Wing Commander #07 False Color by William Forstchen (best books to read in life .txt) 📕

was filled with pride, knowing Murragh could meet the final race with the Running Death with the true Kilrathi spirit. But pride was balanced by rage. They had come so close to victory but it had eluded their grasping hands by less than claw's-length. "Return to your post, Hyilghar," he mix quietly. "And reflect on this . . you have done well young Murragh. Your entire clan would be proud today . . as I am."

He turned back to the bank of readouts and monitors most of them blank, that were supposed to allow him to direct a multi-ship deep-space battle. Irony tasted bitter in Largka's mouth. He had argued for month: that he should be given a battle command instead of being confined to a staff job on Kilrah, and always hi: cousin Thrakhath had said there was no available command large enough to sustain the honor of the Imperial Family. Largka had appealed directly to Thrakhath's grandfather, the Emperor himself, protesting that he would take any squadron, however small or unimportant.

And the Emperor had granted his request. A tiny raiding squadron operating on the fringes of the war zone between humans and Kilrathi, one of the new supercarriers and a scratch supporting battle group oft only four escorts. And those had fallen one by one during: the disastrous raid on the world the humans called "Landreich." First the two cruisers, then the destroyer Takh'lath, and finally the escort Frawqirg, caught by the two Terran cruisers and badly damaged before Karga could secure from jump and assist him. The crippled escort had last been seen shaping an orbit for the inner moon of the oversized gas giant Vaku, a marginally habitable world where they might manage a landing and await a rescue . . . if the Kilrathi won the engagement in space.

But it was clear that wasn't the likely outcome of today's battle. Without escorts, even a supercarrier was vulnerable to a sustained attack by conventional warships. Carriers weren't supposed to fight in the thick of the fray. Karga had been forced to do just that, though, and it would take a miracle for him to pull through.

But before he died, the carrier would give a good account of himself against the apes. Largka vowed to make the Terrans remember Vaku, one way or another.

"Concentrate fire on the lead Terran cruiser," he ordered. It was strange to be making tactical decisions again, fighting a ship instead of directing a whole squadron. But with both the carrier's control rooms out of operation, his flag bridge was the closest thing to a tactical control center left on Karga. "Ignore the other one . . but kill that ape cruiser!"

"As you order, Lord Admiral," one of his aides acknowledged.

Largka studied his monitor screen with the chill calm of a warrior determined to fight to the bitter end.

Engineering Control Center, TCS Juneau Near Vaku VII, Vaku System 1342 hours (CST)

Commander Douglas Scott Graham stared at the image on his monitor screen in horror and disbelief, hardly able to watch but equally unable to tear his eyes away.

He was watching a ship die, a sight all too common for a Terran Confederation Navy officer in this thirty-fifth year of continuous warfare with the Kilrathi Empire. Plenty of ships had been lost over that decades-long span, but that didn't make it any easier to watch TCS Juneau's consort, Dover, coming apart under the incredible bombardment generated by the Kilrathi carrier the two Terran ships faced today.

Kruger wanted revenge, he thought bitterly. I hope it's worth the price we're paying.

The two cruisers were part of a Terran Confederation task force operating among the frontier worlds in loose cooperation with colonial military units and semiautonomous planetary governments. The most prominent of these was Landreich, neither wholly independent nor fully cooperative under the leadership of its maverick president, Max Kruger. Kruger had reluctantly played the role of cavalry-to-the-rescue during the Kilrathi assault against the Sol system three years back, and now when Kruger sneezed there was a scramble among Confederation leaders to see who could hand him a handkerchief the fastest. So when the small but deadly Kilrathi carrier battle group had launched a raid on Landreich itself, every ship in the region had been summoned to intercept them before they could return to Imperial space.

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 Chief's 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