Her shoulder boards carried four narrow brands of gold braid, marking her as a Sub-Colonel – equivalent to his own rank. His implant provided the memory of being introduced – her first name was Jenaveve, but someone had coughed at the wrong moment and he hadn’t caught her name or whether she served aboard Dauntless or Adamant.
“Sub-Colonel,” he greeted her with an inclination of the head and an extended hand. “I’ll confess that the introductions were a complete blur to me,” he told her with a grin. “If you’ll do me the favor of re-introducing yourself?”
She returned the smile, slightly, and shook his hand firmly.
“I am Sub-Colonel Jenaveve LaCroix,” she told him. “I command Dauntless’ Demons – the fighter wing.”
While Phoenix fighter wings did have numbers, they were also assigned names when they were established. Unlike the Federation’s Starfighter Groups, those names were the main reference.
“I am impressed by Dauntless herself,” Kyle admitted. “I can’t help but assume that her fighter wing is to match.”
“My men are the best,” LaCroix replied with a small smile. “Our Chevaliers are no Falcons, of course, but that will change in time.”
“Of course,” Kyle agreed. “I heard the Templar was supposed to enter flight trials shortly?”
The Templar was the Kingdom’s seventh generation starfighter, supposed to be a fraction less-heavily armed than the Falcon but with matching speed and an even more powerful electronic warfare suite.
LaCroix winced. “It did,” she said shortly. “There were… interference issues with the mass manipulators. Six flight crew died.”
Kyle shared her wince, and offered his glass in toast to the fallen flyers.
“Per ardua ad astra,” he said quietly.
LaCroix drank and nodded her agreement.
“How is the Falcon to fly?” she asked after they’d let a silent moment pass.
“A dream,” Kyle told her. “I haven’t spent as much time in real space in one as I’d like, but I swear the engineers worked some magic with the compensators and gimbals. I’ve never flown anything as smooth.”
“The pilot makes all the difference,” the Phoenix officer observed. “I heard Avalon’s wing had issues?”
Kyle took a sip of his drink and raised an eyebrow at her over the glass. That wasn’t exactly polite to point out to an ally. He shrugged.
“She’s been off front-line duty for a while,” he admitted. “SFG One took some molding to get back up to grade, but they’re starting to live up to my standards.”
“Are they now?” LaCroix murmured, eyeing him. “Care to put your money where your mouth is, Wing Commander Roberts?”
“Oh?” he asked cautiously.
“Exercising against other Phoenix wings only gets us so far,” she told him. “They have the same doctrine, same tactics, as we do. It stops becoming a stretch for anyone after a while. I would love to put my Demons up against Avalon’s wing – see if their extra experience can offset your people’s superior fighters.”
“My people are making my grade now,” Kyle warned, and the Sub-Colonel grinned brightly at him.
“You know that, and I know that – but my people don’t. Either they listen when I tell them that, and make up the difference with teamwork, or they learn a valuable life lessons,” she told him.
“Losing wing buys the beer – and losing commander buys the other dinner,” LaCroix proposed. “Sound like a bet, Wing Commander?”
Kyle returned her grin.
“I’ll take that wager,” he told her.
Chapter 13
Phoenix System, Kingdom of Phoenix
9:30 August 15, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Alpha Actual – Falcon-type starfighter
“So boss, I heard about your side bet,” Stanford told Kyle over a private channel.
“The one where if we win, they have to buy the entire wing drinks?” the Wing Commander asked dryly. He’d made that one clear to everyone, Stanford knew.
“Nah, the one where if we lose you buy LaCroix dinner,” the Flight Commander replied. “So, boss, should we lose so you get a date?”
“Ha!” Roberts barked. “Somehow, I don’t think the entire Flight Group would be willing to trade buying drinks for the Demons, even for getting the CAG laid.”
“You’d be surprised,” Michael muttered, knowing perfectly well that Roberts would hear him over the mental link.
“Play nice, Flight Commander,” was all his boss told him. “I have LaCroix on another channel, we should be clear to link the simulations in a couple of minutes.”
As soon as Kyle signed off of the channel, Stanford flipped to a second private channel with the other Flight Commanders.
“He didn’t go for it,” he reported. “Told you.”
“Does he really expect to win this?” Shannon Lancet asked quietly. “The Demons are the Kingdom’s best and we’re…”
“Good,” Mendez interrupted, to the shock of the Flight Commanders from the original SFG-001. The two Flight Commanders from Alamo had always seemed a cut above to Stanford and his compatriots. “Better than our people think they are – better than your lack of faith deserves.”
“Hell, I was willing to go for it just to get the man laid,” Rokos told the others. “I’m with Mendez,” he continued. “The Group is good – one hell of a lot better than we were. But we could use Roberts laying off the men, too.”
Zhao laughed, a melodic peal from the tall and elegant woman.
“I’m not sure the man has got laid while I’ve known him,” she told the others. “And even if he did, I don’t think it would make him lay off the Flight Group. But kicking the Demons’ butt? That will get him to give the crews some slack.”
“Some slack they’ll have earned – and he knows, like we all do if we’re paying attention, that we can do it.”
