An hour after the exchange with Ness, he learned the final answer.
Assembled into a single force in a rough wall formation, all eight Terran starships turned as one for Xin orbit and brought their engines online. Two hundred gravities—a fifty-gravity edge over anything Battle Group Seven-Two could achieve and still thirty gravities less than the modern battleship and battlecruiser at the heart of their formation.
The Lexingtons, the Volcano, even the Assassins were only there to thicken the missile defenses against the salvo that Ness knew Kyle was holding in reserve. It was the Saint and the Hercules that were going to kill his fleet.
Seventh Fleet would arrive before the Commonwealth ships reached Battle Group Avalon. They would emerge at the edge of the gravity well, a light-minute behind the Terrans, fifteen minutes before those eight warships reached lance range.
Since missile flight time for Seventh Fleet would be over thirty minutes, Twenty-Third Fleet had moved fifteen minutes too soon for Kyle’s people to survive this. The Terrans wouldn’t make it out—not with an entire fleet’s worth of missiles and starfighters chasing them across the system, even if Battle Group Seven-Two did no damage to them all—but they’d destroy Kyle’s people first.
He’d failed.
01:15 April 9, 2736 ESMDT
BC-129 Camerone, Bridge
Mira finished running the numbers herself and looked at her link to Admiral Alstairs’ flag bridge helplessly. They would arrive fifteen minutes before Kyle came under attack—and fifteen minutes too late to do anything.
“I did not come this far and cut things this close to watch Force Commander Roberts die,” Alstairs said flatly, loudly enough that everyone on both the bridge and flag bridge heard her.
“Commander Coles,” she continued, her voice sharp. “Have you ever threaded the needle before?”
Mira’s navigator looked at her, then at the intercom screen to the flag bridge as he swallowed hard.
“No, ma’am,” he admitted. “Some of the Marine transports have done it, but they’re all on their way back to Alizon now.”
“Coordinate with the other navigators, then,” the Rear Admiral ordered. “Find someone who has—I want us to drop out right behind these bastards.”
“Ma’am, that’s sixteen million kilometers into the gravity well,” Coles objected. “I don’t know if we can do that.”
“Commander, Pendez dropped Roberts into goddamn orbit at Tranquility,” Alstairs told him flatly. “She’d never done a late Alcubierre emergence at that point either. Make. It. Happen.”
Mira walked over to the Commander after Alstairs turned her attention away, dropping her hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“We know it can be done,” she said quietly.
“Everybody forgets that the old Avalon had neutronium armor,” Coles pointed out. “She could take a lot more of a beating than any of the new ships.”
“Is it going to rip any of the ships in half?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “Not unless we screw up the math or one of the engineering crews misbalances their singularities. This is very tight.”
“Then get the math right,” Mira told him. “And I’ll go step on the engineers. I am not getting to Huī Xing in time to watch Kyle die. Understand, Commander?”
“No pressure, huh?” Coles asked bitterly.
“Do you understand, James?” Mira repeated.
“I get it,” he told her. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to calculate a needle for eight starships to thread.”
42
Huī Xing System
01:45 April 9, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
“Salvo all missiles,” Kyle ordered.
Watching the Terran warships close for a full fifty minutes had been painful, but at this point, the survivability of his own battle group wasn’t the primary concern anymore. Launching earlier would allow the ships Ness didn’t need to kill Avalon to break off and be outside the gravity well once Seventh Fleet arrived.
Now that Twenty-Third Fleet was approaching turnover, there was no way those ships could help protect the fleet from his missiles and escape the gravity well before Seventh Fleet arrived. No one on his bridge or even the other warships had questioned the delay either.
Everyone in Battle Group Avalon had accepted their fate. Their deaths were going to bait the trap that handed the Commonwealth one of their worst defeats of the war. If the ships Ness was bringing to Xin were taken or destroyed, seventeen Terran capital ships would have been destroyed in Operation Rising Star.
