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tumblingoff to starboard. His own readouts were showing pockets of searing heat and a blaze of intense X-ray radiation from the wreckage—theproduct of those rogue singularities chewing through mass deep inside.

No, there would have been be no survivors.

 

VFA-198 Hellfuries

Penrose TRGA

79 light years from Earth

1239 hours, FST

Lieutenant Julianne Adams hurtled along America’s spine, the massive bulk of the carrier’s quantum tap generators blurring past her as she dumped the Starblade’s velocity.She’d seen the blast that had destroyed the Seare just astern of the star carrier, and she wondered if anybody had survived.

Her wingman, Lieutenant Robert Spahn, was off her portside. “Where the hell are we going, Julia?” he called, sounding impatient. “The squadron’s forming up eighty klicks from here!”

“Just need a second, Spanner,” she called back. “I want to see if anyone survived on the Seare.”

“Survived that? Don’t be ridiculous!”

But he stuck with her as their Starblades passed a hundred meters above America’s massive aft drive projectors and decelerated hard at the fringes of a fuzzy, expanding cloud of debris.

Another brilliant flash, this one larger and brighter than the others. Something—an enemy fighter, or possibly a battlespacedrone—had just slammed into the spreading spiral of debris laid down by Acadia. More explosions followed, and local space was suddenly filled with hurtling debris.

Fighters emerged from the debris cloud, and Adams’s computer identified them as the new Yastreb fighters—the name was Russian for “Hawks.” At least six of them had been destroyed by impacting the cloud, but the spiralof rawmat was only about a kilometer across by now, too small of a wall to catch every one of the incoming Hawks. Adams estimatedat least two squadrons—say, twenty-four fighters—in this first wave. A quarter had been knocked down by the squadron’s improviseddefenses, but the rest were flashing silently in past America and her consorts.

Standard star carrier tactics called for dropping out of Alcubierre Drive at a distance, then sending fighters in toward thetarget at high velocity, usually right behind an initial bombardment of missiles or KK projectiles at near-c. They would do as much damage as was possible with beams and missiles, softening up the target for the capital ships trailingbehind.

The Seare’s wreckage would have to wait. “Let’s take them!” she called to Spahn, and the two fighters spun to port and accelerated. The enemy fighters were moving much too fast for a human brain to track, but the fighters’ AIs predicted firing solutions and, with Adams’s approval, launched a spread of VG-92 Krait missiles. Nuclear fire blossomed, silent and stark against the night, casting weirdly moving shadows through the cloud of dust and ice particles surrounding the Seare’s shattered hull.

Adams decelerated sharply; some of those chunks of radiating debris were the size of houses, and everything in the sky wasmoving.

Missiles were inbound, tracking her. Shit!

Maneuvering sharply, she ducked behind one large piece of debris just as two nuclear-tipped missiles swung to intercept her . . .

. . . and slammed into the wreckage, a white supernova of blinding intensity filling all of space.

Adams’s Starblade died as she lost consciousness.

Chapter Six

12 April, 2429

USNA CVS America

Flag Bridge

Penrose TRGA

1252 hours, FST

Gray watched the blossoming white flowers of nuclear fury strobing against the darkness. America’s fighters were engaging the enemy fighters ship to ship in a savage knife fight. At least five more enemy fighters diedwithin a few seconds, but two of his Starblades were scratched as well.

The fighters America had launched moments before possessed very little in the way of maneuverability. In hard vacuum, fighters were unable topull off the fancy zooms and curves of winged vehicles in atmosphere, and maneuvers were limited to slight adjustments fromside to side or up and down. Even so, the dogfight might well scatter them all over the sky, leaving America and her two surviving escorts to deal with the approaching squadron of Russian capital ships.

Captain Rand barked an order, and America’s main batteries opened up—powerful high-energy lasers, or HELs, and the searing, gigajoule lightning of particle-beam projectors, the PBPs, or “pee-beeps.” Enemy fighters died in that computer-directed crossfire.

But not enough.

“Captain Rand,” Gray said. “I suggest you bring our fighters back aboard.”

“Already gave the order, sir. It’s getting too hot out there for the little guys.”

“We’re also going to need to accelerate,” Gray told him. “And soon.”

“Through the TRGA?”

Gray felt Rand’s shock. “We have no choice, Captain.”

It had taken Gray several minutes to arrive at that decision. Those capital ships—six destroyers and a very large carrier—wouldbe arriving all too soon, coming in close behind the fighter wave. The question was what to do about them. The lack of information—thefailure of the drones to return—worried him, but if they stayed here, the Russian heavies would pound America, Birmingham, Arlington, and Acadia into drifting wrecks soon after they arrived.

“Why the hell are the Russians attacking us, anyway?” Rand demanded. “What’d we ever do to them?”

“I suspect that they’re being used by somebody else,” Gray replied. “Someone who doesn’t want us going through that gate.”

Astern, Acadia had returned from her quick out-and-back to lay down her rawmat minefield. To starboard, Russian fighters continued to flashpast. America’s heavy weapons did their best to claw the swift-moving intruders from the sky.

“Combat Officer! How long before the enemy heavies get to us?”

Commander Billingsly was the squadron combat officer. “Uncertain, sir. We’re having trouble seeing through the debris clouds astern. Best guess? Another fifteen minutes.” With lower rates of acceleration, the Russian capital ships would not have been able to get anywhere near the speed of light in the past ten minutes.

“Very well. Captain Rand—we need to move now! Have your people ready for maneuvering as soon as I give the word.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Minutes passed, dragging. The Russian fighters had all vanished into the distance ahead, well beyond the loom of the PenroseTRGA. America’s fighters were coming back on board, their numbers depleted.

Gray wished there was some way to find out what was happening beyond the TRGA that didn’t risk losing the entire squadron,but there was no way he was aware of to avoid it. Take an