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| <b>HALLIN SYSTEM INSIDE THE</b>
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| <b>KILRATHI EMPIRE</b>
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| <b>CONFEDERATION DATE 2634.121</b>
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| "A second ship's just come through the jump point!"
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| Hans Kruger, copilot of the smuggler ship <i>Phantom</i>, felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Looking nervously over at the plot board, to where the pilot and owner of the ship, Kevin Milady, was pointing, he saw the second red blip wink to life. Seconds later a third blip appeared.
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| "Get me a readout on it!" Milady snapped.
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| Hans punched in a data inquiry and on a side screen the silhouette of a Kilrathi <i>Targu</i> class frigate appeared.
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| "All right, people, there's some big boys waiting up ahead," Milady cried.
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| "Got 'em on my board," came the reply from overhead.
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| Hans looked up at their topside gunner and navigator, Igor. Igor, grinning, took a small cup and spit a stream of tobacco juice into it; several of the drops splattered down to land in Hans' lap.
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| Again he felt the rage boiling over at the humiliations Igor had been heaping on him ever since he had signed on board ship back on Gainer's World. He knew it was part of the hazing a new scrub had to endure until he had proven himself. The problem was that, on a ship like the <i>Phantom,</i> the hazing had a deadly edge to it. In a one on one against Igor, chances were he'd lose and the result would not just be a sound thrashing. Igor wouldn't be satisfied unless the thrashing included a clipped ear, a jagged scar across the face, a missing eye, or perhaps even a cut throat. Hans knew that playing around with a smuggler crew from the Landreich had its tougher side, but then again, there were no other alternatives.
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| Back in Confed territory he was wanted for murder. Granted, it was self-defense, but no court would ever bother to see that side of it, if he was even fortunate enough to make it to court. A lot had happened to him in his twenty-one years, none of it all that good. To escape a drunken father and life in a dreary icebound mining settlement on a godforsaken world, he had dreamed of the Academy as a way out. But at seventeen the acceptance had not come. Rather than endure another day he signed on to the next merchant ship leaving port, and for four years worked his way up through the ranks of the Sarn shipping firm, earning his copilot's license at twenty.
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| Things had been looking bright. Old man Haffa Sarn had even started to consider him to be one of his extended family, that is, until he killed one of Haffa's sons in a fight over a girl. Some might have said Hans had a streak of the chivalrous in him for protecting a bar girl from a lout like Venela Sarn, but old man Sarn would never see it that way. The finer distinction of Venela pulling a blaster first to blow the girl away for her impertinent refusal would most certainly be forgotten by Haffa, who, for form's sake, had promised that Hans would be "sleeping with the asteroids."
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| So, for reasons of health, he had hopped the first ship pulling out of Gainer's World and <i>Phantom</i> was in need of a copilot. They hadn't told him where they were going, and it took some time to get used to the smell. The cleanup job for the remains of the last copilot had failed to locate the random bits of tissue, brains and blood scattered around the interior of the ship, splattered there after the unfortunate soul took a direct hit from a mass driver round which penetrated the shields and forward viewport.
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| "Say, Marilyn, what's going on with those bastards behind us?" Kevin shouted, breaking Hans out of his contemplation of just how wretched he felt at the moment.
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| Hans looked back over his shoulder and down the access passage to where Marilyn Langer, the ship's chief engineer and tail gunner squatted, hunched over her twin mass drivers. He could not help but admire the view, though if Marilyn knew he was checking her out, his fate might very well be the same as that of the last copilot.
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| "Four of the bastards and still closing up. Damn, they must have upgraded the engines on those Cat fighters."
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| Hans continued to stare at the forward plot board.
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| "The two frigates are accelerating." Hans announced. "Time to closing one minute and thirty-seven seconds."
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| He looked over at Kevin, who turned to gaze at him with his one good eye. Kevin grinned sardonically.
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| "Think we're dead?"
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| "It doesn't look good," Hans choked out.
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| "When you run the frontier of the Cats, ya gotta pay," Milady announced with a smile. "Now hang on!"
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| Before Hans could even reply Milady slammed his stick forward while cutting off the hydrogen scoop fields which served the dual role of pulling in the stray hydrogen atoms to be found in deep space for fuel and at the same time providing the drag which enabled a ship to turn and maneuver as if it was inside a planet's atmosphere. With the scoops shut down the ship didn't go into a dive but simply tumbled over on its x-axis so that in an instant it was facing "backwards" to its trajectory towards the jump point. Milady slapped in full throttle, popped the scoops back open and Hans wanted to scream a protest, they were bleeding off their speed and rapidly slowing down so that they'd be a sitting duck for the fighters closing in from one direction and the frigates sealing off their escape in the other.
