“And do you have a plan, Captain Roberts, for dealing with these pirates?” the Admiral asked.
“Yes,” Kyle confirmed. “It is not complicated, gentlemen. We escort the convoys. We wait for them to come to us, and we interrogate the survivors.
“Once we have learned the location of their home bases, we smash their defenses and board them with Marines to learn the locations of any bases we missed. We burn them out root and branch.”
“And you can succeed where all of our fleets have failed?” the Admiral asked.
“I am the Stellar Fox,” Kyle reminded them. “You have heard of me, haven’t you?”
The Sultan laughed, his booming voice echoing from the pillars and walls of the Hall of Scimitars.
“Bring food and drink for Our guests,” he ordered the woman at his right hand. “Let us sit and eat together, and plan how we shall bring about the end of the enemies of Our Kingdom.”
Kyle managed to swallow a sigh of relief. If the Sultan was feeding them, they appeared to have navigated the minefield of a conversation with a near-absolute monarch.
He hoped.
#
When they finally left the Hall of Scimitars after a good but extremely mentally draining meal, Nebula immediately pinged Kyle with a simple warning:
“Everything is being recorded. Say nothing until you’re back aboard Kodiak.”
“Understood,” Kyle signaled back, following Colonel Osman—who had been silent through the entire dinner—back toward the shuttle pad.
“Colonel, I will need to meet with the Federation’s Ambassador before I return to orbit,” Nebula told Osman. “Would it be possible for you to escort me?”
The Istanbul officer turned to look at Nebula, then glanced at Kyle. There was a question in his gaze, Kyle was relatively certain, but the Captain wasn’t sure what it was.
“My people should be able to see you safely to the pad, Captains, if that’s acceptable?” he finally asked.
“I don’t see why not,” Kyle allowed. He wasn’t sure what Nebula was up to, though it was likely that the man did need to speak to the Ambassador. It was just unlikely that was all the spy was up to.
“Thank you,” Osman said with a small bow. “Sergeant, please see Captain von Lambert and Captain Roberts to the shuttle pad. I will escort Mr. Nebula to the Federation Embassy.”
“My thanks, Colonel.”
“What’s going on?” Kyle demanded over the implant link.
“Diplomatic matters,” the spy responded calmly. “Even this link may not be secure, Captain. We will talk again aboard Kodiak.”
The two starship captains went one way, and the spy and the local officer went another. Kyle mentally sighed.
He wasn’t sure he trusted Nebula to tell him everything, but he did, at least, trust the man not to be acting against the Federation’s interests at least.
“Would you be able to give me a lift back to Kodiak?” he asked von Lambert. “I’d prefer to leave my shuttle here for Nebula, along with some Marines.”
“Of course, sir,” the Imperial officer agreed with a sidelong glance at their escorts. “We’d be delighted to give you a ride.”
#
Chapter 24
Istanbul System
09:00 October 23, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-052 Kodiak, in Constantinople orbit
“I’m not sure why they even bothered with those starfighters,” one of the other Wing Commanders snipped at the morning briefing. “Our Falcons would go through them like a knife through butter.”
Michelle and Kodiak’s other Wing Commanders were gathered in the briefing room next to the main flight deck. With only six of them in the room, including the CAG, they were gathered around the table at the front of the room, with an image of the Istanbul “Needle” starfighter hovering on the holodisplay.
“If you made it to lance range, yes,” Michelle pointed out.
“We’d make it to lance range,” John Redwood, Bravo Wing Commander, replied. “They’ve got no ECM, bugger all for anti-missile defense…sheep to the slaughter.”
Song chuckled and her subordinates looked at her. “Finish the explanation, Michelle. I’m not surprised you picked it up.”
“What?” Redwood demanded.
“Listen, Commander,” Song ordered, then gestured to Michelle to continue.
“They’re not intended to mix it up at lance range,” she told them. “They don’t have a lance at all. They’re a pure missile platform, closer to the Vultures in design than the Falcon. Though, honestly, they’re more a development from the original Ferret type we deployed at the beginning of the last war.”
The Ferret had been the first starfighter ever deployed. A pathetic lance by modern standards, four crude starfighter missiles—and deployed in the face of the Commonwealth offensives, the Ferret had killed Terran battleships by the dozen.
“In the Federation, we focused on building a better starfighter. A bigger platform, a more powerful positron lance, more missiles. Istanbul clearly targeted building a cheaper starfighter. Smaller platform, shorter range, no positron lance…but the same four-missile salvo as a Falcon opens with.
“We’d have follow-up salvos. The lance. But they’re not designed for that,” Michelle concluded. “They’re solely designed to extend the missile range and capacity of their mothership. If they’ve got point one cee of delta-v, I’d be stunned, but they’re carrying thousand-gravity missiles.
“And four hundred modern missiles are going to ruin your day, Commander Redwood, ECM or not. And the Needle is a one-man starfighter that costs maybe a twentieth of what a Falcon does.” She shivered. “I don’t think the ISDF cares if they’re destroyed after they’ve launched.”
Redwood was silent and she was pretty sure she caught him shivering as well.
