“Yes, sir.”
“Seven-Two is ready to go as soon as our Marines are aboard,” Kyle reported to Alstairs from his office. It was a small conference via Q-Com with the three Battle Group commanders plus Alstairs’ flag captain. “I don’t expect to be leaving late, though Commander Pendez tells me we have an hour or so of leeway before it will be an issue.”
“Seven-Three departed six hours ago,” Aleppo advised him. The Trade Factor Force Commander’s Battle Group had the farthest to go—twelve light-years to Seven-Two’s eleven or Seven-One’s ten. “We are on schedule for arrival.”
“Seven-One will be ready to depart in approximately eight hours,” Rear Admiral Alstairs confirmed once her subordinates had finished reporting. “So far, we are on schedule for Phase Two of Rising Star?”
“Fully,” Kyle confirmed. “We were able to use the captured Terran freighter to provide orbital defenses to Cora. I suspect she was intended to provide defenses to several systems, which will give Cora a very solid defense network once they’re all online.”
“How long is that going to take?” the Admiral asked.
“Longer than I’d like,” Kyle admitted with a sigh. “From what Governor Musil has learned so far, barely ten percent of the Cora Security Force personnel survived. He has found their records, however, and has people digging up every ex-member of the Force they can find. Enough experienced volunteers have come forward over the last few days that Musil believes they can have the two deployed platforms online—at least as missile control centers—by tomorrow evening Standard Meridian.
“Refitting the platforms with non-Commonwealth Q-Coms is going to be the biggest task,” he continued, “and Seven-Two is out of reserve blocks of entangled particles. Nonetheless, Cora’s new military may not have a name, but they will have a fully functioning defense network by the end of the week—one that is only going to grow stronger given time.”
“But you have the Federation platforms aboard the logistics ship still?” Aleppo asked.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “None of those platforms or fighters are being deployed here—Governor Musil has accepted the logic.”
“That will help make up for the loss of the Venture in terms of Rising Star,” the Rear Admiral said grimly. “A lot is going to depend on what we encounter at Frihet,” she continued. “If they’ve based a nodal force there, we could be looking at an even fight.”
“I’m not a fan of those,” Kyle noted. “But with all three groups arriving, I’m pretty sure we can make them leap the wrong way.”
“Somehow, that you want them looking the wrong way when you punch them doesn’t surprise me,” Aleppo said dryly. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”
“We need more data to really play them,” he replied. “In this case, we’re probably best off going in fast and crushing them with overwhelming firepower. It all depends on whether their missing ships are there.”
“It’s unlikely that those ships are missing for a reason we’ll like,” Solace noted. She was being quiet, though Kyle certainly had been aware of her presence. “I would guess they’ve been pulled back for upgrades. There’s a lot of things they could be refitting their old ships with that would make our life harder—modern deflectors, for example.”
“I don’t trust a position Walkingstick set up to be as weak as this appears,” Admiral Alstairs agreed. “I’m also concerned about rumors they’ve been testing a seventh-generation starfighter—by now, they have to have realized the deficiencies of the Scimitar’s design versus our new ships. Re-equipping their carriers and cruisers with a starfighter capable of going toe-to-toe with our Falcons will be a headache.”
“Walkingstick thinks like I do, I believe,” Kyle told his fellows. “So, my question is…where does he want us looking—and what are we missing?”
“I don’t know,” Alstairs said slowly. “We can hope he didn’t see Rising Star coming—we’ve been pretty lackadaisical about attempting to reclaim our systems, after all. But if he did… Watch your backs, people,” she ordered.
“We’ll discuss our plans for Frihet in detail as we get closer. Review what we have on the system, and for now, let’s assume that all six of our missing ships are there.”
The Rear Admiral and Force Commander Aleppo dropped off the channel, leaving just Kyle and Mira on the conference. Given that everyone else in the Fleet was limited to recorded messages to their loved ones, stealing even a handful of minutes made Kyle feel guilty.
