Again, sorry its taken me so long to update, I've had exams to contend with. Fortunately they are over and updates should start becoming more frequent. Thanks to Bien Canonizado for reviewing.

Less fortunately, I'm going to have to start this chapter with a fairly long author's note in response to your last review. I considered your suggestion for giving brief descriptions of the ships but I couldn't write these in a way that fit in with the narrative. If anyone you're trying to get into the story, (thanks for doing so by the way), needs to know about what the ships look like then you could direct them to http/ should be revealed there.

Some of the ships you requested I can include, specifically the wc2 ones. Others I can't. The Tiger shark and the Piranha I cannot include simply because this story is set before they came into existence. You should find some of your requested ships soon however.

As for Blair, I haven't decided yet whether to include him or not. Also the confederation should be going on the offensive, (sort of), quite soon. Snakiers and Hakagas may very well show up, just not for a while. Snakiers at this time were nearing obsoleteness and were reserved for less important systems, also there aren't many Hakagas around. Still, be patient, they should arrive before too long.

Right, i think that's it.

Chapter 10: Hunted

Torrent's perspective

I never thought I'd be so enthused about flying towards an asteroid field.

Captain Karl Von Tieschowitz, the highest ranking pilot left in our wing, had discovered a nearby asteroid field that lay not too far away from us. Distantly I remembered the awkward flight path we'd taken on the way here to avoid it. He'd ordered all of us to charge at it at best possible speed. It was the best chance we had of evading our pursuers.

It was lucky that on of us had been paying attention to the Nav map. All I'd thought to do was run and if possibly run faster. I'd have to keep this incident in mind for future reference, assuming I lived through it.

Rather unsurprisingly, the largest problem that we faced was one of fuel. We'd be able to get pretty close to the asteroid field with afterburners, but after that we would be forced to fly towards it at cruise speed, giving the Kilrathi more then enough time to close the already narrowing gap between us and blow us all away. Also, even if we got into the field, there was nothing to stop their far more manoeuvrable ships following us.

What we needed to do was lose our pursuers in the field, then shut own as many systems as possible, if our electronic emissions were sufficiently low, we'd be able to move away from the Kilrathi unnoticed.

Hopefully.

I checked my tactical display, the closest ship to us were a wing of four Dralthi that had jumped in with two enemy cruisers. They were a little over 23 kilometres away. What fleeting hope I had that we'd be able to make it to the field without incident died with that discovery.

Seven minutes later

My speed indicator switched from 1000kps to 380kps. I still had a drop or two of fuel left, but one of the Longbows had run out, and it made more sense to stay together. None of us probably would have been able to accomplish anything more then a fifteen centimetre lead anyway.

The distance between us and the Dralthi was closing fast. I could imagine the looks on the Kilrathi's faces now that their prey could no longer run fast enough to evade them.

The asteroid field was visible, barely, I could make out brief hints of grey rocks in the distance, they seemed very far away.

My 'lock' light sprung to life abruptly, sending a surge of panic through me. I released a decoy and pulled upwards, hitting my afterburners ad spending what little fuel I had left as I did so.

The alarm and the lock light died in unison. The missile had detonated on the decoy. I didn't feel much in the way of relief seeing as I was now falling behind the others.
"We're not going to make it with these hairballs hounding us," Tieschowitz said suddenly, "All units, break and attack, let's make this quick people."

I pulled my ship around and launched one of the four remaining image recognition missiles that I had left at the nearest Dralthi. It was somewhat helpful that the pilot had neglected to deactivate his afterburners when eh engaged us, he was probably trying to close the distance to make targeting us easier.

The downside, for him anyway, of dong this was that he had little time to evade the missile heading at him, and also the increased speed of the collision resulted in greater damage to his ship.

The explosion ripped off the right wing of the Dralthi, sending what was left of the ship into an uncontrollable spin. I fired off a few shots for good measure, and sure enough the rest of the enemy fighter exploded.
"That's one down." I said quickly, trying not to waste time in acquiring a new target.

My rear turret suddenly sprung to life, I switched to my rear view display and noticed a second Dralthi hovering behind me.