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| The inertia-dampening system was barely adequate on the battered ship and Hans grunted, gasping for breath as he was slammed into his seat, the ship creaking and groaning in protest from the ten g stress load. Igor opened up with the topside guns, his photon blasts lighting up space. Hans had no idea what Igor was firing at, no target was visible as stitches of fire slashed back and forth in the darkness, dazzling his vision. Four points of light now erupted in front of him, bolts of light snapping back.
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| Hans wanted to duck as one of the streaks of light appeared to slash past the cockpit and laced into the starboard wing, a shower of sparks erupting as <i>Phantom's</i> shielding dissipated the energy.
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| "Lock on with the lasers!" Kevin shouted, and Hans nervously leaned forward to peer at the heads up display. Four blips danced across the glass in front of him. Igor was pouring fire in on the one stitching their starboard wing, but Hans still couldn't see anything, just the flashing red lights and a target circle that weaved back and forth, waiting for his command to lock and fire.
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| Suddenly, as if materializing out of nothingness, the four fighters popped into view. One second they were nothing but a blinking light on the heads up, and an instant later they seemed to fill space in front of him and then peeled off, two turning to starboard, the other two screaming by so close that the shielding of one of them brushed against the ship, so that it bucked and rocked. He could hear Marilyn's high-pitched yell erupt from the tail gunner's position as she opened up, her cries drowned out by Kevin's wild curses.
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| "Kruger, you damn idiot! You could've dropped one, damn it! Now shoot!"
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| But nothing was in front of them. Looking down at the plot board he saw that the frigates were still closing and were now less than two thousand clicks astern. Kevin kept his hands on the throttles, pressing them up to the firewall, their momentum towards the jump point all but gone as <i>Phantom</i> shuddered to a stop relative to the point and then slowly started to crawl away.
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| "They'll be on us in ten seconds!" Hans shouted, wondering just what the hell the pilot was doing.
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| "Got one!"
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| Hans looked up to see Igor roaring with delight, tobacco Juice dribbling down his chin to splash Hans with a fine, pungent spray. Hans saw a flash off the port side and, leaning over, he witnessed an erupting cloud of debris.
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| "Hang on!" Kevin roared and a split second later he once more flipped the ship over on its x-axis so that it was again lined up on the jump point. He dodged the ship straight down and away from their original trajectory. The two frigates swept past to either side, both ships spraying the area with lasers, mass driver rounds, and plasma energy bolts, almost all the shots intersecting where <i>Phantom</i> would have been if they had continued on their previous course.
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| Several of the shots still found their mark, however, and Hans felt the ship heave under the hammer blows. In an instant shielding dropped down almost to zero from the heavy impacts. Several mass driver bolts slammed clean through the starboard wing in a shower of sparks. Hans realized that if they had been a couple of more meters inboard, the rounds would have driven right through the top of the ship, puncturing the cabin and thus triggering a rapid decompression. It most likely would not have mattered to him though, he thought, since the rounds would have nailed right through his seat, thus providing him with the same death as the last copilot. He looked to his right, to where his helmet and gloves were resting. Reaching over, he grabbed the helmet and put it on, ignoring Kevin's disdainful snort.
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| "Damn, kid, we get punctured, better to go quick, rather than float around and wait for the Cats to play games with you," Kevin snarled.
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| Hans had heard enough tales about what the Cats did to smugglers who dared to cross the line that he was tempted to take the helmet back off.
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| "One coming up front!" Marilyn shouted, her warning followed by a staccato burst from her guns. "Winged him, get the bastard!" A Kilrathi Vak fighter shot past them, tumbling end over end. Hans leaned forward to line up on the heads-up display, his helmet banging against the forward viewport so that he lost acquisition for a second. He saw the lock on and hit the forward lasers. Intersecting blasts of light arced out, slashing into the crippled fighter, which detonated.
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| Hans let out a triumphal whoop—it was so damned easy!
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| Another shudder snapped through the ship, a shower of sparks erupting from the control panel to his right. A fighter swept past them, Igor cursing wildly as he tried to track the target.
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| "Those frigates are coming about!" Marilyn shouted.
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| Hans looked back at the plot board. Damn, how did they do that? Turning a ship that big using your scoop field usually took a couple of minutes, but they were already halfway through the turn and boring in. He looked over at Kevin, and for the first time saw that the boss was decidedly nervous, if not outright scared.
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| "They must have pulled some new upgrade," Kevin mumbled. "Don't worry, we'll hit jump before they close, then we'll lose the bastards."
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| Hans looked back at the board.
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| "At current rate of closing they'll be alongside us in forty seconds."
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| "Just shut up," Kevin snarled and then looked back over his shoulder.
