Q-Ship Chameleon (Castle Federation Book 4) Read online

He passed Glass as he stepped through the door, exchanging an uninterpretable glance with the smaller man.

  “Somehow, I have the feeling that Glass has stolen much of my thunder,” the head of Castle’s Joint Department of Space Personnel told Kyle, taking the chair behind the desk and laying a tablet on it.

  “Is that actually his name?” Kyle asked, buying himself time to regain some control of his temper as much as anything else.

  “No,” Kane confirmed Kyle’s suspicion. “It is the third I’ve known him by, and I don’t entirely believe the Federation knows his real name. All I can tell you is that he speaks for the highest levels of our intelligence apparatus.”

  “So, what he told me was true?”

  Kane sighed.

  “I don’t know for certain what he told you,” he admitted. “I can guess, though I can neither confirm nor deny any of it. Glass’s conversation was off the record. Ours is not. Do you understand me, Captain Roberts?”

  The Admiral’s tone was apologetic, but there was also no mistaking the command.

  “I guess, sir,” Kyle allowed with a slow nod. “Interrupted as we were, this is your meeting. What did you need from me?”

  “With Avalon laid up, you’re at loose ends and the Federation would like to put you where we think you can do the most good,” Kane explained.

  “And you’re going to tell me that’s not on the bridge of a warship?” the junior man asked.

  Kane sighed again.

  “We can argue the logic until the heat death of the universe,” he pointed out. “You know some of the background details, but the truth is that a purely administrative position is one of the big checks you’re missing to make flag rank.”

  That stopped Kyle in his tracks.

  “I’ve been a Captain for less than a year,” he pointed out. “I’ve been in the Navy, as opposed to the Space Force, for barely more than that. It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” the other man agreed calmly. “But not too early for us to be considering it as your career progresses. We are at war and war has an…unfortunate accelerating factor on military ranks. I don’t expect to be pinning a star on you this year, Captain—but I would be unsurprised to be doing so next year.

  “An educational, administrative, or technical command would fill a noticeable gap in your record,” he continued, “and help soothe the opinions of those who see the Stellar Fox as a glory hound.”

  “I hate that nickname,” Kyle grumped. “And I’d happily trade glory just to have Michael Stanford back, or to not have brought home two crippled ships in six months. No one wants glory, sir.”

  Michael Stanford had been Avalon’s CAG and his Captain’s strong right arm and friend. He’d died at Huī Xing because his Captain hadn’t been good enough.

  “I agree,” the Admiral said quietly. “But, frankly, you need time away from a combat assignment. Time with ready access to a counselor and no new memories and losses.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Kyle objected. “And Captain Solace is still with Seventh Fleet, for that matter. I don’t think we have enough shrinks for if my girlfriend dies on the front and I’m flying a desk, sir.”

  The room was silent for a long moment, and then Kane chuckled softly.

  “I see Glass got you more than a little riled up,” he noted. “I do, for the record, know probably about as much about his offer as you do, but I would appreciate it, Captain, if you at least let me explain what the Federation wants you to do before you take a dive into the black.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  “We see two places that you could have an outsized impact on the war effort,” the Admiral noted. “My own suggestion, my biases being what they are, is to send you to the Academy. We’re trying to rush our cadets through what’s supposed to be a three-year program—even with neural implants—in eighteen months. A top-tier tactician is exactly what they need, someone who’s seen combat in this war and won’t forget things have changed.

  “Your knowledge has also been requested by JD-Tech’s testing and oversight committees,” he continued. “We’d want you to review early- and late-stage planning and development for real-world applications. We’re trying to consolidate twenty years of military R&D by four major and two dozen-plus minor powers into a new generation of standardized weapons and systems. Again, someone who’s seen combat in this war would have a disproportionate value to those programs.”

  “Why me?” Kyle asked. The Joint Department of Technology ran all of the Federation’s military research and development—and its testing and oversight committees had to sign off before anything went into service. It was a position a lot of officers would give their left arm for. “We’ve seen a lot of action this last year. Any of those officers would do for that.”

  “Yes,” Kane admitted. “The same tactical instinct that makes me want you for the Academy would have real value to the design committees, but we have other officers we can send for that. Other officers who can train our cadets. You’d be damned good at both jobs, and it’s your call. With the background crap going on, that’s the least I can do.”

  “But if I take any of these jobs,” the Captain said quietly, “I don’t get Avalon back when she’s repaired, do I?”

  “No.”

  “And what do you know of the op Glass wants me for?”

  “That he has a ship and needs a Captain,” Kane replied. “It may change the course of the war…or it may do nothing but get people killed. It’s that kind of black-ops affair, Captain Roberts.”

  “But it’s my only choice if I want a command?”

  The tall Admiral sighed again but nodded.

  “Yes. I can’t give you a ship—but the nature of Glass’s job protects him from…high-level disapproval.”

  Kyle shrugged.

  “I’m a combat officer, sir,” he told Kane. “I’m no glory hound—I don’t think, anyway—but I can do better for the Federation and the Alliance on a command deck than behind a desk.”

  “I’ll let Glass know,” the Admiral said after a long moment.

