Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  “That…simply won’t work,” Horaček replied. “We need that open space; it exists for a reason. Without it, we can’t transfer fighters, fuel fighters or retrieve fighters.

  “What we can do,” the Imperial Lieutenant Colonel continued, “is keep four squadrons in our launch tubes. They’ll be a bitch to embark and disembark from, and it’ll slow retrieval significantly, but that gets four more squadrons aboard Thoth.”

  “And we can do the same,” Song agreed. “We could squeeze six squadrons into ours, we launch a full wing at once, but we’re probably better off splitting the extra ships between us and Thoth.”

  “I agree,” Kyle said instantly. “Get in touch with Vice Commodore Altena and sort it out; I want her birds aboard by this time tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” the CAG agreed.

  “Nebula, anything with Neverwinter’s government I need to worry about?” he asked the diplomat.

  Nebula shook his head.

  “Right now, your biggest problem if you went down to the surface would be not drowning in flower petals and booze,” the old spy said cheerfully. “You just gutted the pirates who’ve been wrecking their lives for the last year. We may be the most popular people in the system right now.”

  “It was a nearer-run thing than I’d like,” Kyle admitted. “And I’m damn glad that battlecruiser wasn’t here. The Terrans are still here, people, and that’s going to be a problem. Have we learned anything so far from the wrecks?”

  “My assessment of the corsair’s construction was accurate,” Trent told him. “With the live data, I’ve refined the targeting program and passed it on to Thoth and the bombers. Physics and angles will have their part, but we now have a seventy-percent-plus chance of attacking a vulnerable side when we run into them again.”

  “They are not going to like that,” Sterling said with satisfaction. “They weren’t expecting the torpedoes, either. Those turned the tide.”

  “Our trick worked even better than expected,” Kyle agreed, “but it’s a one-shot deal. Not even pirates are stupid enough to try that twice. All they had to turn this into a fair fight was not try to cut us off from the freighters.

  “Have we located their base yet?”

  “No,” Nebula said grimly. “The corsairs’ computer cores wiped themselves. Extremely modern, extremely effective data security.”

  “That fits with most of what we’ve seen,” Trent confirmed. “The corsairs were…weird. Some parts were extremely modern or even unique: the drive system, the stabilizers, the missiles. Others were a hodgepodge of stolen parts. The cores of their new modular systems were Class One manipulators stolen from merchant ships. The lances were twenty years out of date, the zero-point cells almost as bad.”

  “Their computers cores were old, but their software was top of the line,” the spy added. “And the starfighters…well, those cores were even stranger. Almost no data on them. We managed to retrieve a couple intact, but…”

  He shrugged.

  “The data wasn’t wiped from the cores,” he said slowly. “It was never there. Everything they saw, everything they had aboard, was being fed live from the their mothership. Every sensor system from the original design except for the actual targeting systems is missing.”

  “That’s damned dangerous,” Song pointed out.

  “Yes. But it gave this Coati gentleman complete control over what his pilots saw,” Nebula replied.

  “What do you mean?” Kyle demanded.

  “Did it seem strange that the fighters kept coming, even while the motherships died and fled?” the spy asked. “Strange that not one of them tried to surrender?”

  “A little,” Kyle admitted, “but the only way they were going to escape was if they took us out and allowed the remaining corsairs to pick them up.”

  “They didn’t even know Coati was running,” Nebula said flatly. “According to their tactical feeds and maps, the corsairs were right behind them. Hell, their sensors didn’t even show the destruction of any ship they weren’t directly communicating with. They weren’t fanatics; they didn’t even know they were fighting to the death!”

  The meeting was silent as that sank in. Navy and Space Force officers alike relied on their sensors and communications. To see how badly the pilots they’d just fought had been lied to…

  “The crews weren’t properly trained, either,” Song told them. “Hard to say for sure, but I’d be stunned if most of those flight crews had more than a hundred hours of training time. They were being treated like expendable cannon fodder.”

  “That makes no sense,” von Lambert argued. “He just threw away almost three hundred sixth-generation starfighters. I didn’t think there would be that many Cobras out here.”

  “There shouldn’t be,” Kyle replied. “We sold just over four hundred, total, to the various Free Trade Zone systems. Many of those have been confirmed destroyed and the remainder accounted for in various defensive platforms.

  “I have no idea where the hell the bastard got that many of our fighters.”

  “I think I do,” Taggart interjected. “Trent and I went over the data and there’s a similar pattern to the one we saw in the corsairs also applies to the fighters. The design is that of the Cobra…but the components aren’t.”

  “The components are an integral part of the design,” Song objected. “That’s why we have stockpiles of the essential component to allow us to build replacement ships.”

  “To a point, yes,” the XO replied. “You need certain power levels of mass manipulators and zero-point cells, but…if you have those, even if they’re not quite the right ones, and the design…you can build something that’s basically a Cobra.

  “It’s not as efficient or as effective, but it’s cheaper and you can build it out of whatever components you have on hand—so long as they meet the requirements.”

