PROLOGUE
Major Tom Vale toggled his navigation plot to the Nephele system and smiled as the system diagram appeared on his heads-up display. The convoy, made up of three small freighters and his escort of four lightweight Arrows, would arrive at the jump point late, but well within acceptable parameters. Unless, of course, one of the old transports blew another engine. That kind of delay would kick his entire schedule into a cocked hat.
He traced his finger along the patrol route. His Arrows had to escort the convoy to the jump point, but the patrol legs through the system could be trimmed if he needed to make up time. He leaned back in his seat, glad he'd solved the toughest problem he was likely to face all day.
The circuit was a typical Nephele milk run—long and boring. He had survived twelve years of fighter combat against the Kilrathi, and two more of rough-and-tumble peace on the frontiers. The command of a patrol squadron on a third-rate system was the perfect assignment for him to coast out his career and retire.
He grinned happily. He was entitled to be bored, he even enjoyed it. He made it a point to complain regularly to the personnel office, however. The rear echelon bastards at Central Casting would have collective apoplexy if they thought an officer was happy in an assignment.
The section's leading element, made up of Tiger and her wingman, Sparrow, pushed ahead of the convoy's main body. One fighter remained above each flank of the leading transport, ready to intercept targets closing on the convoy from the front. He glanced back at his own wingman. Scarman kept loose station on his port side, behind and below the civilian ships.
He opened the squadron's common channel and cleared his throat. "Fuel check," he said.
"Eighty-three percent," replied Tiger.
"Seventy-two," from Sparrow.
"Eighty-six," answered Scar.
Vale nodded, satisfied. Wingmen usually used more fuel than their primaries, and Tiger had been keeping Sparrow busy. He remained cynically amused that his ability to bring fuel home found such high praise in his Officer's Efficiency Reports. His superiors, all combat veterans whom he felt should have known better, wrote more on his OERs about his ability to husband scarce resources than they did on how well he trained his squadron or led it in combat. Ah, the peacetime fleet, back to polishing brass, kissing butts, and fighting against nothing more dangerous than boredom.
The Kilrathi War was less than two years over, and it seemed to him that the navy was already busy forgetting everything it had learned in three decades of conflict.
He knew he really shouldn't have been surprised at how quickly the emphasis had changed after the war. Fleet construction provided jobs, and could be justified to a Senate intent upon rebuilding the Confederation's shattered economy. Military supply, combat readiness budgets, and training funds didn't contribute as visibly to local employment and could be easily, and often, pared. The result was that an officer who could save money was more competitive for promotion than one who could save lives. It was a truism that hadn't changed in centuries. Unfortunately.
Tiger's voice crackled across his radio as she instructed their resident rookie on the finer points of leg patrols, the "burn-and-turns" that were the daily bread for a system defense squadron. Marlena had done wonders in bringing the squadron's newest member up to speed in such a short time. He was glad he'd gone out on the limb for her. Her mouth had hopelessly damaged her prospects for promotion, even during the war.
He listened to her issue brief instructions to Sparrow, then make gentle corrections as the rookie attempted to execute them. Her usual sarcasm vanished as she worked with the younger pilot. He grinned. He hadn't expected her to be such a strong trainer. He made a mental note to add a line of praise to the "Comments" section of Tiger's OER. A kind word from him in the "plays well with others" section might be enough to convince a board that she was ready to put on captain's pips. Otherwise, she would be dismissed at year's end for "excessive time in grade."
Sparrow, the rookie, had a fine hand, good instincts, and a reasonably good eye for deflection shooting. He would be a fine asset to the squadron once his training was complete. His attitude needed work, however. The kid had visions of daring missions from strike carriers dancing in his head. The reality of duty on a backwater like Nephele was hard for him to bear, especially as a lone "newbie" in an outfit full of jaded veterans.
Vale knew the kid chafed at not having been born early enough to "do his bit" in the war against the Kilrathi. He reminded Vale of all the young hotshots whose dreams of glory all too often ended in an empty casket shot into space. Their "glory" usually turned out to be a name engraved on a beer glass in a pilots' bar, and a medal mailed home in lieu of a casket.
His tactical plot chirped, drawing him away from his mental meanderings. The Ashiri Maru was drifting. Again. He selected the Maru's channel from the comm menu.
"Aces leader to Ashiri Maru," he said, hoping his voice didn't betray his irritation.
His comm-screen flickered, the channel menu replaced by the Maru's master, a hatchet-faced woman he knew only as Frost. "Now what d'ya want?" she asked in a sullen, exasperated voice. Her expression made it quite plain that he'd interrupted her in the middle of a critical ship's operation. He guessed from the filth he saw on the bulkhead behind her that cleaning wasn't a high priority on her ship.