“We’re expendable,” he said, his voice much quieter than before. “But we try to come home.”
“I’m sure the ISDF officers do care,” Song pointed out. “And the pilots are definitely trying to come home! But the ship is designed to be a one-shot, short-range weapon. From a strategic perspective, any of them you get back after launching are a bonus.”
“They’re not intended to be used on an offensive platform,” Michelle concluded. “They’re designed for exactly the purpose we saw them in: overwhelming expendable force for home defense.”
“There’s probably four or five hundred of them scattered around the system,” Redwood said slowly. “We could take them, but you’re right.” He shook his head. “That would hurt.”
“Fortunately, while they may be assholes, Istanbul’s an ally,” Song reminded them. “Keeping it that way, however, is why no one’s getting shore leave.”
#
Kyle was on both his second coffee and his second donut when Nebula finally entered his office, the diplomat looking completely exhausted. He wordlessly gestured the man to a seat while finishing his swallow.
“Do you have more of those?” Nebula asked after dropping into the chair.
For a moment, Kyle considered pointing the other man to the coffee machine, but the sheer exhaustion Nebula was carrying bought a few scraps of consideration. He slid the half-empty plate of donuts across the table and rose to refresh his own coffee and grab a new one.
“Busy night, I take it?”
Nebula took a massive swallow of still-steaming coffee, blinking against the temperature as he swallowed, then nodded.
“Colonel Osman and I had a very productive discussion on the way to the embassy,” he said. “Then I met with our ambassador, then our intelligence section.” He shook his head. “We have some damned competent people here; I was impressed.”
“Learn anything useful?” Kyle asked.
“Nothing good,” Nebula admitted. “But plenty useful. Did you know there’s a Commonwealth embassy on Istanbul? I sure as hell didn’t, because it’s brand new. Been in place six months.”
“That sounds unusual for out here.
”
“It is,” the diplomat said flatly. “Sultan Seleucus specifically invited them. Laying groundwork for if we lose the war, is our ambassador’s opinion.”
“Which is reasonable,” Kyle pointed out. “We can’t expect systems like Istanbul to rely on us proving victorious against the most powerful nation in existence.”
“Fair enough,” Nebula allowed. “What we can do is expect them to not stab us in the back, Captain Roberts. The decision to ask the Imperium to send assistance was after Antioch informed Istanbul they’d asked us for assistance…and came directly from the Sultan himself.
“Seleucus isn’t stupid. He knew exactly what kind of tension that was likely to create, and to follow up on that by leaving his commanders with the kind of orders you’ve been running into since we arrived? No fighter patrols? No bodyguards?
“The treaty specifically allows us to have our Captains and diplomats escorted by Marines, even into the Sultan’s presence,” Nebula noted. “I’m not certain what Seleucus’s game is, but what I know is that he met with the Commonwealth ambassador between being informed of Antioch’s request to the Federation for help and his request to the Imperium for help.”
“And even in the most positive light, he knew that was going to mean more ships out here,” Kyle admitted. “There’s not much we can do about that, though, beyond watching our backs here.”
“The ambassador has his hand on the pulse of what’s going on in Istanbul,” Nebula agreed. “It’s under control now, I think. We’ll see.
“Where do we go from here?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Kyle told him. “I have a conference with the freighter captains in an hour or so. We’ll be on our way by morning Earth Standard; the only question is where and whether I send Thoth off on her own.”
“Keep me informed, Captain, if you would,” Nebula asked. “For now, I’m going to go pass out. It’s been a long day.”
#
Kyle waited patiently while the freighter captains argued over the conference channel, doing his best to process what each of them wanted while they tried to beat each other into submission.
“All right,” he finally said, cutting off the captain of Midsummer Night’s Dream pointing out that her cargo was the latest of all of the cargos in question. “All of your cargos are late. If your recipients aren’t understanding of the situation, they’re going to be almost as angry over a few days as a few weeks.
“My priority is getting all of you to your destinations alive. I presume we can all agree that is at least somewhat important?”
The captains mostly quieted, waiting to hear what he had to say. There had been three freighters waiting in Istanbul. Combined with the four he’d brought, there were now seven ships he needed to deliver safely—fully half of the remaining shipping in the Free Trade Zone.
“I am hesitant to split you up,” Kyle told them. “I have two ships here to protect you with, but the pirates have demonstrated their ability to take on a single warship.”
An older warship, yes, but Kyle wasn’t prepared to rank Thoth that much higher than Crusader. The Antioch warship had actually been of equivalent age, and while her fighters had been older, enough extra pirates could make up that difference.
“The seven of you have three different destinations, as I understand,” he continued. “Two of you want to go to Antioch. Three of you want to go to Serengeti, and two of you want to go to Reinhardt.”
Kyle had needed to check his implant to confirm where Reinhardt was. He’d been surprised to have two ships headed there, until he realized that the planet was primarily a mining colony…and had been having a minor famine.
