False Colors

CHAPTER 13

Combat Information Center, FRLS Karga

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

1447 hours (CST), 2671.011

Admiral Geoff Tolwyn settled into his captain’s chair and thought once again how good it felt to be in command of a ship again.

The thought had occurred to him more than once since the beginning of the Goliath Project, but it still hit him every so often that he was fortunate to have a second chance like this one. For all of his reputation as a strategist and a brilliant fleet commander, Tolwyn had always secretly felt that it had been a mistake to give up his first and greatest love, ship command, in favor of the wider responsibilities of a ConFleet admiral. People often talked about the “loneliness of command,” but the fact was that a captain knew his ship, officers, and crew far better than a flag officer could ever know his battle group or fleet. The decisions you made sitting in the captain’s chair were translated into instant action, for good or ill; an admiral’s orders filtered through layers of subordinates and were never so immediate or so personal.

Even with the back-breaking work of refitting Karga, Tolwyn had found these past months among the most worthwhile he’d ever been through. For at least this brief period he had felt truly alive again, the pressures, the worries about other things secondary. Indeed, they were following their chosen course, the other things-that was a machine all ready running, just waiting for the moment to be unleashed. If anything, these weeks out here had been a final respite, a rekindling of older days before the events of things to come were finally shaped and unleashed. It was something special to see the battered derelict come alive again bit by bit, and to know that he had played a part in making it all happen. A decisive part, in fact, given the way he’d been forced to maneuver Richards and Bondarevsky into going ahead with the project.

Whole days had gone by in which he’d never even thought about the Confederation, or the conspiracy, or his career. He wished, sometimes, that it could always be like that, but tempting as it was to throw himself wholeheartedly into the service of the Landreich he was still committed to serving Terra any way he could. Getting Karga back into service was the only way he could help right now, but when the time came he’d leave Kruger’s navy and go home to carry on his struggle over fresh battlefields.

“Ring System transit coming up in fifteen minutes, sir.” Lieutenant Clancy, the helm officer from Sindri who’d been helping out with the refit had the conn today. There were a whole series of tests scheduled for Karga to attempt, and Clancy knew the helm and navigation systems better than any of Karga’s regular crew.

“Thank you, Helm,” Tolwyn said. He keyed the intercom pad at his arm. “Engineering, are you ready?”

“As ready as we’ll ever be, sir,” Commander Graham’s voice responded. “I think the generators will stay online this time.”

“Do your best, Commander,” the admiral told him. He touched another key. “Sindri, this is Karga. Shield test commences in thirty seconds.”

“Roger that” Sindri’s captain replied. “Thirty seconds.”

Tolwyn watched the event countdown roll by on his monitor. As it hit zero, the lights flickered in CIC for a moment, and the ship’s status board beside him came alive with multi-colored lights as Graham switched on the shield generators and a whole new part of the ship awakened from a year-long slumber. At first the lights were a mixture of red, green, and amber, but slowly the red lights went out as section after section adjusted to the new configuration of the power grid and the shielding subsystems.

They’d been through this before-three times, in fact. Each time the shields had gone down almost immediately. Tolwyn hoped they wouldn’t have to go through a fourth failure and another week or two of tracing connections and bridging weak spots in the shield emitter arrays.

Seconds crept by like hours, and the shielding held.

After two full minutes, Tolwyn activated his intercom again. “Sindri, my board shows green. Shields are nominal.”

“That’s confirmed, Karga. Looking good from here. I’m switching our shields to stand-by mode…now.”

And Karga was generating her own protective field at last, unaided by the tender still riding her superstructure like some kind of bizarre metallic symbiont.

“Engineering,” Tolwyn said. “Good work, Commander Graham. I think this time you’ve got it.”

Graham’s reply was pessimistic. “They’re holding, sir, but I’m not real happy with some of these readings. There’s still something wrong with the power flow to the upper superstructure emitters. I’ll need to do some more work before I can guarantee any kind of combat-rated shields.”

“But in the meantime we don’t have to depend on Sindri just to keep from frying,” Tolwyn said. “And that counts for a lot. Keep me appraised, Commander.”

“Aye aye, sir,” the engineer responded. “We’ll try to maintain shields through the ring transit, and see how they do. But don’t start thinking about cutting the cord just yet. We need Sindri to fall back on if a glitch develops.”

“Ten minutes to ring transit,” Clancy announced.

