Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  He lifted his teacup in a mock toast: “To partners – and damnation to the Commonwealth!”

  Chapter 23

  Deep Space, En route to KG-779

  09:00 January 5, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Main Engineering Bay

  The main engineering bay of the new Avalon was smaller than her flight deck by a significant margin. There was no other open space on the ship that rivaled it, though it hardly felt as immense as it was. Machinery ran along every side of it, and Avalon’s array of primary zero point cells ran along the center of the bay.

  The bay, and the warrens of tunnels, capacitors, fuel tanks, antimatter reactors and engines that wove through the entire ship like veins and muscles, were the domain of Senior Fleet Commander Alistair Wong.

  “I see you finally made your way down to the dungeon,” that worthy told Kyle as the Captain entered the bay, as if the inspection hadn’t been scheduled for two weeks.

  “I still think the dungeon is Barsamian’s brig,” Kyle pointed out, glancing around at the gleaming equipment and reporting stations at Wong’s command center. “Everything ship-shape? I believe there’s some kind of inspection scheduled.”

  “Oh crap, I knew there was something I was supposed to tell my crew!” Wong exclaimed.

  Kyle shook his head and grinned, looking past his Chief Engineer to the neatly drawn up ranks of those members of the current engineering shift not doing anything critical. He knew engineers – there was no way this many of them were clean an hour into their shifts by accident.

  “As it happens,” Kyle told the crew, “Commander Wong and I have a little bet. He tells me that he’s pulled together the cleanest, most efficient engineering department in the Navy. I think you’re good, don’t get me wrong, but I served on Federation herself back when I was a fresh Space Force pilot. I really don’t know if you’re better than the Navy flagship!

  “But since I always put my money where my mouth is, there’s a very large case of beer – conveniently, enough for everyone in engineering – riding on this inspection. Shall we get started?”

  “Right this way, sir,” Wong gestured for Kyle to head into the center of the engineering center. Displays surrounded him, permanently fixed to show the energy densities of the zero point cells, temperatures of the antimatter secondary plants, and capacity of the positron capacitors.

  Everything critically important was instantly visible. More information was easily available to the engineering team via their implants, but this was still the nerve center of engineering, which made it the beating heart of Avalon to the bridge’s brain.

  “How’re the engines holding up?” Kyle asked quietly. Three days of pushing the ship ten percent past its rated faster-than-light acceleration put an extra edge on the importance of this inspection.

  “Not as well as I’d hoped, not as poorly as I’d feared,” Wong replied. “We’ll make it to KG, but…”

  “I don’t like ‘buts’ with the Alcubierre Drive, Wong.”

  “We’ll be fine,” the Engineer replied sharply. “But I don’t think we’re going to want to do a full ten points over again. She can take it, but… well, she can take a mass driver hit. Doesn’t mean it’s good for her.”

  “We need to catch that battleship,” Kyle pointed out. “If it isn’t possible, I’ll take that hill for you, Commander, but…”

  “I didn’t say we can’t go faster than that ten year old hunk of rust,” Wong snapped. “I said we shouldn’t go ten points over after this trip. Five should be perfectly safe.”

  “All right,” the Captain allowed with a sigh of relief. “Not a hill I want to die on with the Admiral. I want that fucker.”

  “So does the entire crew,” Wong replied. “My best guess is that we can run at ten points for about fifteen days, after which we’d need to recalibrate the stabilizers and the Class One manipulators. That’s a three week process, Captain. We’re burning most of those days getting to KG, but we should be good for almost as long as normal with re-calibrating at five points.”

  “Should be good enough. If we can’t catch them with a five percent acceleration edge…”

  “That’s your problem, Captain,” the Engineer replied quietly. “I’ll guarantee that five percent edge. Anything more…” He shrugged.

  Kyle glanced over the displays. They were similar to, though far more complex than, the equivalent displays and implant feeds on a starfighter. The difference was more a matter of scale than anything else, so he really could tell at a glance that everything on the ship was running well within tolerances.

