CHAPTER THREE
Blair walked onto the flight deck, trying to juggle his helmet, callsign list, tactical book, and flight recorder. His head still ached from his binge, in spite of the antihangover pills a sympathetic hospital corpsman had given him. Now you know why you shouldn't drink whiskey, he said to himself.
He had been fortunate that his squadron commanders were all prepared to brief him on their squadrons' readiness, saving him the need to do more than nod sagely from time to time. He just hoped his hangover cleared up before launch. Trying to fly with one was a stone bitch.
He didn't see the pilot waiting by the access door to the maintenance bay until he stepped into Blair's path.
"Sir?" the man said, startling him. Blair jumped, almost dropping his helmet. He looked the young man over, desperately trying to remember his name. The kid was one of the dozens of pilots he'd met with shiny new wings. He had trouble keeping them sorted out.
"Yes, umm, Lieutenant . . ." Blair faltered.
"Carter, sir," the lieutenant supplied helpfully, "Troy Carter. Callsign Catscratch."
"Yes, Lieutenant," Blair said as he tried to recover his composure, "what can I do for you?"
"Well, sir," Carter said enthusiastically, "I just wanted you to know how much of an honor it is for me that you picked me as your wingman." Blair didn't have the heart to tell the kid that he'd simply been at the top of the flight rotation, and that Blair hadn't given it a moment's consideration. The rookie cut him off before he could answer. "I just wanted to let you know, sir, that I won't let you down."
Blair looked at him a moment before he realized the kid expected some kind of response. "I'm sure you won't." He started to walk towards the maintenance area where crews were completing the final preflights on the ready group. Carter fell in step beside him. Blair ignored him as he tried to get the pile in his arms under control. He finally managed to dump the entire mess into his helmet. He stepped into the main bay and angled for his own bird.
Blair nodded in satisfaction. His orders to have one flight each of Arrows, Hellcats, Thunderbolts, and Longbows prepared for immediate launch had been carried out, in spite of numerous raised eyebrows from the senior squadron officers. The flight crews had worked quickly and professionally to get the fighters ready on short notice. Blair couldn't recall seeing a wartime carrier operate any more efficiently. He reminded himself that the peacetime fleet literally had the cream of the war's veterans to choose from. The Lexington had no excuse for inefficiency.
"Sir," Catscratch asked, interrupting his thoughts, "if you have a couple of minutes, I'd like to discuss the mission."
"It's a simple jump recon, Lieutenant," Blair replied. "What else do you want to know?"
"Well," Carter answered, "I know having a strike force in the chute is doctrine when a carrier comes out of jump. They taught us that at the Academy. Most wings just put one squadron on alert. Why'd you decide on a mixed force?"
Blair looked at him a moment, trying to decide through his thumping head whether or not to be sarcastic. He chose a straight answer. Sarcasm took too much work. "Task forces are terribly vulnerable during jump," he replied. "They can only go through the gate one at a time, and peacetime rules stipulate a five-minute interval. Most wings use a defensive philosophy, preparing their point-defense squadron to cover the task force while it gets organized." He stepped towards his own Arrow. Carter, his face intent, followed. "That'll surrender the area of space around the carrier to an enemy. You invite a strike."
He twisted his head around, trying to decide if he felt better. "The other option is to prep for a magnum launch, getting everything ready. That puts one hell of a strain on the ground crews and will eat into your sortie rate."
He shrugged. "I prefer the middle ground, enough ships for defense and a modest strike." He stopped and looked at Catscratch. "We'll launch a reconnaissance as soon as we're out of jump. In the event we find a target, then we'll launch the Hellcats and Longbows. That way we're not passive. We're lashing out, even if there's a strike inbound. In the event we do get hit, the Thunderbolts and Arrows will pull point-defense duty. Understand?"
Carter dipped his head twice, nodding quickly. "Thank you, sir," he said. Blair saw the kid's expression was one of almost reverence, as though he'd been given the secrets of the universe. Blair wanted no part of that hero worship. "These're based on wartime procedures that Captain Eisen worked out a long time ago. It's his plan, not mine."
