At this point, Fleet Captain Mira Solace was very used to waking up at whatever time she decided before she went to sleep. The morning meeting was set late enough, however, that she actually allowed herself to sleep in—waking up to the sight of Frihet’s dawn streaming through the hotel window.
Kyle Roberts stood in the window, looking out onto Landning City, and Mira simply lay in the bed, a rumpled disaster after the prior evening’s extended activities, and watched him. This had not been where she’d expected to end up when she’d been pulled from her nice, comfortable, safe posting aboard Sunset.
But then, she also hadn’t expected to make Captain anytime soon, either. She’d first hit it off with the big carrier captain and then been promoted herself. The opportunity had seemed too good to pass up.
Now she worried. The current split of Seventh Fleet meant Kyle could easily end up in another star system, fighting—possibly dying—far away from her. Their positions and ranks made them luckier than many in the fleet—they were physically close enough that they could steal time together, and senior enough to be able to do so.
It was hard to feel guilty about that while her lover was standing naked in the window, haloed by the light of the planet’s slowly rising sun.
“You’re awake,” he said brightly without turning around. “It’s still a couple of hours till the conference. I’ve checked in with Avalon; all’s quiet in orbit.”
Kicking off the blankets, Mira joined him at the window.
“Looking at anything in particular?” she asked.
“Just…the city,” he replied, gesturing outward. The Capital Star Hotel was far from the tallest building in Landning City, though it was far enough out from the main downtown to tower over its immediate surroundings.
Landning was a pretty typical colonial capital. It had a central core of skyscrapers, some towering as much as half a kilometer into the sky, where the planet’s big corporations and local branches of multistellars were headquartered. That core was surrounded by a vast expanse of suburbs, linked by carefully coordinated ground and air traffic. Sections of relatively small apartment buildings—mostly under fifty stories here—were scattered at points throughout those suburbs. Her implant said the city was roughly fifteen percent of the planet’s population.
There was surprisingly little visible damage from the fighting. Even looking beyond the city, the craters and smoke plumes where the space defense units had dug in were barely visible from here. The Terran Marines had, to their credit, made a point of surrendering before any of the fighting got into the city.
“It all looks so peaceful from up here,” Kyle eventually said. His voice was less cheerful than she was used to from him, and she looked at him carefully from the corner of her eye. “If we screw this up, the Terrans will come back, and a lot of people could still die.”
“That’s the risk the whole operation is dealing with,” she agreed. “Five systems liberated from the Commonwealth, but…only fixed defenses, no starships, and ten warships out there somewhere.” Mira shivered. “We think we’re saving these people, but we could be setting them up for a world of hurt.”
Kyle shifted, wrapping her in his arms and warming her shivers with his body heat.
“I know,” he agreed. “It’s war, it’s strategically necessary, and I hate it.”
For all of his bulk, Mira was much the same height as Kyle, and she easily wrapped her arms around him in turn.
“What do we do?” she asked quietly. Her question had more meaning than she realized. She wasn’t even entirely sure there was a “we” yet. She enjoyed Kyle’s company, respected him, but even she wasn’t sure what the long-term potential for them as a couple was yet—and that was assuming the war let them have any potential.
“Our jobs,” Kyle told her. “Too many people look to one or both of us for us to forget that,” he continued. “But…” He pressed her fingers to his lips. “We are allowed to be human, Mira. We can have doubts; we can steal this time to be us.”
His eyes met hers and Mira realized he’d heard both her questions. He didn’t know either, but he saw the potential for an “us” too.
That was…all anyone could ask for sometimes.
25
Frihet System
09:25 March 26, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, CAG’s Office
“You should see what Zahn has given us for flight crews,” the man on the other end of the Q-Com link told Michael Stanford. “Half of them are amazing—older officers, vets of the last war to a man and woman. The other half…” Flight Commander Antonio Zupan shuddered. “They’re so green, I think they’re drinking chlorophyll.”
Zupan, a whipcord-thin man with tanned-dark skin and black hair, had been promoted off Avalon when they’d brought Battle Group Seventeen’s fighter wings up to strength. His promotion had landed him an assignment to one of the cadres being delivered to the systems Rising Star liberated.
Despite his junior rank and recent promotion, the man was the second-ranked Castle Federation Space Force officer in the Zahn system, tasked with taking the crews that the planetary defense force provided and training them to fly the three hundred and eighty-four Falcons the Federation had given Zahn.
“You were no better once,” Michael told him. “Hell, you were a rabble-rousing fight-starter once, and I don’t think any of your greenhorns have grown into that level of iniquity yet!”
“I think you promoted me to make me behave,” Zupan accused. “And I’m still a rabble-rouser, for that matter. This lot will make good crews, given time. We’ve got maybe twenty squadrons of mostly qualified crews. The other thirty squadrons? They can get the birds into space, but I need more time.”
Four Citadel-class platforms based eight Federation fighter wings—forty-eight squadrons. Michael was actually surprised that Zahn had come up with enough people qualified to serve as fighter crew in the time they’d had—starfighter crew members required a ninety-ninth percentile ability to run data through their implants.
