Space Carrier Avalon

by Glynn Stewart

  A ripple of conversation ran through the room, in varying degrees of anger and disappointment. Finally, one of Delta Squadron’s gunners asked what most of the Starfighter Group’s crews were thinking.

  “What happened to Commander Roberts?!”

  “People,” Stanford told them, his voice sharp enough to cut glass, “I know we like to play games about how separate we are from the crew of the carrier that happens to deliver us to battle, but I would have hoped that at least some of you paid attention to the All Hands announcement this morning.”

  Michelle glanced away from the new CAG sheepishly. She’d been… otherwise occupied when the announcement had come through her implant, and hadn’t checked into it after Angela had started her shift. From the shuffling around her, she was far from the only one who had missed it.

  “For those of you who are not keeping up on shipboard affairs, Senior Fleet Commander Roberts has transferred to the Space Navy and accepted the position of Executive Officer of Avalon,” Stanford told them. “As I think everyone can guess from that, his injuries are such that he is no longer qualified to pilot a starfighter.”

  “Now, that said,” he continued briskly, “Commander Roberts is still this ship’s XO, and I know he’s going to be keeping an eye on us. So let’s not disappoint him, shall we?”

  Transferred to the Navy was a hell of a lot better ending for the former CAG that Michelle had hoped for when she’d shoved his charred body into her fighter’s auto-doc. It wasn’t, quite, dead after all.

  “I know everyone was hoping for a quiet rest of the trip,” Stanford said quietly once it was clear the flight crews had calmed down. “Unfortunately, it looks like we’re having the exact opposite. You are all cleared for the information I am about to give you, but it remains classified Red-Four. Do not discuss it outside of this briefing room.”

  Red-Four was the lowest level of red classification. Red classification, however, was the level immediately beneath ‘Top Secret.’ Disclosure of Red classification information to an uncleared individual was grounds for ten years in a Federation penal colony.

  “Thanks to our work in leaving enough of that battlecruiser intact for Intel to dig into, we now know that our worst fears around our recent upsurge in piracy failed to grasp the full depth of the threat.”

  “The pirates were a Commonwealth covert operation. What they were not doing was engaging in long-term economic warfare to weaken the Alliance border defenses,” the CAG told them.

  “They were engaging in an immediate operation to pull our forces out of position for an imminent invasion.”

  For a man who’d just dropped a verbal nuke, Michelle reflected as she stared at her new commander, Wing Commander Stanford looked surprisingly calm.

  “In the face of a renewed war, Avalon will not be returning to Castle on schedule,” Stanford told them. “Nor will we likely have time to wait for new flight crews or starfighters to be delivered.”

  “Thankfully, between our spare ships, spare parts, and the fact that Flight Lieutenant Williams retrieved Commander Roberts’ fighter, we have enough starfighters to assemble five full squadrons. Conveniently, that’s how many flight crews we have left.”

  “We will amalgamate Alpha and Echo Squadrons into a new Alpha Squadron under Flight Commander Rokos,” Stanford continued. “Chief Hammond assures me that Roberts’ command fighter will be cleared for duty within the week, and I will fly aboard her once she is ready.”

  “I need all of you to do what everyone else on this ship is going to be doing,” he continued. “Go over your starfighters. Review your training. Run through virtual sims with your new squadron mates.”

  “I have no idea of the details beyond one thing – but that one thing is enough: we will be called to war. And ladies, gentlemen, Avalon will not be found wanting.”

  Chapter 24

  Hessian System

  21:00 September 10, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-001 Avalon – Captain’s Office

  “So how was your first day in the Navy, Commander?” Blair asked as he passed a steaming mug of tea across his desk to Kyle.

  “As Dr. Pinochet pointedly reminded me when I met with her this afternoon, too busy for light duty,” Kyle replied, gratefully taking the cup. “I got quite the lecture from her, though she at least understands that things are a little unusual right now.”