“If we cut this off early, the Admiral will tell me off again,” Mira said immediately, heading off his guilt with the smile so few people saw. It transformed the elegant ebony statue of his former executive officer’s work persona into a still-gorgeous but far more human woman.
“How are you holding up?” he asked quietly. Camerone was her first command, and one she’d been rushed into with little notice or preparation. While they’d taken advantage of her no longer being his subordinate quite quickly, he was also concerned about the demands on her.
“Alstairs built up a good team,” she told him. “And, thankfully, she also knows when to get out of the way. Her people don’t look to her for orders instead of me most of the time.” She paused. “It’s good. We don’t do the easiest job in the galaxy, but with this team behind me, I’m doing okay.”
“I saw the Zahn reports,” Kyle replied. “I’d say you’re doing better than okay!”
“I at least didn’t hang my ship out to dry as bait!” she said. “What were you thinking?”
“That I was outside the gravity zone the whole time and could have backup in place in twelve minutes,” he told her with a grin. “Compared to the crap I pulled at Barsoom, that was nothing—and pulling it off captured a star system in exchange for thirty-seven Marines.”
His grin faded as he remembered that. Most of them had died on the surface, taking Trudeau City. Just because the casualties had been light to take an entire system didn’t stop them being people with lives and memories that were now lost.
“How often can you play the odds like that, Kyle?” she asked. “Sooner or later, one of your stunts is going to blow up in your face.”
“I know,” he agreed. “That’s why the Cora plan had fallbacks and cutouts, Mira. Barsoom…Tranquility…those were all-or-nothing stunts where I had no choice. The worst-case scenario in Cora was realizing the entire Battle Group was outgunned and going back into warp before we engaged anyone. I like those kinds of options.”
She shook her head.
“Fair enough, I suppose,” she allowed. “I believe I have mentioned that you’re not allowed to get yourself killed in this war, right?”
“And the same applies to you, my dear,” he reminded her. “I look forward to stealing some actual time together in Frihet.”
“Hopefully, the Commonwealth won’t impede that plan,” Mira told him with a smile.
“Walkingstick would probably like to cut our time short,” Kyle agreed. “But with all of Seventh Fleet, I don’t think he’ll succeed.”
“Oh, he won’t succeed,” Mira replied, her smile widening into something more predatory. “But he’s welcome to try.”
19
Deep Space, En Route to Frihet System
20:00 March 17, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Main Flight Briefing Room
“Vice Commodore, this is Rokos.”
The voice of his Bravo Wing commander echoed in Michael Stanford’s skull as he approached his office.
“What is it, Wing Commander?” Avalon’s CAG asked.
“We need you in the main briefing room,” Rokos replied crisply. “We’re having a…discipline problem and need higher authority.”
Stanford cursed whatever Stars had made him the CAG. With two hundred and forty starfighters under his command, that meant he had seven hundred and twenty flight crew, plus roughly a thousand deck personnel.
The flight crews, in his experience, were prima donnas to a man, woman, and he
rm. By and large, the Flight Commanders handled their squadrons, but problems filtered up to the Wing Commanders on a regular basis—and, occasionally, the worst cases hit the Vice Commodore in charge of the Group.
“I’ll be right there,” he sighed.
“Thank you, sir,” Rokos told him crisply.
It was late in the ship’s ‘day,’ three quarters of the way through the Bravo shift and two hours away from changeover. Flight Country was dead. The current Combat Space Patrol was being run by starfighters from Indomitable, playing trainer to several squadrons of hastily refitted Scimitars in the hands of Coran ex-retirees.
He was surprised, as he approached the briefing room, not to hear any signs of commotion. If a Wing Commander felt they needed to call in the CAG, there was usually shouting when said CAG arrived.
Michael’s sense of paranoia, finely honed in recent months after an assassination attempt by the same woman who’d tried to take out the Captain, finally triggered when he stepped into the main flight briefing room—a room the size of many school gymnasiums, designed to allow addresses to or social events for every one of his seven hundred-plus flight crew—to find the lights down.