He turned away to inspect his Arrow. Catscratch, his sense of importance touched, went towards his own fighter. Blair watched the kid through sidelong glances as Catscratch checked intakes, tugged and pulled at the slung ordnance, and inspected the safety tags that locked the weapons out while they were in the maintenance bays. The kid, Blair decided, was conscientious and diligent. Yeah, he grumped to himself, and probably also cheerful, thrifty, brave, and clean.
He climbed up the short ladder and into his cockpit, taking extra care not to bang his head on the raised canopy. That would have been an embarrassment he wasn't prepared to endure, and he wasn't entirely certain his head wouldn't fall off.
The crew chief helped him strap in, then handed him his helmet. He put it on, then plugged the interior cables into the intercom box. The helmet came alive, crackling and scratching as the headset purged the static electricity from the system. He raised one thumb, indicating he had communications. The crew chief pulled the ladder away, then moved to finish the preflight.
Blair watched her plug into the fighter's starboard diagnostics panel as he pulled out his own checklist.
"I show engines, weapons, and shields green," Blair said, checking each system in turn.
"I confirm," the crew chief replied. "I'm still getting an intermittent flutter in your portside control array, but nothing outside normal specifications."
Blair thought he detected a touch of hesitancy in the chief's voice. "Trouble?"
"No," the chief said, "it isn't enough to rate a down-check. I'll make a note in the maintenance log to run a full diagnostic as soon as the mission is over."
They ran the rest of the checklist without incident, verifying the fighter was combat ready.
"All systems green, Colonel," she intoned.
"Okay," he said, "setting guns to preheat and arming missiles." She quickly ducked under the right wing and pulled the arming clips from the missiles. Blair watched his diagnostics as the seekerheads on the infrared and IFF missiles uncaged and ran their warmup cycles. The chief stepped out from under the left wing and into his line of sight. She held her hands up, her fingers splayed for him to count the ribbons dangling from the arming pins looped around her fingers.
"I count six," she said, "two IFF, two infrared, decoy dispenser, and ejection system." He switched to his internal graphic and checked his stores load. "Correct," he replied, "all systems green."
"Okay, sir," she said, "the bird is yours." She smiled. "Try not to make too much work for me."
He allowed the ghost of a smile to cross his face. "I'll try," he answered.
She stepped back as he sealed his canopy and radioed the flight control officer. "Arrow Seven-Three-Seven, callsign Alpha Six, reports ready." Lieutenant Naismith gave him a terse acknowledgement. Blair shook his head, remembering that the Arrow's telemetry information would give the communications officer a precise readout on his status at any time he was within range. He sighed. He hoped Naismith chalked the faux pas to his being rusty, rather than nagging. Then again, he'd heard the comm officer had a reputation for going by the book. He might like the redundant checks.
He glanced around the maintenance bay. Cockpit canopies closed and engines began cycling as the strike group members warmed up their drives.
He looked at his chronometer, checking the time to jump. The task group would proceed through the jump point singly, with each ship running up to flank speed and entering the nexus at a slightly different angle. Fleet doctrine called for evasive maneuvers upon completing transition. The carrier's inertial dampers would mask almost all of the stresses. Blair knew he'd still feel sick and nauseated before the jump was halfway over.
He tried to distract himself by monitoring the flight wing's command and control circuits. Naismith chose that moment to run systems checks with each of Blair's strike elements.
"Lexington to Group Six," the comm officer said in his dry, businesslike voice. "Status?"
"Scout Six, standing by," Blair said.
He listened as Strike Six, Escort Six, and Raid Six all reported readiness. He looked around one final time, pleased by what he saw. His own four Arrow fighters were spotted first on the launch deck, ready to begin their recon of the Hellespont system as soon as the Lexington completed the jump. Behind them were the four Longbows of Strike Six, together with their escorting Hellcats. The four Thunderbolts of Raid Six, two armed with ship-killing torpedoes, stood off to one side. They were the ready group's reserve, capable either of launching their own smaller raid or of reinforcing the strike group.
