Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  Three seconds after the first missiles detonated, the Jackhammer salvo hit home. Of the sixty-five missiles launched almost an hour before, one made it through everything the Commonwealth could throw at it, and collided head-on with the lead Saint.

  Traveling at almost twenty percent of the speed of light and carrying a one-gigaton antimatter warhead, the Jackhammer hit with two gigatons of force. The twenty million ton battleship visibly lurched backwards, debris scattering into space from the point of impact, fire blasting out of the hull to disappear as the oxygen fuelling it was exhausted.

  Michael Stanford knew, intellectually, that battleships were the toughest things ever built by human hands; that modern meters-thick ferro-carbon ceramic armor was almost as tough as the old thin shells of neutronium. It was a far different affair to watch the Saint take that missile on the nose and keep firing.

  It changed nothing.

  Two seconds after the sole Jackhammer impact, the second fighter missile salvo charged in on its heels. Hundreds of missiles had been deceived by jamming and other countermeasures. Hundreds more of the less-capable fighter-launched missiles died to the defenses that had killed dozens of capital ship missiles.

  ‘Only’ one hundred and twenty missiles made it through. The already-damaged Saint, with its weakened defenses, was the target of over half of them, and vanished in a ball of fire.

  The other four ships survived, somehow, dancing and pirouetting in the cataclysm of fire that embraced them. Half-gutted, barely functional hulks, but they survived, and were still firing.

  Vice Commodore Michael Stanford and Battle Group Seventeen’s starfighters were barely two seconds behind their missiles.

  15:00 December 31, 2735 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge

  Kyle had never sent starfighters into battle without accompanying them before, and it was a far more nerve-wracking experience than he’d expected. When the battle was finally joined, everything disintegrated into a chaos even the Q-Com links to the fighters and accompanying drones couldn’t sort out.

  It probably wasn’t any clearer when you were in the middle of that chaos, but it felt clearer. You knew what you had to do.

  From the outside, you just watched a thousand people disappear into a ball of hellfire, and prayed to the Gods that they came out alive.

  He knew from the speeds and firepower in play that it would be over in less than twenty seconds. Those seconds passed, and the computers still struggled to resolve anything from the debris and radiation. Another twenty seconds passed.

  Finally, over a minute after Stanford had detonated the first wave of missiles, the computers combined the data from the starfighters and the probes and reported the results of the fighter strike.

  Force One was gone. Where a minute before, fifty-plus starfighters and five of the Terran Commonwealth’s newest warships had charged through space, only wreckage remained. As Kyle watched, a handful of escape pod beacons began to light up. Not many – not nearly enough.

  Fifty thousand people had just died in less than a minute.

  Thirty-six of Battle Group Seventeen’s fighters had gone with them. Glancing over the numbers, Kyle saw they’d been lucky – twenty-five of the ships had ejected their emergency capsules, saving their crews.

  Seventeen of the thirty-six lost starfighters were Imperial Arrows, a disproportionate loss. The Imperium would tear the result apart in their review sessions, but he suspected it was as simple as the Coraline fighters’ lower powered electronic warfare suites being less able to keep them alive in the middle of the fray.

  “Get me a status on the Kematians and Force Two,” he heard Tobin order, and pulled his thoughts back to the living.

  “The KN has six salvos, three hundred missiles, inbound,” Anderson reported onto the squadron net.

  Kyle caught a quick glance over from his Tactical Officer and gave the young man a reassuring nod. He didn’t need Kyle’s permission to share that data, though some Captains might object to the junior officer taking it on themselves to respond to the Admiral’s query.

  “What’s the ETA on those missiles?” he asked Anderson himself. The loss of their motherships made the missiles less deadly, but by no means helpless.

  “First salvo arriving in eight minutes, final in ten,” the young man reported crisply. “Our fighters don’t have the vector for intercept – it’s all on the locals.”

  “Damn,” Kyle whispered. Anderson had answered his next question before he asked it. “Gods protect them.”

  “Force Two is accelerating again,” Sanchez reported, answering the second half of Tobin’s question. “They are vectoring away from the planet. The battleship will make their closest approach at two million kilometers at roughly five percent of light speed, the transports at ten million. Both will be in roughly twenty minutes.”

  If there was nothing Stanford could do for the Kematian Navy, maybe…

  Kyle opened a channel to the CAG.

  “Michael, do your ships have missiles left?”

  “Half-load on everybody,” Stanford replied. “What do you need?”

  “I want you to vector towards the planet,” Kyle told him. “There’s no way any of us can intercept Force Two, but I want to make them nervous – make them think about running, not making precision attacks on the orbital infrastructure.”

  There was a pause.

  “Not any less helpful than chasing missiles I can’t catch,” the CAG observed. “Making it happen.”

  Kyle realized, after giving the order, that it was probably Tobin’s call not his. He glanced at the window in his implant showing his link to the Admiral, though, and got a quick thumbs up directed at him and Stanford.

  “Good call,” the Admiral agreed. “Let’s make them sweat.”

  “Kematian starfighters are intercepting the missiles,” Anderson reported quietly. “Ninety seconds to first wave impact.”

