Wing Commander Pilgrim Stars Prologue

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Prologue
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Book Wing Commander Pilgrim Stars
Next Chapter 1
Pages x-xvi


Dramatis Personae

Text

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 super-dreadnought 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 grav-ity 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 super-structures 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 neutrinos--part 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 side-long 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 pub-lic display of frustration.

     How could so many of Torshk's clan deny who they were? Descended from predators, from pack hunters, the Kilrathi peo-ple 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 chal-lenge all who concealed information from him. His growl con-firmed 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 spearhead--a 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 tor-pedoes 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 fre-quently 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 supercruiser trav-eling 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 supercruiser now rushing in behind him. "I will assist!"

     The missiles tightened their gap on Covum's Dralthi as Tor-shk 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 missile--even as it tore into Covum's Dralthi.

     "For my hrai 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 pierc-ingly through his helmet. Every sense registered the throbbing agony of his cousin's loss. Panting, he increased velocity and soared above the destroyers--just 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 com-puter automatically selected the ship's most lethal points and pri-oritized 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 con-trol. 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, bar-rels 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 dis-patching 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, cir-cular 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 bat-tleships slowly broke into meter-sized fragments that hurtled toward the darkness amid tendrils of jettisoned gases and stream-ers 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, Tor-shk 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 sud-denly 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.

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