Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  That would cut as much as a day off his trip, but it would also put a significant risk on the two ships he was leaving behind.

  “You’d be stuck here until we had another escort come through,” he warned.

  “We can deal with that,” Al-Assani told him. “It’ll take us days to offload this food, Captain. Longer to load a new cargo of metals. We can wait until the next ship comes by, and a day may make all the difference for you—and if you succeed in your mission, Captain, we won’t need an escort anymore.”

  “I’ll talk to the RSF,” he promised. “Thank you, Captain Al-Assani. You’re right. Timing might be everything right now.”

  “Inshallah, all will go well and I won’t see you again, Captain Roberts,” she said. “Fly safe and fight hard. The whole sector is looking to you.”

  The channel dropped and Kyle sighed.

  “Have we contacted Schwarzwald Control?” he asked Jamison.

  “We have,” she confirmed. “They’re pleased to see us and have assigned vectors. We have q-com codes for them now, relaying through the Castle and Antioch Switchboard Stations.”

  “All right. Get me RSF command,” he ordered.”

  #

  Quantum entanglement was an inherently point-to-point system. One particle changed, its entangled partner changed—no matter how far apart, no matter what was between. But since only that one other particle changed, it didn’t allow for omnidirectional transmission.

  To solve the problem, humanity’s engineers had resurrected the concept of a switchboard. The blocks of entangled particles in Kodiak’s q-com array linked to a number of space stations across human space, mostly the one in Castle orbit, that contained millions of similar blocks. Those stations were linked to other ships and to other switchboard stations.

  The routing code that Schwarzwald Control had given Jamison had their transmission going to the Castle Switchboard Station, where it was relayed to a set of particle blocks entangled with particles aboard the Antioch Switchboard Station, which then relayed the message to the RSF command station in orbit of Schwarzwald.

  Time delay was almost nonexistent, but it still took several minutes to actually get someone on the other end of the channel. Finally, a blue-haired man in a simple white uniform with a single star on his collar appeared on Kyle’s neural feed.

  “I am Rear Admiral Vincent Merkel,” he greeted Kyle. “I apologize for the delay; how can I be of assistance?”

  “Admiral Merkel,” Kyle returned his greeting. “I am Captain Kyle Roberts of the Castle Federation Space Navy. We’re escorting a convoy of ships, two of which I believe you were expecting.”

  “Anteater and Golden Aurochs,” Merkel confirmed. “We’re glad to finally see them, Captain Roberts. Things have not become truly dangerous down here, but some of our towns and cities were starting to run perilously close to the wire where even rationing wasn’t going to get everyone fed.”

  “With the pirate situation, it was dangerous for them to move alone,” Kyle replied. “That said, the situation with the pirates has escalated and I need to move on to the Serengeti System as soon as possible. Would you be able to deploy starfighters to escort the two food freighters in to a safe orbit?”

  “This is a safe system, Captain Roberts,” Merkel objected. “They will be fine regardless.”

  “Admiral, Antioch lost a battlecruiser in their own system,” Kyle pointed out. “I’m not certain any system here is safe.”

  The Reinhardt man winced.

  “I hadn’t considered that aspect of Crusader’s fate,” he said slowly. “I’ll have our fourth squadron move out to rendezvous with the ships,” he promised. “Will you be able to meet with my senior officers and the President before you leave?”

  “No,” Kyle told him. “If you can escort Anteater and Aurochs in, we’re going to be leaving immediately. I have a damaged warship to take care of.”

  “Ah.” Merkel nodded slowly. “Very well, Captain. Our fighters will be on their way momentarily. Safe travels, and good luck with your mission.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.”

  He cut the channel and turned to his staff.

  “Houshian, set up the course to get us to Serengeti and transfer it to everyone else. Sterling, let me know as soon as those fighters are moving. We’ll let them get to about thirty minutes’ flight from the freighter, and then we’re going to be on our way, though they should make orbit before we’re clear to go FTL.

  “We have a date with some pirates and I don’t want to be late.”

  #

  Chapter 27

  Deep Space en route to Serengeti System

  20:00 November 3, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-052 Kodiak

  “Enter!”

  The door to Captain Roberts’s office slid open at the barked command, and Michelle Williams stepped through. She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d been called up to the Captain, and she was feeling more than a little nervous at the summons.

  That lasted about ten seconds after she came through the door, long enough for Roberts to gesture her to a seat with the beer in his hand and raise a questioning eyebrow at her.

  “Beer, Wing Commander?” he asked. “Or coffee, tea? I even think the machine can handle most vodka-based cocktails.”

  “Beer is fine, sir,” she said slowly. “I’m technically off duty, but…”

  “Once you’re past a certain point, we’re never off duty,” he agreed. He popped the lid off a dark bottle and slid it across the table. “This is the last of my supply of microbrews from the Corona breweries,” he admitted. “Anston Brewery is one of my favorites, but they don’t keep enough stock on hand for my taste. I’d leave orbit with a pallet of their stuff every time if I could.”

