Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (26 page)

He smiled.

The easiest step was complete. He wasn’t, yet, committed – though as soon as
Avalon
left the Alizon system his career was over. No matter the price, he would make certain that
Triumphant
would not escape justice.

Captain John Paris was somewhat unsettling in person. The albino Commonwealth officer was extremely tall and gaunt – towering several centimeters over Kyle’s own daunting height – which combined with his red eyes, pale skin, and almost translucent hair into an odd visage even by Federation standards.

Two Federation Marines had led the way off of the shuttle onto the flight deck where Kyle and Tobin were waiting. Another dozen from the platoon Norup had left aboard formed an honor guard around the two Federation officers.

Paris himself was escorted by a pair of burly, but unarmed, Commonwealth Marines in full dress uniform. Two more Federation Marines followed him, escorting a second Commonwealth officer, a redheaded and broad-shoulder woman with the paired gold bars of a Commander.

Kyle stepped forward as the prisoner paused in front of the honor guard, offering the man a firm salute.

“Welcome aboard
Avalon
, Captain Paris,” he said calmly, reflecting again on the inevitable confusion of so many Alliance powers deciding a starship commander was an O-7. He and Paris had the same title, but he outranked the other man. With a nod, he led the man over to Tobin.

Reaching the Vice Admiral, Kyle rejoined his flag officer and formally introduced them.

“Captain John Paris of the Commonwealth Navy, this is Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin of the Federation Space Navy.”

“Admiral,” Paris said with a sharp salute. “I hereby surrender my facility and personnel into your keeping.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Tobin replied calmly. “On the honor of the Federation, so long as your people cooperate, no one will be harmed.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Paris replied. “I never expected to surrender my command to the Alliance,” he said quietly, “but strangely, all I feel today is relief that you were here.”

“We were in pursuit of
Triumphant
,” Kyle noted. “Even so, we did not expect what he did.”

“Commodore kaBhekuzulu knew about Kematian, obviously,” the base commander said quietly. “He demanded Richardson’s surrender.
Triumphant’s
XO informed us he had Richardson in custody and would surrender the ship and Richardson so long as kaBhekuzulu guaranteed that no one other than Richardson would face the death penalty.”

The skeletal Commonwealth officer shrugged, looking very tired.

“kaBhekuzulu agreed,” he said simply. “The crisis appeared over, and we stood down to allow the
Triumphant
to be taken in. You saw what followed.”

“You’ll forgive me, Captain Paris, if I am more concerned about the hundreds of millions Richardson killed on Kematian than the thousands he killed here,” Tobin said bluntly. “But do not worry. We will hunt Captain Richardson to the ends of the galaxy if need be.”

Kyle managed to avoid making any noticeable response to that. Hopefully, the Admiral was exaggerating – there were limits to how far
Avalon
could go, or how long they could indulge in this pursuit.

“I must confess, Admiral,” Paris replied, his voice very quiet, “that before I surrendered our facility to you I left a program in our surveillance network to inform Walkingstick of where
Triumphant
fled. Whether by your hand or by the Marshal’s, Richardson will pay for his crimes.”

Tobin grunted and gestured for the Marines to take Paris and his subordinate away. Once the prisoners had left, Major Norup exited the shuttle. The Marine was in an unmarked dark gray jumpsuit, the kind his people wore under body armor, and looked exhausted.

“Captain, Admiral,” he saluted. “I beg leave to report we have secured approximately seventy five percent of the Commonwealth base. We have identified and sequestered slightly over eighty percent of Captain Paris’ people – we’re using one of the storage platforms to hold them all. It’s been cleared of anything except food,” he noted.

“Excellent work, Major,” Kyle told him. For sixteen hours work in as large a facility as the Commonwealth had assembled here, that was almost a miracle.

“We have also managed to make contact with the command structure of the Alizon Guard,” he reported. “My understanding is that President Ingolfson is alive, but buried
very
deep – both literally and metaphorically. He is expected to be in a position to speak with Admiral Tobin by later this morning.

“My people are coordinating efforts with the Guard, but so far, the Terrans are being cooperative. If,” he finished with a wicked smile, “somewhat shocked at just how
many
intact, fully equipped, Guard units are still around.”

“Well done indeed, Major,” Tobin confirmed. “We’re having a staff meeting on
Avalon’s
next steps at oh nine hundred hours. It will impact your people, so I’d like you to be there.”

“Yes, sir,” was the disheveled Marine’s only reply.

Dimitri took a swallow of his coffee as he settled himself down at the end of the conference table, glancing around the room at the small group he’d gathered. If he failed to convince these five people of the validity of his plans and authority, he might well end up throwing his career away for nothing.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” he began calmly. “It has been seventeen hours since
Triumphant
went faster than light. Since it will take us two hours to get clear enough to engage our own FTL drive, that means we are a minimum of nineteen hours behind Captain Richardson, and according to my math, we’ll only make up four hours over the ten light years to Barsoom.

“We are under some pressure from High Command to bring
Triumphant
to heel and return to other duties,” he lied. “I want to get us underway as soon as possible – I would very much like to have us underway by thirteen hundred hours. Giving Captain Richardson more than twenty hours in a system that is effectively defenseless makes my teeth itch.”

“What about Alizon, sir?” Norup asked immediately. “The Guard may be doing the heavy lifting on the surface, but the Star Guard is functionally gone. Even if they have pilots, they have no starfighters or guardships.”

“Remember, Major, that Captain Paris’ surrender included the remaining starfighters,” Dimitri reminded him, “While the flight crews did their jobs and wiped their systems, my understanding is that we have a copy of the
Scimitar’s
flight and combat software. Vice Commodore?”