“Anything on sensors, Mr. Kittani?”

Karga’s First Officer, Captain Ismet Kittani, was peering over the shoulder of the technician on duty at the sensor panel. He straightened up slowly and turned toward Tolwyn with an aura of finicky precision Tolwyn found irritating. But the man had an impressive service record as CO of a destroyer, and although his personal style clashed with Tolwyn’s he’d done some good work in the refit project.

“We are still not getting reliable readings through the ring plane,” the swarthy Turk from Ilios said gravely. “We will have to do something to improve sensor performance before we attempt any sort of active operations.”

Tolwyn frowned. The sensors, like the shield generators, had become one of those on-going problems that seemed to take up increasing amounts of refit time that should have been going into less essential systems by now. “We’ll get them when we can.” He activated the intercom system again. “Flight Wing, from CIC. Captain Bondarevsky, we will be entering the ring system in nine minutes. What’s your status?”

“Four Hornets on patrol,” Bondarevsky replied. “Four Raptors on Alert Five.”

“Very good. Please have your fighter patrol take position ahead of us. They might not be able to help much, but I’d like some eyes out in front, just to avoid what happened last time.” On the ship’s previous ring transit two days earlier a particularly large chunk of ice had very nearly hit the ship, and Tolwyn didn’t want a repeat of the threat today. Not while Graham’s shields were still not fully reliable.

He checked the status board again, pleased to note that the shields were still holding steady despite the chief engineer’s concerns. Despite the problems that continued to crop up, he was still confident of success. With luck they’d soon have the shields permanently on-line, and maneuvering drives ready to lift them into a better orbit before the next time their present elliptical path brought them back through the rings again.

With luck….

Hornet 100, VF-12 “Flying Eyes”

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

1454 hours (CST)

“Watchdog, this is Kennel. Put a couple of your birds four minutes ahead, same orbital vector. And keep your eyes peeled for anything big enough to be a bother.”

“Kennel, Watchdog. Copy. Viking, we’ll take point. Lefty, Drifter, you two maintain your position.” Babe Babcock accelerated her fighter to the new vector, settling in ahead of Karga with her wingmate close by. She was feeling irritable today, the result of a whole string of petty frustrations that had started with the hot water heater in the squadron’s ready room showers going belly-up just when she wanted to use it that morning and culminated in the discovery that her regular Hornet had earned a down gripe from Lieutenant McCullough and had been pulled from the flight line to have a navicomp fault repaired. As a result she’d been forced to take out Hornet 100, the fighter normally reserved as a back-up craft and designated for use by the Wing Commander when he chose to fly a mission with the lesser mortals of his command.

She didn’t like Hornet 100. The target lock system was slower than it should have been-though it was still within acceptable tolerances, a good pilot knew the difference in a combat situation-and it was fitted with an APSP rather than the extra pair of missiles she would have preferred to mount. But it would have taken too long to reconfigure the fighter’s load, so she’d taken the fighter despite her preferences. After all, it was another routine patrol, more practice than anything else-for the carrier’s flight crews as much as for the Flying Eyes.

She was starting to regret her new assignment to the Karga. She’d liked duty aboard the Independence, and had regarded Kevin Tolwyn as the best kind of Wing Commander, a CO who was willing to delegate responsibility to his squadron leaders and let them have their own heads most of the time. Bondarevsky, her new Wing Commander, might have been a big-time war hero and an intelligent, capable officer, but he was a hands-on type of leader who wanted to have a part in anything and everything going on around him. It made Babcock uncomfortable to know that he might turn up to look over her shoulder any time, any place, always ready to offer an opinion or point out an alternative.

But more than the change in personalities, duty aboard Karga wasn’t exactly what she’d signed up for. The crew and officers’ quarters were still a long way from being refurbished, and recreational facilities were something between horrible and nonexistent. And the daily flight ops were becoming something of a joke. Vaku was a backwater even among backwaters, and Karga’s endless orbit was a study in monotony. The pilots who had come across from Independence weren’t even involved in much of the refit work, since they had to do flight duty, so they didn’t even have the technical challenges the rest of the crew faced to keep them fresh.

Babcock was starting to think she ought to volunteer for one of the squadrons designated for the Kilrathi birds. At least then she’d get a crack at extensive combat simulations, instead of nothing but routine patrol work.

“Come on, skipper, we’re coming up on the rough spot!” The voice of her wingman, Lieutenant Eric “Viking” Jensson, brought her back to reality. “One minute.”

