“I’ll try not to do anything stupid,” Stanford promised. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m in command,” Kyle observed calmly.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“No,” the Acting Captain agreed. “It was explaining why I won’t. As for not doing anything stupid, are you going to fix things with Mason?”
Michael winced. They’d come to something of an agreement before everything had tried to explode.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s a scary thought.”
“I know all about scary thoughts,” Kyle told him. “But I’ve got some food for yours: one, I checked: even with Kelly as Acting XO, she’s still not in your chain and command, and it’s not against regs. Two: the two of you have your heads completely off kilter. You were less compromised when you were together.”
“So three,” Avalon’s Acting Captain finished, his voice flat, “I need you both back on your game. If that requires you to fuck each other from one end of this carrier to another, all I ask for is your discretion. Do you follow me, Wing Commander Stanford?”
Michael couldn’t help himself. The sudden crudity shocked a laugh from him. That turned into a smile, and a sudden moment of content relaxation.
“Thank you, sir” he said quietly. “I think… I needed to hear someone say that.”
“Good,” Kyle replied, his head cocking slightly as he received an implant comm. “Because she’s here, and that means I need to be in Secondary Control.”
The Acting Captain hung around in the cubicle for long enough to hold the curtain open for Kelly Mason, and then disappeared back to his duties.
For her part, Kelly had no words. She sat down on Michael’s bed and took his hand in hers, looking at him in silence with tired eyes.
Michael smiled up at her. He still couldn’t move much, but he could talk – and somehow, that wasn’t as scary as it had been.
“I love you, you know,” he began.
Deep Space
09:00 September 17, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Secondary Control
Per the book, Kelly, as acting XO, should have been in Secondary Control while Kyle held down the bridge.
Seeing as how all of Deck Two had been reduced to minus five Centigrade to hold the bodies until they could retrieve them and the bridge consoles were completely fried, she was instead holding down the tactical officer’s console in Secondary Control.
This worked for Kyle, not least because her senior deputy’s quarters had been on Deck Ten. With their casualties, Avalon really only had one full bridge shift to run the ship.
“Well, Alistair?” he asked finally, glancing at the clock. Twenty-seven hours had allowed them to bring what was left of the ship’s crew mostly back onto their feet, have gravity back, and test the weapons and sublight engines.
Wong’s image in the video link showed that the Engineer had been awake the entire time. His uniform was rumpled and his eyes were bloodshot, but he had a grin on his face.
“The good news is that we now have four Class One mass manipulators again,” Wong replied. “All of the Stetson stabilizers are checking out green – we have no flutters this time.”
“What’s the bad news?” Kyle asked.
“Manipulator Three is garbage,” the Chief Engineer said bluntly. “We gutted it for parts, and we may as well blast the shell off the hull as garbage. If we didn’t have a spare, we’d be calling for help and floating in space.”
“I can live with that,” Kyle told him. They were lucky – like the atrium on Deck Six, having a full Class One mass manipulator as a spare was considered an unnecessary luxury by many of the Federation’s allies. A Phoenix warship in the same position, for example, would have been waiting for a tow.
“Lieutenant Ivanov,” he said, turning away from Wong’s image to look over the senior surviving member of Pendez’s department other than the hospitalized Navigator. “Do you have a course set in for Tranquility?”
“Yes, sir,” the dark-haired young man replied crisply. “One light year per day squared for twenty-four hours, then decelerate at the same for twenty-four hours. We should arrive in Tranquility in just over forty-eight hours.”
Kyle nodded and looked towards his acting XO and Chief Engineer.
“Do we have any reason to delay heading for Tranquility?” he asked quietly. “We’re cutting it damned close, but we can’t help anyone if we drop out of FTL again six light-months away.”
“There’s no guarantees at this point, Captain,” Wong said simply. “Everything should hold together, but I won’t be able to say for sure until we’ve been in FTL for a few hours. If you want to make Tranquility in time, we’ve got to go.”
“Commander?” Kyle asked Kelly.
She shrugged. “We’re as ready for battle as we’ll be without finding replacement crew. If we’re going to do this, then we need to do it.”
“Agreed,” he told them. Activating the ship’s internal com, he gave the all-hands warning and then turned to Ivanov.
“Lieutenant Ivanov, please initiate Stetson stabilization fields,” he ordered.
Kyle found himself holding his breath as the shimmer of the Stetson fields dropped over his screens smoothly and without issues.
“Interior Stetson field active,” Ivanov reported. “Exterior field on standby, mass manipulators on standby.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Kyle said softly. “You may warp space at your discretion.”
It seemed to take longer than usual, though the timestamp on his implant told him he was imagining that. The space distortions of Avalon’s singularities filled up the screen, and then reality warped around them.
“Mr. Wong?”
“Running clean and clear, Captain. We’ll keep an eye on it from here.”
“Yes – your staff will keep an eye on it,” Kyle told Wong pointedly. “You are going straight to sleep for at least ten hours unless something goes wrong. That’s an order, Fleet Commander,” he said sharply as Wong opened his mouth to protest. “Stims will only carry you so far.”