  “He’s building his own starfighters?” Kyle asked. “I know we can do that, but those fabricators and designs are even more restricted and controlled than the starfighters themselves!”

  “We already established that the bastard has a shipyard somewhere that’s building custom pocket warships,” von Lambert said grimly. “Is it that much of a surprise that he has at least one starfighter fabricator?”

  “No. But it’s going to be a giant headache,” Kyle admitted. “So, we have no idea where his bases are?”

  “None,” Nebula confirmed.

  “We’re working on analyzing the hull debris we’ve pulled in,” Trent told them. “We may be able to narrow down a star system for the origin of the metal, but that’s only likely if the supply is coming from a known source.”

  “Which it almost certainly isn’t,” Taggart agreed.

  “What about prisoners?” Kyle asked.

  “His fighters weren’t equipped with such luxuries as escape pods,” Song told him. “We’ve picked up a few lucky survivors in crippled ships.”

  “We’re starting on interrogations,” Nebula added, “but so far, they’ve been about as useful as mushrooms—kept in the dark and fed shit.”

  “Do they even have the bandwidth to be proper pilots?” Kyle demanded. “Given everything else he seems to have done with these fighters…”

  “Your medical people say they’re mostly borderline,” the diplomat told him. “They probably stuffed a bunch of idiots who wanted to be starfighter crew more than they wanted to not be pirates into the ships and basically wrote them off immediately.”

  Kyle shook his head. Starfighter corps were generally regarded as the elite of most militaries, with high requirements in both neural bandwidth capacity and academic performance to even be considered. Planetary populations were large enough that the inherent losses were replaceable, and starfighter crew had to be somewhat expendable, but treating them like cannon fodder…

  “What I’m hearing is that we’re back at square one,” he noted. “I was hoping for more.”

  “We gutted Coati’s main force,” Taggart pointed out. “We didn’
t think he even had that many ships, so losing twenty-two of them has to hurt. Even if he can replace the ships and the starfighters, that’s thousands of crew he has to find again.”

  “There’s twenty systems in the Free Trade Zone,” Kyle said quietly. “Assuming he’s only recruiting from them, that’s still, what, thirteen billion people? You can find a lot of scum willing to rape and kill in thirteen billion people.”

  “What do we do now?” von Lambert asked.

  “Continue the convoy escort,” Kyle said with a sigh. “From here back to Antioch, then to Istanbul. See what intelligence we can pick up and if their losses make any kind of dent in their activities.

  “If nothing else, people, there’s at least one Terran battlecruiser out there, and I’m not willing to call this done until that ship is either taken or destroyed.”

  #

  Chapter 33

  KDX-6657 System

  14:00 November 19, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  BC-305 Poseidon

  James Tecumseh had half-expected never to see Coati again. In the safety of his own head, he could admit he was actually disappointed to see the six corsair ships limp back into the KDX-6657 System. There was a tiny flicker of hope that the pirate had not survived the damage his fleet had taken, but that was dashed when he was pinged a few moments after the pirate ships showed up on Poseidon’s sensors.

  “Coati for you, sir,” Amoto informed him. “Strange that we haven’t heard from him since they reached Salvatore.”

  “It looks like it didn’t go well, and our pirate friend is hardly willing to admit we told him so until he has to,” James replied. “Put him through, Lieutenant.”

  In general, they hadn’t heard from Coati except when the pirate was in the same system as them. From an operational standpoint, James would admit that was something of a problem. From a personal standpoint, he was delighted not to have to talk to the scaled and brightly-haired pirate.

  “Commodore Tecumseh,” Coati greeted him as his unique visage settled onto the screen in James’s office.

  “Commodore Coati. You appear to be missing a few ships.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Commodore?” the pirate demanded.

  James was taken aback.

  “You walked into a trap you were warned about,” he replied slowly. “It’s certainly not the smartest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, but I know you were convinced you could turn it on them.

  “I take it that didn’t work?”

  “No,” Coati hissed. “It did not, and I begin, Commodore Tecumseh, to wonder just how long ago I walked into this trap.”

  Now James was very confused. Coati had grounds to be angry, but with the loss of half of his ships, the pirate needed the Commonwealth ships more than ever.

  Though, with all of the delays, James was currently wishing he hadn’t sent Chariot to Amadeus. His second ship was finally on its way back but was still almost twenty-four hours out.

  He let the silence linger, leaving it to Coati to either explain what he was going on about or move on.

  “You were right,” the pirate finally allowed. “I don’t know who they turned, but they twisted my intelligence network against me. I have agents already in motion. I will learn who betrayed me, and they will all pay.

  “Everyone who betrayed me will pay,” Coati glowered at the screen. “And your Roberts…oh, his fate will be delicious.”

  “Be cautious in your vendettas,” James warned. “Even the Commonwealth has problems with the Federation, and they will not blithely watch as you hunt down one of their most famous captains.”

  “You underestimate me, Commodore Tecumseh. You always have,” the pirate noted. “But you were right, this time. Our losses against Roberts were significant.”

  “The Commonwealth stands ready to make certain our shared objectives our met,” James said smoothly. “We can work together to make certain the Alliance force is…removed as a factor.”