“Copy,” she said. “Stick close to my three, Viking.”

“Close enough to reach out and touch you,” he replied, drawing his fighter in tight beside hers.

“You do and you’ll be up on charges,” she said sweetly. “Again.” Viking was a big, blonde, handsome Dane who’d grown up on Terra but drifted out to the frontier after being turned down by the ConFleet Academy as unsuitable officer material. He’d done better on Landreich, but three times in a relatively short career he’d landed in hot water by making unwelcome advances to female officers. If he hadn’t been a naturally brilliant fighter jockey he would probably have been cashiered long since. Still, despite his reputation, Babcock was glad to have him in the squadron…as long as he knew where to draw the line in his personal pursuits.

They were coming up fast on the arbitrary “edge” of the gas giant’s rings. They were impressive by any standards, out-showing even Saturn in the Terra system, but though they extended for thousands of kilometers outward from the superjovian world, they were less than a hundred kilometers thick. Made up of ice ranging in size from dust up to chunks like small boulders, the density of the ring field was fairly low, so that ships could pass through without much danger of major collisions. Unshielded, Karga had passed through the rings hundreds of times since being damaged, and had collected only a few extra scars as a result.

Still, a ring system wasn’t exactly a pleasant place to fly. Particles of debris clouded sensor scans and confused computer imaging systems, and an unlucky encounter with a substantial ice boulder could ruin your whole day. It was particularly bad here and now. Normally a carrier had enough sensor arrays and sufficient computing power to compensate for the inhibiting effects of the rings, but Karga’s systems still stubbornly refused to resolve the data gathered into anything useful. That meant she and Viking had to be doubly careful making the transit. And they also had to be the eyes for the carrier. If they picked up anything large enough to be a threat, they’d have to deal with it. Karga still couldn’t maneuver away from danger under her own power, and her point-defense batteries couldn’t fire as long as the sensors weren’t able to distinguish individual targets.

“Here we go!” Viking called. “Hornet one-oh-six, feet cold!” That was pilot’s slang for approaching any airless chunk of rock or ice, up to and including small planets.

They passed the boundary set arbitrarily by the navicomps. At first there was no noticeable change, but then the particle density began to rise until Babcock felt like she was flying in atmosphere. Although the rings were not very thick, the supercarrier’s orbit was at a very low angle from the plane of the rings, and it took nearly half a minute on that vector to pass through them. As abruptly as they’d entered the orbiting ice cloud, they were through.

And, all at once, the threat tone sounded loud in Babcock’s ears.

Bridge, Guild Privateer Bonadventure

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

1458 hours (CST)

“Targets! Targets! Two targets, bearing zero-zero-two by zero-one zero! Range ten thousand, closing.”

Zachary Banfeld rose from the captain’s chair and crossed to the tactical control officer’s position. “What are they?” he demanded sharply.

“Mass is just under fourteen tons each,” the TACCO reported. “Length ’prox twenty-five meters…warbook calls them Hornet fighters.”

“Hornets.” Banfeld didn’t bother to hide the contempt in his voice. Obsolete light fighters from ConFleet’s old stock didn’t pose much of a threat to his squadron.

“Thev will be posted as patrol craft,” Gedi Tanaka commented. He was nominally the captain of the privateer, a one-time Confederation Fleet officer who had been discharged for failing to prevent a Kilrathi raider from knocking out three ships in the convoy he’d been assigned to escort. Despite that blot on his record he was a fine tactician and a capable leader, and he had flourished since coming out to the Landreich and joining the Guild. “There will be heavier fighters ready to respond to an attack.”

“But not enough to stop our attack,” Banfeld replied. “Not if we can get the first blow in by surprise.”

He checked the tactical plot. Bonadventure had settled into orbit well ahead of the Karga, keeping the rings between the two ships. Springweather’s information had made mention of a sensor glitch, and that was just the thing he needed to achieve complete surprise.

His orders from Williams were to destroy the supercarrier, but Banfeld had no intention of doing so if he could possibly knock it out without severely damaging it. Those Landreichers had worked hard restoring the ship to something like working order, and he fully intended to take advantage of their hard work. But to take out the ship’s shields without causing collateral damage he’d needed an edge, and the obscuring rings had given him just what he wanted.

