1223 hours (CST)
"He's powering up his engines. Looks like he's getting ready to cast off."
Tolwyn nodded. He'd seen the sensor data flowing across his monitor even before the sensor operator reported Vorghath's changed status. He had known they wouldn't have much time before the dreadnought moved into action. The key now was to maximize their own firepower while denying their giant foe the chance to trade them shot for shot.
"Mr. Clancy. Assume position alongside the station. Commander Deniken, shift point-defense to standard operation. The station will be launching missiles once they realize we're vulnerable."
The carrier changed course slightly as Clancy altered her vector. Mjollnir was sliding smoothly behind the protective bulk of the station, allowing it to come between her and the dreadnought. It masked the carrier's fire, too, but that wouldn't be the case for long.
The section of the station they were hiding behind was the part the Strakhas had attacked. The shields had failed there, and the orbital dock was only lightly armored.
Tolwyn was assuming that the Cats would be reluctant to fire on their own station, at least for the moment. But he had no such qualms.
Strakha 800, VF-401 "Shadow Cats"
Near Orbital Station Asharazhal, Baka Kar System
1224 hours (CST)
Bondarevsky dropped his cloak once again and opened fire. The battle had developed a strange sort of rhythm, decloak, attack, cloak, move, decloak... a seemingly endless cycle of hit and run moves. The entire Strakha squadron was now concentrating their attentions on the dreadnought, leaving the station for other members of the Wing. Working in two teams of four according to a carefully prepared plan, the stealth fighters had switched from hitting the dreadnought's shield projectors to attacks on turrets with a bow firing arc. Each of those massive turrets was easily five times the size of a Strakha and mounted a whole battery of energy weapons far more powerful than anything the fighter mounted, but they couldn't hit what they couldn't lock on to, and the almost random movements of the fighters back and forth across the ship's hull, hidden by the cloaking devices, meant they couldn't even begin to track their attackers. Like tiny stinging insects, the Strakhas could only mount pinprick attacks, but each time they hit an unshielded turret they caused a little more damage. The turrets had weaker armor than the main hull, so the damage mounted up fast.
He was beginning the re-cloaking sequence once again when Harper let out a whoop. "That's done for the bastards!" the Taran shouted.
The turret below him erupted in flame as one of Harper's missiles struck and penetrated. Further down the curve of the hull a second turret went up, too.
Even insect stings could kill.
CHAPTER 20
"The gods expect that every kil shall perform his duty."
from the Tenth Codex
17:14:33
Raptor 401, VF-88 "Crazy Eights"
Near Orbital Station Asharazhal, Baka Kar System
1227 hours (CST)
"Thor One, this is Odin One," Doomsday said. "We're starting our rim. Follow us in."
"Roger that," Lieutenant Commander Stefan Razin replied tersely. Razin commanded VA-702, the Black Pumas, Mjollnir's single squadron of Paktahn-class bombers. Their codename for the day's battle was appropriate to their role. Like Thor, the thunder god, they would hammer the orbital station into submission.
Montclair lined up his fighter and started his run. "Make your run count," he ordered his squadron. They spread out in a loose line, diving straight toward the orbital station's main launch bay.
Fighters rose from the depths of the station, Dralthis, Darkets, even an eight-ship squadron of old-style Jaithi heavy fighters that were the same vintage as Doomsday's Raptor. Montclair grinned and opened fire, pouring on the energy weapons fast enough to deplete his reserves in a matter of seconds. The station launch bay was bigger than a carrier's flight deck, and more fighters could launch simultaneously from it, but they were still constricted as they passed through the airlock force field . . . and the change from atmosphere to vacuum, artificial gravity to zero-g, caused even experienced pilots a moment's loss of control as they made the transition. The Raptors were taking good advantage of that, knocking down enemy fighters almost as fast as they could clear the gaping maw.
A few made it out, though, and streaked up to meet the Raptors with guns blazing. "Break! Break! Break!" Montclair chanted, peeling off to go after a Jalthi. The rest of the Raptors broke formation to pursue individual targets as well, their initial job of covering the approach of the bomber squadron done.
Montclair slid under the Jalthi and did a fast reverse, coming up on his opponent's six and opening fire at close range with a pair of heat seekers and his gagatlingass driver. The Jalthi's stern came apart, and then the Kilrathi fighter erupted in a fireball. Doomsday plunged straight through the inferno, already starting to alter course in search of fresh prey. Below, he spotted the Paktahns streaming past in a line, each bomber pulling up at the last possible second and dumping a full load of ordnance straight into the opening of the launch bay. They probably couldn't hope to do a thorough job of destroying such a large target, but the Kilrathi fighters still trying to launch there would be sitting ducks, and the damage those missiles did would be enough to keep the station's contingents of fighters from being a problem for the duration of the day's battle.
