Wing Commander #07 False Color William Forstchen (top 10 books to read .txt) 📖

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." Boss Marchand responded in person. "Twenty minutes, sir," she said.

"Roger that." Suddenly Jason Bondarevsky felt very tired. The Black Cats had won their first victory, but it didn't seem much like a triumph.

CHAPTER 14

"Honor the heroic dead, for their deeds are worthy of remembrance."

from the First Codex10:14:64

Operations Planning Center, FRLS Karga Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System 1821 hours (CST), 2671.011

Admiral Geoff Tolwyn glowered from his position at the foot of the oval holo-tank, the good mood of just a few hours earlier shattered by the attack on the carrier. Someone had attacked his ship, and he wanted nothing more than a chance to strike back. But it was unlikely he'd have that chance any time soon.

"Shields are still holding well enough," Commander Graham was saying. "If the bastards had made a couple of runs against us, they might've strained the generators past their limits, but we were lucky. All we took was collateral damage. But with Sindri gone we're going to want to rethink the repair schedule. Either we get the drives working so we can put this boat into a higher orbit, or we try a tow from Xenophon."

"Towing something this size is a risky proposition," Admiral Richards said slowly. "I think I'd rather do it under our own power. Can you get the drives on-line?"

"On a crash-priority program, I'll have us able to change orbit inside a week," Graham said. "But it means pulling everybody off all the non-essential repair work. We have to virtually rebuild the maneuvering drives from the deck up, which means a lot of work for the Carnegie." He gave a thin smile. "So I'm afraid the repairs to the hot water heaters on Deck Eight are going to have to wait a while."

'We'll live with it," Richards said. "Geoff, what do you think?"

Tolwyn was still frowning. "It all depends on whether we've driven them off for good, or if they're just off regrouping to hit us again. As Graham says, we can't handle a full-scale attack, and without Sindri . . ."

"Yeah," Richards nodded. "Yeah, without Sindri, we fry if the shields go down for more than an hour or so. Just like the original crew."

"Their intentions must depend on their resources," Bondarevsky said from his usual place in one of the upper tiers of seats. He looked tired and grim.