Bonadventure was the perfect ship for the mission, and she was ready to strike. Originally a bulk ore carrier, she’d been taken over by the Landreich government ten years back and refitted as a sort of makeshift escort carrier, with a single flight deck and a capacity of no more than twenty carried fighters. Before she was finished the Landreich Navy had pronounced her hopelessly outclassed for combat service against the Empire, and the project had been abandoned. But the orbital shipyard where she’d been building had belonged to a member of the Guild, and Banfeld had paid to have her completed and crewed as the largest of his fleet of privateers. Though she might not be able to face a stand-up fight with a Cat battle group, she was an excellent convoy escort…and an equally effective raider.

Against an enemy with no drives and dependent on a tender’s thin-stretched shields, Bonadventure’s fighter contingent would be more than adequate. Striking with surprise, they’d have the tender’s shielding battered down before the carrier could scramble its available fighters, and that would be the end of the fight. Banfeld could sit back and wait for the supercarrier to fall into his hands, intact and ready to have her refitting completed by the Guild.

Of course, Mancini and Williams didn’t have to know if the supercarrier was captured. Let them think he’d been forced to destroy it. They were pleased to call him one of the best agents of Y-12, but in fact Zachary Banfeld remained his own man. It was convenient-and lucrative-to work with the confees from time to time, but in the end what mattered to Banfeld was preserving the balance of power out here on the frontier. He’d take down the Landreichers before they could put a ship into service that would force Ragark to back down…but later it might be the Cats or the confees who needed to be cut off before they became a threat, and with the Karga he’d be nicely placed to do whatever was needed to keep the fires of war stoked high.

Banfeld smiled. He enjoyed the dangerous game he played, balancing opposing sides and growing wealthy from the profits. He imagined Ragark would offer a tidy sum for information about Murragh, the kil Springweather had claimed was the heir to the Imperial Crown. He’d kept that bit of information from Williams and Mancini, figuring that Ragark would pay more than they would. How much would it be worth to the warlord to have this rival eliminated? With luck, Banfeld would have a chance to find out. But, as he’d told Springweather, he wouldn’t be telling the Cats about Karga. That was too valuable a secret to let Ragark discover. For now, at least.

The tactical plot showed the wedge of fighters shaping their course toward the oncoming Hornets…and the supercarrier that would soon be coming through the rings. Bonadventure’s sensors were tracking the supercarrier well enough. They were top-of-the-line modules salvaged from a Kilrathi cruiser, coupled with a computer imaging program he’d picked up from the ConFleet by way of a black market source who had an inside line to the CSB. He smiled at the thought. According to Springweather that was just the sort of thing they were doing aboard Karga, cobbling together different technologies to produce an effective compromise between Cat and human systems.

Banfeld knew he’d feel right at home when he sat on the bridge of the supercarrier….

Hornet 100, VF-12 “Flying Eyes”

Near Vaku VII, Vaku System

1459 hours (CST)

“We have multiple targets! Repeat, multiple targets!” Babcock strove to keep her voice level. “Looks like a cruiser and…twenty small craft. Maybe fighters.”

“Nonsense,” Viking argued. “A cruiser can’t carry that many fighters.”

“Look at your warbook, you dumb Dane,” she flared. “Those are reading as Broadsword heavy fighters…”

“Confederation fighters?” That was Bondarevsky, back in Primary Flight Control. “What are twenty obsolete Terran fighters doing out here?”

“Beats the hell out of me, Captain,” she replied. “What I want to know is what the hell I’m supposed to do about them? Do I wave, ignore them, or spit?”

There was a long moment of silence before Bondarevsky replied. “They’re not Confederation Navy. Broadswords are out of service except with Reserve Wings. And they’re not Landreichers, unless somebody’s forgotten to update our own warbook files.” He hesitated again. “Your ROE is to consider them potentially hostile, but engage only if fired upon. Repeat, fire only if they fire first. I’m launching the Alert Five birds and putting the rest of the Wing on scramble now. Just in case.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said sourly. Fire if fired on, indeed…as if two Hornets could fight off twenty Broadswords under any circumstances.

“The bandits are accelerating,” Viking reported, sounding cool and professional. Whatever his personal shortcomings might be, he was all business in a crisis. “I make their vector an intercept with Karga.”

She checked her navicomp. “Confirmed. You copy that, Kennel?”

“Roger. Break off and pull back to join the rest of the patrol. Stay close to the boat and we’ll give you support from the laser turrets.”

