Stellar Fox (Castle Federation Book 2) (31 page)

None of the mutineers were from the small section of people a standard electron beam couldn’t disable, and all four went down in spasming heaps. Michael approached the half-opened door carefully.

“It’s Stanford,” he shouted before exposing himself. “Is Solace there?”

“I’m here, CAG,” the exec responded. “We’ve got injured – I don’t suppose you have a medic with you?”

“Sadly not,” he replied. “Fernandez – get your ass down to the Infirmary and get some people from Cunningham,” he ordered one of his people. “If these
assholes
have picked a fight there, get back here and find help.”

He stepped over the half-retracted door and into Secondary Control. The carrier’s auxiliary command center was a mess. Consoles and screens were worse the wear for being used as cover, and too many people were injured. Now the shooting had stopped, one of the junior officers had grabbed a first aid kit and was seeing to the wounded as best she could.

“Do you have coms with anyone else?” he asked Solace as the tall black officer, looking much less elegant with a still-bleeding cut across her face and a security shotgun in her arms, unfolded from behind the command chair.

“We’re hard-linked to the bridge and engineering,” she told him. “Should be hard-linked to Flight Control and the flag deck, but those links seem to have been disabled.”

“We’re in control down in Flight,” he replied. “We had no coms with anybody.”

“All transmissions are jammed, and the ship network is down,” Solace said grimly. “Apparently your team in engineering had even better timing than you did – Wong’s people are all fine, and they’ve got a dozen mutineers in cuffs. He says the Drive is intact, no problems, and he’s locked things down so no one is going to cause any problems with it.

“As for the bridge, Master Sergeant Wa was apparently
worried
about it,” the XO said dryly. “Nobody told
me
she’d assigned an extra Marine to the duty – and had them standing by in a closet down in the corridor in god-damn
boarding armor
. The bridge is secure.”

Michael winced. Boarding armor was about two steps up from regular powered battle armor – it wasn’t nearly as maneuverable on a planet, as it was designed for vacuum and shipboard operations. It was also immune to any weapon that wouldn’t breach the hull. There was no way the mutineers had expected it or had had anything capable of injuring a Marine in it.

“What about the flag deck?” he asked. “That’s where Captain Roberts is, isn’t it?”

“No contact,” Solace admitted. “At this point, the flag deck is the last serious pressure point – I’d be worried about the armories, but Kyle locked them down before he went to arrest Tobin. I thought he was being paranoid.”

“Apparently, Sanchez was preparing a fifth column for if Tobin relieved Roberts,” Michael told her. “Now that we know Tobin was involved in everything…”

“Right. Let me talk to Sergeant Wa,” the XO said quietly. “I need that Marine in the boarding armor.”

Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin looked around his flag deck and wondered where the hell everything had gone so wrong.

His Flag Captain and four Military Police were in handcuffs against the wall. Half a dozen people – his staff, MPs, Marines – were dead on the ground, and his Chief of Staff seemed to have taken over everything.

“You won’t get away with this, Commander,” Roberts said, his voice admirably calm for someone in cuffs and being watched by people with guns. “We knew about your mutiny.”

“You heard the Admiral order it,” she pointed out. “That makes it not a mutiny.”

“The Admiral has already been relieved,” the Captain replied. “He has no authority.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Captain,” Sanchez said sweetly. “That little stunt of yours will only help hang you. I’ve been promised that on the
highest
authority.”

“Tobin never did any of what his code was used for, did he?” Roberts asked conversationally. “It was you. It was
always
you. What did the Terrans offer you, Commander?”

Sanchez laughed, and Tobin looked at her desperately as leaned against the console.

“Is this true, Commander?” he demanded. “Did you try to kill the Captain?”

“I don’t work for the Commonwealth, Captain,” his Chief of Staff mocked Roberts. “No, there are those in the Federation who knew you were doomed to screw up. I was placed to make sure the damage was limited. My actions are approved and ordered by members of the Senate itself.”

“You tried to assassinate the commander of a capital ship in the face of the enemy?” Tobin demanded. Suddenly, even his worry that they might not manage to catch
Triumphant
seemed small. His Chief of Staff was apparently a viper in their midst. If she wasn’t Commonwealth… if she’d been sent by a
Senator
…

“My orders were to remove him before he did serious harm,” Sanchez confirmed. “Utterly destroying his reputation and making his failures of judgement obvious to the public was preferred.”

The Admiral noted that nobody in the room except Snapes looked remotely surprised by this, and remembered with a chill that
Sanchez
had picked most of his staff. Backed by the wealth and power commanded by any Senator, she’d easily hidden a private force inside his staff.

