Another update flashed on the holo, a blinking purple light, showing that action had started in the Landreich. It had taken hours for the signal to travel, even at burst speed. Three carriers of the Kilrathi fleet now confirmed against what a colonial militia could put up. Their chances were next to nothing, he thought, just about the same as ours.

"Ten seconds to jump and counting at nine, eight . . ."

Jason punched in to the deck flight officer.

"All fighters prepare for launch!"

"Two, one, jump initiated."

The phase shift of the jump field kicked in, space in the forward and aft screens disappearing in a wavy haze. Jason swallowed hard, the momentary nausea of jump taking hold, as Tarawa and everything inside of it winked out of existence at jump point 324C and then rematerialized seconds later half a dozen light years away, back into position in the Hell Hole system.

The screen shifted, star fields returning to view.

"All ahead full, move it!" Jason shouted and Tarawa surged forward. Not five seconds later Gallipoli appeared behind him in nearly the exact same space he had just been occupying, followed seconds later by two more escort carriers.

The maneuver was insane. Standard fleet procedure was to have at least one minute intervals between jumps. The actual point of rematerialization was problematic, never occurring at precisely the same spot, and if a ship in transit should come out of jump in the same space occupied by another vessel no one in the two ships involved would ever even realize that their existence had suddenly winked out in a white hot explosion.

"Launch all fighters, launch all fighters!"

A hazy shimmer appeared in the forward screen.

"Helm hard to port, up ninety degrees!"

Tarawa shifted, turning, as a destroyer of the Landreich fleet materialized out of jump less than four hundred meters ahead.

Jason was nearly knocked from his command chair and at the same instant a bank of red lights started to flash at the damage control desk.

"Ship hulled starboard side, sections twenty-two through twenty-four Decompression hull breach!"

Internal bulkheads had already been sealed for action stations. Jason looked over at the damage display board. Three sectors of the outer hull were gone, crew quarters. He could only hope no one was still in there. He waited, watching to see if the breach would rip down the length of the hull or burst into the heart of the ship. It held.

"What ship was that?"

"Destroyer Blitzkreig, Kruger's flagship, sir."

"Damage?"

"Part of her port rear stabilizer gone. Hull integrity holding."

"Then the hell with her, get the rest of those fighters out!"

He turned back to tactical display and drew in his breath.

Kruger was either a genius or a madman, the next five minutes would tell — so far the plan had worked.

Directly ahead, at less than a thousand kilometers, were the three Kilrathi carriers, moving in line abreast formation. Kruger had met them ten hours earlier as they jumped into the Hell Hole system, fought a brief skirmish, trading a corvette and two fighters for two destroyers and nearly twenty fighters of the Cats and then fled, the enemy in hot pursuit.

They had jumped out of the Hell Hole System, come to a dead stop, and then turned, jumping straight back into the system they had just fled.

The Kilrathi, assuming they were chasing a beaten and far weaker foe, had recovered nearly all their fighters in preparation for jump in pursuit. Forward of the carriers by three hundred clicks was the outer screen of frigates, which would, according to standard doctrine, jump through first to secure the next point in preparation for the carriers to follow.

Range to the forward ships would close in under a minute.

Doomsday gave the thumbs up to the deck launch officer. She saluted, crouched down low, pointing forward, and the senior deck officer in the launch control room hit the catapult button.

In under two seconds Doomsday was clear of Tarawa, full afterburners roaring, even as Tarawa turned to avoid colliding with Kruger's flag ship. Doomsday banked hard over, skimming past the destroyer with less than a dozen meters to spare, and took a deep breath as he shot clear.

His heavily modified Sabre, with side-by-side pilot and co-pilot seats crammed in, and a single heavy Mark IV torpedo slung underneath shook with the 110% power surge. Grinning, he looked over at Paladin who was flying the right hand seat as weapons officer.

"Here we go again, laddie," Paladin said calmly, though Doomsday could tell that the old pilot was miffed that there weren't enough fighters in the fleet for him to get one of his own.

"Weapons check?"

"Torpedo armed and ready, now give me a target."

Doomsday spared a quick look down at his tactical screen. The forward string of frigates were less than a minute away, the first of them already slowing, turning to move in across the carriers. Less than thirty seconds behind them the three carriers were starting to come about

"All hells about to break loose," Paladin chuckled. "These two fleets are about to go straight through each other.

"There's the rest of the strike," Doomsday announced, pointing nearly straight up, and he edged his stick back, climbing a thousand meters to tuck himself in under a Broadsword's belly, giving himself a little more protection from the heavy strike craft's gunners.

"We're going for the middle carrier," Doomsday said quietly.

"We'll go for his port launch deck, you take the starboard one, lad," the Landreich pilot of the Broadsword above them replied and Doomsday clicked his mike twice as an affirmative.

"Hang on, crossing through the frigates!"

A crisscrossing of neutron bursts, laserflashes, and mass driver rounds snaked out from the Kilrathi picket line. Doomsday held steady on his course, working for an early fix and lock on the center carrier, which was now full broadside and starting to come around astern.

"Launch bay hits are out," Paladin announced. "Go for main engines."

A Landreich fighter, moving ahead of the two, winked into a fireball and disappeared. They shot through the wreckage, Doomsday wincing when a bloody smear of what had once been the pilot smashed into his forward canopy and spun away into the darkness. The blood seemed to be a dark omen and he started to breathe hard, fighting down the sense of premonition and Paladin looked over at him.

"He was already dead, laddie, already dead."

Doomsday gulped hard and shook his head. He pulled open his helmet visor. wiped the sweat from his face. He reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a short cigar and clamped down hard on it, chewing the end.

Ian had given the cigar to him long ago. He had never smoked it, but somehow, for this mission he felt it was a talisman and he brought it along.

They shot under the belly of a frigate, the two attack craft shuddering as they skimmed through the high energy field of the ship's fuel and maneuvering scoops.

"I have target lock," Paladin announced calmly, "and counting at thirty seconds, twenty nine."

Doomsday hated torpedo launches more than anything else. It required the fighter to stay on a straight and steady course for thirty seconds until the torpedoes' guidance and arming systems cut through the high energy shielding of the target, decoded the shield phasing, and then countered the phasing so that it could penetrate for the kill.

The carriers were now clearly visible in space, three silvery masses less than fifty clicks ahead, the ships completing their turns, engines winking white hot. Three Landreich fighters darted past Doomsday, their afterburners flaring, diving straight in, loosing a string of infrared guided missiles. The shots would not penetrate but their explosions on the carriers aft shields would momentarily blind the point defense systems.