“Two bandits breaking formation!” Viking broke in. “They’re coming after us!”

“Break formation!” Babcock ordered. “We can outrun them!”

The Broadswords opened fire…

Primary Flight Control, FRLS Karga

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

1500 hours (CST)

“We are under fire. Repeat, we are under fire!”

Bondarevsky turned from the communications console. “Why aren’t those Raptors up yet?” he snapped.

“First one’s launching now,” Boss Marchand replied evenly. “How do you want to handle the rest of the deployment? It’ll take time to get the other birds from the Eyes and the Eights up and prepped. They’ve already started their maintenance rotations…“

“What’s the status on the Kilrathi planes?” Bondarevsky asked. They had scheduled a practice launch of the recovered Imperial fighters for later in the day, the first flight for the pilots who had been taking simulator training these last two weeks.

Marchand didn’t even hesitate. “The Strakhas were scheduled first up,” she said. “They’re ready to go. Five minutes to get the first two up on the flight deck and ready for launch. After that…call it four more every three minutes. The Dralthis and the Vaktoths will take a little longer.”

“Do it,” he ordered. “Scramble the Strakha squadron! And make sure one of the first two is one-zero-zero.”

“You’re taking her out yourself, sir?” Marchand asked.

“Yeah.” Bondarevsky was already heading for the door. “You think I’d send those people out there to fight in ships they’ve never handled before without going out there myself?”

Marchand gave him a long, thoughtful look. “Some would,” she said curtly. Then, “Good luck, skipper.”

Combat Information Center, FRLS Karga

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

1502 hours (CST)

“One minute to the ring field, Captain.”

Tolwyn clenched the arms of his chair and watched as the forward viewer began to grow hazing from the gradual thickening of multi-hued ice dust. Somewhere up ahead a small swarm of hostile fighters was bearing down on his ship, but he was helpless to fight them for the moment. Blind and unable to change course, Karga could only ride out whatever was coming at them. The patrol fighters wouldn’t be able to stop the attackers, and the rest of Bondarevsky’s planes would take time to launch. The enemy, whoever they were, would get at least one punch in before Karga cleared the ring field and the Flight Wing went into action.

After that, though, they’d be fighting an even battle. Or so he hoped.

“Captain, Durendal and Caliburn are moving to support us, but it will be at least ten minutes before they can get into the game.” That was Richards, calling on the private line from the flag bridge. “I’ve ordered Xenophon to keep station with the Carnegie and the City of Cashel. I know it isn’t likely, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave them open to attack. It looks like we’re on our own for now.”

Tolwyn gave a tight nod. “Looks that way, Admiral,” he responded. “We’ll keep them busy until the tin cans can get here, don’t you worry.” He turned from the intercom screen. “Deniken! Are your weapons on-line?”

“All laser turrets ready, sir,” he said. “Point defense off-line until we get the sensors up again.” He sounded apologetic.

“Stay on top of it.” He danced at Kittani. “Get Damage Control ready, Exec. And alert Doctor Manning that she may be getting some casualties down there.” Tolwyn didn’t like to think about that. Sick Bay was still not up to anything like ConFleet standards, and Manning could be handling combat injuries under appallingly primitive conditions down there if the carrier took any serious damage.

“Aye aye, sir,” Kittani replied.

“Engineering, this is CIC. Will your shields keep on holding, Mr. Graham, or should I order Sindri to go back on-line?”

“Won’t matter much one way or the other, Captain,” Graham responded, sounding harried. “Sindri’s shields might stop a mosquito-if it wasn’t too mad. I’d say we’ve a better chance with our own. They might not be able to take a whole lot of pounding, but they’re better than what the tender could put out…while they last.”

“The shield generators have priority, Engineer,” Tolwyn said grimly. “I don’t care if you have to splice wires together by hand. I want those shields to stay up. Understood?”

“We’ll do our best,” Graham said.

“Entering the ring field,” Clancy announced.

“Get ready, people…”

Targets! Targets! Targets!“ Deniken chanted. ”Just came up on the screens. They’re close…“

The effective range of the sensors in this mess of ice was barely a kilometer. The enemy fighters were right on top of them.

“Incoming fire,” Kittani said. “Beams and missiles!”

Tolwyn braced himself, ready for the worst.

