“We’ve got to go,” Krystal said with a firmness that the pail look in her muzzle really didn’t suit.  “Now.”

“Wait, WAIT!” Zannah exclaimed back.  “As soon as I light up anything, and I mean anything other than what is active right here, right now, those corvettes out there are going to know we’re here!”

“But we need to get that information back to Admiral Rikes! We have to warn the fleet!”

“You don’t think I know that!?!?!  Look Krystal, I might be a privateer but there is damned sure no way I want the cats to win this war, but tell me, how the hell are we going to get out of here in one piece, and right now I think that’s pretty important to all of us!”

“Krystal floated towards the tactical board where she had been only moments before not bothering to strap in she started typing commands.  “If we get out of this system,” she mumbled we stand a better chance of surviving.”

“Well that’s kind’a obvious Krystal,” the vixen returned a bit sharp.  “But you see we’ve got a little problem.  There are four corvettes out there that will know what we are as soon as we power up any system.  The Windrider might be heavily armed for a civilian ship but I didn’t see the Oriskany’s ground crew loading an anti-ship torpedo into the ship with all the other goodies they gave me, and last I checked, your husband’s fighter can’t carry one of those things!  Those corvettes might be ‘small’ but there is no bloody way even combined our weapons are going to bring one down, oh, and lets not forget the little problem that we’re out numbered what? Like four hundred or so to two?”

“Three hundred fifty-two to two,” Krystal seemed to mutter absentmindly as she frantically typed out commands on to the computer terminal.  “A Kilrathi carrier group is eighty-eight combat ready fighters and bombers.”

“You’re only making my point Krystal…”

“Wait… wait…” she mumbled louder sounding this time like she was intending to talk to everyone.  “We know where all the Kilrathi forces are at the moment… behind us if we head to the jump point to Cauthon’s System where the Felix is….” She grabbed a dataslate and started scribbling, scribbling! Zannah thought on it, what was the collie doing!?  “A Khemek-class corvette tops out at 250-KPS…” she mumbled quoting numbers from memory.  “Zannah?  What can the Windrider do?”

“Without your husbands fighter? I could do four hundred, easy, with it….” She did a couple quick mass-to-drive thrust equations in her head, very rough.  “Without hitting the afterburners and dumping half our stored fuel load in one shot?”  it was odd that such an idea had even come about to drive engine designers.  Windrider was one of the biggest that fitted engines that were equipped with the secondary fuel-flow system that dumped extra fuel into the hot plasma already coming out as thrust.  The end result of what happened was extremely similar to an old jet engine afterburner, with approximately the same side effect, you burned a lot of your fuel very, very quickly which was why fighter pilots used it rather sparingly, they didn’t have much fuel to begin with, even with the magnetic ramscoops they used to sweep up stray hydrogen atoms to add to their fuel.  “Probably about three hundred, three hundred twenty five.”

Krystal nodded absentmindly as she scribbled even more still.  She wasn’t even paying attention to where she was floating and she was caught about the waist by her husband before she banged her ears against the tight confines of the Windrider but even then she didn’t pay attention.  Zannah got a good look at what she was scribbling though and it looked like equations.  She was doing math?!?  “A Sartha-class light fighter is rated at five hundred KPS, even if they have a screen launched from each carrier already… they probably do knowing Khal’saad, it would take them…. Fifteen minutes to reach our position, we can be at the jump point in ten…  All we have to do is outrun those corvettes…”

“Oh great, all we have to do is out run the Corvettes…” it was better than trying to fight their way through to the jump point but….  “How the heck do we know we’re not already in weapons range!”

Chaser frowned and floated up to the pilot’s seat and it looked to Zannah like he was doing some thinking of his own.  “Krystal, give me a zoom on the corvettes…”

“Huh?” both women said at once.

“I want to see the Corvettes closer, we have an optical zoom on this thing somewhere don’t we?” he pointed to the tactical board as he continued to gaze up at the corvettes.

Krystal blinked, but nodded and typed out a few commands bringing up for separate panes on the screen display each of the corvettes as Chaser floated back.  “Ok, there is the forward gun mount….” He mumbled, tracing his paw over one of the shapes.  “missile tubes, point defense system… he smiled a tight smile as he stabbed a shape on one of the two middle corvettes.  “I knew it!”

“Wait, knew what?” Krystal blinked and Zannah knew she shared the collie’s look of confusion.

