Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (24 page)

“I know the rodeo, Captain,” Stanford replied. “We’ll bring the bastard down.”

“Good luck, CAG,” Kyle said softly. “Seems we’ll need more than I hoped!”

It was good to be back in space. There was little Michael found more frustrating than sitting on the carrier, watching other people make the decisions that would decide whether or not he and his people lived and died.

With all of his starfighters out and moving, however, he had a
lot
more control over how things would end.

“All right people,” he told his flight crews. “Everybody but Bravo and Epsilon, set your course for
Triumphant
. Rokos, Nguyen – the Marines are in your tender hands. Try to get them to target in one piece?”

“I make no guarantees,” Rokos intoned ominously. “Though I’ll note that Major Norup owes me a beer.”

“Then you’ll want to be sure I survive to make good,” the Marine commander replied. “We’ll be fine, CAG. Go get
Triumphant.
”

“Good luck, Major.”

“
I’m
not the one charging a battleship in a tin can,” Norup pointed out.

Michael really had no response to that, so he let the channel drop as the two groups of small craft separated. ‘Tin can’ was a more accurate description of his starfighter than he figured the Marine commander knew – tiny as the thirty-meter wedges of his ships were by the standard of modern spacecraft, they still massed about as much as the old wet navy destroyers that had first carried the nickname.

Depending on how
Triumphant
reacted, this could be a very short flight or long one. If the battleship set her course to engage
Avalon
, they’d be engaging in an hour and a half at almost a third of lightspeed. If the battleship
ran
, they’d bring her down in about three.

It would be ten minutes before they knew for sure, though the time delay would drop as they closed – and perhaps more importantly, as the Q-Com-equipped probes fired ahead of them at a thousand gravities closed.

And… there were the Q-probes dying. What he was seeing on his scanners was still twenty-five minutes old, but it was now more recent than the last data from the dead probes.
Triumphant
continued on her course for a few minutes, though Michael winced as he saw the power readings from the scans she was sweeping space with.

Even at twenty-five light minutes,
that
was going to get a readable return off of
Avalon
. One way or another, the rogue battleship would know she was being hunted by the time the signal got back.

“What are they doing?” Kayla Arnolds, his gunner asked softly. “Are they… spinning?”

He was right, Michael realized as he reviewed the footage.
Triumphant
had ceased to accelerate, turned so her longest side was facing
Avalon
, and begun slowly rotating.

“They’re launching,” the CAG said simply. “Find me the missiles, Kayla.”

His command starfighter traded the third missile in each of its magazines for dramatically increased computer support. Linked into the systems via his implant, he almost
felt
the repeated reviews of the data with various levels of enhancement and different tools. The whole process took seconds.

There were almost certainly twenty-four missiles – a full salvo from the battleship – but they could only confirm fourteen of them. Four of
those
they only had vague locations on, and as Michael watched the computer downgraded one of them to ‘probable’ from ‘likely’.

Then it blipped up six
new
missiles as the battleship rotated again – a reload cycle complete on all of her launchers.

“Keep an eye on those birds,” he ordered. “I need an estimate of how many.”

“They’ll have to go live, won’t they?” Arnolds asked. “We’ll see them then.”

“I dislike surprises, Lieutenant,” Michael observed. “Keep them labeled on the feed, watch their course.”

More missiles popped up. Not nearly enough for them to be detecting all of them, but as the minutes passed, Michael was detecting
dozens
of definite and probable missiles – none of which had fired their engines, and none of which were on a direct course for
Avalon
.

“What
are
they doing?” he asked aloud.

As if the universe was listening, the missiles finally activated their drives. His starfighter’s computers dispassionately analyzed their numbers and course and gave him the most likely answer to his question.

Four full salvos, ninety-six missiles, activated their drives in a sequence carefully calculated to turn them into a single massive salvo. Their course arced away from
Avalon
, but his computers happily told him that they would almost certainly turn back, go ballistic, and make a final approach on the carrier from a direction his fighters could not intercept.

“Oh Starless Void,” he cursed as he grasped the dilemma that Captain Richardson had left him with. If he pursued
Triumphant
, he could bring the battleship to bay long before they escaped into Alcubierre – but
Avalon
would have at best a fifty percent chance of stopping that many missiles.

He ran the vectors to be sure and sighed.
Triumphant’s
commander had chosen his attack arc with care and skill – there was no line on which his fighters could catch the missiles and still have a chance of bringing the battleship to bay.

With two Wings detached to assault the depot, he only had three Wings – one hundred and forty-four fighters – left. He could,
maybe
, take
Triumphant
with one Wing, or stop the missiles with only one Wing… but to be certain of either…

“All fighters,” he opened a channel to the ships in his attack force. “New course downloading, setup for missile intercept.”

They could always catch
Triumphant
later – but if they lost
Avalon
, none of them got to go home.

Dimitri listened to the Vice Commodore’s decision with disbelief. He understood the CAG’s dilemma, but their mission was to catch
Triumphant.
He
had
to catch
Triumphant
.

“Captain Roberts,” he snapped. “That salvo will go ballistic before it reaches us. How much danger are we seriously in?”