  “Don’t overdo it, Kyle,” Blair told him. “I need you – but I need you sane and functioning too. If the doc says to take it easy…”

  “Sir, that is the last thing I want to do right now,” Kyle admitted. “Left to my own devices, I’m going to brood over my implant and go nuts.”

  The Captain nodded and gestured his acceptance with his teacup.

  “Very well, Commander, I’ll trust your judgment for now,” he said. “But if you need to slow down, or if you need help with any part of the XO’s job that’s out of your experience, let me know. I have done the job myself,” he finished dryly. “Where are we at?”

  “Well, like I said, Dr. Pinochet thinks I’m overdoing it,” Kyle told him with a wide grin. “I think Commander Pendez is wondering whether seducing me will help her performance evaluation, though I also think she’s smart enough not to try.”

  “Mason seems a bit out of sorts,” he continued, “but I’m not familiar enough with her to be certain. She gave me a list of items we needed from Hessian – replacement missiles, mainly. Stanford gave me the equivalent for the SFG.”

  “Thankfully, it turns out Hessian has production plants for both capital and fighter missiles, both up to full Alliance standard. They’ve agreed to replenish our munitions from their planetside stores, and we should be fully loaded within the hour,” Kyle concluded. While the various powers of the Alliance used different warship and starfighter designs, they’d decided early on to standardize missiles across the entire body.

  “We’re damn short on spare parts for the starfighters, and we don’t have any spare birds left. Sadly, we can’t do anything about that without waiting for some kind of delivery from the Federation.”

  “Which we likely won’t have time to wait for,” Blair finished for him. “Not bad for a first day on the job, Commander.”

  “I’d have liked a quieter start,” Kyle admitted, “but the Commonwealth doesn’t seem to be giving us much of a choice.”

  “No,” Blair agreed. “We’re going to have to make them regret that.”

  The ship’s intercom pinged. Glancing upwards, Blair clearly activated it with his implant and responded.

  “Blair. What is it?”

  “This is Lieutenant Wilson, sir. We have a Q-com request from Castle for you – Priority Alpha One.”

  “Thank you Lieutenant,” Blair replied calmly, which was more than Kyle thought he could have managed. Alpha One was reserved for either overriding orders or ‘your position is about to come under attack’.

  The wall of the office beside the two men flickered for a second, and then transformed from plain gray steel to a two-dimensional image of the formal seal of the Castle Federation: a stylized castle inside a circle of fourteen stars.

  The seal occupied the screen for several seconds, and then faded into the image of a gray-haired woman in the Navy’s blue-piped black uniform – with three gold stars on her collar.

  “Fleet Admiral Blake,” Blair greeted her with a moment of surprise Kyle shared fully.

  Fleet Admiral Meredith Blake was the senior-most of the Federation’s four Fleet Admirals, and the current Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the uniformed commander of every branch of the Castle Federation’s armed forces. She was not who Kyle had expected to be delivering their orders.

  “Captain Blair, Commander Roberts,” Blake returned the greeting. “As I’m sure you can guess, I have new orders for you. Given the magnitude of the situation and your own praiseworthy involvement in us knowing what’s coming, I wanted to speak to you myself.”

  “Your capture of Achill
es’ data cores has given us a priceless forewarning of what is coming,” she said calmly. “Commander Roberts’ and Commander Stanford’s promotions are only the beginning of the thanks I and my fellows intend to lay on Avalon for what you have done.”

  “Unfortunately, the first reward for a job well done is always another job.”

  “We are re-deploying units of the Allied Fleets as we speak, but we face the unfortunate reality that most of the forces along the border cannot be moved without creating new vulnerabilities that we are certain the Commonwealth will exploit.”

  “Reinforcements will be leaving Phoenix, the Federation, the Imperium, and the Trade Factor over the course of the next six hours, but we have only nine days,” she concluded grimly. “In some cases, I fear that it will fall to those reinforcements to retake systems that will have already fallen.”