Four other Thunderbolts, designated "Thor," stood by as the fleet's point-defense element. That element would remain under the control of the Lex's flight officer.
Blair glanced at his watch again and saw they were less than two minutes from the jump. He took a deep breath. "Alpha Six to Six elements," he said, "stand by for transition." He watched the maintenance crews flee the bay for their quarters. Jump transition was something no one wanted to do standing up.
The jump klaxon sounded, warning the ship's crew that the carrier had begun its final run. Blair closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as the Lexington entered the jump point.
He felt as though he were being stretched, his molecules spread over a dozen cubic parsecs. The feeling lasted only a second, but seemed to go on forever. It was a frightening, disorienting feeling. His world snapped back in place an instant later as the Lexington exited the nexus, presumably in the Hellespont system. Blair's already delicate stomach fluttered as the Lex began her preprogrammed evasive maneuvers.
"Flight control to Group Six leader," Naismith said, his voice cool and detached, even after jump. "We're getting a distress call. Stand by to launch and intercept."
"Roger," Blair replied, trying not to sound as frayed as he felt. He heard the quick click as the flight boss assumed control of the frequency.
"Arrow Seven-Three-Seven. You are first in queue. Stand by for scramble."
Blair felt the launch cradle begin to inch forward as it moved to the on-deck position beneath the launch rails. He heard the rumble and roar as the launch bay's atmosphere was evacuated. He felt the familiar anxiety begin to grip his guts as the cradle bumped again and began to rise. The launch elevator quickly lifted the cradle to the staging area behind the launch bays and deposited it on the rails. The cradle passed through the primary force curtain and into the zero-gee, zero-atmosphere launch bay. The deck crews, wearing pressure suits and magnetic boots, loaded him into the tube with wartime alacrity.
"Launch Deck to Flight Control," Blair heard the duty officer report, "Seven-Three-Seven spotted on 'Cat Two. Ready for launch."
Blair braced his shoulders against the seat back and gripped the control yoke firmly. He looked up at the launch control officer in her lighted socket. She waited for his raised thumb, indicating that he was ready. She gave him a salute, then glanced down at her board. He turned his head back to the front, trying to ignore his pounding heart and dry throat. Carrier launchings were the second most dangerous non-combat operations a pilot could perform, after carrier landings. He'd almost rather face a pack of Darket light fighters than the launch bay.
"Flight control to Scout Six. Scramble."
The moment of launch took him by surprise, as always. The roar of his engines on full afterburner merged with the roar of the catapult as the Arrow leapt forward. His weight doubled and doubled again as the G forces built. He tried to inhale against the crushing weight on his chest, desperately sucking in air through tightly clenched teeth. He felt the bladders in his flight suit's legs inflate to force pooled blood back into his body. He saw stars appear ahead, at first dimly through the bay's forward force curtain, then sharply and brilliantly as Arrow 737 burst out of the bay.
The fighter's inertial dampers, freed of the Lexington's floor field, snapped on. The sensation of acceleration and the extra mass vanished as the dampers compensated for the acceleration. He breathed a quick sigh of relief. He'd survived another launch.
He pulled the Arrow into a steep left-hand turn, in order to clear the Lexington's bulk if his main drive failed. He recalled one hotshot on the Tiger's Claw who'd ignored the clearing turn, then lost his engines. The sixty-thousand-ton strike carrier hadn't left enough of the fighter to bury, much less the pilot.
The Arrow, freed of the Lexington's bulk, picked up the distress call. ". . . day. Mayday," a scratchy voice said, "this is the packet Velden Jones. We are a convoy under attack. Our escort has been disabled. We are under attack. May . . ." Heavy static built as jamming cut off the rest of the message. Blair switched to his own navigation plot as Naismith updated his map. The convoy's location appeared, as did an asteroid field several thousand klicks beyond.
