Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  With a thought, Mira dropped into the channel with Clawhammer.

  “Captain Mauve,” she greeted the battleship’s androgynous commander. “We’re ready for the test shot on our end, and the probes are in position to report the results. What’s your status?”

  “Every test so far shows all green, Captain Solace,” Mauve replied. “You may proceed when ready.”

  Mira gave Mauve a firm nod and turned her attention back to Rose.

  “Fire one three-second burst from secondary seventeen,” she ordered.

  “Three-second burst, aye. Firing.”

  The beam wasn’t truly visible to the human eye, but Camerone’s computers drew it in as a bright white line emerging from the battlecruiser, crossing the almost half-million kilometers to Clawhammer—and clearly deflecting well away from the battleship.

  “Yes!” Rose exclaimed, then quickly restrained herself, looking embarrassedly at her Captain.

  Mira maintained her calm face, the expression she knew most of those who knew her called “the onyx statue” and levelly met the pale younger brunette’s gaze. As the officer started to flush, she winked.

  “I call that a successful test, Captain Mauve,” she told Clawhammer’s captain. “How’s the deflection vector look?”

  “Right where it should be for the upgrade,” Mauve replied. “We’re lining Sledgehammer up for the second wave test. This should be a show.”

  Sledgehammer had started out several hours before, carefully aligning herself almost four million kilometers from the other battleship. Against the older deflectors, the battleship’s one-megaton-a-second main lances could be deadly at over two million kilometers.

  Nothing compared to the potential range of a fighter strike, but still demonstrative of why Command had refused to send forward any ship without modern deflectors. Now the battleships should have an effective range of almost a million kilometers—half what it would have been before.

  “Sledgehammer has fired,” Rose reported, and Mira turned her gaze back to the display.

  The battleship was reporting the beam via Q-Com, and Q-probes along the route reported its travel in nearly real time. The beam traveled close enough to the speed of light to make the distinction irrelevant, but that still meant an almost thirteen-second transit time for a four-million-kilometer shot.

  Mira caught herself holding her breath for the full time. The beam, drawn on her plot in bright white again, hit Clawhammer’s deflectors, running against the magnetic field around the ship and shifting away from the battleship by more than enough to protect it.

  Then something went wrong. The deflectors collapsed, and the beam snapped back into its original line. There was nothing Sledgehammer’s crew could do, having already ceased fire over ten seconds earlier. Mira swallowed her held breath in horror as the massive beam swung back towards the Clawhammer—and finally, barely, cut out twelve meters from the hull.

  Camerone’s captain exhaled, took a deep breath, and exhaled again, looking helplessly over at Rose.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I’d say they overloaded something and blew the emitters,” Rose said slowly.

  “Captain Mauve, what’s your status?” Mira asked, realizing she still had Clawhammer’s captain on the line.

  “Shaken,” the herm replied bluntly. “We took some fringe energy from the beam getting that close; should be repairable.” Mauve gave a headshake. “Looks like we lost an entire primary power coupling. The deflectors appear to be fine; we just didn’t check the new power demand versus some of the older parts.”

  Clawhammer’s captain looked back at her people.

  “We’ve got some more work to do here before we’re ready for another full-power test,” Mauve continued. “I need to get to it!”

  15:00 February 28, 2736 ESMDT

  BC-129 Camerone, Flag Conference Room

  “What the hell happened?” Rear Admiral Miriam Alstairs snapped.

  The Admiral’s anger wasn’t directed at a particular individual, but it was still enough to make all of the captains on the holoconference quail, including Mira herself.

  “My people have been through the power coupling in detail now,” Eden Mauve said quietly. “In all of the planning and rush to get the refit complete, not to mention sending us out here with half the parts on board to install ourselves, no one ever did more than a cursory check of the power demand of the upgraded deflectors.

