Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  Moving after they went ballistic wouldn’t confuse the missiles necessarily—they were smart weapons, being fed data from their motherships with plenty of time to adapt, but it opened up Kyle’s options and narrowed the missiles’.

  Minutes ticked by, with the timer to impact in Kyle’s implants seemingly running down slower and slower as he tried not to hold his breath.

  Finally, his ships reached their range of the missiles and opened fire. Defensive lasers and positron lances slashed across space, hundreds of invisible beams drawn onto the displays by the computers to allow humans to follow them.

  Of the hundred and twenty missiles charging at his ships, only seventy-three lived long enough to bring up their drives for their terminal assault. His starfighters, facing fewer missiles but with fewer weapons truly designed for the task, still faced eighty.

  Kyle watched in silence as the missiles closed. At this point, he’d given his orders. All he could do was leave the defense of his ships to the tactical officers and fighter crews.

  The advantage to ballistic salvos was that if your target didn’t see them enter ballistic mode, they had no idea where the missiles were. The disadvantage was that if your target had Q-probes on top of the missiles for their entire ballistic component, they knew exactly where your missiles were.

  Even a thousand gravities of acceleration couldn’t do much to change the cone of probabilities for a missile moving at over thirty-four thousand kilometers a second. Missiles died in their dozens, Battle Group Seven-Two’s capital ships having them far too dialed in for them to evade.

  The last of the salvo they’d charged died over a quarter million kilometers clear of the capital ships, and then the ships turned on the missiles they’d left behind.

  Those missiles had waited to turn on their drives, the intelligence that made capital ship missiles so much deadlier than starfighter missiles recognizing that they wouldn’t hit if they activated on schedule. They dove through the starfighter screen trying to stop them, chasing real targets—targets worth their time.

  They were twenty-eight seconds into their terminal burn before Kyle realized that they weren’t going for his warships. He doubted it was intentional—Ness has not struck him as the type to intentionally target the transports loaded with unarmed rescued prisoners—but the missiles’ silicon and molecular circuitry brains had fallen victim to the dangers of long-range missile fire.

  “Take us at them, full acceleration,” he snapped. “Those missiles cannot get through!”

  The fighters turned, chasing after the missiles burning at twice their acceleration. The starships turned, desperately trying to close the distance to save the freighters. The freighters themselves moved, trying to buy precious seconds for the intercept.

  Sixty missiles had survived so far. Dozens more died as the weapons of four capital ships were unleashed on them.

  Nine, confused by the starfighters’ massive ECM projections, missed the necessary adjustments and slammed into the moon. Between antimatter explosions and kinetic force, the entire unimaginably massive planetoid visibly moved, jumping dozens of kilometers as a gaping crater was ripped into its side.

  Eight missiles made it past everything, skipped around the planet, and charged straight for the transports. Three Marine Assault Transports stood in their way—the only ships with real missile defenses and carrying fewer people, the massive assault ships made themselves a target to guard the transports with their forty thousand civilians apiece.

  The assault transports had the defenses, if not the weapons, of a battlecruiser. They could stand off eight missiles—given time and space to play with. They had a hundred thousand kilometers and three seconds.

  Kyle couldn’t watch. He closed his eyes—only to open them again as his bridge erupted in cheers.

  Chimera had nailed the last missile seventeen hundred meters clear of her hull. A blast wave of radiation and heat smashed into the assault transport—but her armor held.

  The transports had survived.

  #

  It was easily several minutes before anyone on Avalon’s bridge could breathe properly. The warships moved to cover the transports again, and damage reports flowed in.

  The Battle Group had survived surprisingly well, Kyle noted. Chimera had lost a chunk of her missile defenses and sensors but was otherwise fully functional. They hadn’t even lost a single starfighter, which was unusual when using them as an antimissile screen.

  “Sir, we’re receiving a transmission relayed through the Q-probes from Admiral Ness.”