  Michelle was actually familiar with Anston Brewery, though her salary certainly didn’t extend to picking up entire pallets of their product! Or, at least, her Flight Commander salary hadn’t—she hadn’t exactly looked at her bank balance since they’d shipped out.

  “Thank you, sir. What’s this about?”

  “This, Commander, is about the joys of being in charge of our entire inventory of bombers and currently being the most experienced bomber pilot and commander in the Alliance,” Roberts told her. “We’re all wracking our brains trying to think of clever ways to take out these pirates, but I realize that we’re neglecting one of our most effective weapons.

  “None of us, including me, really know everything your bombers can do, Williams,” he continued. “We’re up against the odds enough that we need to use every advantage at our disposal, so I wanted to pick your brains on just what we could do.”

  Michelle took a thoughtful sip of the beer, considering.

  “Our biggest advantage is that I don’t think anyone out here even knows they exist,” she pointed out. “We launch, people are going to think we’re just starfighters until our torps launch. Even then, they’ll probably underestimate what our torps can do until they’re in terminal approach.”

  “I’m already leaning toward bait and trojan horses,” Roberts admitted. “Both of our warships are the same size as more modern freighters. It’s not a deception we can maintain for long, but we can lure them in.”

  “They would expect the freighters to have an escort, though,” Michelle pointed out. “We can’t send out ships without an apparent escort or they’ll know we’re trying to fool them.”

  “Taking people by surprise in space usually involves making them look one way while you’re winding up your fist in the other direction,” the Captain agreed.

  Michelle smiled as a thought struck her.

  “So, we make them look at the warships,” she suggested. “And have my bombers somewhere else. While they’re not designed overly well for it, I suspect we can rig up an interface to dock the Vultures with the freighters’ service airlocks.”

  “Which would keep your people from going stir-crazy trapped on their starfighters, while having the bombers be somewhere t
he pirates aren’t expecting at all,” Roberts agreed, his grin turning evil. “I like it, Commander. It’s not an answer all on its own, but it’s a good trick—one they won’t see coming.”

  “Have the freighters run away, rig our vectors so it looks like we made a mistake?” she said.

  “They’ll bring the Hercules at us but send the corsairs after the freighters,” he pointed out. “Which…works, to be honest. Your bombers will annihilate those pirates, and I’ll take Thoth and Kodiak against an unsupported Hercules. We’ll have to run some scenarios, but I like it. I didn’t even think of using the bombers on their own.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied. “Though, if possible, I’d prefer we had at least some starfighters with us. My Vultures aren’t defenseless against starfighters, but we only have so many fighter missiles, and those pirate ships do have fighters aboard.”

  “We still have a few days to sort out details; I don’t expect to be leaving Serengeti immediately,” the Captain told her. He took a long pull of his beer, studying her.

  “How are you liking your new command, Michelle?” he suddenly asked, his body language and tone shifting dramatically. Suddenly, he was no longer the task group commander, the master-after-god of two starships and ten thousand souls, but her old commanding officer, checking in.

  “The bombers are something different,” she said slowly. “I see a lot of ways we can improve on them with our own technology and design paradigms—it’s pretty obvious that they’re a prototype design and not even ours, after all.

  “The crews took being thrown into a combat formation under my command better than I expected, too. We were test pilots, but I think we all knew we were going back to war. Made it easier.”

  “Easier than any of us had it at the start of the war,” Kyle admitted. “And yourself? You were put back together even by Tranquility, but you seem to be even better now.”

  She hesitated. That was more personal than she’d actually expected Roberts to get, even though they had served together before. She’d nearly accidentally killed him once, after all.

  He’d also been the man who’d discovered that she’d been raped and made absolutely certain that James Randall was brought to justice. Rumor said that the consequences of that had been extreme, but that didn’t show in the Captain’s eyes.

  “I am,” she agreed. “Modern medicine is a wonderful thing, and time is a powerful tool. I don’t think any of us are going to be okay until the war’s over, now, but I’m at least as okay as everyone else aboard Kodiak.”

  “That’s true on both counts,” Roberts admitted with a shake of his head. “War rips apart our families, our partnerships. We lose too many friends along the way.”

  “Like Stanford,” Michelle said softly, and the Captain nodded with a wince.

  “Michael’s death hurt,” he admitted. “He’d been my strong right hand since I first came aboard Avalon, and he was a friend. But war…war has no respect.”

  She nodded her understanding, pausing in silent hesitation for a moment before speaking again.

  “Sir, rumor has it you have a girlfriend with Seventh Fleet?” she asked hesitantly.

  He eyed her questioningly but nodded.

  “I do. Why?” he asked simply.

  Michelle swallowed, recognizing that she was going further across the line between personal and professional than he had. She was reasonably sure this conversation still fell under “counseling an officer”, but it was also heading in the direction of awkward.

  “How do you handle it, sir?” she asked softly. “Angela is with Fourth Fleet, on the hospital ship, and I still can’t not worry about her.”

  Captain Roberts chuckled, glancing at her bottle to check her remaining beer, then rose to check the fridge again.

  “Here,” he told her, sliding another beer across the table. “From the Imperator’s personal micro-brewery. Most of Coral’s beer sucks, but this one is decent. And this is not a conversation to have without a beer in hand, you get me?”

