Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (32 page)

“I do not intend to disobey these orders – but I also do not intend to fail.”

Michael leaned back in his chair with a small smile. Despite the beginning of the day, lifting the communication blackout was appearing to have a positive impact on morale. Certainly, his own morale had been boosted by the several messages waiting in the queue from Kelly Mason.

His girlfriend had settled well into her role as Executive Officer of the strike cruiser
Sunset
. That ship was assigned to the defense force securing the Tiāntáng system – one of Castle’s daughter colonies, and on the opposite side of the capital from the Commonwealth.

The most dangerous thing Kelly Mason was facing was an occasional patrol of the uninhabited systems on the Federation’s rimward frontier to make sure nothing untoward was happening in star systems rarely visited by man. Given the last few weeks aboard
Avalon
, Michael was guiltily
glad
she hadn’t ended up serving as the XO for the big carrier.

His door chimed, and he glanced up.

“Enter.”

As if summoned by his thought, Mira Solace stepped into his office. The elegant dark-skinned woman took a seat in front of his desk without asking and smiled slightly.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked. “Something warm? It’s been a hell of a day.”

“Tea, please,” she agreed. “You seem in a better mood this evening.”

“Like most people, lifting the blackout has done me some good. Yourself?” He poured a cup of tea and passed it to her.

“I’ve been busy,” Solace pointed out. “But yes, I did get to my backlog.” The XO smirked, a surprisingly girlish expression on the normally serious officer’s face. “My seventeen-going-on-thirty little sister left me a
long
message. Lots of stories about school, some chatter about a couple of boys in her classes – and a roughly five minute long lecture on just how
dreamy
the ‘Stellar Fox’ is and how lucky I am to be on his ship!”

Michael almost snorted tea as he laughed.

“Because his XO should be paying attention to how dreamy the Captain is,” he observed as he cleaned up the mess he’d made. “Siblings, huh?”

“She’s a teenager,” Solace agreed with a shake of her head. “Things like ‘chain of command’ are meaningless to her still – and, God willing, will stay that way. Anna is
not
suited to the military.”

“Neither was I at her age, looking back,” Michael pointed out. “For that matter, given his family history, I don’t think the Captain was planning on a military career at seventeen.”

“And here we all are,” she said softly, sipping her tea with unreadable eyes.

“Was there something you need, or was this just a visit?” Michael asked. She wasn’t really interrupting, but it was rare for the Senior Fleet Commander to show up in his office without a reason of some kind.

“Yes,” Solace replied, and sighed. “You know Kyle well, right?”

“I haven’t known him
long
,” Michael said slowly, wondering where this was going. “Only six months or so, really. But we’ve been through a
lot
of shit together in those six months.”

“He has an… interesting personal reputation in the Navy,” the XO said slowly. “The opposite of yours, in fact.”

Oh.
That’s
where this was going.

“He is interested in women,” Michael pointed out. “Inasmuch as he’s interested in anyone. You know about his son, right?”

“That wasn’t…” Solace trailed off in mid-objection and smiled sheepishly. “Yes, I know about his son.”

“Our dear Captain, having made an utter and complete mess of his first serious relationship, promptly decided he sucked at relationships and wasn’t going to touch them again,” the CAG explained, ignoring her objection as if she’d never said it.

“I see,” the XO said primly.

“So, you and the Captain, huh?” Michael gently poked.

“Would be against regulations, so I doubt either of us would permit anything to happen,” she said very precisely.

“But he won’t be in your chain of command forever, and your sister isn’t the only one making eyes at the war hero,” he concluded.

“I am not ‘making eyes’ at my commanding officer!” she snapped, then smiled sheepishly again. “I…
may
be harboring possibly inappropriate notions about the man, but I am nothing if not patient.”

Michael found himself having to clean up tea again, and he waved a warning finger at Solace.

“Patience would be the name of the game,” he warned her. “While I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Kyle has had… professional companionship in the last ten years, he hasn’t had a relationship since he joined the Navy.”

She shook her head, sipping her tea.

“I can’t believe I’m even thinking this,” she admitted. “We work well together, damn it. The last thing I want to do is screw that up with a god-damn schoolgirl crush!”

“Why does everyone come to me for relationship advice?” Michael asked rhetorically. “Does something about my string of broken hearts and almost-ruined career suggest a great skill at this?”

“I’m not sure I’m even asking for advice here, Michael,” Solace told him. “More… finding the lay of the land.”

“Dangerous land, my dear,” he replied. “Not just because he’s your Captain – though Stars know that’s enough! I suspect our dear Captain has more than a few landmines even a good friend hasn’t seen.”

She grunted, apparently lost in thought.

“Like I said, Michael, I can be patient,” she pointed out. “If it’s a crush fed by walking through hell together, then it will fade. If it’s not… well, I didn’t make it this far without knowing the tactics for dangerous ground.”

