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

“Alliance Battle Group Seventeen,” Kane said bluntly. “Being assembled around the new
Avalon
. It’s a multi-national force, and will require an admiral both experienced in battle and in managing a multi-national force.”

“
Avalon
, huh?” Dimitri said as he released the chair and walked a half-circle around Kane’s desk, studying the hologram. “That’s quite the strike force,” he continued. “What’s the catch?”

“A bunch,” Kane told him. “The Trade Factor doesn’t have a seventh-generation starfighter yet – hence them contributing a battlewagon. The Imperium
does
, and their cruisers are bringing the first wave of their
Arrow
type fighters. We’ve made sure both
Avalon
and
Cameroon
have full wings of
Falcons
, but no one has built doctrine for
Falcons
flying with
Arrows
yet.

“Last, but not least,
Avalon
hasn’t commissioned yet,
Horus
hasn’t arrived yet, and Alliance politics mean at least your first mission is going to be glorified babysitting.”

Dimitri eyed the force.
Avalon
was the biggest ship by far, but the battleship and all three battlecruisers were of a similar generation – which meant of a similar size. The only difference between a battleship and a cruiser, after all, was the role. Cruisers carried fighters, though
battle
cruisers still had battleship-grade guns – just not as many of them as a battleship.

“It sounds like I’ll want to raise my flag on
Cameroon
,” he observed. “Let the new
Avalon
get their feet under them
without
the Admiral hanging over their shoulders.”

“Normally I’d agree with you,” Kane allowed, “but in fact, I’d regard it as a personal favor if you did fly your flag from
Avalon
.”

Dimitri raised a questioning eyebrow at his friend.

“I ended up giving her to Captain Roberts,” the head of personnel for the Federation’s military told him. “The kid is good – the ‘Stellar Fox’ has more potential and more killer instinct that any other three Captains I could name, but he’s also the most junior Captain in the fleet.”

“You want me to mentor him,” Dimitri said quietly. “It’s… not my favorite task, Mohammed.”

“You’re good at it,” Kane pointed out. “Those who
survive
your mentorship do well – and Roberts needs the crash course, unfortunately.”

Dimitri grunted, looking at the six ship battle group again.

“My life is the Federation’s,” he repeated finally. “But you’ll owe me.”

“I don’t have any appointments left till one,” Kane replied. “May I offer lunch as a down payment?”

“So Doc, am I going to be able to dance after it's all said and done?”

Surgeon-Commander Adrian Cunningham was more than used to his patient’s idea of a sense of humor, and the tall blond man looked down at Vice Commodore Michael Stanford with a sigh.

“That, Michael, will depend very much on whether you could dance before that door sliced off your legs,” the Doctor told the newly promoted starfighter pilot. “From your reputation, I don’t care to guess one way or another.”

Stanford, a dark-haired man with pale skin and blue eyes, grinned incorrigibly up at the much taller doctor.

“And here I was hoping the door chopped off the extra left foot,” he told Cunningham.

“Sadly, your new legs have the same genetics as your old ones,” the Doctor replied. “You’ll still have two left feet.

“In all seriousness, much as I know that’s not your preferred state,” Cunningham continued to a ‘mea culpa’ gesture from Stanford, “your new legs have grown in just fine. How’s the PT coming?”

“Slowly,” Stanford told him, shifting uncomfortably on the examination table. “I can walk on my own again at least.” He’d arrived without a wheelchair, which was an achievement on its own after losing his legs in September. “But I won’t pretend I can run a sprint. It’s a good thing I don’t need my legs to fly.”

“Don’t remind me,” the doctor said dryly. “Remember, Vice Commodore, it was
my
order you ignored to fly at Tranquility.”

“We needed me,” Stanford said flatly. “We needed everybody.”

“We did,” Cunningham allowed. “But you aren’t getting
back
in a cockpit, Michael, until I clear you.” The Surgeon-Commander – promoted, like most of the old
Avalon
’s crew, after the Battle of Tranquility – blinked in a manner Stanford associated with neural implant usage.

“Which I have now done,” he finished. “You are cleared to return to full active duty, CAG.”

Michael smiled and inclined his head to the doctor. He’d been informed a full week ago that he would be taking command of Starfighter Group Zero-Zero-One and acting as Commander, Air Group for the new
Avalon
, but, technically, that appointment was dependant on him being cleared for full duty.