  “Put it on the main screen,” Kyle ordered. “Let everyone see what the man has to say.”

  Vice Admiral Kaj Ness looked uncomfortable to Kyle’s eyes, though he wasn’t sure what exactly gave him that impression. Once again, the Admiral sat in the middle of his flag bridge and faced the camera levelly.

  “Force Commander Roberts, I apologize for the unnecessary attack on the transports carrying the rescued prisoners of war,” Ness said calmly. “While we both know it was an accident, it was also an inherent risk of long-range missile fire. I take full responsibility and appreciate the efficacy of your people’s defense.”

  What Ness didn’t mention was that the Tau Ceti Accords would have made the destruction of a transport with thousands of rescued prisoners aboard a war crime. Kyle suspected that he had a reputation with the Commonwealth where it came to war criminals.

  “As long as this standoff continues, that risk continues,” Ness continued flatly. “I can and will keep you trapped in this system until starvation forces you to fight or surrender. You lack the firepower to successfully break out.

  “Trapping you here puts those same prisoners at risk, however, so I am prepared to offer a compromise. If you surrender and offer the parole of yourself and all the personnel aboard your ships, and the rescued POWs, that you will not serve against the Commonwealth, I will permit you to transfer your warship personnel to the transports and leave this system unmolested.

  “I make this offer out of a desire to avoid unnecessary loss of life on either side and a personal respect for your prior actions,” Ness concluded. “I await your response.”

  Avalon’s bridge was silent. Kyle glanced around, but none of his staff would meet his eyes. It was a generous offer—one that would risk Vice Admiral Ness’s career to execute.

  It was also one that would require Kyle to either hand Avalon blithely over to the Commonwealth or destroy one of the most powerful and modern warships in the Alliance’s order of battle himself. Either way, it required him to surrender without a fight.

  “Well,” he said quietly. “That’s quite the offer.”

  The image of Anderson being relayed from the secondary control center acquired a dark blue box in Kyle’s mind, noting that the XO had taken the channel completely private. No one would hear or see what the two men who ran Avalon discussed.

  “Accepting would destroy your career, sir,” Anderson murmured.

  “And guarantee a hundred and thirty thousand lives,” Kyle replied.

  “If you can trust him.”

  “I think we can trust him.”

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “Do you really have it in you to surrender without a fight?” Anderson asked flatly.

  Force Commander Kyle Roberts, the “Stellar Fox”, captain of the supercarrier Avalon and commander of Battle Group Seven-Two, laughed aloud. His bridge crew looked at him, and suddenly, they were meeting his eyes—and their gazes were determined.

  “Record for transmission,” Kyle ordered, then leaned into the camera.

  “Vice Admiral Ness,” he said flatly. “You threaten the men and women I have rescued from your prisons to force my surrender. You blithely expect that I will yield to you without a fight—that I will yield Avalon to you without a fight!

  “You know who I am, Admiral. Remember it—so when you reach the River Styx, you can tell Charon who sent you!”

  He paused and gestured for
it to be sent.

  “Now, while he chews on that,” Kyle told his bridge crew, “let’s see if we can get our transports out of this system.”

  Chapter 34

  Huī Xing System

  21:00 April 4, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Bridge

  Kyle tossed the tiny black pill into his mouth far more casually than the overpowered amphetamine deserved, washing it down with a mouthful of water. He’d ordered the Battle Group to stand down from general quarters, letting at least some of the crew rest while he plotted.

  They’d have hours to respond to anything Admiral Ness did in response to Kyle’s rejection of his offer. His people could get some sleep—even if he wasn’t going anywhere.

  He’d been running scenarios on his implant and command chair computers for an hour, though, and he wasn’t coming up with any clean solutions. The two Terran task forces could cover any path he took to escape Goudeshijie’s gravity well, though there were routes he could take to force them to use their Alcubierre drives to intercept him.

  Once in warped space, they’d have a lot fewer options to change course, but that didn’t help him much. Either of those forces could destroy the freighters single-handedly and would have better-than-even odds of taking on the entire Battle Group.

