Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  With a smile and a slight shake of his head, he intentionally turned his thoughts from work.

  “I’ve traded a few messages with my mom,” he told Kelly. “She told me to tell you that you have an open invite to dinner at home. With Dad gone and me in the Force, I think she gets a little lonely these days.”

  His mother was a specialist automation troubleshooter, sent all around Castle and its star system—and occasionally beyond—fixing the odd problems that arose when you lined up several hundred semi-sentient robots and told them to build things. His father had been a starfighter pilot in the last war, and come home to fly interplanetary transport ships. Their schedules had clearly converged enough for them to get married and have three children before James Stanford’s transport ship had suffered a critical systems failure and been lost with all hands and passengers.

  “Since you’re assigned to Home Fleet, I know you can make it home,” he continued. “My mom, however, does not, so if you don’t feel up to meeting her without me, we can beg off. You two did seem to get along, though, and it would probably be good for her. Her work gets her to meet a lot of people, but I’m not sure if she gets to know any of them.

  “Let me know,” he finished. “I look forward to hearing from you again. I love you.”

  With near-perfect timing, his admittance chime sounded moments after he finished the message. His implant informed him that Wing Commander Russell Rokos was outside.

  “Come in, Commander,” he ordered, sending a mental signal to open the door.

  “Commodore,” Rokos greeted him, the burly pilot taking the proffered seat. “I’ve been studying the specs on those Templars the Phoenixes brought to the party, and I have some ideas on how we can make the best use of them alongside our own Falcons.”

  “I’m listening,” Michael replied, leaning forward. All he’d had on the docket today was routine paperwork, so almost anything was more useful.

  “With the heavier lance they’re packing, they’re better at killing starfighters than the Scimitar is,” Rokos pointed out. The Commonwealth’s latest-generation starfighter had been designed as a starfighter-killer, but its multiple lances were lighter weapons. The Scimitar was deadly at close range, but it had to survive to get there. “What I’m thinking is we sneak one of the Group’s Q-probes in as close as we can, and use the missiles to try and pick out squadron leaders and so forth—and then have the Templars hit them as we close. They’ve got almost forty thousand kilometers’ more range against the Scimitars than we do.”

  “And shattering their command and control at that point would throw their datanet out completely,” Michael agreed. “On the other hand, picking out command nodes in a combat datanet is hard.”

  “I know,” the junior officer acknowledged. “But I had a thought there, too…”

  11:00 March 8, 2736 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Captain’s Office

  There was never truly a time when the ship’s captain was off duty. In the age of neural implants and quantum-entanglement coms, Kyle could arguably command his carrier from the other side of the galaxy.

  The necessary bandwidth was more than any but the most expensive Q-Com links could handle for even one person, the almost-inconceivable price tag the major barrier between humanity and remote-controlled missiles and starfighters.

  Still, sitting in his office away from the quiet but intense activity of the supercarrier’s bridge was as off-duty as the temporary Force Commander could get while conscious. Having never commanded a six-ship formation before, he was stunned by the amount of work inherent in just keeping on top of the status of his ships.

  The downside to neural implants and Q-Coms was that he could easily keep track of everything going on on all six ships. It would rapidly drive him insane, but it was theoretically possible.

  Fortunately, he’d commanded starfighter groups before he’d commanded a starship. He’d learned there to leave the individual squadrons to his junior officers, watch the high-level reports, and step in when his juniors told him they needed help—or, often enough, when said juniors’ senior noncommissioned officers told him the officers needed help.

  The ships’ computers could give him very handy high-level synopses of the ships’ status, and nine times out of ten, that was all he needed. His captains were junior enough that they would have issues, and he’d been quietly messaged a few times in the two days of the trip so far, but nothing dramatic had arisen.

  FTL trips were quiet, and this one seemed even quieter than usual. There was a sense of anticipation around Avalon that made Kyle nervous—but then, the quiet times of the mission that had ended up liberating Alizon had been marked by attempts to assassinate him.

