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

by Glynn Stewart

  The third missile salvo still required missile intercepts, but none of the Terran missiles made it past that last line of defense.

  With the fourth, Battle Group Seven-One had their enemy’s measure—and the destruction of half of the orbital platforms had reduced their ability to adapt for the Alliance’s defenses. Not one missile made it past the missile defense net, and Mira breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Ma’am!” Notley suddenly snapped. “Q-probes are picking up a wideband transmission from the surviving platforms—they surrender.”

  “Order them to detonate their missiles,” Alstairs ordered immediately. “Reduce acceleration on ours until we’ve confirm the self-destructs, then move them on to retrieval vectors.”

  “Their missiles are going up!” Rose reported. “Self-destructs propagating along at lightspeed. That was sent before they got our message, ma’am.”

  “Guess they figured that was as clear as it could get,” Mira acknowledged. “Admiral? Your orders?”

  “Maintain zero-zero course for Zahn,” Alstairs replied. “Once we’re in position to cover their approach, we’ll send in Marines to secure the stations and try to contact the surface.”

  The implant communication channel was as much mental as vocal. It didn’t always carry emotion or intent as well as face-to-face, but it was definitely better at it than text communication. The Rear Admiral sounded both relieved and pleased.

  “Zahn is ours.”

  15

  Cora System

  23:00 March 13, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge

  Avalon erupted into Cora space with the inevitable burst of blue Cherenkov radiation. Kyle had considered hiding behind the system’s gas giants, but they were too far away from the habitable planets to be useful.

  Instead, he’d emerged directly on the ecliptic, a full light-minute from Montreal—Cora V. And they’d emerged alone—despite being the biggest ship in the Battle Group, Avalon had the best acceleration curve. She was best able to handle any trouble that came her way—and best able to get out of it.

  “Stanford, get your people out there,” Kyle ordered. “Pendez, settle us into a nice, slow orbit. Let’s not rush in until we see what we’ve got. Xue, make sure all of our data is feeding back to the rest of the Group. Let’s see what we have.”

  The kilometer-and-a-half-long carrier arced in the general direction of Cora’s two inhabited planets on a curve that would make her closest approach to Montreal just over six million kilometers. It wasn’t an aggressive course, and Kyle didn’t need it to be.

  “What are we seeing?” he asked aloud, studying the tactical plot in his neural implant. The computers were already filtering out the civilian shipping, but he could see three true starships in orbit. Xue had the other layers of data; she would break down what they were and let him know.

  “All right,” Xue responded slowly. “Bogey three here”—the largest of the starships flashed orange— “is a logistics ship—similar to Sunshine. She appears to be in the process of deploying orbital fortifications—I’m reading these”—two disks in orbit and several dozen smaller satellites flashed darker orange— “as two Zion-class fighter bases and missile launch platforms. None of them are reading as operational yet, which leaves us with these as a threat.”

  The last two starships flashed bright red.

  “Bogey One is a Paramount-class carrier,” she continued. “Old ship, probably being used to supply birds to the Zions, but she’s easily retrofitted with modern missiles and carries a hundred starfighters. Her friend is a bit more of a worry—I’m reading a Hercules-class battlecruiser.”

  “Oh she’s going to be fun,” Kyle murmured. A Hercules was functionally brand-new, a contemporary to the Saint-class battleships and Volcano-class carriers carrying the main weight of the Commonwealth’s campaign against the Alliance.

  “Unless the Zions have fighters aboard, and their energy signatures don’t look like it, we’re only looking at about a hundred and thirty starfighters,” Xue concluded. “But that battlecruiser has almost as many missile launchers as our Battle Group. She’s a sniper, and she can hurt Avalon bad.”

  “Well, let’s see just what she does,” Avalon’s Captain replied. “And get me a vector on that logistics transport if she tries to run—I want that ship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was fully ten minutes before the Commonwealth finally moved, and Kyle was starting to wonder if he needed to start insulting people’s mothers by radio to get a reaction out of the Terran ships. Finally, however, the Paramount’s fighters formed up on the battlecruiser, and the Hercules burned out after Avalon.

