Rimward Stars (Castle Federation Book 5)

by Glynn Stewart

  The Katana was a seventh-generation starfighter, and a hundred and sixty of them was a very different threat parameter than the same number of sixth-generation Cobras.

  “Pass on everything we have to Song,” Kyle ordered. “A third of the ships with her are Katanas; she should know the balance better than we do.”

  “How the hell do they have that many Katanas?” Taggart asked.

  “We knew they could build starfighters,” Kyle replied. “Now we know there’s a maximum distance from here to Coati’s main base: that’s at least ten days’ production for a fighter factory of significant size, and they’ve had the design since November twenty-second at the earliest.

  “Their yard can’t be more than eight, maybe ten light-years from here. That cuts down the possibilities a lot.”

  “They’re using the corsairs to ferry them out here, figuring their biggest threat was Tecumseh either coming back or betraying the location to us,” Taggart concluded. “So, if we live through this, we’ve probably punched out a good chunk of the Katanas available to them.”

  “Only probably,” Kyle told him. “And we need to live through this mess and take that station intact.”

  “Song is launching missiles at the incoming starfighters,” Sterling told them. “Our missiles moving in to support.”

  With six squadrons, four of the Alliance’s eight starfighters and two of the Commonwealth’s ten fighters, held back to protect the warships, the strike’s numerical edge was slimmer than Kyle would have liked. They’d counted on an individual superiority they weren’t going to have—and the missiles from the station and its satellites were going to make up much of the numbers difference in the first salvos.

  There were a lot of missiles in space. Even the neatly spaced salvos of capital ship missiles coming from the three warships were vanishing into the confusion of drive signatures and jamming, entire wings of starfighters easily lost in the confusion.

  “Can we target any of the station’s weapon systems?” Kyle demanded.

  “Scans show her deflectors are weaker than expected, but not that weak,” Sterling replied. “The satellites have shot themselves dry, too. Any missile we fired would have go through the fighters, and any lance beam will be deflected.”

  The station couldn’t even maneuver and Kyle found himself wishing for one of the battleships they’d started the last war with—their massive railguns would have been perfect for this task.

  Instead, he had modern ships with antimatter missiles and positron beams. Far deadlier warships overall, but completely incapable of a purely kinetic long-range strike.

  “What are the Terrans doing?” Taggart suddenly demanded.

  For a few seconds, icy fear gripped Kyle’s heart as he thought his precautions against betrayal had been too few and Tecumseh had set them up…then he caught up with what the tactical feed was showing.

  The Katanas under Tecumseh’s command had used a burst acceleration capability he hadn’t known the fighters had to charge out in front of the rest of the starfighter formation. Leading the way ahead of the Alliance spacecraft, their ECM sang a suddenly complex siren song, luring the incoming Javelins to them—and then hammering them with a clearly perfectly coded electronic warfare attack.

  The Commonwealth might have handed Coati enough super-modern Javelin VII missiles to fight a war, but they hadn’t done so without any precautions. Every missile in the first salvo detonated simultaneously, lighting up the uninhabited system with a wall of white fire.

  “Getting out in front so they could hit the missiles with a directional transmission without interception, apparently,” Kyle concluded. “Keep our missiles covering them. I’m betting that won’t work twice.”

  The following salvo proved him mostly wrong. Some of the missiles in it were clearly, like the fighters launching them, Coati’s home-built rip-offs. Those lacked whatever software or hardware mechanism the Commonwealth transmission was triggering, and survived as their brethren self-destructed.

  Lasers and positron lances flared to life in anti-missile mode, but the Terrans had pushed themselves too far forward. The Alliance ships could support them, but their efficiency was degraded, and some, not many but some, of the missiles made it through.

  “I make it six Katanas lost on our side,” Sterling reported. “If Tecumseh’s really are ‘our’ side.”

  “For now, yes,” Kyle replied. “Coati’s?”

  “Our first two salvos have punched out over half of the Katanas; we’ve got one more salvo for both of us before lance range.”

  “I don’t suppose we can get Tecumseh’s people back in formation?” Kyle groused.

  “Song’s already ordered it once and they’re ignoring her,” Jamison reported. “Even with some of the missiles ignoring that code, they’re clearing one hell of a path.”

  “Third salvo intercepting,” Sterling said grimly. “Almost ten percent survived the self-destruct code, and they’re hitting lance range…now.”

  Alliance doctrine now called for the missile-heavy Imperial Arrows to fall back at this stage, leaving the Falcons with their heavier lances to carry this part of the fight. That was even more true with the Katanas, whose lances were still more powerful.

  With the Terran fighters already out in front, the Falcons closed the range as fast as they could, trying to bring Coati’s fighters into their lance range before their “allied” Katanas died.

  Antimatter flared across space as starfighters died, but the lack of training that Coati’s pilots had always shown was aggravated by their new ships. In a direct duel with equivalent starfighters, they didn’t stand a chance.

  “Song reports a clean sweep,” Jamison told Kyle. “They are beginning to decelerate to make a disabling pass of the station.”

  “Put me through,” Kyle replied.

  “Vice Commodore,” he greeted her. “How bad?”