  With a thought and a flick of his hand, he threw the summaries he was viewing on his implant onto the wallscreen of his office. Six ships filled the wall—the abbreviated arrowhead of Avalon, the slightly sharper spike of Sledgehammer, the two diamonds of the Phoenix warships and the spheres of the freighter and assault transport.

  The plan for Cora was both tricky and straightforward. If it worked, he could pull the Commonwealth out of position and gut them with few or no losses—and in the worst case, Battle Group Seven-Two would face a straight slugging match with an edge in numbers and firepower.

  The plan after they took the system worried him. Rising Star called for Seventh Fleet to leave the systems behind them defended only by the orbital platforms the logistics freighters carried. Until they attacked the naval base at Via Somnia, they would make no major commitment to holding the systems they were liberating.

  It made sense—but it also dropped one hell of a risk on the systems they passed through. They could be setting up a situation where Cora could switch hands three or four times in the next few months—each side spending ships and blood to take the system every time, and the system’s infrastructure taking more and more damage with each battle.

  Some of the systems near the Commonwealth border had barely recovered from having that happen to them last time. Even a victory in Operation Rising Star could leave the worlds the Alliance had set out to save in even worse shape.

  Neither the star maps nor the status reports on his ships showed him an answer. He hoped High Command had one, but all he could do right now was his job—take the fight to the enemy.

  Chapter 13

  Zahn System

  23:00 March 13, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  BC-129 Camerone, Bridge

  Mira caught herself holding her breath as the countdown ticked toward emergence in the Zahn system. Slowly, as quietly as possible, she exhaled—hoping none of her bridge crew caught her nervousness.

  Emergence into a friendly system was a calm, stately affair. Information relayed from in-system sensors via Q-Com allowed the incoming ship to place their arrival point clear of the small orbital bodies no system—except perhaps Sol—had perfectly tracked, as well as the many small in-system ships that drove a star system’s economy.

  Assaulting a hostile system had none of those luxuries, plus the added danger of enemy warships and defenses. Intel placed three Commonwealth warships in the Zahn system, and while they were probably in orbit of the inhabited planet Zahn IV, they could be anywhere in the system.

  And Captain Mira Solace had never commanded a warship through a hostile emergence before. None of the emergences Avalon had gone through with her as executive officer had suffered the slightest issue, but there was always a risk.

  Then the star-bow and star-wake surrounding her converged and the warp bubble popped.

  Emergence.

  “We have entered the Zahn system,” Fleet Commander James Coles reported. “We are approximately forty million kilometers from the planet Zahn and ten million kilometers above the ecliptic plan. Zero-zero ETA assuming no interruptions and Battle Group flank acceleration, two and a half hours.”

  “Thank you, Commander Cole,” Mira told her navigator, and glanced around the bridge. As always, her neural implant ove
rlaid the walls with the image of the empty space around them. Dispersing shreds of Cherenkov radiation lit up blue sparks in her vision as the computers dropped icons in to note the other six ships of Battle Group Seven-One, Camerone.

  “Commander Rose,” Camerone’s Captain continued, turning to her tactical officer, “do we have a bead on Commonwealth forces yet?”

  “Still processing the light from across the system, but I’m not seeing anything,” Fleet Commander Keira Rose replied. “I’m picking up fighter base platforms in orbit of the planet—I’m currently calling it four Zion-class fighter bases. They’d support two hundred starfighters.” As Rose spoke, she threw an image onto the physical main viewscreen so everyone could see it. Zahn IV—most commonly simply called Zahn—was a dry but habitable world, with massive landmasses and oceans that were more brown than blue. Rose added icons in orbit of the planet, first the four two-hundred-meter disks of the launch platforms, then a scattering of smaller red icons amidst the orbital industry.

  Zahn had never been a wealthy world, and its sparse orbital platforms showed it. The Terran fighter platforms were the largest stations in orbit, although there were two big civilian space stations that weren’t much smaller.

