by Peter Telep
Admiral Vukar swiveled his command chair and thrust out his jaw in the expression of demand.
Comm Officer Ta'kar'ki snapped his gaze toward his instruments. "Yes, Kalralahr, our cruisers and destroyer are jettisoning all non-essential equipment and personnel to increase thrust."
"How many warriors will give their lives?"
"Approximately eighty."
"Eighty…" The number gave Vukar pause. He closed his eyes and spent a moment in reflective silence, then said, "We send them into the void with Sivar's highest blessing. Their names will adorn the temples, their souls the heavens. If only we could be so fortunate…" His whiskers stood on end and salvia gathered in his mouth as he coursed with the renewed electricity of the hunt.
The moment they had jumped into the system and had detected the supercruiser, Vukar had cried out in relief and had launched a long-range communications drone back to K'n'Rek to confirm that Dax'tri nar Ragitagha had, indeed, provided the correct location of the supercruiser. The Ragitagha clan had behaved honorably, and now the Ragitagha would rejoice as the Caxki clan withdrew from the emperor's new alliance. Vukar would seize the supercruiser and take it back to K'n'Rek, where both clans would exploit its technology. Or, perhaps, he would take it somewhere else and send out scouts to K'n'Rek to make sure the Ragitagha had set a trap for him. That seemed a more intelligent plan.
"She is still traveling at full impulse," Tactical Officer Mako-rshk reported. "And still no trace of gravitic distortion." A wavering hiss rose from the second fang's gut. "Kalrahalr, something is wrong."
Since every bridge officer knew that a challenge existed between Vukar and Makorshk, any conversation between the two turned some of those officers into anxious, quavering fools who at any moment expected blood to spill. A few of the older warriors kept their composure and scrutinized Vukar, searching for a reason why he had permitted the second fang to live so long. Unlike them, Makorshk was not afraid to voice his opinion, to stray from blind obedience, to use his own initiative to solve problems. The young second fang represented a new generation of Kilrathi, one Vukar hoped would still embrace the old ways while developing a new and vital sense of individuality. Although he despised that aspect of human culture, he conceded that there lurked something very powerful within a thinking warrior who could also listen to his heart. Makorshk represented a blending of the old and new, and he would not be the last of the Caxki clan to challenge authority.
Without breaking his gaze on the glistening dot that he followed through the forward viewport, Vukar tilted his head in Makorshk's direction. "What is it?"
"We've been pursuing them for a few minutes now, my Kalralahr. Why haven't they engaged their hopper drive?"
Vukar had nearly forgotten about the supercruiser's capability. For too long he had fought against similar Confederation carriers equipped with the standard jump drive that required a natural gravity well or other anomaly to function. He had wrongly assumed that the supercruiser speeded toward the system's jump point, and relying on that assumption he had predicted that his battle group would cut it off before it could reach that destination. But if the ship could create its own gravity well at any time, then yes, why hadn't it jumped?
Vukar pushed his bulky frame up from the chair and pounded back to the tactical station. "Range of our cruisers and destroyer?"
"One-eight-five-six kilometers and closing," said Makorshk, tapping a long finger on his display. "All four ships continue the bombardment."
"Ta'kar'ki?" Vukar called to the comm officer. "Remind our captains that once her shields have been weakened, they will use only low-level lasers to disable her ion engines."
"Yes, Kalralahr."
"The supercruiser is sustaining heavy fire," Makorshk said, observing images coming in from the cruisers. "Perhaps they will draw our escorts closer, then engage their drive to destroy them. But in order to do that, they have to permit our ships to come within five hundred meters to be affected by their gravity well. We could easily disable her well before we came so close. Something is very wrong."
"I suggest you discover what that something is," Vukar said, making much more than a suggestion.
Makorshk slowly lifted his head from his screens and regarded Vukar with a near-frozen stare. "I think I already have. We should pull back our escorts and initiate long-range bombing. If you allow them to get any closer, we'll lose them."
"How? She lacks the firepower."
"Yes, she does, but she won't need her weapons. If her engi-neers have modified the hopper drive so that its gravity well can become larger than five hundred meters, then they will destroy our ships without launching a single torpedo. I've already presented this scenario to you, and it seems the only reason why they haven't jumped. They're baiting our ships. They could activate that drive at any moment." The second fang paused to pull in a long breath, seemingly overwhelmed by his own realizations. "Kalrahalr? You have a decision to make."
