In a perfect world, he’d disable those ships. Interrogate their crews, learn why they were there and confirm the Commonwealth’s aggression.
It wasn’t a perfect world. He needed to make certain Boudicca was safe…and there was one way to very definitively do that.
“Order to the Fleet and inform von Santiago,” he said coldly, watching the Terran ships run.
“No one escapes.”
10
Boudicca System
June 16, 2706 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
“Coraline Imperial Fifth Fleet, arriving!”
Those were not words Darius had ever expected to hear aboard one of his ships—let alone aboard one of the Federation’s most advanced, most classified ships. Even he had actually asked permission before inviting Admiral von Santiago aboard Vagabond.
He’d got it, and now the raven-haired woman with the slightly aslant eyes stopped at the end of the shuttle ramp to salute the honor guard.
Those guards weren’t Marines. The Navy Military Police did a passable job, but Darius suspected von Santiago could tell the difference.
Of course, her Marines had joined his on the surface hours before. Between their two fleets, they’d put over ten thousand power-armored troops on the surface. The search-and-rescue teams Iceni’s shattered government had mustered might have had five thousand suits of equivalent hazmat gear.
Those Marines were saving lives, and Darius was grateful the Imperials were down there. It couldn’t hurt that his people were working alongside their Coraline equivalents to save lives instead of fighting each other.
“Welcome aboard Vagabond, Admiral von Santiago,” Captain Michaud greeted her new guest with a crisp salute. “We’re not quite in the shape we’d want to be to be receiving guests, but I hope you’ll forgive us.”
Vagabond might have been the deadliest ship in the fray, but her enemies had registered that. Even the neutronium-laced armor of a modern battleship failed in the face of antimatter explosions. They were functionally intact, but they’d paid for their victory.
“Resolution is in worse shape,” the Coraline Admiral admitted. “Our enemies might not have had positron lances of their own, but they adjusted their threat parameters for them quickly enough.”
Darius stepped forward and bowed slightly.
“You’ll forgive us if I don’t tell you how many ships like Vagabond we have,” he said drily. “Welcome aboard, Admiral. It’s a pleasure to meet you face to face at last.”
“Instead of glaring at each other across twenty light-years of space and wondering which of us would get the attack order first?” she asked. “I think that question, at least, might be laid to rest for a while.”
“That’s at a higher level than even mine,” Darius replied, offering his hand. “But I look forward to the thought, it’s true.”
She smirked and he had to remind a portion of his hindbrain that he was sixty years her senior and still, arguably, her enemy.
“I understand we have a call scheduled with Ambassador von Argent,” she replied. “I hope that may give you some assurance.”
“I can hope,” Darius agreed. “But I am very old, Admiral von Santiago, and I did not get that way by false hope.”
“And yet you trusted me to help you fake a battle to lure out a potentially nonexistent enemy?” she murmured. “I’m not sure I’d share your fortitude without hope, Admiral.”
“I lay little weight on hope, Admiral,” Darius conceded, gesturing for her to walk with him. “I lay everything on faith. Faith in the honor of the Imperium. Faith in my people. Faith, Admiral von Santiago, in everything I had read on you.”
He saw her shiver at the thought.
“I did not think that kind of faith in humanity was a Stellar Spiritualist teaching,” she noted.
“The stars are far-off, uncaring things,” Darius observed. “They watch, but it is only humanity who can act. Only humanity who can have faith—and in the end, the only thing we can have faith in is each other.”
“You sound more like an atheist than a Spiritualist, Admiral.”
“I do not believe that we require guidance,” he told her. “I do believe that we are judged and held to a higher standard by the stars who watch us. I have faith in that, Admiral von Santiago. The question was whether I could have faith in you.”
“Please, Admiral Moonblood,” she replied. “We have risked treason and failure together to answer your question of faith. Please call me Trinh.”
They shared a smile.
“Then I must insist you call me Darius.”
Barre and Michaud joined them in the small conference room, Darius’s operations officer leading her Imperial counterpart in with them.
A few seconds after they took their seat, Resolution’s Captain linked in virtually, a holographic image of the man filling the empty seat next to Barre. Lord Captain Khayyam Kariuki had the rare trait of being even darker-skinned than Darius’s operations officer.
“Ambassador von Argent asked to speak to us all,” von Santiago told him. “Von Coral and I were already supposed to be here.”
Darius concealed his surprise at the name and took a second look at the operations officer. The dark-haired woman sitting across from Barre was not who he’d been expecting. The last report had said that von Santiago’s operations officer had been a man.
Captain Samantha von Coral was the Imperator’s cousin. Technically, she was on the list of potential replacements if he died—though the Electors did tend to pick from the previous Imperator’s adult children if available.
Before he could say anything more, the link from Castle came live and the holographic image of the Coraline Imperium’s Ambassador appeared standing at the end of the table.
Von Argent looked exhausted…but also like the cat that ate the canary. A moment later, Senator Falk’s image joined him from yet another location. The two politicians were standing, facing the seated officers.