  The hundred and twenty missile launch platforms stood out amidst that lack of orbital clutter. Between them and the fighter platforms, it was a formidable defense, potentially capable of standing off a warship on its own.

  A warship. Admiral Alstairs had brought four warships. Not to mention that in the absence of at least sublight guardships if not real warships, there was nothing stopping them from slowly removing the defensive platforms with long-range missile fire. The fighters and missiles would complicate it, but Mira could defeat the visible defenses with Camerone alone, given time.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Captain?” Rear Admiral Alstairs asked Mira quietly via her implant.

  “We haven’t picked up any true warships, ma’am,” Mira confirmed. “No guardships, either.”

  “The Commonwealth likely wouldn’t have brought guardships with them,” Alstairs noted, “but this makes the back of my neck itch.”

  A moment later, Alstairs came onto a broader channel linked to all of the Captains, XOs, and Tactical Officers.

  “All right, people, it’s looking like Walkingstick has left the door wide open—but I am not prepared to trust that. Let’s get the starfighters into space in a defensive formation and make our course for Zahn. All transports, move to the center of the formation and stay out of the line of fire.

  “Let’s get some Q-probes out there, too,” Alstairs ordered. “I want a full sweep of the system ASAP. If they’ve left the door open, I’m happy to kick it down and take over—but if this is a trap, I want to know before they kick us in the ass!”

  #

  An hour later, the Q-probes were sixty million kilometers away, continuing to transmit in real time, and Battle Group Camerone had a solid idea what was in that radius. The answer was: not much.

  No warships in hiding. No guardships patrolling and keeping an eye on the civilian shipping in the system. Two squadrons’ worth of starfighters scattered around the civilian spaceships in penny packets, now burning hard for Zahn orbit, and the defensive platforms slowly concentrating themselves on the side of the planet facing Camerone.

  “All right,” Alstairs said finally. “I’m still feeling paranoid, but it’s looking like that’s all it is. Vice Commodore Bachchan!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” that worthy replied. Vice Commodore Gopinatha Bachchan commanded the one hundred and twenty-eight Falcons aboard the Ursine-class deep space carrier Grizzly—making her the senior starfighter officer in BG 7.1 and therefore the battle group CAG.

  “Hold two wings back—one each of Arrows and Falcons—as CSP and then take the rest of your ships forward,” the Admiral ordered. “We’ll be launching missiles momentarily as a first sweep, but the lion’s share will fall on your people. Clear Zahn’s skies for me, Vice Commodore.”

  “With pleasure,” Bachchan confirmed. “I’ll hold Grizzly’s Wing Three and Gravitas’s Wing Two in reserve. We’ll be underway in two minutes.”

  No one objected—it was, after all, Bachchan’s call. Grizzly’s Wing Three was a third understrength—an oddity of the Ursine-class carriers’ design, and Gravitas’s smaller fighter wing meant both of her wings fielded only five squadrons.

  That would leave nine squadrons—seventy-two starfighters—to back up the capital ships and protect the transports, while the majority of the ships—twelve squadrons from Grizzly, five from Gravitas, eight from Horus and six from Camerone for a total of almost two hundred and fifty seventh-generation starfighters—headed for Zahn.

  “All capital ships,” Alstairs continued, “target missile platforms one through seventeen and coordinate your salvos. Launch in sixty seconds.”

  Seventeen was not picked at random, Mira noted as she gestured for Rose to set up the strike. That would put two capital ship missiles on each platform. It was a test as much as anything else. Two missiles—even Jackhammers—probably wouldn’t penetrate the platforms’ defenses.

  But they might. And every platform they blew up was one that wasn’t firing back.

  “Ma’am,” Rose responded quietly. “They seem to be done waiting as well. I have missile launch from the orbital platforms. Scanners mark as three hundred sixty inbound. Estimated time to impact, twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Our missile flight time?” Mira asked quietly.