That was over a fifth of the strength the Federation had started the war with. Kyle didn’t want to die any more than the next man. He wanted to live. He wanted to see where things went with Mira, to finish rebuilding his relationship with his son, to dance at Lisa Kerensky’s wedding to another man.
But he’d sworn an oath. Like the crew of his ships, he faced his fate unhesitatingly, watching his salvo of nine hundred and fifty missiles charge out at the Commonwealth fleet.
Seconds ticked away, turning into minutes. The Terrans hit turnover, slicing away their velocity by almost two kilometers a second every second.
The Terrans’ defenses opened up a full minute before impact, lasers and positron beams ripping into space from a million kilometers away. At that range, they scored few hits—but every missile that died was one they didn’t need to kill later.
Electronic countermeasures and jamming lit up the space around the Commonwealth fleet to Avalon’s sensors, even as streams of energy tore across the same void. Missiles died, their fiery deaths lighting up Kyle’s view and releasing expanding balls of radiation that added to the jamming.
His view of the battle was starting to disintegrate under the jamming and radiation, even the Q-probes in the middle of the fight barely able to sustain a clear view of the action. At this point, there was little the launching ship’s computers could do for the missiles—it was all down to the networked intelligence of the rapidly shrinking missile host.
“Go go go!” Kyle heard someone whisper on Avalon’s bridge. He grinned. The Captain couldn’t say that, but he could agree with the sentiment.
A cascade of fire and radiation reached across a million kilometers of empty space and crashed down on the Commonwealth ships. Desperate last-ditch defenses wove a shroud of explosions around the Twenty-Third Fleet, and it was easily ten seconds—an eternity to officers living in their implants and tactical nets—before the Commonwealth ships emerged.
Even as the Q-probes scanned the Terrans, studying and analyzing, there was one obvious sign of the effect of their missiles: eight starships had met the missile storm.
Six had left.
Kyle waited patiently for the identities to be established, for the data to be collated.
“We got the Volcano,” Xue reported after a minute. “The Volcano and one of the Assassins. Looks like the other Assassin and the Saint both took hits but are still ticking.”
Avalon’s Captain shook his head in admiration. Modern ships might not have the incredibly dense neutronium armor of pre–positron lance warships, but their meters-thick ferro-carbon ceramic armor could take a lot of punishment.
“Estimated time to lance range?” he finally asked.
“They haven’t adjusted their course at all,” Xue told him. “They will range on us in thirty minutes.”
The satellites had shot their bolt. Every missile he’d suspended in orbit was gone. All that he had left were nineteen starfighters and three crippled starships. Xin didn’t even have a moon to hide behind.
“Battle Group orders,” he said calmly. “Assume formation Alpha Foxtrot One.” He paused. This channel only went to the bridges, but he knew whatever he said would rapidly be conveyed throughout all three ships.
“Spacers, fellow soldiers,” he told them. “It has been a privilege and an honor. We aren’t done yet. Let’s…see what happens.”
He watched the
Commonwealth ships close, counting down the seconds and minutes. There was nothing he could do—the only trick he had left was a last-minute suicide charge to try to get his own ships’ heavy lances into range. Everything was down to Admiral Alstairs’ desperate throw of the dice.
Then his starfighters started moving. That was not in his plan.
“Wills, what are you doing?” he demanded.
There was no response, and all nineteen of his remaining starfighters were now charging at the Commonwealth fleet. He ran their courses—and was somehow unsurprised to realize they were on kamikaze flights.
“Damn it, Wills, answer me,” he snarled into the communicator, his hands clenched into fists as he watched the last survivors of his fighter wings charge into the face of the enemy. “We have a plan. Please!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the Star Kingdom of Phoenix officer replied softly. “If that doesn’t work, we won’t have time. This way…well…this way, if nothing else they’re looking at us.”
“Damn you, Sub-Colonel,” he whispered.
“It’s the job, sir,” she told him. “Starfighters die so our friends live.”