Catscratch rocketed out of the starboard launch tube a moment later. Blair kept his lazy left-hand turn as Carter punched his afterburners to take up his station to Blair's wing. Blair kept his turn long enough for the last two fighters of Scout Six to complete launch and form up.
"We're here," one of the other Arrow pilots announced.
"Radio silence!" Blair snapped. "Form on me." He turned his fighter toward the distant fight and hit his afterburner. The loose diamond behind him followed smoothly, boosting towards the beleaguered convoy.
The formation took only a few minutes to cross open space to the stricken ships. Blair watched with a sickening feeling as convoy ship after ship faded from his tactical screen. He knew, even as he boosted his fighter to its maximum velocity, that they would be too late to save the transports. The last of them vanished from his tactical plot just as he came into extreme visual range. There was no sign of the attackers.
He led his small force into the middle of what had been the convoy. One ship detonated as they passed through, vanishing from the pilots' sight in a flare of blue-white. Blair saw several hulks, the remains of the Confed transports, drifting in macabre formation. Their blackened remains and hollowed appearances made them look like giant insect husks. One ship tumbled end over end, its drives still glowing with residual heat. Blair detected no signs of life or active energy signals from any of the ships.
The senselessness of the attack mystified and angered him. He could understand destruction as an act of war, or even comprehend raiding for booty, but this annihilation without apparent cause infuriated him. He cut his drives, easing up between a pair of blackened and destroyed ships. He then activated his gun cameras to record the remains. He wanted people to see the carnage that had been wrought.
"All right," Blair said, trying to master his emotions as he completed his recording, "the bastards can't have gone far. We'll run some fish-hook search patterns and see if we can't pick them up. If you find them, stay off the radio. One of you stays put and trails the target while the other hightails it back to the Lady Lex for the strike force. Questions?" He waited a moment, then called the flight's second element leader. "Varmint, assume course 040. Use your own discretion on your outbound legs, but don't wander out of the Lex's range. Remember, radio silence."
He tapped his thumb on his control yoke, then aimed the Arrow away from the destroyed convoy. Catscratch followed smoothly, staying perched just off his left wing as Blair brought them onto their own search course. They boosted together, accelerating to maximum standard velocity. Blair kept one eye on his readouts, balancing his thrust and fuel consumption as the readout hovered around 520 kilometers per second. He ran out along his base course, checking his tactical scanner for any signs of the raiders.
He held course and speed for several minutes, alternately checking his scanner readouts and looking out of the cockpit for visual clues. They saw nothing on the outbound leg. He had just reached the decision to bend the search pattern back to the left and pick up another pie-wedged slice of space when he caught a momentary blip on his scanner. It flickered blue and red, as though the Arrow's computer was uncertain of the blip's identity as friend or foe. It flickered again, turned red, and vanished. Under other circumstances Blair would have ignored it as a sensor artifact. The contact had been too fleeting and uncertain for a good lock-on.
He switched to a low-powered light-beam laser link and called Catscratch. "Did you see that?" he asked.
"See what?" Catscratch replied.
Blair would have been a lot happier if his wingman had also seen the trace. He considered a moment, then made his decision.
"I think I saw something, maybe a radio signal," he said. "It's worth checking out." He checked his nav plot, letting his voice harden. "Assume course 330 Z plus five. Kill your IFF and data telemetry systems."
"Our side won't know it's us without the IFF!" Catscratch protested.
"It'll reduce our own electronic signatures," Blair said. "Do it. And stay off the radio."
"Aye, aye, sir," Catscratch said, a touch petulantly. So much for the hero worship, Blair thought sourly.
He touched his throttle, kicking in his afterburners and boosting his speed to try and close on the ghost contact before it moved too far out of range. He also tried to keep his approach somewhat oblique, the better to stalk his quarry.
They quickly closed on the location where Blair had caught the signal. He ran several crisscrosses, hoping to pick up another trace. Nothing. The longer he ran search patterns, the more he felt he'd been chasing gremlins.
