You’re going out with Dan again, aren’t you?” Jacob asked. His words sounded more bitter than the smile on his face suggested.

  “Go,” the boy’s mother answered. As the child disappeared, she dropped herself in front of the camera. She was more dressed up than usual, suggesting that Jacob’s assessment was bang on.

  “We’re going to the Navy Annual Gala,” she told Kyle. Her new boyfriend was Daniel Kellers—clearly “Dan” to their son—a Member of the Federation Assembly and, last Kyle had checked, a sitting member of the Committee on Military Appropriations. “Lots of men and women and jackasses in uniform. Your running off to join the military on me may have given me an inaccurately high opinion of soldiers.”

  In the privacy of his office without spectators, Kyle stuck his tongue out at her. No one had to know, after all.

  He
r smiled faded to something gentler, and she leaned forward.

  “Rumor mill tells me you’re seeing someone,” she told him. He laughed again—in this case, the “rumor mill” was him saying so in his last message. “I’ll confess to looking up her pictures. She’s gorgeous.”

  He didn’t think the edge in Lisa’s voice was jealousy, per se. A warmer, less poisonous, cousin perhaps. Almost…happiness?

  “Her record makes me think she can keep you in line, too,” his ex continued with a grin. “Don’t let this one get away, Kyle,” she finished, suddenly serious. “I know you’re not a scared eighteen-year-old anymore—but neither is she. She’s more likely to chase you halfway across the galaxy and drag you back than I was!”

  The image of Lisa Kerensky chasing his bus down the street brought a grin to his own face. He didn’t think it would have worked out for either of them, but he wondered if it would have changed his mind.

  Of course, so many other things would have changed. Who knew if someone else in his place would have done as well? Ansem Gulf, Battle of Tranquility, the pursuit of Triumphant…

  “I know you can’t tell me much from the front,” Lisa concluded. “But message us. Let us know you’re okay. And message your mother,” she added with a grin. “I’ll remind her to message you when she gets here.”

  The message faded to black and Kyle smiled to himself. It meant a lot to him that Lisa approved of Mira. It probably wouldn’t have changed much if she didn’t, he was honest enough with himself to admit that, but he was glad she did.

  Time could heal only so much of the distance his duties and sins had put between them. For Jacob’s sake, if nothing else.

  With a sigh, Kyle turned back to his work. He could record his response later, and he had a lot of work to get through to justify taking the evening off—some enterprising soul had set up a full-scale restaurant on one of the new fighter bases in Alizon orbit, and Mira wanted to try it out.

  11:00 February 28, 2736 ESMDT

  BC-129 Camerone, Bridge

  “Stand by for test fire,” Fleet Commander Keira Rose, tactical officer of Camerone, announced.

  “What’s our position?” Mira asked, eyeing the battleship floating in the center of the tactical plot. She knew roughly where they were relative to Clawhammer, but this kind of test wasn’t something they wanted to mess up.

  “We are five hundred thousand, two hundred forty kilometers and one hundred and seventeen meters away from Clawhammer,” Commander James Coles, her navigator, replied.

  “That is a bit over three times the maximum effective range of our secondary battery against Clawhammer’s pre-refit,” Commander Rose noted. “It should be seven times the effective range of a seventy-kiloton lance versus their upgraded deflectors.”

  “Yes, it should,” Mira agreed. “However, since even a seventy-kiloton-a-second positron lance is still a beam of pure antimatter that could gut our friends on Clawhammer, let’s do this by the book, shall we?”

  Miriam Alstairs had not necessarily been slack as a Captain, but she and her bridge crew had worked together for three years. Mira Solace had inherited that crew, and while she knew they knew each other well enough to operate with less explicit discussion than “the book” called for, she didn’t know them that well.

  “Understood, ma’am,” Rose apologized crisply. “I have secondary lance seventeen spun up, positron capacitors at sixty percent and rising. Targeting point Zeta, standing by to fire on your command.”

  “Point Zeta” appeared on the tactical plot in Mira’s head as a highlighted white point, roughly fifty meters behind Clawhammer—close enough that the beam would intersect the battleship’s electromagnetic deflectors, far enough away that if something went very wrong and Clawhammer’s deflectors failed, Camerone wouldn’t gut the older warship.

  With a thought, Mira dropped into the channel with Clawhammer.

  “Captain Mauve,” she greeted the battleship’s androgynous commander. “We’re ready for the test shot on our end, and the probes are in position to report the results. What’s your status?”

  “Every test so far shows all green, Captain Solace,” Mauve replied. “You may proceed when ready.”

  Mira gave Mauve a firm nod and turned her attention back to Rose.

  “Fire one three-second burst from secondary seventeen,” she ordered.

  “Three-second burst, aye. Firing.”