With everything happening, it had been far too easy for Kyle to put off delivering the message from the Joint Chiefs to Tobin. Eventually, however, it had to be done, and he found himself in the brig – still half-expecting to meet Sirvard Barsamian in the office just outside.

The Ship’s Marshal had not survived the flag deck. Another casualty of Tobin’s failures as a commander. He sighed, straightened and stepped into the brig.

“How can I help you, sir?” a Military Police Corporal asked. The Asian-featured woman saluted crisply, but she kept her other hand on the shotgun slung over her body armor, and an eye on the hallway leading to the detention blocks.

“I need to speak with Tobin,” Kyle told her.

“Cell A3,” she replied immediately. “It’s easy to pick out – it’s the only one with a guard outside.”

“Thank you, Corporal,”
Avalon’s
Captain said and heading down Corridor A – one of six blocks of twenty cells. The big carrier’s brigs were almost full, though thankfully only four had been occupied before the mutiny.

As the Corporal had told him, only one of the twenty cell doors in Corridor A had a Marine outside. He wore body armor over his green-piped shipsuit and held a battle rifle at port arms across his chest.

“I need to speak with the prisoner, soldier,” Kyle told him. A thought flipped an authorization code from his implant to the Marine’s, and the man saluted and stepped aside.

The door slid open at a mental command and the Captain stepped into the cell.

It wasn’t much of a room, basically a three meter cube. It had a bed, a console with a restricted entertainment library, and a Faraday cage layered into the walls that blocked implant transmissions.

Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin sat on the bed. He was staring at the wall, though not blankly. Kyle recognized the stance of someone running through their implant’s cyberneticaly perfect recall of events. The silicon remembered far more reliably than the neurons, though that also meant the loss of the silicon could be traumatizing.

Only a policy requiring shipboard backups for starfighter pilots had saved Kyle’s own memories when his implant was lost.

Sighing, he coughed softly. Tobin blinked and looked up at him.

“You look very grim, Captain,” the big Admiral rumbled softly. “You are not my executioner, and I sadly have little doubt I have earned whatever you are here to say. Do not fear hurting my
feelings
, Captain. That I have managed sufficiently on my own.”

“I have reviewed the Alpha One communiqué from the Federation Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Kyle told him, his voice formal. “I have also confirmed the situation with Fleet Admiral Blake.

“As of January Seventeenth, Twenty-Seven Thirty-Six, you are relieved of command of Battle Group Seventeen,” he said flatly. “Investigation of your involvement or knowledge of Senior Fleet Commander Sanchez’s mutiny will be carried out by qualified JD-Justice JAG personnel upon our rendezvous with the rest of the Battle Group at Alizon.”

“There will need to be charges of incompetence laid as well as whatever they’ve already set their minds on,” the big man said quietly. “I should have seen and prevented Sanchez’s plan. She was
my
Chief of Staff.”

“I… cannot disagree, sir,” Kyle said quietly. “But I will neither be responsible for the investigation nor sit on any Board or Court. I am far too close to this matter.”

Tobin closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, he wouldn’t meet the Captain’s gaze.

“I failed you, Captain Roberts,” he admitted. “I failed you, I lied to you, and I betrayed you. But please,
please
, tell me you didn’t turn the ship around.”

“We were never supposed to have left Alizon,” Kyle pointed out. “Our orders have not been changed.”

“Damn it all, Kyle – don’t make me beg,” Tobin said softly, desperately. “You
can’t
let Richardson get away. We can’t let so many deaths go unavenged.”

“Our orders have not changed,” Kyle repeated. “But I have been authorized to proceed to the Barsoom system. No one ever disagreed with you, Admiral. But revenge
couldn’t
be our priority. But since you dragged us this far, it seems I will finish the job regardless.

“I will bring Richardson down, Dimitri,” he promised very, very quietly. “You should never have done it, but you will not have sacrificed your career in vain.”

Avalon
erupted into the Barsoom system in a blast of Cherenkov radiation, followed by full spectrum sensor sweeps. Emergence would temporarily emit as much energy as a small star, and Kyle saw no reason to pretend their entrance was stealthy.

“Get me a location on
Triumphant
,” he ordered.

“Data coming in now,” Commander Anderson replied. “We’ve got her – one light minute away and pushing for a zero gravity zone.” He paused. “Sir, I’m reading two
Saint
-class battleships on my scopes. They’re in hot pursuit of
Triumphant
.”

“Show me,” Kyle told him. His world spun for a moment, and then the tactical plot feeding his implants updated and he saw the three starships.

They’d arrived, it seemed, at the end of an hours-long game of cat and mouse – and the cats had definitely lost. The two
Saints
had a thirty gravity advantage over
Triumphant
, but they were ten million kilometers behind her with only a thousand kilometer a second advantage.