"Adjust course to conform to the convoy's movements," he said. He thought he sounded a bit imperious, even to his own ears. He tried to soften his tone. "You're drifting again. I told you before that we can't protect you if you wander too far."
"An' as I've told you, General," she replied, scratching her armpit, "what you going to protect us from? There ain't nothing here in Neph', 'ceptin' you an' us. I dunno why you war-boys keep harassin' honest folks. The fighting's over, right?"
Vale sighed. The A. Maru's master stared defiantly back at him. It was times like this that he actually missed the war. Then he could have invoked the Emergency Decrees for failing to comply with military authorities and blown the smirking bitch into next week if she so much as looked at him cross-eyed. Martial law, he mused, had its good points.
He was still trying to frame a civil answer to her when Sparrow cut into the channel. "Sparrow to Knave." Vale smiled indulgently at the kid's excited voice. "I got something on my scanner. One red pipper . . . Wait, it's gone now."
Vale frowned at his tactical display. A free comet or garbage sack shouldn't have vanished like that. Vale guessed the boy was jumping at shadows.
"Roger, Sparrow," he replied, "maintain surveillance. Call me if you get a repeat." He tapped his control yoke in thought. Sparrow was ahead of the transports and on the port side, with Tiger to starboard. It was barely possible that Sparrow might read a scanner signal that was just out of Tiger's range.
He switched channels to Marlena's frequency, "Knave to Tiger."
Tiger's face appeared in his screen, her head moving back and forth as she scanned the area around her. "I know what you're going to ask, boss," she said. "No, I didn't see it." She paused a moment. "Do you want him to intercept? It'd be good practice."
Vale considered it. "No, we'd best not. Fuel allocation's been cut once this quarter already. We need the gas more than he needs the practice."
Tiger's face clouded. "Parsimonious bastards. The ink wasn't even dry on the treaty before they cut the budget."
Vale said nothing. He agreed with her, but wasn't about to let himself get caught criticizing his bosses on an open channel. There were far too many unemployed majors flying bar stools for him to have any illusions about his indispensability. "Keep an eye on it," he said. "It was probably a sensor artifact or a spurious contact, but you never know."
"Roger," Tiger replied.
He tried to ignore the sense that something was wrong. Sparrow's contact troubled him. The kid's scanners were new, in good shape, and decently maintained. Anomalies weren't unusual, of course, and there was a lot of junk floating around to give a momentary reflection, but something just didn't seem right. Nephele was as predictable and as boring as mess-hall eggs. Odd events just didn't happen there.
Vale shook his head. The kid had gotten worked up over nothing, and was now making the whole flight jittery. It was probably nothing.
The pilot waited patiently while the convoy appeared on his long-range scanner. He counted seven craft, just as he had been told to expect. They were late, a fact that disturbed his sense of order, but which had no relevance on the outcome.
He checked his Kilrathi-style cloaking device. It was working, rendering him invisible to both their scanners and the naked eye.
He waited for the ships to wander into visual range. Four early-model Arrows hovered in a sloppy formation about their three charges. He frowned slightly. He had expected better escorting tactics from Confederation pilots. The Fleet had let things slide since the peace.
He smoothed his facial features, mastering his expression and his feelings. Emotion impaired judgement and efficiency. He struggled to purge himself of all feeling—the better to do what was needed. When he cued his wingman's frequency, his voice was as cold and still as a winter morning.
"Seether to Drakes," he said. "The old man was right. Targets sighted. Let's do it." He checked the raiders' coded transponders to ensure all four ships were in their correct positions. Two hung off of each bow of the convoy, for now matching their course and speed with the freighters like sharks after a school of fish. He sent his wingman the preset code to attack, then goosed his throttle and aimed for the convoy. "Remember," he said, "no survivors."
He checked his ship's status, then switched his ready ordnance to an IFF missile. It was a "fire-and-forget" weapon, one that required no further attention from the pilot once it was launched. The missile would lock on a target's electronic signature, then would follow it until it ran out of fuel or was hit.
Drake Two dropped out of cloak to his right, firing a dumb-fire missile as he bored in on the first transport. The dumb-fire was a powerful, unguided rocket that probably wouldn't get a kill on the freighter, but would certainly shake it up.
He followed Two's lead, dropping his own cloak as an Arrow grew in his sights. The Confederation fighters exploded into action, scattering like startled quail as the lead element of Drake flight appeared literally out of nowhere and ripped through the center of the formation. Drake Two broke hard to the right and opened up on the leading pair with his tachyon cannon, rifling shots around the Confed fighters. The Arrow on the convoy's starboard bow heeled sharply over, accelerating away in a complicated corkscrew maneuver.