  “The fighters are sticking to the same acceleration at the Hercules,” Xue reported. “Two hundred and thirty gravities—I estimate sixty-five minutes for the battlecruiser to make lance range.”

  “Any missiles yet?”

  “Negative.”

  “Let’s change that, shall we?” Kyle asked cheerfully. “Give me…five salvos on the Paramount. Stanford gets the Hercules; he needs a second one on his resume.”

  “You’re just nervous because you almost died the last time we met one of them,” the CAG replied. “Which, for the record, you are not permitted to try this time.”

  Chuckles ran around Avalon’s bridge as the first salvo of nine missiles blasted into space. The crew was feeling a little twitchy at hanging out there on their own, even if they all knew where the rest of the Battle group was.

  “Is anyone except the Hercules moving?” he asked.

  “Rabbits are running for the bushes,” Xue replied. “Civilian shipping is burning away from us as fast as they can—they don’t want to be caught up in this. That Paramount is staying in orbit, as is the freighter. They seem to think the Hercules can take care of us.”

  “Well, then, let’s encourage them in that line of thought,” Kyle said. “Once those missiles are on their way, turn us directly away from the Hercules and go to two hundred gees. Let’s see if we can tempt them into a fighter strike.”

  A little over two minutes passed, every twenty-two seconds marked by another set of nine missiles launching into space. Kyle noted approvingly that Xue had given them a more complex course than a straight path to the carrier. By arcing them around the Hercules, she’d increased their flight time by several minutes but prevented the battlecruiser from defending the carrier.

  Thirty minutes to impact either way.

  “We have missile launch from the Hercules,” Xue reported. “Twenty missiles inbound.”

  “We are turning to run now,” Pendez announced. “Let their missiles choke on that.”

  “Enemy missile time to impact, thirty-five minutes and change,” the tactical officer noted. “Our time to impact for first salvo, twenty-eight minutes and counting.”

  Kyle checked the numbers. It would now be over two and a half hours before the Hercules brought Avalon into range of her massive, megaton-a-second positron lances. Their missiles were going to be more of a headache, but with all two hundred and forty of his starfighters flying carrier defense, that was more of a minor pain than a real issue.

  As far as the Commonwealth could tell, the situation was well in hand. Either Avalon would flee into Alcubierre and the system would be safe, or the Hercules would bring her to bay and rip apart the carrier and her fighters with its lances at close range.

  He checked the Hercules’ position and acceleration.

  In a little over sixty minutes, the Terrans would learn not to take appearances at face value.

  “Sir, we just received a warning notice from Camerone,” Anderson told Kyle quietly. “The defenders at Zahn have added what looks like a software kludge to give their missiles a terminal sprint mode. Not sure that our friend out here has it, but…it gave their missile defense issues.”

  “Update our software for the possibility,” he replied. “We’ve got time.”

  Anderson coughed his agreement, turning his atten
tion back to the computers. Their own missiles were still fifteen minutes from the Paramount, which was maneuvering to both protect the transport ship and make sure none of the civilian space stations were in the line of fire.

  The last was a consideration not every starship commander would have thought of, and Kyle mentally saluted the other carrier’s captain. It wasn’t going to save the Terran ship—the carrier could probably take the Jackhammer salvos, but it wouldn’t take a lot of bad luck for it not to, and Kyle’s plan for the Paramount had already been set in motion.

  The Hercules’ first salvo would reach Avalon four minutes later, followed by another twenty missiles every twenty-five seconds for almost four minutes. The battlecruiser had sent ten salvos their way, then ceased fire to see what happened.

  Two hundred missiles, even arriving in sequence, were going to be a handful for the supercarrier and her fighters. A manageable handful, most likely, but a handful.

  Kyle wasn’t even bothering to send his own missiles back. Nine missiles a salvo into the teeth of a modern battlecruiser with a hundred and thirty starfighters flying escort? It would have been a waste of ammunition.