Triumphant
was a little over two light minutes, almost thirty eight million kilometers, from reaching the zero gravity zone she was aiming for – a space cleared of debris by the motion of Barsoom’s outer planets. She would reach that zone and bring up her Alcubierre-Stetson drive in sixty minutes.

At that point, the
Saints
would still be ten minutes from their own weapons range. Captain Richardson had escaped his pursuers again. Except…

Kyle had already put together a plan in his head. Now it was time to use
every
capability of his ship – including the ones they’d regarded as flaws.

“Commander Pendez,” he said calmly. “I’m transmitting you a vector. I want us on that course at four hundred gravities until I give you new instructions. Once on our way, prepare a jump calculation to take us into FTL and drop us
here
.”

He dropped a glowing sphere onto the tactical plot – at the exact point where
Triumphant
would be able to safely activate her Alcubierre drive.

“Sir, if we go to four hundred gravities…”

“We’ll leave a trail of antimatter that’ll light up the whole star system,” Kyle confirmed. “That’s what I want, Commander. Make it happen.”

He flipped open another channel.

“Vice Commodore Stanford, are you ready to launch?”

“We are,” his CAG confirmed. “But we’re a long way away.”

“I know. I’m arranging some cover, then we’ll be leaving you behind to go say hi more closely. Do you follow?”

There was a long pause, during which the entire ship trembled as Pendez got her underway at a pace that would burn days’ worth of fuel in minutes.

“I think so, sir,” Stanford replied. “Initiating launch sequence. We’ll be clear in forty seconds.”

“Anderson, have they seen us yet?” Kyle asked.

“Should have just,” he confirmed. “One minute till we see any reaction on their part.”

“So let’s see what happens,”
Avalon’s
Captain said with a smile. “We’ll give Stanford that long to get clear.”

“Sir, if we’re leaving fighters and jumping in front of
Triumphant
…” Anderson hesitated. “I feel obligated to point out we don’t match her firepower by a long shot without our fighters.”

“But our deflectors are twice as strong as hers, which means we outrange her by half again,” Kyle shook his head. “I’m not worried about engaging
Triumphant
in a ship-to-ship duel. It’s those
Saints
whose guns scare me.”

Seconds ticked away as
Avalon
burned through space – on a course
exactly
parallel-but-opposite to
Triumphant’s.

“All starfighters are away,” Anderson reported. “They’re flying
into
our exhaust trail?”

“The positrons carry a charge,” Kyle pointed out. “They’re not focused or under pressure, so they’re not a significant threat to a ship with deflectors up. Makes a great shield.”

“
I
can barely see them,” the Tactical Officer whispered, his voice surprised.

“Sir, we’re burning a day’s worth of regular fuel every fifty-two seconds right now,” Pendez pointed out. “When are we jumping?”

“Captain, transmission received from the Commonwealth ships!”

Kyle nodded and turned to his Navigator.

“Take us into FTL now, Maria,” he ordered.

As the singularities and Stetson stabilization fields flickered into place around the carrier, the familiar distortions settling across his view,
Avalon’s
Captain leaned back in his chair and nodded to his communications officer.

“Forward me their message.”

The image of a dark-skinned man with Amerindian features in the red-sashed black uniform of the Commonwealth Navy, appeared on his implant feed. The stranger’s hair was tied back in what appeared to be a shoulder-length braid, and his collar bore the single gold star of a Commodore – the Terran equivalent to Kyle’s own rank.

“Federation warship, this is Commodore James Tecumseh aboard the battleship
Saint Anthony
,” Tecumseh said calmly. “I can guess why you’re here. I can
understand
why you’re here.

“But this is Commonwealth space, and your presence is not welcome.”

Tecumseh paused.

“We are in hot pursuit of
Triumphant
. I will permit you to witness the conclusion of this pursuit, but if you do not then withdraw from this system, I will have no choice but to engage and destroy your ship. Should
Triumphant
elude us, such an action would prevent me from pursuing Captain Richardson as he deserves.

“His actions are a stain on the honor of the Commonwealth Navy,” the Terran Commodore concluded. “I would shed no blood today but his.

“Tecumseh, out.”

Kyle smiled grimly.

“Time to emergence?”

“Five minutes and counting,” Pendez replied.

“Let’s see who counts as in hot pursuit then, shall we?” he murmured.

#

Six minutes after disappearing from normal space,
Avalon
emerged again in a second burst of Cherenkov radiation. While they hadn’t actually broken lightspeed in their micro-jump, the difference between the starship’s regular acceleration of two hundred and fifty gravities and the estimated Alcubierre-Stetson drive acceleration of a hundred and thirty five
thousand
gravities still made short A-S hops useful.