He opened fire a second later.

My ship shuddered under the multiple impacts. None of the shots missed.

I pulled right, the Dralthi stayed with me, after a few second he opened fire again, the first shots barely missing me, the next few tore away what was left of my rear shields.

My ship shuddered again, and my hand was knocked away from the flight controls.

Then the shuddering stopped.

I pulled away regardless, not wanting to tempt fate. I checked my radar, the Dralthi was gone, and a blue dot was moving away from where it had been, I checked my contact list quickly to see who it was who ad presumably just shot the enemy off of my tail.
"Thanks Adish." I said quickly.
"Don't mention it." He replied, "Two down."

I activated my damage control display. My rear turret was gone, as was most of the durasteel armour I had in that section. My engines had taken minor damage that according to the computer was seconds away from repair. Not nearly as bad as I had feared. I had expected to find myself confined to 50kps for the next hour or so.
"Three down." Tieschowitz added after a few more seconds. The enemy were beginning to succumb to our greater numbers.

If our roles had been reversed and confederation pursuers had been suffering at the hands of the Kilrathi, the surviving pilot would most likely fall back and join the second wave of fighters closing in on the enemy.

The remaining Kilrathi had other ideas.

I pulled my ship around so as to get him in my gun sights and readied another missile. We didn't have much time left. The Sorthak were closing on us. In our current condition we were no match for them.

The Dralthi veered to the left, he was moving very quickly, I wondered briefly if he was in fact going to pull back to his friends after all. That was until I saw his ship collide with Lieutenant Schneider's Longbow. The Dralthi went up immediately, Schneider's fighter spun momentarily before coming to a stop.

The entire aft section looked charred and mutilated. Pieces of hull had been torn away, atmosphere was leaking from one hull breach, fire from two others.
"Schneider," Tieschowitz shouted, "What's your status, can you still fly."

After a second, Schneider's face appeared on the com screen. Accompanied by smoke and what sounded like a continuous electrical discharge from somewhere behind him.
"My engines are shot, that bastard took out every…" he cut himself off, barely keeping a lid on his panic, I couldn't blame him, "I'm dead in the water." There was another pause, this one longer. "Look, all of you keep going, I'll stay here, try and distract them."

Tieschowitz's face appeared on the com screen but it was a few seconds before he said anything. He was clearly struggling with the responsibility and the hard decisions that he had to face. These weren't things typically cast upon Captains.

I have to say however, he performed well.
"You heard him," he said after a moment, "We have to keep moving, quickly people, we don't have much time. The Hermes needs this data."

Ordinarily we could have trusted the tracking stations to report this find to the Hermes and the other ships in the system. Unfortunately, a fair few of the Strakha that had destroyed the Boston had encored with the destruction of the three tracking stations that monitored the jump hole. The stations boasted neither heavy armour nor decent defences, and several kamikaze wings had been able to slip through the flak fire.

This left us effectively blind. We did not have any Prowler class corvettes in our presence, sending a destroyer or a cruiser to the jump hole would be foolish to say the least and would leave us with one less ship with which to fight the enemy.

It was pure luck that we had been where we'd been when the Kilrathi came through. It was a truly a miracle that we had survived this long.

We started moving again, each doubtlessly cursing themselves for wasting time, and then cursing themselves for considering listening to what were doubtlessly going to be Schneider's last words a waste of time. That was what I did anyway. At this time my mind was largely becoming a mess. The Sorthak were closing quickly, and the chances of us reaching the field before they reached us were becoming slimmer by the second.

In the radar I noticed a small swarm of red dots advancing on the stationary blue dot. Schneider's Longbow wouldn't even slow them down. All it would take was a few gunshots and he'd be gone. He probably wouldn't be able to even return fire.

As the five red dots closed in on Schneider, his face returned to our com screens. I think he was crying.
"Jamie, Cassandra, this is for you."

As his face vanished from the screen, space lit up behind me.

I switched on my rear view display and witnessed an explosion far more powerful then the destruction of a Longbow should have been able to produce. An explosion like that was often the result of a small cap ship blowing up, or…

Mines.