  “Given the energy density of a zero point energy system and our need for backups, most of our ships are overpowered for their needs. We had the power supply for the new systems,” Mauve concluded, “but not necessarily the power grid for the new systems.” The battleship captain shrugged. “Add in that some of the parts were in the last year of their life cycle and scheduled for replacement in the near future, and we had a recipe for a critical failure. Better found in testing than in battle.”

  The herm took nearly being vaporized by the accident far more in stride than Mira could have in the same place.

  “And your damage?” Alstairs asked.

  “Minimal,” Mauve said crisply. “We can’t bring up a Stetson field until we’ve replaced the emitters the energy bleed burnt out, but we should be able to go FTL inside forty-eight hours.”

  Without a Stetson stabilization field, a ship could generate an Alcubierre warp bubble. The crew would be almost instantly killed by the radiation compression inherent to the bubble, shortly followed by the ship vaporizing and the bubble imploding, but it could be done.

  “That beam should never have come as close as it did, regardless,” Urien Ainsley, Sledgehammer’s Captain, said quietly. “Across thirteen light-seconds, we’re supposed to have a beam variance of under one hundred meters. The beam was over two hundred meters off-angle and fully coherent.”

  The brown bear of a man shook his head and met Mauve’s gaze levelly.

  “We’re checking all of our main lance emitters for their calibration,” he told her. “I’ve already confirmed there was a miscommunication on Lance Five that resulted in a missed calibration after the yard work. We fucked up, Eden,” he said levelly. “I’m sorry.”

  Mira watched the Admiral glance from one Captain to the other and sigh.

  “All right,” she told them, her voice calmer now. “We’ve got time, so let’s beat this till the horse stops bleeding. We’re going to do a full fleet-wide reexamination of the power grids. I am not losing a ship to a power failure!

  “Second, I want every lance in the fleet recalibrated.”

  Mira winced, along with the rest of the Captains. Examining Camerone’s power grid would be relatively painless, if not quick. It was a chore for bots by the dozen but didn’t require very many people.

  Regulations required a human set of eyes on the calibration statistics of a positron lance. Even the lightest lance fired a beam of pure antimatter that could devastate a planet relatively quickly. Camerone alone had one hundred and forty-four positron lances. Recalibrating them all would take days.

  The starfighters weren’t as big a deal. None of the little ships in the fleet were more than a year old—and recalibrating their lances was part of their regular post-flight maintenance.

  “Our last update placed our Marine brigades four days out,” the Admiral continued. “We should be able to complete the recalibration in three days. It’s been a rough day for a lot of our people, so I suggest we let everyone off the hook tonight and get started in the morning.”

  Mira tried not to look too relieved as she glanced at Kyle Roberts’ image in the holoconference. As the holotank slowly shut down, she realized she hadn’t managed it, as both her XO and Admiral Alstairs were grinning at her.

  21:00 February 28, 2736 ESMDT

  Alizon Star Guard Orbit One, Commercial Concourse

  There were enough shuttles flying back and forth between all of Seventh Fleet’s ships and the main orbital platform of the Alizon Star Guard for Kyle to simply add himself as cargo to one of them. He wa
sn’t entirely surprised that Orbit One had picked up a number of civilian entrepreneurs selling to Alizon’s rapidly rebuilding self-defense forces—it had been built as a “civilian transfer station’.”

  That “transfer station” had required less than two days’ work to transform into a fully functioning starfighter base. Within two weeks, positron lances and missile launchers hidden on the surface had been brought up and mounted into preexisting slots.

  Whoever had come up with the design had been both bold and brilliant. It had enabled Alizon to be reasonably safe even when Kyle’s then-Admiral had dragged Avalon on a wild-goose chase, abandoning the system with a single Federation fighter wing and a pile of stolen and refitted Commonwealth starfighters for defense.

  Since the station had passed Commonwealth inspection as civilian, however, it still had a large trade concourse in place. The empty stalls and restaurants spoke as much to the current disorganized state of Alizon’s government and economy as much as anything else.

