Battle Group Avalon (Castle Federation Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  The Assassin and the Lexingtons only had six-hundred-kiloton-a-second lances—hugely underpowered and hence outranged by every ship in Seventh Fleet—including the warships in orbit around Xin.

  The commanders of those ships reacted faster than Kyle would have thought. The battle had turned from a certain victory for the Terrans to a crushing defeat in under twenty seconds—but by the time Sub-Colonel Wills’ fighters started breaking off their suicide runs, the last four Terran warships were signaling their surrenders.

  Without missiles or starfighters, faced with a fully supplied Alliance fleet, this truly was a battle they knew they could not win.

  Chapter 42

  Huī Xing System

  10:00 April 9, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  BC-129 Camerone, Admiral’s Office

  Captain Kyle Roberts entered Rear Admiral Alstairs’ office slowly, offering a crisp salute to the small woman sitting behind the desk, waiting for him. She wordlessly gestured him to the chair in front of her desk, and he obeyed the implicit command.

  Before either of them said anything, he placed the small gold chevron of a Force Commander on Alstairs’ desk.

  “I hope that next time, you give this to someone who does a better job,” he said quietly.

  Engineers were swarming over the three ships left of his temporary command. Avalon would need months of repairs but would fight again. Courageous would also need a yard review but would probably be scrapped—the Fearless-class cruiser was too old to be worth repairing the amount of damage she’d taken. Indomitable was incapable of Alcubierre. Kyle wasn’t sure what her final fate would be, but she would never leave the Huī Xing system.

  “And what do you think this hypothetical someone would have done that you didn’t?” she asked him.

  “Not got his entire command crippled or destroyed,” Kyle said flatly. “I lost functionally all of my fighters and none of my starships are combat-capable. Had I followed the plan, I might not have lost one of my best friends.”

  “Which would have left one hundred thousand prisoners of war to the whims of fate,” the Admiral pointed out. “You knew the risk when you went in. I knew the risk when you went in. We won, in the end.”

  “A Pyrrhic victory,” he replied. “Walkingstick can replace the ships he lost better than we can replace what we lost. The mission to take Via Somnia is a failure. All of these worlds are now at risk.”

  “Command has already promised us a mobile yard ship and a legion of computer and hardware techs,” she told him. “They expect to have all four ships we captured here in service in three months. Yes, given the likely fate of Courageous, you effectively lost three ships. But we captured four. We gain one, all told—and Walkingstick loses seventeen.”

  “And the Commonwealth will build sixty warships this year on an effectively peacetime footing,” Kyle said. “Ness told me to run the numbers on this war. I did. I honestly don’t know if we can win.”

  “Says the man who got trapped by over twice his numbers and almost didn’t need my help to carry the day,” Alstairs told him with a smile. “You did all right, Captain Roberts. If you’d known everything, could you have done better? Of course.

  “But we don’t know everything when we make our decisions, Captain. And not deciding—not acting—places our people and the nation we serve at risk.” She shook her head. “I’ve already signed off on transfer orders returning Avalon to Castle for repairs. Unfortunately, that means you’ll have to face the media and your political enemies with, as you accurately described, a Pyrrhic victory to your name.”

  Kyle had sent the son of the current Senator for Castle to prison for fraud, rape and treason. Senator Randall, first among equals of the Castle Federation’s thirteen-person executive, did not like him.

  “I do not envy you your reception,” the Rear Admiral told him. “With six months in repairs on Avalon, you may well find yourself on the beach. Be prepared for that—but remember this, Kyle Roberts:

  “The Commonwealth outmasses, outnumbers, and outproduces the Alliance. If we are to be victorious—if we are to maintain our independence in the face of the people who would force all mankind to kneel—we need brave, smart officers who will take risks and accept the consequences of those risks.

  “We need officers like you,” she finished, standing and offering her hand across the desk. “You did just fine—and I think you’ll continue to do just fine, Captain Roberts. Don’t disappoint me.”

