Singularity: Star Carrier: Book Three (3 page)

The remaining twenty vessels were a Pan-European task force commanded by Grand Admiral Francois Giraurd on board the star carrier
Jeanne d’Arc
.

Technically, all of the ships except for the Chinese vessels were Confederation Navy, but . . . there was a problem, a
big
problem. Koenig wasn’t sure yet how it was going to play out.

“The
Cheng Hua
and the
Haiping
have both just materialized,” Sinclair announced. “Range twelve light minutes. And there’s the
Zheng He
. . . .”

He’d been expecting the Chinese and the North Americans to follow the battlegroup into the Abyss. The question remained: What would the Pan-Europeans do?

After the Battle of Alphekka, CBG-18 had remained in the system, refitting, re-arming, and consolidating. Grand Admiral Giraurd had brought his flagship alongside the
America
and told Koenig that he was taking command of the entire fleet, and that the fleet would be returning to Earth.

And Koenig had refused the order.

Giraurd had threatened to open fire as the fleet elements loyal to Koenig had begun accelerating out-system, and for a nerve-wracking few hours, the Pan-Europeans had pursued the rest of the battlegroup. They’d never quite pulled into range, however, and, once the rest of the battlegroup had begun dropping into Alcubierre Drive, there was a good chance that Giraurd had ordered his contingent to break off the pursuit.

But Giraurd knew Koenig’s plan, knew the coordinates where they would be emerging. If he
wanted
to, he could be moments away from Emergence . . . and Koenig would be looking at the very real possibility of either capitalization or mutiny.

Which would it be?

“Admiral!” Sinclair called. “Another star carrier emerging, range fifteen light minutes! Sir, it’s the
Jeanne d’Arc
!”

Giraurd had followed them after all.

“More ships emerging from the horizon,” Sinclair added. “
De Gaul
.
Illustrious
.
Frederick der Grosse
. Looks like the Pan-European main body.”

Now they would learn whether or not Koenig’s mutiny had just precipitated a civil war.

Chapter Two

10 April 2405

VFA-44

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1342 hours, TFT

P
lease, God, don’t let me screw up, don’t let me screw up, don’t let me screw up . . .

“And acceleration in four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .
launch
!”

Acceleration slammed Lieutenant Trevor Gray back in the cockpit as his SG-92 Starhawk hurtled down the spinal launch tube and into space. At seven gravities, he traversed the two-hundred-meter length of the tube in a fraction over two and a third seconds, emerging at just under 170 meters per second relative to the carrier. The vast, black, circular dome of
America
’s forward cap receded swiftly behind him, the ship’s name in faded letters meters high, the word sandblasted to a faded and ragged gray by long voyaging through the interstellar medium. He switched to view forward. Ahead, the local sun showed as a close-set pair of intensely brilliant sparks.

“Blue Dragon One clear,” he called over the communications net. “CIC, handing off from Pryfly.”

“Blue Dragon One, CIC. We have you.”

“Imaging,” he told his ship’s AI. “Show the squadron, please.”

“Blue Two, clear,” a second voice said. Lieutenant Shay Ryan’s Starhawk had launched in tandem with his. Computer imagining showed her ship as a blue diamond, high and forty meters to port. He switched to his in-head display. With his cerebral implants receiving feeds from external sensors all over the craft’s fuselage, his Starhawk seemed invisible now, at least to his eyes, as though he’d merged with his fighter and become a part of it. Ryan’s Starhawk sharpened into high-res magnification, a long and slender black needle with a central bulge, her ship, like his, still in launch configuration.

With a thoughtclicked command, Gray flipped his fighter end for end and began decelerating, his maneuver matched closely by Shay. Other SG-92s were appearing now, spilling two by two from
America
’s forward launch tubes.

“Blue Dragon Three, clear.”

“Blue Four, in the clear.”

Fighters from other squadrons were dropping laterally from the carrier, propelled by the centrifugal force of the rotating hab modules behind the forward cap, and slowly, a cloud of fighters was beginning to surround her.
America
, he knew, was just one of many warships in the newly reinforced CBG-18, with several other carriers out there, but, from this vantage point, he couldn’t see any of them save as colored icons painted into his visual cortex by his fighter’s AI.

“Dragonfires,” Gray said over the tac channel. “Go to combat configuration and form up on me.”