  Though…in Ness’s position, Kyle would concentrate his forces in the face of a breakout attempt. Once Battle Group Seven-Two had built up enough of a vector toward a given side of the well, he could risk uncovering part of the well to concentrate his forces and reduce his losses.

  A single ship left behind could take out all seven freighters in a single salvo, though. Unless…

  Kyle activated a ping on his two main subordinates’ implants. “Anderson, Stanford, I need you both on a private channel now.”

  “Here,” Stanford replied immediately. Apparently, his CAG was still aboard his starfighter, probably taking the same pills Kyle was.

  “Give me a moment,” Anderson replied. A few seconds passed, then the XO was back on the line, sounding slightly more awake. “If you send me to sleep, you could give me more than an hour,” he pointed out grouchily.

  “You can sleep for a week once we’re out of here,” Kyle told him. “Gentlemen, I need ideas, options, plans—we need a way to make Admiral Ness think we have the freighters with us while leaving them behind.”

  “Why?” Anderson asked.

  “I think I see,” Stanford interrupted. “They’ll still have a four-hour flight out, sir.”

  “Three and a half,” the XO corrected in a distracted tone.

  “Which is plenty of time to turn around if it looks like Ness is throwing too much in their way,” Kyle pointed out. “The logistics transports also have the capacity to retrieve starfighters—they can’t launch them quickly, but they can pick up everybody and take them with them if we send a wing out to escort them.

  “And I’ll stack any of your wings up against an Assassin any day of the week,” he told Stanford. “But the key is to make Ness think we’re going for a full breakout with the transports in our wake—and the bastard has Q-probes stuck to us like burrs.”

  “Okay…” Anderson said slowly. “I’m not saying that’s impossible, boss, only that it’s spectacularly difficult.”

  “If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t need Avalon,” Kyle replied. “I’m well aware I’m asking for minor miracles, but there are a hundred thousand lives on the line.”

  “Can I add ‘miracle-worker’ to my business bio, then?” the XO asked, his voice suddenly awake and excited. “Because I have an idea.”

  21:30 April 4, 2736 ESMDT

  SFG-001 Actual—Falcon-C type command starfighter

  There was a program, inside the tactical network interface that allowed Vice Commodore Michael Stanford to command the three-hundred-plus starfighters they’d started with, that simulated drawing straws. A group of individuals—in this case, the two Phoenix CAGs and all five of Michael’s Wing Commanders—were entered, and the program presented each of them with a virtual straw.

  “Why is it always me?” Rokos demanded after the selection ended, Bravo Wing’s burly commander looking at the other wing leaders grumpily.

  “Normally, it’s because I pick you,” Michael pointed out. “Apparently, the computer noticed a pattern.” He shook his head at the grumpy officer. “Yours is the most important job,” he continued. “If everything else goes wrong, you’ll be the only chance those freighters have of getting out alive.”

  “Right, so we’re the meat shield.”

  “I don’t care what name you stick on it,” the Vice Commodore told him. “You draw the short straw, you get the escort duty. Everyone else—sorry, you’re giving up starfighters to bring Bravo Wing up to full strength. You’ve got thirty seconds to identify them.

  “Keep those people alive, Russell,” he finished, a bit more seriously as his other Wing Commanders assigned crews and fighters to bring Bravo Wing up to a full forty-eight-fighter strength. “I’m trusting you.”

  “We’ll make it happen,” Rokos promised. “Bravo Wing, breaking formation.”

  Michael’s implants showed him the world around him as if he was his starfighter, and then overlaid icons and data to track the two hundred and fifty starfighters, four capital ships, three assault transports, and two logistics freighters of Battle Group Seven-Two.

  Forty-eight of the starfighter icons now dropped away from the main formation, cutting a carefully calculated course that dropped them behind Goudeshijie’s moon. There was a blip on his scanners, even his computers thinking that the assault transports and logistics freighters were duplicated for a moment.

