"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.
CHAPTER 14
"Honor the heroic dead, for their deeds are worthy of remembrance."
from the First Codex
10:14:64
Operations Planning Center, FRLS Karga
Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System
1821 hours (CST), 2671.011
Admiral Geoff Tolwyn glowered from his position at the foot of the oval holo-tank, the good mood of just a few hours earlier shattered by the attack on the carrier. Someone had attacked his ship, and he wanted nothing more than a chance to strike back. But it was unlikely he'd have that chance any time soon.
"Shields are still holding well enough," Commander Graham was saying. "If the bastards had made a couple of runs against us, they might've strained the generators past their limits, but we were lucky. All we took was collateral damage. But with Sindri gone we're going to want to rethink the repair schedule. Either we get the drives working so we can put this boat into a higher orbit, or we try a tow from Xenophon."
"Towing something this size is a risky proposition," Admiral Richards said slowly. "I think I'd rather do it under our own power. Can you get the drives on-line?"
"On a crash-priority program, I'll have us able to change orbit inside a week," Graham said. "But it means pulling everybody off all the non-essential repair work. We have to virtually rebuild the maneuvering drives from the deck up, which means a lot of work for the Carnegie." He gave a thin smile. "So I'm afraid the repairs to the hot water heaters on Deck Eight are going to have to wait a while."
'We'll live with it," Richards said. "Geoff, what do you think?"
Tolwyn was still frowning. "It all depends on whether we've driven them off for good, or if they're just off regrouping to hit us again. As Graham says, we can't handle a full-scale attack, and without Sindri . . ."
"Yeah," Richards nodded. "Yeah, without Sindri, we fry if the shields go down for more than an hour or so. Just like the original crew."
"Their intentions must depend on their resources," Bondarevsky said from his usual place in one of the upper tiers of seats. He looked tired and grim. "If we knew who they were, and what they were after, we might have a clue as to whether they'll be coming back any time soon."
"Not Kilrathi," Tolwyn said. "Not Landreich or Confederation, either, the way I figure it. Mercenaries?"
Captain Bikina of the Durendal stirred. "Mercenaries have to have an employer," he said. "And I've never heard of mercenaries with a carrier, even a ramshackle job like that one." His contempt for their erstwhile foe was plain in his tone. The carrier had gathered in its surviving planes and fled at the approach of the two Landreich destroyers.
The other destroyer captain, Pamela Collins, cleared her throat. "I don't know who they're working for now. But I know who designed that carrier."
"Who?" Richards demanded. He seemed angry. Probably, Tolwyn thought, he was frustrated that he didn't have access to the intelligence information he was used to having. That was often the difference between a staff posting at home and a command in the field. And it had been a long time since Vance Richards had held a combat command.
"There were plans for an improvised carrier like that one in the Landreich Navy several years back," Collins told them. "I was up for a spot as T/G Officer on the prototype. But the Council did a study that proved the design wouldn't be worth putting into action against superior Cat fighting ships, so the whole project was scrapped before the first boat was completed."
"I remember that flap," Forbes of the Xenophon said. "'Twas a big brawl in Council. Auld Max almost ended up with a vote of no confidence over it all, until Danny Galbraith talked him into shutting down the program."
"What happened to the prototype, then?" Bondarevsky asked.
"I heard it was bought up by a consortium of ship-owners for use as a convoy escort."
"Zachary Banfeld's gang of pirates," Richards said, sounding disgusted. "I should have thought of him. He's got fingers in every pie from here to Sirius, and he's completely without loyalty to anything or anyone except his own profit margin. Somehow he found out there was a nice fat derelict out here just waiting to be taken over, and he tried to move in on it. But when he saw he wasn't going to get it cheap he cut his losses and bailed out."
"If that's the case he's not likely to come back," Bondarevsky said.
"I'm not so sure," Tolwyn said slowly. "He had inside information. Nothing's more certain. All the orbital elements, and details of Sindri's part in the repair work. Probably at least a hint of our sensor and shield problems, judging from how the attack was mounted. I think we're up against more than one greedy privateer. Somebody who could collect all that data on us and then bring Banfeld in to act on it."
Richards looked thoughtful. "Maybe so," he said, frowning. Tolwyn recognized his
expression. It was the one Richards usually adopted when he thought Tolwyn was being overly paranoid. "But the fact is we took out five of his Broadswords. A quarter of his force in one engagement, and that was when they had the element of surprise. Banfeld's too smart to try again, whether he's working for himself or somebody else."
