Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (19 page)

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 spy 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.

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.

“We –
I
– ignored the vulnerability of the planet, and half a billion civilians paid for it,” he said grimly. “I can’t imagine what kind of mental gymnastics it took to try to make Captain Roberts look in the wrong there.”

He tossed the datapad back to her, part of him
enjoying
her taken aback look. While she’d earned that strip the hard way, he knew he was mostly unleashing his self-hatred at her. It felt disturbingly good.

“So, like I said, you really don’t like Roberts, do you?” he snapped. “Is it going to be a problem?”

This obviously hadn’t been the response she’d been expecting to her report. Sanchez was gaping at him like a shocked goldfish.

“Sir, he is an inexperienced youth, promoted past his competence or proven capabilities,” she said sharply. “He has no respect for you, your rank or your people!”

“As Commander Solace pointed out to me a while back, Captain Roberts earned his planet the hardest way possible – winning a battle no one else could have,” Dimitri replied harshly. “He may not have experience at sitting in orbit dealing with bored spacers, but he’s one of the most combat-experienced officers we have. The only person on this ship with
more
combat experience, in fact, is me.”

His Chief of Staff was silent, and he glared at her for a long moment. Finally, she glanced aside, and he continued flatly.

“He has not exerted any privilege with regards to you and the rest of my staff that is not the prerogative of a Captain. I will
not
stand for you attempting to undermine him with me – and yes, Commander, I know what you’re doing. I came by the gray hairs honestly, and I’ve seen this bullshit before.”

Sanchez looked back up, and her eyes were hard and fierce.

“He won at Tranquility by being
reckless
,” she snapped. “He is too familiar with his officers, too unthinking in his aggression. That man is
dangerous
to have in command of a warship of the Federation!”

That rocked Dimitri back in his chair. He hadn’t expected Sanchez to be quite so… vehement in her opinion of Roberts.

“Commander, I’m only going to say this once,” he said, his voice flat, cold, and quiet. She had to lean into hear him, and he met her ice blue eyes calmly. “
I
do not agree with you on this. Alliance High Command does not agree with you on this.

“If you continue to attempt to undermine my Flag Captain with me, or if I discover that you’re, God-forbid, trying to undermine him with his
crew
, you will be off my staff and out of the loop so fast you’ll be wondering what planet fell on you.

“Am I clear?”

She dropped her gaze to his desk, but said nothing.

“I said, Commander:
Am. I. Clear?
”

“Yes, sir,” she ground out.

Kyle held his steaming cup of coffee carefully, warming his hands as he watched his and Tobin’s senior officers enter the briefing room. It was early in the ship’s day, but with barely forty-five minutes until they emerged in KG-779, anyone with complaints was keeping them to themselves.

Once Wong and Anderson trickled in, the last of the ten senior officers aboard the ship to arrive, Kyle rose to get their attention.

“If everyone has their caffeine of choice to wake up, we can begin,” he said crisply. “We’re coming up the KG-779 system. If we’re lucky, we’ll find
Triumphant
somewhere in system where we can intercept her.

“Unfortunately,” he warned the others, “the likely situation is that the Commonwealth is only using KG as a waypoint. It is possible that
Triumphant
has already left, and even if she is still in the system, she’s likely to be far enough out that she can initiate Alcubierre before we can bring her to into weapons range.

“While catching
Triumphant
would be preferable, our
objective
is to find where she went from here,” Kyle concluded. “We will not be able to sustain the same acceleration advantage that has brought us here so soon after
Triumphant
going forward. Commander Wong’s assessment,” he nodded to his engineer, “is that we can safely sustain one point zero five light years per days squared. A five percent edge adds up fast – but a ten percent edge added up faster.

“We will be deploying Q-Com equipped probes as soon as we enter the system, and if necessary, I intend to self-destruct those Q-probes rather than retrieving them,” Kyle concluded. “I do not intend to remain in KG-779 any longer than we have to.”

He looked around the room.

“Any questions?”

When no one responded, he nodded to Tobin’s Intelligence Officer. “Intelligence has, as usual, cut things down to the wire. Commander Snapes received an update on
Triumphant
less than an hour ago. If you could update us, Commander?”

The Lieutenant Commander, a tall and slim woman with jet-black hair and Asiatic eyes, stood and activated the hologram in the middle of the conference table.