“Do they all meet the bandwidth requirement?” he asked, wondering if they’d simply let the recruiting standard slip.
“I wondered the same thing, Vice Commodore,” Zupan replied. “I checked them all—they managed to find twelve hundred souls with enough bandwidth in two days. I suspect someone, somewhere, already had a little list.”
“That helps, though it may have other issues,” Michael warned.
“If any of these kids were drafted, they aren’t whining about it,” the trainer told him. “They saw the Commonwealth occupation firsthand. They’ll fight.”
“Just make sure they can.”
“That’s what they sent me…” Zupan trailed off, staring at something Michael couldn’t see. “Fuck. FUCK. No!”
“Flight Commander!” Avalon’s CAG snapped.
“Going to have to cut this short,” the trainer replied shortly. “The Commonwealth is here.”
09:45 March 26, 2736 ESMDT
Landning City, Capital Star Hotel
There was something inherently wrong to Kyle about sitting in a comfortable hotel conference room, well rested and well fed, while watching a data stream announcing that your subordinates almost a dozen light-years away were going to die.
The scheduled conference had been canceled. None of the Marines or junior officers had joined them, but the captains of the warships in orbit were being linked in to the room where Kyle sat with the other Force Commander, the Admiral, and Mira.
The holograms helped fill a room that would otherwise have felt empty with only the four of them, and helped shield against the data feed now coming in from Zahn.
Eight capital ships accelerated towards the planet at an even two hundred gravities, spearheaded by the massive bulk of a Saint-class battleship. Arrayed around the twenty-million-ton, sixty-million-cubic-meter battleship were two Resolute-class battleships, two Assassin-class battlecruisers and three Lexington-class fleet carriers.
&nb
sp; It was a stupendous amount of firepower, a force that would have crushed any of the three Battle Groups Seventh Fleet had been divided into for the last portion of the operation.
Against the four launch platforms, three hundred and eighty-four starfighters and two hundred missiles satellites in Zahn orbit, it may as well have been the Sol Home Fleet.
As Kyle watched, the carriers started to fall back with the cruisers as escorts. A small group of starfighters remained with the carriers, but five hundred Scimitars advanced toward the planet alongside the battleships.
“They don’t stand a chance,” Anders said aloud, putting into words what every senior officer in Seventh Fleet was thinking. “Damn it all.”
No one in Zahn was bothering to update Seventh Fleet on their plans, but access to the full telemetry from the Citadels told the story. All of the Falcons were in space, carefully establishing the swirling, semi-random formation of space combat.
Then, almost as one—too many of the pilots were green for smooth simultaneity—the starfighters lunged out at their enemies. Moments later, seventy-eight new icons lit up on the screen as the Terran battleships opened fire.
“Thirty-six minutes to fighter missile range,” Kyle noted softly. “The Atlatls will need to open up in just under eleven minutes for a massed time-on-target strike.”
A mass strike from the six hundred launchers those two hundred platforms carried, combined with the sixteen hundred fighter missiles from the starfighters, had a decent chance of hurting those battleships…except for the close-in fighter escort.
With five hundred fighters playing missile defense for the Terrans and the defending starfighter pilots being so green…Kyle wasn’t sure how it would end. But from ten light-years away, all that Seventh Fleet’s office could do was watch.
But watch they did. Minutes ticked by, and Zahn’s defenders launched their missiles a few seconds later than Kyle predicted. It shouldn’t make too much of a difference, but the slight coordination failure worried him.
And the others. He felt Mira sneak her hand under the table into his and squeezed gently. There was nothing they could do—nothing but watch and hope that this commander had learned the lesson that Dimitri Tobin had sacrificed his career to teach the Commonwealth.
Atrocities would not be tolerated. If this fleet fired on Zahn, Operation Rising Star would be put on hold while Seventh Fleet hunted down the bastards who’d killed a world. Avalon had done it once. Kyle would gladly do it again.
More missiles blasted out from each side, the Atlatls going to rapid-fire at the command of the Citadel platforms, while the battleships maintained an even metronome of one salvo a minute for fifteen minutes.
The Atlatls, like the Terran defenders of the system before them, emptied their magazines before the Terran missiles reached them. Like Admiral Alstairs, however, the Terrans had realized this and ignored the platforms. Their missiles targeted the Citadels and hammered home with devastating force.
Seven minutes before the starfighters reached their range, the first Stormwinds reached the Citadel defensive platforms. Defensive fire filled the space above Zahn, and the Stormwinds responded with jamming and evasive maneuvers.
It wasn’t enough. The cadre of Federation officers and spacers left behind hadn’t had enough time to train their new crews. They stopped the first salvo, but not the second or the third. The fourth salvo finished the job, missiles slamming into already-crippled hulks and vaporizing them in blasts of antimatter fire.
Now Mira was gripping Kyle’s hand with horrified strength, and he knew he was clinging to her too as he watched the fighter strike lunge forward. With an experienced fighter group, the gunners could have fully taken over control of the capital ship missiles, augmenting the strikes and delivering a hammerblow.
It was rapidly clear Zahn’s defenders had done no such thing. The missiles charged in on their own highly capable brains alone. The fighters crossed the invisible line in space marking their own weapons range and opened fire.