  At some point, likely while the station was under construction and trying to fool the Terrans, someone had installed a water fountain at the end of the concourse and trees along the entire center line of the two-hundred-meter mall.

  Mira was standing next to the fountain, but it took him a minute to recognize her. This was actually the first date they’d managed to pull together, and he’d never seen her out of uniform. She wore a long blue dress that offset her dark skin to perfection, and he found himself frozen in place for a long moment, just staring.

  Finally shaking himself, he approached her with a smile.

  “I didn’t realize there was a dress code,” he told her, gesturing down at the uniform he had worn.

  “Kyle, do you even own something other than a uniform?” she asked with a chuckle.

  “I think I have a suit somewhere,” Kyle hedged. “It might not fit.” He stepped back from their embrace, looking at her in awe. “You are beautiful.”

  “And you are a walking eyeball magnet in your uniform, so you’re doing just fine,” Mira replied. “Come on, the restaurant’s this way.”

  She took his hand and led him towards one of the occupied stalls. A sign proudly announced it was the Third Charm restaurant, featuring ‘traditional Tau Ceti cuisine’.

  “What’s Tau Ceti cuisine?” he asked as they approached the live human dressed in a dark burgundy suit at the front door.

  “I have no idea,” his lover replied cheerfully. “It’s the only sit-down restaurant I could find that we could get to without commandeering shuttles for a date.” She stepped up to the host. “Reservation for Solace.”

  The host, however, was looking directly at Kyle.

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said crisply. “If you could wait here a moment?”

  The host was gone for several minutes and Kyle was wondering just what was going on when he reemerged, trailing a tall dark-skinned woman with a red tattooed dot between her eyes and a chef’s hat. She almost met Kyle’s own height, and as she approached him, she swept off the hat in a deep bow.

  “Captain Roberts!” she greeted him. “We didn’t know you were coming; we would have made extra preparations!”

  Kyle swallowed awkwardly. “That’s not necessary,” he told her slowly.

  “Alizon is free, thanks to you,” the chef—and, he was guessing, owner—replied. “Come in, come in! Mukesh, the best wine in the house! Ninette, clear the high table! We have Captain Roberts in the house!” She swung on Kyle himself. “And do not think for one moment you are paying to eat in my restaurant, Captain!”

  “Let it go, Kyle,” Mira murmured in his ear. “I hadn’t thought about this, but you did save their planet, after all.”

  He nodded his acceptance and followed the Third Charm’s owner in. Mira was right next to him, her hand still warm in his and bringing a smile to his face.

  They were promptly seated at a table near the kitchen but out of the way of traffic, on a slight dais with an incredible view of the restaurant. The Third Charm had been extremely carefully decorated, with circular tables and wire-framed chairs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an old movie’s Paris café’, matched with hand-woven tapestries depicting Hindu gods and scenes from Tau Ceti’s colonization.

  Looking at the menu, Kyle rapidly ended up relying on his implant for translation. It was technically in English but an odd dialect with a lot of French and Hindi words added in.

  “So, looking at this,” Mira told him, “Tau Ceti cuisine is what happens when a Frenchman marries an Indian woman and they’re compromising on what to feed the children.”

  After poking at translations through their implants, they settled on the ‘escargot rogan josh’ for an appetizer and continued to peruse the menu.

  “You know we’re going to be in different battle groups,” Mira said quietly after the waiters had moved on.

  “It makes sense,” he admitted. “Split the modern warships up, we’re half again the volume and mass of the ships from the Reserve. Avalon’s our most powerful unit, too.”

  “It’s going to be a busy few days with the recalibration now, too,” she sighed. “You are not permitted to die on me, Kyle Roberts. Is that clear?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” he chuckled. “The same is true for you, you know. I need to introduce you to my mother. And my son, for that matter,” he admitted. “Apparently, his mother looked up your picture online. I’m told she approves.”

  It was Mira’s turn to chuckle.