“Senator,” Darius greeted her. “I wasn’t expecting you to join us on this call.”
“Once I found out that von Argent was reaching out to von Santiago and she was supposed to be on your ship, I added myself to the discussion,” she told him. “Much of what we have to tell will remain classified on the part of both of our nations.
“You and von Santiago would have been briefed regardless, but your staffs will also need to be read in, and I believe your Captains deserve to know what their sacrifice and courage purchased.”
The Battle of Boudicca had been a massacre in the end, but most of the ships had been damaged and three battleships had been completely lost.
“I serve the Senate and the Federation, Senator.”
“Far beyond any rational request on our part, yes,” Falk agreed brightly. “At the end of this conversation, Ambassador von Argent will be meeting an aircar to bring him to the Senatorial Chambers. There, he and I will present the document we’ve been working on since your victory.”
That was less than eight hours earlier. They’d worked fast.
“The Senate will approve it. Jacob von Coral has already indicated his approval. While we intend to keep it secret for the immediate future, by this time tomorrow, the Castle Federation and the Coraline Imperium will have concluded a draft treaty of mutual nonaggression and defense.”
Darius was glad he was already sitting. He might have fallen in sheer shock.
“The presence of what appears to have been an entire Commonwealth battle fleet in territory both of us regard as under our protection is intolerable,” von Argent told them. “Examination of the ships and interrogation of the survivors will give us more answers, but my Imperator feels that we cannot wait for certainty.
“The risk is too great. We must act now, to agree to stand together against this threat. He has suggested that both of our nations begin to send envoys to the various small nations around us. A larger alliance is needed here—neither of our fleets can stand off the Commonwealth.
“Not al
one. Not together.”
“But if we bring in the Trade Factor, the Star Kingdom, and the other single-system nations around here with fleets, we might be able to change that,” Falk told them. “Both of us intend to begin a crash rearmament program to update our ships with positron lances.
“Officially, those programs are targeted at each other. Our alliance will likely become an open secret quickly enough, but the longer we can keep Terra in the dark, the safer we all are.”
“I almost wish I was wrong,” Darius admitted, considering the industrial and military might of the Commonwealth. “Stars as my witness, I wish I was wrong.”
“So do I, Admiral Moonblood, but you were correct to suspect a third party at Boudicca—and there is no one else. If the Commonwealth comes for our stars, we will be ready. Will you, Admiral Moonblood? Admiral von Santiago?”
“My life is the Imperator’s,” von Santiago noted. “I will stand against any enemy. I’ll admit, though, that it’s reassuring to not be watching our closest neighbor.”
Darius nodded, bowing slightly to Falk’s image.
“I serve the Senate and the Federation,” he echoed his earlier words. “If the Commonwealth comes, they will have a rude awakening.”
The Commonwealth began their invasion by assaulting the Star Kingdom of Phoenix on August 3, 2708.
Thanks to the secret treaties forged in the two years prior to that invasion, the Alliance of Free Stars was ready for them and Admirals von Santiago and Moonblood led a relief fleet that prevented Phoenix from falling to the Commonwealth.
Admiral Darius Moonblood did not survive the victory at Phoenix, but he left an entire region of space with a hope for freedom.
Thank you so much for reading A Question of Faith. Read on for a preview of Space Carrier Avalon, book 1 in the Castle Federation series, or click to check it out in the Amazon store.
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Preview: Space Carrier Avalon by Glynn Stewart
Enjoyed the A Question of Faith? You may also enjoy the first book in the Castle Federation series, Space Carrier Avalon, available now!
A bygone legend with a washed-up crew
A crack team gathered for one last tour
A cold war that has simmered to its final hour
When the Castle Federation deployed the first starfighters, they revolutionized war and drove the Terran Commonwealth from their space. The first of the carriers for those deadly strike craft was Avalon, a legend that turned the tide of a dozen battles.
That was decades ago. Now Avalon is obsolete, a backwater posting—but still a legend to the Federation and her allies and enemies alike. Wing Commander Kyle Roberts and a cadre of officers are sent aboard the old carrier to take her on a final tour along the frontier.
Aboard, Roberts finds outdated fighters, broken pilots…and key subordinates who just might be traitors. He and the others will get Avalon ready for war once more regardless. Show tour or not, the old enemy has been seen near the border and no matter what, when the call comes, Avalon will answer!
1
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
18:00 July 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
On approach to DSC-001 Avalon
Wing Commander Kyle Roberts did not enjoy being flown by someone else. It was always a struggle for the red-haired pilot to keep his hands and implants away from the controls and overrides when he was a passenger in a shuttle. To make everyone’s lives easier, he normally stayed out of the cockpit.
Today, however, he wasn’t feeling quite so magnanimous, and had unceremoniously shunted the small craft’s normal co-pilot into the bucket seat that was supposed to be reserved for an observer like him. The burly Commander already felt a little bit guilty over that, but that slipped from his mind as the shuttle began its final approach and Avalon came into view.