Lieutenant Commander Snapes, on the other hand, looked utterly horrified. The Intelligence Officer was edging towards Sanchez, and Tobin wondered just what she had in mind. He was starting to think he’d made one
hell
of a mistake by not checking into his new Chief of Staff’s background more closely.

“Uh-uh,” Sanchez snapped, her gun suddenly flipping around to point directly between Snapes’ eyes. “Don’t try it, Lisa. I
know
you guessed what I used to do. For every minute of training you’ve got, they gave me an hour. You don’t stand a chance.”

The room was dim. Startlingly, impossibly, dim. Tobin realized he was shivering, and it had nothing to do with the temperature. He’d screwed up. He’d screwed up
bad
. Nothing he’d done was going to catch
Triumphant
or avenge Kematian – but it might allow an insane operative on his ship to kill his Flag Captain and betray the honor of his Navy.

“What happens now, Sanchez?” he asked, and his voice seemed very distant.

“Once I’ve confirmed we’re in control of the ship, we brig our idiot Captain, I make sure the records tie to our story, and then we go kill
Triumphant
,” she promised him. “You’ll have your revenge for Kematian, Admiral. A
Senator
will owe you. What’s a few incompetents and idiots versus that?”

Nothing. And everything. And the honor of the Navy. The honor Tobin had wanted to serve with his revenge and had stained with his betrayal.

The gun was still focused on Snapes. Sanchez was perfectly willing to kill a loyal, competent officer for no other reason than that the woman was in her way.

Something snapped inside Dimitri Tobin, and he found himself charging across the bridge. Everything seemed to move in such slow motion, Sanchez shoving Snapes away and spinning to point the gun at him.

He hit her with full force. Tobin was twice the blond woman’s size and he smashed her bodily into the console behind her. A moment later, he was flung to the side, gasping as his kidney seemed to explode in pain. A bladed hand slammed into his diaphragm, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

Struggling to rise, he saw Lisa Snapes tackle Sanchez from behind. The spy – whoever she really was – had already grabbed her gun. An elbow slammed into Snapes’ throat with a horrible crunching sound and the Intelligence Officer stumbled back.

Sanchez fired twice, and blood sprouted on Snapes’ uniform. Struggling vainly to breathe, the Lieutenant Commander collapsed, clutching at her throat and chest as she died.

Leaving the other woman to drown in her own blood, Sanchez turned back to Tobin as he struggled to his feet. He was still having problems breathing, but his world had shrunk down to the woman who’d betrayed him and the gun in her hand.

“Damned shame,” she said softly, raising the weapon again. “You weren’t supposed to go down with him.”

In the dimness filling the room in his mind, he barely registered the door snapping open. He saw Sanchez spin and fire – the bullets bouncing off a black metal monstrosity that filled the entire doorway. More bullets joined it as her allies opened fired as well.

Then the boarding suit opened fire. A pair of shoulder mounted electron lasers tracked the room, firing a single pulse at each individual with a weapon out.

The only result was a fusillade of return fire, and Tobin saw Sanchez grunt as electricity arced over her shipsuit without harming her – and pull another, larger, weapon from under one of the consoles. He didn’t wait to see what it was.

Still struggling to breathe, he launched himself at her again. This time, she saw him coming and moved to sidestep – but he wasn’t aiming at
her
.

He ripped the weapon from her hands and hit the deck – and then gunfire echoed through the flag deck again as the armored Marine opened up with the suit’s battle rifle.

Sixty-two dead.

That number was probably going to haunt Kyle for the rest of his life. Sanchez’s mutiny had cost the lives of sixty-two of his crew – including the Chief of Staff herself, so they would never be entirely sure just what the hell had happened.

Sixty-two dead. One hundred and fourteen detained, including Vice Admiral Tobin. Kyle still had too many unanswered questions to allow the Admiral to wander free or to be in command of the ship.

His decision to prepare a counter-measure had made all the difference. Each of the teams Sanchez had pulled together had run into prepared and armed resistance. Wa’s decision to dig out a full suit of boarding armor as part of those preparations had also paid dividends, especially after realizing most of the flag deck crew were compromised.

He shook his head and met his Executive Officer’s gaze.

“Hell of a day,” he told her. “I feel like an idiot for spending most of it in cuffs.”

“That part could have gone better,” Solace agreed. “But you’re still in command and
Avalon
is still combat-capable. I think we can call that a win.”

Kyle looked at the Alpha One icon rotating on his wallscreen.

“Fair enough,” he allowed. “Shall we see what Command wanted that Tobin didn’t want us to see?”

She made a go ahead gesture, and he activated the video, the most recent of
four
Alpha One recorded messages from Fleet Admiral Meredith Blake.