A Dralthi maneuvered toward him, trying to work around to the rear of the Raptor. "No way, kitty," Montclair said, pulling his control stick hard over. His fighter rolled and spun, seeking the new target.
Hornet 101, VF-12 "Flying Eyes"
Low Planetary Orbit, Baka Kar, Baka Kar System
1230 hours (CST)
"Here they come!" Babe Babcock called. "Drifter, you cover my tail!"
"With pleasure," Lieutenant Commander David "Drifter" Conway responded.
Babcock's Flying Eyes had drawn the assignment of covering the embattled Mjollnir from any attacks that might originate planetside. Sweeping low, they had spotted a tight knot of targets climbing fast from a base on the northern coast of the largest equatorial continent.
Evidently they were the only Cats on the ball today. They were the first on the scene, and Babcock intended to punish them for their efficiency.
"Stay close," she said. The Hornets swept forward in a tight formation, swooping down into the upper fringes of the atmosphere at a speed high enough to cause the shields to flare red from the energy they were absorbing. The targets were rising fast . . .
They erupted into view, two full squadrons of Darket light fighters. Their formation was loose; it looked to Babcock as if each pilot was pushing his craft hard to be the first to reach the battle. Instead, she told herself with a smile, the battle had found them.
"Concentrate your fire!" she ordered. Babcock keyed her comm console to identify her own target to the rest of the squadron, then lined up her shot and opened up. An instant later all ten of her squadron-mates were adding their firepower to her own.
It was risky business, ignoring fifteen fighters to focus on one, and the Cats replied to the Hornets' attack with their own fire. But their coordination was poor, so each Hornet took individual hits that were easily absorbed by shields, while the full power of eleven paired Hornet lasers tore into a single target, ripping through shields and armor and destroying the ship in a moment.
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 t
he 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 spill, 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.
The monster Kilrathi warship had cast loose from its moorings now, but it was having trouble maneuvering clear of the station on thrusters alone, and didn't dare cut in the main engines so close. Meantime Tolwyn was performing brilliantly in Mjollnir. He had fired through the intervening barrier of one of the station's docking arms, and as the structure had come apart more and more of his shots had dug into the Vorghath's armor. By that time the Strakha hit and run raids on the turret emplacements had begun to leave gaps in the dreadnought's forward field of fire, so Tolwyn had shifted his tactics and brought the carrier back into the open. Against the bulk of Vorghath even the supercarrier looked tiny, and the difference in maneuverability and precision of control was immediately plain. Tolwyn took the carrier in to point blank range again, maneuvering Mjollnir like she was a destroyer rather than a carrier, and the damage to her massive opponent began to tell.
He could see Mjollnir's point-defense batteries firing at the dreadnought again, too, and knew Tolwyn was pressin
g home the attack with everything he had. Bondarevsky's sensors showed that one of the Cat cruisers, the one the fighters were having so much trouble with, was coming up fast. Once she got into the action Mjollnir would be in serious trouble. She was still held together mostly by patches and prayers, with much of her armor gone, and a sustained battle with a cruiser could only end one way.
Tolwyn had to deal with the dreadnought before Mjollnir had to fight for her very life . . .
Combat Information Center, FRLS Mjollnir
Near Orbital Station Asharazhal, Baka Kar System
1238 hours (CST)
"Her armor's finally going!"
Tolwyn almost joined in the cheer that followed the Exec's hoarse cry. Kittani, his voice all but gone from barking orders, pointed to the main viewscreen with a savage jabbing of his fingers. The beams were indeed penetrating the dreadnought's thick belts of armor at last, especially in the area immediately abaft the gaping missile tubes that Tolwyn had singled out for special attention from Deniken's guns.
"Back us off, Mr. Clancy," he ordered. "If we've got this right, this isn't going to be a real healthy neighborhood in about another thirty seconds . . ."
The helmsman played his controls like a musical instrument, and the carrier backed away, gathering speed and turning slowly to accelerate clear. Tolwyn had remembered a briefing on the Kilrathi dreadnoughts that noted the missile tube in the bow, designed for the massive planetary bombardment missiles the Cats used to lay waste to entire cities. And behind the tubes were the magazines, stocking scores of the huge warheads . . .
Wing Commander #07 False Color Page 39