  #

  Mira was waiting for Kyle outside the Admiral’s office, and she fell into step behind him as he walked silently, struggling to wrap his brain around his own confused emotions and feelings. Part of him was convinced he’d failed. Thousands of people under his command had died, for a victory that would likely have happened without that sacrifice.

  But the Admiral seemed to think that it had been worth it—that things might not have ended as well if he had done differently. He knew that it was sometimes hard to see your own successes past the costs—or your own desires past your fears.

  Camerone’s Captain had walked silently with him but also managed to guide him to her cabin. Opening the door, she led him into her sitting area, gestured to a chair, and then produced two bottles of beer.

  “To Michael Stanford,” she said quietly, raising the beer to Kyle.

  He took his own and returned the toast.

  “To Michael. May he ever fly amidst the Eternal Stars,” he murmured the pilot’s toast. He shook his head. “I knew he had the riskier job, but…somehow, I never expected to lose him. He always seemed…well, invincible.”

  “All of you starfighter jocks are convinced of your invincibility,” Mira told him. “It came over to the Navy with you.”

  “If I’m invincible, too many of those around me aren’t,” he replied. “We carried the day…but the cost...”

  “What happens now? Avalon looked beat to pieces.”

  “Last time I flew an Avalon back to Castle, she was in even worse shape,” Kyle replied with a chuckle, amusement at the thought providing a wedge he ruthlessly used to break past his incipient funk. “But we are taking her back to Castle to be repaired. I’ll hand her over to the Merlin Yards, and then we all go into the general pool for new assignments. Her repairs will take six months—the Navy can’t have five thousand of her better crewmen and officers sitting on their hands for that long.”

  “You’ll be on Castle for a while, then?”

  “Probably,” Kyle admitted. “Senator Randall doesn’t like me any more now than he did last year. The politics are going to suck, but it comes with the job.” He sighed, looking at the ebony-skinned woman sitting across from him. “And you’ll be here. Doing the job. Risking your life.”

  “Every uniformed couple ends up facing that sooner or later,” she told him. “We can…end this now, if you want,” she offered slowly. “Leave it as a wartime fling, maybe look each other up again come peacetime.”

  “I don’t want,” he told her fiercely, feeling suddenly more certain than he’d been in a while. “We haven’t had much time together since you left Avalon, but I know what I want, Mira Solace. I want to take the time to see where things go. I want to put the effort in to match up leaves, to meet on planets in the middle—whatever it takes. I want to see if we can make this work.” He paused, his certainty draining away, and sighed. “If you want.”

  He realized she was smiling—the bright, brilliant smile that cracked every semblance of the black statue she could be into the beautiful woman he’d fallen for even when she was utterly off-limits to him.

  “I want,” she replied. “I want to…see what happens.”

  Niagara System—Commonwealth Space

  21:00 April 9, 2736 ESMDT

  BB-285 Saint Michael—Marshal Walkingstick’s Office

  Fleet Admiral James Calvin Walkingstick, Marshal of the Rimward Marches in the name of the Terran Commonwealth, sighed and closed the report from Via Somnia. It had taken the Navy Base’s
defenses far too long to realize that Seventh Fleet had left the system—time that had robbed Vice Admiral Ness of the warning that could have saved the man’s life.

  “Go with God, my friend,” he murmured, looking at the viewscreen showing the map of his Marches. The Alliance’s counteroffensive had been stunningly successful, though thankfully also stunningly expensive. Seventh Fleet’s victory at Huī Xing hurt—but Fourth Fleet had run into meat grinder after meat grinder as they pushed his ships out of his second wave of conquests.

  Every system he’d seized in the seven months of war was now back in Alliance hands. The price they’d paid in blood and starships to do so, though… He pulled up the latest analysis from his staff. The Alliance had put two thirds of their entire reserve into commission and was still down to two hundred and forty starships from their starting two hundred and eighty-eight active ships.

  Walkingstick pulled the long black braid down his back over his shoulder, the massive Admiral using it as a pointer as he ran down the list of his own losses. They were more than merely painful—each ship was three to seven thousand lives lost. He’d been forced to abandon entire divisions of Terran Marines behind enemy lines.