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| "All right, Marilyn, dump the surprise!"
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| "They're away!" came the almost simultaneous reply.
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| Hans looked back over at Kevin, wondering what the hell they were doing.
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| "We just dropped a nuke mine," Kevin said quietly. "Damn, that thing cost almost as much us our entire haul."
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| "A mine! Damn it, a civilian ship carrying one is a capital offense. Why the hell didn't you tell me?" Hans cried.
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| "Why, you wanna quit? If so, then just get the hell off now!"
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| Hans, wide-eyed, shook his head.
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| "It'll save your ass, boy. Now shut up and get a lock on that light frigate."
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| The jump point was closing in, its telltale distortion waves rippling across the plot board, but smack in the middle was the Kilrathi light frigate which must have just come through. The two fighters swept in again from either side, a stitch of mass driver rounds slashing across the top of their ship, another one puncturing the starboard wing. A flash suddenly erupted on the plot screen, and at the same instant a hellish white-blue light bathed the cockpit.
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| "Got one!" Marilyn screamed. "He's shearing off. The other one's turning aside, the idiot fell for the dummy mine!"
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| Hans watched the plot screen and punched in a visual magnification. The eruption of the mine was dissipating, and the Kilrathi frigate which had been their target was tumbling out of control, its entire forward section a twisted, molten wreck. Unless the Cats had good internal bulkhead design and shielding, the bastards in the stern half were most likely cooked as well. The second ship had veered wildly off course, falling for the trick of the second mine, which was nothing more than an empty casing with a trace of radioactive material inside.
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| Three flashing red blips emerged from the second frigate and started to bore in.
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| "They've launched seekers," Hans announced, trying to contain the terror in his voice as a low-pitched tone started to squeal in his headset, the combat information board flashing with a profile of the weapon.
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| "Must've really pissed them off if they're blowing two hundred and fifty thousand credits a pop to kill us," Milady replied, almost as if pleased that the Cats were expending one of the most expensive launch weapons in a ship's arsenal.
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| "Marilyn, three seekers, can you nail them?"
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| "On it!"
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| "Damn, they really want us," Kevin said, his voice suddenly filled with weariness. "Those damn things cost a bundle. Kruger, blow chaff, two-second intervals!"
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| Hans looked at the weapons board, fumbling till he found the chaff launch button, and punched it five times. All the time Kevin kept weaving the ship toward the jump point. Hans watched as Kevin activated the jump engine, which drained their power still further. Once inside the nexus, the engine would interlock with the displacement of the jump point and they'd be catapulted across a dozen light-years, hopefully to emerge on the other side of the frontier, though if the angle of acquisition wasn't quite right, or the engine wasn't fully engaged, there was no telling where they might wind up.
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| "It's either shields or engines," Hans announced. "We won't make it running both."
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| Without comment, Kevin reached over and slapped the toggle shutting the shields down. Now there was only bare metal between them and whatever the Kilrathi could throw in their direction.
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| "First two seekers plowing straight through the chaff!" Marilyn announced, her voice drowned out by the reverberation of the tail guns as they kicked in, sending out a spray of mass driver rounds in the desperate hope that one of the bolts might impact on a seeker and detonate it.
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| Topside, Igor was still at work, trading shots with the fighters as they swept back in, while up ahead the light frigate, still holding position by the jump point, began to fire as well. Space seemed to be an insane intersection of flashing lights, all of them crisscrossing around <i>Phantom.</i>
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| <i>I'm a dead man,</i> Hans realized, and to his utter amazement, rather than renew the fear, he suddenly felt a strange, distant detachment from all that was happening. The sensation was remarkable, as if time was distorting, each second dragging out to an eternity. For an instant he wondered if he was already dead, so calming was the sensation.
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| He looked over at Kevin and saw the pilot, staring wide-eyed as they approached the light frigate, which was barely visible beyond the explosion of light emanating from its forward batteries. The man's scared to death, Hans realized, and the recognition of the fact was fascinating. He had been in tight binds before, while working for the Sarn consortium, and funny, again when he killed Sarn's eldest son, and that same feeling had been there. Draw your weapon, step to one side to dodge the first blast, then calmly nail him between the eyes, turning everything from the neck up into a spray of pulp.
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| There was an intense awareness of all that was going on around him: Kevin, white-knuckled, driving relentlessly for the jump point; Igor cursing wildly, swinging his turret back and forth in a desperate bid to fend off the fighters; Marilyn cursing as well as she fired wildly at the incoming seekers. He looked down at the plot board, all the data now standing out so remarkably clearly. The seekers were still accelerating and would close a good ten seconds before they hit the jump. The light frigate was sending out a curtain of fire, but somehow he could sense that whoever was in charge of gunnery on board was doing one hell of a rotten job. The concentrated fire was causing the two fighters to hold back when all it would take was one more close sweep, and the first mass driver bolt to hit the pressurized cabin would cause a clean breech.