Seether smiled grimly to himself, his mask of indifference slipping. The Arrow pilots were better than their formation flying had suggested. He licked his dry, thin lips. Good, he thought, his people could use some live-target practice.
Vale was just about to order Sparrow back to the convoy when he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye.
He was just turning his head towards it when a single red dot appeared on his tactical display, flickering into existence on the convoy's starboard bow. A second red pipper appeared, this one to port. It took him a moment to realize the significance of the red dots as . . . enemy. "Tallyho!" he yelled, cuing the squadron's general circuit. "Bandits! Vector one-zero-one degrees and three-three-zero, Z plus forty. Tiger section, break and attack!"
"I copy, Knave," Tiger replied, "well take the bandit on the left." Vale saw her accelerate towards her target. Sparrow followed a second later, angling back towards his wing slot from his advanced position in front of the convoy.
He caught quick acknowledgments from Scarman and Tiger, then a beat later from Sparrow as each reported weapons readiness. He knew that doctrine called for aggressive intercept as far from the vulnerable transports as possible. He just wished he'd had more time to intercept.
Vale hauled his own control yoke to the right, nearly standing the nimble fighter on its tail as he hit his afterburners and turned to attack. Scarman turned smoothly with him, the plume of his afterburner glowing white as he matched his burn to Vale's.
"Tallyho, boss. I designate Target One," Tiger said, her voice calm. "Range, six thousand kilometers to target. Accelerating to eight hundred KPS." The raider, at first glance a heavy fighter, opened up with twin columns of fire. Tiger spiked her craft into evasive maneuvers that took her past the raider and out of its gunline. She pirouetted neatly and arced in on the raider's flank, her guns blazing.
Vale turned his own attention towards the bandit who'd angled towards the rear of the convoy. The enemy's red pipper glowed and swelled as he turned towards it. He goosed his afterburner, inhaling as the increased thrust pressed him back into his chair. He was glad his inertial dampers appeared to be functioning well—he'd have been thrown around the inside of the cockpit without them. His lasers and ion cannon weren't nearly as heavy as the raiders'; he could only hope that he had a speed and maneuver advantage that would balance the scales.
He had a quick glimpse of Tiger trading fire with the first bandit, while Sparrow now maneuvered to the flank.
The missile alarm chimed in his ear, its Dopplered pitch warning him of a lock-on. A yellow dot appeared on his scanner and quickly accelerated towards him. "Damn," he said, then cued his radio. "Scar, evasive. Then break and attack."
He rammed the throttle forward as Scarman broke away, leaving behind him a string of missile decoys. Vale kicked in his afterburner and hauled his control yoke down and left as he fought to open as much room between himself and his wingman as he could. The missile ignored the chaff and Scar to lock onto him. He cursed under his breath.
The two trailing transports loomed in front of him, their drive plumes brightening as they accelerated to the best of their ability. He flashed between them, hoping their mass would throw off the missile. He craned his head around and saw it closing rapidly, its lock-on intact. He banked and cut back, using the lefthand transport as the pivot for his tight parabolic turn. He snapped out of the turn, his course reversed. He dropped chaff pod after chaff pod, hoping the signal simulators would lure the missile away from him. The warhead yawed after the first and detonated.
Vale looked frantically around. The leading freighter bloomed fire along one flank, the result, he thought, of a missile or rocket attack. A torpedo would have reduced the little ship to free atoms. He checked his tactical display and saw one intruder arcing in towards the hindmost transport. Scar whipped and saw-bucked in the distance, apparently locked in his own dance with a missile. This guy is good, Vale thought, he's taken us both out of play long enough to get in close to the freighters.
Tiger and Sparrow were tied up with the second bandit and were in no position to help, leaving him with no option except to go one-on-one. He hoped to stay out of the raiders front arc and its big guns. He angled his Arrow towards the raider and hit his throttle. His fighter jumped forward, the acceleration pressing him back in his seat in spite of the inertial dampers.
The intruder turned slightly as Vale closed, affording him his first good, long look. The thing was sleek and completely black, except for a pair of glowing, top-mounted Bussard intakes, suggesting a jump capability. It looked ultra-state-of-the-art to him, utterly lethal and unlike any design he had seen. It sure as hell didn't look Kilrathi.
He pushed his throttle back, cutting out his afterburner and slowing his headlong charge to better target his weapons. He fired his ion cannon at range, more for his own morale than from any real hope of inflicting damage.