  His starfighter wing was the only thing that could threaten the Hercules, though the hundred-odd Scimitars could blunt the worst of the strike if he sent Stanford in. Even with the Paramount’s wing in play, though, he figured SFG-001 could take the ship.

  Even with Avalon alone, he figured he could take the system. Separating the Hercules from anything the Paramount could do would be the first step in that, so he was content to run at less than his top speed and let the battlecruiser slowly catch up.

  For now, he watched his missiles close with the enemy. The carrier accelerated into their teeth, then turned at the last minute and opened fire. Lasers and positron lances did their work, and his first salvo died well short of the Terran ship.

  The second and third suffered the same fate, though they died closer to the Paramount than the third had.

  Kyle wasn’t sure what happened with the fourth salvo. The Q-probes were close, giving him near-real-time data, but it still wasn’t clear. One moment, the Terran ship was sweeping the missiles from the sky—the next, an entire quadrant of the ship’s lasers stopped firing.

  The spray of fire that took out the last of the fourth salvo was clearly desperate, almost random—and took the remaining defenses out of position for the fifth and final salvo.

  One missile made it through. A one-gigaton direct hit split the old ten-million-ton ship in two, her prow and stern spinning off into space from the vaporized void that had been her middle third.

  “Damn,” he said mildly. “I…didn’t actually expect that to work.”

  23:45 March 13, 2736 ESMDT

  SFG-001 Actual—Falcon-C type command starfighter

  “Well, I hope you do expect this to work,” Michael Stanford told Roberts over the com. His five wings of forty-eight fighters apiece were feeling a little exposed, drifting a hundred thousand kilometers behind Avalon. “Because a lot of us are going to be in trouble if it doesn’t.”

  “My faith in you is extensive, Vice Commodore,” the Force Commander replied brightly. “And I know when to get out of the way. Good luck.”

  Michael grunted acknowledgement at Roberts, then switched to his fighter group’s channel.

  “Rokos, Bravo Wing front and center,” he ordered. “Use your missiles, your lances, whatever you feel is needed. We’ll cycle the center Wing when you run out of missiles.”

  “You just want me dead so you can take my bunk,” Wing Commander Rokos replied. “You’re not dumb enough to think you can get my wife.”

  “Your wife and Mason would both kill me,” Michael agreed. “Stay alive, people. I hate writing letters home.”

  Even front and center wasn’t that much more dangerous for Bravo Wing than anyone else. Most of what Michael was dropping on Rokos’s wing was the lion’s share of the antimissile fire.

  Seconds ticked away and the missiles closed. Vice Commodore Michael Stanford, Commanding Office Starfighter Group Zero Zero One, counted the seconds and kilometers in his implant until…

  “Weapons free,” he snapped. “Take them down!”

  Suiting actions to words, he lined the nose of his own command starfighter up on the probability zone where his computers said a missile would likely be and fired. The six-thousand-ton spacecraft shivered as the beam flashed into space—and he cheered as he connected, blasting the missile into vapor.

  With twelve times as many starfighters as missiles, the first salvo didn’t so much fail as evaporate. Michael’s fighters charged on, cutting into the second salvo with equally deadly efficiency.

  Here and there, a missile managed to sneak past the starfighters—Stormwinds, like Jackhammers, were incredibly smart weapons.

  A single missile, though—even two, which somehow sneaked past Michael’s people on the seventh salvo—was no danger to Avalon’s defenses. Michael’s fighters ripped two hundred missiles—the best a modern battlecruiser could throw—to pieces in the time it took the missiles to pass the fighters.

  Some days, Michael really understood why the Federation Senate had stopped funding battleships. At least cruisers brought some starfighters to the party.

  “We are swinging bare-assed in the breeze and still here, sir,” Rokos reported crisply as the tenth salvo died. “What do we do now?”

  “Wait and see what our Terran friend does,” Michael replied. “Think he’s going to throw more missiles?”