He was just beginning to feel a little silly about the whole thing when he caught another momentary blip on his scanner, again at extreme range. This time it remained steady, though on the very edge of his detection range. He brought his fighter around to center it in his scanner's inner ring.
It remained reassuringly solid, enough for him to switch to his target tracker. The red cross glowed brighter, indicating that his AI had achieved lock-on. He smiled. So much for gremlins. The target began to post a diminishing range in small numbers below the graphic. He waited for the AI to give him a target identity on the tactical scanner, then frowned as the screen remained blank. Either the fighter had no match in its inventory of ship types, or more likely, it couldn't secure enough targeting data to run a match. He was torn between trying to close the distance to get a solid identification and risking detection.
The desire for stealth won out. He switched his throttles back, to maintain their relative distances. The range to target stopped dropping. The enemy craft was still well out of visual range, but close enough to provide the targeting system with a passive signal. He smiled. He wondered what Lieutenant Carter was thinking now that his hunch had paid off.
Blair was careful to keep his distance from his target. The Arrow was a narrow, wedge-shaped ship with a small cross section and few vertical surfaces. It had the smallest scanner signature in the fleet. Blair hoped to use that to his advantage. If he was lucky he could keep his opponent just within scanner range, while depending on his smaller signature to remain invisible. That way he could remain undetected long enough for the target to lead them back to its base.
He knew he was working with a good theory, but it was one talked about more than practiced. He wondered who he was outsmarting, his enemy or himself.
He checked his speed. Four hundred kilometers per second. He frowned at the odd velocity, then checked his range. It held steady at a little over 12,000 meters. He opened his tactical book and flipped through the technical data. Neither the Longbow bomber nor its Kilrathi equivalent, the Paktahn, could sustain 400 KPS without hitting afterburners. He checked the Thunderbolt's configuration as well. The T-bolt could carry a torpedo, but couldn't maintain the speed without burners.
He tried to put himself in the enemy pilot's seat. He'd just finished his mission. It'd be time to relax and go home. If he didn't need to use afterburners to make base, then why bother? And if he did, then why use so little? The enemy (a fighter?) was moving only a few KPS faster than it should have been. The contradiction puzzled him.
He flipped through his book again. A Hellcat modified to carry a torpedo? Or perhaps a Draltha? Either would explain the speed, but the configuration would test the frame's limits. He recalled how his experimental Excalibur had handled when he'd carried the Temblor Bomb. The weapon had reduced the nimble fighter to a space-going pig. He rubbed the Hellcat's page between two fingers. A torpedo-carrying Hellcat was possible, but it just didn't feel right.
He almost crowed with glee when he saw the profile of a larger ship appear on his scanner, lurking on the edge of the asteroid field. The capital ship's size suggested that it was either a fast transport or a small warship, possibly a frigate or light Kilrathi destroyer. The enemy craft bored in towards the ship, then vanished as it landed. That confirmed the ship as the enemy's base.
Bingo, he thought exultantly. He backed off his speed, enough to let the enemy mothership open up some distance. He cued his laser link. "Scratch," he said, "hit your burners and scoot back to the Lex. Bring the strike force here."
"How'll I find you again?" Catscratch asked.
Blair thought a moment. "I don't think we're going to wander too far. I'll keep an eye out for you." He paused. "Don't forget to turn your IFF back on, unless you want to tangle with a T-bolt."
"Roger," the rookie replied.
Blair watched Catscratch's fighter heel sharply over, then vanish as he blasted away under full afterburners. He smiled at the youngster's enthusiasm, then looked back at the target. It would be a while before Catscratch brought the strike force back. He could best use the time to do a quick recon and prepare targeting data for Dagger, Strike Six's leader.
His first step was to obtain a computer identification. He switched to targeting mode and selected the ship. He then began a long, slow loop, designed to bring him around behind it. He, like most pilots, believed that a capital ship's scanners were less efficient directly astern. Once behind it, he crept up on the target until he saw its drive plume, winking and flaring like a star in the distance. It accelerated, turning away from the asteroid field, its mission apparently complete.