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| A shot from the frigate sheared through the portside wing, tearing off a couple of meters. Kevin dodged the next volley and then lined back up on the jump point. Without even asking for permission Hans leaned over and slammed the hydrogen scoops off. Though it immediately cut drag, it would be impossible to maneuver now.
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| "What the hell?" Kevin roared.
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| "Their shooting sucks and it'll give us a few more clicks of speed," Hans replied calmly.
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| He looked back down at the plot board. The first seeker was leaping forward, and then simply disappeared as Marilyn's shooting detonated the missile.
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| <i>That bought us a few seconds,</i> Hans thought, but the second and third rounds were still boring in. The second round skidded to maneuver around the expanding cloud of debris from the first seeker. To his amazement the third seeker appeared to go straight into the shower of debris, and it detonated as well. <i>Interesting,</i> he thought, </i>the cats should have programmed their missile to avoid such a stupid mistake.</i>
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| "Ten seconds to jump point," Hans announced, eyes still focused on the board.
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| The detachment and distortion of time that he was experiencing seemed to stretch out even further. He found it curious that, in a perverse sort of way, he was actually enjoying himself, a complete reversal from the terror that had all but overwhelmed him when the action first started. It was something worth remembering, he thought. Once into it, there's almost a cold joy to it all. Strange that dancing at death's door appeared to be the only thing that could elicit such a feeling.
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| He spared a quick glance up. The Kilrathi light frigate was turning to fire broadside, but he knew it was far too late. They shot past the frigate. They were inside the edge of the jump field, the jump engine telemetry showing that it was engaging with the distortion of the field.
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| Yet, even with his sense of total awareness, what now unfolded seemed to be nothing but a blur. The seeker seemed to leap forward and he realized that there must be some form of afterburner on the missile's engine to boost it through any point defense systems. The missile bored in and he heard Marilyn's cry of alarm.
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| He could see Kevin's features shifting to a brief instant of elation with the thought that they'd hit jump. That was washed out by a flash of light astern.
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| There was a final cry from Marilyn, "Got the bas…" and then the blast enveloped her. Though she had nailed the seeker, a remarkable display of shooting given its final acceleration, it had detonated far too close to them, the explosion washing into the back of the ship. If full shields had been up, they might have gotten away with it, but now there was nothing but a thin layer of durasteel, and the fragments of the missile, driven forward by the detonation of its warhead, slammed into the stern of the ship, tearing it open as if it was made of nothing but paper. He started to turn to look…and then wished he hadn't as what was left of Marilyn sprayed up into the cockpit. The air inside the ship whooshed out through the ruptured stern, the back draft sucking the fragments of the woman through the jagged opening.
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| He looked back at Kevin but there wasn't that much to look at there. A jagged hunk of durasteel, still imbedded in the back of his seat, had decapitated him. Igor, up in the top turret, was struggling to kick himself free of the debris, the bottom half of his flight suit was frayed by the wash of fragments, shards of white bone sticking out through the orange jumpsuit, pulses of blood spraying out and freezing in the vacuum.
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| Hans realized that his hands felt cold and, looking down, he saw that he had not put his gloves on. They were still in the rack to his right and, reaching over, he fumbled to put the first glove on. It felt strange. The pressurized cuffs around his wrists had sealed his suit shut. His hands were now in pure vacuum, sensation in them rapidly fading away as the moisture on his skin boiled off. It was becoming difficult to move them and he knew if he didn't act quickly they'd freeze solid.
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| Before he had even clipped the first glove on he struggled with the second, forcing it over his hand. He slapped his hands down on his thighs, snapping the locks closed, and sighed with relief as the pressurized cuffs released, flooding warm air around his fingers.
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| Something bumped into him. He looked over his shoulder and saw Igor, without a helmet, his flight pants from the knees down a tangled fringe of fabric, blood and bone. At the same instant the jump engines kicked in and there was the gut-wrenching sense of falling through jump. He had always hated this part, but for once jump came as a blessed relief. Everything seemed to freeze for an instant, Igor hovering above him, floating up for a brief moment as the jump engines overrode the artificial gravity. Behind him he could see open space where Marilyn's position used to be, the star fields coalescing into a shimmering, deep red glow as the ship instantly leaped through the folded space of the jump field. An instant later they were through to the other side, star fields returning.
