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world& that would ensure a fast spread of the tailored disease they carried.
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It would not be long before the effects of the attack became visible.
Locanda IV was as good as dead already, and Maverick Blair, the great pilot
and war hero, was the man to blame for it all. The man who failed&
He forced the thought aside and concentrated on his fighter's controls.
Blair's Thunderbolt came through the long fight with only light damage, but he
had trouble with the port-side maneuvering thrusters, and the computer was
unable to reroute the circuits through a more dependable network.
They were near the original coordinates of the Kilrathi fleet, which
thankfully was moving away at full speed toward a nearby jump point.
Blue and Green Squadrons, after maintaining a prolonged diversionary action
against Thrakhath's flagship, had returned to
Victory
. Gold
Squadron remained out, however, searching for a lost sheep.
Incredibly, only Beast Jaeger's fighter was confirmed as destroyed in battle,
though several of the others were in terrible shape. How Hobbes still flew at
all was a mystery, and Vaquero's weapons systems finally overloaded in the
last fight against the Strakha. But one of the
Thunderbolts remained missing, and Blair ordered Gold Squadron to spread out
and search for the missing man& or some sign of his fate.
Lieutenant Alexander Sanders, callsign Sandman& Blair never really knew him.
He had served as Maniac's wingman throughout the current deployment and spent
most of his off-duty hours hanging with Marshall.
Although he always struck Blair as a complete opposite to Maniac steady,
dependable, loyal, reliable Sanders and Marshall were good friends as well as
wingmates. Neither Blair nor the lieutenant were very comfortable with each
other as a result of the ongoing feud dividing the colonel from the major.
Now it looked as if Blair would never get a chance to know the man.
Maniac had allowed himself to be separated from his wingman in the battle with
the Kilrathi escort squadron while Cobra covered herself after
Jaeger's death, so no one saw Sandman fighting. He might have been destroyed,
or simply damaged and left adrift& or he might have ejected from his fighter.
Until they were sure, they had to look.
A refueling shuttle arrived from
Victory to rendezvous with the squadron and top off their tanks, and now the
eight remaining fighters were to form a broad search pattern, hunting for some
signs of the lost pilot. They were barely within sensor range of each other,
and the comm channels were mostly quiet. Everyone knew the mission had failed.
Everyone was exhausted by hours of continuous stress and tension punctuated by
more fighting than any of them had seen in a long, long time.
"
Bad news, Colonel"
Cobra broke into his reverie. "
I've got a debris field here. Material analysis reads consistent with a
Thunderbolt's hull armor& It's gotta be Sandy's
."
"You're sure it isn't part of Jaeger's ship?"
"No way, sir. Too far from where Beast caught it."
"Start a close scan, Cobra. If there's an escape pod around there, find it."
"I'll try, sir, but you know the cats. If they spot a pilot after he ejects,
they'll either blast him where they find him or tractor him in for
interrogation and a sporting death entertaining a ship's nobles."
"Check it out, anyway, Lieutenant. If there's any chance Sandman's still
alive, I want to find him." Blair paused. "All fighters, from Leader.
Converge on Cobra's beacon and concentrate your search there."
Bringing the fighter around, he increased his thrust. Cobra was right, of
course. The odds against finding Sanders alive were too high a bet for anyone
but a blind optimist, but he had to try.
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It was a pitiful gesture set against his failure defending the colony, but it
was all he could do right now.
Bridge, TCS Victory
Locanda System
"Approaching Gold Squadrons search grid now, sir."
"Very good, Mr. DuBois," Eisen acknowledged the helmsman's report.
"Go to station-keeping. Sensors to full sweep. Let's help the Colonel look for
his man. Any word, Lieutenant Rollins?"
"Nothing from Gold Squadron, sir." Rollins turned in his chair to face the
captain. "
Coventry's broadcasting updates on the Kilrathi fleet.
Several of their ships have jumped, but it looks like
Sar'hrai is delaying.
Probably to pick up stragglers from the cat fighter strike. If we teamed up
with the cruiser, sir, we might get a few licks in& "
"This is a carrier, not a dreadnought, Lieutenant," Eisen told him. "A
carrier with a fighter wing that isn't likely to be able to pull a strike
mission for quite a while. And that close to a jump point you always run the
risk of something popping in when you least expect it."
"Yes, sir," Rollins said. He sounded disappointed.
"Look, I know how everybody feels. The cats broke through, and the colony's
probably& in trouble. You want to hit back. So do I, believe me.
But there's no sense in compounding one tragedy with another. ConFleet can't
afford to throw away ships on meaningless gestures, and that's what it would
be if we tried to take
Sar'hrai
."
They were the right words, Eisen told himself. But he didn't like them at all.
"Captain?" That was Tanaka, the Sensor Officer. "Sir, I'm only reading seven
fighters in the search grid. There ought to be eight& "
"What the devil?" Eisen demanded. "Find that other fighter. And
Rollins& get on the line and tell Blair it's time he took roll call!"
Thunderbolt 300
Locanda System
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