Broadsword 206, Guild Squadron “Raider-One”

Near Vaku VII, Vaku System

1504 hours (CST)

“Firing!” Winston Drake hit the trigger to release a full salvo of beam weapons, then followed up with a pair of salvaged Kilrathi Image Recognition missiles. According to the mission profile the pilots had gone over during the outward voyage, the target ship would have only minimal shield power available, and a rapid string of laser hits would weaken the force fields long enough to allow the missiles to penetrate. Each of the privateer fighters in the two Broadsword squadrons would make an identical run, and the cumulative damage from so many tightly-packed attacks was sure to overload the target’s capacity to protect itself and destroy the target completely.

That was the plan…direct and simple. But his sensors were giving him a different story from the predicted profile. The attack wasn’t going anything like the computer simulations they’d run back on the Bonadventure.

The beams were striking the intended target area, but the shields were absorbing them easily. And the two missiles detonated harmlessly, their hellish energies barely causing a ripple in the force field.

“Damn!” he said aloud. “Damn it, those shields are stronger than they’re supposed to be!”

“Continue your run,” Zachary Banfeld ordered. “If it takes a little more effort to bring the shields down, so be it. Just knock out that tender!”

Bridge, FRLS Sindri

Docked with FRLS Karga, Vaku System

1504 hours (CST)

“Those bastards are targeting us!” Dickerson added a few more colorful comments.

“Calm down, Captain,” Tolwyn said over the commlink. “What’s your status?”

“If we hadn’t been letting you run your own field, we’d already be debris,” Dickerson said harshly. “As it is, we’re draining power fast. Our generators weren’t built to cycle fast enough for combat conditions. We’ve got lots of reserve power, but we’re losing ground.”

“This is Richards,” the battle group commander cut in. “Captain, cut loose your grapnels and get under way. With our fighters joining the part and the carrier clearing the ring system I think we can keep the bastards occupied while you make good an escape. If you stick where you are, one of them could get through and take you out.”

“But, Admiral, if your generators go down…”

“Never mind that! This is not what your crew signed on for. Get them clear!”

“Aye aye, sir,” he said reluctantly. Dickerson wanted no part of a battle, but he felt guilty at leaving the carrier to fend for itself. He’d been monitoring the same instruments Graham was watching from the carrier’s engineering decks. Karga could replenish her shield reserves far more quickly than Sindri could, but the generators weren’t balanced properly. Sooner or later the strain of maintaining them at full power would cause the whole system to collapse, and the supercarrier would be wide open to whatever the hostiles sent her way.

And if the shields were knocked out for a prolonged period, radiation would do all the killing the enemy needed.

But he had the admiral’s orders…and the lives of his own people to think about. “Mr. Kaine, cut us loose,” he told his first officer. He glanced at the empty pilot’s chair. Clancy was on his own. Luckily they wouldn’t need his fine touch for the kind of maneuvering they were about to perform. “You take the helm, Kaine. Get us the hell out of here!”

Broadsword 206, Guild Squadron “Raider-One”

Near Vaku VII, Vaku System

1506 hours (CST)

The carrier was clearing the ring system by the time Drake killed his original attack vector and swung around for a second run. He was cursing under his breath as he locked in the target coordinates. The first bombardment was supposed to have penetrated the shields and destroyed the tender perched on the back of the carrier’s looming superstructure. That would have spelled victory then and there.

Now the privateers would have to go back in against an opponent ready for them. They wouldn’t have the advantages of obscured sensors and masked point defense weapons. And the sensors showed fighters had started launching from the starboard flight deck of the ungainly Kilrathi ship. That would complicate things.

But even though the Landreichers had been working on that monster for months now, Drake had seen the pitting and scarring along the carrier’s hull. A ship that badly damaged couldn’t put up much of a fight, not against two squadrons of determined men willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.

He lined up his targeting reticule on the tender, then cursed as it lifted clear of the ship and accelerated outward. His sensors showed the carrier still had shields up. That explained the unexpected strength of the tender’s shielding, then. The carrier didn’t need the tender’s support any longer.

Drake followed the tender. His orders were to destroy it, and destroy it he would, attached or separated. Putting the tender out of action would still leave the carrier at their mercy if they could batter down her shields as well.

He lined up his shot and opened fire with everything he had….

Hornet 100, VF-12 “Flying Eyes”

Near Vaku VII, Vaku System

1506 hours (CST)

“I’ve got one on my six! Give me some help!” Babcock scowled and accelerated as Jensson’s desperate call crackled in her headphones. Retreating toward the safety of the carrier had proved to be no safety at all, not with those Broadswords circling and swooping in like birds of prey stooping low over their victim. Most were concentrating on attacking the tender, but the attackers didn’t pass up a chance to take a shot at the Hornets if they came in range.