So Paladin lays on the guilt trip and me — the sucker — goes for it and here I am like one minute until launch and I'm about to fight for a bunch of fanatics and mass murderers and how's your day shaping up?
Maniac shifted his butt deeper into the seat, trying to buckle himself down for launch and adjust his poorly fitting Skivvies, issued by a farsighted Pilgrim supply officer. At least the Pilgrim repair crew had not screwed up; they'd done an outstanding job on his fighter. Most of the damaged thruster and reactor components had been replaced by new ones instead of the usual reman-ufactured parts; that fact alone deserved his admiration.
Okay, they fixed up my ride. It's not like I should thank them like this. Shit. I wish Zarya was here. I can't believe I miss her so much. Is it love? Or am I just horny? I need someone to talk to right now. Forget Blair. Can't talk to him. He's as big an idiot as me. The Pilgrims flash him some T amp;A and tell him some lies and they got him by the tiller. I can't trust him or the commodore anymore. I'm alone. It's up to me to take out this bitch. I do that, come out of this alive, they'll make me the goddamned space marshal…
"They say your call sign is Maniac," the flight boss said, her ghastly face a potent emetic that threatened to crack his Visual Display Unit. "Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Maniac, you try any bullshit out there, I got a friend up in fire control who will issue you an antimatter enema."
"Excuse me, ma'am, but I'm unfamiliar with the technical terms 'bullshit' and 'antimatter enema.'"
"But you are familiar with what a single round of antimatter fire can do to your day…"
"You seem uptight, ma'am. Sounds like you could use a little, I don't know, recreational spanking."
"Line up, mister!"
Maniac placed his gloved hand over the miniature camera mounted above the visual display, blocking her view. He nodded to the deck boss and followed the man's signals, positioning his Rapier between the hangar's bulkhead and the launch tube.
"Elect Five, you are cleared for launch," the old lady said, still boiling.
"Just call me Maniac, sweetheart. And have I ever told you about the time I got my tongue stuck in-"
He ignited his thrusters and lapsed into a howl that made the flight boss tear off her headset and possibly wonder exactly where his tongue had been. He didn't stop howling until he cleared the energy curtain and punched into the void.
That was ridiculous. Childish. I should grow up.
Why?
At about quarter klick off the Olytnpus's stern, Maniac banked hard to join the fifteen Rapiers in William Santyana's squadron. They flew on the supercruiser's portside, in a loose wedge or, more precisely, an old-fashioned fluid four that resembled the fingers of an outstretched hand. The rest of the Olym-pus's complement of seventy-one fighters and sixteen bombers had launched and divided into six and four squadrons, respectively. They encompassed the supercruiser and maintained the same heading. At the moment, Maniac appreciated Aristee's recruitment of equipment and personnel, and the modifications she had made to the flight deck to accommodate
many more fighters and bombers than the usual twenty or so Rapiers and half dozen Broadswords assigned to Concordia-class supercruisers.
But they were still outnumbered. Each of the Kilrathi cruisers carried at least fifty Dralthi; the dreadnought boasted one-hundred and fifty herself; and the superdreadnought, well, Intell reported its fighter complement at over two hundred.
Hey, man. Take it easy. The more cats, the more kills…
The VDU snapped on. "Santi to Maniac. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant." Santyana flipped back his HUD viewer. "Good to be flying together again. At least this time we're on the same side, if not the wrong one. You kept up with me pretty well over McDaniel. For a moment there, I wasn't sure I could lose you."
Maniac thought back to that furball. He had been chasing a Pilgrim fighter and had narrowed its lead to twenty meters. The Pilgrim had leveled off, cutting through a gauntlet of fighters and bombers crisscrossing about a quarter kilometer away from the moon. Maniac had had trouble believing that the enemy pilot could navigate through coordinates so densely packed with other starcraft. That feat resulted in the jock's escape and Maniac's unfulfilled promise to find and smoke him. "That was you?" he asked incredulously. "I owe you a missile, Commander."