“I need to get to Serengeti myself,” he told them, “but…bluntly, people, I’m going to prioritize people in need of food over just about everything else. Reinhardt isn’t particularly far off the route to Serengeti”—though the need to decelerate to stop at Reinhardt would more than double the travel time to that system—“so we’re going there first.
“From Serengeti, we will rendezvous with my third ship and make new plans to get everyone to where they need to go, with sufficient escort.”
Most of the merchant skippers were nodding, though one or two looked mutinous.
“I’d ask if that worked for you all, but, well, I’m the one with the warships and that’s the route we’re taking,” he told them with a grin. “You’re welcome to take a different route if you wish, but you won’t have an escort.”
#
Chapter 25
Salvatore System
19:00 October 29, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
BC-305 Poseidon
The Salvatore system had a single massive gas giant named Waterdeep. Emerging on the far side of it from the planet of Neverwinter was a useful way to hide the distinctive massive energy flare of an Alcubierre-Stetson drive emergence from the locals.
The locals, of course, weren’t blind to this fact, and poverty on a star-system scale was relative. They’d long maintained a network of sensor platforms above Waterdeep to make certain that no one sneaked up on them.
Even before James and the Commonwealth battle group had arrived, Coati had made a habit of showing up every so often and blowing those platforms to pieces. That recurrent destruction had enabled the destruction of Maasai and now had allowed the assembly of the strike force they would take up against Alexander.
James was impressed by the force that Coati had managed to assemble for the plan. The corsair ships the pirate used had arrived in sets of four, linked together to project a bubble of warped space.
Now sixteen of the ships, each barely a tenth of Poseidon’s size and firepower but terrifying in combination, had gathered around the big Terran ship.
Hopefully, it would be enough.
“Alexander and her convoy are due in approximately two hours,” Sherazi reported. “You realize there’s no way we can leave this to Coati’s people, right, sir? The Conqueror-class ships are easily Poseidon’s superior in every sense. She’s almost a third bigger than we are. We’ve only recently cracked the Federation’s latest generation of stabilizers.”
Which was the problem, of course. The latest generation of Castle Federation warships had no equals. They were eighty million cubic meters to the sixty-four million of Poseidon and her sisters. The Commonwealth was currently constructing a new generation of ships that clocked in at seventy-five million, but until they deployed, the Federation’s top-line ships were unbeatable one on one.
James was surprised they’d sent one of their limited number of Conquerors out this way, though it gave him the opportunity to deal a serious blow to the Alliance.
But Sherazi was right. If Poseidon couldn’t take Alexander on her own, even all sixteen of the ships Coati had brought combined were out of their league.
“I know,” James confirmed. “Our orders were clear: we were to take one of Roberts’s ships, and powerful as Alexander is, she’s an easier target than both of the other ships.” He shook his head.
“Our orders have changed at this point,” he told Sherazi. “We’ll engage directly once Alexander arrives. Katanas, missiles, and try to close to lance range. We’ll make a fight of it.”
“Then they’ll know we were out here.”
“The goal is to divert Alliance forces,” James reminded his subordinate. “Any attempt to sow friction between the Imperium and Federation was entirely secondary. At this point, we almost want them to know we’re out here.
“Let Alexander call for help. It will only help our mission in the end.”
And the sooner the Alliance sent major forces out this way, the sooner one Commodore James Tecumseh could go home and leave “poor” Commodore Coati to face an Alliance fleet on his own.
#
“So, how many of our friends out there are actually new?” James asked his analyst as the clock continued to tick down. They’d been tracking Coati’s ships all along, and he was pretty sure the pirate was playing games with just ho
w many they’d actually seen.
The pirates obviously had at least the sixteen ships they’d brought today, but…
“We had drive signatures and other IDs on thirteen ships before,” Leila Kosta, the dark-haired and diminutive Lieutenant Commander who headed the Flag Deck Analysis Team, replied. “Current analysis says nine of those ships are out here.”
James whistled silently.
“Only nine? What’s the certainty on that?” he asked.
“Over ninety percent,” Kosta replied. “That put Coati’s total strength at at least twenty ships.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” James pointed out. “I’ll give you that he’s captured more than enough freighters to give him the twenty Class One manipulators, but those corsairs are custom built. They’re unique. Who the hell builds twenty purpose-designed pirate ships for someone like Coati?”
“I don’t think anyone built them for him,” Kosta told him. “The only way he has that many ships is if he’s building them himself—it wouldn’t need to be much of a shipyard to build twenty ships over the ten years he’s been operating.”
“That’s a lot more resources than we thought he had,” the Commodore said. “If he has a shipyard…” James shook his head. “I figured l’Estación de Muerte was a secondary base, but that suggests his core base is…”
“Huge,” the analyst replied. “Would explain where he get the Federation starfighters from, too: he got his hands on the design at some point and has been building them himself.”
James looked back to the display with its sixteen pirate ships. Each of those ships carried a single ten-ship squadron of Cobra starfighters, totaling more starfighters than many carriers. It was definitely more second-line Federation starfighters than he suspected Castle had ever lost track of, and Coati had replaced the three dozen fighters he’d lost in the Antioch raid far too quickly.
Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5) Page 17