The door slammed shut behind him before he could begin to retreat, and he was halfway into reaching for his weapon when the lights came back on—and his ears were suddenly assaulted by over seven hundred voices chorusing, “Happy birthday to you!”
Even if any of his people could sing, enough of them couldn’t that it dissolved into an overwhelming cacophony, aided easily along the way by the two men in the front—one tall and huge, one short and wide—both of whom had the lungs for volume but couldn’t carry a tune in a star freighter.
“I see,” Michael replied as the sound finally died down, “that your ‘discipline problem,’ Commander Rokos, was your own willingness to ignore my standing order to ignore my birthday.”
“Without question, sir!” Rokos replied in perfect cadet form. “No apologies, sir.”
“If you aren’t planning on scrubbing starfighters with a toothbrush tonight, there had better be cake,” Michael intoned perilously, only to find his Captain laughing at him.
Massive as Force Commander Kyle Roberts was, it was hard to be intimidated by him when he was grinning and laughing like a teenager—something Michael suspected that Roberts cultivated intentionally.
“Please, Michael,” Roberts told him. “Of course there’s a cake.”
Avalon’s captain gestured imperiously, and a path opened through the crowd, allowing Senior Chief Petty Officer Olivia Kalers, his deck chief, to roll a munitions trolley across the briefing room. Kalers was a shaven-headed woman with a permanently sour expression, but she was trying to smile. Pride of place on the trolley was a one-twentieth-size model of a Falcon starfighter, made of cake.
The other worthy pushing the trolley was Master Chief Petty Officer Cardea Belmonte, Avalon’s bosun. Belmonte was a massive woman with short-cropped white hair, and she was smiling—one of the biggest grins Michael had ever seen on a human being.
“Happy thirty-ninth birthday, Vice Commodore,” she told him. “We made you a cake!”
By the time most of his people had swung by, seized cake, and wished him a happy birthday, Michael was feeling utterly wrung out. It wasn’t often that he dealt with this large a portion of the nearly two thousand people under his command on anything even resembling a one-on-one basis, and the process had consumed over two hours of his evening.
Finally, he managed to snag a second piece of cake for himself and find a relatively quiet corner—to find Roberts waiting there for him. With, almost inevitably, a beer.
“How do you always have beer?” he asked as he gratefully grabbed the—still cold! —bottle from his superior.
“Because I always stock up when we hit a planet,” Roberts replied cheerfully. “This is from a microbrewery just outside Trudeau City. I was impressed, so I grabbed a few cases.”
“Cases,” Michael repeated. “How much of your mass allowance is beer, boss?”
“Thirty percent or so?” the Force Commander guessed. “The refrigeration units take up a bunch too. I don’t have that much stuff, Michael—I’ve lived shipboard for eight years at this point.”
Avalon’s CAG studied the party, a warm feeling settling into his chest at the sheer amount of work his people had put into it.
“Last time I checked,” he noted, “my subordinates don’t have easy access to my birthday. Someone more senior than Rokos had to provide that.”
“That was me,” his boss confirmed cheerfully. “Though I will note that your people came to me. It seems Hammond knew your birthday and set all this in motion before he got med-evaced. Rokos didn’t know the exact date, but he knew it had to be soon.”
There was nothing Michael could really say to that. Master Chief Petty Officer Marshal Hammond, Avalon’s former deck chief, had been badly wounded in the attempt to kill Michael himself. As the CAG—who had lost his legs just above the knees in the Battle of Tranquility—knew, there wasn’t much that required someone to be shipped planetside for medical treatment.
Hammond had spent his last few weeks aboard Avalon in a wheelchair, wrapped in a “cast” that had effectively replaced the functions of several of his organs. The kind of internal reconstruction the Chief had required wasn’t possible out of even the big carrier’s resources, and he’d been shipped all the way back to Castle to get the best care possible.