  “The Terrans took the brunt of it,” she answered, surprise in her tone. “Tecumseh’s people lost twenty-two birds. We lost three. The pirates…” She sighed. “Coati’s rip-offs didn’t bother with such niceties as ‘escape pods.’ They’re gone.”

  “And the station?”

  “We’ll clear the big guns as we pass and nail as many of the secondaries as we can,” Song replied. “Compared to a hundred and sixty Katanas? This part is easy. Just make sure everything is clear before you send the Marines in; I kind of like Gonzalez.”

  “I have no intentions of sending them in until they’ve surrendered or we’ve cleared every positron lance off that station,” Kyle replied calmly. “Well done, Vice Commodore.”

  “Well done, half-begun,” she replied. “We’ll finish the job for you, sir.”

  #

  Chapter 44

  KDX-6657 System

  20:00 December 9, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  SC-153 Chariot

  The three warships decelerated to a smooth halt three hundred thousand kilometers from l’Estación de Muerte, carefully orienting themselves to present the largest possible number of weapons, and then went to work.

  James had provided his new allies with every scan of the station he had, and the q-probes were positioned barely five thousand kilometers away from it. The starfighters had removed all of the missile launchers and heavy lances, leaving the space station helpless beyond about a hundred thousand kilometers.

  The Alliance and Terran ships were in much better shape.

  “We’ve dialed in the deflector emitters and strength,” Modesitt reported. “We should be able to land clean hits from here.”

  “Good,” James replied. “Let Roberts call the shot. For now, this is his show.”

  The Terrans were very much here on sufferance, and they knew it. Debts of honor or not, James expected his new allies to turn on him as soon as Coati was defeated—if he was lucky, Roberts might give them a head start.

  Of course, he had plans for that situation. For now, however, they were working together. Half of the shuttles
waiting for the capital ships to clear away l’Estación de Muerte’s defenses were Terran, after all.

  “We have their com codes,” he reminded Chariot’s Captain. “Shall we see if they’re willing to surrender?”

  “Worth a shot,” she said with a shrug, tapping a command on her chair.

  “L’Estación de Muerte, this is Captain Modesitt aboard Chariot,” she said sweetly. “You betrayed us, but we found some lovely new friends. We are now in a position to neutralize your defenses and take the station by force.

  “I won’t make promises at this point, but if you surrender, we will be far more positively disposed than we will be if you make us drag you out of your stinking hole.”

  James chuckled.

  “I’m not sure how effective that’s going to be,” he admitted, “but damn, was listening to that cathartic.”

  “I’d rather let Barbados shoot them all,” Chariot’s Captain replied. “I suspect he’d be pissed if we let them surrender.”

  “And I get the impression he and Gonzalez are on the same page,” James agreed. “No one is going to mind too much if they surrender, but some of the Marines will definitely complain.”

  “No response from the station,” Modesitt noted after a few moments. “Captain Roberts’s people have informed they will commence firing in thirty seconds.”

  “Carry on, Captain,” James ordered, settling into his observer’s chair and making sure his tactical feed was updating properly.

  Exactly on the deadline, all three warships opened fire. A carrier and two strike cruisers, none of them had particularly massive lance armaments, though Kodiak, while carrying lighter weapons than the two cruisers, actually carried as many as the two other ships combined.

  Over forty medium positon lances lashed out into space, the computers happily drawing the invisible streams of antimatter into the feed as clean white lines. Where those lines collided with l’Estación de Muerte, however, they stopped being “clean.”

  Positron-lance and anti-missile-laser positions vaporized as beams of pure antimatter hammered home. Flash-boiled metal and exposed atmosphere blasted into space, short-lived gouts of flame lighting up the process as the three warships worked their way around the station’s hull, disabling every weapon that could still threaten their Marines.

  “I think we’re good,” James murmured, watching as the risk assessment continued to shift.

  “Colonel Barbados, it’s up to you and your Federation counterpart, but I think you’re good to go.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the Marine replied, leaving the channel open as he turned his attention to his people.

  “All right, Marines, are you ready to go kill some pirates?!”

  #

  James rode on Barbados’s virtual shoulder as the assault shuttles hammered home, laser cutters flaring to life to slice holes through hull already weakened by the craft’s engines. Metal flashed to vapor, and the shuttle hammered a temporary lock into the hole.

  “Go! Go! Go!” the Marine Colonel bellowed, waiting for his people to clear the shuttle before exiting.

  James could see the same tactical map Barbados did, drawn from painstaking discussion and analysis of every visit his people had made to l’Estación de Muerte. The map they’d assembled covered over eighty percent of the station’s volume but noticeably did not cover Engineering or the main command center.

  Unfortunately for Coati’s security, his people had so studiously kept the Terrans out of those areas that the attackers had a damned good idea of where they were, and the studiously split attack went in right next to the blanks on the map.

  The Alliance Marines were going for what they thought was the control center, while the Terran Marines went for what they thought was Engineering. Splitting the objectives also meant keeping the two forces, who no one quite trusted not to shoot at each other, well apart.

  “Clear!” a voice bellowed, and a wall that the Marines had suggested led into the engineering compartments disappeared in a series of explosions—and the Terrans charged through.