  Intercepting missiles with starfighters was only moderately effective and dangerous – being too close to a successfully intercepted missile had nearly killed Kyle and was responsible for the NSIID that had permanently grounded him.

  But when you had three hundred fighters to hand, and over three hundred capital ship missiles headed your way, you used the tools you had.

  Even on their own, the Stormwinds were smart enough to activate and run most of their electronic countermeasures. Jamming and false images filled the scanners – but unlike the missiles, the starfighters did have their motherships behind them.

  The cruisers’ massive computers interpolated data across the hundreds of Kavaleris and dozens of Q-probes circling the battlespace, and fed the exact locations of the missiles back to the starfighters in near-real-time.

  The first pass was a resounding success. Only five missiles cleared the fighters and were easily shredded by the cruisers’ defenses.

  As the lead time decreased, the success degraded. Four survived of the second salvo. Six of the third. Ten of the fourth, and fifteen of the fifth and sixth.

  Twenty-five starfighters died along the way, victims of unlucky direct hits or just too close to the explosions of missiles that were caught.

  Behind them, the Kematian Navy’s three cruisers danced in the fire. Missiles died as lasers and positron lances lashed out. For over a minute, as everyone on Avalon’s bridge held their breath, every missile died.

  One solitary missile, a glitch-induced straggler from the fourth salvo launched barely four seconds ahead of the fifth, dodged under and around everything. As the targeting computers switched to the clump of missiles behind it, most missing the singleton.

  It took precious seconds for a human to see the gap and re-direct defenses. Antimatter beams and lasers retargeted, but it was too close.

  They caught the missile a quarter-kilometer from the hull of the lead cruiser. Too close to be safe – but far enough away to save the ship.

  Fire hammered across the cruiser’s hull, stripping away sensors, stabilizer emitters, and all
tools that necessity placed outside a starship’s massive armor.

  When it passed, the cruiser was battered and burnt, but it remained.

  Cheering echoed Avalon’s bridge as Kyle’s people let their collective breath go. The Kematian Navy’s fighter losses were brutal, but its starship strength was intact – and in a cold final analysis, the main purpose of starfighters was to die so that starships didn’t.

  “All right,” Tobin said loudly, cutting into the cheering on both the flag deck and the bridge. “Get me a channel to the Kematians – we’ll need them to pull Search and Rescue.

  “As for us, get us on a course after Vice Commodore Stanford,” he ordered. “It’s time to send that last ship running back to Walkingstick!”

  #

  Kyle watched the single remaining battleship carefully. The assault transports were clearly giving up the attack as a lost cause, all three of them heading for the system perimeter at two hundred gravities. They’d pass well outside of even missile range of the planet’s orbital defenses.

  The battleship, on the other hand, was courting a missile duel with the closest of the orbiting battle stations. The stations had, in fact, been firing on her for about thirty minutes now, with the first salvos closing in as Kyle watched.

  Still with ten minutes to go before their closest approach, the Terran warship continued to bat down the individual salvos with ease. While the orbital platforms were throwing seventy missiles at the ship at a time, they were being launched from multiple platforms in salvos of ten.

  Without starfighters to distract and add to the chaos, there was no way seventy missiles were going to penetrate a modern battleship’s defenses. Whatever the Commonwealth Captain’s plan was, he was clearly willing to weather the platform’s fire until he was close enough to make precision attacks.

  They were barely five minutes from their closest approach when they finally opened fire, and it was almost a relief. Watching them close through the defensive missiles without firing, like some unstoppable juggernaut, had been nerve-wracking.

  Twenty-four missiles shot into space, a tiny answer to the over seven hundred the defensive platforms had thrown at the single ship but fired in a single salvo and targeting much less heavily defended prey. Twenty-six seconds later, another salvo entered space.

  In the five minutes it took the battleship to reach its closest approach, the Terran warship launched eleven salvos. The twelfth was launched just after the ship passed the nearest approach, and then the battleship ceased fire.

  The first salvo hit the defensive platforms ninety seconds after the closest approach. Lasers and defensive positron lances slashed through space, lighting up Kematian’s sky with explosions as antimatter missiles died.

  Three of the seven platforms on the battleship’s side of Kematian died with those missiles, though, and a thousand people with them. Those larger explosions sent shivers down Kyle’s spine – the weapons platforms represented half of the anti-missile defenses covering the planet’s orbital infrastructure. He was starting to get a sinking feeling.

  With the reduced defenses, the second salvo took out the remaining platforms. Another thousand-plus people dead, and the anti-missile defenses protecting the planet were gutted.

  The third salvo had clearly been targeted on the platforms as well, detonating in the space where the battle stations had orbited, illuminating their wreckage and filling the space above Kematian with static and radiation.

  The fourth salvo split on its way in, wrapping around the planet to hit the other defensive platforms as they neared the horizon. Only two platforms were destroyed, but that was enough to remove any chance of further missile fire on the battleship as she ran.