In that instant it made sense. Schneider had waited until the Sorthak were close enough, then he'd detonated all twelve mines in his ship's arsenal. It was surprisingly, and almost a little disturbingly comforting when I realised his death would have certainly been quick and painless.

I checked the radar. Only two Sorthak remained, I fired up the tactical display and noticed that one of them was in no better shape then Schneider's bomber had been in before he sacrificed himself. The other appeared to have stopped completely; the explosion must have damaged his engines.

The first of the remaining Sorthak's wasn't foolhardy enough to continue the chase. The dot on the radar soon moved back towards the orange swarm behind us.

"He's done it." Python, (the second Thunderbolt pilot,) was almost shouting, "They're falling back." "And they can't reach us before we reach the field." I added, my voice betraying a weariness that had abruptly fallen upon me. I pushed it away as best as I could. We weren't out of the woods yet; not nearly.
"Don't get careless," Tieschowitz added, "the cat's got careless and look what's happened to them already."

He was right. We'd been hopelessly outnumbered, and we'd had a H'varkann to content with, and on top of that we'd already taken out thirteen enemy fighters and severely damaged four more. Not bad.

"I'm reading new hostile contacts," Adish uttered, relief at the Sorthaks' defeat evident in his voice, "Darkets, eight of them."
"They just don't learn do they?" Python added.
"We're almost at the field," Tieschowitz said, "maintain radio silence, and deactivate all systems except engines, radar, shields and life support once we get inside the field."

Now came the hard part, or the easy part, depending on how fate favoured us in the field.

Eleven minutes later

In the course of my career I had noticed two different types of asteroid field. Some were largely empty and allowed plenty of room for ships to manoeuvre and after burn without too much risk of collision just so long as you employed a little common sense.

The second type of asteroid field was so densely packed that the space dust has a hard time moving through it. This field fell into the latter category.

This did have its good points, the density of the field made it all the more difficult for the Kilrathi to locate us, if things kept going as they did we might be able to sneak through the field and run back to the Hermes. Unfortunately, the density of the field also resulted on restrictions on our speed. We were travelling at 120kps, at this speed the H'varkann may very well reach the Hermes and Brimstone 2 first.

Actually that was unlikely, the Kilrathi would assemble their fleet first, maybe send in a few patrols to determine or perhaps weaken our defences. They wouldn't strike for a day or two at least.

I could still see the H'varkann. By now it was a tiny blotch in the corner of my rear view display. I couldn't tell exactly how far away it was, but I knew that any other ship in both the Confederation and Kilrathi fleets would be invisible at this distance.

Even if we were able to warn the Hermes, there was little they'd be able to do about that abomination except run away from it. We didn't stand a chance against it.

But we couldn't keep running.

Retreating only pushed us back further into a corner. The Kilrathi weren't overextending themselves, and they weren't going to. We needed to draw the line somewhere.

Desperation and defeat had stared us in the face twice before, once before the now legendary mission of the TCS Tarawa, again at the battle of Earth. Now the Confederation was feeling the noose tightening around its neck for a third time. We were falling back on all fronts, and losing many more ships then the Kilrathi. We needed to…

I shook the thoughts away. I'd had this train of thought several times before and no good had ever come out of it. Besides, an asteroid field wasn't a good place for a daydream.

I pulled my ship underneath a large piece of rock that lay in my path, smaller fragments impacted on my shields, not doing any considerable damage. I didn't know how long we'd be in this field, the majority of our navigational equipment had been deactivated to lower our electronic emissions. All we had to go on was one white crosshair telling us what direction to fly.

It was a shame we couldn't rely on autopilot in a field of this density. I could use a rest after the overly eventful sprint into this field. But that wasn't an option. Maybe colonel Trent would give us some time off after we got back.

You humans are laughable creatures, shying away from every challenge fate gives you.

Along with the memory of Z'ratmak's assessment of humanity, I could almost see the stern look of disapproval on his face at my desire to be out of the firing line for a while.