“How’s he doing?” Roberts asked, clearly following Michael’s thoughts.
“It’s Marshal, sir,” Michael replied with a chuckle. “From the last communication I had from him, he’s spending half of his day in a tank full of nanites, and the other half complaining that the nanites make him itch.”
“Do they?” the Force Commander asked.
“In my experience? Like Void, sir. Like Starless Void,” Michael confirmed, shivering. “Was worth it to walk again for me—and without proper regen therapy, Hammond was looking at that life support chair for the rest of his life—but Void, did it itch.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m facing dramatic, life-threatening injury,” Roberts replied cheerfully.
23:00 March 17, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, CAG’s Quarters
Like a carrier’s Captain, a carrier’s Commander, Air Group wasn’t attached to any of the ship’s three shifts. Michael’s sleep schedule was variable at the best of times, but he was usually asleep by twenty-three hundred hours Standard.
When he finally managed to make it into his quarters, though, his implant happily informed him that he had a private Q-Com message waiting for him. His mother’s birthday message had arrived that morning, which left only one likely candidate.
Tired as he was, he couldn’t stop a silly smile as Kelly Mason’s image appeared in his mind. With a thought, he transferred the message to his quarters’ wallscreen and dropped down on the side of his bed to watch her message.
“Hey, lover,” she greeted him. She looked tired—she’d only sent the message an hour before and her uniform was rumpled from long wear. “Happy birthday. Interstellar shipping is a bitch, so you’ll get your present when you come home.”
The voluptuous blond woman smiled, sending a shiver running through Michael’s heart.
“That gives me time to think of what to get you,” she added wickedly. “It’s been a hectic month,” she admitted. “After the attack when you guys left, they’ve got Home Fleet pulling system-wide patrols, making sure nobody sneaks up on the Yards. At least we don’t have to worry about the Reserve anymore.”
She didn’t elaborate—Q-Com transmissions might be the most secure communication known to man, with zero chance of interception, but that didn’t invalidate operational security—but Michael had seen the same reports. With the first wave of the Reserve deployed, the Castle System Reserve was in the yards now. Twenty ships at a time, four months to commission each wave—it would take almost another year to get the Allian
ce’s eighty reserve starships deployed.
Hopefully by then, there’d be new-wave construction to deploy as well. Avalon, for example, was over twice the volume of the Reserve ships sent out to reinforce her. There was supposed to be an entire generation of warships to match her, but only a handful of the Sanctuaries had been completed before the war started.
“I’d be okay with the patrols,” Mason continued, “if they didn’t also insist on inspections to keep the Home Fleet to the ‘standard expected of the Federation’s last line of defense’. I’ll never object to engineers checking over my ship’s tech, but inspectors going over my people’s uniforms and corridor cleanliness?”
She shuddered, and Michael doubted it was feigned. The Federation’s Home Fleet was notorious for its spit and shine—suddenly, being on the front didn’t sound so bad!
“Spent yesterday cleaning the ship from top to bottom and today playing nursemaid to a pair of idiots who might fall into a fusion reactor or something if left alone,” she concluded. “And that was if they didn’t irritate anyone enough to help them fall, for Christ’s sake.”
His smile tried to split his face. His girlfriend’s concerns were very real—and very much the concerns of a fleet attached to an unlikely target. Walkingstick’s people had launched one attack on the system, but the logistics of that kind of operation were a mess. If nothing else, once your Alcubierre speed crossed the ten-light-year-per-day mark, ships started to have a real chance of just, well, disappearing.
Compared to the fear of losing his people when they hit Frihet, they were seemingly minor. Roberts’s tricks had got them through Cora without fighter losses, but that couldn’t continue. Starfighters, after all, existed to die so starships didn’t.
Mason reached out toward the camera as if to touch his face. “I miss you,” she said quietly. “I did, for your information, manage to make time to have supper with your mother. We ended up talking grandkids.”
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 77