Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (4 page)

“All right Commander Pendez. Take us out – nice and slow now,” Kyle ordered softly, watching through both the bridge screens and his neural implant as the last of the umbilicals and gantries finished retracting from
Avalon’s
hull.

They had enough crew aboard that he had a full bridge shift gathered around him. Solace had taken one of the observer seats at the back of the bridge and was watching everything with a silent, measuring gaze.

Flipping open another mental window, he turned his attention to the faded brown skin and shaved head of his Chief Engineer. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to get Senior Fleet Commander Alistair Wong back after the other man’s promotion, but he wasn’t complaining.

“How’s she looking, Commander Wong?” he asked, and the Engineer grinned broadly.

“Everything is clean and shiny down here,” Wong reported crisply. “All primary zero point cells are online. Mass manipulators are showing green across the board. Can’t tell you more without putting her through her paces, Captain.”

“That’s what we’re here for,” Kyle replied cheerfully, watching carefully as Pendez fired the immense ship’s maneuvering thrusters. Thanks to the ship’s dozens of mass manipulators of every size, it took far less thrust to move her than it should, but even so no one wanted to fire off her main antimatter engines remotely near a space station.

The Merlin Dry Dock slowly retreated from around the ship, still filling the entire view to the fore but no longer surrounding her on all sides. The station, one of six, was easily ten kilometers long and six high, holding bays designed to build, refit, and repair the immense starships that fuelled both the Federation’s economy and its war machine.

Avalon
moved slowly, but even under the light thrusters she would use this close to Merlin she felt more responsive and lighter on her feet than the last of her name. The Stetson Stabilizers that made Alcubierre drive FTL safe were limited by volume, not mass, and the old
Avalon
had been wrapped in a layer of neutronium armor. With new stabilizers, the new
Avalon
was over three times the size of her predecessor – but without the obsolete neutronium armor she only massed twice as much.

“Merlin Yards report us clear of the safety zone,” Pendez told him crisply. “They have cleared us to initiate main drive.”

“Then rotate us and make your course for the testing area, Commander,” Kyle replied. “Let’s see what this young lady can do. Take us to seventy gravities to start. Nice and slow still.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied.

The image of the world around them spun as the thrusters rotated the massive ship in space, aligning her with the testing area a full light hour clear of the yards. Then, with a rumble that rippled through the entire ship, the massive hydrogen-antimatter rockets at the rear of the ship flared to life.

Mass manipulators throughout the ship reduced her mass related to the exhaust blasted into space. More mass manipulators offset the acceleration – and yet
more
mass manipulators
increased
the mass of the superheated gas blazing out.

The combination of the three sets of manipulators brought the fuel usage down to almost zero. Seventy gravities was ‘Tier One Acceleration,’ most commonly used by civilian starships as it used almost no fuel.

It was still blisteringly fast by any absolute standard, and Kyle watched the Merlin yards rapidly drop behind them with a small smile. A ship, an engine and open space – what more was there to ask for?

“Well, Wong?” he asked the engineer after they’d been running for a full minute.

“What?” the engineer asked. “You mean we’re moving? I could barely tell. Are we going to actually test the ship sometime today?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘the ship is fine,’ shall I?” Kyle asked, his smile broadening. He turned back to Pendez. “Commander, take us up to two hundred gravities. Let’s test her at flank speed.”

“JD-Ships rates our flank speed at two thirty five,” Pendez pointed out.

“And I suspect they underrated her,” Kyle agreed brightly. “Let’s take her to two hundred to start, shall we?”

He didn’t feel a thing. If he hadn’t been watching the dry dock on the screen and tracking the ship’s speed, he wouldn’t have realized they’d just nearly tripled their acceleration. He let the ship run for about thirty seconds and caught Wong’s faked impatience in his window.

Kyle shook his head at the engineer.

“Behave, Alistair,” he murmured. “Let’s not act like children in the candy store, shall we?”

Wong looked mildly abashed, but smiled cheerfully. “She’s just purring down here, Captain.”

“I get the hint, Commander Wong,” Kyle agreed, loudly enough for everyone on the bridge to hear him. “Commander Pendez – take us to two hundred and thirty five gravities please. Hold that for sixty seconds, then begin incrementing by one gravity every ten seconds until Senior Fleet Commander Wong tells us to hold.

“Wong,” he turned back to the engineer. “Watch your scopes carefully. As soon as we clear the Tier Two plateau, let Pendez know.”

Each tier represented a ‘flat spot’ in the fuel efficiency chart, unique to each ship’s manipulator and engine setup though generally classifiable. Once they
left
that flat spot, they would start burning more fuel for each kilometer per second of speed –
fast
.

“Two hundred thirty five gravities, aye,” Pendez replied, and the ship smoothly responded to her commands again.

Sixty seconds passed without incident, confirming, if nothing else, that the Joint Department of Technology and Design’s Ship sub-department hadn’t underestimated the ship’s ability.

“Beginning increments,” Pendez announced, and Kyle caught even Solace starting to hold her breath. He flashed the XO a quick smile, and she shook her head, ever so slightly, at him.

Seconds ticked by slowly.

“We have reached two hundred and forty gravities,” the Navigator announced. “Still running clean.”

Now
Kyle
caught himself holding his breath. It was rare for JD-Ships to be more than five gravities out on their estimate of a ship’s acceleration tiers.

“Two forty-five,” Pendez reported. “Wong?” she asked.

“Definitely in the tier,” the Chief Engineer replied calmly. “Keep running her up, Commander. I’ll let you know when we hit the line.”