Which had in no way prevented him moving aboard the all-but-complete supercarrier and picking quarters and an office. He’d known he was only an appointment away from being cleared, and he’d
wanted
Cunningham, now the head surgeon on DSC-078
Avalon
to sign off on him returning to duty. It had been Cunningham who had grounded him – correctly, as Stanford well knew.

Checking his own implant for the notification of the Surgeon-Commander’s decision, he saw two additional messages. The first made him curse – the second made him curse again, with a very different tone.

“Vice Commodore?” Cunningham asked slowly.

“Bad news and good news,” Stanford told him. “Mason didn’t get assigned to
Avalon
– she’s headed to one of Home Fleet’s cruisers to serve as XO.”

Senior Fleet Commander Kelly Mason had been Acting XO of the old
Avalon
at Tranquility – and was one Michael Stanford’s girlfriend. The CAG was out of the XO’s chain of command, so he’d hoped she’d be assigned to
Avalon
.

“That is unfortunate for you both,” the doctor agreed. “I’m presuming that’s the bad news?”

“Yeah. The good is we finally have a Captain,” Michael said with a grin. “They’re giving us Kyle back, Adrian.”

Cunningham blinked as he checked his own messages and nodded slowly as he saw that one.

“I believe, Michael, I should get you on your way,” the Navy officer murmured. “With no Executive Officer and no Chief Engineer aboard, I believe I’m actually the senior Navy man. I’ll need to organize Captain Roberts’ welcoming committee.”

Kyle greedily took in every centimeter of his new command as the shuttle shaped its gentle parabola over the Merlin Shipyards. She was immense, over twice the size of the old
Avalon
she was replacing, a jet-black spike in space still nestled amidst the gantries and modules of the orbital dry dock she’d been built in.

“I can take us for another loop before we dock if you’d like, sir,” the pilot offered, her eyes twinkling as she – and she alone, as Kyle had once again kicked the co-pilot out for an approach to a new command – watched his kid in a candy store glee.

Youngest Captain in the Navy or no, Kyle did still have a job to do, and he shook his head regretfully as he smiled at the pilot.

“That’s fine, Lieutenant,” he told her. “I’m sure I’ll find other excuses to see her from the outside. Take us in.”

With a nod, the young black-haired pilot slowed the shuttle even more, angling for the flattened prow of the carrier and the immense doors of her main flight deck.

The approach seemed silent, with no communication between the approaching shuttle and the carrier, but Kyle knew that even as he watched the massive supercarrier approach, the pilot was trading messages and information back and forth with
Avalon
at the speed of thought.

They approached the ship, their speed dropping as they came closer to the massive hatches. For a moment, despite having made this exact approach
hundreds
of times, Kyle thought the doors weren’t going to open for them.

Then they whisked aside with a speed that belied their multi-thousand ton mass, frictionless super-conducting bearings carrying their mass smoothly out of the way.

The shuttle entered the airlock, slowing to a handful of meters a second relative to the carrier. The doors closed behind them, just as smoothly as they’d opened, and the inner doors opened an immeasurable fraction of a second later.

With a precision Kyle wasn’t sure he could have emulated with his much reduced implant capability, the pilot settled the shuttle right next to the blast shield guarding the honor party. The tiny ship settled to the deck in the artificial gravity, and the thrusters shutdown.

“Everything checks out,” the pilot told him. “We’ll take care of the bird, Captain – sensors are showing the mid-ship exit should be cool enough to be safe.”

“Thank you Lieutenant, I appreciate the smooth flight.”

#

Kyle knew that
Avalon
didn’t have anything approaching her full complement of crew and officers yet. She would be fully crewed before she commissioned, but that was still eight days away, and she was still short everything from Marines to pilots to an Executive Officer.

He hadn’t been expecting a full honor party. At least he’d seen it on the way in, and was only mildly taken aback when the blast shield retracted leaving him facing a double file of Marines in green-piped black dress uniforms and the handful of senior officers aboard.

“Attention!” a familiar, hard-edged, woman’s voice snapped out. Forty pairs of boots slammed together, and forty gloved hands snapped on the stocks of battle rifles as an entire platoon of Federation Marines came to attention, rifles on their shoulders.

Kyle took in the platoon of Marines, led by a small women with dark-haired and sharply angled eyes, in honor guard formation around the grand total of three officers, one each of Navy, Space Force and Marines, which awaited him.

“At ease,” he ordered.

The tall blond man in the same uniform as Kyle, though with the Caduceus of the Navy Medical Corps under the two gold circles of his Navy rank, stepped forward and saluted sharply.

