“We have been and will be launching boarding actions in the face of Terran Commonwealth Marines, people,” Silje said sharply. “They are every bit as good, every bit as determined, and every bit as well equipped as we are. To date, we’ve either had orbital bombardment or surprise on our side, or been boarding stations already battered to hell. We can’t rely on that—the day will come when we will be hitting Terran Marines who’ve had ample time to prepare. Marines who’ll know we’re coming.
“If today was any example, we’ll lose over half the battalion when that day comes, and that is not acceptable,” she snapped. “We have two more days before we hit Huī Xing, people. We’re going to run through the same exercises tomorrow. Then the next day, we’re going to run two-company assaults. When we reach the target, I want to know I’m not going to be writing five hundred letters home!”
“I thought the op plan didn’t call for us to be assaulting anything?” Lieutenant Major Fenton, a tall and gangling blond man, asked. “Last I saw was the Battle Group was going to be bouncing around the outside of the system, playing bait—there’s not much out there to land Marines on, ma’am.”
“We are Castle’s damned Marines, son,” Silje told Fenton, the self-applied nickname for the Corps rolling off fiercely. “We do not prepare for the ops plan. We prepare for war. Most importantly, we do not relax because the ops plan doesn’t call for us!”
Fenton looked suitably abashed, though Edvard wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. It was easy to plan for the theory that the Marines wouldn’t be needed and treat the exercises as a game.
“The plan may change,” the Colonel noted. “A battleship could get crippled without being destroyed. A target may present itself outside the gravity well. Any of these things could result in Force Commander Roberts needing the Federation’s Marines. We will not be found wanting when the Federation calls, will we?”
Edvard wasn’t sure who started the wolf howl in reply, but even a handful of Marines could fill the briefing room if they needed to.
22:15 March 31, 2736 ESMDT
DSC-078 Avalon, CAG’s Office
It was late in the ship’s day when Michael Stanford dropped into his chair, a summary of the day’s exercises running through his implant as he opened the beer he’d snagged from the mess on the way over.
The new starfighter flight crews were working out better than he’d allowed himself to hope. That he’d been able to poach complete squadrons helped, a lot. He’d merged them under his Epsilon Wing’s Wing Commander Lei Nguyen.
He’d actually had more problems with the reorganized squadrons for his other two hundred crews. Only a handful of his squadrons had lost more than one starfighter at Frihet, but he’d been forced to dissolve most of those more-understrength squadrons to fill in the rest of his formations.
The members of the dissolved squadrons were less than happy, especially as that had left three Flight Commanders leading sections instead of squadrons. He’d personally talked to all three of them, but their discontent was showing in their flying.
It took him a moment to notice the flashing icon of a personal message. His implant was set up to only notify him of those at certain times and places—his office after about twenty hundred hours was on that list.
He hit a mental command, opening the message from Kelly.
“Hey, lover,” she greeted him. “Busy tonight, but I wanted to send you a quick note. Scuttlebutt is drying up hard around Fourth and Seventh Fleet’s ops, which makes me worry. When things are this quiet, I always wonder if it means something’s gone wrong.
“Last time scuttlebutt went silent on Avalon, rumor says an Admiral ended up in a cell,” she said quietly. “I’m hoping things are running a bit smoother this time! Hope to be able to talk to you live soon. Love you!”
With a smile of his own, he leaned back in his chair and activated the tiny camera hidden in his wall for just this person.
“Hi, Kelly,” he greeted her. “You know I can’t tell you anything about Seventh Fleet’s ops. I’m surprised the rumor mill has much of anything about the Alliance’s offensives, though I’ll confess I’ve learned to never underestimate it.
“It’s been…rough,” he admitted. “I think I can say that much. But things are holding together. The Commonwealth knows we’re coming now, though. The next few ops are going to be hard. But…we’ve got Roberts—the Stellar Fox himself—and the Terrans don’t.
“I don’t put much stock in the exaggerations the media sells as news,” he told his girlfriend, “but I watched Kyle earn that name. Things may not go our way, but I’m betting Kyle makes sure they don’t go the Commonwealth’s way, either.
“How can they, after all?” he finished with a grin. “I’m here to execute whatever crazy plan he comes up with!”
#
Michael wasn’t entirely surprised to find the flight deck wasn’t empty when he wandered through it, making one final check before he slept. There were always some of his people, often under Olivia Kalers’ own guidance, checking over starfighters and equipment, even in the inviolable sanctuary of warped space.
He was surprised to find it empty other than Force Commander Kyle Roberts.
Avalon’s Captain, a vastly larger man than Michael’s own slight frame, was studying the plaque where the names of the flight crews who’d died aboard this Avalon had been carved. There were other places those names were recorded—notably, they’d been carved onto the obelisk in the atrium that had been transferred from every vessel that had ever born the name Avalon in the Federation’s service—but this was the one the Space Force kept for their own.
There wasn’t much difference between Navy and Space Force uniforms in the Federation’s military. Both wore the same self-sealing shipsuit, a one-piece garment that passed for slacks and a turtleneck at a moderate distance, with a uniform jacket. Roberts’ shipsuit was piped in gold versus Michael’s blue—but the Force Commander had worn the same blue once upon a time.