  “You should have seen the twenty-two-minute-long loop of exclamation and shock my sister sent me back when I told her,” she replied. “I’m not entirely sure she breathed.”

  Kyle smiled, but he also understood why she’d raised the topic.

  “We probably won’t manage to get together again before we move out,” he acknowledged aloud. “We’ll survive, though. Duty divides so many.”

  “It does,” she nodded. “For tonight, however, I must point out that this station has more than one entrepreneur aboard—and one of them has opened what I’m told is a very nice hotel.” Her hand sneaked across the table to settle on his. “Suffice to say I have a room booked and nearly ten hours before I need to be back on ship. Let’s take what time we have.”

  He lifted his glass in a silent toast of agreement.

  Chapter 8

  Alizon System

  12:00 February 29, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge

  “We have Alcubierre emergence signatures,” Xue reported. “I have four signatures and they are on schedule for Suncat and her companions.”

  Kyle studied the emergence signatures on the screen. Suncat herself was a thirty-million-cubic-meter, twelve-million-ton carrier—effectively an Ursine-class ship like Polar Bear or Grizzly built under license. The two strike cruisers accompanying her—Excelsior of the Thorn Defense Force and Voltaire of the Sebring Space Navy—were home-built ships of a similar technological pedigree.

  The fourth ship was a Federation vessel, a Myth and Truth–class mobile shipyard intended to bring those three ships up to the same specifications as the Reserve ships assigned to Seventh Fleet. The addition of the Basilisk and Toad had caused the delay in Suncat’s arrival. No one had wanted one of the incalculably valuable mobile shipyards flying unescorted.

  “Looks like we’re the closest,” Kyle observed. There was no point in calibrating Seventh Fleet’s energy weapons without test-firing them, which required enough safety distance that the Fleet was spread out around the system. “Take us over to say hi and hail them for me.”

  His bridge team was used to his idiosyncrasies by now, and Maria Pendez, his chief navigator, started the ship moving even as the com officer linked Avalon to Suncat—via a quantum-entanglement switchboard in the Castle system.

  “Welcome home, Captain Larue,” Kyle said quietly as the channel opened, and the space-black face of the only surviving starship captain of the Alizon Star Guard appeared on his screen.
“It’s good to see you and Suncat where you belong.”

  “It’s good to be back,” Kojo Larue rumbled back at him. “And the welcome committee is fitting as well. I must thank you, Captain Roberts, for all you have done for my people—all that fate would not permit me to do.” He clasped his hands together and bowed over them.

  Kyle nodded, acknowledging the bow as non-awkwardly as he could. Captain Larue had been the senior officer of the Star Guard and able to do whatever he wanted with his ship. His ship had been desperately needed where it was, and would also have been insufficient against the defenses Avalon had encountered in the system.

  “Rear Admiral Alstairs will want to speak with you as well,” Kyle warned Larue. “So will President Ingolfson.” There was, after all, no way the senior survivor of the Star Guard was going to stay a Captain longer than it took Alizon’s president to find him and pin a set of Admiral’s stars on him.

  Larue’s resigned expression suggested he’d made the same assessment Kyle had.

  “Of course,” he allowed. “Our presence, I hope, is sufficient to allow you to liberate other systems as you did mine, Captain Roberts?”

  Kyle glanced around his bridge. Everyone here was cleared on Rising Star, though the intended launch date was still being kept somewhat quiet. Larue needed to know though

  “Operating Rising Star will kick off as soon as our Marines arrive, Captain Larue,” he told the other man. “We’re going back and we’re kicking the Commonwealth off our worlds.”

  “With you at the heart, I do not think they will know what hit them,” the black giant on Suncat’s bridge said with a bright grin. “And other worlds will know the Stellar Fox as we do. We will speak before you leave, Captain Roberts, but may God go with you in all your travels.”

  Kyle hated that nickname, but somehow it was less offensive coming from Larue than the news media.