“Sir, they have enough ECM in play that we can’t localize their vectors before they go ballistic,” Roberts told him grimly. “With a fighter intercept, we’re in no danger –
without
one, we’ll localize the missiles when they bring their drives back up for terminal maneuvers. We’d have less than a minute to intercept the missiles.

“With that many birds, we’re looking at a fifty percent chance of losing
Avalon
.”

“If he goes after the missiles, we’ll fail in our mission to catch
Triumphant
,” Dimitri snarled at the other man.

“We will catch
Triumphant
,” Roberts replied calmly. “Not today, perhaps, but we have a strategic speed advantage, and we have enough probes scattered around this system now that we’ll know their destination when they jump.

“Given those conditions, the preservation of this ship takes tactical priority over catching
Triumphant
today,” the Captain said flatly. “Ending our pursuit of
Triumphant
in mutual destruction has no purpose, Admiral.”

Roberts, Dimitri reflected, wasn’t thinking about their time limit. The Alliance might well pull
Avalon
back – or order them to hold Alizon! – if they didn’t catch
Triumphant
today. If they could still pursue
Triumphant
, though, the Captain wasn’t wrong.

“Damn it, Captain, you’re supposed to be the aggressive wonderboy,” he snapped anyway. “You’re the last man I expected to be a coward in the face of the enemy!”

“Aggression is about risk, sir,” Roberts replied flatly. “It’s about odds and probabilities, and knowing we can catch them later makes me perfectly willing to give up a ninety percent chance of catching
Triumphant
today to avoid a fifty percent of
losing Avalon
.

“I have no intention of dying for revenge today when we can live and have it tomorrow.”

The entire concept behind a missile strike with a ballistic phase was to use ECM and decoys to render the exact location of the missiles unpredictable. That way, they were almost impossible to destroy before they hit terminal range and brought their drives back up for their final attack runs.

Like most tactics, there was a counter-measure. In this case, using starfighters to intercept the missiles in their ballistic phase. While you couldn’t locate the missiles accurately enough to shoot them down, you could bring starfighters in close enough that
they
could locate the missiles.

Kyle watched impassively as Stanford’s fighters ripped through the missile swarm. The Stormwinds re-activated their ECM too late – a clear sign that the humans responsible for them weren’t expecting them to survive at this point. A good missile jockey would have followed the starfighters’ path and sent the lightspeed command to bring up the ECM early well before the attackers arrived.

“I show ninety-one missile kills, Captain,” Stanford reported. “Can you confirm?”

Kyle glanced over at Anderson who flashed a thumbs up.

“We have the same, CAG,” he told Stanford. “I’m pretty sure we can deal with five missiles.”

“Want me to take off after
Triumphant
?”

Avalon’s
Captain looked at the geometry to sighed.

“There’s no point,” he admitted. “Your velocity is all wrong at this point, you wouldn’t even get close before they jump. Reinforce the depot strike,” he ordered. “Let’s make sure the Marines get in.”

“Tally-ho, Captain.”

Kyle focused his attention on the depot. They had a new Q-probe in the area, so he had real-time data on the defenders again. Those sixty starfighters continued to orbit, which surprised him. They might be outnumbered, but he refused to fault the Commonwealth Navy’s will to fight.

“Sir, Wing Commander Rokos is on a channel for you.”

“Link him in,” he ordered.

“Captain, I’m receiving a lightspeed transmission from the depot,” the Wing Commander told him. “They’re requesting to speak with our CO, so I’m relaying to you.

“We are one hour from turkey shoot time,” he noted. “Activating relay.”

An image of a pale-skinned man with slightly pink eyes and pure white hair resolved itself on Kyle’s implants. A small icon on the screen noted it was a recorded message, transmitted a little over five minutes beforehand – Rokos’ fighters were still over five light minutes from their target.

“I am Captain John Paris of the Commonwealth Navy,” the albino said calmly. “My people have completed their scans of their starfighters and confirmed what I presumed from the beginning.

“While the officers and men and women under my command are brave, their morale has been shattered by betrayal, and I am willing to admit when we face a superior foe. To avoid further loss of life on this already bloody day, I offer the unconditional surrender of the Alizon Logistics Depot, the shattered remnants of its defenses, and all forces on the surface of Alizon.”

Paris sighed and bowed his head for a long moment before looking back up at the camera.

“I await the response of the Alliance High Commander,” he said quietly.

Kyle checked that Tobin had received the message – for some strange reason, he didn’t have an active link to the Vice Admiral right now – and then opened a link.

“Admiral.”

“Captain.”

From his frosty tone, Tobin hadn’t quite forgotten their earlier argument.

“The depot has offered their surrender,” Kyle said calmly. “How we proceed from here… is a strategic decision, sir.”

Frost or not, that got a quirk that might have been the beginnings of a smile from the old Admiral.

“Then I shall speak to this Captain Paris. Stay on the channel, Captain.”

Kyle watched as Tobin’s people quickly and efficiently setup for the recording, and then the Admiral turned to face the camera, his most intimidating dark scowl settling onto his face.