  “Seven-Two starfighter wings, form on me,” he ordered. Turning his own fighter, he aligned it with the Saint and its attendant task force orbiting Goudeshijie a full astronomical unit away. A few moments later, his implants confirmed that the remaining two hundred and two starfighters of Seven-Two’s fighter strength were aligned on him.

  “Force Commander,” he sent to Roberts. “Starfighters are prepared to move.”

  “Carry on, CAG,” Roberts ordered. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  “Seven-Two starfighters,” Stanford addressed his people. “Two hundred gees for ten minutes, then drop to one hundred until we’ve matched velocity with the battle group. Engage in t minus ten seconds.”

  Seconds later, his entire force leapt forward into space, charging directly at the largest ship in the enemy fleet. If that wasn’t enough to make Admiral Ness blink, moments after that, all four capital ships moved out, followed by the five transports a few moments later at one hundred and fifty gravities. A slow acceleration, one that conserved fuel and looked like blood in the water to the enemy.

  Adjusting accelerations would align them all in a neat formation with the transports protected well before they reached any range at which Twenty-Third Fleet could engage them. The fighters led the way but were still in range of the weapons of the capital ships. It combined all of Battle Group Seven-Two into a single hammer, designed to blast its way through Force Alpha and cover the escape of the transports behind it.

  “Just don’t look behind the moon, Mister Ness,” Michael muttered.

  #

  Once the Battle Group had assumed its final formation, Michael started to feel like they were almost walking. It was an exaggeration: one hundred and fifty gravities was over double what any civilian ship could accelerate at, but it was a gentle acceleration for the starships, let alone the fighters that normally ran at five hundred gravities.

  “So, boss,” Arnolds asked quietly, “what happens if Force Bravo doesn’t take the bait?”

  “Most likely?” Michael considered his gunner’s question. “Most likely we hit Force Alpha with the hammer we’re waving under Admiral Ness’s nose, punch our way through, and go back to the original plan of dancing around the outer system with, well, whatever’s left of the Battle Group.”

  “That seems…dangerous.”
<
br />   “It’s a head-on suicide charge, a true ship-to-ship action,” the CAG agreed. “But it actually offers us the best chance of getting some of the Battle Group out—but you’re right. We wouldn’t get everyone out.”

  The gunner swallowed.

  “But we’d probably reduce Force Alpha to debris and cripples,” Michael continued after a moment of silence. “They have the edge in hulls, but we have better starfighters—and we have the Stellar Fox. The Terrans will blink.”

  “Think they’re that scared of the old man?” she half-whispered.

  “I would be,” Michael replied. “If there’s any officer in this galaxy I’d believe was actually about to ram this hammer of starships and fighters down Admiral Ness’s throat, it would be Kyle Roberts. It might not be the smartest thing to do, and it would expensive as all hell, but it would work.”

  He smiled as an icon on his implants flashed and vanished—the Q-probes watching Force Bravo reporting that the second Terran Task Force had brought up their Alcubierre drives and disappeared into warped space.

  “And there we go,” he concluded. “There’s the blink.”

  The warped space bubble that the Terrans had entered wasn’t automatically faster than light. It had to accelerate up to that at its mind-boggling light-year-a-day squared acceleration. Bound to, roughly, straight lines that couldn’t cross Goudeshijie’s gravity well, the flight would take a full half-hour.

  Not a big deal when it came to intercepting Battle Group Seven-Two. Force Bravo might be blind in their bubbles of warped space, but Force Alpha and the Q-probes would keep them readily updated on the Alliance force’s position.

  “Q-probes are moving for clearer lines of sight on us,” Xue reported, Avalon’s tactical officer updating the CAG along with all of the ship captains. “The ghost zones are moving around Goudeshijie toward us. They haven’t opened much of a blind spot, but it is there. Let’s keep it flashy and keep the eyes on us, people.”