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| Igor slammed back down on the deck and then, as if he was the walking dead, came back up, his mouth open in a soundless scream, hands clawing at Hans' helmet, as if trying to pull it off. Hans did not even bother to ward off the blows, there was an almost perverse satisfaction in not even bothering to resist his old tormentor.
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| Igor's eyes changed color as the moisture in them boiled off, the eyeballs then freezing. Igor continued to claw, mouth open, the thin wisp of a cloud of moisture, changing instantly to floating crystals of ice, cascading out of him. The tobacco he had been chewing fell out of his mouth, a frozen mass of dirty brown. His blows weakened, his arms slowly falling to his side, hands curling up into tight balls.
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| The blood in his lungs must be boiling, Hans realized, the bubbles filling his heart chambers. He knew that the stories about people exploding in vacuum were nothing but old wives' tales. Death was far more subtle, with surface moisture, the eyes, and the lining of the lungs giving up their moisture and then freezing. In a way, the victim simply suffocated, long before all the liquid inside their body was sucked out by the vacuum, leaving the corpse a shriveled mummy. Igor clutched at his throat, even as he slowly crumpled to his knees. Hans still watched him, not sure if, in a final malevolent act, he might not draw his blaster to insure company on the other side.
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| And then he did something that startled Hans. Igor seemed to smile and gave Hans a thumbs-up gesture. He wavered for several seconds, then fell to the deck. Hans looked at him in amazement. It was almost as if, at the very end, his foe had indicated that Hans was accepted, that he was part of the club.
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| Hans looked back at the plot board. There was no pursuit and space around where he had emerged was empty. He keyed up the nav screen and sighed with relief to see that they had successfully made their jump back into the demilitarized zone dividing the Kilrathi Empire and the outer reaches of the frontier. He popped the hydrogen scoops open. Fuel was at absolute zero. It'd be a couple of days at the speed <i>Phantom</i> was running at to pull in enough stray hydrogen atoms to fire the engines up. It was the frustrating equation of space flight. There was fuel aplenty in deep space. Have a big enough scoop field and you could not only maneuver but could always pull in more and yet more fuel. The faster you were going the more you got. But when you needed it the most, when you were down to bone dry, you might drift for days, weeks, even months before you had pulled in enough to pulse the engines up to a speed where you could gather in energy quickly. He knew that if the Cats pulled a hot pursuit it'd be over in another minute…but they never came through.
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| He chuckled softly. They must have seen the seeker blow, the blast engulfing the ship, and assumed that it had been a direct hit. Since you only got so many hops out of a jump engine before a very expensive overhaul, the frigate captain must have assumed it was a write-off and not worth the effort of going through to check. Heaven help that Cat, Hans realized, when someone finally checked the high-speed film and saw that <i>Phantom</i> had hit the jump point still intact. Well, more or less intact. He could only hope that they didn't get around to that for awhile.
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| Hans stood up and realized that his knees felt slightly weak. The moment of hyperawareness was drifting away and he wanted to reach out, to embrace it and wrap it into his soul. Never had he felt so alive, so clear in his thoughts, as he had in those final seconds. He knew now that, like a lotus addict, he'd willingly seek the moment out, again and again, no matter what the risk. He knew as well that something inside of himself had changed forever. He had glimpsed it when he killed the Sarn, a calm detachment, but that moment had been so brief, and the fear of what the Sarn family would do to him so strong, that he had never really taken the time to fully embrace and analyze what had happened. A line of challenge had been crossed, and the crossing had been remarkably easy. Hans realized that Kevin, whom he had secretly admired even as he feared him, never had that sense of control. He could see that in the pilot's eyes in those last seconds. He looked back over at the corpse. The blood that had been pulsing out of his severed jugular had stopped, the sticky liquid evaporating in the vacuum.
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| He looked around the ship and weaved his way through the flame-scorched rubble to the stern access hatch. An inflatable collar might be able to seal that off, he thought. He'd have to go outside, look for punctures and fill them with plasti-seal. Fortunately the blow had taken them directly astern. There was no way <i>Phantom</i> could go into an atmosphere, but at least the forward cockpit, with its precious control systems, had escaped damage.