Viking’s Hornet was being pursued by one of the Broadswords. Both ships were plunging straight in towards the carrier, rolling from side to side as the enemy pilot tried to match Jensson’s evasive maneuvers. Viking’s acceleration curve was all wrong, far too slow, and Babcock caught a glimpse of twisted metal along the rear of the port side wing. He’d taken a hit, then, and now he’d lost the one advantage of a light fighter over a heavy one-speed.

“Keep them guessing, Viking, while I get into position,” she said coolly, dropping her fighter behind the Broadsword and arming her heat-seeking missiles. The target reticule seemed to take forever to center on the Broadsword, and Babcock remembered again how she’d wished she could have strapped on her own plane today instead of this one.

Then the diamond on her HUD display glowed red to indicate a target lock, and Babcock opened fire with both laser cannons and both heat seekers, a single powerful strike. She hoped it would at least get the other pilot’s attention.

But even as she fired, the Broadsword was opening up as well. Beams stabbed at the weakened rear shielding of Viking’s Hornet, and moments later missiles detonated. It was small consolation to see her own missiles batter right through the Broadsword’s shields and rip through a weak spot in the armor around the main engine…not when Viking’s Hornet disappeared in an expanding cloud of debris at almost the same instant.

Babcock swore. She hadn’t liked Eric Jensson, but he had been one of her pilots. Now he was gone.

The threat tone sounded in her ear. Another Broadsword had decided to join the party to help the one she had just crippled. And it had just acquired a target lock on her fighter.

She rammed the throttle full forward on her main engine, and prayed she could out-fly this new menace before she joined Viking in whatever Valhalla dead fighter jocks ended up in.

Strakha800

Near Vaku VII, Vaku System

1508 hours (CST)

Acceleration pushed Bondarevsky back into his seat as the Kilrathi fighter leapt from the deck, hurled clear by a powerful linear accelerator catapult. Internal gravity compensators absorbed most of the g-force, but not quite all, and for a moment Bondarevsky reveled in the feel of it. Too much time had gone by since he’d made his last catapult launch.

There wasn’t time to think about it, though. Clear of the flight deck, he cut in his main engine and pushed the throttle forward to full military power. The Strakha was handling remarkably like the simulator version he’d flown time and again since Christmas. Maybe, just maybe, the squadron’s training time would count for something out here after all.

“Strakha Eight-zero-zero, good shot! Good shot!” he called, setting course toward the nearest of the enemy fighters.

“Strakha Eight-zero-niner, good shot,” he heard just seconds later. It was Harper, who’d insisted on flying as his wingman. Boss Marchand must have been cycling the catapult faster than ConFleet safety regulations would ever have allowed, rushing to get the Kilrathi fighters into the battle before the Hornets and Raptors were overwhelmed.

“Bard, this is Bear,” he said crisply. “Go to stealth mode.”

“Copy,” Harper responded, all his banter gone, replaced by a cold, professional manner. “Engaging.”

Bondarevsky flipped a switch, and to all intents and purposes the Strakha fighter vanished.

Kilrathi stealth technology still wasn’t fully understood in human circles even yet, despite having been studied and adapted for use in the latest ConFleet ships, from Excalibur fighters up to recon ships like the old Bannockburn that James Taggart had commanded out here in the Landreich during the Free Corps campaign. The twin generators mounted under the fighter’s ventral fin created an area of distortion that bent most radiation, right up through the visible spectrum, right around the hull. A small amount was allowed to leak through- otherwise the pilot would be as blind to the outside universe as his enemies were to him-but the narrow band opening was constantly remodulated by a random computer program so that it took a lucky observer to spot a cloaked ship. But it also took a lot of power, and a Strakha couldn’t stay cloaked very long under combat power requirements.

Right now, though, Bondarevsky was glad to be in the cockpit of a Strakha. These unexpected and unknown enemies had pounced on the carrier with little warning. He intended the counterstroke to return the favor.

Up ahead, his sensor display had picked out a hot and heavy engagement between a Broadsword and a Hornet that was weaving and dodging for all it was worth. Bondarevsky increased his acceleration. “Bard,” he said. “We’ve got a furball at zero-three-one by zero-four-four. Let’s see if they like gate crashers at their party.”

