William Forstchen - False Colors

Babcock switched her target and fired again, with the same effect. Then the two groups of fighters flashed past each other.

“Break and attack at will!” she called, cutting the targeting transmission. “Drifter, follow me in!”

But Drifter Conway had picked up a pair of Darkets on his own tail. He tried to reverse course, but the two Kilrathi ships cut loose on him as he turned, and he lost control of his plane. A moment later it exploded.

Babcock bit back an oath and nailed the nearest Darket with a missile. Part of her wanted to mourn the loss of another of her Flying Eyes, but this wasn’t the time or place. You pushed the feelings aside and concentrated on the job at hand. The job of killing Cats.

The job went on. Her sensors were picking up a fresh wave of planes rising to intercept them, and they already had plenty off foes to deal with as it was…

Vaktoth 505, VF-489 “Black Leopards”

High Planetary Orbit, Baka Kar, Baka Kar system

1234 hours (CST)

Laser and missile fire probed outwards from the Kilrathi cruiser, making Lieutenant Commander Ileana Constantine twist and juke her heavy fighter from side to side to avoid the sustained Double-A-S. Around her, four full squadrons of fighters from Mjollnir did the same.

Not all the pilots were as skillful-or as lucky-as she was. Up ahead one of the human Darkets was caught in an energy discharge that consumed the entire craft in an instant, like a moth in a flame, and a pair of Dralthi Fours had already been taken out by defensive missiles. But the attackers plunged ahead, trying to get in close enough to cause the cruiser some serious damage.

Planning for the battle today had posed some serious logistical problems for the Wing Commander. Once surprise was lost, Mjollnir would become the target of increasing numbers of Cat fighters and bombers, no matter how effectively they managed to block the early response to their raid. Flying the Mjollnir’s Kilrathi-built planes too close to the scene of the action was a sure recipe for disaster. In the heat of battle, a pilot, or a point defense emplacement, was apt to focus on the type of craft that came into range without necessarily checking an IFF beacon to decide whose side it might be on. Yet Bondarevsky hadn’t been in any position to sacrifice more than half his available birds from the action.

Thus, the dispositions for the various Mjollnir squadrons. Only the bombers, with a tightly defined mission only they could effectively execute, and Bondarevsky’s stealth fighters playing a game of harassment in close to the dreadnought, were to be employed in the immediate vicinity of the carrier. Hornets, Raptors, and Rapiers would be used for the crucial tasks of protecting Mjollnir and interdicting various possible sources of trouble. The rest of the fighters, the Kilrathi-built planes, had a different mission…to strike any capitol ships that hadn’t been drawn away from the planet by the threat that had erupted near the jump point, the three ships of the battle group under Admiral Richards.

When the outlines for the mission had been mapped out no one had known how many targets they might have to face. As it turned out, there were three Kilrathi capital ships still in high planetary orbit over Baka Kar. One was the carrier that was reading as seriously damaged and unable to effectively power up. The other two were cruisers.

The four fighter squadrons-one of Darkets, two of Dralthi Fours, and the Vaktoths of the Black Leopards-had received orders to concentrate on the closest cruiser in hopes of neutralizing it before it could intervene in the fighting around the station.

But killing a cruiser was no easy task. As the range dropped, another Darket was caught. This time the cruiser only grazed the starboard side of the craft, but it vaporized one wing and the engine mounted there. The craft went into a spin, until the pilot managed to use maneuvering thrusters to stabilize the little fighter. But he had to drop out of the formation and head for home. It was no use fighting a battle when your whole attention had to be taken up trying to keep to a steady vector.

“ By the numbers, boys and girls ,” Commander Charles Robertson, CO of the Leopards and acting commander of the entire strike element, sounded ready to handle anything, even a cruiser spitting coherent energy in every direction. “ Let’s take it to them !”

The Darkets peeled off, circling left, trying to get around toward the stern of the cruiser where there were fewer turrets that could fire on the fragile craft. Robertson’s Strakha, the odd man out of the heavy fighter squadron, took position at the head of a loose cone of Vaktoths and Dralthi Fours and dived straight in, with all beam weapons firing.

The volume of Double-A-S increased as they stooped down on their intended victim, and another fighter, one of the Dralthi Fours, exploded close by Constantine’s Vaktoth. Robertson skimmed low right over the cruiser’s hull, dumping a full load of missiles into her shields and then pulling up.

A point-defense battery tracked his craft, a gatling mass driver that used magnetic fields to accelerate tiny slivers of metal to fantastic velocities. A stream of the deadly projectiles intersected with the Strakha.

Robertson’s voice was loud in her ears. “ I’m hit! I’m hit! Tell Mary -”

Then there was silence. Ileana Constantine was the new commander of the Black Leopards.

Strakha 800, VF-401 “Shadow Cats”

Near Orbital Station Asharazhal, Baka Kar System

1238 hours (CST)

“ There’s just too damned many of them, Bear. We can’t cover everybody … I don’t have any reserves to send !”

“Stay icy, Bifrost,” Bondarevsky responded. The code name identified the Command and Control element of the wing, one of the Grathas. “We knew we wouldn’t have it all our own way.”

He was paying the price, now, for the decision to take over the Shadow Cats in place of the wounded Travis. The Gratha that Mjollnir had deployed to help coordinate the fighter battle had been his designated place, but instead it was Commander Tomas Alvarez, the Deputy Wing Commander, who had the duty. But Alvarez was finding it difficult to cope with the overwhelming responsibility of trying to manage the far-flung engagement, especially now that the Landreichers were starting to run into increasingly heavy resistance. Commander Babcock was engaged with three times her numbers in low planetary orbit, and had lost three of her fighters in a matter of minutes. And the assault on the cruiser had penetrated her shields, knocking out her maneuver bridge, but at the cost of the detachment CO and several other birds…and the cruiser was still coming, controlled now from her CIC section, no doubt. The Paktahns had finished their strike and were withdrawing to rendezvous with one of the Kofars to rearm, with Montclair taking his Raptors and the squadron of medium Rapiers down to support Babcock. But that left no more reserves. The Wing was stretched to the limit.

Bondarevsky fought the temptation to lead the Strakhas out to support the other squadrons. The two intense battles were too far away…and the primary mission was still to cripple the dreadnought. He couldn’t allow himself to be drawn into a sideshow, no matter how bad things might be getting out there.

And he couldn’t do two jobs at once. He could be either a Wing Commander or a squadron CO, and he’d made that choice when he strapped on the Strakha.

“You have the big picture up there, Bifrost. Not me. I trust you to do the best you can. Loki One, clear.”

He cut the channel and focused on the nearest gun turret. The Strakhas continued their intricate dance, but one short now since Lieutenant Kendricks had come out of cloak just as a point defense battery had opened fire. It wasn’t as bad as with some of the other squadrons, not yet, but Bondarevsky knew that attrition was going to take its toll on all of them soon enough.