Operation Medusa (Castle Federation Book 6)

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Operation Medusa (Castle Federation Book 6) Page 11

by Glynn Stewart


  “Oh, good,” Kyle replied. “Captain Novak?”

  “Admiral?”

  “Vaporize his communication relay for me.”

  “Yes, sir,” his flag captain said brightly.

  A moment later, one of Elysium’s massive, megaton-a-second primary positron lances flared to life. A warship’s deflectors would have protected it at this range, but the tiny communications satellite had no such defenses. The beam of antimatter that hit it had spread out to be wider than the satellite at impact, utterly annihilating the automated space station.

  “Find me that bunker, Commander,” Kyle ordered. “And, Captain Novak? Have your engineers fabricate me a deep-penetration special weapons package.

  “I don’t like killing off the Governor’s staff, but I have the sinking feeling that if I don’t remove this idiot, a whole bunch of other people are going to get killed.”

  “WE’VE GOT HIM,” Sterling told him. “Bunker buried under the mountains to the west of the capital. About a hundred klicks clear of everything, I’m guessing he’s got some kind of underground tramway.”

  “Are we sure it isn’t another relay?” Kyle asked.

  “It’s a larger facility. He might be using it as a relay, but there’s definitely some kind of bunker there.”

  “All right.” Kyle looked around his flag bridge again, studying his staff.

  “Any further word from the Governor?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Aurangzeb told him. “No attempt to coordinate an evacuation, no attempt to talk to us. He seems to think if he ignores us, we’re going to go away.”

  “And the uncoordinated evacuation?” Kyle asked.

  “Messy,” his operations officer replied. “People are moving, but…it isn’t pretty. They’ll be at least twelve hours behind the deadline.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone else is stepping up?”

  “Something is going on,” Novak told him, the Captain linked into the conversation via their implants. “There’s a slow but growing wave of organization, but…whoever is doing it has no authority; it’s being assembled on the fly.”

  “And instead of helping, the local government agencies have been ordered to get in the way,” Kyle concluded.

  “You have that package for me?”

  “Yep. One long-range ground-penetrating bunker buster.” Novak shook her head. “Should punch clean through into the bunker and wreck the Governor’s day.”

  Kyle considered the possibility of directly threatening the Governor, but his impression was that wasn’t going to help.

  “You may fire when ready, Captain,” he ordered.

  A single white icon appeared in the tactical feed hitting everyone’s implants, a weapon closer in size to a new bomber torpedo than a capital-ship missile accelerating away from the carrier at a thousand gravities.

  It flashed across the distance to the planet, carefully aligning itself in orbit and then diving straight down. There was a white flash on the feed, and then data began to come in from the Q-probes in orbit.

  “Target bunker is gone,” Novak confirmed. “Minimal splash damage.”

  “All right.” Kyle shook his head uncomfortably, then sighed. “Get another wide broadcast.”

  The recorders turned on for hopefully the last time and he looked unhesitatingly into them.

  “People of the Aswiri System, your Governor continued to refuse to speak rationally to us or to begin coordinating the ordered evacuation of your orbital platforms.

  “We have now destroyed the bunker he was transmitting from. I will, at this point, work with whoever is prepared to organize an orderly evacuation of your space stations.

  “The clock is ticking.”

  15

  Aswiri System

  20:00 September 9, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Alliance Forty-First Fleet

  IF HE’D BEEN able to think of a single good reason, Kyle wouldn’t have watched. He had no need to watch decades of investment go up in flames—only duty to see his orders carried out.

  He stood on Elysium’s flag deck with his hands clasped behind his back as fireballs marched their way across the Aswiri System. He’d given them eight extra hours to evacuate and hoped, as hard as he could, that it had been enough.

  The cloudscoops were destroyed first, the Q-probes orbiting the gas giants allowing him to watch in real time as his starfighters carefully severed the habitat sections of the stations from the industrial portions. Once the habitats had been boosted into higher orbits, the starfighters went to their real work.

  Positron lances flared against the backdrop of the atmosphere of the massive planets below, chopping the immense tanks and refinery plants into flaming pieces. Debris scattered across the atmosphere of the gas giants, and the massive tubes that had hung down from the scoop stations fell.

  A massive hydrogen explosion lit up one of the screens, but the starfighter crews had judged the distance well. The habitat sections containing the cloudscoop’s crew were thrown about by the explosion but undamaged.

  The destruction in Indus orbit was more carefully orchestrated. They could let debris fall into the gas giants. They couldn’t let it fall to the surface of the inhabited planet.

  Every explosion, every missile strike, every lance beam, had been carefully calculated for hours before the destruction even began. Refinery platforms, orbital factories, assembly platforms, refueling stations…everything in orbit that wasn’t purely residential was ripped apart by fire.

  Here, the debris was flung into higher orbits. It would form a new temporary ring around Indus. Eventually, the locals—or, more likely, the Commonwealth—would have to clean it up to avoid the navigation hazard.

  But none of it fell to the surface, and none of it survived. The Aswiri System would no longer fuel the economy powering the war machine attacking Kyle’s home.