  Kyle closed his eyes as the fifth and sixth salvos struck home. Even without the platforms, the missile defenses were ripping the heart out of the salvos, but a dozen missiles from each salvo still struck home. Even with his eyes closed, his implant continued to relentless feed him the sensor date, and he watched as orbital manufactories, sublight shipyards, and transfer stations died in balls of fire.

  The seventh salvo was the first time a habitat died. It wasn’t specifically targeted – it was just too close to a smelting platform and was caught in the fireball. By the eighth, it was clear that no safety allowance had been made around habitats as three more were caught in explosions and half-incinerated.

  Avalon’s Captain opened his eyes, querying his implant. There had to be some way they could bring the battleship down. The computers calmly informed him that even using their missiles’ ability to fly ballistic and re-activate their drives, there was no way they could hit the battleship. Even Stanford and his starfighters were fourteen hours away from Kematian at this point.

  By the eleventh salvo, sixty percent of the planet’s orbital infrastructure was gone. The debris fields would finish off the rest as they orbited into each other. Tens of thousands were dead or would soon die, no matter how desperately they scoured space for life pods and sections with atmosphere.

  It was a callous attack but, just barely, short of an atrocity. Most of the habitats had been far enough away from the industrial platforms to be spared. The losses could be argued as collateral damage. Kyle watched the last salvo close grimly, burning every detail in his mind.

  Then Avalon’s bridge crew, including himself, gasped in horror as the missiles ducked through the fields of debris their sisters had created. There were no defenses left to stop them as they charged further and deeper than the other salvos – and dove into Kematian’s atmosphere.

  There was nothing any of them could do but watch in horror as every city on half a planet vanished in balls of antimatter fire.

  15:30 December 31, 2735 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Flag Deck

  Dimitri Tobin was surrounded by silence. No one in a command position in the Battle Group would ever forget those moments. The realization that the Terran commander had gone past atrocity into outright mass murder.

  It had been almost a hundred years since the invention of small enough stable antimatter containment units to allow for antimatter warheads. Almost a hundred years, which had seen dozens of wars both large and small across human space.

  Kematian was only the second time they had ever been used on a planetary target.

  “Recall the,” he coughed, clearing the surprising lump of phlegm in his throat. “Recall the starfighters,” he repeated himself.

  “Sir, they…” Snapes trailed off as he turned a level gaze on her. Dimitri wasn’t sure how much of the burning anger and hate he was feeling showed in his eyes, but his Intelligence Officer shut up.

  “They can’t catch that battleship,” he snapped. “No-one in this system can catch that ship before it reaches FTL.”

  Again, he had watched the Commonwealth destroy without mercy. He’d watched Amaranthe die, and while no one had ever been sure what had happened there it had happened after the Commonwealth landed. He’d watched when an outnumbered Commonwealth battle group had completely destroyed Hessian’s orbital infrastructure, intentionally targeting civilian habitats – and he’d helped wipe every last ship in that battle group from existence.

  A sickening sense of failure and helpless rage sank deep into his bones. Every major atrocity of the last war had happened on his watch, and now the first atrocity of the new war joined them. Maybe he should have stayed home. It certainly appeared his presence was a curse for the innocents of the worlds he tried to defend.

  “You were right,” he told Captain Roberts bluntly on a private link. With no sound, the implants carried only text between them.

  “Nobody predicted this,” the Captain replied instantly. “Even the Kematians thought Force One was the threat.”

  “We’re going after the bastard,” Dimitri told Roberts, the decision made as he said it. There was nothing else he could do at this point. He couldn’t let the bastard who’d just burned half a planet go home. Even if Command ordered him to stay…

  “Walkingstick
will hang him for us if we let them go,” Roberts pointed out.

  “I will not rely on the Commonwealth to provide justice for our dead,” the Admiral snapped.

  “Agreed,” his Flag Captain said calmly. “I think we can push Avalon above the light year a day squared mark,” he continued. “It might be a strain, but I don’t think they’ll see it coming.”

  A vicious snarl spread across Dimitri’s face. It had been fifty years since anyone had managed to reliably get an Alcubierre-Stetson drive to accelerate more than one light year per day squared. He knew JD-Tech had been experimenting, and that the results of some of those experiments had been included in Avalon’s engines. Even a tenth of a light year of extra velocity each day would make running down Kematian’s murderers easy.

  “Move our Q-probes in closer,” he instructed Roberts. “I want to know everything about that ship – its name, its engine signatures, what the Petty Officer running Lance Six had for breakfast. Everything, Captain Roberts.”

  “Done and done.”

  Looking around at his flag deck crew, the Admiral realized his cold snarl had caught his staff’s gaze, and they were all looking at him.

  “Get me Captain Alstairs on a private implant link,” Dimitri ordered harshly. “Inform me as soon as Vice Commodore Stanford and his people are aboard.

  “I think we’re going to be taking Avalon hunting.”

  Chapter 20

  Kematian System

  03:00 January 1, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon Main Flight Deck

  It had been a long and emotionally exhausting flight home.

  Michael had set the computer to fly the simple course back to Avalon and tried to sleep, but it wasn’t happening. Victory had turned to ashes in his mouth, and when he closed his eyes, his mind insisted on replaying his implant’s picture-perfect record of the missiles striking home.