"Consider us even." Static cut across the display, then Santyana's dark features returned as he transmitted now on the squadron's general frequency. "All right, listen up, cowboys. We're point squadron. For those of you who missed or slept through the briefing, they'll be a bombing squadron with fighter escort targeting each of those cap ships. All we have to do is draw fire away from them. The captain assures us that the lead cruiser will cease fire in a minute or two. The others will follow."
"What's she going to do?" Maniac began amusedly. "Get that skipper on the comm and say, 'Uh, excuse me Mr. Cat, sir, but would you mind like ceasing fire for a little while so we can barbecue your god-ugly asses?'"
"Trust me, Lieutenant. Those guns will cease."
"Sir, is she using Pilgrims to do that?" Blair asked. "I mean Pilgrims who can-"
"I'm afraid she is, Lieutenant. Can't say I agree with her methods, but I don't have any particular love for the Kilrathi either. Politics and edicts aside, this is about saving our butts. And we're all pretty good at that. Stand by. Ready now? Break and attack!"
Still confused, Maniac shrugged and obeyed the order, looping back to fly inverted relative to the oncoming cruisers. He rolled upright and tensed as he surveyed the scene. The Fralthi-class cruisers had spread themselves into a wide, flat arrowhead, with the destroyer lining up behind like the arrow's shaft. The radar scope showed the dreadnought and superdreadnought positioned well behind them, spearing their way forward on full impulse. Strangely enough, they held their fire, letting the cruisers and destroyer communicate for them. And given their position, maybe they wouldn't launch fighters. One hundred and fifty from the cruisers still gave the cats a roughly two-to-one advantage.
Okay. What do we got? The battle group's flagship and an escort are hanging back. This tells me they want the Olympus intact. Of course they want the ship. They want the drive. And they'll use that destroyer to deploy boarding details. Subtle the cats ain't. Then again, that pack hunter mentality might come into play. Maybe they're driving us forward, toward another battle group that'll spring and attack. No way, man. Don't get that paranoid.
A proximity alarm squawked. Maniac frantically scanned the HUD, then rolled onto his side as a pair of torpedoes streaked by with a salvo of antimatter fire running shadow.
"Oh my god," somebody said over the general channel. "Look."
Maniac leveled off, and as he dived toward the lead Fralthi, he suddenly realized that her trio of antimatter guns had fallen silent, that her tube doors had closed, and that her bow began pitching down a few degrees. Despite that, wave after wave of Dralthi fighters fled like hungry bats from her cavernous flight tubes, as they did from the other two cruisers.
"Okay, our first bombing squadron is clear," Santyana shouted. "Let's bait those fighters."
Scanning the comm channel list, Maniac found Blair's private frequency and tapped for the link. "You mind telling me what's going on? Does Aristee have spies aboard that cruiser or what?"
"Why are you sweating the details? Just do the job. You got my wing." Blair cut the channel.
Whatever. Maniac kept Blair's Rapier in his field of view as it jerked into a high-G climb that beckoned a trio of Dralthi pulling away from the cruiser. "Got three taking a sniff," he told Blair. "Maintain that heading. I'm coming in behind to skin 'em."
"Do me a favor?" Blair asked. "Don't miss."
"Me? You've lost your memory, Ace."
An old girlfriend had once asked Maniac if he had ever grown tired of dogfights. Wasn't it the same old thing, time and again? You fly into the furball, try to get a bead on the enemy, fire, and blow him away. So what? That wasn't profound or artistic. And didn't he suffer from the cookie factory syndrome and have an aversion to flying unless it pertained to his job? And hadn't he grown tired of bragging about the missions, describing the same types of situations, using the same old words? / came in from his eleven o'clock, swooped to line up on his six, got the lock, thumbed off the safety, and wham, I'll take mine extra-crispy. Hey, can I buy you another one of those, sweetheart?
Even if he kept a journal of his exploits, it would hardly amount to a reflection of literary depth or afford him a meaningful look at his psyche.
So what kept him going?
"It's the juice, honey. The feeling it gives you. You can't duplicate that anywhere else. And it's different every time. Yeah, the words get old, and sometimes the kill is the same. But the feeling… it's always different. Keeps me coming back."