  “No,” Force Commander Roberts replied. “He’s seen that’s pointless—he’s going to close the range, rip you guys apart with his lighter lances, and then blow Avalon to hell with his big guns.”

  “Oh. Are we going to let him do that?” Rokos asked, somewhat abashed.

  Roberts laughed.

  “Wait and see, Wing Commander. Wait and see.”

  00:00 March 14, 2736 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge

  Midnight.

  Avalon and the rest of Seventh Fleet had known the battle was coming; the full crew had been rested and awake when they’d arrived in their target systems.

  The Commonwealth ships hadn’t had that luxury. Twenty-three hundred hours was an odd time, too. Most of the “day shift” crew would still be awake, not quite having passed out yet. Without warning, though, the night shift would be the only people fully awake and functional. There was a good chance that the Hercules’ captain had been pulled out of bed.

  Nonetheless, Kyle figured someone over there had to be wondering why Avalon was running. At this point, he could easily turn the carrier and her fighters around and go head-to-head with the battlecruiser. It would be a near-run thing, but he figured he could take the Hercules. The Terran captain probably figured she could take Avalon.

  “You were wrong,” Xue announced. “They’re launching more missiles.”

  “They’re not aimed at Avalon,” Kyle guessed. “They’re going to see if they can strip away our fighter cover—or at least force us to keep SFG One in space and run them out of missiles. Watch this lot,” he ordered. “If they have the sprint mode that Admiral Alstairs saw, they’ll use it on our fighters.”

  Again, the missiles blasted into space every twenty-six seconds. He didn’t expect them to stop after ten salvos this time, either. The Hercules had well over a thousand missiles in her magazines, and killing Stanford’s starfighters was her best chance at carrying this battle.

  “Flight time is seventeen minutes, almost exactly,” his tactical officer noted. “Passing on our telemetry to Vice Commodore Stanford.”

  Kyle nodded acknowledge of Xue’s report, but he was focused on the updates from the Q-probes. The missiles weren’t going to matter.

  The twelfth salvo of the new attack blasted into space and then, finally, the Terran battlecruiser crossed the somewhat arbitrary line in space he’d drawn before they’d even arrived in system. Avalon’s ‘flight’ had pulled the battlecruiser past the carrier’s arr
ival point. The Hercules was far enough away from everything that she could have gone into Alcubierre drive if she’d chosen to.

  The battlecruiser’s course hadn’t been perfectly consistent the whole flight out. Even on a roughly straight line, she’d swooped, curved, spiraled, and barrel-rolled to render missile or long-range lance fire more difficult.

  But her course had been roughly straight. Straight enough for a message sent twenty minutes ago via Q-Com to have predicted her position now within a ten-thousand-kilometer error.

  In a brilliant flash of blue Cherenkov radiation, the battleship Clawhammer and the strike cruiser Courageous dropped out of warped space—barely twenty thousand kilometers from the Terran battlecruiser.

  One hundred and sixty-six light positron lances—lighter on Courageous than on Clawhammer—blasted into the Terran starfighters the moment the warships emerged. Their own sensors hadn’t resolved the static radiation from their departure; everything was targeted by data relayed from Avalon’s Q-probes. An extra thirty-six beams cut into space to make certain of the kills, and every Terran starfighter died in two seconds.

  Their deaths were a sideshow as Clawhammer took half a second to orient herself and fired her main weapons. A dozen megaton-a-second heavy positron lances hit the Hercules-class battlecruiser amidships and held.

  Courageous’s dozen six-hundred-kiloton-a-second beams arrived fractions of a second later—and hit only vaporized metal.

  16

  Cora System

  00:10 March 14, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  AT-032 Chimera Landing Group, Assault Shuttle Four

  Fully encased in the two-hundred-plus kilograms of carbon filament armor and servomotors that made up his combat armor, strapped into an assault shuttle locked into a launch tube of an assault transport “threading the needle” of the effect of a planet’s gravity on the Alcubierre field, there was no way for Edvard to appreciate emergence as he preferred.