Blair yawed wide to the right, far enough to get a decent profile view of the ship. The targeting computer flashed a graphic over the ship, then listed a likely class identification in the targeting box. Blair sucked air in through his teeth as it selected Caernaven frigate. The Caernavens were an older, but still serviceable class.
He flipped to the tactical book again, this time to the Caernaven's page. He wasn't surprised to learn that the Confederation had stricken the ships from active service. Many were held in reserve status or had been mothballed. Others had been sold to the Border Worlds, or, stripped of their guns and weapon systems, to private concerns. The Kilrathi had even captured a few as trophy ships. Blair ground his teeth in frustration. The Caernavens were, without a doubt, as common as dirt.
He boosted his speed a bit, to confirm the computer's ident with his own visual inspection. It looked to him like a Caernaven, except for a lozenge-shaped blister along its belly. Blair guessed the blister marked the profile of a landing bay, perhaps one large enough to handle a half-dozen strike craft. The shape of the bay nagged at him, but he couldn't dredge up the recollection.
The frigate killed the notion that the attack had been a botched raid for booty. No warship that small had enough cargo space to make a pirate raid profitable. Blair was willing to bet that whatever hold space the frigate did have was tied up in servicing the fighters. No, the objective had definitely been to kill ships.
He dropped back to extreme visual range of the frigate. He thought he caught a glimmer of motion at the front end of the frigate's launch bay. His target tracker flickered a moment, showing enemy ships for an instant, They vanished. He looked down, puzzled. Was it a sensor artifact? Some special weapon launched by the frigate?
He was drawn from the question by distant signals he guessed were from the incoming attack force. He prepared a tight-beam burst transmission reporting his findings, then squirted it in the strike force's direction.
"Tallyho," he heard in his headset, "one bogey bearing 330."
He quickly moved to turn his IFF on. "Disregard," the voice said, "its friendly." Blair smiled at the man's disappointed tones.
He shook his head in wonder as the strike force fell into position around him. Catscratch had brought the entire group, with enough firepower for a fleet action, much less a single lousy escort ship. He paused, then realized the fault was his. He hadn't actually told the younger pilot not to bring the entire ready group. It was a less-than-auspicious beginning for his tenure as wing commander.
The rookie, oblivious to Blair's ruminations, resumed his customary wing slot.
He heard a crackling in his headphones. "Dagger to Alpha Six, that's it? One frigate?" Blair heard the disbelief in her voice. "This is going to be like hunting bunny rabbits with a fusion cannon." Her voice turned serious. "The target's a Confed class ship. Is it a confirmed?"
"Yes," Blair answered, thinking of the landing the enemy fighter had made.
"All right," Dagger said, "we're still under peacetime rules of engagement. I'll have to get firing authority from the Lex."
"Roger," Blair replied, "I'll give them a chance to surrender while you get clearance." He boosted ahead of the formation before he switched to a high gain radio circuit. He selected a common commercial channel to transmit.
"Unidentified frigate," he said, "this is TCS Lexington Strike Group Six leader, callsign Heart of the Tiger, ordering you to heave to and prepare to be boarded." He disliked using his Kilrathi hero-name but reasoned that if the raiders were Cats, it might carry more weight. No such luck. The frigate's drive plumes brightened. The ship accelerated to flank speed. Well, Blair thought sourly, so much for impressing 'em.
He cued his radio again. "Frigate, this is your final warning. I am authorized by the admiralty courts to destroy you if you do not comply with my instruction to heave to." The last was, to Blair's knowledge, a lie, but the frigate was unlikely to know that.
The ship's only response was to engage with its defensive batteries. Blair cut his speed to open up more range as three streams of red-orange lasers began to flash past.