  “Shall we get to that tour, then?” he asked. “I need to at least look at your people’s work before I agree with you and give them the beer.”

  “Let’s start with the main zero point cells,” Wong agreed, leading the way down the row of immense spherical power cells, each sixty meters in diameter. Inside each, incredibly powerful magnetic fields spun through the ‘quantum soup,’ extracting the charged particles from the constant creation and destruction of particles that formed the background of the universe.

  “Every cell is running at one hundred percent efficiency,” the Engineer told Kyle. “Obviously, we’re not running at a hundred percent capacity – we would only ever go past ninety-five percent if we were under heavy missile attack and firing every laser aboard.”

  Only Avalon’s missile defense lasers would actually draw from the ship’s main reactor. Her positron lances were zero point cells all on their own, and actually fed power back into the ship’s grid when they fired – the electrons pulled out of vacuum to offset the positrons they shot into space.

  “Any problems down in engineering?” Kyle asked as they walked up to and checked over each of the massive cells. “I’m leaving the hunt for our spy to Solace and Barsamian, but I hear rumors.”

  “I know the ones,” Wong said grimly. “None of my NCOs or juniors have said anything, but that doesn’t mean much if someone’s talking… trouble. It’s not like Stanford or Hammond suspected O’Madden.”

  Kyle nodded as he stepped around the cell. A work-cart, loaded with tools, sat in the way. It was the first item out of perfect place in the tour, and he frowned slightly. If someone was working on the big zero point cell, where were they?

  He was stepping forward to investigate when Wong came out from behind the cell.

  “What the hell?” he demanded. Spotting Kyle’s motion, he slammed a heavy hand on his Captain’s shoulder and yanked Kyle back. “That should not be there,” he snapped.

  “It’s just a work-cart,” Kyle pointed out.

  Before Wong even finished opening his mouth, the cart exploded. Kyle instinctively used the momentum from the Engineer’s pull to charge backwards, slamming into the other man and bringing them both to the ground.

  A moment later, what he thought was a wrench ricocheted off the extremely powerful reactor next to him, centimeters above his head.

  Silence reigned for a long moment. Then the screaming started.

  16:00 January 5, 2736 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Captain’s Break-out Room

  “What the FUCK is going on?” the Admiral demanded from the head of the table.

  Arguably, internal security of the ship was Kyle’s problem, but having just had someone try to assassinate him, he was a little less willing to argue than usual. This time, at least, Sanchez was busy somewhere else and Tobin had only inserted himself into the meeting.

  “Someone appears to be attempting to assassinate key senior officers aboard this ship,” Barsamian told the Admiral calmly. “First the CAG, now the Captain. We were lucky today – the bomb was next to a major positron cell, and those are armored to withstand anything. We have four injured people, but no significant damage to engineering itself.

  “Whoever this is, they are extremely professional with a full suite of modern intelligence tools,” she continued. “We pulled the camera from the engineering bay. The footage is all there. That work-
cart isn’t.”

  “That’s not possible,” Wong objected. “That would require…”

  “Some sort of program or macro actively editing in real-time, most likely,” she agreed.

  “Another virus, then,” Tobin rumbled.

  “There is no sign of a virus,” Barsamian told him. “After the prior incident, it was the first thing we checked for. So far as we can tell, there are no signs of any kind of intrusion, back door use, or viral infection in the computer systems in engineering.

  “It appears that someone with full authority to edit that footage loaded a semi-intelligent macro that followed a specific item of some kind and removed any object that item was attached to. From the moment the object – whatever it was – was attached to the work-cart, that cart was invisible.”

  She shook her head. “We tried to validate when it disappeared, but it appears to have been at some point while the unit was in storage with several dozen other carts. Given that we can’t detect the exact moment of it disappearing from our systems, we suspect it was obscured from the camera – and that is likely why that specific cart was chosen.”