“Right with you,” Harper replied.

The Broadsword was losing ground as the Hornet accelerated away, using the full advantage of speed and maneuverability, but despite the opening range the Broadsword pilot was keeping up a heavy assault with lasers. Some of them were scoring hits. The Hornet’s shields and armor weren’t likely to hold long against the heavier, more modern fighter’s firepower.

But the Strakha was newer and heavier than the Broadsword. Bondarevsky smiled coldly as he started his attack run, powering up his meson guns as the Strakha hurtled toward the pursuer. As the range closed he cut the stealth generators.

It took several seconds for the fighter to decloak, and during that time he couldn’t fire his weapons. But he’d timed the maneuver almost perfectly. The Broadsword was looming close ahead when the veil of energy shimmered around the Strakha and it became fully visible again. The targeting reticule on his HUD flashed orange, and Bondarevsky hit the trigger.

Both meson guns opened fire at close range, battering through the Broadsword’s shields and peeling away armor in a fury of raw energy. For good measure Bondarevsky launched a ConFleet-issue Pilum FF missile. It struck the weakened Broadsword and detonated in a brilliant fireball.

“Never thought I’d be glad to see a Cat fighter turn up like that,” Babe Babcock said. “Whoever you are, drinks are on me when we get back to the barn.”

“No problem, Commander,” he replied. “Head for home, and round up your other pilots on the way in. This is no place for your Hornets.”

“Aye aye, sir,” she responded.

A pair of Broadswords had changed vector to support the fighter he’d taken out, and now it was Harper’s turn to decloak suddenly and score a kill. Bondarevsky followed the other Broadsword as it veered off. He could sense the shifting fortunes of the fight. The tide was turning in Karga’s favor as more fighters joined the battle. Deniken’s gun turrets were lending a hand, two, firing streams of coherent light that blazed furiously against the darkness of space. Bondarevsky saw one Broadsword caught by the carrier’s Anti-Aerospace fire. It vanished, torn apart by the Double-A-S.

“All right, Strakhas, let’s get them!” That was Commander Travis, her voice exuberant as she led the second pair of Kilrathi fighters into the fray.

“Let’s concentrate on driving them off, Commander,” he said dryly.

“Hey, come on, skipper, I just want to get a little live-fire practice with this thing!” she responded.

“Quite a wee shield maiden we’ve got, I’m thinking, sir,” Harper said, dropping back into his brogue. “Or maybe an Amazon?”

“Whatever,” Bondarevsky said, worried that his pilots were getting too excited by the thrill of the fight. “Right now-”

All at once something flared so bright that his cockpit went opaque to protect him from the glare. When he could see again, he was horrified.

A Broadsword had scored a direct hit on Sindri’s engines, and the tender had been literally torn in half by subsidiary explosions. The little workhorse ship that had made Karga’s refit possible was gone.

Stunned, Bondarevsky couldn’t find words for long seconds, and it was plain he wasn’t the only one. After a few heartbeats Travis spoke, and her voice was ragged and flat now, totally unlike her high-spirited tones of less than a minute before.

“They’re breaking off, Captain,” she said. “Looks like their mother ship’s spotted the two destroyers coming up and sounded the recall.”

“Do we pursue?” Harper asked.

“Negative.” Bondarevsky forced mind and mouth to work again. Much as he would have liked to go after the pilot who had taken out Sindri, the flight wing couldn’t go charging off after their retreating foes. There could be other dangers lurking nearby, and the fighters were needed to stand guard against another attack. “Negative. We’ve done our job. Let the tin cans do theirs. Commander, form up your squadron and maintain a patrol in force until we’re sure the bastards are done with us.” He switched channels. “Kennel, Kennel, this is…” He suddenly realized that the abrupt nature of the crisis had taken them all by surprise, so that the Strakha squadron hadn’t even been assigned a code-name for the mission. “This is Bondarevsky,” he went on at last. Commlink security wasn’t particularly necessary right now anyway. “Get one of the Cat Kofars prepped and fully loaded. I want our people to be able to take on fuel or reloads without going back down to the deck, until we’re sure there won’t be another attack.”

Boss Marchand responded in person. “Twenty minutes, sir,” she said.

“Roger that.” Suddenly Jason Bondarevsky felt very tired. The Black Cats had won their first victory, but it didn’t seem much like a triumph.