Now, they were in
front
of
Triumphant
– emerging only a handful of kilometers from where Kyle estimated the rogue Commonwealth warship was planning on going FTL – with a vector directly towards her.

“Record for transmission to Commodore Tecumseh,” Kyle ordered, then smiled calmly into the tiny camera pickup on his chair.

“Commodore Tecumseh, this is Captain Kyle Roberts aboard
Avalon
,” he greeted the other officer calmly. “As you yourself said, I am in hot pursuit of
Triumphant
and have been since Captain Richardson launched antimatter warheads at an inhabited planet under the protection of the Alliance of Free Stars.

“My assessment is that your task group will not be able to intercept
Triumphant
before she escapes this system.
Avalon
will.

“You are welcome to bear witness to the fate of those who embrace atrocity as a weapon of war, and if you do not intervene we will leave this system with no further conflict. Captain Richardson’s actions place him beyond the pale – and beyond the protection of the Commonwealth.

“I would shed no blood today but his,” Kyle quoted back at the officer, and then killed the transmission.

“Do you really think that will work, Captain?” Solace asked over the link from Secondary Control. “Richardson may be a rogue, but standing back and watching us blow a Terran warship out of the sky is one hell of a pill for Tecumseh to swallow.”

“It’s a long shot,” he admitted. “I call it seventy-thirty he fights. Be prepared for it.”

“Sir,
Triumphant
is adjusting course,” Anderson announced. “She’s reversing her acceleration – they’re falling back on Tecumseh’s battle group.”

“Richardson is thinking the same thing you are, Commander,” he told Solace. “He stands a better chance in a Commonwealth brig than a shattered starship, so he’ll play it up.”

“Take us after her, Commander Pendez – flank acceleration.”

“Oh thank god,” his Navigator muttered. He chose to ignore that. The roughly two minutes they’d spent at four hundred gravities had served multiple purposes, but it had also burned through nearly five percent of the ship’s total reaction mass reserve.

They were now almost two light minutes from
Triumphant
– over two and a half from
Saint Anthony
and her sister ship. With a combined velocity approaching three percent of lightspeed, however, that distance was going to evaporate quickly.

“Drones away,” Anderson reported. “Assuming no change in profile, we’ll have real-time information on
Triumphant
in roughly forty minutes. I’m staggering drone launches and acceleration profiles, we should be able to maintain real-time information indefinitely from that point.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Kyle replied.

The battleship was going to change acceleration eventually – if Richardson tried to run
through
Tecumseh’s battle group and leave them to fight
Avalon,
it was unlikely to end well for the rogue Captain. Sometime in the next half an hour, he would start accelerating back towards the carrier.

Kyle had a guess, but sharing it with his crew would be embarrassing if he was wrong, so he watched the timer tick away the minutes

“Sir!” Anderson suddenly interrupted his thoughts with a shout. He saw what the Tactical Officer had seen almost instantly.

Saint Anthony
was breaking off. Her course was exactly perpendicular to her previous path, pulling her away from the coming confrontation at over two kilometers a second squared.

“Do we have a message from our Terran friend?” he asked.

“Wait, watch the other ship,” Anderson interrupted again, and Kyle looked at the tactical feed again with a sigh.

The second
Saint
remained on course for rendezvous with
Triumphant
.

“We have received a transmission from Commodore Tecumseh. Feeding it to you, Captain.”

The Terran Commodore appeared on the screen, looking surprisingly calm for a man who had chosen to condemn an entire battleship to death.

“Captain Roberts,” he said calmly. “You are correct in your tactical assessment. For the sake of the honor of the Commonwealth Navy, and to see these criminals brought to the justice their actions have earned, I am breaking off and leaving
Triumphant
to you.

“If you do not vacate the system upon the neutralization of Captain Richardson’s vessel, I will take whatever actions are necessary to defend Barsoom. Until then, however, I am declaring a temporary cease fire in the interest of justice.”

He paused, tilting his head slightly in the manner the vast majority of humans had acquired when receiving a voice transmission to their implant. The big dark-skinned Commodore sighed.

“I must also warn you that Captain Antioch of
Saint Augustine
has informed me my orders are illegal and is continuing on his course. While I will not engage you prior to
Triumphant’s
destruction, I will also not permit you to fire on the
Saint Augustine
.

“Tecumseh, out.”

#

“
Triumphant
has made turnover,” Anderson reported.

Kyle checked the time. Seventeen minutes after they’d started accelerating towards the
Saint Augustine
and still six million kilometers short of the other battleship.
Saint Anthony
had now separated two million kilometers from her sister ship, her velocity dropping as she fell back to defend Barsoom from any threat
Avalon
could make.

“Time to range for us,
Triumphant
and
Saint Augustine
?”