“Captain Roberts,” the familiar gray-haired Admiral’s face appeared on the wallscreen facing the two officers. “I feel like I’m sending these communiqués into the void. I am forced to presume you are not receiving them, but I have nothing else I can do from here.

“I do not know what you think is going on,” she continued, “but your ship is
supposed
to be in the Alizon system. From my conversation with President Ingolfson of Alizon, no one on
Avalon
appears to be aware of this.

“Since I discussed these orders with Vice Admiral Tobin personally, I know
he
is, which forces me to the conclusion that the Admiral has knowingly disobeyed his orders and taken
Avalon
off on a damn fool mission of vengeance.”

Blake shook her head, looking very old and very tired.

“Having to give this order once was bad enough,” she said softly, “and now I’ve had to give it four times. Captain Kyle Roberts, you are ordered to relieve Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin of duty and place him under arrest.

“You are then to immediately return to the Alizon system to await the remainder of Battle Group Seventeen.

“What the hell is going on aboard that ship, Roberts?”

The message ended and Kyle sighed, dropping his face into his hands.

“Well, isn’t this a giant clusterfuck?” he demanded aloud.

“I’m glad we didn’t release the coms lockdown before viewing this,” Solace noted. “I probably have orders in the queue to relieve both you and Tobin. We need to report in.”

Kyle didn’t respond aloud to his XO, but he triggered a command that would try to open a communication on the same channel the communiqué had arrived on. The stylized castle and fourteen stars of the formal seal of the Castle Federation rotated on the screen for a few seconds, then a plain-uniformed dark-haired woman with the collar insignia of a Navy Commander appeared on screen.

“This is Commander Sonia Ardennes,” she said crisply. “You have reached Fleet Admiral Blake’s office. May I assist you?”

“Commander Ardennes,” Kyle said quietly, “this is Captain Kyle Roberts of
Avalon
reporting in. I need to speak to the Fleet Admiral as soon as possible.”

“Captain Roberts!” she exclaimed. “Hold on a moment – Admiral Blake is in a meeting but she left orders for if you made contact.”

The screen returned to the logo. Now as it rotated, it switched between the seal of the Federation and the sword and rocket of the Castle Federation Space Navy.

They waited for several minutes, and then the screen resolved into the familiar image of the Castle Federation military’s uniformed commanding officer.

“Well, you’re alive at least,” she snapped. “Report.”

#

Blake waited patiently as Kyle and Solace laid out the sequence of events, their suspicions of Sanchez, and the details of the mutiny. When they finished, she was silent for a long moment.

“I assume you’ll have a more formal report once things are more under control,” she finally said. “This is going to take some digesting, Captain Roberts, Commander Solace. You are confident that Sanchez was not a Commonwealth spy?”

“Yes,” Kyle confirmed quietly. “If she was, her level of access and skills would have been better used as a spy than as an assassin or agent provocateur. As a Battle Group Chief of Staff, she could have compromised massive swathes of our military operations.

“I… am forced to suspect she was an agent for more domestic employers.
She
said her orders came from members of the Senate… but the cameras were disabled so I have no record of that outside my people’s implants.”

“
That
, Captain, is the can-opener for a political shitstorm,” Blake said bluntly. “You copy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I hate to ask this,” she continued, “but I’ll need two versions of your reports: one with
everything
, and one sanitized of all mention of Sanchez’s motives. This is a time bomb I want to keep to myself for now, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kyle agreed. He didn’t like it, but he understood.

“How quickly can you return to the Alizon system, Captain?” Blake asked. “Ingolfson is hanging in the damn breeze, and the rest of Battle Group Seventeen is still over six days away.”

He hesitated.

“Ma’am, we are almost five days away from Alizon,” he reminded her. “It will take us as long to get back as it took us to get here, and…”

“And what, Captain?”

“We’re barely a day from Barsoom, ma’am,” Kyle said quietly. “We shouldn’t have left Alizon, but it’s not like there was no weight to Admiral Tobin’s points. We’re most of the way there, now – shouldn’t we finish the job?”

Blake was silent, her eyes thoughtful.

“I’ll confess, Captain, I am inclined to order you home simply because you are as close as you are due to Tobin disobeying orders,” she admitted. “There may well be a major Commonwealth presence in the system engaging Richardson as well.”

“I understand, Admiral,” Kyle agreed. “My concern is also for my crew’s morale,” he told her. “We’ve been chasing
Triumphant
for weeks, and we’ve just taken the mother of all sucker punches. My people
need
a victory, Admiral Blake – and we
want
Triumphant
.”

“And if there is a Commonwealth force, Captain?”