  #

  Chapter 3

  Castle System

  17:30 April 25, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Orbital Dry Dock Merlin Four

  Merlin Four was primarily a military station, one of the several central hub stations serving the shipyards and dry docks orbiting Castle. Given the scale of the station—each of its six dry docks was almost two kilometers long—there were a lot of military personnel aboard, which had inevitably required a civilian presence to support them.

  The core of that presence was the promenade, a two-tiered mall located as far away from anything important as could be arranged. The better restaurants were reserved up to a month in advance, but Kyle wasn’t above leaning on his fame as the “Stellar Fox” to get a table once he discovered that Senior Fleet Commander Kelly Mason, his one-time subordinate and the late Michael Stanford’s girlfriend, was going to be on the station.

  The small satchel the big officer carried through the crowds felt a lot heavier than it actually was. Technically, Kyle wasn’t supposed to have it. While Stanford had arranged for the samples to be taken, he’d never actually formally recorded his intentions.

  Since both his doctor and his Captain had known about them, however, they’d quietly arranged for them to end up in Kyle’s care so he could deliver them to Kelly Mason—the only woman in the galaxy for whom Michael Stanford might have had sperm samples put aside.

  The crowd was dense and mobile, a sense of life and energy that energized the big man. The solitude of command clashed with his base nature, and it was good to be surrounded by people who didn’t look to him as their master after the Gods.

  His size and bulk meant that most people shifted out of his way unconsciously and even the densest crowd was easy to pass through, allowing him to cross the promenade toward his destination without issue until someone bodily slammed into him.

  Kyle stum
bled backward and was suddenly aware of another man, almost as large as he was, with a very ugly-looking knife in his hand.

  “Your wallet and the bag, now, or I gut you,” the mugger snarled.

  “I’m with the Navy,” Kyle said calmly. “I don’t carry a wallet on Merlin Four—and the bag is the last thing a dead friend of mine left for his girl and you don’t want it.”

  The knife jabbed at him, a warning that came well short of touching him.

  “Not playing, Navy boy. The bag and any money you got.”

  “Not happening,” Kyle replied, trying to hold the mugger’s gaze. “The bag is bio samples, you twit.”

  “Open it,” he gestured with the knife. “Prove it.”

  “It was sealed by medical professionals and should only be opened by them or the samples could be ruined,” Kyle snapped. “Just…go. I’ve got nothing for you.”

  Something in the mugger’s eyes finally clicked with Glass’s original warning—that someone had been waiting to kill him and make it look like a mugging. He didn’t look nearly disappointed enough, and any sane mugger would have vacated as soon as Kyle refused to be intimidated.

  Kyle wasn’t a martial artist or any kind of hand-to-hand fighter, but he was a massive man who worked out religiously. As the knife stabbed toward his chest, he punched his attacker in the face. At least one tooth shattered under the impact and the stranger stumbled backward, spitting blood.

  “Oh, you’ll regret that,” he snapped. “Take him!”

  The sight of the knife had sent the crowd scurrying away, but two other men had stayed close enough that they lunged in to grab Kyle’s arms.

  He flung the first one forward, whatever plan or tactic they were using insufficient to deal with how strong he was. The second one, however, took a grip that accounted for that—and his attempt to use brute force to fling the man away instead crumpled him to the ground in excruciating pain.

  He kept enough presence of mind to place the bag of precious samples on the metal floor, freeing his hand to try to defend himself as the first assassin came at him with the knife.

  The one he’d flung aside grabbed his arm again as Kyle tried to defend himself, moments too late to stop the big officer from knocking the knife to the ground. The blade flashed along his skin, the fabric of his uniform jacket and emergency shipsuit splitting under the ultra-sharp blade, and blood spattered to the ground.

  Shouts sounded from behind him and the sound of running feet echoed as Kyle found himself staring down the barrel of a Navy-issue pistol.

  “Out of time,” the thug snarled—then his head exploded as three rapid gunshots echoed through the promenade. The corpse crumpled to the ground to reveal the old man who’d introduced himself as “Mister Glass” holding the same type of gun.

  “I really can’t complain,” the spy said grumpily, “but you’d think professionals would talk less.”

  #

  By the time Kyle had been rushed to a nearby clinic under escort by Castle Federation Military Police, had the gash in his arm cleaned and stitched up and given a statement, his dinner appointment was over an hour in the past.

  Once the MPs had filtered out, however, Glass dropped into the chair next to his bed and looked at him levelly.

  “You gonna live?”

  “It’s a five-centimeter cut that barely made it through the skin,” Kyle pointed out. “I don’t think that was ever in question. The gun was going to be a problem, though. Thanks.”

  “I was in the area,” Glass said, his tone somewhat apologetic. “I’d passed the details of those three onto the station MPs, but I underestimated their ability to stay under the radar. I apologize, Captain.”

  “You also saved my life. Apology accepted.”

  “Good.” The spy smiled. For a moment, he looked like someone’s friendly grandfather—except for his eyes, which remained utterly flat. “I also took the liberty of informing Senior Fleet Commander Mason of your travails. She is waiting outside for the conversation you promised her—one I don’t envy you, Captain.”