“Kyle,” Michael announced his arrival. “Wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
“It’s one of the quieter places on the ship at this time of night,” Roberts replied. “Always used to come down and look at the plaque when I was CAG. Old Avalon didn’t have anyone who’d died under my command until I wasn’t CAG anymore. Alamo did.”
Michael nodded. Roberts had first made his reputation salvaging a boarding operation gone very wrong on the pirated transport liner Ansem Gulf. He’d seen half of his Wing shot apart around him before he’d taken command—and lost people after that as well.
He’d seen more combat action before the war than Michael had—but now, Michael had lost more starfighters and flight crew under his direct command than Roberts had as CAG.
All of Michael’s losses were still Roberts’ losses, though.
“I should have seen a better solution,” the Force Commander said quietly. “I didn’t expect it to go so wrong.”
“You told me yourself: there was no better solution,” Michael pointed out. “We can’t carry every victory without losses. We won’t have a clever trick for every engagement, every clash. I’d rather bring all my people home,” he admitted, “but the only way to do that is not to fight.”
“That’s not what the Federation pays us for,” Roberts agreed. “I just feel I owed them something…more.”
“I know,” the CAG agreed. “Like we should have done better. Our jobs.”
Roberts shook his head, glancing back at the smaller starfighter pilot with a smile.
“Shouldn’t be dumping this on you,” he admitted. “Bad for morale for people to see the Force Commander get all weepy.”
“You may be my boss,” Michael told him, “but you’re also my friend. I heard nothing, saw nothing. Only the Stellar Fox preparing for war.”
Roberts laughed.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied. “I’m no legend. Just lucky.”
“I’ll take that luck, then,” the CAG answered. “I don’t care
if you’re lucky or good, Kyle; you’ve brought us this far and I don’t expect that to change. We chose our path when we put on these uniforms. I won’t pretend I like losing good people. I don’t. But…”
“I will not leave these worlds under the heel of Terra,” Roberts promised him. “I won’t sacrifice our people in vain, either, but I will not bow to the Commonwealth’s Unity.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it? They believe this is right.” Michael gestured around them. “That the cost of war is worth it, because Unity is better for us.”
“Our Senate and our allies disagree,” the Force Commander told him. “As do I. They’ll choke on their Unity before this is done.”
“I’d drink to that,” Michael agreed, “but I finished my beer in my office.”
“You’ve seen my stash,” Avalon’s captain replied. “My office?”
Chapter 28
Huī Xing System
12:10 April 2, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge
Battle Group Avalon erupted into normal space once again, the unavoidable blue corona of the starships’ emergence announcing their presence to any with the eyes to see.
Inevitably, someone had to have those eyes—and the Alliance crews needed to know who.
Kyle waited patiently as Xue and Anderson ran over the data, correlating with the feeds from the other eight ships in the battle group. The logistics freighters’ sensors weren’t worth much, but even they were another pair of data points to feed into the analysis.
“Where exactly are we?” he asked Pendez.
“Where I told you we’d be,” his navigator replied. “Exactly twenty-nine million kilometers away from Xin—roughly one point six light-minutes, as requested. Battle Group is closing positions to formation Alpha-One as previously instructed.”
He nodded his thanks. Alpha-One was a very simple formation—an oblong box with the four warships at the front and the five transports behind.
“What is Xin’s gravity well?” he asked.
“Twenty million kilometers,” Pendez replied crisply. “She’s a big, heavy rock—I’d hate to live there. You want to watch this, though,” she noted, marking a second, larger sphere in Kyle’s implant map. “Goudeshijie”—roughly, “Dog World” in English—“is Huī Xing’s fifth planet, and she’s aligned with Xin right now. Since Goudeshijie is a super-Jupiter with a full astronomical unit of gravity well deep enough to stop us going to Alcubierre, the unsafe zones intersect right now.”
“We’re staying well away from Goudeshijie’s gravity well, right?” he asked.
“You said to stay where we could jump clear, so yes,” she told him. “You just need to be aware that we don’t have the freedom to maneuver we normally would near a habitable world.”
He nodded. Habitable worlds were usually well clear of other gravity wells significant enough to prevent Alcubierre-Stetson drive use. The super-Jupiter barely seven and a half light-minutes away had to be an incredible sight from the surface—assuming you got past the over-half-again Earth gravity long enough to look up, anyway.
“All right, sir,” Anderson addressed him over the link from Secondary Control. Kyle stood and crossed to the tactical section. Presumably, their analysis was done. The pale, redheaded XO met his gaze over Xue’s screen and nodded calmly before continuing.
“We have good news, bad news, and ‘well, shit’ news,” he said bluntly.
“Lay it out, Commander,” Kyle ordered.
“The bad news is that the logistics depot in orbit is intact and clearly in use by the Commonwealth,” Anderson said bluntly. “I’m also reading eight Zion-class platforms intermingled with the storage stations and a pair of Assassin-class battlecruisers.
“The good news is that they didn’t put in heavy fixed defenses because the nodal fleet is supposed to be here. There are fighter bases and the two battlecruisers, but no missile satellites we’re picking up.”
