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 out there, facing the oncoming enemy in a desperate bid to save the heart of the battlegroup.
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. Flashpoint, the phenomenon was called in the milspeak slang of fighter pilots, when a gravfighter and its pilot were both devoured by its own drive singularity.
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 America continued to accelerate. The black bulk of Haris, the planet, shifted with it, blotting out the sun with an artificial sunset. The battlegroup, Gray knew, must be trying to swing around behind the planet, using its bulk as a shield.
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.
“This is Dragon Two! Dragon Two! Got one on my tail!
“Hold on, Two, I’m on him!
“Shit! I’m hit! I’m hit!”
“On him, Two! On my mark, break high and right! Ready … mark!”
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. Family.
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
CIC, TC/USNA CVS America
Haris Orbit, Eta Boötis System
2015 hours, TFT
“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 Spirit of Confederation, the Kinkaid, and the other vessels of the shrunken battlegroup, the Turusch fighters, what was left of them, had broken off the attack. America, after swinging behind the planet, had aligned with distant Sol but not yet begun accelerating.
The Choctaw shuttle and its Nightshade escorts were rendezvousing with the America now, gliding in from astern, aligning their approach vector with the opening at the aft end of the rotating Number Two docking bay. At the last possible moment, they gave a final, brief burst of acceleration before killing their drive singularities and drifting dead-stick into the swinging maw of the docking bay, entering a tangleweb field that slowed them abruptly for the final fifty meters of their approach.
“CIC, PriFly,” sounded in Koenig’s head. “The shuttle is aboard.”
“Thank you, PriFly. I saw.”
He had a screen at his CIC station set as a repeater off of PriFly’s main board. He’d watched the Choctaw enter the gaping opening, could see the gunships coming in through the entrance now, in staggered formation to match the docking bay’s rotation, one after the other. Nightshades were essentially large, two-man fighters, but slower and less maneuverable than Starhawks or War Eagles, with a maximum acceleration of only twelve Gs. That made them good for chewing up ground targets and serving as close-support for the infantry, but not of much use in a gravfighter fur ball.
Koenig turned his attention to the fighters—four from VFA-44 and eight from VFA-51. They were eighty thousand kilometers astern of the America now, but catching up fast.
“Admiral?” Buchanan’s voice said in his head. “Permission to begin accelerating the America.”
“Granted,” Koenig told him. The slow movers were safely on board now. The fighters easily had the acceleration necessary to match velocities with a capital ship. The sooner the last seven capital ships of the battlegroup were pushing c, the better. Koenig still expected Turusch warships to be coming in on the tails of those fighters; they could appear on feeds from the more remote battlespace drones at any moment.
On the tactical display, the ships of the battlegroup began moving faster, as data readouts showed the vector change. The fighters were already going all out, the distance between them and America dwindling rapidly.
Come on, he thought, the words fierce. Get your butts in here. …
Dragon One
Eta Boötis IV
2020 hours, TFT
“Okay, chicks,” Allyn said. “Final correction is coming up. Lose the dust balls.”
At her command, each pilot switched off his or her forward singularity and decelerated, sending the atom-sized collections of dust and debris hurtling into the void. The maneuver was vital; those submicroscopic specks could wreak untold havoc with America’s internal spaces if they struck the carrier.
They hadn’t been in flight for long, and the dust masses were so minute they likely would have caused no damage. On the other hand, they were traveling slowly enough that the specks might not pass all the way through the carrier. They could become imbedded in her hull, where they would continue to feed and grow.
There were horror stories still told in the service from the earliest days of gravitic engineering, of ships infested with neutron-sized black holes, of ships and their crews dying slowly.
One by one, the fighters dropped into staggered approach vectors.
“Howie!” she called. “What’s your sit?”
“Doing okay, Skipper.” He sounded scared. Medical telemetry showed his heart rate, breathing, and