Ten seconds more passed. Then another ten.

“Two hundred and
fifty
gravities.” Now Kyle
was
holding his breath – only to exhale quickly as Wong spoke.

“That’s it, slow her back down,” he snapped quickly.

Pendez instantly cut their acceleration by twenty gravities, and Kyle studied the numbers carefully, trying to hide the giant grin taking shape on his face.

“I think I owe some JD-Ship’s designers a beer,” he said loudly. “Ladies and gentlemen, we just clocked in at two hundred and fifty one gravities for Tier Two acceleration. That makes us, officially,
the fastest damn ship in the Navy.
”

“I have to object, sir,” Mira Solace put in, and Kyle turned back to her observer chair with a raised eyebrow. “Based on my own analysis, that actually makes us the fasted damn ship… in the
Alliance
.”

“She didn’t even strain, sir,” Wong interjected. “I’m comfortably rating our flank speed for two hundred and fifty gravities.”

“Commander Pendez? Senior Commander Solace?” Kyle asked the others. “Any disagreement with Senior Commander Wong’s assessment?”

“None, sir,” Pendez replied, and Mira simply shook her head.

“Sir,” Wong interjected slowly. “We passed Tier Two acceleration parameters, but… the ship wasn’t even straining. I’d like to take her higher.”

Kyle stopped, thinking for a long moment. There was, theoretically, no reason a starship couldn’t make Tier Three acceleration – the five hundred gravities usually reserved for starfighters. Most starships weren’t built to be able to do it, as the Tier 3 ‘flat spot’ in fuel consumption was much, much higher.

It wasn’t something he could justify on a regular basis, but knowing how hard they could push the ship in an emergency would be useful.

“That’s a daring suggestion, Senior Fleet Commander Wong,” he said very, very softly, glancing at Solace and Pendez. Pendez looked like a puppy who’d just had a bone waved in front of her face. Solace was… unreadable.

“If you see the
slightest
strain, we pull back to two fifty immediately,” he ordered. “Commander Pendez – initiate a ten gravity every ten seconds increment. Let’s see how fast we can go, shall we?”

There was almost no chance that any acceleration would leak through to the ship, but he saw several members of the bridge crew – including Solace – strap themselves in. He couldn’t – it would show a lack of faith.

“Ready, sir,” Pendez reported.

“Engage,” he replied. As the ship began to leap forward, he hoped that no one else could see where his hands were clenching the sides of his chair. Despite his orders to Wong, this was still risky – risky enough he’d never try it any further away from the yards that could fix the ship.

The ship smoothly accelerated to two hundred and sixty. Then two hundred and seventy. Three hundred gravities passed without even a tremor, though the fuel levels being reported in one of his mental windows were dropping faster than he’d ever seen outside a starfighter.

Three hundred and
fifty
, and Kyle watched the numbers and metrics like a hawk. They were burning fuel prodigiously, but the ship seemed to be able to take it.

Then, just past four hundred gravities, his sensors went crazy.

“Zero thrust,
now!
” he snapped and Pendez obeyed. The ship’s acceleration cut to zero but the chaotic mess across the ship’s scanners remained. After a few seconds, it began to slowly dissipate, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he realized the sensors themselves weren’t damaged.

“What happened?” Kyle demanded of Wong. The engineer had disappeared from the com screen, but returned after hearing Kyle’s voice.

“Nothing permanent?” the Chief Engineer said questioningly. “We’ll have to look into it, but it looks like several of the positron feeds opened all the way up. We had intact antimatter leaving the ship.”

“Where it annihilated against the exhaust outside the ship, and lit up the sky like we were firing off nuclear fireworks,” Kyle finished grimly. “How long is that going to last?”

“Depending on how many positrons got out… thirty, forty minutes?” Wong replied.

“All right people,” the Captain said calmly, “we know we’ve got a four hundred gravity emergency sprint, and I think that’s good enough. Let’s see if we can make it through the tests without blowing up anything
else
we don’t mean to.”

Shaking his head, his grin returned. Despite its ending, it had been exhilarating to, even for a few moments, see the massive carrier fly like a starfighter.

“We’re still on course for the testing zone, I presume?” he asked Pendez.

She nodded.

“All right. Take us over at two hundred and fifty gravities. It’s time to reduce our surplus asteroid supply!”

#

Michael hadn’t been on the bridge during their attempt at a sprint, but he’d been linked into the ship’s network while reviewing his new Wing Commanders’ files. It had been impressive to watch, though the ‘fireworks’ display at the end had been a little disconcerting.

Now, he was strapped into the cockpit of his starfighter, glancing around him with both his eyes and his starfighter’s sensors.
Avalon
had two hundred and forty starfighters, all
Falcons,
with six
Falcon-C
command starfighters reserved for the CAG and the five Wing Commanders – each of whom led a six squadron wing as large as the old
Avalon’s
entire Flight Group.

He sat inside his own command starfighter, one of the eighty already loaded into the big carrier’s launch tubes. His starfighters made up the second part of the live fire test, and he watched Captain Roberts test the ship’s main weaponry with interest while preparing for his turn.

First, an innocent asteroid was the target of all of
Avalon’s
forward facing missile batteries. Eight Jackhammer capital ship missiles blasted into space at a thousand gravities to annihilate the poor planetoid in multiple gigatons of fire.

That test complete, the carrier aligned on a new victim, and twenty-four seven-hundred-kiloton-per-second positron lances rippled across space. Accelerated antimatter collided with the ice of the artificial target, and then the asteroid came apart in a glitter of debris.