Kyle blinked away tears he wouldn’t—couldn’t—show.
“Gods speed you, Sherry,” he finally told her.
Silence covered Avalon’s bridge as the nineteen tiny ships, less than a thousandth of the size of their enemies, lunged across space. The Terrans recognized the threat instantly, heavy positron lances beginning to flicker out at starfighters they were unlikely to hit.
The secondary lances should be enough against nineteen fighters, but clearly Ness wasn’t willing to take the chance.
Weapons fire flashed across the stars again and Kyle clenched his fists so hard, he suspected he was drawing blood, counting seconds as his people charged to their deaths.
They might make it work. Even if Alstairs’ gamble failed, Wills might manage to save them all. All nineteen fighters survived the heavy lances, dancing around the Terran weapons with the deadly skill of survivors.
And then a massive explosion of Cherenkov radiation blasted out of the space behind Twenty-Third Fleet. A million kilometers behind the Terrans, it wasn’t as close as he knew Alstairs had aimed…
But it was close enough. Zheng He’s immense positron lances might be weaker than those aboard the Hercules, but they were more powerful than anything else in the Terran fleet—and they hit the Hercules-class battlecruiser first.
Even before the blast of bright blue radiation had faded, the Commonwealth battlecruiser had come apart under the Trade Factor battleship’s pounding. The Saint, Vice Admiral Ness’s presumed flagship, survived only seconds more as Clawhammer swung into range of her weaker but still powerful heavy lances.
The Assassin and the Lexingtons only had six-hundred-kiloton-a-second lances—hugely underpowered and hence outranged by every ship in Seventh Fleet—including the warships in orbit around Xin.
The commanders of those ships reacted faster than Kyle would have thought. The battle had turned from a certain victory for the Terrans to a crushing defeat in under twenty seconds—but by the time Sub-Colonel Wills’ fighters started breaking off their suicide runs, the last four Terran warships were signaling their surrenders.
Without missiles or starfighters, faced with a fully supplied Alliance fleet, this truly was a battle they knew they could not win.
43
Huī Xing System
10:00 April 9, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
BC-129 Camerone, Admiral’s Office
Captain Kyle Roberts entered Rear Admiral Alstairs’ office slowly, offering a crisp salute to the small woman sitting behind the desk, waiting for him. She wordlessly gestured him to the chair in front of her desk, and he obeyed the implicit command.
Before either of them said anything, he placed the small gold chevron of a Force Commander on Alstairs’ desk.
“I hope that next time, you give this to someone who does a better job,” he said quietly.
Engineers were swarming over the three ships left of his temporary command. Avalon would need months of repairs but would fight again. Courageous would also need a yard review but would probably be scrapped—the Fearless-class cruiser was too old to be worth repairing the amount of damage she’d taken. Indomitable was incapable of Alcubierre. Kyle wasn’t sure what her final fate would be, but she would never leave the Huī Xing system.
“And what do you think this hypothetical someone would have done that you didn’t?” she asked him.
“Not got his entire command crippled or destroyed,” Kyle said flatly. “I lost functionally all of my fighters and none of my starships are combat-capable. Had I followed the plan, I might not have lost one of my best friends.”
“Which would have left one hundred thousand prisoners of war to the whims of fate,” the Admiral pointed out. “You knew the risk when you went in. I knew the risk when you went in. We won, in the end.”
“A Pyrrhic victory,” he replied. “Walkingstick can replace the ships he lost better than we can replace what we lost. The mission to take Via Somnia is a failure. All of these worlds are now at risk.”
“Command has already promised us a mobile yard ship and a legion of computer and hardware techs,” she told him. “They expect to have all four ships we captured here in service in three months. Yes, given the likely fate of Courageous, you effectively lost three ships. But we captured four. We gain one, all told—and Walkingstick loses seventeen.”