“While we keep at least some information on file on all Commonwealth ships,
Triumphant
wasn’t deployed anywhere near us six months ago,” she told everyone. “Central Intelligence had to dig deep into their archives, and see what data they could beg, borrow, or steal from our allies.

“In the end, we identified Captain Jonah Richardson as the commanding officer of
Triumphant
.”

An image appeared in the middle of the table. Richardson was a pudgy man of just below average height, with thinning and faded brown hair. In his Commonwealth Navy file photo, he had a mildly bemused expression.

He looked like somebody’s favorite uncle, not a mass-murdering lunatic.

“Captain Richardson was promoted to O-6 five months ago, and given command of
Triumphant
when she was transferred to the Rimward Marches,” Snapes continued. “For those who aren’t up to date with Commonwealth policy, they assign starship commands to O-6s instead of the O-7 most Alliance navies feel is necessary.”

Kyle, for all that he had the same
title
as Captain Richardson, actually outranked the man. The Federation had long ago felt that the scale of a starship’s independence, firepower, and crew numbers meant that the ship needed a senior officer with an experience level older navies would have required of their most junior flag officers.

“Richardson has served in their Navy for fifteen years,” Snapes continued. “His last duty prior to command of
Triumphant
was commanding a guardship squadron at the New Krishna Navy Base. While on assignment there, he picked up no less than three reprimands for the use of excessive force to keep civilians away from the Navy Base.”

“Before anyone leaps to conclusions, by Commonwealth standards that basically means he fired a warning shot,” Tobin pointed out. “At least in their own territory, they’re damned careful of their force levels.”

“Indeed,” Snapes allowed. “The most important detail of his service at New Krishna for our purposes, however, is that is where he met his wife.”

Kyle had a sudden sinking feeling as he realized where this was going, and the Intel Officer nodded as she saw the officers catching the hint.

“He and Commander Janet Richardson were married a little less than a year ago,” she said quietly. “Commander Richardson was the Executive Officer of the battleship
Saint Christopher
, which was destroyed at Kematian. At the last information from Kematian authorities, we have definitely identified all officers retrieved from the escape pods.

“Commander Richardson was not one of them. She died with her ship.”

“That justifies nothing,” Tobin snapped, the Admiral then looking somewhat abashedly around the room.

“No-one is saying it does, sir,” Kyle said gently. “But understanding what drove our enemy to this kind of vicious stupidity helps us catch him.”

“Agreed,” Snapes replied. “My guess is that what we saw in Kematian was the result of a moment of bloodlust, revenge, and mob mentality on the bridge of a modern warship.

“Our reports are that Walkingstick has been apprised of what happened by the transport captains. It is extraordinarily unlikely that he will let this stand.”

“I have no intention of trusting
Walkingstick
to handle justice for Kematian,” Tobin said grimly. “We’ll burn this Richardson before he makes it home.”

“We need to be prepared for Richardson to react in ways we might not regard as rational, sir,” Snapes told the Admiral. “We can all-but-assume he had some form of psychotic break – and his crew went along with him.

“This is a man who has already demonstrated a willingness to commit mass murder, with a crew that has already followed him into the worst crime they could commit.

“What is that man going to do when we call on him to surrender?” she asked softly. “Hell, what is he going to do if the
Commonwealth
calls on him to surrender? He’ll know as well as I do that anyone who takes him is going to shoot him.”

“This could get very ugly, very fast,” Solace said softly. “If he decides he can’t go home, and the Alliance is to blame for his wife’s death…
Triumphant
is a modern battleship. With nothing to lose, they could do a
lot
of damage before we bring them down.”

“Then let’s make damn sure we bring him down first,” Tobin rumbled. “Starting here, in KG-779.”

“We have full shutdown,” Pendez reported. “Class Ones are on cooldown, all stabilizers are powered down and safed. We have entered the KG-779 system.”

“Thank you,” Kyle told her, studying his implant and the screens around him. They were currently showing the computer’s estimate of where the system’s trio of lonely planets were and not much else.

KG-779 was an old, dying, star. It had one rocky planet too close in to be of use, and two massive gas giants who had, according to the astronomers’ best guess, eaten each other’s moons over the eons.

“Commander Anderson?”

“Passives are pulling in data now,” his Tactical Officer replied. “We’ll have updated details… now.”