Z'ratmak thrives on hurling himself into danger with barely any regard for his own wellbeing. More then one marine under his command had been known to describe him with such adjectives as 'insane', 'suicidal'. To him, the quality of one's life depended on how many adrenaline rushes had been crammed into it. I'm sure he'd love this situation; if he were a pilot that is.

I shook this thought away as well and silently cursed myself for my complacency.

I looked ahead, taking in the view of endless grey rocks. There seemed to be no end to the asteroid field.

Three hours later

For what seemed like hours, we just sat there, staring at it.

They shouldn't have been able to see us. We were still in the field. The end was now in sight, however the inconveniently placed Kilrathi light destroyer and its two Vaktoth escorts. No doubt they'd been placed there so as to prevent our escaping out of the field and warning the Hermes, or failing that, they could simply radio our position to the rest of the Cats and the chase could start all over again.

After a few more seconds of staring, Tieschowitz's face appeared on the com screen.
"Listen up people," he said in a rushed voice, "We don't have a lot of time before the fur balls lock down on this transmission. Adish, you and I will both launch a torpedo at the destroyer. Python and Torrent take out the escorts and do it quickly. If we're quick we might just blast through without the rest of the beasts noticing us. Let's go.

With that he closed the com channel and increased his thrust to maximum. That was a risky thing to do considering we were still in the asteroid field, but what choice did we have?

I powered up all of my ship's systems, increased power to my engines and sped out of the field. Well, I guess sped isn't a suitable choice of words really.
"Python, take the one on the left, I've got the other one."
"Right."

I fired all of my remaining image recognition missiles at the Vaktoth. The pilot didn't react at once, maybe he was surprised to see us.

When he did react, it was with experience that he dodged the first missile. He deployed a decoy and strafed to the left. The first missile sailed gracefully into the decoy and exploded.

The second two fared better. The pilot didn't even have time to scream.
"Got one!" I shouted.

I pulled up the second Vaktoth on my targeting display and moved after it. Judging by the way it was moving it seemed that Python had the same idea that I did, although his missiles looked to have met with less success.

I noticed gunfire in the distance that seemed to be coming from a Thunderbolt; it was somewhat difficult to tell at the distance that seemed to have grown between our two ships very quickly.

As I continued to move at an agonisingly slow pace towards the dogfight, I heard a pained Kilrathi voice on the radio. There was no accompanying face.
"My clan shall avenge my…"

The voice was cut off as the area was lit up by the exploding destroyer.

Almost involuntarily, I let out a celebratory cheer. Even if we met our death here, that destroyer kill strengthen my belief that we'd taken enough of them with us.
"The second Vaktoth is down." Python said after a few more seconds, "Killed the fur brained fool as he was gawping at the toasted cap ship."
"Great," Tieschowitz replied, "Let's move it people, we don't know if they got word of our position off or not. Resume radio silence."

I quickly set my speed to full and re-entered formation with the others.

Four hours later

All of us except Tieschowitz actually laughed with sudden joy when the Hermes appeared on our radar. When the H'varkann had come through the jump hole, I'd never expected to see her again.

Jake Coben's face appeared on our com screens before we could request landing clearance.
"Holy shit, what happened to you guys out there?"
"We'll explain when we get onboard." Tieschowitz replied, his voice echoing all our desires to get out of the cockpits.
"Fine, you've got clearance as soon as the two Arrows from Delta wing are onboard." He paused and shuffled closer to the com screen, "They're here aren't they."

I can only assume that Tieschowitz nodded in response because Coben's face took on an abrupt look of shock.
"Shit." He murmured to himself. After a few more seconds he closed the channel.

After a few seconds the two Arrows disappeared from sight.
"Good work everyone." Tieschowitz said, already accelerating towards the carrier. "Me and Torrent took the most damage so we'll head in first."

I increased my speed and headed for the launch bay. Enjoying the fact that for the moment, the threat of an upcoming Kilrathi attack was drowned out by my own relief at being back alive.

I knew this feeling wouldn't last long, especially considering three pilots who hadn't been so lucky. Triumph rarely went untainted in this war.

To be continued.