  “And there is one system that we have no ships in place to reinforce,” she told them, and an image of the border appeared beside her, a single system highlighted.

  The system was on the southern clockwards edge of the border between the Alliance and the Commonwealth, far away from the fronts of the last war or the centers of the Alliance’s military might.

  “Tranquility joined the Alliance after the war,” Blake told them. “They’ve kept diplomatic and trade channels open all along – and no less than four major systems on the Commonwealth side of the border will suffer moderate, though unlikely dangerous, food shortages if the shipments from Tranquility stop.”

  “They’ve clearly decided to short-circuit this by seizing Tranquility. Unfortunately, Tranquility is twelve to fifteen days from any base or nodal force we can spare units from.”

  Kyle saw the reason she was speaking to them as soon as Blair did.

  “We’re fourteen light years from Tranquility ma’am. Seven days,” the Captain said quietly. “But Hessian is defenseless if we leave.”

  “A relief force is already en route to Hessian and scheduled to arrive in five days,” the Fleet Admiral told them. “Hessian is also not on their target list – the destruction of Hessian Orbital was intended to draw units there and out of the main fighting.”

  “Regardless, though, the simple fact is that Avalon is the only unit in position to reinforce Tranquility,” she told them. “We’re confirming the status of their fleet, but we know their only carrier is at Midori – and both of their cruisers are old.

  “There are as many worlds in the Alliance who will suffer if the shipments from Tranquility stop as there are in the Commonwealth, gentlemen. Even if that was not the case, we promised them protection when they joined the Alliance. Castle did, specifically.

  “The freedom of one of our allies and the honor of the Federation are at stake here, gentlemen. Is Avalon ready to fly?”

  “We are, ma’am,” Blair confirmed fiercely. “We can be underway within two hours.”

  “Then do so,” she ordered flatly. “The very survival of our nation and our allies depends on the next ten days, and on every ship on the front.

  “May the stars shield your path and light your way. Good luck.”

  Chapter 25

  En route out of Hessian System

  08:00 September 11, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-001 Avalon – Atrium

  Between the coma and his ensuing busy-ness, Kyle had almost missed the notifications about the memorial service for the crew and pilots who’d died, and for all of the people aboard Hessian Orbital and Jäger.

  Blair made sure he didn’t, thankfully, and he had struggled his way out of bed against the exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm him. Dressed in his brand new full uniform, he joined the Captain in the open clearing at the heart of the starship’s atrium.

  Every member of the crew who could fit in had joined them. The entire Starfighter Group was drawn up on one side of the clearing in neat, black-uniformed ranks. Facing them were hundreds of crew members – here to mourn Senior Fleet Commander Kleiner, the pilots, and the tens of thousands of dead.

  The nature of space combat left few bodies behind. Caroline Kleiner’s body would never be recovered, nor would most of the pilots’. The handful that had been retrieved were frozen in the ship’s morgue, to be delivered to their families when Avalon returned home.

  There were no caskets at the center of the silent formation gathered in the warship’s green heart. An honor guard of Marines stood in a neat circle around a stone plinth, an obelisk of shining white marble three meters tall.

  Bronze plaques marked the sides of that obelisk. Each was marked with names – exactly two hundred per plaque.

  Many of those names were starfighter pilots, but that plinth had been taken from the shattered wreck of the battleship Avalon in 2692, a year before the current vessel had commissioned. That white stone and its plaques would be carried to any new ship that bore the name, as the living memory of every man and woman who had given their lives aboard the mighty vessel.

  A tiny, spider-shaped, robot rested in Captain Blair’s hands as he and Kyle approached the monolith. With perfect precision, the Marines stepped aside, allowing them to step up to the memorial.

  Kyle stopped at the circle of Marines, giving the stone a textbook perfect salute that he held as the Captain reached it and softly placed the robot on the latest, half-empty, plaque.

  “Spacers of the Castle Federation,” Blair said aloud. “My brothers and sisters in arms.