“There she is, sir,” the pilot told him, her amused tone revealing at least some understanding of her much-senior passenger’s anticipation.
Avalon would not be the first of the Castle Federation’s Deep Space Carriers that Kyle had served on – but she was the first whose starfighter group he’d command in its entirety. Avalon was a legend, the first modern space carrier ever built by anyone, and her SFG-001 had a list of battle honors as long as Kyle’s arm.
The abbreviated arrowhead of the carrier slowly grew in his vision, and he twigged his implants to zoom in on her. The computer in his head happily threw up stats and numbers as he scanned along the length of his new home.
The carrier was small compared to her modern sisters, a mere eight hundred meters from her two hundred meter wide prow to her four hundred meter wide base, angling from a hundred meters thick at the prow to two hundred meters at the base. She was smoother than more recent ships as well, with her weapons and sensors clustered together in the breaks in her now-obsolete neutronium armor.
Several of those clusters were currently open to space, weapons dating back two and three decades, according to his brief, being ripped out for replacement with the super-modern systems delivered by the transport he’d arrived on.
“I never expected to see Avalon fly again,” the co-pilot observed from behind Kyle. “Rumor had it that her assignment as guardship here was just a quiet way of placing her in the Reserve.”
Kyle nodded his silent agreement. He’d heard the same rumors, and he’d seen the rough brief of the work they were doing to make her fit for duty. If nothing else, Avalon was a carrier, and the starfighters she’d carried had been three generations out of date.
That was his job to fix, of course. He’d spent his trip babying six entire squadrons – forty-eight ships – of brand new, barely out of prototype, Falcon-type starfighters. The new ships strapped mass manipulators and engines rated for five hundred gravities to four three-shot launchers firing short-range missiles with gigaton antimatter warheads and a positron lance rated for fifty kilotons per second.
The number of ships told the story of Avalon’s age, though. His last command, the fighter wing aboard the battlecruiser Alamo, had also been forty-eight ships. That ship, however, been almost thirteen hundred meters long, and had carried a broadside of ten half-megaton-per-second positron lances in each of the four sides of her arrowhead shape, plus missile launchers and the seventy-kiloton-per-second lances generally used as anti-fighter guns.
Avalon was less than two thirds the size of modern ships, as the technology behind the Alcubierre-Stetson Drive had advanced significantly in the forty years since she had been built. Past her, he could see the twelve ships of the Castle Federation’s New Amazon Reserve Flotilla – the smallest and oldest of them twenty years newer than Avalon, and a quarter again her size.
“She’s a special case,” Kyle said finally, continuing to eye the old carrier. “The Navy’s Old Lady, gussied up one last time.”
After that, Kyle was silent, considering his new ship and his new command. One last time was true – rumor had it that the tour of the Alliance that they’d been assigned to carry out was Avalon’s last mission. Once they were done, they would deliver the old lady to the shipyards of the Castle system itself, where she would be gently laid to rest.
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
19:00, July 5, 2735 ESMDT
DSC-001 Avalon – Flight Deck
Exiting the shuttle, followed closely by the two Flight Commanders he’d brought with him, Kyle found the ship’s Captain waiting. He was a tall, gaunt man with iron-gray hair who looked like he’d gone best out of three with Death – and the Reaper had kept an eye.
Modern prostheses could be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, but Captain Blair’s was
an older model, an emergency implant Kyle had most commonly seen on men and women injured in the War who were proud of the plain but extremely functional metal eye.
“Welcome aboard Avalon, Wing Commander Roberts,” the Captain greeted him with an extended hand. Like Kyle, he wore the standard shipsuit that, despite imitating the appearance of slacks and a turtleneck, was a single piece garment capable of sealing against vacuum and sustaining the wearer for at least six hours, underneath his formal uniform jacket – piped with gold in the Captain’s case for Navy, blue for the Space Force in Kyle’s.
“I am Captain Malcolm Blair,” Kyle’s new commanding officer continued. “I wanted to welcome you aboard in person, though your Flight Group is waiting to show you the song and dance.”
Blair gestured slightly behind him, where the four Flight Commanders leading the squadrons currently aboard the carrier stood at rigid attention.
“Thank you for the welcome, Captain,” Kyle replied. “I understand we have our work cut out for us.”
“We do,” Blair confirmed. “Uniform of the day is shipsuits until further notice,” he continued cheerfully with a tug at the gold-banded sleeves of his uniform. “We have enough work going on throughout the ship that an accidental loss of pressure isn’t impossible.”
“Understood, sir,” the Wing Commander replied, glancing past the Captain again to the men and women he would command.
“Allow me to introduce you to your Flight Commanders,” Blair asked, stepping aside and leading Kyle and his two trailing officers forwards to where the Flight Group waited. “Your senior squadron leader is Flight Commander James Randall.”
A Question of Faith: A Castle Federation Novella Page 6