All of the squadron commanders were silent for a moment, then the Wing Commander linked them into his circuit.
“All right people,” Roberts told them, presumably unaware of their prior discussion. “We are syncing with Dauntless’ simulation computers in sixty seconds. I’m downloading the formation I want your squadrons to assume now.”
A moment of silence passed as the squadron leaders reviewed them.
“These intervals are garbage!” Lancet declared. “Half of them are too close, half of them are too far. The only squadron with a decent formation is Alpha, and you’ve got Foxtrot and Echo intermingled with them. What is this?”
“It’s what a rookie reserve wing would do,” Rokos observed quietly.
“It’s what the wing the Demons think we are would do,” Stanford agreed, his mental attention turning to Roberts.
“Exactly,” the CAG told them, his mental voice tinged with pride. “This is what we’re going to do…”
Phoenix System, Kingdom of Phoenix
9:40 August 15, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
SFG-001 Actual – Falcon-C type command starfighter
In reality, Kyle’s six thousand ton command starfighter – which traded out the fourth missile in one of its launchers for dramatically expanded computer support – rested in its maintenance cradle in the bay on Avalon’s Flight Deck.
In the simulated world conjured by the synchronized computers of two carriers and almost a hundred starfighters, the ship sat slightly to the left of the central part of the chaotic-looking arrangement he’d provided his people.
The scenario he and LaCroix had agreed to was straightforward, negating most of the tricks that could be played with starfighters. The two fighter groups had each assumed formations in front of what was referred to in training design as 'nominal carriers’ – wireframes of the motherships with no ability to influence the engagement except as targets.
The Demons’ formation, he noted was just about perfect. Their intervals were all randomized, but with a clean synchronization set up to allow each ship a clear field of fire at
every moment in the cycle.
His own formation was neater than it looked – the fields of fire were clear eighty-five percent of the time, and the excessive drifting he’d built in worked better for defense most of the time. More than anything though, it looked unprofessional.
“Here they come,” Rokos announced over the command network.
Kyle nodded to himself and switched to an all-hands channel. “All right folks, let’s go meet Phoenix’s best,” he told them. “Keep your EW suites in intel-gather mode until I tell you otherwise,” he continued, “and play lame duck. Let’s see how sloppy we can convince them to get.”
That got a few chuckles on his command net, and the CAG smiled to himself as he sent his own starfighter spiraling forward at five hundred gravities. If his people could carry this sim – if they could even hold their own – it would do wonders for his people’s morale.
“Landon,” he said quietly, linking to his ship’s gunner. “Most of the data from everyone’s electronic warfare suites is going to be dumping into our systems. You know what you’re looking for – let me know when you’ve got it.”
The Chevaliers were similar to the Falcons in base design, thirty meter long wedge-shaped ships. The Phoenix fighters were just as fast as the newer Federation ships, but narrower, and hence lighter and more lightly armed.
The two clouds of starfighters closed at almost ten kilometers per second squared, and the hundreds of thousands of kilometers between them began to evaporate far too quickly.
“Their ECM is good,” Landon reported after a minute. “I’m not getting much of a read on them.”
Kyle considered. He needed a reaction, but he couldn’t waste missiles – not yet.
“All ships,” he said softly, opening a channel to all of his people. “Give them a two second blast of positrons.”
“We’re not going to hit anything at this range,” Lancet objected.
“I know,” he agreed. “So let them think we’re useless – I want to see how they react.”
A few seconds later, obedient to his orders, lightspeed simulated antimatter blasted out from the fronts of his starfighters. Enough firepower to level a good sized city hurtled through space at the Phoenix ships – and missed them by as much as hundreds of kilometers as magnetic deflectors threw the charged particles aside.
But the target formation shifted. Intervals tightened slightly, allowing the deflectors to reinforce each other so as to throw any other long range attacks aside harmlessly. And the change to the formation meant orders had to be given…
“I’ve got them!” Landon announced over the ship’s internal net. Eight of the Chevaliers were suddenly highlighted in bright red on Kyle’s display: squadron command ships.
“Sloppy,” Kyle murmured. “Sloppy indeed.” The Demons, ‘knowing’ they were facing inferior opposition, had been relying on the passive security on the internal networks. Active security would have bounced and re-bounced the messages as well as encrypting them, preventing him from identifying the command ships – but also requiring the direct attention of at least one officer in each squadron.
“Download targets to Alpha and Bravo squadrons,” he ordered Landon. “Set up the parameters for Snicker-Snack and download to everyone.”
At their closing velocity, missile range was half a million kilometers, which they would reach… now.
“All ships, fire as per download,” he ordered.
Forty-eight ships each fired four missiles each, a single salvo from every one of their launchers. One hundred and ninety-two Starfire missiles, each carrying a one-gigaton antimatter warhead – enough to kill a starship, let alone a starfighter – blasted away from his ship’s at one thousand gravities.
The bright white light of his people’s missiles were the only activity between the two fighter groups for thirty seconds as the Demons waited for a better targeting solution. Then ninety-six missiles blasted away from the Chevaliers, heading for Kyle’s people.
