Jaeger cut sharply to the left, then broke right again as he applied braking thrust. The Strakha, pounded by Cobra's beams, shot past Beast's Thunderbolt, and Jaeger opened fire on the exposed tail where the shields were still shimmering from the fury of Buckley's attack.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the shields collapsed and Jaeger's blasters tore through armor. A shot penetrated to the power plant, and the Strakha exploded.
"Nice shooting, partner!" Cobra called, grinning.
You set it up," Jaeger said. "Only five more to go!"
"Four!" Maniac cut in. "I've already nailed two of the bastards. Come on, you two, join the party! Plenty of little kitty asses for everybody!"
"Two more coming in, Cobra," Jaeger reported. "Up ahead . . . shit! My shield generator's fritzing on me again!"
"Back off, Beast, let me handle — The two Strakha dived straight in, concentrating their fire on Jaeger's Thunderbolt. Shot after shot raked the fighter. He was trying to turn away, but Buckley could see he was too late. The bow shield was failing . . .
Then it was over. The fireball consumed Jaeger's fighter so bright her computer cut in the polarizers for an instant to protect her eyes. When she could see again, nothing remained of Helmut Jaeger's craft but a rapidly-expanding cloud of twisted, scorched metal fragments.
She could hardly believe it had happened so suddenly. One instant Jaeger had been out there . . . now, nothing. It took her back to the horrors of the Kilrathi labor camp to guards who would strike down a slave without warning and to people she knew who vanished in the night. The cats were always the same, always killing without warning and without mercy, taking joy from death and fear and pain . . .
"Bastards!" she screamed, hitting her afterburners to dive toward the nearest Strakha as she opened fire with all her energy weapons at once. "Damn cat bastards! I'll see you all in hell!"
Graldak nar Sutaghi bared his fangs as four Terran fighters accelerated away from the developing battle. So, the Terran strike leader knows how to hunt, he thought grimly. Prince Thrakhath had bestowed a name upon their Flight Wing commander: The Heart of the Tiger. Today the human was living up to the honor of that name, clinging to his mission despite all the barriers the Empire raised in his path.
Did Thrakhath realize what kind of warrior this ape was? The Prince wasn't known for esteeming his Terran foes, even those who received a Kilrathi vendetta-name.
No matter, now. The only thing that counted at the moment was victory, and that was very nearly under Graldak's claws. The Terrans had managed to destroy two of the four flights of missiles, and they had almost reached the third. But they would get no further.
"Red Fang squadron," he said aloud, feeling the battle-lust surging through his veins. "Decloak and engage at will!"
"Keep them off me! Keep them off me!" Vaquero's voice was urgent in Blair's headphones. "Where the hell are you, Vagabond?"
"Just hang in there a little longer," the Chinese pilot responded. "The cavalry's coming."
Blair wrenched his attention back to his HUD as a Strakha dived toward him, guns blazing. This last batch of enemy fighters had come at them out of nowhere eight against his four, and the Terrans were fighting for their lives. Even as he flipped the Thunderbolt into a tight, high-G evasive turn a part of his mind was on another part of the battle entirely . . . and on the clock. Each second ticking away took the final flight of Kilrathi missiles further from the Terran fighters, letting them spread out. Soon it would be all but impossible to detect them even when they weren't cloaked.
He tracked the Strakha in, holding his fire and waiting for an opening. Then Flint swept past, her blasters searing, battering at the other ship's shields. Blair joined the barrage, and the Strakha came apart.
"Twenty-two, Lieutenant" he remarked dryly.
"No, sir, that one was yours. I just softened him up." Flint sounded as tired as he felt.
"We'll debate it when we get back to Old Vic," he said, trying to sound encouraging. Flint had done yeoman duty on his wing today, keeping formation, supporting him constantly, never forgetting herself or yielding to temptation. Since that first hit she hadn't scored a clean kill, but she didn't seem to be concerned at missing her chance to rack up more points in her quest for revenge. After this, he wouldn't doubt her again, he told himself as he turned his attention back to his sensor readouts. "Scanning for new targets."
There were four more Strakha ahead.
"Everybody up to another dogfight?" he asked. "Targets at eleven o'clock, low. Let's nail them!"
The four Thunderbolts closed up into tight formation and drove for the newest targets. The Strakha broke formation promptly, not waiting for the usual round of individual sorties that usually marked a fight with the Kilrathi. Their CO must he one hell of a leader, Blair thought.
"Vaquero, Vagabond, you guys dance with these four, Blair called. "I want to try for the rest of the missiles. You with me, Flint?"
"On your wing, Colonel," she told him.
He broke to port and increased thrust, with Flint's fighter sticking close by. The other two Thunderbolts drove straight toward the Strakha, but these Kilrathi pilots didn't rise to the bait of close combat. Blair saw the images on his scanner flicker and go out as the Strakha engaged their cloaks again. He muttered a curse under his breath.
"Keep a sharp eye out, people," he said over the comm channel. "They'll be back. Bet on it."
And suddenly they were back, two of them, at least. The pair of Kilrathi fighters materialized right on his tail, releasing missiles and then fading out of sight once again. Blair dumped a decoy missile and banked sharply, feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline in his blood. One of the enemy missiles picked up the decoy and homed in on it, but the second wasn't fooled by the electronic signature and continued to hurtle after the Thunderbolt. Blair altered course sharply again, veering back toward the decoy's flight path. The timing would have to be damned tight. . . .
His fighter flashed past the two missiles just seconds before the Kilrathi warhead detonated. The blast that erupted behind him was like a false dawn. His shield indicators registered a noticeable power loss, but nothing close to what he would have suffered if the full force of the blast had been absorbed by the shields themselves. After a moment he checked his screens, and let out a sigh. The explosion had caught the second enemy missile.
Then another Strakha was in sight, firing on him with beams and missiles from dead ahead. Blair returned fire, and seconds later Flint joined the fray with all her guns blazing. Just as Blair's forward shield was registering zero, the Strakha went up in a magnificent fireball. Blair heard Flint cheering. A moment later Vaquero and Vagabond were joining in, proclaiming another kill.
"The other two boys are running!" Vaquero shouted all trace of the peaceful musician submerged now. "Looks like we've taught em a real lesson this time!"
"Permission to pursue, sir?" Flint added a moment later.
"Negative," he snapped. "Negative! We've still got missiles to track down! Get on your scanners, people. Now!"
But it was too late. His sensors turned up nothing but debris and open space, out to their maximum limit The remaining Skipper missiles, five at least, were gone