  Even with the loss of Twenty-Third Fleet, he’d traded ninety-seven Commonwealth warships for over a hundred Alliance ships. Given the size and strength of the Commonwealth Navy, those were acceptable losses—but his own available force strength was down under sixty warships.

  Fortunately, Huī Xing made a very pointed example. He was waiting for the call he knew had to be coming. The quantum entanglement communications network linked him instantly to Earth. He might have been provided immense power in his area of authority, but he still answered to the elected politicians of the Interstellar Congress in the Star Chamber on Terra.

  As if his thoughts had finally summoned it, his implant buzzed with the notice that a Q-Com request had come in from Sol.

  He threw it on the viewscreen, replacing the map of stars with the white hair and pitch-black skin of Senator Michael Burns of Alpha Centauri—the head of the Committee on Unification.

  “Marshal Walkingstick,” the Senator greeted him. “What the hell happened?”

  Burns was many things. He was not frail, and his booming voice echoed through Walkingstick’s office.

  “My people at Via Somnia failed to realize they’d been fooled,” Walkingstick said calmly. “Since we believed Seventh Fleet to be pinned there, I authorized Vice Admiral Ness to neutralize Roberts. The man has been a thorn in our side whose removal I believed was worth the risk.” He shrugged. “We were wrong as to Seventh Fleet’s location, and we lost Huī Xing and Twenty-Third Fleet.”

  “You came to us with a plan you said would guarantee the conquest of the Rimward Marches,” Burns told him. “Now you have lost every system you captured and appear to have embroiled the Commonwealth in a war that risks our territorial integrity.”

  “I made no guarantees,” Walkingstick pointed out. “There are no guarantees in war, Senator, and I made no such claims. The situation, however, is not as dire as you may think, and while we may not be on the optimal path, my plans cover this circumstance.”

  “Explain,” Burns ordered.

  “The Alliance has completed every ship they had under construction at the start of the war,” the Marshal pointed out. “They have recommissioned well over half of their reserve. They have lost more ships than they had in the reserve and now face a minimum eighteen-month period before any of their new construction is ready for deployment.

  “Given the force available to me, I can continue to slowly grind down their fleet in penny-packet engagements, clearing the way for a final offensive to seize their most important systems before they commission those new ships.”

  “Neither the Committee nor the Congress is going to be accepting of slow progress at this point, Marshal,” Burns warned. “You have lost over half the forces assigned to you.”

  “And that is why slow progress is all I can make,” Walkingstick replied. “If Congress is prepared to provide significant reinforcements, I could end this conflict in a year. If only the currently planned reinforcements are assigned to me, then it will take sixteen months at a minimum and will likely cost far more in terms of ships and lives before we’re done.”

  Burns grunted.

  “Send me more ships, Senator, and I will deliver the Rimward Marches,” Walkingstick promised. “Do not, and I will still try. But I may not succeed.”

  “Very well,” the big black man snapped. “I will see what I can do.”

  Walkingstick inclined his head, and Burns cut the channel. With a small smile, the Marshal opened a file on his implant, running through the chains of branches and possibilities that made up the entirety of his true plan. The one the Committee would never see.

  It would never do for the Committee to realize how many of those branches and possibilities called for manipulating them.

  Walkingstick would get his ships. And the Rimward Marches would join the Commonwealth.

  Unification, after all, was inevitable.

  ###

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  Other books by Glynn Stewart

  Castle Federation

  Space Carrier Avalon

  Stellar Fox

  Battle Group Avalon

  Q-Ship Chameleon (upcoming, see www.faolanspen.com for latest estimated launch date)

  Starship’s Mage

  Starship’s Mage: Omnibus

  Hand of Mars

  Voice of Mars

  Alien Arcana (upcoming, see www.faolanspen.com for latest estimated launch date)

  Stand Alone Novels

  Children of Prophecy

  City in the Sky