  “Sir?”

  “We’re off the record now,” he told her. “Call it a counseling session, call it crying on the boss’s shoulder, whatever. Drink your beer.”

  She obeyed, finishing off the excellent Anston Brewery ale while waiting for her Captain to organize his thoughts.

  “Having a lover on the front lines sucks,” he finally told her. “It’s not any better for them, but you knew that. Probably worse for Angela than for myself, Mira or you. The rest of us are on capital ships, but you’re flying a starfighter—and no one in the Navy is unaware of the loss ratio for fighter strikes.”

  “I’ve made it this far,” Michelle replied, “but I know. I’m not sure how to reassure her.”

  “You can’t,” Roberts said bluntly. “Any more than she can reassure you. Gods, Williams—my girlfriend is commanding the flagship of the biggest offensive we’ve launched to date. Reassurance isn’t on anyone’s damned agenda there.”

  “Damn,” Michelle breathed. “I didn’t know, sir.”

  “If you had known, someone would be having a lovely discussion about OPSEC,” he pointed out. “And I won’t give you more details than that. But…yeah. We deal, Commander. With various degrees of difficulty, I’m afraid.”

  “Enjoy what we have, then?”

  “Basically. We don’t know when it will end,” Roberts admitted. “We could find out tomorrow they’re gone. They could find out tomorrow we’re gone. We take what time we have.”

  “No plans for the future?” Michelle asked, and the Captain sighed.

  “I don’t even know,” he admitted. “I’ve always told people not to ask me for relationship advice; my track record is unimpressive. I’ve always been better at planning a military operation than my own personal future, so I have no idea.”

  “No getting engaged in wartime?” Michelle said, and Roberts laughed.

  “That serious, huh?” he asked.

  Michelle blinked in shock. She’d meant it as a joke, but…

  “Maybe?”

  “Go with what feels right,” the Captain told her. “We don’t know if we’ll have tomorrow—but we don’t know we won’t, either!”

  That…was more helpful than it might have been, and she nodded slowly, taking another swallow of beer.

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome,” Roberts replied. “Making me think myself, Commander. Sometimes, you just have to take a step back and try and decide just what you’re after—and what you’re prepared to risk for it.”

  #

  Chapter 28

  Serengeti System

  11:00 November 5, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-052 Kodiak

  The reports, simulations and data feeds hadn’t truly prepared Kyle for the sight of Alexander. He understood, better than many, exactly what an antimatter missile strike did to a ship, but he’d never seen a ship this badly damaged that had managed to fly away.

  Alexander was a rough arrowhead with the tip missing to make space for the fighter bay. Now…now, she was missing a hundred-meter chunk of her starboard “wing”, ripped off when the battlecruiser had gone FTL. A massive blackened crater marked her upper flank on the same side, where an explosion fit to shatter planets had smashed into her massive armor.

  Kodiak approached from behind, a screen of starfighters sweeping out to cover the wounded battlecruiser. More starfighters helped Thoth escort the convoy of freighters into Serengeti orbit, but none of the merchant captains had even blinked when Kodiak had taken off to rendezvous with Alexander.

  “She’s in rough shape,” Sterling said aloud. “Going FTL like that…it was risky. The right move, but damn.”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Kyle admitted. His first command, the Federation’s first carrier, had been old and obsolete when he’d taken command…and a shattered wreck when he gave it up. His second command, the newest Avalon, had been in only slightly better shape than Alexander when he’d sent her
in for repairs.

  His last command, the black ops ship Chameleon, well… No one was going to admit to ever having seen her, regardless of how many pieces he’d brought her home in.

  “Yeah, but was that still flying?” his tactical officer asked.

  “Flying home. No more,” Kyle agreed. “Which is all that Captain Sarka is going to be doing. Jamison—have you confirmed the Captain’s arrival time?”

  “Yes, sir. Her shuttle will be leaving in about five minutes; she’ll be aboard at eleven hundred forty.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. I’ll be on the deck to meet her. Commander Taggart has the con.”

  “I have the con,” his XO confirmed, stepping up next to his chair. Like everyone else on the bridge, Taggart was distracted by the feed of Alexander’s state.

  “She looks awful,” he murmured.

  “She made it back,” Kyle replied, equally softly. “And any fight you walk away from, Commander, is a fight you didn’t completely lose.”

  #

  The flight deck’s gravity fields grabbed the shuttle as it flew through the rapidly cycling airlock doors, and gently settled it to the floor. An honor guard of Marines snapped to attention as the doors opened and Captain Sarka limped out, a brace on her leg and the blocky metal replacement for her arm hanging heavily from her shoulder.

  While eyes and other complex organs were usually replaced with cybernetics, most humans could have limbs regenerated. Sarka, it turned out, could not. The advantage for her was that she had prosthetics immediately, crude as the emergency devices were.

  The disadvantage was that prosthetics were all she would ever have. The Federation made high-quality cybernetics, ones no one else would ever be able to tell from her original limb, but they would never feel quite right to the possessor.