"Whether they try again or not, we'll be ready next time," Bondarevsky said. "I'm increasing our patrols and bringing the rest of the Black Cats on-line as quickly as possible. If Commander Graham isn't going to monopolize all the workers and the entire output of the Carnegie I figure we'll have the port flight deck up and running in three or four days, and Sparks tells me she's got most of the Kilrathi birds that we're ever going to get running just about ready to start flying."
She nodded from her seat beside the Wing Commander. 'We'll actually have an oversized flight wing by the time we're through," she said. "At least by ConFleet standards.
Karga originally carried a hundred and twenty-eight planes of all types, in sixteen of their standard eight-plane squadrons. Eight of those were fighter squadrons—two each of light, medium, heavy, and stealth craft—with two more of bombers, and six support squadrons. Support planes, command and control birds, attack shuttles, and so on."
McCullough glanced at her computer monitor. "Here's how we're looking to stack up," she said. "We have four squadrons from the Independence wing. That's eleven Hornets in the Flying Eyes, twelve Rapiers, and twelve Raptors. That makes thirty-five ConFleet-type fighters, just about half of a standard wing."
"I wish a few of them had been available today," Deniken growled.
"They were out there, Lieutenant," Bondarevsky shot back. "We lost a Rapier today, and almost had the CO of the Eyes taken out too. And one of the Broadswords we got was killed by one of the Raptors from the Crazy Eights."
"They caught us at a bad spot in our maintenance schedule," McCullough added. "That won't be happening again."
"What's the story on the Kilrathi planes?" Richards asked. "You said you can get most of them up this week."
She nodded. "Here's how it stands. We have One squadron of Darket light fighters, and a couple of working birds in reserve if you're not too fussy about how you define 'working.' Both squadrons Dralthi Fours, medium fighters. Apparently they never got into action at all during Karga's raiding mission, and they didn't suffer any losses. We're short one plane to make an eight-ship squadron of Vaktoth heavy fighters, but there's an extra Strakha that I'm fitting out as the CO's bird for that outfit. A full squadron of Strakhas, of course. They did a damned fine job out there today. And we've managed to cobble together a full squadron of Paktahn bombers, although there's a couple of them that are going to be maintenance-intensive for a while. Jorkad tells me the Paktahns got pretty badly chewed up in the fighting near Landreich." She checked her list again.
"We're also able to fly full squadrons of each of the noncombatant types, and we've even got spares on most of those. Forty fighters, eight bombers, twenty-four miscellaneous noncombatants from the Kilrathi side of our stocks, though of course their squadron sizes are based on eight birds instead of twelve. Even so, seventy-five fighters makes a pretty damned impressive aerospace wing."
"And these will be ready for normal duty in a few days?" Richards asked.
"Well . . ." Bondarevsky cleared his throat. "Most of the pilots have had at least some sim time. The Strakhas performed well enough. I'll be happier after everybody's had a chance to get the feel of their birds, but with an intense cycle of flight ops we ought to get everybody up to snuff fairly soon."
Graham shifted. "You said you'll need some men and resources for all this. Just how much do you absolutely have to have? Because I wasn't kidding about needing crash priority to get the drives back in operation."
"I'm sure we can work out a compromise, Commander," Bondarevsky said wearily. "But much as we need to get the engines working and get this tub into a safer orbit clear of the brown dwarf's radiation, we also need to be able to rely on both flight decks to get our fighters into play faster. That was the big bottleneck this afternoon. Half the Strakha squadron didn't even clear the flight deck before the bandits were running. We've got to have a faster response time. Next time around it might not be a bunch of pirates in a half-improvised carrier coming at us. If the Cats found out we were here and sent in a supercarrier of their own, we'd be dead meat."
"The two of you can hash out a work schedule tomorrow morning before our regular meeting," Richards suggested. "Captain Lake, maybe you could be there too?"
The commander of the factory ship inclined his head. Richards looked around the chamber. "If that's all, I think we should probably call it a day . . ."
Tolwyn met his eyes. "The memorial service," he said quietly.
The battle group commander nodded. "Right. We'll be holding a service for the Sindri's crew at twenty-one hundred hours tonight on the flight deck. I'd appreciate it if all department heads were there, and anyone else who cares to come. I know those of you from other ships will want to hold your own observances, but representatives would be welcome. This has been a blow to morale, despite the fact that we beat the attackers off, and I think it would be a good idea for the whole battle group to demonstrate out solidarity and determination before we get on with the next stage of the project. Agreed?"
There was a murmur of approval from the assembled officers. Richards stood slowly, looking his full age and more today, and turned to leave. Tolwyn watched him thoughtfully. He was beginning to wonder if Vance Richards was really up to the strains of leading a battle group after so many years behind a desk.