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| He looked back around the cabin. Burial would be easy enough, just drag them to the ruptured stern and out they go. They wouldn't be the first consigned to the eternity of darkness. And besides, he was no longer considering a one fiftieth share of the profit from the illegal shipment of Kilrathi durasteel down in the hull. This was, after all, a salvage job he reasoned, and by the rules of admiralty courts half the salvage was his, the other half divided between the government and the original owners. He chuckled. Hell no, this wasn't a salvage job. The captain and owner was dead—long live the new owner of the <i>Phantom.</i>
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| {{novelindex/pilgrimstars}} | | {{novelindex/pilgrimstars}} |
Dramatis Personae
Text
UNITED
CONFEDERATION
CARRIER TIGER CLAW
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MARCH 16, 2654
0200 HOURS
ZULU TIME
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VEGA SECTOR
ENYO SYSTEM
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Prologue
Vega Sector, Downing Quadrant
Near the Kilrathi Border
2654.079
1100 Hours Imperial Standard Time
Flight Captain Torshk nar Caxki drew in a long breath of nutrient gas, felt his whiskers brush annoyingly against the inside of his helmet, then shifted his head to fix tawny eyes on the void that enveloped his Dralthi fighter. Four plastisteel talons extended from the wings of his craft like burnished spikes threatening to impale any ship or sentient who dared venture into Kilrathi territory. For the moment, though, there were no trespassers, and Torshk predicted that he and the rest of Gold and Black Claw Squadrons would not engage in battle any time soon. Their task force of two Ralari-class destroyers and a Thrakhra-class ConCom ship had been ordered to break off from the Shak’Ar’Roc battle group to perform a routine border patrol. If Torshk had his way, they would be penetrating Confederation space and attacking Confederation ships, not sniveling like lowborns on their side of the fence. But Torshk knew he must obey his orders without question, focus on the strongest threat if one miraculously presented itself, and respond to any challenge. Yes, he understood the Kilrathi social constructs that dictated his behavior, but a blood frenzy simmered within, one that would soon reach a boil.
Reports had come in of Kalralahr Bokoth’s death, and Torshk found it difficult to believe that the emperor had not ordered a retaliatory strike on the Confederation. Bokoth had been one of the empire’s most revered admirals and a member of the imperial house. He had taken the famed superdreadnought KIS Grist ‘Ar’Roc into Vega Sector, had destroyed the Confederation’s Pegasus Naval Station, and had managed to steal the station’s Navcom AI, a computational system that would guide the Kilrathi through the Charybdis Quasar and directly to Earth. According to spy satellite reports, Bokoth’s ship had reached the Sol system but had been brutally ambushed by a Confederation battle group. The hairless apes had taken Bokoth’s life with, it now seemed, impunity. Though Torshk did not belong to Bokoth’s clan, he felt the blow just as painfully. The emperor had already begun uniting the major noble clans of Kilrah, and Tor-shk’s clan, the Caxki, had been one of the first to join the new imperial alliance. Before scrambling for the patrol, Torshk had discussed his frustration with the rest of his squadron. They understood his rage and had tried to quell it by reminding him of the rumors that Bokoth’s ship may have been destroyed by a gravity well and that the admiral’s plan to attack Earth relied upon his trust in a human traitor, a human who belonged to an ancient and strange clan of humans called Pilgrims. Torshk refused to believe that one as highborn as Bokoth could make such an error. He shook his pale head and bared fangs as a hiss rose from his gut. No, Bokoth. You did not dishonor the imperial house. You died a warrior’s death and your soul shall find solace in Sivar’s hand . Swallowing a bitter tang, Torshk toggled on his tactical display as a diversion from his introspection. A schematic of the task force appeared on the screen. The two destroyers glided directly overhead, their cylindrical hulls and stubby prows affirming their battering power. Rotating sensor dishes and an array of imperial satellite link antennae crowned T-shaped superstructures whose viewports appeared as silhouettes since the ships operated in stealth mode. Above the destroyers hung the ConCom ship, a command and communications vessel with a hull design that reminded Torshk of his own Dralthi. Shoots of sharp-edged plastisteel extended amidships, curved forward, and reached well past the bow like Koractu swords. A lone portside wing jutted out and supported two hardpoints for six ship-to-planet missiles that should have been replaced by ship-to-ship missiles, but departure orders had allowed no time for that. The ConCom probed the area of operations with powerful, long-range sensors, searching for electromagnetic emissions and for sudden releases of photons and neutrinospart of any invading ship’s post-jump residuum. Torshk doubted they would pick up anything. “Gold Claw Leader to Dark Eye. Report on contacts.”
The ConCom’s communications officer, Sh’ahte nar Caxki, peeled back his gray lips, and the thick fold of skin on his brow lowered in fury. “Gold Claw Leader, you have disobeyed the order for silence.”
Torshk narrowed his eyes and took several long breaths. “There are no contacts, are there?”
“Break transmission now.”
Extending a serrated nail through a slot in his gauntlet, Torshk flicked a toggle and broke the signal. We cower here like boryangee ! He summoned an image of the frail, hairy creature that often raided the garbage heaps on Kilrah, then glanced sidelong at Covum nar Caxki, a cousin two years his junior who flew the Dralthi at his wing. Covum bowed his head, but Torshk could sense that the younger warrior did not approve of his public display of frustration.
