No pilot liked cleaning up an ambush, primarily because they couldn't be wholly certain that they were going to be hit a second time. If the mothership was attacked with a second group, there would be hell to pay, given that only two fighter squadrons were up and running. Arrow Squadron, which was comprised of twelve scout craft, had scrambled and launched almost immediately; Arrow-class scouts were one of two military craft that the mothership carried, and they were noted for superior speed and maneouvribility. However, they carried a single mass driver cannon, and so were not the best combat ship. The workers in the foundry watched as the twelve scouts looped through the void and engaged the attacking fighters.

Arban Ferriil, a young man of about twenty-six, stared out into space from the hangar deck. His Blade-class interceptor sat in its launch rack behind him as the technicians ran the last pre-flight checks. Soon, he would be through the thin membrane of electricity that contained the atmosphere and out in the fight. There were pinpoint flashes of explosions as the Arrows engaged the enemy. "I'm coming," he said to the pilots out there, and hoisted himself up into the cockpit. The on-board computer detected his presence and powered up the heads-up display; a holographic options menu appeared in front of him, and he touched the green circle that denoted the ignition sequence. The drive systems behind him flared to life.

"All Blades, report in."

That was Juriin Nabaal, Blade Lead. She was a hot pilot, and Arban implicitly trusted her. As the servo mechanisms of the launch rack kicked in and aligned the twelve fighters with the hangar entrance, he waited until it was his turn to report in. "Blade Six, ready to fly," he said through his helmet mike.

"This is Fleet Command," a new voice, this time Karan Sjet's, said over the comm channel. "Blade Squadron, you are cleared for launch."

A series of electromagnetic accelerators fired, and the twelve interceptors were suddenly rocketing out into space. Inertial dampeners were killing the g-forces, but Arban always dialled the setting down a fraction in order to get a better feel of his fighter as it moved in the vacuum. He glanced at his primary monitor the instant he was out of the hangar. There were thirteen or fourteen enemy contacts out there, with a few more on the long-range scans. He queried the computer, and it identified two larger ships moving in; they appeared to be corvettes of some form. They bore the same ugly architecture as the fighters, except on a larger scale, studded with warty protrusions that could only be gun turrets. Arban flicked the flight stick and headed in towards the battle, keying the comm with one finger. "Blade Lead, we've got contacts. Two corvettes and fourteen fighters heading towards the mothership."

Juriin's voice came back cool and calm. "I copy, Six. Engage the fighters. The Arrows will move in on the corvettes."

Arban hit the throttle, then shunted power to the shields. The interceptor rose like a ghost of the Khar-Selim from its grave and came about to point its nose towards the fighter cloud. As the other members of his squadron pulled up on his left and right, he punched the engines full forward and launched himself into the fight.

A smile blossomed on his face. Any sane Kharakid would find hurtling along in a fragile craft of metal and ferroceramics to be stupid, suicidal, or a combination of both. Pushing that same craft into battle merely compounded the danger in the situation, and he knew it. By the same token, very few experiences in his life compared to flying a fighter, because that was a point where civilisation demanded that he harness his animal nature and employ it against a more dangerous prey. Without being physically, mentally, and mechanically at his best, he would die, and might even cause the death of his teammates. But he had no intention of letting that happened.

Using the lateral thrust controls, he moved into a slide behind his first victim. The crosshairs on his heads-up display instantly locked onto the boxy ship in front of him. A steady beep from the targeting computer let him know that he had a lock, and the square surrounding the ship went red, then the tone went constant. Showtime. Arban hit the trigger and the twin mass driver cannons set into the prow of his ship lit up with projectile fury. Thousands of ultra-hardened metal/ceramic bolts crossed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, puncturing the hull and splitting the engine assembly wide open. Roiling fire spewed out and engulfed the enemy ship before the pilot knew what was going on.

"Pick your targets carefully," Juriin cautioned as he moved away from the spreading debris cloud. "They're started to get cranky out there."

"I copy," Arban replied.

He kicked his interceptor up on the port side and hauled back on the stick. Chopping power to the engine, he tightened the circle, then rolled out to the right as one of the fighters started a long, serpentine turn. He switched over from mass drivers to missiles – unlike the Arrows, interceptor fighters carried six torpedoes for use against heavily-armed targets. Pilots often saw it as overkill when used against fighters, as had been done before in war games, but Ferriil saw it as an expedient way of lowering the odds. The targeting computer picked out a pair of fighters; Arban goosed the throttle and lined up his first shot. The crosshairs went blood-red, and he thumbed the button. A streak of scarlet fire shot out from the belly of the Blade fighter and jammed itself right up the exhaust port of the enemy fighter, actually punching through the cockpit before detonating. The second missile got similar results.