  Of course, at this point, he would be perfectly willing to go after Roberts’s remaining two ships with just Poseidon and Chariot. He no longer needed Coati…which meant he could feed the pirate’s remaining ships into a meat grinder if it helped achieve his mission.

  “We should meet in person,” Coati finally replied. “It appears I will need to lean on you more in the immediate future than I would like, but this Roberts and his task group must be removed.”

  “I agree. I estimate you being able to come aboard around seventeen hundred hours?”

  “It’ll be nineteen hundred,” the pirate told him firmly. “I have other affairs to arrange as well.”

  “Very well,” James agreed.

  Using the pirate and his ships as mobile ablative armor sounded better and better by the second.

  #

  In the end, not only did Coati refuse to show up on James’s schedule, but he refused to even show up on time. His shuttle finally arrived just before twenty hundred hours, almost an hour late. James had waited ten minutes for the pirate to show up, and then returned to his office to get work done while Coati messed around.

  “He’s finally here,” the dock officer informed James over the intercom. “Do you want to come down and meet him?”

  “No,” James said grouchily. “If he wants to be this late, let him deal with it. Have a pair of Marines bring him up to my office.”

  Coati could probably find his way to the Commodore’s office by now, but there was no way that James was letting the pirate wander around Poseidon unescorted. The Marines were more of an honor guard than anything, but they’d stop the man from getting in too much trouble.

  And making Coati come to him helped reinforce the necessary power dynamic—and let James finish the piece of paperwork he was working on, allowing him to have two cups of coffee waiting when the pirate finally arrived.

  There was reinforcing power dynamics and there was being rude, after all.

  Coati looked to have his own personal storm cloud as he entered the office, shaking off the Marines with a dismissive shake of his head as he dropped himself into the chair and glared across the table. He grabbed the coffee without a word and drank a massive gulp.

  “I presume you’re not trying to poison me,” he concluded afterward. “Though I suppose I should know better than to trust one of Terra’s Unity fanatics.”

  “I am a believer in unification, yes,” James said slowly. “I am hardly a fanatic, though, despite what you’ve said before.”

  “Takes a blind fanatic to think that all of humanity can be ruled by one set of suits on Earth,” Coati pointed out, his grouchiness fading somewhat. “Instant communication be damned, your theoretically elected rep would be four months’ flight from here. There’s no way she’s going to be playing by the rules with all of the temptations of power to her fingertips.”

  “The system works,” the Terran pointed out. “The Commonwealth is not the most powerful nation in human space by accident, after all.”

  “The system has worked,” Coati replied. “As you expand, you will find the limits of your system, and your Commonwealth, like every empire in history, will break.”

  “No empire in history has ever had all of our advantages,” James said. “What’s your point, Coati?”

  “I have to have a point?” the pirate said with a blatantly fake grin.

  “You just got your ass kicked six ways to Sunday by the Alliance,” James reminded him. “Is this really the time when you want to be discussing the virtues of quantum entanglement–based representative democracy?”

  The fake grin disappeared and Coati leaned forward across the desk.

  “It’s related,” he said flatly. “I do have a point, Commodore Tecumseh. My own assessment is that the Commonwealth is rapidly approaching the limits of its capacity. A two-front war against the second-largest polity in human space, however disorganized that polity is, and the largest coalition of nations ever assembled?

  “Even victory will doom the Commonwealth now,”
the pirate continued. “Adding that many systems at once will break the annexation policies that have held it together. The nation you have sworn to serve, Commodore, is doomed.”

  “I think it’s obvious I disagree,” the Commodore said dryly. “And I am again left with my question: what is your point, Coati?”

  “You are correct, Tecumseh, in that I need your ships if I am to complete my goals now,” Coati admitted. “But I have no reason to trust the Commonwealth and many reasons not to. So, I have an offer for you, Commodore.”

  “And what is that?” James asked, though he suspected.

  “Join me,” the pirate offered. “Stand at my right hand while we forge a new empire here in this forgotten corner of the galaxy. I have resources and allies I have not yet revealed; the birth of a new nation, a new dynasty is within reach.

  “I offered you a world once and I meant it,” Coati reminded him. “Now I offer you the chance to help rule two dozen worlds. You can serve a nation that is doomed to fall and drag you down into the ashes with it, or you can stand at the right hand of an emperor. I reward those who give me honest service.

  “Fight with me, Commodore Tecumseh, and you will be rich and powerful beyond your wildest dreams.”

  Coati’s concept of riches and power were not James Tecumseh’s, he suspected. Rulership of a world didn’t appeal to him—it mostly sounded like work. A task group of three ships was enough work; a planet full of people? Especially a planet full of resisting people?

  James would rather fight to save a dying civilization, not that he truly feared that fate for the Commonwealth.

  “You really don’t know what motivates men like me,” he told Coati quietly. “I serve the Commonwealth for the greater good, not my own aggrandization. My mission calls for me to destroy the Free Trade Zone and undermine the influence of the Federation and Imperium out here.