The running pursuit had knocked out three of the five Kilrathi ships…but the carrier and her escort were still formidable foes when the two Terran cruisers had spotted them jumping into the Vaku system and moved to engage.
The proof of that was on his monitor. Ignoring Juneau entirely, the Cat carrier was pumping everything she could fire into the unfortunate Dover. Under that intensive bombardment, the cruiser wouldn’t last long. Graham could see the rippling of shields burned through by energy beams, and the Confederation cruiser seemed to stagger under wave after wave of missiles from the carrier and the swarm of Kilrathi fighters that clustered around her.
“Christ, look at her,” someone said behind Graham. “She’s a goner for sure….”
“Back to your post, spacer,” Graham snapped. “Chief, get these slackers back to work now, or they’ll have a lot worse than the Cats to answer to.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Chief Ellen Quinlan responded smartly. “All right, you sons-of-Cats, you heard the man! Eyes on your consoles and heads in the game! And if any of you aren’t afraid of what an officer might do to you, just keep in mind what I’ll do! Do I make myself clear?”
Graham hid a chuckle as the engineering control center grew suddenly quiet and thoroughly businesslike under the Chiefs stern glare. A stern, hatchet-faced CPO of the old school, Quinlan could generate more sheer terror than a whole squadron of incoming Cat fighters. She was also one hell of a good engineer.
The monitor flashed as explosions ran along the spine of the crippled Dover, bringing Graham’s attention back to the fight. For an instant the flare of light was blinding before the computer cut in the compensators. Even then, it was difficult to distinguish details. One moment Dover was whole. The next she was shards of wreckage whirling away in all directions, ship and crew alike consumed by the fearsome energies unleashed by the concentrated Kilrathi attack.
That left Juneau and the Cat carrier alone under the mottled light of Vaku. Cruiser against carrier…and that carrier had just done in a Terran cruiser in one furious assault.
Graham swallowed. Now it was Juneau’s turn.
Flag Bridge, KIS Karga
Near Vaku VII, Vaku System
1348 hours (CST)
Admiral Cakg dai Nokhtak bared his teeth in defiance as the Terran cruiser broke apart. Victory is still possible! he told himself. If Karga could just put some time and distance between himself and the surviving Terran, they could effect repairs to the jump engines and escape back into Imperial territory, where songs of this day’s action would be sung for eight-eights of years to come.
“Target the cruiser’s engineering section,” he ordered, keeping his voice level and firm despite the urge to let the emotions inside him run free. “Helm Officer, take us in closer to Vaku.”
“Lord Admiral…” The staff officer who had suddenly found himself acting as helmsman for the crippled supercarrier was almost visibly shivering as he questioned his superior’s order. “Lord Admiral, the shields are already weak, and the radiation from this star…”
“Will kill us in minutes if they fail,” Largka finished the sentence for him. “Nonetheless, you will carry out my order. I want a tight hyperbolic orbit that will take us through the plane of Vaku’s ring system. If we can cripple the Terran ship’s engines, the ring debris and that same radiation you are afraid of will serve to mask a course change as we move out of their range. This will give us our chance to break off this fight.”
“You would run away from battle, Lord Admiral?” That was Baron Grathal nar Khirgh, whose official title of Fleet Intelligence Officer masked his real position as the Imperial Family’s spy and political officer aboard the carrier. “The Prince would not like to hear that one of his noble cousins chose to run rather than fight.”
The admiral half-rose from his chair, unsheathing the claws of his powerful right hand before he forced himself to ignore the insult. “Thrakhath would be more concerned still to hear that I lost a supercarrier in battle with the apes,” he said through tight lips. “Once we have broken off the action and made repairs to engines and flight bays, we can come back and deal with that cruiser. Right now the important thing is to preserve the Karga.”
He sank back in his seat, but his eyes remained locked on Khirgh’s until the Intelligence Officer gave a reluctant grasped-claw gesture and turned away.
“Course laid in, Lord Admiral,” the Helm Officer said, sounding nervous. Largka couldn’t blame him. No one wanted to get involved in court politics at the best of times, and certainly not when a battle was raging around them.
Damn Thrakhath and his idiot followers! The Emperor’s grandson had consistently mismanaged the war against the Terrans, and no small part of that mismanagement was the way he’d treated the nobility that should have been the mainstay of Imperial support. Thrakhath’s policy of using court favorites as watchdogs over nobles he didn’t trust only magnified the rifts in the Kilrathi war machine. Even if he managed to win the final victory he was always touting, Thrakhath might very well fall to the sharp claws of the factions he had created.
And perhaps a member of the Imperial Family who had distinguished himself in battle might hope to take advantage should the Emperor’s favorite grandson stumble….
“Execute course change,” he ordered, pushing his bitter thoughts from his mind and focusing once again on the battle unfolding beyond the supercarrier s bulkheads.
“I have targeting solutions on the Terran cruiser,” the Acting Weapons Officer announced. “Locking energy batteries on the engineering section….”
“Fire all batteries!” the admiral ordered.
Bridge, TCS Juneau
Near Vaku VII, Vaku System
1351 hours (CST)
Unimaginable energies battered at the cruiser as the Kilrathi supercarrier loosed its barrage. Captain Ekaterina Tereshkova tightened her grip and closed her eyes for a moment as she felt her beloved cruiser shuddering under blast after blast from the Kilrathi ship’s main guns. She had seen what had happened to Captain Fowler’s Dover when the Cats had turned their full power against that ship. She wasn’t going to let them do the same thing to Juneau.
“All batteries, fire!” she grated. “Give me everything you’ve got, Guns!”
“Aye aye, skipper,” her Fire Control Officer responded. On the monitor screen in front of her, lasers stabbed back at the Kilrathi carrier, probing the kilometer-long ship’s weakened defenses.
How much more punishment can the Cats take, anyway? Tereshkova wouldn’t have believed it possible for the Kilrathi ship to hold out this long. Even a Kilrathi carrier wasn’t supposed to be able to handle a stand-up fight with Terran cruisers. Their primary weapons were the fighter squadrons they carried, and with a few exceptions they hadn’t been able to launch fighters with their hangar decks crippled in the first exchange of fire. But whoever was skippering that carrier was as brilliant as he was stubborn.
The cruiser lurched again, the red bridge lights flickering and then going out as power was interrupted. After a long moment a backup power source kicked in, but there were plenty of dead consoles around the bridge…and the ones that were still registering were lit up with warning lights.
“Heavy damage to the rear shields,” her XO reported, gripping a stanchion with one hand and holding his earpiece communications link in place with the other. Commander Lindstrom’s voice was matter-of-fact, as if he wasn’t really a part of the chaos that had erupted on the bridge after that hit. Tereshkova’s eyes flicked from one station to another, taking in the body of the FCO slumped across his board and the young commo officer kneeling beside his chair trying to give first aid.