  The beam wasn’t truly visible to the human eye, but Camerone’s computers drew it in as a bright white line emerging from the battlecruiser, crossing the almost half-million kilometers to Clawhammer—and clearly deflecting well away from the battleship.

  “Yes!” Rose exclaimed, then quickly restrained herself, looking embarrassedly at her Captain.

  Mira maintained her calm face, the expression she knew most of those who knew her called “the onyx statue” and levelly met the pale younger brunette’s gaze. As the officer started to flush, she winked.

  “I call that a successful test, Captain Mauve,” she told Clawhammer’s captain. “How’s the deflection vector look?”

  “Right where it should be for the upgrade,” Mauve replied. “We’re lining Sledgehammer up for the second wave test. This should be a show.”

  Sledgehammer had started out several hours before, carefully aligning herself almost four million kilometers from the other battleship. Against the older deflectors, the battleship’s one-megaton-a-second main lances could be deadly at over two million kilometers.

  Nothing compared to the potential range of a fighter strike, but still demonstrative of why Command had refused to send forward any ship without modern deflectors. Now the battleships should have an effective range of almost a million kilometers—half what it would have been before.

  “Sledgehammer has fired,” Rose reported, and Mira turned her gaze back to the display.

  The battleship was reporting the beam via Q-Com, and Q-probes along the route reported its travel in nearly real time. The beam traveled close enough to the speed of light to make the distinction irrelevant, but that still meant an almost thirteen-second transit time for a four-million-kilometer shot.

  Mira caught herself holding her breath for the full time. The beam, drawn on her plot in bright white again, hit Clawhammer’s deflectors, running against the magnetic field around the ship and shifting away from the battleship by more than enough to protect it.

  Then something went wrong. The deflectors collapsed, and the beam snapped back into its original line. There was nothing Sledgehammer’s crew could do, having already ceased fire over ten seconds earlier. Mira swallowed her held breath in horror as the massive beam swung back towards the Clawhammer—and finally, barely, cut out twelve meters from the hull.

  Camerone’s captain exhaled, took a deep breath, and exhaled again, looking helplessly over at Rose.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’d say they overloaded something and blew the emitters,” Rose said slowly.

  “Captain Mauve, what’s your status?” Mira asked, realizing she still had Clawhammer’s captain on the line.

  “Shaken,” the herm replied bluntly. “We took some fringe energy from the beam getting that close; should be repairable.” Mauve gave a headshake. “Looks like we lost an entire primary power coupling. The deflectors appear to be fine; we just didn’t check the new power demand versus some of the older parts.”

  Clawhammer’s captain looked back at her people.

  “We’ve got some more work to do here before we’re ready for another full-power test,” Mauve continued. “I need to get to it!”

  15:00 February 28, 2736 ESMDT

  BC-129 Camerone, Flag Conference Room

  “What the hell happened?” Rear Admiral Miriam Alstairs snapped.

  The Admiral’s anger wasn’t directed at a particular individual, but it was still enough to make all of the captains on the holoconference quail, including Mira herself.

  “My people have been through the power co
upling in detail now,” Eden Mauve said quietly. “In all of the planning and rush to get the refit complete, not to mention sending us out here with half the parts on board to install ourselves, no one ever did more than a cursory check of the power demand of the upgraded deflectors.

  “Given the energy density of a zero point energy system and our need for backups, most of our ships are overpowered for their needs. We had the power supply for the new systems,” Mauve concluded, “but not necessarily the power grid for the new systems.” The battleship captain shrugged. “Add in that some of the parts were in the last year of their life cycle and scheduled for replacement in the near future, and we had a recipe for a critical failure. Better found in testing than in battle.”

  The herm took nearly being vaporized by the accident far more in stride than Mira could have in the same place.

  “And your damage?” Alstairs asked.

  “Minimal,” Mauve said crisply. “We can’t bring up a Stetson field until we’ve replaced the emitters the energy bleed burnt out, but we should be able to go FTL inside forty-eight hours.”

  Without a Stetson stabilization field, a ship could generate an Alcubierre warp bubble. The crew would be almost instantly killed by the radiation compression inherent to the bubble, shortly followed by the ship vaporizing and the bubble imploding, but it could be done.

  “That beam should never have come as close as it did, regardless,” Urien Ainsley, Sledgehammer’s Captain, said quietly. “Across thirteen light-seconds, we’re supposed to have a beam variance of under one hundred meters. The beam was over two hundred meters off-angle and fully coherent.”

  The brown bear of a man shook his head and met Mauve’s gaze levelly.

  “We’re checking all of our main lance emitters for their calibration,” he told her. “I’ve already confirmed there was a miscommunication on Lance Five that resulted in a missed calibration after the yard work. We fucked up, Eden,” he said levelly. “I’m sorry.”