She rammed the throttle full forward on her main engine, and prayed she could out-fly this new menace before she joined Viking in whatever Valhalla dead fighter jocks ended up in.
Strakha800
Near Vaku VII, Vaku System
1508 hours (CST)
Acceleration pushed Bondarevsky back into his seat as the Kilrathi fighter leapt from the deck, hurled clear by a powerful linear accelerator catapult. Internal gravity compensators absorbed most of the g-force, but not quite all, and for a moment Bondarevsky reveled in the feel of it. Too much time had gone by since he’d made his last catapult launch.
There wasn’t time to think about it, though. Clear of the flight deck, he cut in his main engine and pushed the throttle forward to full military power. The Strakha was handling remarkably like the simulator version he’d flown time and again since Christmas. Maybe, just maybe, the squadron’s training time would count for something out here after all.
“Strakha Eight-zero-zero, good shot! Good shot!” he called, setting course toward the nearest of the enemy fighters.
“Strakha Eight-zero-niner, good shot,” he heard just seconds later. It was Harper, who’d insisted on flying as his wingman. Boss Marchand must have been cycling the catapult faster than ConFleet safety regulations would ever have allowed, rushing to get the Kilrathi fighters into the battle before the Hornets and Raptors were overwhelmed.
“Bard, this is Bear,” he said crisply. “Go to stealth mode.”
“Copy,” Harper responded, all his banter gone, replaced by a cold, professional manner. “Engaging.”
Bondarevsky flipped a switch, and to all intents and purposes the Strakha fighter vanished.
Kilrathi stealth technology still wasn’t fully understood in human circles even yet, despite having been studied and adapted for use in the latest ConFleet ships, from Excalibur fighters up to recon ships like the old Bannockburn that James Taggart had commanded out here in the Landreich during the Free Corps campaign. The twin generators mounted under the fighter’s ventral fin created an area of distortion that bent most radiation, right up through the visible spectrum, right around the hull. A small amount was allowed to leak through- otherwise the pilot would be as blind to the outside universe as his enemies were to him-but the narrow band opening was constantly remodulated by a random computer program so that it took a lucky observer to spot a cloaked ship. But it also took a lot of power, and a Strakha couldn’t stay cloaked very long under combat power requirements.
Right now, though, Bondarevsky was glad to be in the cockpit of a Strakha. These unexpected and unknown enemies had pounced on the carrier with little warning. He intended the counterstroke to return the favor.
Up ahead, his sensor display had picked out a hot and heavy engagement between a Broadsword and a Hornet that was weaving and dodging for all it was worth. Bondarevsky increased his acceleration. “Bard,” he said. “We’ve got a furball at zero-three-one by zero-four-four. Let’s see if they like gate crashers at their party.”
“Right with you,” Harper replied.
The Broadsword was losing ground as the Hornet accelerated away, using the full advantage of speed and maneuverability, but despite the opening range the Broadsword pilot was keeping up a heavy assault with lasers. Some of them were scoring hits. The Hornet’s shields and armor weren’t likely to hold long against the heavier, more modern fighter’s firepower.
But the Strakha was newer and heavier than the Broadsword. Bondarevsky smiled coldly as he started his attack run, powering up his meson guns as the Strakha hurtled toward the pursuer. As the range closed he cut the stealth generators.
It took several seconds for the fighter to decloak, and during that time he couldn’t fire his weapons. But he’d timed the maneuver almost perfectly. The Broadsword was looming close ahead when the veil of energy shimmered around the Strakha and it became fully visible again. The targeting reticule on his HUD flashed orange, and Bondarevsky hit the trigger.
Both meson guns opened fire at close range, battering through the Broadsword’s shields and peeling away armor in a fury of raw energy. For good measure Bondarevsky launched a ConFleet-issue Pilum FF missile. It struck the weakened Broadsword and detonated in a brilliant fireball.
“Never thought I’d be glad to see a Cat fighter turn up like that,” Babe Babcock said. “Whoever you are, drinks are on me when we get back to the barn.”
“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.”