message to deliver to the Emperor, and the clock is ticking.'
Kilrah was a dirty orange-brown sphere that filled his field of vision, swelling visibly as the Terran fighters pressed forward at full thrust. Blair ran his eyes over his instrument board, checking over all systems one more time and praying nothing would go wrong now that the final attack was so near.
His hull temperature gauges were just beginning to register the friction of the tenuous upper atmosphere. Soon he would have to switch to shields or drastically cut his rate of descent. Blair waited until the cockpit was noticeably hot, until the outer hull was beginning to glow faintly, before he finally cut the cloak and activated the shield generators.
Screaming through the thickening atmosphere under the dull light of Kilrah's red-orange sun, three Terran fighters plummeted downward toward a final rendezvous with death.
CHAPTER XXX
'Lord Prince, the ground-based defenses have picked up three intruders. Terran fighters matching the description of those engaged yesterday.'
Thrakhath rose from his throne and stepped down from the dais. 'The ground defenses?' he demanded. 'Is every one of my ship captains blind, then?'
'No, Lord Prince,' Melek said, voice quavering a little. 'But the Terrans . . . are entering the atmosphere. They came out of cloak almost directly below our present orbit, descending at high speed.'
'Scramble all available interceptors, Melek,' Thrakhath commanded, starting toward the door. 'Including my own squadron. We will show them they cannot defile the Homeworld with impunity!'
'Eighty kilometers up . . . two hundred ten kilometers to target,' Blair said over the comm channel. There was no need for comm silence now. The Kilrathi had surely detected the Terran fighters. 'Maniac, you take point. Open me a path. And you watch my tail, Flint. They're going to throw everything they can our way.'
'Affirmative,' Flint replied.
'You got it,' Marshall chimed in a moment later. His fighter swept past Blair's to take the lead.
He was hardly in position before the first targets appeared ahead. 'We got bogies,' Blair said. 'They look like atmospheric craft — ground-based interceptors.
'Piece of cake,' Maniac told him. The Excalibur's afterburners cut in, and Marshall surged ahead, his blasters beginning to fire as he closed in on the enemy aircraft.
Conventional atmospheric fighters weren't as well-equipped as space fighters, but they were fast and maneuverable in their own element. Marshall's guns cut a swath through the leading fighters, but the others rolled out and then swung inward from either flank, unleashing a massive bombardment. Caught in a crossfire from four aircraft at once, Maniac rolled left to concentrate on one threat. Blair banked sharply right and opened fire on the remaining pair. His blasters raked across the nearer target, which came apart under the savage force of the beams.
The second fighter looped up, turning away from the battle and accelerating fast. Evidently the pilot had decided against a glorious death today . . .
'There's more of the bastards up ahead, Colonel,' Marshall reported as he finished off his last opponent and swung back into formation. 'Looks like we're not welcome around here.'
'As long as they're just conventional aircraft, they shouldn't be much trouble,' Blair said. 'Stay focused, though. You can bet they'll bring in the big guns soon enough . . .'
'Targets! Targets! Targets!' Flint chanted. 'I've got six . . . eight targets on my board. Coming in from orbit!'
They weren't showing on Blair's sensors yet, so they were still at extreme range. 'Watch em, Flint,' he ordered. A whole squadron of space-based fighters would be a lot harder to handle than the aircraft ahead, but they'd be hard-pressed to close the range as long as the Terrans could keep moving.
The second wave of interceptors closed in from below, eight high-performance jet aircraft in a tight formation. They broke just as Maniac opened fire, scattering, curving in on the Terrans and engaging with missiles and beam weapons. Once again Maniac and Blair had to engage them, and by the time the attackers had been destroyed or forced to flee Blair realized what the enemy strategy was. Each time the Terrans got caught in a dogfight, however short, the orbital fighters closed the range a little more . . .
A near miss by a missile buffeted her fighter, and Lieutenant Robin Peters had to fight her steering yoke to maintain control. It had been years since she'd last had to fight a battle in a planetary atmosphere, where all the rules were different from those she was used to in deep space fighting. Shock waves carried. . . and shields were weakened by the energy they absorbed from friction in high-speed maneuvers.
'They're firing,' Flint reported. 'One Vaktoth . . . and a Bloodfang, both of them in combat range. More Vaktoth coming up fast behind them.'
'Bloodfang . . . Thrakhath s personal fighter.' Blair's voice was grim. 'Damn it all!'
She nodded Intelligence reports on the Prince's personal fighter, code-named Bloodfang by the Confederation, suggested it would be one hell of a tough opponent. 'Don't know if I can take the bastard, skipper,' she said. 'You have any bright ideas?'
'Go to afterburners,' Blair ordered. 'Let's see if we can outrun them.'
She kicked in the extra power, but the Vaktoth matched her. . . continued closing the range. Another missile detonated, even closer this time. 'No joy, skipper,' she said. 'Looks like there's going to be a fight . . .'
Kilrathi blaster fire probed at her rear shields, sapping the power levels with each hit. Cursing, she pulled up in a sharp loop and opened fire on one of her two pursuers with blasters and a spread of four missiles. The two fighters were having as much trouble fighting in atmosphere as she was, and the weakened forward shields of her target went down under the fury of her attack. The Vaktoth exploded in a shower of debris, and Flint let out a whoop of triumph.