When the interceptor spun back towards the fight, Arban saw that the amount of enemy fighters had dwindled significantly. "Lead, this is Six," he reported. "Let us take the corvettes. We've got the firepower. The Arrows can clean up the remaining fighters."

"Too late, Six. The Arrows shot down one corvette and rammed the other. Let's get ready to go home -- " The transmission blurred for a second, then a new announcement filled the earpiece in his helmet. "Attention all fighters, this is Fleet Command. Incoming carrier-class vessel. It seems to be refuelling, repairing, and constructing fighters. All fighters, engage the carrier and destroy it."

"Looks like we've got our orders, Lead."

"The Arrows are going to cover us while we make attack runs. We'll take down the shields, then use torps to make the kill."

"I copy."

The carrier was not terribly far away from the fighter cloud, so it took Arban only seconds to snap his interceptor around and fly in towards his target. In his peripheral vision, he saw Blade Nine, a Sjet man by the name of Hirar, transform a tailing fighter into a golden gout of flame. Ferriil thanked him by comm before turning his full attention to the carrier before him. It was small for a carrier vessel, and consisted mainly of a long, segmented maintenance and hangar bay strapped to a ventral engine. Arban's instinct for ship design told him that it was probably an unwieldy ship to manoeuvre, particularly in combat, but it seemed well-armed; point-defence turrets had already taken out both one Arrow and one Blade, and if they didn't go on the evasive quick enough, the rest of his squadron, too. Through the cockpit canopy, he could see the far-off glimmer of the sun and the curve of the mothership, hovering in a dramatic silhouette against it. Off to the starboard, the carrier crouched like a malignant beetle. The turrets along its spine and collar fired out, trying to track the Blades heading inwards, but the shots were no real danger to the fighters and their superb pilots. Juriin and Hirar Sjet were old hands at piloting, and knew how to pull the teeth of such vessels. As long as the Arrows kept the fighters busy, the carrier had no chance.

The first slashing attacks came from Juriin Nabaal. She rolled through and opened fire on the forward shields. Coming from the other direction was Hirar, who strafed the dorsal shields with projectile hell. Juriin's concentrated attack seemed to make little difference, until another Blade pilot loosed a torpedo into the aft shielding. It flared and collapsed under the explosion. Hirar's second burst melted a dorsal turret clean away while the other pilot, Blade Three, nibbled away at the ship's belly vector jets. The carrier was done, though Arban had no doubts it would take a couple more passes before it was truly destroyed.

"Blade Six to Fleet Command," he said through the comm. "The carrier is pretty much dead in the water. Destroy or abandon?"

"This is Fleet Command. Intelligence reports that the carrier may leave the system and call for reinforcements. Destroy, repeat, destroy the carrier."

"Acknowledged."

He followed Juriin up and around the back, where the vulnerable engine ports glowed a fiery reddish-pink. The Arrows seemed to have the fighters cleaned up, given that the scouts were faster and more heavily-armed than their squared-off opponents. They also seemed to lack the discipline of a military unit like Blade Squadron. Arban settled into an attack run and began a long stride in towards the engines. He opened fire with the mass drivers first, then toggled to missiles and lined up a double hit. A quick tone-lock informed him that the carrier's engines, which were immobile targets anyway, were open and vulnerable. The interceptor closed at rapid speed. Arban let the gap narrow to about fifty metres, then hit the trigger and veered to the right. The two missiles outgunned him and slammed into the engine assembly before detonating. They still had a lot of fresh kinetic energy built up, and they managed to worm their way deep into the thrusters to maximise destruction. Lights across the carrier's hull flickered on and off as power fluctuations began to play havoc with the ship's systems. Hirar and Juriin nailed the hangar and the engines once more, and as Arban loped away into open space once more, the carrier collapsed in on itself and fire consumed it from within. Long, insanely-distorted fingers of liquefied metal stretched out into the cosmos before freezing solid.

"Target destroyed," Arban reported gleefully. "Entering holding pattern."

The heads-up display was bordered with green, indicating no more active hostiles. He thumbed the comm channel to the Arrow frequency and hailed the lead ship. "Nice job there, Arrows. Thanks for keeping us alive and flying."

"Always happy to save your tails, bomb jockey. See you back at base."

Arban Ferriil locked the interceptor's navigation computer onto the mothership's hangar bay and transmitted the appropriate docking codes. They had saved the mothership, but the fact that there were other beings out here frightened him a little. They had been malevolent to the point of destroying an unarmed support craft like the Khar-Selim with little provocation; would they treat the mothership and its fleet in a similar manner?

He found that they probably would.