Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Read online

  Castle Federation: Avalon Box Set

  Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox & Battle Group Avalon

  Glynn Stewart

  Castle Federation: Avalon Boxset © 2019 by Glynn Stewart

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-988035-74-1

  Space Carrier Avalon © 2016 Glynn Stewart

  Stellar Fox © 2016 Glynn Stewart

  Battle Group Avalon © 2016 Glynn Stewart

  Cover Illustrations © 2016 Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Space Carrier Avalon

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Stellar Fox

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Battle Group Avalon

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

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  About the Author

  Space Carrier Avalon

  Castle Federation Book 1

  1

  New Amazon System, Castle Federation

  18:00 July 5, 2735 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time

  On approach to DSC-001 Avalon

  Wing Commander Kyle Roberts did not enjoy being flown by someone else. It was always a struggle for the red-haired pilot to keep his hands and implants away from the controls and overrides when he was a passenger in a shuttle. To make everyone’s lives easier, he normally stayed out of the cockpit.

  Today, however, he wasn’t feeling quite so magnanimous, and had unceremoniously shunted the small craft’s normal co-pilot into the bucket seat that was supposed to be reserved for an observer like him. The burly Commander already felt a little bit guilty over that, but that slipped from his mind as the shuttle began its final approach and Avalon came into view.

  “There she is, sir,” the pilot told him, her amused tone revealing at least some understanding of her much-senior passenger’s anticipation.

  Avalon would not be the first of the Castle Federation’s Deep Space Carriers that Kyle had served on – but she was the first whose starfighter group he’d command in its entirety. Avalon was a legend, the first modern space carrier ever built by anyone, and her SFG-001 had a list of battle honors as long as Kyle’s arm.

  The abbreviated arrowhead of the carrier slowly grew in his vision, and he twigged his implants to zoom in on her. The computer in his head happily threw up stats and numbers as he scanned along the length of his new home.

  The carrier was small compared to her modern sisters, a mere eight hundred meters from her two hundred meter wide prow to her four hundred meter wide base, angling from a hundred meters thick at the prow to two hundred meters at the base. She was smoother than more recent ships as well, with her weapons and sensors clustered together in the breaks in her now-obsolete neutronium armor.

  Several of those clusters were currently open to space, weapons dating back two and three decades, according to his brief, being ripped out for replacement with the super-modern systems delivered by the transport he’d arrived on.

  “I never expected to see Avalon fly again,” the co-pilot observed from behind Kyle. “Rumor had it that her assignment as guardship here was just a quiet way of placing her in the Reserve.”

  Kyle nodded his silent agreement. He’d heard the same rumors, and he’d seen the rough brief of the work they were doing to make her fit for duty. If nothing else, Avalon was a carrier, and the starfighters she’d carried had been three generations out of date.

  That was his job to fix, of course. He’d spent his trip babying six entire squadrons – forty-eight ships – of brand new, barely out of prototype, Falcon-type starfighters. The new ships strapped mass manipulators and engines rated for five hundred gravities to four three-shot launchers firing short-range missiles with gigaton antimatter warheads and a positron lance rated for fifty kilotons per second.

  The number of ships told th
e story of Avalon’s age, though. His last command, the fighter wing aboard the battlecruiser Alamo, had also been forty-eight ships. That ship, however, been almost thirteen hundred meters long, and had carried a broadside of ten half-megaton-per-second positron lances in each of the four sides of her arrowhead shape, plus missile launchers and the seventy-kiloton-per-second lances generally used as anti-fighter guns.

  Avalon was less than two thirds the size of modern ships, as the technology behind the Alcubierre-Stetson Drive had advanced significantly in the forty years since she had been built. Past her, he could see the twelve ships of the Castle Federation’s New Amazon Reserve Flotilla – the smallest and oldest of them twenty years newer than Avalon, and a quarter again her size.

  “She’s a special case,” Kyle said finally, continuing to eye the old carrier. “The Navy’s Old Lady, gussied up one last time.”

  After that, Kyle was silent, considering his new ship and his new command. One last time was true – rumor had it that the tour of the Alliance that they’d been assigned to carry out was Avalon’s last mission. Once they were done, they would deliver the old lady to the shipyards of the Castle system itself, where she would be gently laid to rest.

  New Amazon System, Castle Federation

  19:00, July 5, 2735 ESMDT

  DSC-001 Avalon – Flight Deck

  Exiting the shuttle, followed closely by the two Flight Commanders he’d brought with him, Kyle found the ship’s Captain waiting. He was a tall, gaunt man with iron-gray hair who looked like he’d gone best out of three with Death – and the Reaper had kept an eye.

  Modern prostheses could be almost indistinguishable from the real thing, but Captain Blair’s was an older model, an emergency implant Kyle had most commonly seen on men and women injured in the War who were proud of the plain but extremely functional metal eye.

  “Welcome aboard Avalon, Wing Commander Roberts,” the Captain greeted him with an extended hand. Like Kyle, he wore the standard shipsuit that, despite imitating the appearance of slacks and a turtleneck, was a single piece garment capable of sealing against vacuum and sustaining the wearer for at least six hours, underneath his formal uniform jacket – piped with gold in the Captain’s case for Navy, blue for the Space Force in Kyle’s.