That was good news. Eight Zions and two Assassins was still four hundred and sixty starfighters—a hundred and twenty or so more than his Battle Group carried—but the Assassins were outclassed by his own warships and the Scimitars were outclassed by his starfighters. The defenders were out of their league and almost certainly calling for help right now.
Exactly according to plan.
“What’s the ‘well, shit’ news?” he asked.
“Taking the platforms intact means they took prisoners here,” Xue answered for the tactical department. “Their victories across the sector meant they’ve taken a lot of prisoners, and we haven’t seen many on the worlds we’ve taken so far…
“But there’s a cluster of ten storage platforms in a polar orbit flashing a Tau Ceti Accords prisoner-of-war camp identifier code. They’re Commonwealth stations, added to the logistics depot after the system fell,” she noted. “Assuming they’re complying with the Accords, they probably have about ten thousand prisoners on each platform.”
The Tau Ceti Accords were the modern “rules of war,” a replacement for the Geneva Conventions heavily supported by the Commonwealth. It would be…very out of character for Terrans to break those rules.
Potentially a hundred thousand prisoners of war. The crews of twenty starships. Thirty thousand starfighters. A dozen logistics depots like the one the Alliance had set up here at Huī Xing.
A hundred thousand people captured and imprisoned by Terra, in need of rescue. Deep inside a gravity well that his entering could put his entire battle group in danger.
“Well, shit.”
#
“Take us onto our planned course,” Kyle ordered Pendez. “Let’s see if we can lure those cruisers out.”
He also needed time to think, and the long, arcing course around Xin would buy him that. They were inside capital missile range, but it would be literally days before even the Terran starfighters could bring Seven-Two into range unless Kyle maneuvered to meet them.
Doing so would risk bringing him into the gravity well, entirely against his orders.
On the other hand, his three-day timer didn’t start until the Terrans’ nodal fleet had arrived. Allowing the two battlecruisers still in Xin orbit to meet up with the other eight warships swanning around somewhere was dangerous, both for Kyle and for Seventh Fleet’s plan to lure the Terrans into a trap.
“Xue.” He called his tactical officer over. “I want you to set up a three-salvo time-on-target strike on those battlecruisers. They’ll see it coming, but I want them jumpy. I need them to come out after us.”
Running the numbers in his implant, he could tell that it would take two thirds of the Jackhammer missiles’ hour-long flight endurance to reach the Terran ships. The hundred and eleven missiles he was planning on hitting them with would be a serious threat to the two cruisers—except that the Zions’ fighters would make short work of them.
The point was to force the cruisers to come out with the starfighters. If they remained in orbit, he could throw ever-heavier salvos until either Seven-Two ran out of ammunition or the Terrans ran out of starfighters.
Since both he and the Terran commander knew the latter would probably happen first, the only way the Commonwealth ships had a chance of surviving this encounter was to close with Seven-Two. If they eliminated Sledgehammer with missiles or starfighters, the two battlecruisers would at least have a chance of getting into their own positron lance range of Kyle’s ships.
In roughly four days, if he didn’t turn to face them.
He watched the missiles blast into space, the accelerations of the first two salvos adjusted ever so slightly to account for their longer flight times. The cruisers were still waiting in orbit, but the fighters were starting to deploy as their Q-probes drew closer, compressing the time delay before Kyle saw their actions.
“Anderson,” he said softly over the channel to secondary control. “Do we have any data on where their fleet is?”
Presumably, the nodal fleet had been notified by Q-Com now. How quickly t
hey could get to him—how large his safety margin was—depended on where they were right now.
“They left Zahn on the twenty-seventh,” his XO replied. “About twelve hours before we left Frihet. All we can say for sure is we know that they didn’t go to Hammerveldt—they’d be there by now.” He paused. “Best guess is they headed for Cora,” he said grimly. “They would only have just known we’d taken Frihet, and may well have known Cora was the most heavily defended.”
Kyle nodded. If nothing else, they would know that he had taken the logistics ship somewhat intact. The Captain would have informed them via Q-Com that he was being boarded. It would be a safe assumption that a significant portion of the defenses aboard the ship now defended Cora—though the Terrans probably wouldn’t know that his Marines had irreparably broken the Alcubierre drive taking the ship.
“What’s intel’s opinion on that?” he asked, his gaze back on the icons of the prisoner of war stations.
“That’s their guess,” his executive officer told him dryly. “After the cluster that was their original estimates, they’re giving us probabilities now. They figure a sixty percent chance the Terrans are on their way to Cora, q thirty-five percent they’re headed to Frihet, and a five percent chance they are heading to Hammerveldt and either dropped out early or stepped down their acceleration for some reason we don’t know.”
“So, no matter what, the closest intel thinks they are is nine days behind us?” Kyle murmured, a smile settling onto his face.
“I’m told there is no logical reason for them to do anything except complete their retaliation sweep in one pass,” Anderson replied.
“It’s what I would do,” the Force Commander noted cheerfully, “but I have a reputation for mindless aggression and shock-and-awe tactics to maintain.”
Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3) Page 22