“Welcome aboard, Captain Roberts,” the man greeted Kyle, who the Captain
finally
placed as they shook hands.

“It’s good to be aboard, Commander Cunningham,” he greeted the doctor. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cunningham allowed. “If I may present all of your senior officers who have made it aboard? I believe you know Vice Commodore Stanford.”

Kyle shook Stanford’s hand firmly, noting the twinkle in the other man’s eye and suspected, quite strongly, who
hadn’t
mentioned to Cunningham that an honor party wasn’t necessary in dock.

“Michael, it’s good to see you.” He glanced at the Marine NCO and Lieutenant Major waiting for him. “We’ll talk later,” he promised, then turned to the others.

“Lieutenant Major Tyson McRory,” the burly company commander, a fit and tanned young man with shockingly white hair, introduced himself. “I command your Third Company – Major Norup will be arriving tomorrow, I believe, to take up overall command.”

“A pleasure, Lieutenant Major McRory,” Kyle told the youth, then turned his gaze on the woman standing next to him. She’d clearly passed Castle Federation Marine Corps height standards by the skin of her teeth and potentially tricky hair arrangements, but she wore the uniform as if born in it.

“
Master
Sergeant Peng Wa,” he greeted the woman, who had been a Gunnery Sergeant and the senior Marine Non-Commissioned Officer aboard the battlecruiser
Alamo
, his posting before the last
Avalon
. “I see the Marines have decided you’re better at keeping me out of trouble than most?”

“I believe the exact phrase Colonel Armand used, Captain Roberts, was ‘he didn’t ram any battleships with us aboard, and I can spare you if I have to’, sir,” Wa said primly.

Kyle laughed and shook the NCO’s hand warmly.

“It’s good to see you too, Master Sergeant,” he told her. “Dismiss your men,” he instructed, then turned to Cunningham.

“What one of these worthies,” Kyle glared, somewhat gently, at Stanford, “should have told you, Commander Cunningham, is that an honor party isn’t necessary before the ship has even been commissioned. Nonetheless, I’ll need the three of you with me on the bridge. Lead the way.”

Cunningham only gaped like a hungry goldfish for a few seconds. Kyle
liked
his new ship’s doctor.

Kyle led the three officers, currently the most senior officers aboard the ship, onto the new
Avalon’s
bridge, and breathed deeply of the faint smell of ozone that made up the ‘new ship’ smell. As a starfighter pilot, he’d smelled that scent a few times – but it was far rarer for a
Navy
officer to smell it.

Avalon’s
bridge was significantly larger than the Secondary Control he’d used to con the old
Avalon
into battle. The layout was different from the bridge of the older ship as well, with forty more years of knowledge of the needs of a deep space carrier built into the new ship’s design.

The screens that surrounded both the entire room and each console were entirely secondary systems. Most of the displays, and
all
of the control input, would be managed by the crew’s neural implants. While the Navy didn’t require the ninety-ninth percentile interface capability a starfighter needed, Navy officers still needed to have an above average ability to interact with computers through their implants.

The only thing identical between the old and new
Avalons
was the command chair. It sat on a raised dais in the exact center of the bridge, capable of three hundred and sixty degree rotation to allow the Captain to see over the shoulder of any of their officers.

Kyle walked over to the chair, stepping up onto the dais. He didn’t sit in the command chair yet, but linked into its computer systems with his implant to activate the recorders for the logs.

Glancing back at his companions, he slotted a computer chip into the receptacle on the chair, and then removed a piece of archaic parchment from his dress uniform jacket. He turned to face the other officers, currently the only people on
Avalon’s
quiet bridge.

“To Captain Kyle Roberts from Vice Admiral Mohammed Kane, Joint Department of Space Personnel, December Fifth, Year Two Thousand Seven Hundred Thirty Five Earth Standard,” he read crisply. “Upon receipt of these orders, you are hereby directed and required to proceed to the Castle system and report aboard the Deep Space Carrier
Avalon
, hull number DSC – Zero Seven Eight, there to take upon the duties and responsibilities of Commanding Office of DSC – Zero Seven Eight
Avalon
. Fail not in this charge at your peril.”

There was always some degree of noise aboard a starship, the hum of power conduits and air circulators. Even over that sound, though, he could hear the soft exhalation of his officers. Reading that paper made him the new master after the Senate of
Avalon’s
crew.