How could so many of Torshk’s clan deny who they were? Descended from predators, from pack hunters, the Kilrathi people were not prone to lying in wait without a plan to attack. Were his clansmen able to suppress their instincts? He doubted that. Did they know something that he did not? He would challenge all who concealed information from him. His growl confirmed that thought.
“Dark Eye to Gold Claw leader,” the comm officer began excitedly, his wide, flat nose and bulbous eyes filling a monitor. “Photon and neutrino emissions detected. Uploading coordinates now.”
Torshk recoiled in a wave of surprise as quickly overcome by his tingling blood frenzy.
A Confederation attack.
It had to be.
Now he would make the hairless apes pay for Bokoth’s death. His laser cannons would light the path of revenge. He studied the coordinates scrolling down his navigation display, and the grooves in his cheeks deepened. A ship had jumped into the quadrant, but it had not followed any known jump path. In fact, the coordinates placed it within striking range of the K ‘n’ Rek system. He looked to his cousin. “Leader to Gold Claw Two. Break off from escort.”
Covum throttled up and swept under the destroyers, toward the anitgraviton flux some twelve hundred grid points ahead. Twin thrusters dimmed into the void as Torshk watched his cousin advance.
Young Covum had twice proven his bravery. He had saved Torshk’s life by destroying a Confederation Rapier fighter that Torshk had been unable to outmaneuver because of thruster damage. And he had accepted a challenge from J’talc of the Kur’u’tak clan. J’talc’s jealousy had flared when Covum had received the Banner of Fa’orc’al, given by the emperor himself to the most courageous pilots. J’talc had felt that he deserved the banner. The killing rage had consumed both warriors, vorshaki dueling blades had flashed, and in minutes J’talc’s blood had warmed the cold flight deck. Covum regretted the incident, but he had behaved honorably.
Torshk now felt apprehensive over sending out his cousin as decoy, despite the honor Covum would garner. The strategy of using a decoy had been born of instinct, born of ancient times when Kilrathi would dispatch one warrior to lure a pack of opposing clansmen. The pack would chase the lone warrior into a designated area, where they would fall prey to an ambush. Torshk stiffened in anticipation of Covum’s rapid and safe return with the enemy in his wake. He considered opening a channel but thought better of it. Patience . There seemed little honor in that act. He squinted through the canopy and remained in that position for several minutes
Until impatience overwhelmed him. He accelerated ahead of the destroyers, along Covum’s vector.
A pinpoint of reflected light birthed in the distance. Even as Torshk noted the speck, a proximity beacon wailed. The tactical display showed Covum’s Dralthi headed toward him. Something huge trailed his cousin, and the targeting system had trouble identifying the contact. Fluctuating geometric patterns glowed and intertwined across the Heads Up Display. The image finally coalesced into the crimson schematic of a vessel shaped like a spearheada Concordia-class supercruiser. Six of its thirty point-defense missile stations had already launched ordnance in Covum’s direction, while two of its tubes had opened to fire torpedoes at the ConCom ship two hundred meters above.
Torshk stared at the oncoming supercruiser, rapt by the view, by the startling fact that it bore no insignia and traveled without escorts. Standard Confederation protocol called for supercruisers to be escorted by at least two destroyers and a cruiser or larger battleship. Transports, ship tenders, and resupply operators frequently accompanied the convoy.
“Gold Claw Leader? The prey comes!” Covum cried.
The tactical report showed the destroyers adjusting tack. They would make a series of intercept approaches, feinting until the last moment when they would increase thrust and spring on their catch.
But Torshk could not ignore the oddity of a supercrusier traveling alone through Kilrathi-held space. Had the ape in command lost his senses? If so, weren’t there other apes aboard who knew better? Or was the rest of its battle group preparing to jump in behind it? A chill coiled up Torshk’s spine as his gaze wandered over the cap ship’s immense hull, past a few of the many torpedo tubes and the colossal antimatter guns mounted on the upper deck. His display reported the battleship’s length at 855 meters, but he swore she was bigger. He stole a final look at her superstructure, rising several dozen meters from the deck like a durasteel volcano, then cocked his head as Covum’s fighter darted by with a pair of missiles chewing through his thruster wash.
Torshk seized his control yoke and yawed to port, heading at full throttle toward his cousin, the supercrusier now rushing in behind him. “I will assist!”
The missiles tightened their gap on Covum’s Dralthi as Torshk plowed through exhaust trails, activated his targeting computer, and centered his reticle over the starboard rocket. Meson fire leapt from his blasters, struck the rocket with accelerated subatomic particles that instantly decayed inside the missile and heaved a terrific internal explosion. Torshk roared through the fireball to glimpse the second missileeven as it tore into Covum’s Dralthi.