  The image feed that James was getting from Barbados’s helmet was hard for him to follow, all smoke and scanners and gunfire. The Colonel wasn’t in the middle of the fight, but in this kind of corridor-to-corridor fight, no one was entirely out of the fight, either.

  “Here!” one of the sergeants snapped. “I’ve got a primary ZP array.”

  “Second Company, move in to secure,” Barbados snapped. “Third, swing around; we’ve got an other pocket up and to your left. There’s got to be at least one more array; let’s lock them down before anyone gets clever.”

  “We’ve made contact with Alliance forces on Deck Six,” another platoon commander reported. “Pirates are broken; falling back on all sides.” Pause. “Alliance reports they’ve secured the command center and the primary computer cores.”

  “Report, is anyone still facing resistance?” Barbados demanded.

  “Fourth Company, we’ve got at least half a battalion trying to launch a breakout from what I think is the armory! We’re holding, but these are the first of the fuckers with real gear.”

  “First Company, move to relieve,” the Colonel ordered. “Karlson, coordinate with the Alliance. If I’m reading this map right, they should be able to cut in behind those bastards and squeeze them up against First and Fourth.”

  Silence. James waited.

  “Alliance confirms; they’re moving Imperial Marines in,” the platoon commander replied. “Watch your lines of fire, First and Fourth; let’s not piss these people off today, eh?”

  More gunfire echoed, but Barbados was finally out of the fight. The Colonel paused, appearing to study the map as he stepped into the engineering chamber Second Company was securing.

  “Zero-point cells are stable,” he reported back to James after scanning the controls. “I’m reading three arrays, we hold two, the Feds have the third.

  “Once that breakout is suppressed, we are in control of l’Estación de Muerte.”

  #

  Chapter 45

  KDX-6657 System

  12:00 December 10, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  l’Estación de Muerte

  “This is stupid.”

  “I know,” Kyle agreed to Major Gonzalez’s complaint genially. “The station is, however, almost entirely secure and represents a handy neutral meeting ground for us to discuss what happens next.”

  “This station is not secure,” the Marine pointed out. “There are still pockets of resistance, even if they’re a long way away from the computer cores and engineering bays. Fuck, I’m not sure this station is safe to inhabit; the maintenance of the atmospheric systems is better than the rest of the station, but still atrocious.”

  “I agree,” Kyle acceded. “But the value of being able to meet somewhere neutral remains.”

  “Yes, because having all three capital ship commanders in one spot is a great idea. Why exactly couldn’t this be a virtual conference?”

  “So far as I can tell, because the analysts want to see our faces when they lay out just how amazing they are and how much information they extracted from this rusted-out piece of junk,” the Captain replied. “But there is also a value in Captain von Lambert and myself being able to look Commodore Tecumseh in the eye while we plan the destruction of the ship he used to command.

  “Plus, all of this information was pulled by a joint team of our analysts and spies and his. I think Nebula, if no one else, would blow a fuse at the thought of transmitting all of this over something as insecure as a radioed virtual conference.”

  “It’s still dangerous,” the Marine concluded, which was an improvement from stupid, at least.

  “Which is why you and a dozen brave Marines in power armor are escorting me,” Kyle replied, gesturing at the mobile wall of metal surrounding him. “Von Lambert and Tecumseh have similar escorts, and the location we’re going to has been well secured by both Alliance and Commonwealth troops.”

  “I do
n’t trust the Terrans.”

  “Which would be other reason no one is traveling anywhere on this station alone,” Kyle agreed. “But we need this meeting, Major. We need to know just what Coati was up to and how we stop it.”

  “What happens after that, sir?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Kodiak’s Captain admitted. He was leaning toward “give Tecumseh a one-hour head start and kick him out,” but that wasn’t something he’d admit just yet.

  #

  Despite the decrepit nature of most of l’Estación de Muerte, the area around the main control center was perfectly clean. That area, thankfully, included a decently equipped conference room linked into the pirate station’s computers.

  At the front of the conference room, dressed in an Intelligence Senior Fleet Commander’s uniform that Kyle suspected he had every right to wear, was Karl Nebula. He was sitting on the table on the presentation dais, four Terran, three Imperial and two Federation intelligence specialists sitting behind him in the actual chairs.

  “Ah, good,” he greeted Kyle. “Now that Captain Roberts is here, we can begin.”

  The intelligence officers outnumbered everyone else in the room. With the Marines outside, only the three Captains and Commodore Tecumseh were waiting to hear what they had to say.

  Kyle took a seat next to von Lambert, wishing he’d had the foresight to pack a thermos of coffee or something. He wouldn’t trust anything the pirate station produced to drink, and from the lack of coffee mugs or water glasses in the room, everyone else felt the same way.

  “This has been an unusual and likely educational process for us all,” Nebula told the officers. “We spend most of our careers trying to block each other’s intrusion software, not assigning responsibility based on whose software is better at certain tasks.

  “And, well”—the spy grinned—“making sure none of us are watching over each other’s shoulder or trying to copy said software. While this was a pile of fun for us spies, I’m not sure you four have any interest in anything except what we found out.”