“Then our actions will depend on the circumstances on our arrival,” he replied. “If
Triumphant
is evading a Terran task group, we may able to ambush and destroy her. Even the presence of a major Commonwealth force does not preclude the completion of the mission.”

“This is mad, Captain Roberts,” Blake told him, but she’d relaxed and some of the worry had left her eyes and face. “Tobin’s crazy quest for revenge has left a planet defenseless, and you want to finish the job?”

“If it were only Tobin’s quest for revenge,” Kyle said quietly, “we never would have made it this far.”

“You’re right, Captain,” the Admiral allowed with a nod. “The entire Alliance wants to see Kematian’s dead avenged, and as you pointed out, you’re already too far away to make a difference to how long Alizon is defenseless.

“Very well, Captain Roberts. You are authorized to proceed to the Barsoom system. There, you are to exercise your own judgment over whether it is practical to engage and destroy
Triumphant
.” She held up a cautionary finger. “
However
, Captain, under no circumstances are you to pursue
Triumphant
from Barsoom, or risk your vessel. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“Then good luck, Captain.”

The bridge had been spared the worst of the conflict that had raged through the warship mere hours before. When a boarding suited Marine had appeared behind the mutineers and loomed over them in a metric ton of steel and ferro-carbonate armor, his polite request for surrender had been quickly granted.

It looked enough like the flag deck, which had resembled a butcher’s shop by the time the same boarding suited Marine had finished their work, to still give Kyle shudders.

He concealed them as he stepped up to the command chair and glanced around. Pendez and Anderson had been holding down the watch while he and Solace communicated with Command. His regular bridge watch was in place around them, men and women he knew he could trust. With almost a hundred and fifty members of his crew joining Sanchez’s mutiny, it stood out that not
one
member of the bridge crew shifts had been among them.

“Thank you,” he said softly. He didn’t specify for what. He was certain he didn’t need to.

Kyle took his seat, adjusting the chair to allow him to see most of his people and activated the all hands channel.

“Crew of
Avalon
,” he greeted them. “I am reasonably confident that I can state that today has likely been one of the worst days of all of our lives – though I am debating its position versus flying
through
a battleship.”

The chuckles that shocked from his bridge crew told him he’d hit the right tack. The last thing his crew needed today was an unending cascade of doom and gloom.

“Today, we were betrayed by our shipmates, those who we trusted and thought were our friends,” he continued after a moment. “And now you find yourself looking at those around you and wondering who else you were wrong about. Who else might betray you?

“I have an answer for you on that, at least,” he told them. “No-one. Less than three percent of this vessel’s crew, Marines, or Space Force personnel, faced with someone who they could have easily believed truly had the authority to order this, joined in the mutiny.

“Many of those were deceived, or made an error in judgment, and truly thought they were doing the right thing,” he continued. “Those who did
not
already betray us will not.”

That was probably stretching the truth. After all, there had to have been a few people approached who hadn’t joined, or the rumors that had reached his ears wouldn’t have existed. Those people might not have joined up with Sanchez, but they’d certainly stayed quiet enough.

“I wish, in the aftermath of this morning, I had good news to give,” he said quietly. “But it turns out we faced more than one betrayal. Officers and crew of
Avalon¸
I am afraid this ship was never supposed to leave Alizon.

“Our orders from Alliance High Command were to guard Alizon and make sure the system we’d so fortuitously freed was protected until we could rebuild their defenses. Vice Admiral Dimitri Tobin chose to disobey those orders and
lie
to us about our mission.”

Kyle paused, waiting for that to sink in.

“Sadly, this means that Vice Admiral Tobin, while uninvolved in the mutiny, will not be released from the brig,” he said softly. “He has been relieved of command by Fleet Admiral Blake. And we, my crew, my pilots – my friends – were ordered back to Alizon.”

He could only see the faces of his bridge crew, but even on those twenty faces he saw what he’d expected to see: disappointment, but also a determination to do their duty.

“However, as I pointed out to Admiral Blake, we are now barely thirty hours and counting from Barsoom – and five days from Alizon. We are close on the heels of one of the worst mass murderers in human history, and I’m not sure I have it in me to give up the hunt, no matter how solid, how pragmatic the reasons.

“Admiral Blake understands. The Alliance of Free Stars, the Castle Federation, our Navy and Space Force – these are not entities that can stand by while the innocent are slaughtered. Justice must be done one way, or another.

“We have been authorized to complete this final leg of the pursuit. We will bring
Triumphant
to bay in Barsoom, and we will either capture Captain Richardson for trial and execution, or we will destroy his ship with him aboard.

“Our orders are clear,” he warned them. “We are not to pursue
Triumphant
beyond Barsoom. We are not to risk this ship against superior Commonwealth forces to engage her.