The enemy ignored his pinpricks to fire quad energy weapons at the transport. The bolts punched through its flimsy screens and hulled it deeply. The freighter's single defensive turret opened up, a pathetic single stream of laser beams to answer its mortal wound. He sent the transport a quick interrogative.
The ship's master answered at once, his face appearing on a jumping, static-filled screen. Vale saw drifting smoke behind him. "We're here," the Elgin Dailey's master said, "Y'all just keep it that way. Drives are intact. We'll hold station." His face faded as Vale saw a secondary explosion mushroom out of the transport's side. He suspected the Dailey was in more trouble than it let on.
The raider turned on him, snake-quick, and fired. Four beams of lambent energy crossed close in front of his prow, brightening the inside of the cockpit with reflected energy. A single bolt plowed into his forward phase shield, wiping it out and chewing up his frontal armor. His damage board showed a stabilizer hit. He punched his throttle to the stops and hauled back on his stick as he scrambled to get away from the enemy fighter. He poured on the coal, trying to escape as bolt after bolt passed close by. His rear shields weakened but held as the near misses ripped past.
He brought his Arrow around, trying to cut across the heavier fighter's vector and accelerate away before the black ship could follow. The raider tumbled in space, its nose turning to track Vale's Arrow. He saw a bright red flare and closed his eyes. He opened them to see Sparrow arcing in from his upper right his lasers and ion cannon slashing at the raider.
The black ship continued to rotate in space, turning now to follow Sparrow. Vale kicked his own ship into an autoslide and pivoted back to fire on the raider. He kept the deflection shots going, turning his own Arrow to keep the black ship under fire. The deflection angles were changing too quickly for either his AI to predict or him to track. He missed with most of his shots.
Sparrow's shots slowed, the quad fire having drained his capacitors. "I'm outta here," the kid shouted into his mike. Vale picked up the gist of the message through the feedback as Sparrow poured fuel into his afterburners. The black ship rolled, then fired into Sparrows rear quarter, slewing the little ship around.
"Damage?" he asked as Sparrow cleared the raider's guns.
"Transmitting," the kid replied, sounding very subdued. The schematic of Sparrow's fighter solidified on his screen. He saw that the kid's afterburner, rear armor, and stabilization systems had been hit. One more solid hit and Sparrow would be history.
Vale looked across the convoy in time to see a raider pinion Tiger's fighter, catching her in its bright beams like a pushpin through a butterfly. Vale watched her ship stagger under twinned hammer blows as the cannon stripped the Arrow of its phase shields, armor, and skin. Pieces began to spall and burn.
Vale heard her scream, a long, drawn-out wail of fear and agony that abruptly ceased as the black ship fired again, this time with all its weaponry.
The black ship did a victory roll as it flashed past the expanding debris cloud that marked the remains of Tiger's ship, then began to close in on the convoy. Vale glanced around, realizing too late that he'd lost track of the second raider.
"Keep your eyes open," he said to Sparrow, "the other one's still out there."
Scar cut his drives, autoslid, then boosted after the black ship that had killed Tiger. The Confederation pilot pulled his Arrow into a tight inside loop, trying to flip up and descend on the larger ship's vulnerable back. The raider was ready. It shifted, linking the two ships with multiple columns of firepower. Scar's Arrow, immolated on the beams, detonated.
Vale realized as he looked in vain for a life pod from Scar's ship that resistance was futile. The convoy was lost. It was time to salvage what he could, in this case a young pilot who didn't deserve to die. "Sparrow," he said harshly, "disengage. Get home and make a full report. Intelligence'll need to know what we saw here."
The other Arrow slowly turned away. Vale felt ice in his guts as he saw the two black ships slashing in towards the transports. He rammed his throttles to the stops, punching the little ship towards the convoy. A tiny voice inside his head screamed at him to disengage, to run for home, to live. He gritted his teeth and bored in to attack.
His target fired its missiles, volleying them all off in a single salvo against the Elgin Dailey. The weapons bloomed in explosion after explosion as they punched into the Dailey's guts. Vale watched the stricken ship slew out of formation and angle away. A massive explosion rocked the transport, blowing off the front section containing the bridge and the life bubble. It tumbled alongside the remainder of the ship, still spewing gas and debris.
Vale checked his scanner and saw Sparrow running flat out for home. Vale's chest tightened as he saw one of the black ships flicker into existence behind the rookie. The raider accelerated and fired a missile. Sparrow dodged and weaved, trying to avoid the warhead. His maneuvering cost him enough forward speed for the fighter behind him to close. The black ship fired.
