Tolwyn’s instincts were still those of a combat pilot, and the recon mission had tempted him mightily. But though he still used his old handle, “Lone Wolf,” he knew that his responsibilities as a wing commander ran deeper than satisfying his personal desires. Some wing commanders would have directed operations from the carrier’s flight control center, but that would have been too much of a leap for Kevin Tolwyn. Instead he’d fly the support part of the mission, where he could sit back and oversee the whole operation but still get into the action personally if a furball developed.
It was the kind of decision he figured Jason Bondarevsky would have made…or at least he hoped so. It was hard to live up to the standards set by a man like Bondarevsky, but Tolwyn was determined to do his best.
On his tactical plot the white dots representing the Flying Eyes were beginning to sweep past the green symbols of VF-88, gathering speed as they accelerated at maximum military thrust. Tolwyn kept his eye on the screen, letting the Raptor maintain course and speed on autopilot while he devoted his full attention to the unfolding recon flight.
As the minutes crept past a new indicator came alive on the plotting board, a fuzzy red symbol that indicated a large and potentially hostile target.
“There she is,” Babcock announced calmly. “Tally ho!”
“Maintain your watch,” Tolwyn reminded her. “Don’t get so wrapped up in the target that you miss any loiterers who might be planning to crash the party.”
“Roger that. Snake, Lefty, you two are on high guard. The rest of you peel off according to the recon plan. Stick to your wingmen and make sure your cameras are hot. Go!”
“Good luck to you all,” Tolwyn muttered under his breath.
Flight Deck, FRLS Independence
Deep Space, Vaku System
0805 hours (CST)
“Look at that thing,” Bondarevsky said softly, almost reverently. “My God, just look at it. I’ve never really been able to just sit back and watch when one of these was on my screens. I was too busy dodging Double-A-S to do anything more than fly and fight.”
Sparks had shifted from the tactical plot to a realtime computer-enhanced relay from the sensor pod mounted on the bow of Babe Babcock’s Hornet. The four officers grouped around the three-dimensional display had almost lost track of time as they waited and watched, but now, at last, the fighters were getting a good view of the derelict spacecraft.
“Seems kinda funny not to be locking on,” one of the pilots said over the commlink, echoing Bondarevsky’s sentiments.
“Keep your eyes on your displays and your mind on the job, Drifter,” Babcock growled. “They’re not paying us to sightsee out here…that’s why God invented sensor pods.”
“Aw, Babe, you got no romance in your soul,” Drifter replied in a mock-sad voice. Then, a moment later, he switched to a completely business-like voice and manner. “You see the spike on the emissions readout?”
“Yeah. I copy it. Her shields may be down, but she’s got power running through her grid. Not much, but power.”
“Stay focused, people,” Kevin Tolwyn broke in. According to the latest position check, his Raptor squadron was still five minutes from the hulk, and Bondarevsky could hear a trace of nervousness in his voice. He knew the feeling, the fear that something could go down that would cost good pilots’ lives while the support squadron was still killing off velocity to match vectors and join an engagement.
Sparks leaned closer to the display. “I’d say something blew up pretty damn close to her, skipper,” she said. “See the pattern of damage along her forward hull?”
“Yeah.” Bondarevsky frowned. “I don’t think that’s what did her in, though, Sparks. Doesn’t look like the blast damage did all that much to any critical areas of the ship. Just breached the hull in about thirty or forty places, that’s all. Her shields were already down when that happened, or nothing much would have got through.”
“That’s battle damage there, Captain,” Bhaktadil said, pointing to the shattered blister on the forward part of the carrier’s massive superstructure. That was the main bridge, Bondarevsky thought. “All the signs of a burnthrough on the shields and a fairly heavy missile strike following it up.”
“Looks like our Cat friends had some unfriendly company, all right,” Bondarevsky said. “Those two cruisers must have caught up with her and given her more than she could handle. Pretty unusual for a ship-to-ship battle to develop around a carrier, though. Her fighter screens should have kept cruisers at arm’s length.”
“Let me check something, skipper,” Sparks said. Her fingers played across the controls, calling up the images from a different Hornet. “This is Hornet One-oh-nine,” she said. “He’s assigned to skim past the port side flight deck.”
“Sweet Mother of God,” Aengus Harper said out loud. “Will you look at that bit of a tangle.”
The image being relayed now hardly looked like a flight deck entrance at all. The tangle of wreckage around the entry port was twisted and blackened, and beyond, only partially glimpsed as the Hornet flashed past, it looked as if the interior of the flight deck had suffered equally serious damage. Bondarevsky frowned. If they had to put all that to rights, it was going to take time and effort on a Herculean scale.
“Looks like this flight deck was knocked out,” Bondarevsky said. “Might have been a lucky hit, or even a landing accident by one of the Cat pilots. Hard to tell.”
Harper had a pocket computer terminal out. “The way I’m rememberin’ the database, sir, it was the port side flight deck that was reported hit during the battle over Landreich,” he said. “Aye, here it is, indeed. Blitzkreig scored on the old girl late in the battle by making an unexpected run in to point blank range and firing a barrage of torpedoes. Barely escaped the scrapyard herself, but Himself has a charmed life when he gets out there in the thick of it all.”
That sounded like typical Kruger tactics, all right. Brilliant, unconventional, daring, and suicidal. “This is the starboard side,” Bondarevsky said. “No wonder they got in a ship-to-ship duel. It looks like they went into battle with only one flight deck operating, and lost that early on. Probably to a pilot who blew a trap. If she only had a few birds out for scouting when she blundered into the two cruisers, it would have turned into an old-fashioned slugfest. And big as she is, that supercarrier doesn’t carry all that much offensive weaponry.”
“Enough to take out the two cruisers, though,” Bhaktadil commented. “But not in time to save herself.”
“We might find a bunch of her fighters intact in the hanger decks, skipper,” Sparks pointed out. “Assuming they were snugged down there when the blast swept through the flight deck, and not already up and ready for an Alpha Strike.“
“Maybe so,” Bondarevsky said. “But it’s too early to say. We’ll have to eyeball it in person to know what’s possible over there. Looks like it really is a derelict, not bait in some Cat tactician’s trap, so I guess we’ll be going across. But I don’t like the looks of her. That battle damage is pretty damned extensive. It’s not going to be easy to put her back in fighting trim again.”
“Tell me, Sparks, me darling, is that computer gettin’ any trace of the signal Captain Springweather picked up on her visit?” Harper gave a casual grin and a self-deprecating shrug, as if to apologize for bringing the matter up.
“Nothing,” she said. “Not even a carrier wave.”
“So…if there were survivors, they’re either dead, rescued, or their transmitter’s out,” Bhaktadil said. “Radiation in an unshielded ship would play merry hell with her electronics. Probably fried most of the systems within a few minutes of the shields going down. like taking an EMP from a nuke-even with internal armor as redundant protection against radiation surges, you’ve got about as much chance of keeping electronic components in service in that as a Cat has of keeping his claws sheathed on a hunt.”