  They’d done everything in their power to minimize casualties, and he understood the necessity…but it was never something that Kyle Roberts was going to be comfortable watching.

  “It’s done,” Sterling finally said softly at his shoulder. “Recalling the fighters now. Where do we go from here, sir?”

  “Our next target,” Kyle replied, clearing his throat with a rough cough. “Once the starfighters are aboard, get everyone headed for Alcubierre drive and arrange a virtual conference.”

  “You could, you know, let people know the plan in advance,” his chief of staff pointed out.

  Kyle forced his usual chuckle.

  “If I do that, Commander Sterling, then I have to admit that half the targets are being picked with a dartboard, and what would that do for everyone’s confidence in the Stellar Fox?

  “Arrange the conference—but make sure everyone is keeping an eye out for trouble. We shouldn’t have been here long enough for any of their Navy ships to make it, but let’s be ready for it if they do.”

  EVEN AS HE took his seat in the conference room next to his office and linked into the virtual conference, the tactical feed was running through the back of Kyle’s head. There were no threats left in the Aswiri System, but they were entering the earliest time where the Commonwealth Navy could have a response force in position.

  “We’re done here,” he said without preamble as the last captains linked in. “It’s a shit job and I don’t expect any of us to like it. In truth, any of you that do should probably talk to your ship’s doctors.”

  He grinned broadly.

  “This is about as bad as our job gets without us committing actual atrocities,” he noted. “And if anyone under my command does that, you will wish the Commonwealth caught you first.”

  “These kinds of raids are risky for that,” Captain Tanaka observed. The battlecruiser commander looked drained—but he was from one of the New Bombay System’s cloudscoops. Watching his own fighters dismantle a station almost identical to his home had to have been hard.

  “That’s why we’re keeping the fleet together,” Kyle replied. “Most of ou
r first-round targets are sufficiently lightly defended that we could take them with two or three ships—but we need the moral support of the fleet, I think, to make sure we keep our hands clean.

  “We did well here,” he concluded. “I’m still furious with the Governor, but at least his successors decided to cooperate. Our next target is likely to be smarter…but they’re also going to have more of a Navy presence.”

  “And our next target is?” Bai’al asked dryly.

  Kyle smiled.

  “The Starkhaven System,” he told them, bringing up the astrographic chart of the region. “Fourteen light-years—roughly a week—away from here. We’re bypassing three systems that would be useful targets, but I want to keep Walkingstick and his people guessing.

  “Starkhaven is a key supplier of food and raw materials to the Niagara fleet base,” he continued. “The first of several systems we are going to hit that are Walkingstick’s logistic keystones.

  “Of course, since Walkingstick is far from an idiot and knew that, sooner or later, we were going to have to at least attempt an offensive like this, Starkhaven is better defended than most of the systems out this way.”

  The chart zoomed in on Starkhaven. One inhabited planet, Ferelden, four uninhabited scorched rocks closer in to the massive star, a midsized asteroid belt and a massive super-jovian gas giant.

  “Kirkwall is the gas giant and supplies just over twenty percent of the fuel used at the Niagara fleet base,” Kyle noted. “There are both civilian and Commonwealth Navy cloudscoops in orbit of Kirkwall, and, at last count, they were protected by eight Terran Commonwealth Starfighter Corps Zion-class defense platforms.

  “Unlike Aswiri, intelligence is quite certain that Starkhaven’s Corps bases have been equipped with both Katanas and Longbows,” he continued. “They won’t be Walkingstick’s best, but they’re not back-system militia, either.”

  “What about the planet?” Captain Hammond asked. “Two separate targets?”

  “We’re not burning the farms from orbit, if anyone’s afraid of that,” Kyle told them dryly. “But the transshipment facilities in Ferelden orbit are a major relay point for not only the food and hydrogen from Starkhaven but for spare parts, munitions, and raw materials coming from deeper in the Commonwealth.

  “The fixed defenses in Ferelden orbit are lighter than Kirkwall’s. Just four Zion-class platforms. But…”

  He thought a command and the display refocused. The orbiting stations and warehouses of the transhipment facilities were marked in green as they carried on their eternal circles around the planet below. The four fighter bases glittered in crimson.

  As did the two battlecruisers orbiting protectively over the entire flock.

  “Intelligence puts two Assassin-class battlecruisers in Ferelden orbit as of four weeks ago,” Kyle told his people. “They’re older ships, ones we have quite badly outgunned, but they’re probably the biggest threat in the system.

  “Since, as Hammond said, we have two targets in the system…I have a plan.”

  16

  Niagara System

  09:00 September 10, 2737 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  BB-285 Saint Michael

  “SIR, Senator Cambridge is requesting to have a q-com call with you sometime this afternoon.”

  James Walkingstick studied the painting of Earth on his wall for several long seconds.

  “Forgive me, Commander, but who is Senator Cambridge?” he finally asked his secretary. “We have one hundred and six Senators at last count and six hundred Assembly Members.”

  He could access the information from his implant, but Commander Andrea Messere often had useful insight on the people who wanted to talk to him. He didn’t get many calls from Senators or Assembly Members—and most of the ones he got were from members of the Committee on Unification.