The Engineer took a deep breath and nodded.
“Understood, sir.”
That screen shut down, and Kyle looked back to the displays.
“Lieutenant Ivanov,” he said quietly. “Put an ETA on the screen for me.”
With a silent nod, the junior navigator obeyed. A timer started ticking down the seconds till their arrival, two days away.
“Commander Mason, what was the Commonwealth battle group’s expected arrival time per their Operation Puppeteer plans?” Kyle asked. “Put it on the screen.”
A second timer appeared immediately beneath the first, showing Alliance Intelligence’s best estimate of when the attack on Tranquility would arrive.
If that estimate was correct, and if the Commonwealth kept their schedule, Avalon would beat them to Tranquility by less than an hour.
The Commonwealth battle group didn’t know it, but it had just become a race.
One Tranquility couldn’t afford Avalon to lose.
Chapter 35
Deep Space
19:00 September 18, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Executive Officer’s Office
Kyle was sitting behind his desk, watching the two timers tick down on his screen and re-reading the Intelligence summary for Operation Puppeteer, when Ensign Li pinged him on his implant.
“Sir, something just came in over the Q-com network I think you want to see,” the young computer specialist told him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“The same video just came in on every single channel that links from Commonwealth space,” she replied. “It’s being picked up by all the news media. I think… everyone is going to see this by tomorrow, and that’s exactly what they want.”
“Feed it to my wall-screen,” Kyle ordered grimly. “Thank you, Ensign.”
He recognized the scene on his
monitor the moment it appeared. Even to someone born on a world far from Earth, the Star Chamber of the Interstellar Congress of the Terran Commonwealth was instantly recognizable.
The founders of the Commonwealth had spared no expense on the Star Chamber. The room had begun as a massive empty void, functionally a buoyancy tank for the immense floating platform anchoring the Skylink One space elevator. When the nine oldest colonies had combined with Earth to form the Commonwealth in the mid-twenty-fourth century, millions of dollars had been sunk into the chamber.
Now, massive floor to ceiling windows opened out onto the Atlantic Ocean along one wall, and the inner wall, an internal bulkhead that was moved every few decades to allow for new representatives, was lit up with floor mounted spotlights.
Around the walls were hung massive, twenty-meter long, banners with the images of each member world of the Commonwealth. With over a hundred star systems and seven hundred senators and Congressmen and -women, few worlds’ representatives sat under their banner, but all of their worlds were represented on the walls.
At the front of the chamber, where the video they were receiving was focused, was a raised stage where whoever was speaking would sit. In the video, date-stamped two weeks prior, fifteen of the Congress’ members occupied a long table on that stage, and a chill ran through Kyle.
“This special meeting of the Senate and Assembly of the Terran Commonwealth combined in Congress is called to order,” a frail-looking woman with pale skin and hair announced calmly. A scrolling bar ran under her as she continued speaking, giving her name and position. The woman was Speaker Janet Lane, elected by the Congress itself to co-ordinate their meetings and generally considered the second most powerful person in the Commonwealth.
“I surrender the floor to the Committee on Unification,” she concluded the remarks Kyle had mostly ignored, and his chill turned to ice.
The Committee on Unification was the sub-committee of Congress, selected from its membership by its membership via arcane rules no outsider would ever understand, charged with implementing the ‘historical inevitability’ of human unification. That Committee of democratically elected representatives had started more wars and shed more blood than any dictator in history.
The man sitting in the center of the fifteen-person Committee rose after Speaker Lane took her seat, and glanced around the Star Chamber. Another scrolling bar identified the heavy-set, white-haired, black man as Senator Michael Burns of Alpha Centauri.
“Esteemed officials of the Commonwealth Congress,” Burns hailed his companions, “two days ago, in closed session, my fellow members of the Committee on Unification laid a proposal given to us before you. We recommended, and you, my fellow Congress members, agreed, that the proposal should be approved.”
“We are here to begin the motions of that approval. The Committee calls on Fleet Admiral James Calvin Walkingstick to appear before us.”
The Fleet Admiral had clearly been waiting just outside the doors to the Chamber. As Burns finished speaking, one of the formally clad but functionally armed Congressional Lictors opened the door and ushered the man in.
The camera zoomed in on Walkingstick as he approached the stage in front of the Congress. He wore the red and black uniform of a Commonwealth Fleet officer as if he’d been born in it, and the four stars on his collar had been polished so brightly they gleamed in the sunlight streaming in.
Walkingstick was a large man, with the heavy jowls and dark skin of a northwestern Amerindian. His auburn hair was tied in a braid that clung to his neck without restricting his movements. The Fleet Admiral walked forward as if he owned the Chamber – and for a few moments, some of the Congressmen took up a chant of “Walkingstick, Walkingstick!”
“Fleet Admiral Walkingstick,” Burns greeted the Admiral. “You presented the Committee with a plan to forward the cause of human unification. We have reviewed this plan and presented to Congress. Do you have anything to add that was not in your proposal?”