“This corvette right here, she’s missing the number two dorsal gun position.  On a corvette that’s short-changing yourself a lot of firepower really, considering you only have the one forward gun, your missile tubes, and your ventral and dorsal turrets for your offensive firepower, even on our Venture-class corvettes its pretty much a similar layout…”  He looked at the two females.  “The only reason to delete that turret is you have something you think is more important to add, and the Cats aren’t stupid, there is a cluster of eight tiny domes where that turret should be, it’s a command corvette.”

“Wait, a command corvette?” Zannah blinked.  She had never heard about such a thing.  

Chaser nodded.  “It’s a quirky little design the Cats came up with,  Four corvettes linked together through encrypted datalinks, three of them are the fighters, one of them is the eyes.  ‘Command Corvette’ really is a bit of a misnomer, its really a sensors platform, those eight domes are track sensors, it gives the small group of corvettes a better coordination and can really be effective in upping their potential, but the catch is, the three shooters all have their onboard sensors suborned to the guy with the extra sensors.  If it is blinded, they’re all blinded…”

He turned back to his wife and Zannah.  “I asked Mac to have the red-shirts load a Starburst onto my centerline missile rack, I fire that off right before we hit the drives, and it will go off and blind that command corvette and the other three won’t be able to see us till we’ve run away.”

“Great, just one problem,” Zannah said.  “we’re flying the Windrider right now, not your Rapier.”

Chaser looked.  “I won’t undock, Starbursts are dumb-fires, you don’t need a lock to get them to release, all you have to do is point the Windrider’s nose to the right position, I fire, we run.”

Zannah thought for a few moments, well, it really was the only shot they had, and it was just crazy enough to work.  “I hope you have your speed numbers figured right Krystal,” she mumbled as she pushed herself off at a rather reckless speed towards the command couch straping herself in and without lighting off the main drives began rolling the ship about.  “we’re pointed towards the corvette Chaser…”

She looked back to see the hatch shut and blinked.  “Chaser?”

Chaser’s voice crackled over the intercom as Krystal strapped herself in and started punching in coordinates for the jump.  “Don’t worry, I’m not doing anything ‘stupid…’”

“You mean other than the stupid we’re about ready to try?”

“I’ve got my flight helmet on, I’ll ride the jump from the Rapier as soon as we’re on the other side, I’ll detach and run cover for you all the way into the Felix…” Chaser said as he began his start up checklist, stopping short of actually initiating main engine start up.  He did spool up the Starburst mounted under his rail and punched in an override when his Multi-Function Display situated over his left knee told him safety parameters for launch were not met.  “…At least… I hope I can fit aboard that little ship….” He mumbled hoping it didn’t carry through the intercom.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” his wife’s voice came over helmet’s headset.  “Riding the jump in the Rapier?”

“Not exactly like we can get into any more danger,” he said and he heard a sharp laugh from Zannah.  Maybe she’s starting rub off on me he thought, I wouldn’t usually make that sort of comment.  He licked his muzzle under his helmet as he flipped the safety off the pickle switch atop his side-stick controller, the computer again giving him a red warning that this was decidedly unsafe to do, but he ignored it.  He was pretty sure this would work, but he didn’t want to tell Zannah or Krystal there might be a chance the missile hung-fired because of the low power settings going through his fighter at the moment, that and Starburst were notorious for being well, finiky was the best way to put it, they had enough to worry about.  “Are we ready?”

“I think so,” his wife called out.

“As I ever will be,” Zannah grumbled and Chaser tightened his grip, swallowed and stabbed his gloved thumb down hard.  He actually breathed when his displays told him the missile had actually fired successfully and he felt the ‘thump’ through his ejection seat of the weapon releasing since he couldn’t see out at the moment.

“Its away! Get us out of here Zannah!”

IKV P’NRAU
OUTER PICKET CORVETTE, KILRATHI BATTLE FORMATION
ETA TARSUS SYSTEM
0659 HOURS, CST
OCTOBER 21st, 2565

Sankhar Adav narr Ragava frowned in his command chair situated slightly above all other stations aboard is command.  The P’nrau was a searcher corvette, its sensors linking in to the other four in the striking paw and commanded their own sensors, told their gunners where to shoot and when.  On a ConFed detachment of similar arrangement, that would have made the wildcat the most experienced officer, but, because of inane policies he thought, policies that even Lord narr Khal’Saad could not change completely, he was the most junior commander, and therefore the one to be told what to do and when, he was told, by relay, relay! Where to tell the other three corvettes to shoot.  It also did not help that his ‘fellows’ disdained him because his vessel was not designed to dive into battle like theirs was, all three of them young members of the Royal Family who thought the Lord a fool, not the genius that he was.  It slowed the reactions of his crew in performing their duty, still they did it with a skill and drive that made their commanding officer proud.  He just wished he could have been assigned to the mis-direction units, now there was a cunning position!  To fool your enemy that you are going to pounce one place, while your fellow warriors sprung the real trap.  It took skill he thought to do that, skill and guile and he would have truly enjoyed the chance to test his own.