  “Sorry, sir, I…figured you’d know who the Senator for Aswiri was after the last few days.”

  James winced.

  “All right, Andrea, I deserved that,” he admitted, then sighed. “Schedule the call. Let’s not pretend I’m going to enjoy talking to the good Senator, but it’s part of the job.”

  “He’s available immediately if you are, sir,” Messere told him. “He seemed to think it was urgent.”

  The man in charge of over a fifth of the Commonwealth’s fleet, tasked with bringing fifty systems into the unification, sighed.

  “What’s the latest from Aswiri?” he asked.

  “The Alliance moved out last night after thoroughly wrecking the local space industry,” she reeled off instantly. “We have a three-cruiser task group sixteen hours out, but Rear Admiral Kita never expected to get there before the Alliance left.”

  “I’d hope not,” James agreed. Ami Kita’s three strike cruisers were last-generation ships, Ocean-class vessels carrying sixty starfighters apiece. Aswiri hadn’t been able to give him a decent idea of what the fleet raiding his space looked like beyond “thirteen starships,” but even if half of those were logistics ships, Kita would have been better off shooting her crews herself than committing them to action.

  “But she’ll be in position to provide S&R and relief,” he continued. “That’s useful to know when speaking to the Senator. Let his staff know I’m available.”

  James Walkingstick shook his head.

  “Let’s face the music.”

  SENATOR DORIAN CAMBRIDGE LOOKED, to James Walkingstick anyway, like someone had taken his face and squashed it down by a third. His head was broad and his features heavyset in skin so pale, it could have been carved from ivory.

  “Marshal Walkingstick,” he greeted James. “I’m glad you could take time out from allowing thugs to rampage over our systems to speak to me.”

  James smiled thinly.

  “Senator Cambridge,” he replied. “I am always at the disposal of the members of the Star Chamber of the Commonwealth, though the task of bringing an entire region of space into Unification is a demanding one.”

  “You are also tasked, Marshal, with securing the region behind you,” Cambridge said acidly. “A task I must question your commitment to, given the attack on my star system! We cannot simply allow these murderers to have their way!”

  “We are at war, Senator,” James said carefully. “I know it may seem strange, but not all of our conflicts will be—not all of them can be—fought entirely in enemy space. By engaging in our campaigns of unification, we do open ourselves to attack.

  “Vice Admiral Roberts’s attack was…unexpected but not unanticipated,” he continued. “The Alliance represents one of the largest blocs we have ever attempted to bring into the Commonwealth at once. Unlike many, they have the resources to prosecute offensive operations against us.”

  “No one has ever attacked a Commonwealth system like this!” Cambridge snapped.

  “That is unfortunately not true,” the Marshal told him. “During the last war against the Alliance, they carried out offensive operations in our territory as well. The Via Somnia System has already fallen in this war.”

  “Those were military targets. Aswiri wasn’t even supplying your bases!”

  “But Aswiri is a member system of the Commonwealth and a legitimate military target,” James said levelly. “I do not wish to sound dismissive, Senator, but the attack on your system was carried out with scrupulous attention to both the accepted laws and traditions of interstellar war.”

  “That son of a bitch killed my Governor!”

  “Your Governor, Senator Cambridge, ordered over a thousand TCN and TCSFC personnel to their deaths for no good reason,” James snapped back. “He faced a battle fleet, Senator. From the moment Roberts emerged from Alcubierre, he controlled the Aswiri System.

  “The only way to minimize losses at that point was to cooperate with him. The destruction of Aswiri’s defenses and industry was inevitable. The deaths of military and government personnel was not.

  “That, Senator Cambridge, I fully lay at the feet of your Governor. Admiral Roberts m
ay be our enemy, but he did everything in his power to carry out his mission with minimal loss of life.”

  “And that’s all you’re going to say?” Cambridge snarled. “Thousands are dead, billions in infrastructure destroyed, and you’re going to defend your enemy?!”

  “There are ships already en route for relief operations,” James replied. “We will hunt down Admiral Roberts and his fleet, Senator. There will be consequences for what has happened, but the risk of it occurring was always a factor in this operation.”

  “And my world just swings, does it?” Cambridge asked.

  “That is between you and your colleagues in the Senate and Assembly,” James told him. “I would strongly recommend a significant package of economic relief and rebuilding assistance myself, but that is entirely out of my scope of authority, Senator.

  “Making sure what happened to Aswiri does not happen again is not. And that, Senator Cambridge, is now one of my top priorities, I assure you.”

  If for no other reason than because prosecuting the damned war required more and more political support with every passing week.

  THE CALL WITH CAMBRIDGE OVER, James stalked to the wallscreen in his office, switching it to show the view of the world beneath him. The Niagara System had few selling points beyond the big TCN base there. The Navy had seen the fate of Trinity in the last war and carefully separated their fleet bases from major civilian populations.

  It wasn’t that Trinity had been particularly badly handled when the Alliance had smashed the fleet base there, but the Commonwealth Navy liked to keep the civilian populace well away from its wars. The Committee on Unification’s mission had a massive base of support across the Commonwealth, but James Walkingstick was aware of how fragile that support was.

 

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