And the juice did, indeed, course through Maniac as he studied the three Dralthis closing in on Blair and issued a voice command to the Tempest targeting computer. "Missile select? Guided. I want two. Multiple launch on my mark."
"Ordnance ready," came the AI's breathy, female voice that had once roused Maniac into a fit of dirty talk.
"All right. Let's take a look." He swiped the HUD viewer over his eye and waited until the smart targeting reticle appeared and locked on. "Mark!"
Two guided missiles ignited on their upper port and starboard mounts-
And Maniac jammed down the primary weapons trigger, express-delivering synchronous neutron fire to the center Dralthi, no signature required.
The Rapier's wings shook as the missiles thundered off, adding to the potent vibration generated by the fighter's rotary barrel cannon.
Fountains of diaphanous blue energy clouded the center Dralthi's shields. Maniac kept the fire coming and kept hard on the cat's tail until the pilot rolled to port and suddenly dove.
Even as Maniac slammed the stick forward to pursue, his missiles struck the other two Dralthis. The feline fireworks showered overhead as he stayed with the last cat.
"Only two?" Blair teased. "You got rusty lying in that cell."
With a quick snort in reply, Maniac dedicated himself to the last Dralthi's destruction-just to shut up his wingman. The enemy's shields finally dropped for the count, and Maniac let his neutron gun play connect the rivets on virgin plastisteel as the alien transmitted a taunt.
"No honor is greater!" the Kilrathi cried in a poor attempt at standard speech. The thing stared at Maniac with those piss-yellow softballs it called eyes. "You apes will never know such glory! Ahhhhhhh!"
"Got news for you, pal. I'm feeling pretty glorious right now." Maniac grinned as he corkscrewed a path through the fiery garbage. "And that's three, Blair. You were saying something about being rusty?" He turned on a wing, slashing back to regroup.
Meanwhile, the four Broadsword bombers below had come within torpedo range of the lead Fralthi, and while their fighter escorts warded off attacking Dralthi and a few Salthi light fighters that had joined the fray, the bombers each launched a pair of torpedoes at the foundering cruiser. Maniac could not help but watch for a second as the eight proje
ctiles struck in succession, blasting apart the cap ship's port bow, her superstructure, and tearing gaping breeches amidships. Four hundred and seventy-five meters of Kilrathi engineering began to break apart, illu-mined by the flickering light of her explosions. Nutrient gas streamed from at least a dozen ruptures in her hull and formed long, emerald pennons that trailed the devastation. Tattered pieces of plastisteel tumbled and glimmered, and a few of the Rapiers nearby narrowly avoided colliding with some of the larger rubble.
"Maniac? Blair? Get back to the destroyer and lend those escorts a hand," Santyana ordered. "The rest of you stay with the two cruisers. The one to port has ceased fire."
"Jesus," Maniac gasped. "I don't know how Aristee's doing this, but if she can take out a Kilrathi battle group this easily, then how does Confed brass expect to stop her?"
"We haven't taken out this group yet," Santyana reminded. "Move it."
Complying with a burst of thrust, Maniac soared up beside Blair's Rapier. They darted over the two remaining cruisers and dove forty-five degrees toward the Ralari-class destroyer in the rear. The ship's two turreted lasers wreaked equal opportunity destruction and had already crippled three of the seventeen Rapiers escorting the bombers. Another three Rapiers had broken off to tractor in those pilots who had ejected.
Still, the destroyer's lasers weren't the most serious threat.
Her twin-barrel antimatter gun swiveled and tracked the bombers, then belched out a humbling and steady flow that had the entire group suddenly dispersing as salvos ripped through the phantoms of those crafts.
A flash from the radar scope now showed a band of red blips that represented a full squadron of Dralthis coming in from Maniac's six o'clock low. "Multiple hostiles bearing four-two-four by six-one-three. Range: one point five Ks. They'll reach us first, Blair. My little sweetheart AI counts nineteen."
"Reverse course on my mark," Blair said, his masked face abruptly lighting the VDU. "Let's tie 'em up for a while."
"You want to play chicken with nineteen Dralthi? Look, I've noticed that you can't use your 'Pilgrim' call sign here. Makes for a little confusion. But now I'm thinking you deserve mine. No way in hell am I going to play chicken with nineteen Dralthi."