“Sire?” his sensors manager called out in a questioning tone his tiger-like muzzle bathed in the strange amber glow of his large readout stations.

“Yes, what is it Kavark?”

“Sire, I just saw… something, I don’t know what on the sensors array,” the commoner looked to his lord in abashed confusion.  “it was on the screens for only a moment, and I would have missed it had I not been looking directly at it when it appeared.”

“Show me,” he commanded swiveling about in his chair to face the sensors board.

“Yes Sire,” the Jaguar responded and a ghostly image appeared, for a brief moment.

“That… looked like…” the Wildcat began as sirens began to light off.

“Energy signature!” the sensor operator began calling out.  “Starship in Nature… it is bearing….”

The sensor operator never got out his final report on the position, just as he was locking it down, his entire screen went pure white, the computers that translated the information the sensors were being overloaded with as nothing more than a bright white blaze to the console.  “My sensors have been blinded!”

Narr Ragava growled as he heard a report from his communications officer that his ‘fellow’ captains were now firing wildly in any direction in response to having their own ships blinded, because of the taxing nature of the datalinks their sensors were keyed directly into his own ship’s.  In fact several missiles impacted the P’nrau’s hull.  Luckily he was made of rather stern stuff his commander thought with pride as he heard sirens wail but no damage other than a pounding to the shields being reported.

However, he did have a slight problem, that dazzle charge had definitely concealed a ship, but… where was it from?  Obviously it was not Kilrathi in origin, the only Imperial ships out this far were in the Striking Paw.  That left three possibilities, a Canine prey-stalker ship, what they called the ‘Venture’ a ship very much like his own, a smuggler running Canine and Kilrathi items back and forth between the boarder systems of the two empires.  As much as narr Ragava dispised those honorless sivats, they were a fact of life here on the frontier.  The last option was a pirate vessel that had the unfortunately bad luck to be in the system when the striking paw had jumped in.

He discounted the smuggler immediately; this was well off the established lines of transit, even for one of them.  The pirate ship was the best possibility… but….

“Communications!  Tell narr Teva, narr Giran and nar Yagara that we are on their side and to stop firing!  I want a message ready to be burst transited to the flagship!!!”

IKV KRO’LA’ATH
COMMAND DECK
ETA TARSUS SYSTEM
0705 HOURS, CST
OCTOBER 21st, 2565

Sher stood with his paws behind his back, hidden under the cloak that was a symbol of station for his empire’s military, much as he had discovered the Terrans had a similar sign of station for their navy, though theirs was a simple head covering known as a ‘command cap.’  He found it odd, that they were not required, and many did not bother with, that symbol while on duty according to his scant intelligence sources, most of them simple recoveries of records from the hulks of destroyed Canine ships.  He would have never let the kil under his command see him without the cloak, be it a bit of vanity he wondered at times?  No, he shook that thought off he had other, more pressing thoughts to attend to.

“What is it Khantahr-Tar?”

“Report from the sensing ship in the link group at our perimeter m’lord,” his current under-watch officer announced as he handed his Lord a data-slate.  “Also one from the killer members of the group.”

Sher frowned reading the young officer in command of the stalker first, though his under-watch continued on.  “He reports that his ship briefly detected engine power-up signatures.  However, before his crew could gain a lock on the signature, his sensor systems were blinded, and the killer members of the group as well.”

Sher frowned finishing the report himself.  “he recommends pursuit sire,” his voice rumbled.  The report had been the concise language of an officer trying to put down all the thoughts he believed of utmost importance in as brief a message as possible.  “And the killer commanding officers?”

The officer, a senior Khantahr-Tar, what the Terrans would have called a ‘Commander’ in their military began his announcements on that report right away.  He was a good kill, one that had served his time aboard a destroyer as its commanding officer, and was rather unsuccessful in hiding his desire to return to one again.  He was one of Sher’s staff and he knew his duty however, and he did it well, never presenting information that Sher ‘wanted to hear’ only raw data that he received.  A very good officer Sher thought, one that deserved another ship command.  “They are enraged by the ‘youngling’ as they put it sending this report to you, and demand his removal from command for his breach in the command line.” The short, slimmer statured tiger said in crisp tones that did not completely hide his own thoughts of the killer commanders.  “They believe the young commander was being alarmist and that it was nothing more than a pirate vessel that they easily destroyed even through what the call the commander of the P’nrau’s ‘ineptitude at even the demeaning command he was given’.”