“Copy, Skipper,” the voice of Ben Donovan said. “We’re coming in.”

And the other ships of VFA-44 began closing with him.

Skipper
 . . .

The title still didn’t fit. The Dragonfires’ skipper, their CO, was Commander Marissa Allyn . . . but CDR Allyn had gone streaker during the Battle of Alphekka, her fighter badly damaged and hurtling out of control into emptiness. The SAR ships had found her three days later and brought her back, still alive but in a coma. She was still in
America
’s sick bay ICU, unconscious and unresponsive.

And CAG had told Gray that now
he
was the squadron commander.

The assignment was strictly temporary and provisional. VFA-44 had come out of the furnace of Alphekka with just three pilots left—Gray, Shay Ryan, and Ben Donovan. And of the three of them, Gray held seniority; Donovan’s date of commission was two years younger than Gray’s, while Ryan was a relative newbie, fresh from a training squadron at Oceana.

Over the past month, the three of them had worked together training a batch of replacement pilots, men and women recruited from other shipboard divisions to fill the squadron’s missing ranks. How well the new squadron performed, how they pulled together as a team, likely, would determine whether Gray would keep his new billet—and perhaps receive an early promotion to lieutenant commander to go with it.

The trouble was that Gray had no desire for either the promotion or the responsibility. He and his wife had been Prims—primitives—squatters in the unorganized and half-drowned ruins of coastal cities around the peripheries of the old United States. As such, they’d not been full citizens, and when Angela had had a stroke, he’d been forced to join the military as a trade-off to get her medical treatment.

Gray’s plan had been to put in the mandatory minimum—ten years—and get out. His time would be up in another six years. Damn it, he was
not
going to hang around one second longer than he had to.

Other Starhawk pilots began dropping into formation with him as they continued to exit the carrier. Jamis Natham and Calli Loman, both formerly of
America
’s food services department. Miguel Zapeta, admin. Rissa Schiff, avionics. Will Rostenkowski, personnel. Tammi Mallory, medical department. There were nine newbies in all, not counting Shay, who
had
been through the fight at Alphekka.

“Stay tight,” Gray told the formation. “Close perimeter defense.”

“Who the hell’s going to attack us out here?” Carlos Esteban—until recently an AI systems analyst—asked. “This star system is supposed to be empty!”

“Just do it, Lieutenant,” Gray said. “You can analyze the tacsit later.”

“Scuttlebutt had it we might be fighting the Europeans,” Mallory said. “Giraurd wants Koenig to go back to Earth.”

“Quiet, Dragonfires,” Gray snapped. “No scuttlebutt, no talking. Line of duty only.”

“Uh . . . permission to ask a question?” That was Schiff.

“Granted.”

“Is that true, Skipper? We might be facing off against Confederation forces?”

“They haven’t told me, Lieutenant,” Gray told her. “When they do, I’ll pass it along. For right now . . . follow orders, stay in tight formation, and maintain radio silence.”

But Gray had heard the same scuttlebutt. Everyone in the fleet must have heard it by now. Fleet Admiral Giraurd outranked a mere rear admiral, and the word was that Koenig had been ordered home—presumably with the rest of the battlegroup. For the past two months there’d been intensive speculation on the topic in the squadron ready rooms and lounges. Koenig had figuratively thumbed his nose at the Pan-Europeans and departed from Alphekka, destination . . . unknown. Had Giraurd followed them?

His tactical display had been partially blocked by
America
’s Combat Information Center. He could see
America
and those of
America
’s fighters that were already deployed, but not the rest of the battlegroup. Unless something had gone horribly wrong, there should be at least another twenty-five warships out there, the rest of the original CBG-18. And there were the forty-one Confederation vessels that had arrived as reinforcements at Alphekka; some of them should have come over to Koenig as well. If they’d emerged too far from
America
, the light from their collapsing Alcubierre fields might not yet have reached them, but it had been almost half an hour since
America
had emerged. They all
ought
to be out there by now. . . .

“Blue Dragon One, CIC, command channel.”

“CIC, Blue One. Go ahead.”

“This is the CAG. I, ah, heard the chatter just now.”

“Yes, sir.” He wondered if Wizewski was about to chew him a new one for his people’s poor communications security.

“We’re getting the same from every squadron out there. Don’t sweat it. They have a right to know.”