  “Twenty-nine minutes, ma’am. We are accelerating toward them, which gives them an edge.”

  “Do we know what launchers or magazines they have?”

  “Negative,” Rose told her. “Best guess? Sixty-second cycle, thirty missile magazines. They can empty those platforms before we hit them back.”

  Alstairs had clearly either been running the same analysis or listening to Rose—probably listening to Rose.

  “All ships, change target priorities,” she said calmly. “The missile platforms will shoot themselves dry, but those fighter platforms have anti-fighter lances. Target Zion One and fire when ready.”

  #

  All of the warships in Battle Group Seven-One had been designed to engage on approach to the enemy, especially with missiles. Grizzly and Camerone were Castle Federation designs, arrowheads in space with the vast majority of their weaponry pointed forward. The two Imperial warships were more of a flattened cigar, but had built even more flexibility into their launchers’ firing angle, allowing all of their missiles to fire forward as well.

  Once the order was given, all four ships fired simultaneously, launching thirty-four Jackhammer capital ship missiles into space. Twenty-four seconds later, a second salvo followed. Then a third.

  The fourth targeted the second Zion platform. Two more followed at that launch base, then the target shifted again.

  In a little under five minutes, Battle Group Camerone fired twelve salvos of thirty-four missiles apiece. Then they suspended fire, waiting and watching as the missile salvos and starfighters lunged towards each other.

  The defending starfighters were coming out to meet Bachchan’s people. They didn’t have much of a choice—velocity was life in a starfighter engagement, and the Alliance craft were looking to whip past the defenses at over five percent of lightspeed.

  Seconds turned into minutes and Mira set a series of timers inside her neural implants’ overlay of her vision. The missiles would reach Seven-One’s defensive perimeter first, followed by the starfighters ranging on each other. Then the Battle Group would face a salvo of missiles every minute until the platforms ran out or the starfighters killed them—unless they’d underestimated the platforms’ magazines, about twenty-five minutes either way.

  This was the point in the battle where even if someone came up with a clever trick, very little was going to change. Physics dominated the decision now—the fighters could run, but being far too small to mount Alcubierre-Stetson drives, they had nowhere to run t
o.

  “I guess it’s too much to hope that they’ll surrender?” her XO, Bruce Notley, asked quietly. Notley was a solid sort, unassuming, quiet, and very efficient at dealing with the day-to-day demands of a warship.

  “They’d have surrendered before they launched,” Mira pointed out to him. “They’ve got enough launchers over there that could make Camerone sweat on her own, but against the battle group? Better spitting in a fire.”

  Sadly, determination and a will to push to the last weren’t restricted to the good guys—and that was assuming you could get everyone to agree on who the good guys were! Most Commonwealthers she’d met in peacetime, soldiers or civilians, really did seem to think that bringing all of humanity under one government was a good thing—and hence, the soldiers fighting for it were the “good guys’.”

  “We’re coming up on turnover,” Coles reported. “Any update from the flag?”

  Mira checked her all-Captains channel.

  “Admiral,” she queried. “Any change on turnover plans?”

  There was a pause as Alstairs considered. Turnover—flipping the ships to reverse their acceleration—would point the starships’ engines at the defenses, inherently making them more vulnerable. The starfighters were still on their way and missiles were still spitting into space—but the truth was that the Commonwealth forces were utterly outmatched.

  “Make turnover on schedule,” the Rear Admiral ordered. “You may maneuver as necessary to protect your ships at your discretion.”

  With twelve minutes to go to missile intercept, all six ships flipped and began reducing their velocity towards the planet—and the missiles. Mira’s implant timers shifted, showing that they’d now gained forty-five seconds until the missile salvos started coming in.

  That meant the starfighters reached their weapons range first. The Terran ships fired first, two hundred Scimitars launching eight hundred missiles. Moments later, the Alliance ships replied—and the two hundred and forty-eight more advanced craft flung over fifteen hundred missiles back at the Scimitars.