  “There’s only so many people with that authority, Major,” Kyle pointed out. “Does that help us restrict down our list of suspects?”

  “Sir, nobody with that authority is aboard this ship,” the Marshal said flatly. “Shipboard surveillance is coded as read only, it should not be editable, and there is a physical, uneditable backup.”

  “Like I said, it’s not possible,” Wong pointed out. “They’re intended to provide an unquestionable record of events for inquiries, reviews and courts martial.”

  “Nonetheless, the soft versions have been edited,” Barsamian said quietly. “The hard backup is corrupt. The last three days’ worth of footage in the disks is gone. We didn’t notice because we normally use the soft copies, and the failsafe to inform us the data was corrupting had been disabled.”

  “By who?” Tobin demanded.

  “That footage is gone,” she admitted. “I understand this does not look good on my department, but, again, we are clearly dealing with an extremely well equipped professional.

  “In theory, you could use high enough level access to create a root account on the ship’s systems that would allow you to pull this off and look like a legitimate user,” she concluded.

  “How high, Major?” Kyle asked. He was tired, his shoulder hurt where Cunningham had extracted shrapnel, and he figured he could guess what the answer was.

  “Yourself or the Vice Admiral,” Barsamian said flatly. “You were the target, and, well, to be blunt sirs, neither of you have the technical skill to pull this off.”

  “I’d feel insulted, but since your judgment is that I didn’t commit treason, I’ll live with it,” Tobin grumbled. “But you’re telling me that we have no idea who has now tried to assassinate two officers on this ship?”

  “That is correct, sir,” the Marshal sighed. “I wish we were having more success, but to be honest, my people’s skillset is closer to small town cops than counterintelligence operatives.”

  “Sir,” Kyle said quietly, “Unless you object, I intend to take the ship to CI Level Two.”

  Counter Intelligence Level Two meant no personal messages left the ship. Even the more non-essential portions of the ship’s communication with the Navy were suspended. It also involved personnel on Castle filtering and reviewing even those messages.

  Level Two was an active presumption that the ship was compromised.

  “Very well, Captain,” the Admiral said softly. “Take us dark.”

  Chapter 24

  Deep Space, En route to KG-779

  17:00 January 6, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  DSC-078 Avalon, Flight Country Mess

  The sound of crashing furniture from the main officer mess in Flight Country wasn’t really a surprise to Michael. The only real question was who was fighting whom.

  “What is going on here?” he bellowed, channeling as much of Roberts’ energy and volume as he could as he burst into the mess hall. It had a gratifying quieting effect on the occupants of the room, two of whom froze in the act of trying to put each other through the remnants of the table they’d already snapped in half.

  Michael surveyed the frozen scene, trying to put enough disdain into his movements to make clear how badly his people had screwed up. The mess hall wasn’t an overly decorative portion of the ship – that was reserved for the ship’s three carefully maintained ‘Officers’ Lounges’ – and the long tables and uncomfortable chairs were cheap plastic.

  One of those tables had clearly had someone body-slammed onto it, and said cheap plastic had snapped under the impact. Two men, both Flight Lieutenants with, he sighed, pilot’s wings insignia were half-crouched in the middle of the debris field as the rest of the room’s occupants were gathered around.

  The situation had not yet degraded into a mass brawl at least, and it didn’t even look like blood had been drawn or bones broken. That opened his options up a lot.

  “Well?” he demanded, walking into the room and carefully stepping over the shattered remnants of a chair. “Does someone have an explanation for this mess?”

  Flight Lieutenant Ivan Kovalchick was an old Avalon hand. The big blond kid had served under Roberts as Wing Commander before the Captain’s transfer to the navy, and he’d spent most of the last two years under Michael’s command.

  The other combatant was Flight Lieutenant Antonio Zupan, a whipcord-thin snake of a man with black eyes, black hair and tanned-dark skin marked with tattoos where his sleeves were rolled up. He had, until a few days ago, served aboard Cameroon.