“And the Commonwealth will build sixty warships this year on an effectively peacetime footing,” Kyle said. “Ness told me to run the numbers on this war. I did. I honestly don’t know if we can win.”
“Says the man who got trapped by over twice his numbers and almost didn’t need my help to carry the day,” Alstairs told him with a smile. “You did all right, Captain Roberts. If you’d known everything, could you have done better? Of course.
“But we don’t know everything when we make our decisions, Captain. And not deciding—not acting—places our people and the nation we serve at risk.” She shook her head. “I’ve already signed off on transfer orders returning Avalon to Castle for repairs. Unfortunately, that means you’ll have to face the media and your political enemies with, as you accurately described, a Pyrrhic victory to your name.”
Kyle had sent the son of the current Senator for Castle to prison for fraud, rape and treason. Senator Randall, first among equals of the Castle Federation’s thirteen-person executive, did not like him.
“I do not envy you your reception,” the Rear Admiral told him. “With six months in repairs on Avalon, you may well find yourself on the beach. Be prepared for that—but remember this, Kyle Roberts:
“The Commonwealth outmasses, outnumbers, and outproduces the Alliance. If we are to be victorious—if we are to maintain our independence in the face of the people who would force all mankind to kneel—we need brave, smart officers who will take risks and accept the consequences of those risks.
“We need officers like you,” she finished, standing and offering her hand across the desk. “You did just fine—and I think you’ll continue to do just fine, Captain Roberts. Don’t disappoint me.”
Mira was waiting for Kyle outside the Admiral’s office, and she fell into step behind him as he walked silently, struggling to wrap his brain around his own confused emotions and feelings. Part of him was convinced he’d failed. Thousands of people under his command had died, for a victory that would likely have happened without that sacrifice.
But the Admiral seemed to think that it had been worth it—that things might not have ended as well if he had done differently. He knew that it was sometimes hard to see your own successes past the costs—or your own desires past your fears.
Camerone’s Captain had walked silently with him but also managed to guide him to her cabin. Opening the door, she led him into her sitting area, gestured to a chair, and then produced two bottles of beer.
“To Michael Stanford,�
�� she said quietly, raising the beer to Kyle.
He took his own and returned the toast.
“To Michael. May he ever fly amidst the Eternal Stars,” he murmured the pilot’s toast. He shook his head. “I knew he had the riskier job, but…somehow, I never expected to lose him. He always seemed…well, invincible.”
“All of you starfighter jocks are convinced of your invincibility,” Mira told him. “It came over to the Navy with you.”
“If I’m invincible, too many of those around me aren’t,” he replied. “We carried the day…but the cost...”
“What happens now? Avalon looked beat to pieces.”
“Last time I flew an Avalon back to Castle, she was in even worse shape,” Kyle replied with a chuckle, amusement at the thought providing a wedge he ruthlessly used to break past his incipient funk. “But we are taking her back to Castle to be repaired. I’ll hand her over to the Merlin Yards, and then we all go into the general pool for new assignments. Her repairs will take six months—the Navy can’t have five thousand of her better crewmen and officers sitting on their hands for that long.”
“You’ll be on Castle for a while, then?”
“Probably,” Kyle admitted. “Senator Randall doesn’t like me any more now than he did last year. The politics are going to suck, but it comes with the job.” He sighed, looking at the ebony-skinned woman sitting across from him. “And you’ll be here. Doing the job. Risking your life.”
“Every uniformed couple ends up facing that sooner or later,” she told him. “We can…end this now, if you want,” she offered slowly. “Leave it as a wartime fling, maybe look each other up again come peacetime.”
“I don’t want,” he told her fiercely, feeling suddenly more certain than he’d been in a while. “We haven’t had much time together since you left Avalon, but I know what I want, Mira Solace. I want to take the time to see where things go. I want to put the effort in to match up leaves, to meet on planets in the middle—whatever it takes. I want to see if we can make this work.” He paused, his certainty draining away, and sighed. “If you want.”
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 98