“For my hrail For my” Covum released a strangled cry as his fighter blossomed into fire-licked wreckage.
Torshk’s howl rose from the core of his being and rang piercingly through his helmet. Every sense registered the throbbing agony of his cousin’s loss. Panting, he increased velocity and soared above the destroyersjust in time to watch the ConCom ship explode in a coppery mushroom of smoke and fleeting fire. Howling again, Torshk steered toward the five remaining Dralthi in his squadron. “Gold Claw Squadron! Standby to attack!”
Even as the destroyers shifted to port and fired a quartet of torpedoes at the supercruiser, Torshk reached the others and flew as the poisonous tip of a tight wedge formation. They swooped down toward the cap ship’s bow. Torshk toggled off his missile safety and surveyed the targeting report in his HUD. The computer automatically selected the ship’s most lethal points and prioritized the attack while simultaneously receiving data from Black Claw squadron’s targeting computers. Torshk noted that the seven Dralthi fighters of Black Claw planned to concentrate fire on the ship’s stern in an attempt to knock out ion engine control. Since they would take out propulsion, his warriors would focus on weapons. “Claws Three and Four. You will target the forward guns. Claws Five, Six, and Seven will concentrate fire on torpedo stations.”
“She has not launched fighters, Gold Leader!” That from Gold Claw Three, whose voice bore an icy astonishment.
“And where are her escorts?” Gold Claw Four added.
Two of the ship’s antimatter guns pivoted toward them, barrels lifting.
With widening eyes, Torshk gave the final order: “Break and attack!”
Two Dralthi rolled away, dropping sharply in sixty-degree dives toward the guns. The other three cut hard to starboard and would skim along the hull, targeting torpedo stations and dispatching missiles at point-blank range. Human blood would spill. Sivar would smile.
As Torshk eased his control stick forward and the targeting computer locked on to the cap ship’s bridge, a beeping alarm diverted his attention to his tactical display. His gaze barely met the screen when the voice of Flight Leader Norj’ach of Black Claw squadron burst through the channel. “Torshk! Look at our destroyers!”
Squinting at his display, Torshk could not find the glimmering representations of the destroyers. He noted the tiny dots flitting about the supercruiser and the sudden appearance of an odd, circular distortion positioned about eight hundred meters ahead of the cap ship. The thing’s diameter measured nearly five hundred meters, though it fluctuated by several dozen meters along its perimeter. The report showed concentric yellow rings forming horizontal to the supercruiser and funneling down nearly three hundred meters to a solid point. A sidebar displayed something about “gravitic warping in progress.” Torshk jerked back the stick, pulling into a high-G climb. He rolled to port and leveled off, taking in the view with his own eyes.
The two destroyers’ bows had dropped ninety degrees, and both were being dragged into a whirlpool of wavering gloom. Torshk switched to their comm channel and suddenly wished he hadn’t. Once bold warriors now squealed in horror as their battleships slowly broke into meter-sized fragments that hurtled toward the darkness amid tendrils of jettisoned gases and streamers of multicolored liquids. A powerful blow rocked Torshk’s Dralthi and drowned out the comm channel. Thrown forward, he suddenly found himself barreling toward the abyss. He reversed thrust, and the engines whined against an overwhelming force. Reports from his comrades echoed distantly in his headset, voices smearing into each other:
“Gold Leader? Praise it has to Sivar me! Can home now come to see honor by for clan be so the Lord and this die for blood to can for truth Sivar and know what heart is me in for
“
The supercruiser passed swiftly below Torshk’s fighter. He braced his control stick with both paws and watched the ship draw close to the gravity well’s perimeter. We embrace in death! Sivar grants justice this day !
But the cap ship did not descend into the whirlpool. A veil of shimmering light fell over the vessel as five hundred meters ahead, on the opposite side of the well, an identical flash lifted into space. It jumped
it jumped the well .
Enraged by their escape and by the certainty of his fate, Torshk reversed thrust once more, charging at full tilt toward a cave of filmy night. No, he would never die by their hand. He still had that much control.
As the seconds burned away, he thought about how it would feel to die, if there would be pain, if he could take that pain with honor and not shame himself by crying out. The control stick suddenly shook free of his grip. His seat restraints snapped, and he floated out of the chair, feeling himself shake independently of the ship, teeth chattering, joints grinding, spittle dappling his helmet. He listened to the sound of his labored breathing, saw only a blur of gray, and sniffed at the smoke from damaged instruments that wafted in his nutrient gas line. His bones pushed against his skin.
He gasped.
Gasped again.
Knew it had come.
Fought for the glory of silence.
And won.