Flight Deck, FRLS Karga
Orbiting Vaku System, Vaku System
2112 hours (CST)
Bondarevsky tried not to sway from sheer fatigue as he stood in ranks together with the other senior officers and listened to Karga's ranking chaplain, Commander Francis Darby, somberly reciting the words of the memorial service to the assembled crew on the flight deck and all around the carrier over the internal video channels. It was principally for the thirty-two crew members aboard the Sindri when she was destroyed, but Bondarevsky, at least, considered it a send-off for Lieutenant jensson as well. And tired as he was, he wanted to honor the memories of the dead the best way he knew how.
How many times had he done this over the years? He'd watched more good men and women die than he could ever hope to remember, and it never got any easier. Tomorrow he would have to write the letter to Jensson's widowed mother back home on Terra. He'd barely known her son, transferred to the supercarrier less than two weeks before his death. What could he say to comfort her?
He remembered how he'd felt the day Svetlana died. There was precious little comfort to be given when a loved one was killed in action.
Darby finished speaking and nodded to Harper, who stood poised by an intercom station. The young Taran touched a button and the recorded sound of a great bell tolled out. The gathered officers and enlisted personnel on the cavernous flight deck stood in respectful silence as the bell rang thirty-two times, slowly, mournfully. One stroke for each man and woman aboard FRLS Sindri.
When the bell had faded, Harper hit another control, and called up a recording of "Amazing Grace" played on bagpipes. Sparks operated another set of controls to wheel out an empty coffin bearing the name of Eric Jensson. It rolled to the edge of the force field at the stern end of the flight deck, paused for a moment, then lifted on thrusters to drift through the opening and out into the void. A team of Bhaktadil's marines raised their laser rifles to their shoulders to fire a last salute.
Bondarevsky was a little bit surprised to find his lips moving in a silent prayer for the dead man, the first battle casualty of the Black Cats.
The coffin drifted from view, the marines shouldered their arms, and "Amazing Grace" faded away. Geoff
Tolwyn stepped forward to replace Darby and stood for a long moment in silence, surveying the audience. "The loss of a ship in combat is always a tragedy for the people le
ft behind," he began at last. "Especially when the ship was never intended to fight in the first place. Those of us who are trained to warfare regard it as our job to protect the noncombatants from harm, and failure weighs heavy on us all when we find that all of our efforts, however heroic or determined they may have been, have turned out to be to no avail.
"Sindri was destroyed today because an enemy saw it as a way to get at us. They believed that it was the tender's shields that were keeping us alive, and they targeted her with the deliberate intention of rendering us helpless. Every analysis of the battle that we've run only reinforces that statement. We were lucky enough to have our own shields up, thanks to Commander Graham and his engineering staff, but the attempt could easily have been successful. In a sense, then, the crew of Sindri died protecting us. Though she was not a fighting ship, her crew was as much a part of the Free Republic Navy as any of us, and they gave their lives doing their duty. For that reason, I say, we should not feel guilty at our failure so much as we should feel pride and respect for them."
Tolwyn paused a moment. "For some time now I've been under pressure to give a new name to this ship. Calling it for a Kilrathi hero is not exactly appropriate to our plans for her, after all. There have been plenty of suggestions, some laudable, not a few disparaging or downright obscene." That stirred a ripple of laughter in the audience, despite the solemnity of the occasion. "President Kruger wants us to bear the name Alamo, after the heroic struggle for freedom by a dedicated band of patriots. I've resisted him on a point of principle. I don't like my ship being named after a bloody massacre where the defenders lost the fight!"
A few of the crew on the flight deck laughed. Tolwyn raised a hand and went on. "Today, though, I've settled on a name I intend to put forward to the Navy as soon as possible, if all of you approve. It's not normally my habit to run a democracy on my ships, as anyone who knows me will tell you, but in this case I want you all to feel that this ship stands for something." He smiled. "Some of you might not be familiar with the background from which I've taken this name, so bear with me while I explain it to you. In the mythology of the Scandinavian countries back on Terra, dating back to a time before Christianity, it is told that the gods once asked a master smith of the dark elves to make them a collection of wondrous gifts. There was a magic ring that produced copies of itself, a boat that could be folded up into a pocket, a wig of spun gold to replace the golden hair stolen from one of the goddesses by the trickster Loki, and so on. Now Loki became jealous of the craftsman's work, and set out to ruin it. He changed himself into a stinging insect and did his best to keep the dark elf from his work. But he was only partially successful in this. Only one gift was marred, the war hammer intended for the weather god Thor. The handle ended up too short, but the weapon itself was still a powerful one that the Thunder-God used time and again to smite his powerful enemies."
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