"Hail, Mary, full of grace . . ." Vale heard Sparrow whisper as the bloom engulfed the back half of the light ship. The multiple impacts spun Sparrow to his right, killing his drives and snapping him end over end. The Confederation pilot's prayer turned into a long scream that ended only when the ship exploded. . . . The rookie never had a chance to eject.
He turned his attention back to the two raiders closing in on the transports. He fired on the closest, switching to lasers and plinking at the heavier ship from long range. The raider ignored the fire while it poured shots into the third transport, the Red's Gamble. The raider walked hits up the freighter's defenseless spine.
The Gamble burned brightly, its cargo outgassing and oxidizing through the holes punched in its hull by the raiders' cannon. Vale saw flames licking out into open space, an indicator of the intensity of the inferno within.
The second raider bored in on the Gamble and fired, hitting the stricken transport with both tachyon beams and a heavier weapon that ate whole sections of the freighter. The transport detonated a moment later, one moment coasting in open space with bright jewels of flame winking along its sides and the next vanishing in an actinic flare. The detached, clinical part of Vale's mind noted that the ship's reactor core must have detonated.
A fourth black ship dropped out of cloak on his right flank, firing as it closed the range. His Arrow rocked under the black fighter's hits. Vale slashed his control yoke back and forth, frantically trying to dodge the converging weapons' streams. He felt his drives fail.
He glanced down at his display. System after system glowed red. The eject warning flashed. He reached down between his legs, groping for the yellow-painted eject bar. The ship heeled to one side, hit by another salvo. He glanced up. The raider loomed close, its weapons pointed at his cockpit. It fired from point-blank range, twin bolts of violent energy that blanked out the ship behind. Vale didn't even have time to register pain. . . .
Seether felt the adrenaline drain away as he squeezed his trigger and saw the last Arrow disintegrate into atoms. The pilot, with squadron leader's markings on his fighter's tail assembly, had been passably good. He would have felt a more enduring respect for his opponent, except the Confed pilot was dead. He had no respect for the dead. Death was the ultimate failure, and he could not abide failure.
Drake Three's face appeared on his comm-screen. "Target area sterile," she said, "no signals and no pods. The last transport is attempting Mayday." She glanced downward a moment. "Jamming successful."
Seether nodded and cut her off. "Drake One to Drake flight—stand by for test procedure." He brought his ship around in a tight arc and began his attack run on the sole remaining transport. The pigboat wallowed from side to side, trying to evade his ship. He narrowed his eyes as he closed on the ship. "I'm lighting the 'flash-pak.' " He flipped the safety cover off a special firing button and poised his thumb over it.
The transport filled his forward view, growing larger and larger until he could see the rusted surface details. The transport's single gun sputtered at him ineffectually.
He held his attack run to the last possible instant, then mashed the firing key. He immediately felt the difference in the ship as the thin, convex disc was ejected from his bay. Small thrusters located along its edge gave it ballistic stabilization as it spun and latched onto the transport's hull.
Seether pulled the control yoke back, kicking in his maneuvering thrusters as he swept in a tight turn around the waist of the transport. He emerged above the disc just as it began to vibrate and shimmer. The whole transport visibly shook as surface components ruptured and detached under the strain imposed by the disc. He held his position as the Ashiri Maru shook and rumbled. A violent flash of oxygen and explosive fuels burst out of the hole in the ship's hull and exploded. A second fireball, then a third emerged as the ship's interior spaces detonated in sequence. The final blast loomed over the stricken ship's side like a malevolent flower. When it faded, only the Ashiri Maru's outer hull remained, a charred and scorched husk.
Seether recorded the ship's death on his gun camera. He chuckled, the sound like dice rolling in a cup as he cued Drake Two's channel. "I'd call that a successful 'test,' wouldn't you?' He didn't wait for a response. He reoriented his ship towards the hulk and launched a conventional grappling mine. He watched the weapon tumbling towards the wreck a moment, then hit his "All Call" as he ghosted in after the falling mine.
"Seether to Drakes. Come about to course three-one-zero, Z minus twenty and stand by."
The mine hit the hulk and detonated. Seether whipped his ship around in time to catch the blast on his rear shields, just as he hit his afterburners. He let the blast propel him forward, accelerating him towards his waiting wingmates. The adrenaline faded, leaving him cold. He used the mine-drop and afterburner trick to test himself, probing himself for fear the way he might test a loose tooth with his tongue. He prodded himself, satisfied with the results. No fear. "Cloak on my command," he ordered. "Now."
The four unmarked, black fighters vanished, leaving behind only the hulks and the dead.