  “This lying… jerk,” Michael heard Kovalchick censor himself, “says we’ve got a spy aboard and it’s one of us,” the youth gestured to one side of the room.

  The CAG didn’t sigh aloud when he realized the room was clearly split between the original Avalon flight crews and the new squadrons transferred from Cameroon.

  “And?” he asked patiently.

  Kovalchick flushed.

  “None of us are traitors!” the youth snapped, directed more at Zupan than his CAG. “More likely this new bunch have a snake in their midst!”

  The ex-Cameroon pilot started to open his mouth, but Kyle held up a hand.

  “Ivan,” he said quietly, “we had a spy aboard before these boys and girls came aboard. We know that. So Mister Zupan is correct in that it’s more likely to be one of the old hands than the new.”

  Michael turned to Zupan and leveled a hopefully cold gaze on that pilot.

  “On the other hand, I would hope my pilots had enough Voids-cursed sense not to be picking fights,” he snapped. “You were about to say Ivan here swung first?”

  Zupan nodded.

  “Tell it to the Starless Void. You provoked him, he hit you. Sounds about fair in my books,” Michael told the pilot.

  To his surprise, the man laughed, and nodded.

  “Can live with it,” he said, and offered Kovalchick a hand.

  Hesitantly, the younger man took it. Despite being at most two thirds of the blond’s size, Zupan easily hauled the other to his feet and out of the mess of the table.

  Michael nodded to them both and took the immediate issue as settled. He turned back to face the crowd and shook his head. Sixty people in this room, most of them pilots, though he spotted a few gunners and engineers.

  All of the ex-Cameroon pilots, he noted, but the old hands were a mix from all his wings. Anything he said was going to get back to everyone, and damned fast too.

  “Look around you,” he told them. There were a lot of sheepish faces obeying him, but he needed to drive his point home, and hard.

  “Everyone around you is starfighter flight crew. That means if we go into real action, between a tenth and a third of the people in this room won’t come home,” he reminded them flatly. “You all took this job because you don’t think it’ll be you.

  “But do you really think a Commonwealth s
py would be willing to ride fire alongside you?”

  The chuckles and denials and headshakes took a moment, but they came. His people were fighters – they knew, in the sort of bone-deep certainty that would deny even obvious evidence, that no spy would fly alongside them. That no spy could do what they did.

  “These people will be riding fire beside you when we catch Kematian’s killers,” Michael told them. “You need to trust them – because whether you trust them or not, your life will be in their hands.

  “There isn’t a pilot, a gunner, or an engineer in this fighter group I wouldn’t trust behind me in a starfighter. That ought to be good enough for all of you.”

  The room was quiet, but he could tell he’d made his point.

  All he could do now was hope that the spy really wasn’t one of his.

  17:00 January 6, 2736 ESMDT

  DSC-078 Avalon, Vice Admiral Tobin’s Office

  Dimitri shook his head as he reviewed the sheaf of reports on the latest datapad Sanchez had given him.

  “The first is my assessment of the action in Kematian,” she told him. “I have reviewed the suggestions laid out by Captain Roberts and the others.”

  “And?” he asked.

  “Had we followed Roberts’ suggestion, the Kematian Navy would have been destroyed, with potentially no difference to the fate of the planet,” Sanchez laid out. “Triumphant could have launched before the fighter group caught them, ending in the same result for the planet. Bluntly, sir, his stratagem would have sacrificed the Kematian Navy for nothing.”

  Dimitri laughed and shook his head again.

  “You really don’t like him, do you?” he asked.

  “Sir?”

  “Captain Roberts was right,” he snarled. His self-loathing wanted to believe her, but he knew she was wrong. “Triumphant’s attack was almost certainly a direct response to the destruction of Force One. By the time we engaged, the KN had demonstrated that they were able to drag the fight out for hours – more than long enough for us to neutralize Triumphant and return to Force One.