Gray relaxed slightly. “I agree, sir.”

“But not just yet. We’re releasing the tacsit data to squadron leaders, but not to the general fleet. I want you to see this.”

A separate window opened in his mind as new data streamed into his implant. It showed
America
near the center of a scattering of ships, each tagged with name and hull number.

“It looks like they all did follow us,” Gray said.

“They did. We’re still missing eight ships. They’re probably still outside of our light-speed horizon, and we’ll see them in a few more minutes. Green are ships we know we can trust. Red are probably hostile. Amber are unknowns.”

The twenty-six ships of the original battlegroup were green, Gray noted. So too were twelve more ships—
Abraham Lincoln
’s battlegroup—which meant they were North American.

Twelve were red . . . the Pan-European contingent, minus eight stragglers. The remaining nine—the Chinese—were unknowns.

“Sir,” Gray said, “we’re not going to
fight
them, are we?”

“I don’t know, son. Possibly they don’t know either. They’re probably going to try to bluff us, and the old man is going to call them on it.”

It seemed like utter lunacy. The North Americans comfortably outnumbered the European warships, but an exchange of fire would cause a lot of damage on both sides, something the human fleet simply couldn’t afford this far from home. Damn it, the Sh’daar and the Turusch and the H’rulka were the enemies . . . not the damned Europeans!

“We expect the French carrier
Jeanne d’Arc
to attempt to close alongside of the
America
,” Wizewski continued. “The fighters are going to block her, because we can’t afford to let a ship with her firepower get close enough to fire a broadside. One hundred thousand kilometers. That’s the minimum stand-off distance. Understand?”

“I think so, sir. Are . . . are we authorized to fire?”

“
Only
on my command, or on the command of Admiral Koenig himself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re going to try our damnedest to talk our way out of this. If we can’t . . .”

He left the thought unfinished.

“I understand, sir.”

On the tactical display, the
Jeanne d’Arc
and her consorts were still almost a full astronomical unit away, but they were on a convergent course, closing with the
America
. The American ships were positioning themselves in a tight globe around the carrier, with the heavy cruisers
Valley Forge
and
Ma’at Mons
, along with a number of frigates and destroyers squarely between the approaching French flotilla and the USNA carriers. The
Ma’at Mons
, particularly, was a heavy bombardment ship . . . but she’d expended a lot of her warload against the A1-01 orbital factory. Gray wondered if she had enough munitions on board to keep the Europeans at a healthy distance.

Civil war.

Gray had little use for the Terran Confederation. Hell, as a Prim living out on the USNA Periphery, in the ruins of Old Manhattan, he’d had little use for the United States of North America, either. So far as he could tell, the argument between them involved a difference of strategy. The Confederation wanted to talk with the Sh’daar, and perhaps accept terms, while Koenig wanted to draw the enemy off into deep space, away from Earth and her colonies. Gray didn’t understand how the two could be mutually exclusive, or how Koenig could get away with setting Confederation military policy.

If forced to choose between the two, though, Gray would go with Koenig, if only because he was doing what he thought was right, and to hell with the politicians and rear-echelon second-guessers in Geneva
or
in Columbus.

Koenig was a fighter, and that was enough for Trevor Gray.

CIC

TC/USNA CVS
America

Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

98 light years from Earth

1358 hours, TFT

“Do you think they’ll fight, Admiral?” Captain Buchanan asked.

The voice spoke inside Koenig’s head, since
America
’s commanding officer was on the ship’s bridge, forward from the Combat Information Center, which was the central brain for the entire battlegroup. Koenig was looking down into the tactical display tank, where a cloud of green, amber, and red icons drifted toward a seemingly inevitable collision.

“I don’t know, Randy,” Koenig said. “I don’t know Giraurd. Can’t get a handle on him.”

He’d called up every bit of biographical data on Francois Giraurd that he could find in the Fleetnet database, but found little that was useful. Giraurd was only fifty years old, remarkably young for a grand admiral. Born in 2344, he’d been twenty-three, an engineering major at the Sorbonne, when the Sh’daar Ultimatum had come down through their Agletsch proxies. He’d entered the French
Acádemie d’Astre
as a midshipman cadet in 2368, the year of the disaster at Beta Pictoris, the opening round in the Sh’daar-Confederation War.