A pair of salutes answered him, and the two officers from Alamo allowed themselves to be guided away, leaving Kyle standing with Randall and Stanford.
As soon as they were alone, Randall turned to the other Flight Commander. “I’m delegating the ready squadron to you, Stanford,” he said brusquely. “Don’t scratch my paint.”
“Sir,” the pale man confirmed stiffly, and then stalked away towards what Kyle presumed to be a ready room.
“Don’t mind Stanford too much,” Randall advised Kyle after a moment of watching the other officer walk away. “He has a stick up his ass, but he’s a decent pilot.”
“I see,” the Wing Commander replied noncommittally. “Your squadron is the ready one?”
“Yeah,” the Flight Commander confirmed. “My flight crews at least. We moved most of the starfighters over to the Reserve Flotilla’s guard station, so we only have a single squadron of Badgers aboard. We’re trading off which squadron’s personnel are on-call to man them though.”
“Badgers,” Kyle repeated slowly. “This ship is still flying Badgers.”
The Badger-type fighter had been the last product of the wartime crash development programs, deployed to the Navy eighteen months after peace was declared – twenty years ago now.
“I thought Avalon was assigned Typhoons,” he continued. The Typhoon type was ten years old, two generations behind the brand new Falcon, but still at least a usable fighter.
“She carried Typhoons when she arrived,” Randall agreed. “At some point, those ships were pulled to fill out a sale to an ally, and we got the Badgers in trade. We’re all looking forward to seeing the new ships you’re supposed to be bringing, sir.”
While they’d talked, Randall had guided his new superior from the side-portion of the bay set aside for shuttles to an observation railing from which they could view Kyle’s new domain. Avalon’s main flight deck was thirty meters tall, eighty meters across, and stretched four hundred meters deep into the carrier’s hull.
Right now it was an echoing, empty, space. Equipment designed to service and move five-thousand-ton ships was neatly stored away against the sides. A handful of crewmen were rolling up the hoses they’d used to quickly refuel the shuttle from the Sphinx and Chipmunk. From the observation deck, Kyle could make out four hatches, sized to take starfighters, spaced evenly along the opposite side.
“We have four launch tubes per side,” Randall explained, pointing them out. “We kept the Badgers aboard in the tubes – they’ll be easy to deploy out that way once the new birds are aboard. With a full deck load, we can load new birds into the launch tubes every forty seconds.”
The pilot sounded proud of that, and given the age of the equipment they had to work with he was probably right to be. A forty second turn-around on the launch tubes meant a total of over three minutes to put the entirety of SFG-001 into space – three times the design requirement for a modern carrier to deploy its even larger fighter group.
“That… isn’t fast if we have an emergency,” Kyle observed.
Randall nodded.
“I guess they didn’t realize how important rapid launches would be when they built her,” he agreed. “They did retrofit in an alternative, but I’d be terrified to use it.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“There’s mass manipulators mounted all along the deck,” Randall explained. “All carriers have them to catch the returning birds, but ours are also wired so they can run in reverse – theoretically, we can turn the center twenty meters of the deck into a single massive launch tube and blow the entire Group into space in one shot.”
Kyle shook his head, eyeing the deck askance. The ability to blast everything on his flight deck into space at the push of a button wasn’t entirely appealing to him, though he’d prefer it over having to wait three minutes to put his fighters into space in an emergency.
“Any other old tricks I should know about?” he asked.
The Flight Commander shook his head with a grin.
“That’s the thing about Avalon, sir,” he replied. “I’m not sure any of us know all of her tricks.”
Space Carrier Avalon by Glynn Stewart
Interested in reading more? Space Carrier Avalon is available now.
About the Author
Glynn Stewart is the author of Starship’s Mage, a bestselling science fiction and fantasy series where faster-than-light travel is possible–but only because of magic. His other works include science fiction series Duchy of Terra, Castle Federation and Vigilante, as well as the urban fantasy series ONSET and Changeling Blood.
Writing managed to liberate Glynn from a bleak future as an accountant. With his personality and hope for a high-tech future intact, he lives in Kitchener, Ontario with his wife, their cats, and an unstoppable writing habit.
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Other books by Glynn Stewart
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Peacekeepers of Sol
Raven’s Peace
The Peacekeeper Initiative
Raven’s Course
Drifter’s Folly (upcoming)
Scattered Stars: Conviction
Conviction
Deception
Equilibrium (upcoming)
Castle Federation
Space Carrier Avalon
Stellar Fox
Battle Group Avalon
Q-Ship Chameleon
Rimward Stars
Operation Medusa
Exile
Ashen Stars: an Exile Prequel Novella
Exile
Refuge
Crusade
Duchy of Terra
The Terran Privateer
Duchess of Terra
Terra and Imperium
Darkness Beyond
Shield of Terra
Imperium Defiant
Relics of Eternity
Shadows of the Fall
Eyes of Tomorrow (upcoming)
Starship’s Mage
Starship’s Mage
Hand of Mars
Voice of Mars
Alien Arcana
Judgment of Mars
UnArcana Stars
Sword of Mars
Mountain of Mars
The Service of Mars
A Darker Magic (upcoming)
Pulsar Race: A Starship’s Mage Universe Novella
Starship’s Mage: Red Falcon
Interstellar Mage
Mage-Provocateur
Agents of Mars
Vigilante (With Terry Mixon)
Heart of Vengeance
Oath of Vengeance
Bound By Stars: A Vigilante Series (With Terry Mixon)
Bound By Law
Bound by Honor
Bound by Blood
ONSET
ONSET: To Serve and Protect
ONSET: My Enemy’s Enemy
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent
ONSET: Stay of Execution
Murder by Magic: an ONSET Universe Novella
Changeling Blood
Changeling’s Fealty
Hunter’s Oath
Noble’s Honor
Fae, Flames & Fedoras: a Changeling Blood Universe Novella