A timer popped up in his mental screens. It started at one hundred and thirty seconds – twenty seconds before his missiles would reach the Phoenix fighters, roughly when they would start trying to take the missiles out.
Given the apparently disorganized swarm of missiles his people had launched, he was sure LaCroix’s pilots and gunners were sure they would easily handle the salvo, and then gut his people.
Another thirty seconds passed, and a second salvo blasted away from the Demons. At ninety seconds from impact, a second salvo blasted away from his own ships. The virtual space between the two wings was now filled with antimatter fire and intelligent missiles seeking self-immolation.
“Stand by,” he murmured into the all-hands channel when the counter hit fifteen. He was sure his pilots were on tenterhooks and hardly needed the warning.
“Now,” he snapped as the timer hit zero. “Execute Snicker-Snack!”
Whether or not any of his people were familiar with the old poem about the Jabberwock and the vorpal sword, they understood perfectly what he wanted of them.
He’d timed the launch and execution perfectly. At his command, the formations around him suddenly snapped into place – intervals opening and shortening to clear every ship’s line of fire.
Every ECM system on forty-eight starfighters blasted to full strength at the same time, and a seventh generation starfighter’s systems made the five-year-old Chevaliers look like children shouting into tin cans. He knew their scans of his group had just turned to garbage.
Then his people opened fire. Positron lances ripped out at the speed of light, bracketing starfighters, herding those that evaded.
As antimatter flashed across space, the missiles had their own part to play. The execution command that flashed out ordered a third of them to detonate in place, sending blast waves of radiation rippling out in front of their compatriots.
However co-ordinated the strike was, however perfect the timing, there was no way that Kyle’s people could take out all of LaCroix’s fighters in a single missile salvo.
But with everything combined, they could easily take out eight.
The Demons tactical network came crashing down as every squadron commander, including LaCroix herself, ‘died’ in hammer blows of fire.
“Rokos, Zhao, co-ordinate missile defense,” Kyle ordered. The Demons salvo was still inbound, after all.
“Everyone else… hit them!”
Phoenix System, Kingdom of Phoenix
19:00 August 15, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
McKeon Station – Dancing Starcat bar
The Demons, Stanford reflected, took losing surprisingly well.
‘Buying the drinks’ was one thing. What the Demons had actually done was more along the lines of ‘rent the entire lounge and pay for an open bar.’ Two entire fighter groups, almost three hundred men and women in the uniforms of two different nations, had descended on the Dancing Starcat in full force.
That worthy, a domestic housecat with a starry night sky for a coat, adorned much of the restaurant. It had even been etched onto the pint glasses the bartender was filling up two at a time for the swarming pilots
The two CAGs were nowhere to be seen, the slight Flight Commander noted, making him the senior officer of the chaotic crowd. There were seven Phoenix Space Force Majors around somewhere, but the two he’d seen were leading the way in terms of getting drunk.
Stanford himself was dealing with a not-entirely-newfound sense of responsibility. Roberts had yet to ask or even make much of a point as to how he’d ended up as one of the most senior active duty Flight Commanders in the Space Force, and he found himself wanting to live up to the faith his new boss had put in him.
Right now, that was manifesting itself by picking a table in a corner of the bar and moderating his drinking while keeping an eye on their people.
He was about to get up and collect his third beer of the evening when a shadow fell across his table. He looked up – and then further up! – at a mountain of a man lo
oming over him. The bar lights reflected off the man’s shaven skull in a way that reminded Stanford of Liago and sent tremors of fear through him.
“You’re in my table,” the mountain rumbled. “Move it, little man.”
“The bar is closed for a private function,” Stanford told him, but he could hear his voice tremble. The massive man grinned.
“Don’t matter,” he pronounced. “This is Argo’s table, no one sits here.”
“I was just leaving,” Stanford muttered, sliding out of the table. His attempt to defuse conflict apparently failed, as the collar of his jacket was suddenly grabbed up in a fist the size of a dinner plate.
“Might’ve been,” Argo growled. “But you sat in Argo’s seat. Gonna teach a lesson.”
Before Stanford could try anything, a distinctive and familiar hum cut through the hubbub of the bar. Argo’s head turned, tracking the noise like a turret, to find a pair of women, both in the black and burgundy uniforms of the Phoenix Space Force – and both training fully charged stunners on the giant.
“I know the management has warned you about muscling your way in when the bar is closed,” the closest of the women, a petite but curvy blond, told Argo calmly. “No one is going to blink twice if Rachel and I taze your ass and dump you for the Station cops.”
The lithe brunette behind the speaker simply grinned and made a ‘move-along’ gesture with the barrel of the electro-laser.
Argo stared at the two women, as if unable to comprehend that a pair that he outweighed would actually threaten him.
“Put the Commander down, Mister Argo, and walk out,” the speaker continued. “Or we shoot you, apologize to Commander Stanford for the aura effect, and dump you with the cops with charges of trespassing and assault.”
Stanford hit the ground as Argo released him, managing to land mostly balanced as the giant growled wordlessly and started forward. Both of the stunners stayed locked on him and he apparently changed his mind, walking past the women and down towards the exit.
Space Carrier Avalon Page 12