"Well," Dagger said, "that tears it." Blair nodded in agreement, then looked down at his comm board. It registered an incoming tight-beam burst signal. Dagger was a step ahead of him in decrypting it. "Alpha Six," she said, "I have authority."
"Roger," Blair replied. "The strike is yours."
Her voice cooled as she assumed control. "Dagger to Tazman. Set up for an anvil attack on her port bow. I'll take the starboard. If she turns to evade one of us, she'll give the other a clear shot." She paused. "Let your wingmate take the first shot. As long as we've got overkill, we might as well get some practice in."
"Strike Six to Raid Six," she said, switching to the Thunderbolt leader.
"This is Troubador," the T-Bolt leader replied. "What can we do for you?"
"Skin him," Dagger said.
"No problem," Troubador replied.
Blair watched the four heavy fighters blaze ahead, their afterburners almost blinding him as they leapt to attack. The frigate immediately engaged them, firing its defensive batteries as the T-Bolts closed like a pack of lions after a gazelle. The Longbows split into two sections, each covered by a pair of Hellcats, and began to work their way around to the frigate's bows. Blair kept Catscratch close to him and flew high cover. Life was bad enough without having his strike force get jumped by another force.
Blair watched Raid Six engage the frigate. He saw the multicolored beams arc from the noses of two Thunderbolts as they chewed into the frigate's defensive shields. The first pair peeled off, their capacitors exhausted from the high energy demands of firing all six forward weapons at once. The second pair engaged. Blair watched the shields flare as the combined fire of plasma and photon guns ripped the frigate. Blair watched the first Thunderbolts swinging around to reengage the frigate's defensive batteries. Each of the frigate's three laser turrets fell silent, battered into submission by the heavy fire.
The Thunderbolts continued to harass the ship, even after its weapons were destroyed. They swept in close, making faked passes at her and firing across its bows. The Longbows settled, two on each bow of the frigate, and came to a dead stop.
"Begin target acquisition cycle," Dagger said.
"Roger," her wingman replied.
Blair knew the process would take a half minute or so as the torpedo's tracking system defeated the frigate's electronic defenses, jamming, and phase shields.
He used the time to make a final appeal. "Heart of the Tiger to unidentified frigate. Your weapons are gone, you are defenseless. Heave to and surrender now, or you will be destroyed."
He waited. "I have signal lock-on, phase counter lock-on, warhead armed, bearings set and matched," the Longbow pilot called, forgetting his callsign in the rush of the moment.
"Engage," Dagger said.
The Longbow accelerated towards the frigate, shortening the range before firing the deadly torpedo.
"This is your last warning," Blair said.
He heard a single voice, weak and scratchy, from his earphones. "Go to hell," it said.
The Longbow suddenly swerved away from the frigate, "Torpedo away," the pilot yelled, his voice high-pitched and excited, "running hot and true. Range twenty-six hundred."
The warshot struck home a moment later, detonating its multimegaton fusion warhead in a blue-white flash. The weapon ate into the frigate, causing an even brighter secondary explosion. When the flare cleared, Blair saw nothing of the frigate.
He tried to feel something positive, jubilation at accomplishing the mission, satisfaction at avenging the convoy, anything. Instead, he felt empty. Senseless waste compounding senseless waste. He waited a moment to let the younger pilots chatter, to allow them their moment of exultation.
"Time to go home," he said tiredly.
Blair looked over his notes as Dagger finished her portion of the after-action report. He hadn't met Major Wu Fan before he'd joined the mission, but he'd already discovered her to be a formidable woman. Her grandmotherly features and tiny frame belied the whip-sprung steel within. She was known to the squadron she served in as executive officer as "Mother." Blair thought it likely the nickname had been bestowed with as much fear as affection.
Major Fan concluded her remarks crisply, smacking the pointer in her palm for emphasis. "Longbow one-zero-one-four, commanded by Lieutenant Grigsby, fired a single Mark IV antiship torpedo. It struck the target vessel just aft of the bow strakes, destroying it. There were no survivors." She paused, concluding her remarks. "What are your questions?" She glanced at Captain Eisen, the Lexington's division officers, and the wing's senior pilots. "None?" She turned towards Colonel Blair. "Sir?"
