Instead it looked like Richards would pull the plug entirely. Karga would be bombarded until she blew up, to keep the Cats from ever recovering her, and the battle group would tamely return to Landreich. All that Richards was waiting on was a chance to sit down with Bondarevsky and have him put in his own advice. Knowing Bondarevsky, Tolwyn assumed he’d be with Richards. He’d never been very confident in Goliath in the first place, and with the risk to the lives of everyone involved in the Project aboard a ship with an armed self-destruct system, Bondarevsky was almost certainly to vote in favor of packing up and heading for home.
It couldn’t be allowed to happen that way. There were too many reasons why they had to put the supercarrier back in service. Reasons Richards and Bondarevsky didn’t know about yet, and which Tolwyn was reluctant to share with them. If either of them turned out to be an agent of Belisarius…
Bondarevsky, now. Suppose he’d passed that “information” about the destruct program to them as a way to deliberately sabotage the project? The Belisarius Group would want the Karga kept out of the picture, and it was just possible they’d gotten to him…
Tolwyn shook his head angrily. He’d been living with this paranoia for too long now. It was making him mistrust everyone. Bondarevsky wouldn’t sign on with a bunch of conspirators like the Belisarius Group. Surely Tolwyn knew him well enough to have that much faith, at least.
The problem was, he’d lost the ability to trust. Even old friends like Richards and Bondarevsky raised distrust in Tolwyn these days. It made it that much harder for him to gain the support of the people he needed to rally against Belisarius, because he couldn’t be sure enough of anyone to really open up to them when he had to. His months of tightrope-walking had already cost so damned much…
But the Goliath Project represented a chance to change all that, and by God he was going to see it carried out, whatever the cost. Karga was a resource they simply couldn’t throw away.
He returned his gaze to the computer monitor in front of him, a summary report from the teams that had investigated the hangar and flight decks of the supercarrier before the bomb scare had caused Richards to pull out. The preliminary findings indicated that both hangar decks were well-stocked with Kilrathi planes, exact numbers still not determined. Until they got a close look at them there was no telling how many would actually be able to fly, but if even half of them were put into service they’d be a valuable asset all by themselves. The Karga had been one of the newest and most modern carriers in Kilrathi service, and the planes she carried were all first-line models that could outperform the antiquated Confederation cast-offs the Landreich was forced to rely on.
Tolwyn scanned the report. Light fighters, Darket-class, less than a squadron in the hangar decks but several more reported on the surface of the brown dwarf moon at the castaway camp. The Darket was small and agile, even better for scouting duties than the Confederation Hornet. Individually weak in shielding, armor, and weapons, they were often employed in fighting pairs by Kilrathi pilots to excellent effect.
Medium fighters, Dralthi Four-class, probably two full squadrons, most craft in good condition. The bat-wing shape of the Dralthi Four was fearsome to behold in combat. Tolwyn could still remember watching in frustration as squadron after squadron of the evil-looking birds had swooped low over the Behemoth during the battle that had destroyed the huge weapons platform. They were slightly weaker than their modern Confederation equivalents, but compared to the Scimitars and Raptors of the Landreich’s arsenal they were a deadly match.
Heavy filters, Vaktoth-class, many missing from hangars. Perhaps an eight-ship Kilrathi squadron left, though this remains to be confirmed by closer examination of individual planes. Vaktoths were superior in every respect to the Landreich’s Raptors. Even if they could only get eight of them in service, they’d be a powerful strike force for the carrier.
Heavy fighters, Strakha-class, approximately one squadron in very good condition. That was really something to take notice of. The Landreich so far couldn’t field anything using modern stealth technology, but the Strakhas were capable of cloaked flight that enabled them to evade detection before they struck. Even in the Confederation stealth fighters, the new Excaliburs like the one that had dropped the T-Bomb on Kilrah, had been slow to reach the front lines and scarce as hen’s teeth right to the end of the war.
Bombers, Paktahn-class, numbers hard to determine because of heavy damage to many individual units. Dedicated bombing craft were comparatively new to human flight wings, where the recent Longbow bomber was still a novelty. The Paktahn wasn’t nearly as good as the Longbow, but like the stealth fighter the bomber was something the Landreich hadn’t used at all…until now. If they could even get a few of these fit for combat action, they could greatly extend the Landreich’s ability at power projection.
Electronic Warfare Craft, Zartoth-class, more than a full squadron apparently intact. Built on the same frame as a Vaktoth heavy fighter, the Zartoth was only lightly armed, but was crammed with electronics gear and electronic countermeasures. They were most useful when it was necessary to pinpoint and destroy enemy targets by detecting energy outputs, or when it was deemed advisable to knock out defending sensors or communications channels. The Confederation used larger EW vessels, corvettes, but Tolwyn had always thought the Kilrathi practice of deploying multiple Zartoths for the same role was a better way of doing the job.
Reconnaissance craft, Hrakthi-chss, approximately one squadron in good condition. Unarmed and constructed from a modification of an older light fighter, the Salthi, the Hrakthi was intended purely as a scout craft. They possessed the ability to cloak, and were packed with sensors, but their combat worth was small. Still, the ability to study an enemy formation from close up without being detected appealed to Tolwyn.
Shuttles, carious types, roughly four squadrons. The Kilrathi design philosophy emphasized dispersal and duplication of valuable assets to allow a force to suffer losses and still win a battle. They had adapted one basic shuttlecraft design for a number of different purposes. The Naktarg was the original version, an assault shuttle large enough to hold troops and small vehicles and armed with gatling lasers and anti-armor ground-support missiles. A Search and Rescue variant, the Rogharth, was not unlike the Type-R ConFleet shuttle that had carried the castaway party back to Karga, devoting space to a medical bay and extra sensors. Another intriguing type, as far as Tolwyn was concerned, was the Gratha, which was fitted for command and control duties. It carried a crew of six as well as room for a strike commander and his staff, and duplicated the tracking, communications, and tactical computer functions housed within a carrier’s Primary Flight Control center. They effectively increased the carrier’s ability to control flight operations over long distances.
Finally, there was the Kofar shuttle variant, a flying munitions and fuel dump that could dock with a Kilrathi fighter in space and transfer fuel and missiles. Tolwyn had long argued that the Confederation fleet could have used a similar platform. Carriers, after all, were at their most vulnerable when they were in the process of rearming and refueling fighters in the middle of combat operations. Terran carriers could launch small tankers, but there was no provision for restocking a fighter’s missiles without having it return to the flight deck. The Kofar extended Kilrathi planes’ flight times dramatically.