Walkingstick nodded slowly, and Burns gestured for him to take the floor. The big man stepped into precisely the center of the space between the stage and the podium, and turned to face Congress while assuming a perfect parade rest.
“Leaders of the Commonwealth,” he began, his voice carried the precise diction, odd to Kyle’s ears, still taught in the British Isles, “given the resources laid out in the plan I presented, I believe I can deliver new members to this Congress.”
“Some of these worlds will welcome us,” he continued. “We offer all the benefits of Commonwealth membership, and many will see this as wise.
“Others, more foolish, will stand against the tide of history and the manifest destiny of the human race. They will resist with force, and there can be no guarantees in battle.”
“I do not guarantee you victory, Senators, Congressmen,” he finished. “But I promise you – the Cause will not fail!”
Now the chant of “Walkingstick, Walkingstick!” echoed through the chamber, and it took a good minute for Burns to gain the attention of his compatriots.
“Fleet Admiral James Calvin Walkingstick,” the Senator finally said into a modicum of quiet, “this Congress offers you a Marshal’s mace, to go into the stars and speak with our voice, act with our hands. We charge you to bring the worlds we place into your care to Unification.
“Do you accept this charge?”
Walkingstick bowed his head, an appearance at least of humility.
“I do,” he answered, his voice echoing in the Star Chamber.
Burns picked the mace – a rod of platinum that concealed a DNA scanner and a chip that placed the bearer in command of vast Commonwealth resources – up from the table in front of him and offered it to the Admiral.
Walkingstick took it and the camera zoomed in on his smile.
“James Calvin Walkingstick, this Congress acclaims you Marshal of the Rimward Marches,” Burns proclaimed.
The video ended, leaving Kyle staring at a blank wall for a long moment of silence.
“Fuck.”
Then a priority ping began to sound on his console – Fleet Command was contacting all Federation capital ship commanders.
#
It took Kyle a moment to place the tanned man in the Federation Navy uniform and white turban facing the camera when the video link came up. For all that the man signed his deployment orders, Kyle had never met Vice Admiral Mohammed Kane.
From the list of names showing in a corner of his screen, Kyle wasn’t the first starship commander to link in – but he was also far from the last.
“All right everyone,” Kane said after waiting a moment, “anyone who isn’t online yet can watch the recording – for some of you this is urgent.”
“I assume you’ve all seen the transmission from the Commonwealth Congress,” he continued. “For any of you who have forgotten your academy days, the ‘Rimward Marches’ in Commonwealth parlance is a region of space that basically coincides with the Alliance. There’s some systems that aren’t included, but we, the Coraline Imperium, the Renaissance Factor and Phoenix are all included.”
“And the Commonwealth Congress just appointed a man to hold dictatorial authority over our worlds,” Kane said grimly.
“Given our discovery of Operation Puppeteer, this isn’t the shock to us they’re likely hoping it is,” the Admiral continued, “but we are still badly out of position. The Senate has decided that we have no choice but to take this video as a declaration of war.”
“As of now, you are all operating under Rules of Engagement Alpha One. All Commonwealth warships are to be engaged on sight. All Commonwealth civilian shipping is to be seized and interned.”
“Ladies, gentlemen – we don’t want this war,” Kane concluded. “We’re not ready – but thanks to Avalon’s victory in Hessian, we’re more ready they expect us to be.”
“We don’t want this war,” he repeated, “but if the Commonwealth brings it to our shores, I fully expect you to kick it back through their teeth!
”
“Good luck
Chapter 36
Deep Space
05:14 September 19, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Executive Officer’s Quarters
Kyle had set an alarm for well before emergence, so it took him a moment upon awakening to realize that the noise that had awakened him was not a wake-up alarm.
Finally, he managed to wake up enough to activate the communicator.
“Roberts.”
“It’s Mason,” Kelly said sharply. “We have a problem – looks like our battle group has a more efficient commander than Alliance Intelligence figured.”
Kyle was upright and fully awake as that sank in.
“They’ve arrived.”
“They’ve arrived,” she confirmed. “Standard Commonwealth battle group, two battleships, two carriers. ETA to Tranquility orbit is three hours.”
He checked the ETA clock for Avalon on his datapad, guessing what it would say.
They would arrive in Tranquility roughly fifteen minutes before the Commonwealth fleet settled into orbit of the main planet.
It would take them another three hours to reach the planet themselves, but it wouldn’t matter. By the time they arrived, the Tranquility Space Fleet would be dead.
Deep Space
06:45 September 19, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
DSC-001 Avalon – Main Infirmary
Michelle didn’t quite sneak into the infirmary to meet Angela, but she was pretty sure ‘skulking’ was a valid descriptor. The main infirmary was quiet early in the morning, but she could tell that the nurses and doctors were all on duty.
The same feel was present throughout the ship – Avalon was going into battle, and her battered and depleted crew was going to be ready. Michelle herself was headed to the Flight Deck, and was already clad in the modified shipsuit she would wear in space.
Space Carrier Avalon Page 28
