in close together with a separation of only a few hundred kilometers, their battle AIs linked as they concentrated their fire, one using KK slugs, the other particle-beam bursts to maximize their combined effect. Sandoval was firing his Kraits…serious overkill for a Toad, but the results were dramatic enough as white nuclear blossoms swelled and faded against black space, silent and devastating.
“Sandoval!” Allyn called. “Save the Kraits for the big boys! You’ll need ’em later!”
“Is there gonna be a later?” he shot back, but he switched to his KK Gatling.
The sudden appearance of the five new Starhawks appeared to have thrown the Toad formation off balance. Intertwined with the Black Lightnings, they’d been focusing their attention, it had seemed, on closing with the remnant of the carrier battlegroup. Now, however, they were faltering, breaking sharply, accelerating in different directions, trying to put distance between themselves and their tormentors.
Turusch fighters were designed to put down heavy fire on capital ships, and they tended to work best at distances of from five to fifty thousand kilometers from their targets-medium range in space combat. They were not as maneuverable as Starhawks, and weren’t good dogfighters.
Starhawks, on the other hand, were designed for close-in knife fights, getting in to within a thousand kilometers or less of the target, outmaneuvering it, and taking it down with concentrated KK and PBP fire. If they could get close enough to a Toad, they enjoyed a considerable advantage ship-to-ship…but at medium range the Toads’ advantage in heavy weaponry could be devastating.
Sandoval twisted in toward a Toad already exchanging fire with one of the Black Lightnings. The Lightning was pacing the Turusch fighter, working to drop squarely onto its tail at a range of less than a hundred kilometers.
At the last moment, the Toad spun end-for-end, hammering at the Black Lightning, which rolled to port, using its drive singularity to jink randomly back and forth, making itself a difficult target. Sandoval was farther out, almost three thousand kilometers, and at that range the Turusch particle beams had bloomed, becoming far wider, far more likely to hit, than when they were fired close-in.
The beam caught his Starhawk aft, slashing through shields, vaporizing critical portions of the gravfighter’s projection bootstrappers.
Fighters under drive fell toward an artificial gravitational singularity projected in the desired direction of acceleration;
The remaining four members of the Dragonfires continued the attack.
To the uninitiated, the squadron ready room looked like a place for Dragonfire personnel on board the carrier to relax between missions, a lounge with comfortable recliners, indirect lighting, and soft-padded decks. In fact, it was the nerve center for the pilots of VFA-44, the place where they were briefed before each mission, where they debriefed with the carrier’s combat intelligence officer afterward, and where they waited out the hours of a ready alert, waiting for the order to strap on their fighters.
The overhead, vaulted like a planetarium dome, could be set to project maps or combat plots. At the moment, it was set to display an exterior view of space as relayed back by hundreds of drone surveillance modules scattered through battlespace. Lieutenant Gray was alone in the compartment, stretched out on a recliner and watching the battle unfold.
It was a strange and unsettling feeling to be here, knowing that the rest of his squadron-what was left of it- was
Gray had not yet been signed off for flight-ready status. He felt…alone. Alone and helpless. He saw Sandoval’s gravfighter hit, saw its spectacular end.
The Toad Sandoval had been stalking exploded as the Black Lightning pilot savaged it from point-blank range with KK fire.
The sky projected across the ready room dome was sliding smoothly now from one side to the other as the
He wondered if the fighters still rough-and-tumbling it with the Toads out there would be able to trap.
The Draghonfires’ chatter was coming through over the ready room’s link from CIC, faint voices, adrenaline- shrill with excitement and fear.
Another Toad exploded in white silence. But Dragon Two had been hit, his telemetry showing serious damage to his ship.
Gray’s fists clenched at his sides.
Back on Earth, back in the Manhattan Ruins, you survived by watching out for the others in your extended clan, watching their backs. It was a psychology that translated easily to the military culture, and particularly to the men and women of your own gravfighter squadron. With few exceptions, he hated the others in VFA-44. Sandoval was a stuck-up prig. Spaas, especially, and his partner Collins, were always there riding him about his being a prim, telling him he wasn’t good enough to be a part of their elite.
But they were still a part of his new clan.
And they were dying out there, all of them, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
Chapter Thirteen
26 September 2404
“Captain Buchanan?” Koenig said. “Bring those fighters aboard!”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Under savage, close assault by the Confederation Starhawks, supported by the deadly and accurate batteries on the
The Choctaw shuttle and its Nightshade escorts were rendezvousing with the