Stanford started, surprised, but nodded slowly.

“The
Scimitar
has been in service for years, and we’ve captured a few intact already,” he agreed. “We have full copies of their software to use in our simulators. The Q-Coms won’t work – we don’t have updated Commonwealth codes and we’re probably better off tearing the entangled particle arrays out of the ships for our own security – but we can give them control of the engines and weapons.”

“The Alizoni should be able to come up with flight crews for sixty starfighters,” the Admiral told his people. “As I understand it, the support ships we have left are capable of refuelling and rearming in space. They should be able to coopt some of the insystem clippers or civilian platforms to provide quarters for their crews, and we can leave… how many tugs would you be comfortable leaving, Captain Roberts?”

Avalon’s
Captain looked uncertain. Dimitri knew that Roberts had been aware of the original deadline, now expired, and hoped the man figured the Admiral was stretching his orders, not completely defying them.

“I’m not entirely comfortable only having eight ships for SAR,” he admitted finally. “But we can leave four. The Commonwealth platform had enough Javelins aboard to provide functionally infinite reloads for the starfighters as well. From a planetary defense standpoint, though, sixty starfighters is a pretty sparse line to shield a world.” The Captain paused. “
Triumphant
barely qualifies as a modern ship. We can probably spare one of Stanford’s Wings.”

“Agreed,” Dimitri told him. “The rest of Battle Group Seventeen is already en route here and can reinforce the Star Guard and whichever Wing we leave behind. I can’t see Walkingstick mobilizing an assault force and getting it here in the next twelve days.”

He turned back to Norup.

“I have no intention of leaving the Alizon Guard in the lurch, either,” he told the Major. “The truth is that we will not be attempting to board
Triumphant
,” he admitted. “Outside of a small detachment – the platoon or so you’ve already left aboard should do – for onboard security and supporting Marshal Barsamian, I don’t see any need for Marines.

“I intend to leave you and most of your battalion behind, quartered in the logistics base, with all of your assault shuttles. With you acting a fast response force, and the Commonwealth starfighters to provide a core force for the Star Guard, I believe the Alizoni should be able to secure their own system until BG Seventeen arrives.”

“That… makes sense,” the Major admitted with a sigh. “We can do that, sir.”

“Admiral,” Solace interjected, the first the dark-skinned executive officer had spoken so far. “We now know that Walkingstick knows exactly where Richardson was going from here. One of his main nodal forces is, well, only ten light years from Barsoom. He can have a ship – or even
multiple
ships – to Barsoom before we can get there.

“It’s a Commonwealth system, sir. Can we really justify leaving one of
our
systems swinging in the breeze to charge off to protect a Commonwealth system from a Commonwealth Captain?” she asked bluntly.

“This system needs us, sir. This kind of decision is your prerogative as the flag officer on the scene – we need to at least consider whether or not pursuing
Triumphant
is really in the Alliance’s best interests.”

Damn
, Solace was a clever woman. And a brave one too – Dimitri was sure several of the others had been thinking it, but Roberts’ XO had been the one to put it forward. Of course, she was junior enough that no one would hold being devil’s advocate against her.

“It’s not our place to second-guess Alliance High Command,” Sanchez snapped, Dimitri’s Chief of Staff leaping to his defense. He wondered, for a moment, if she knew what he was doing. She was perhaps the only person on the ship who
might
have overheard something.

“It’s not, Commander Sanchez,” Dimitri agreed, but he forced a smile on his face as he looked at Solace. “However, as Commander Solace says, discussing and considering these sorts of points is the responsibility of a flag officer – or a ship commander,” he added, nodding to Roberts, “on the scene.

“As it happens, Admiral Blake and I had this exact discussion.” Though the sides hadn’t been what he was trying to convince his people of. “High Command and I agree that we cannot risk the loss of face and sovereignty inherent in allowing the Commonwealth to exact justice for our dead. The Alliance has never allowed these atrocities to go without punishment at our hands, and we cannot change that policy now.

“
Triumphant
must – and
will
be hunted down and destroyed. We are the closest, and we will carry out this mission,” he stated firmly. “Now, in regards to that, I believe Senior Fleet Commander Sanchez has prepared a briefing on the Barsoom system?”

He seemed to have won his case. His officers were nodding and turning their attention to the briefing. Despite everything, it seemed to have been an astonishingly easy lie to carry off.

“Barsoom,” Sanchez began, “is a five planet system inside what has traditionally been Alliance space. It was scouted by ships from Earth around the same time as many of the planets that made up the first wave of colonization this far out, but deemed unsustainable for colonization.”

A model of the star system appeared in the middle of the table. It was a stereotypical five planet system – two gas giants in distant orbits, an asteroid field of debris the gas giants had kept from forming into planets, a burnt rock in a super-fast orbit, and a heavy atmosphere hothouse world just too close to be habitable.

The third planet was the key. It was a reddish blue, an odd tinge, but one Dimitri knew tended to be found on barely habitable worlds.

“The system was named for Barsoom III’s resemblance to what geologists believe Mars to have looked like tens or hundreds of millions of years ago. III has an atmosphere, even one breathable to humans. However, an extended weak period of the system star has resulted in most of the water on the planet being locked into the soil and a long-term die off of vegetation and animal life.

“Combined with a trio of large inner system cometary bodies, whose orbits are just fast enough to avoid being captured by Barsoom III but close enough in to strip atmosphere away every time they pass, the surveyors figured III would be uninhabitable by roughly Earth Standard Year three thousand and almost completely atmosphere-less by year four thousand.