Peter Telep - Pilgrim stars

It took no more than a few seconds for the first wave of Dralthi fighters to streak away from the dreadnoughts and festoon the heavens with the blue gleam of afterburners. Vukar suddenly held himself erect and mentally offered his pilots Sivar's blessing.

He could do no more.

"That battle group will reach the jump point in less than a minute," Angel cried, her cockpit instruments blinking and beeping in a rhythm as rapid as her pulse. "Bishop? Hunter? Maintain course. Draw that antimatter fire away from your bombers. Gangsta? Cheddarboy? Break off and target those guns on the portside dreadnought."

The terse replies came and went. Angel held fast to her own course, running escort for the pair of Broadswords targeting the dreadnought at her nine o'clock.

Sinatra flew at her wing, limiting his conversation to cool, curt reporting. "Bombers will be in range in nineteen seconds," he said, his chestnut brown eyes unblinking on Angel's display.

She looked away and confirmed his report on her own tactical screen. Incoming antimatter fire already wreaked havoc with her sensors, and the occasional glancing round struck the canopy shield and neutron gun with appreciable thunder. A ring of blips abruptly crawled onto her radar scope, and while she had seen the fighters launch, she had hoped they would get the Broadswords within bombing range before the Dralthis could engage. "Tick off the bombing range," she told Sinatra. "We break on one, they bomb on one. Are we ready?"

The bomber pilots, who had been monitoring the channel, uttered their assurances. Sinatra added his response then droned off the seconds with a remarkable stoicism as they plunged toward the expanse of Kilrathi plastisteel gathered into the toothy form of a dreadnought.

A vortex of fire erupted around Angel's canopy, and shield warnings darted and winked across her VDU. The Rapier could sustain three, possibly four more seconds of this intense bombardment before the shields surrendered and the incoming struck her fore armor. She would last another few seconds, perhaps even long enough for her to shift beam and run headlong into the cap ship's bridge.

Sinatra mumbled the last three seconds of the countdown and-

At once the bombers fell away and Angel lit burners. She jerked the stick sharply to starboard in a turn that made her stomach question her sanity but took her out of the incoming fire. Two Dralthis descended across her cone, and she slapped the HUD viewer over her eye.

"Torpedoes away!" announced one of the bomber pilots. "They've got a lock. Arming now."

"Got off the quad myself," the other bomber pilot said. "But I'm down to forty-five percent thrust. Port engine is offlining now. If I don't get some support in-"

A dim explosion met the corner of Angel's eye. She checked her radar scope. The Broadsword had vanished. Her heart sank, but as she always did during combat, she told herself that she had to stay with it, stay in it. She had already sighted one of the Dralthi, and the smart targeting reticle winked green and waved her on. White-knuckling her stick, she tracked the Dralthi and cut free her first salvo of neutron fire. Rounds struck sledge-hammering blows to the cat's shields as he rolled and broke.

Groaning against the Gs, Angel stayed with the Dralthi, deciding to take out her rage for the Broadsword's loss on this individual. He dove. She dove. He banked hard to port. She banked hard to port and fastened herself even tighter to the cat's shadow. He leveled off. She got missile lock. Took the shot. Tore off the bastard's port wing. Flew through the phantom of his ship. Looked back at the yawning mouth of debris. The cat's cockpit remained intact. Her VDU crackled with an image of the Kilrathi pilot, all coppery helmet and feline eyes. "This for the braiV With that rushed preamble, the Kilrathi got down to the business of killing itself. The cockpit burst into a thousand tiny fragments spanned by writhing but quickly-extinguished flames.

After wheeling around to face the incoming capital ships, Angel noted with grim fascination that the Broadswords' torpedoes had already impaled the dreadnought, detonated, and had quartered her unevenly, with the largest section belonging to the bow. As she had witnessed many times before, nutrient gas vented into space, along with thousands of other objects not pinned down when the bombs had struck. Kilrathi themselves spun head over heels through the devastation, serving as obscene flotsam and visceral reminders that this wasn't just about destroying ships and gaining tactical advantages on star maps; it was about killing. Killing. And killing some more.

While they had managed to take out one of the dreadnoughts, the cruisers, destroyer, and other dreadnought reached the jump point. Scoured by unremitting cap ship fire, they crunched out of existence amid ringlets of blue-white photons and neutrinos. The superdreadnought followed tightly on her escort's heels, her can-nons recoiling and belting out fire to the last second. She dropped into gravity well, blurred and shrank for a moment, then threw up the blinding sheet of her exit.

Without ceremony or accompanying flourish, the battle simply ended with the jump and the successive self-destruction of the twenty or so Dralthi fighters left behind. Angel squinted as a Kil-rathi at her two o'clock shook paws with Sivar.

"One cap ship for seven," Bishop grunted. "We suck."

"No, we're alive," Angel corrected. "Sucks for you, maybe." She checked her scope. With a sigh she noted that every member of the squadron had survived. "Regroup, ladies. Bishop's buying."

Angel switched off the comm and flipped back her HUD viewer. She figured that Gerald was already relaying their encounter with the Kilrathi battle group. Problem was, the task force Tolwyn had assigned to find the Kilrathi could not cut them off in time. That gravity well could take the Kilrathi to Enyo, to McAuliffe, or even out as far as Vega. Unless Tolwyn already had ships waiting in those systems, the cats would move through them, facing, perhaps, minimal resistance since the admiral had significantly tied up the fleet by establishing no-fly zones around the Pilgrim systems and enclaves.

Her VDU switched from a damage report to display an image of Gerald seated at an ob station. "Exceptional work, Commander. And now for the bad news. Two unarmed commercial transports from Nabco-Mills violated the zone during the attack. They made it past the Mitchell Hammock and into Netheryana's atmosphere."

"They made it past the Hammock?"

"I should have held back more patrols. In any event, the transport skippers refuse to turn back, and the strike base commanders on planet won't order their pilots to fire unless I take full responsibility."

"So take it."

"I have. Those transports are loaded with nothing more than foodstuffs, and each carry a crew of ten."

"Sir, why are you talking to me? You know the course."

"Yes, I do. And I shouldn't need reassurance, but I do. Thank you, Commander. And God forgive me. Captain out."

Unwelcome chills bridged Angel's shoulders as she imagined the two transports exploding into fiery bands across Neter-yana's sky. The destruction would linger for hours and serve as a grim testimony to the inhabitants of Triune.

This can't go on. Even if Aristee doesn't stand down by Tol-wyn's deadline, he can't possibly order the deaths of so many Pilgrims. Doing that will earn him a place in history next to Khan, Hitler, and Tralchar. It's enviable that he doesn't bargain with terrorists, but several billion innocent Pilgrims probably wish he would. If there's a way out of this, it lies with Paladin and Blair.

Damn it. Another day would pass and mark another failure. She played a game with herself now. She tried to go an entire day without thinking once of Christopher Blair. Ten days had passed since she had read his message. Ten failures. You're weak. You're nothing. You're open, vulnerable, and you'll get hurt more than you ever have before. Besides, he's probably dead already.