  “I am Captain Malcolm Blair,” Kyle’s new commanding officer continued. “I wanted to welcome you aboard in person, though your Flight Group is waiting to show you the song and dance.”

  Blair gestured slightly behind him, where the four Flight Commanders leading the squadrons currently aboard the carrier stood at rigid attention.

  “Thank you for the welcome, Captain,” Kyle replied. “I understand we have our work cut out for us.”

  “We do,” Blair confirmed. “Uniform of the day is shipsuits until further notice,” he continued cheerfully with a tug at the gold-banded sleeves of his uniform. “We have enough work going on throughout the ship that an accidental loss of pressure isn’t impossible.”

  “Understood, sir,” the Wing Commander replied, glancing past the Captain again to the men and women he would command.

  “Allow me to introduce you to your Flight Commanders,” Blair asked, stepping aside and leading Kyle and his two trailing officers forwards to where the Flight Group waited. “Your senior squadron leader is Flight Commander James Randall.”

  Randall stepped forward with an Academy-precise salute and inclined his head slightly.

  “Welcome aboard, Wing Commander Roberts,” he said smoothly. “May I say that it’s an honor to serve under the hero of Ansem Gulf?”

  Kyle shook Randall’s hand calmly, gauging the man with an appraising eye. The Commander was blond, blue-eyed, and easily ten years older than Kyle himself. His uniform jacket was decorated with the neat blue and gold square ribbon of the Space Force Combat Badge, a badge only earned by flying a starfighter under fire. Technically, Kyle’s jacket should have borne the same badge, next to the tiny gold icon of the Federation Star of Heroism, their second highest award for valor, but only dress uniform required even the ribbons.

  “Thank you,” Kyle said quietly, and turned to the remaining officers.

  “Flight Commander Michael Stanford,” Blair continued after allowing the silence to drag a moment too long. “Flight Commander Russell Rokos. Flight Commander Shannon Lancet.”

  Stanford was a short, pale man with a firm grip and watery blue eyes. He met Kyle’s gaze levelly and nodded his silent greetings. Rokos and Lancet each murmured pleasantries, the former a stocky man of Kyle’s own bulk without the height, and the latter a willowy blond woman.

  “These are Flight Commander Wang Zhao and Jose Mendez,” Kyle told the assembled officers, introducing the woman and man who had arrived with him. Wang shared Lancet’s height, but was dark-skinned and haired to the other officer’s fair blondness. Mendez, despite his name, shared every ounce and inch of Kyle’s own imposing height and bulk, with close-cropped blond hair and the brown eyes of his Hispanic ancestors. “Both are recently of SFG-074, aboard Alamo.”

  “I will leave you to the formalities of your command,” Blair told Kyle. “Once you’ve read yourself in and the Commanders have given you the tour, please do me the courtesy of stopping by my office.”

  “Of course, Captain Blair,” Kyle confirmed. With a firm nod, the gaunt Captain drifted away from the group as Kyle turned to face his command.

  The Flight Commanders had managed to gather up all ninety-six of the flight crew for the four squadrons already aboard Avalon, and those officers had been waiting in relatively graceful silence as the Captain had introduced their squadron leaders. Along with Kyle and his two squadron leaders, six more members of the two squadrons he’d arrived with had arrived on the shuttle with him. As they saw Kyle draw up to face the Flight Group, all eight of the new officers quietly moved over to join its ranks.

  “Deck Chief, please report,” Kyle said calmly and clearly, projecting his voice across the deck. The projection was unnecessary, as the Senior Chief currently responsible for the Flight Deck had been hovering about ten feet away since he’d stepped off the shuttle.

  “Senior Chief Marshal Hammond, sir,” the burly and grizzled non-commissioned officer, a stereotype of any space navy for all that the man wore the blue piping of the Space Force.

  “Please record for the log,” Kyle instructed, pulling a sheet of archaic parchment from inside his jacket. Under the parchment was an electronic chip that he would deliver to the Captain when they met later, but for tradition, the parchment was vital.

  “To Wing Commander Kyle Roberts from Vice Admiral Mohammed Kane, Joint Department of Space Personnel, June Twentieth, 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 New Amazon system and report aboard the Deep Space Carrier Avalon, hull number DSC – Zero Zero One, there to take upon yourself the duties and responsibilities of commanding officer of Starfighter Group Zero Zero One in the service of the Castle Federation. Fail not in this charge at your peril.”

  At the completion of the formal words, every officer standing in front of Kyle seemed to relax slightly except for Randall and Stanford. The former remained at a perfect attention stance, and the latter seemed surprisingly nervous for a senior squadron commander.

  “I assume command of SFG-001,” Kyle informed the Flight Group. “We still have flight crews and deck personnel aboard Sphinx and Chipmunk who will be reporting aboard today. Our starfighters will be coming over sometime tomorrow, so everyone should expect a busy day.”

  He glanced around his people, and gestured for the Flight Commanders to attend him.

  “Flight Group, dismissed!”

  After the collected personnel had cleared the deck, Kyle found himself standing with his six squadron commanders and Senior Chief Hammond.

  “Chief, can you have someone take care of our gear?” he asked the Deck Chief, gesturing at the duffel bags he, Mendez and Zhao had b
rought with them.

  “Of course sir,” the NCO replied, moving away to police up someone junior to deal with the luggage.