Sher nearly growled.  “Those three are members of the royal family are they not?”

“Yes m’Lord, a distent branch each but yes,” the under-watch replied immediately having done a quick reaserch expecting this question from his Lord.  Technically SHer’s own family was a branch of the Royal Family, but one that had never been in much favor in the courts, having tied its kil to the Empire’s military early on.

Sher turned back to the displays he had been watching before, status boards and deployment notations.  “Send a message of commendation to the commander of the P’nrau, and a promotion is in order I believe,” he thought with a bit of a wicked smile, so, those idiots he had been forced to use to make up that formation believed the youngling was stupid and inept?  Not very good judge of character he thought.  “Inform Tell narr Teva, narr Giran and narr Yagara that the ‘youngling’ narr Ragava is receiving a field promotion to junior Khantahr-Tar, and that he is in direct command of the formation.  Any arguments, or protestations will be seen as mutinous acts, and they will be removed from command appropriately.”  He could not simply kill the imbeciles, that was going too far, however he knew the lines of the Royal Family that those three belonged to well, and they viewed the Emperor as Sivar himself, and the Crown Prince as his Chief Prophet.  Blasphemous thoughts Sher thought disgustingly, no male could serve as a Priest, let alone a Prophet, that was a Female’s exalted position, though again, the Emperor had tried to disband the Priestess Orders as well…

His thoughts were drifting he told himself angrily, he looked at the report.  “narr Regava says he is not certain, but is concerned that this might have been a canine stalking-ship….” He thought allowed.

“Yes sire.  He freely admits that his ship was unable to get a proper signature ID on the vessel, but, he was able to detect a faint jump-residue at a previously unknown jump-point.  Whatever it was, it was not very large to be able to jump and not create a signature that would be traceable farther away.”

“Then not a corvette then…” that would have been the logical choice for a stalker, and something he would have expected…  “Show me the current reports from the misderection force,” he ordered and promptly the information was displayed.  Yes, the misderection forces were still working well he saw according to the data.  The Confederation forces were proceeding to the point he had predetermined.  There was hard data identifying the Victorious, Yorktown and Akagi groups, as well as the cruiser/destroyer units commanded by Admiral Fuentes.  They were all in the proper position, he frowned.  “What of the Oriskany and his escorts?”  He could not think of a ship as a ‘she’ like the Canines did.

“Last reports were that he still was at New Scotland,” the officer replied.  “Those reports are several days old however.  We do know that he is not accompanying the main force.”

That was troubling.  However that deep into the Confederation territory, reports were at best unreliable, and that ship had always been a bit hard to pin down.  He was known to jump about the front to ‘brushfires’ as the Canines said.  From what his intelligence officers and other contacts could tell, the Oriskany striking paw was seen, and used by Admiral van Arragon as a trouble shooter, being sent wherever there was trouble, because he was not technically assigned to a static patrol sector.  However, he also knew that he was an old ship, a pre-war design if Sher remembered right.  As good a ship he might have been, it would most likely spend time in dry-dock, if not on a regular basis, then at least from time to time.  He had several ships in his command that were of similar age, and they required more time in dock than ships of newer vintage such as his flagship.

“Have we seen a pattern to when he disappears, then re-appears again back to the front?”

“Not a firm one sire,” the under-watch admitted truthfully.  “It is my belief that he is in dock for repairs.  The last action we have record of him participating in, he supposedly took damage to one of its engine pylons.”

Sher nodded slowly thinking.  He did not like that, but, it was inevitable.  His under-watch was giving his best interpretation of the data, and he had to make his decision based upon that.  The disappearance of Oriskany was troubling, but, if this operation succeeded, they could easily track down and eliminate a sole carrier striking paw.  The unknown however, had to be dealt with.

“Sind the T’gara through that Jump Point after the unkown…” he remembered well what had happened to the last fool that had chased an unknown through a Jump Point.  “I also want a detatchment of Krant fighters from the flagship to be dispatched with the destroyer as well.  They are to eliminate the unknown and then join us for the final assault.  We cannot pause here Khantahr-Tar, we need to press on.”