Kyle winced. Half of the defenders had fired in perfect unison, linking up with the new timing of the first Atlatl missile salvo. The other half…scattered their missiles over a five-second window. In this kind of battle, five seconds was everything.
The Terran fighters, on the other hand, launched in perfect synchronicity, sending two thousand missiles back into the defenders’ teeth. The Falcons fired again, launching their remaining two salvos while they still had a chance.
The Terrans…didn’t bother.
Fourteen seconds before the missiles hit, the Falcons entered the range of the battleships’ defensive lances and the dying began. Positron beams tore through space, ripping apart missiles and fighters with equal abandon. The defending starfighters launched themselves forward, interposing their own positron lances and lasers between the incoming missiles and the battleships—but leaving the Falcons themselves to the battleships.
Kyle couldn’t close his eyes. He watched as the mix of veterans and half-trained crews, including men and women who’d served under his own command, drove into that maelstrom—their focus on the battleships.
The last Falcon died two full seconds before reaching lance range of the battleship or seeing a missile strike home. Lasers and lances alike turned on the inbound missiles, a devastating harvest of explosions ripping through space as the battleships tangled with the thousands of weapons targeted on them.
The Scimitars ripped the heart out of the missile salvos. They didn’t do it easily or cheaply—dozens of the starfighters died to direct hits and near misses—but they gutted the salvos, leaving them easy victims for the close-in defenses of three modern battleships.
As the last missiles came apart in balls of antimatter fire, Kyle finally closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind of what he’d seen. In sixty minutes, Seventh Fleet’s liberation of Zahn had been transformed into dust and death, with almost five thousand starfighter and platform crew killed in that vain attempt to achieve anything.
“What are they doing?” he heard Mira ask, and slowly opened his eyes, studying the data feed.
“They’re breaking off,” Anders said slowly. “Why? That makes no sense.”
Everyone in the room studied the screen for a long silent moment before the Admiral saw what they should have noticed from the beginning.
“No transports,” she said slowly. “They didn’t come equipped to reconquer—just to shatter whatever defenses we’d put in place. Opening a path and making an example…”
“Delivering a warning,” Kyle said harshly. “Arrogant bastards.”
26
Frihet System
20:00 March 26, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Shuttle Bay
Kyle stepped off the shuttle into the landing bay of his carrier, feeling like a zombie. Last night, everything had seemed to be coming together. Operation Rising Star had swept four of its six targets, crushing the Commonwealth everywhere along the way. Even the warning that there were more warships in the sector hadn’t really sunk in at a gut-level, not after an unbroken string of victories.
Now thousands of Alliance spacers and flight crews were dead. One of the planets they’d liberated had been left wide open, with no defenses once the Commonwealth managed to scare up an assault division to retake them—the number of Terran POWs left behind on Zahn meant they wouldn’t even need that many troops.
James Anderson and Michael Stanford were both waiting for their Captain outside the safety zone of the shuttle bay. The pale, redheaded executive officer just looked tired, greeting Kyle with a firm nod.
Avalon’s CAG looked like Kyle felt. Despite the fact that the fighter pilot had to have rested last night, there were bags under his eyes and new lines under blond hair that looked noticeably more silver than it had a few weeks before.
“Gentlemen,” Kyle greeted them. “What’s our status?”
Anderson visibly shook himself before speaking.
“Avalon is full
y restocked and prepared to move on your command,” the exec replied. “Michael is better able to speak to the fighter group, but we are above ninety-nine percent readiness in all other aspects. Crew could use a day or two of liberty if we have the time to spare.”
“We don’t,” Kyle told him. He didn’t elaborate for now. “Michael?”
“We’ve replaced the lost fighters from the logistics ships and I’ve reorganized my squadrons,” the CAG said quietly. “I have two hundred starfighters ready to deploy from Avalon’s group. Courageous and Indomitable are both down ten ships apiece.” He shrugged. “Not sure if we’re keeping the Battle Group together, so I’ve been keeping in touch with them.”
“The Admiral will be briefing us all shortly,” the Captain told him. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he continued, leading them out of the shuttle bay. “The attack at Zahn was a shock to all of our systems, but we will need to adapt and recover.”
“Zupan was one of mine,” Stanford said quietly. “One of ours. He fought at Barsoom. Damn it, Kyle—he deserved better than to be run out on a branch and cut off like that.”
“I know,” Kyle replied, glancing around the corridor to be sure none of the crew were listening to the CAG tear into the operations plan. “I don’t even disagree,” he said heavily. “It’s been the big known weakness of the plan for Rising Star since the beginning, gentlemen.”
“So, what do we do?” Stanford demanded. “We’ve got a dozen squadrons of our own people playing cadre—with barely enough time to get the people they’re training used to sitting in a damn starfighter, let alone flying one! If that fleet sweeps through Hammerveldt and Cora, all we’ll have achieved is a lot of new corpses.”
“We don’t know where they’ll go, Michael,” Kyle pointed out. “But…we have a plan.”
“What plan?”
“We make them come to us.”
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 83