  “It is never easy to lose friends and comrades. Never easy to say goodbye. This memorial remembers for us, as if we would ever forget.

  “We lost the least here in Hessian,” he told his crew sadly. “Our losses pale into insignificance compared to the death toll aboard Jäger and Hessian Orbital. But that does not mean we feel our losses any less keenly.

  “We remember,” he repeated.

  “We remember Senior Fleet Commander Caroline Kleiner,” Blair continued, and the robot spun to life as he spoke, etching Kleiner’s name into the bronze plaque – forever immortalizing her as part of Avalon’s sacrifices.

  “We remember Flight Lieutenant Kayla Morgaurd.”

  And so it continued, as the Captain read off each name in turn, in decreasing order of rank, and the tiny robot continued to skitter its way across the bronze plaque, adding name after name to the roll of the fallen.

  #

  The Federation military, by and large, took most of its traditions from Castle, the first world of the Federation and still first among equals of the fourteen stars.

  Castle, in turn, had been colonized by a mix of people from dozens of regions and cultures intentionally looking to create a ‘cultural mosaic.’ This had more than a little to do with why a world with heavy Arthurian mythos woven into its names and traditions was ruled by a multi-person executive with more in common with the Roman Republic than any of Earth’s governments at the time they’d left.

  It also resulted in some traditions that even a native could occasionally find to be a peculiar mix. Bronze braziers scattered across the clearing spread the fragrant smoke of several varieties of incense, while paper lanterns floated overhead – lifted by electric heater-lights, not candles, aboard a starship.

  Amidst the lanterns and incense were scattered tables loaded with food and – Kyle hoped! – non-alcoholic punch. Even he felt it was against the rules to not have alcohol at a Castle-style wake, but Navy regs restricted alcohol to the mess.

  And it was now Kyle’s job to enforce those regulations.

  He sighed, shaking his head. Normally, he would be in the middle of the wake, living up the party while trying to shake off the grief. With his new role, though, he felt awkward and out of sorts. Before, only the pilots had been expected to look up to him. Now the entire crew was supposed to see him as an example.

  Since Kyle wasn’t sure what a good example was, he found himself on the edge of the wake with a glass of water, watching the party out of the corner of his eyes.

  There was an underlying tension to the c
rowd he wasn’t sure how to address. With his pilots, he’d have tried by getting them all drunk – and acting like an idiot himself. With three thousand crew instead of three hundred, he didn’t think that would work quite as well.

  A wake was supposed to honor the dead and encourage the living, but the crowd was quiet and subdued. Kyle figured most of them were considering the fact that they could easily be joining that list all too soon.

  “I should have spiked the damn punch myself,” he muttered. Having a third of the crew drunk for a shift would do less damage than the eroding morale he could sense around him.

  “Does that mean you won’t brig me if I admit I did?” a voice said from beside him. He glanced over to find Lieutenant-Commander Maria Pendez’s dark eyes looking up at him with a dangerous sparkle.

  “Only if I didn’t hear you, and I swear my implant damage is causing my hearing to occasionally fritz out,” he told her. “Nonetheless, Commander, behave.”

  She graced him with a smile, stunningly white against her dusky skin.

  “I confess to nothing,” she told him. “But trying to get at least Mason and Stanford drunk was damned tempting.”

  Something about her tone made Kyle look around for that pair. To his surprise, they were not hovering around each other pretending not to make googly eyes as they’d been doing since just after Thorn. Stanford was in one corner with the Flight Commanders, sharing a drink and a joke with Commander Rokos. Mason was on the precisely opposite side of the party, engrossed in a conversation with one of her Lieutenants.

  People didn’t ignore each other that completely by accident.

  “Shit,” Kyle said softly.

  “It ain’t my job to watch ship morale – or morality, as everyone knows,” Pendez said virtuously with a wink. “But that pair… something’s up, and when I tried to lure Mason into ‘girl talk’ I got shut down so hard my ears still ring. You follow me, boss?”