Blair stood and took the pointer. "What follows," he said to the assembled officers, "is my assessment of the attack on the convoy. I do not assert that this is what happened, only that this is what might have happened." He turned towards the wall projector behind him. "Lieutenant Carter, if you please."
Catscratch grinned from his control console. The room darkened to reveal a single dead transport floating in space. "You will note," Blair said pointing the light at the enhanced still image of the hulk, "that whatever hit this ship blew portions of it from the inside out. You can see in this enhancement where portholes have been blown out, and have slagged back against the hull. That suggests some very high temperatures, rather than a garden variety explosion."
He switched to a second still. "The astro-navigation section did a wonderful job editing the gun camera footage, and Lieutenant Commander Garcia's intel people did the technical work." He used the pointer to indicate several holes with outward puckered metal and ejecta. "Their conclusions," Blair said, "are that the transports were hit by some kind of missile that pierced the hulls. The weapon, through some process we don't yet understand, superheated the ships' atmospheres until they ignited. The ships literally burned from the inside out, giving these transports' hulls this distinctive gutted look."
He took a deep breath, aware he was about to leap from fact to supposition. "The actual damage requirement, as compared to a Mark IV ship-killer, is very low. They only need to cook the atmosphere, not disrupt structural integrity. That may allow the weapon itself to be fairly small, certainly smaller than a ten-meter-long Mark IV torpedo."
Carter switched the still to a graphic of the action while Blair took a sip of water. "The ship I followed back from the freighters to the frigate was moving too fast to be a bomber or a torpedo-armed heavy fighter. The weapon that killed these transports might be small enough to fit on a standard missile hardpoint. That would permit medium, perhaps even light fighters, to have a ship-killing capability. That fits with the speed characteristics I witnessed."
He waited for the murmurs of disbelief to subside before he continued. "There were rumors that the Kilrathi were working on such a project for their Strakha-class stealth fighters before the war ended. This might be an outgrowth of that effort."
Eisen spoke up. "Colonel, do you believe the Kilrathi are responsible for this outrage?"
Blair shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know, sir, but it doesn't seem quite their style." He turned back to the still of the freighter, hanging dead in space. "The Cats generally ignored transports as being beneath their notice, beneath contempt. When they did hit our convoys, they usually went after the escorts. Once they'd killed those, they would usually at least make an attempt to capture or board ships. Hobbes told me it was an expression of their predatory past, the glory of taking prey back to the lair."
Blair felt a jolt of pain at the mention of his friend and ally. It still hurt to think that Hobbes had been a mere persona, a false personality overlaid on a Kilrathi agent to infiltrate the human ranks.
Eisen smiled thinly, drawing Blair back from his memories. Blair realized the Lexington's captain was softballing him questions, making the briefing easier on him.
"How about pirates, then?" Eisen asked.
Blair looked at his notes. "Again, sir, the lack of any apparent attempt to board and loot seems to argue against freebooters or privateers. They plunder for resources. Destroying ships gains them nothing." He paused. "The wantonness of the destruction suggests an act of terror, or war, rather than piracy." Blair stepped away from the podium, leaving his last words hanging in the air.
Eisen stood up. "Thank you, Colonel," he said. "We'll be beginning the briefings for tomorrow's move to the Tyr system in about twenty minutes. Why doesn't everyone get a cup of coffee while we get the podium ready?"
He gestured for Blair to join him. They walked together to the coffee urn staged in the corner of the room. "You don't do things by halves, do you?" Eisen asked, chuckling. He didn't wait for Blair to answer. "The Tyr system is right on the edge of the Border Worlds. Tolwyn's made no secret that he thinks they're the culprits." He gave Blair a long look. "So let's just hope your war supposition is wrong. Otherwise, we'll be right in the thick of it, and in a nice, provocative fleet carrier."