The data being fed to his optic nerve by his implant updated, a ripple spreading through the image of the solar system as the computer processed the light it was receiving. As ships appeared, the system tagged each one with the age of the light they were seeing – without Q-probes they were limited to old-fashioned speed of light.

“What are they
doing
?” he heard Solace ask aloud.

He was wondering the same thing. There were four ships on the screens –
Triumphant
and the three assault transports she’d been escorting at Kematian. The three transports were together and moving
fast
. They were already a full light hour into the system and dropping into the gravity well at almost three hundred gravities.

Triumphant
was well behind them, still in a region where they could enter Alcubierre Drive if they wanted, but also on a vector that would stop any attempt by the transports to
leave
.

“If I didn’t know better, and I’m not sure I do right now,” Kyle responded brightly, “I’d say the transports are running from
Triumphant
, and that Richardson is trying to keep them trapped in the system while keeping his options open.”

“Well, he’s a lot closer to us than the transports are,” Solace pointed out. “They won’t see us for an hour – he’ll see us in ten minutes.”

“Anderson. If we fire
now
how close will our missiles be when he sees us?”

“Still basically ten light minutes away, sir,” the redheaded officer replied. “To hit him at this range, we’d need an extended ballistic leg – we’re talking multiple hour flight time.” Anderson shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, but unless they
want
a fight, there’s no way we can engage them before they jump out.”

“I figured,” Kyle noted. “Commander Pendez, take us after him anyway. Let’s not push the engines though – let’s save our sprint for when we have a chance of catching the bastard.”

The big carrier smoothly set into motion, a soft trembling running through her hull as the mass manipulators offset her acceleration.

“Vector our probes in as close as possible, Commander,” he told Anderson softly. “I want the best sensor data we can get when he goes FTL.”

“On it. We’ve got six Q-probes heading his way at five hundred gravities, and two more dropping in on the transports.”

“Should we be doing something about those, sir?” Solace asked quietly.

“I’d love to,” Kyle acknowledged, “but there’s nobody closer than Kematian, and they’re a little busy. We could force them to surrender with Stanford’s fighters, but then we’d have to fly escort to take them anywhere useful.”

“Which is not happening, Captain, Commander,” Tobin interjected. “Those assault troops are useless without starships to clear their way into a system. I’m more concerned about taking out a modern battleship and avenging Kematian than neutralizing a few dozen thousand troops, when the Commonwealth has literally
millions
of soldiers to send.”

“He’s right, Commander,” Kyle told her. “The Commonwealth is far more restricted in terms of transport and spaceborne firepower than they are in ground troops. Some of their occupation garrisons are over a million strong. Those
transports
almost have more strategic value than the thirty thousand troops aboard.”

“Besides, let’s be honest, this whole trip is about revenge, not strategy,” the Admiral pointed out. “Our job is to blow
Triumphant
to hell and make it
damned
clear no one gets away with what they did.”

That was enough to silence both the bridge and flag deck for several minutes. Then, finally, Anderson sighed aloud.

“There we go,” he said. “Right on schedule – emergence plus twenty minutes.”

A moment later, Kyle saw what his officer had seen.
Triumphant
had – roughly ten minutes ago now – rotated in space and set course outwards at two hundred plus gravities.

“How close do our probes need to be for us to nail down his escape vector?”

“We either need a probe within two light minute for an exact reading, or three at least a light minute apart from each other to triangulate,” Anderson told him. “Close or wide – we need another thirty minutes for wide – or almost two hours to get a probe close enough.”

“You’ve got Q-probes going for both?”

“Of course,” the Tactical Officer sounded almost offended, which Kyle gave him. He
was
micro-managing.

Seconds ticked away as Kyle watched
Triumphant
on the display. The battleship was flying directly away from them, which wasn’t going to take them anywhere. It was almost as if they weren’t quite sure
where
to go.

“He’s running scared,”
Avalon’s
Captain said quietly. “No idea where to go.”

“Ten more minutes,” Anderson replied. “I hope he stays…”

“Damn,” Solace cursed, interrupting the junior officer. “There he goes.”

On the screen,
Triumphant’s
crew had made up their mind where they were going. Her headlong flight from
Avalon
stopped as she rotated in space. A moment later, she vanished in a bright blue blast of Cherenkov radiation.