  “Thank you again,” Kyle said honestly.

  “From the sounds of it, you’ll be out of here tonight,” Glass concluded. “In the morning, meet me at shuttle bay Seven-Delta at oh eight hundred. We’re going to take a field trip.”

  With that, the old spy left the room, almost immediately replaced by the voluptuous blonde form of Kyle’s first executive officer, Kelly Mason.

  “I’m mourning enough people, Roberts,” she said sharply as she took the seat Glass had vacated. “Could you try not to get killed at home?”

  “Working on it,” he told her. “I assure you, Senior Fleet Commander, not dying is high on my list of priorities.”

  Mason nodded sharply, inhaling deeply.

  “I saw the reports from Huī Xing,” she told him. “The smart ones are calling you a hero again. The rest… Well, you know you have detractors here, right?”

  “Yes. It’s why I’m heading back out there as fast as I can,” he replied.

  “You have a command?” she asked, surprised. “Rumor mill was that you were heading to a desk for ‘seasoning’, whatever that means.”

  “It’s complicated and I don’t know the details yet, but I’m definitely heading back out,” Kyle told her, being vague about even the details he had.

  “I’m sorry about Michael,” he continued. “I should have done better, done something—anything—different.”

  “And left a hundred thousand people to rot?” she asked quietly. “Michael wouldn’t have let you.”

  “He generally did a good job of recognizing when my head was up my ass,” Kyle admitted. “I miss him. A lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kyle dug through the pile of his effects they’d left next to him and found the satchel from Avalon’s doctor.

  “Here,” he passed it to her. “Technically, Michael had no formal statement of what was to happen to these, but when both your doctor and your Captain know your plan, these things happen anyway.”

  Mason studied the bag for a moment, inhaling sharply as her neural implant picked up the ID tag that was keyed to her implant codes.

  “We’d talked about this,” she whispered. “I…I assumed he’d died before he could put samples aside.”

  “According to the doctor, he had them prepped just before we arrived in Huī Xing,” Kyle told her. “I don’t know if you’ll want to use them with him passed, but…I know he would have wanted you to have them. To have that option, no matter what.”

  Mason was blinking back tears now, and Kyle ignored the stupid hospital gown they’d given him to wrap her in his arms.

  Michael Stanford had been a comrade-in-arms and a friend. He deserved to be mourned.

  #

  Chapter 4

  Castle System

  08:00 April 26, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  Shuttle DXC-5523

  Having spent his entire adult life in the Federation’s military, Kyle arrived at the shuttle bay Glass had asked to meet him at exactly on time. It was one of the smaller docking bays on Merlin Four, a secured single-shuttle bay used for VIP transit, according to the directory.

  Two men in casual civilian clothing leaned against the wall by the hatch to the bay, attempting to look casual. The sharp precision with which their eyes tracked every individual moving down the corridor toward and past them gave the lie to that illusion.

  As he approached the door, Kyle felt his implant buzz—a purely mental sensation—as one of the two guards pinged him for authorization and identification. He extended a limited access to his systems, one that would allow the guard to confirm who he was and why he was there without accessing any of the confidential data or personal memories also stored in his implant.

  “Proceed,” a voice sounded in his head, and he stepped through the door. To anyone outside, it would have looked like he’d casually walked through the door, but Kyle had still passed a high-tier security check before the guard had unl
ocked it.

  Covert ops was entirely outside his experience, but he could still recognize a slick job when he saw it.

  The ship inside the bay was a surprise. He’d been expecting an orbital runabout, one of the small craft used to transfer people between ships without ever leaving orbit or landing on a planet. Instead, he found himself looking at the significantly larger shape of an interplanetary shuttle, barely smaller than a Marine assault shuttle.

  “I presumed you’d want to fly us yourself,” Glass told him, the gaunt man emerging from behind the corner of the spacecraft and wiping his hands with a cloth. “She’s fully fueled and the maintenance crew checked out her zero-point cell this morning. Should be good to go.”

  “Where are we heading?” Kyle asked.

  “Gawain,” the spy replied. “I’ll give you more detailed coordinates once we’re close. There’s more out there than cloudscoops and the Reserve Fleet stations.”

  Gawain was the Castle system’s largest gas giant, anchor to the cloudscoops that fed the system’s rapacious demand for hydrogen, and to the stations that had un-mothballed the ships of the Castle Reserve Flotilla, the Federation’s insurance policy against the very war they were now fighting.

  Kyle’s understanding was that the Reserve Flotilla stations had been mostly decommissioned now that the ships from the Castle system, at least, had been reactivated and deployed. The Terran Commonwealth had demonstrated that they were extremely vulnerable in an attack on the system a few months before.

  “That’s twelve hours away, even in this bird,” he pointed out.

  “Then I suggest you start your preflight,” Glass told him, tossing the cloth he’d cleaned his hands with in a nearby bin—had the frail-looking spy actually disconnected the fuel line himself?

  #

  The shuttle would have been a far clunkier beast than a Marine assault shuttle in an atmosphere, but in deep space, she was a joy to fly. Once clear of the orbital structures around Castle, Kyle got clearance from orbital control to go to full power and lit up her engines.