Wing Commander #07 False Color

by William R. Forstchen

  That earned Bondarevsky a look from the sergeant. Evidently that was what it took to break through their famous iron reserve—the word that one of Terra's naval heroes was thinking of joining the renegades of Landreich.

  "Nothing's been signed yet, Mr. Harper," Bondarevsky told him. "But Admiral Richards seemed to think it was something I should look into . . . and I have to admit the offer is tempting." He gestured toward Sparks. "This is Lieutenant McCullough. She's also interested in a new career."

  "Is that young Bondarevsky?" The voice was as strong and well-modulated as Bondarevsky remembered it, and he turned to see the thin form of Admiral Vance Richards striding towards him from the open security door. Unlike Harper, he wore a full-dress uniform that was everything a senior officer of an interstellar power deserved, dazzling silver trim against midnight black with a rack of decorations, from both Terra and the Landreich covering his breast. But the man inside the uniform hadn't changed much in the last four years, since he'd served as Bondarevsky's CO in the campaign that culminated at the Battle of Earth. If the last wisps of hair on his nearly bald head were a little bit thinner, and his gait was a little slower, he still had the fire in his eyes that had always marked him out from those around him. "It's good to see you again. From the reply you sent last month, I wasn't sure you'd be here."

  "Back then I wasn't sure myself, Admiral," Bondarevsky told him. "But I've had time to think about your offer, sir. And it's a hell of a lot better than signing on a merchant ship or piloting shuttles for PanSystem Passenger Service."

  Vance extended a long, slender hand. For a moment Bondarevsky hesitated to take it. He was embarrassed by his bionic arm, which didn't quite look or feel as natural as advertised, and he still had to concentrate hard to use it for fine manipulation. But after a moment he took the Admiral's hand in his plastilimb fingers and carefully shook it. The sensors in his palm and fingertips told him that Vance had lost none of his unexpected strong grip since the last time they'd seen one another.

  The Admiral met his eyes with a serious look. "I heard about what happened on Coventry. It must have been hell when they told you about the arm."

  "Yes, sir," he said, dropping into a formal military tone to hide the emotion those words triggered inside him. "Yes, sir, it was."

  Richards looked away. "I know, Jason. Believe me, I know. Everyone lost somebody to that damned war."

  In the awkward pause that followed Bondarevsky found himself wondering what the Admiral was thinking about from his own mysterious past. Vance Richards had been the chief of Naval Intelligence for the entire Confederation before taking "retirement" to head up the secret mission that had put Confed ships, including Bondarevsky's old carrier, under the command of the Landreich during the months leading up to the Battle of Earth. His life had been shrouded in secrecy for years, and he never talked about himself. But the bleak tone of his voice hinted at losses of his own.

  "If I might be reminding' you, Admiral," Aengus Harper broke the mood with a light tone, "it's late for your appointment you are. And you'll have to be seeing that flock of VIPs afterward."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant," Richards said with a faint smile. "And to think I invested all that money in a portable computer secretary."

  "I'll not delay you, Admiral," Bondarevsky said. "I assume we'll get a chance to see you on the ship later?"

  Richards shook his head. "I'd like it if you'd join me, Jason," he said. "I think you'll be interested in my . . . appointment. Someone you haven't seen for a while, I'd imagine."

  "As you wish, Admiral," Bondarevsky responded.

  "You'll have to get out of practice with all the formalities, lad, if you're going to join the Landreich. Don't forget, our President's a wanted mutineer and our fleet would likely lose an engagement with a squadron of target drones. Isn't that what you told me, back when we first got a look at Kruger's little corner of the frontier?"

  "Things change, Admiral," Bondarevsky said with a grin.

  "Your luggage, sir?" Harper asked before he could turn away. "So I can see to getting it stowed while you hobnob with the great?"

  Bondarevsky indicated the kitbag he'd set down beside the desk while waiting for the security doors to open. "It's all yours, Lieutenant," he said. "Sparks, if you could go with Mr. Harper, I'm sure you can get us settled in by the time I get back."

  "Aye aye, skipper," Sparks responded. "I'll take care of things for you.

  "Just this, sir?" Harper asked, raising a sardonic eyebrow as he took the kitbag. "You cut your ties with the Earth an' all, heading out for a new life on the frontier, and all you care to take is a single kitbag? They say the Spirit urges us to travel light, sir, but I'm thinking this is a mite extreme."

  Bondarevsky shrugged. "Coventry took a direct hit in Officer's Country during the battle, and there wasn't much left of my personal effects. Since then . . . who has the urge to gather a lot of junk, when you've lived your whole life out of a flight deck locker?"

  'Well, sir," Harper said, studying him with an appraising eye, " 'tis plain you'll be fitting in with the rest of us poor but honest colonials. Some of the lads were afraid you'd turn out to be a pompous twit, all rules and regulations and such-like debs."

  That made Richards smile more broadly, despite the mild profanity. "Debs"—from debris—was one of those swear words that had entered the lexicon as a result of the war. Most Confederation officers maintained an official air of disapproval when it came to swearing among their juniors . . . but Richards had been out on the frontier for years now, and evidently had cultivated a more relaxed attitude in the interim. "Well, Lieutenant, I'm glad our new recruit has your full approval. I'll leave you to your duties."

  "Aye aye, sir," Harper told him, but the gleam in his eye was mocking.

  As they walked together down the concourse Bondarevsky heard the older man chuckling. "Pity young Mr. Harper didn't know you when you had Tarawa," he said. "Maybe he would have had a . . . less charitable view of you back then."

  "Implying I was a pompous twit, Admiral?"

  "Not precisely. But I can recall that you weren't exactly impressed with the way old Kruger ran things. And you didn't hesitate to let him hear about it. He still talks about you, you know."

  "I said what I had to say, sir," Bondarevsky told the admiral, bristling.

  "That, my dear Jason, is exactly why he still talks about you," Richards said. "And why you're still just about the only Confed officer I've ever heard him speak of with anything remotely like approval." He paused. "I've seen the young lady before, I'm sure, but I can't place her."

  "One of my officers on Coventry, sir," Bondarevsky said. "Before that she was a petty officer crew chief on Tarawa. You probably remember her from back then."

  "And she wants to join the FRLN too?" The admiral raised an eyebrow. Bondarevsky remembered that he had a reputation for frowning on loose morals in the people under his command, a legacy of long service in Intelligence where concern over security gave rise to a strong desire to avoid scandal of any sort among sensitive personnel. Was Richards afraid there was some improper relationship between him and Sparks?

  The thought made him want to smile. "She's a topnotch techie, Admiral," he said quietly. "And I owe her more than I could ever pay back. I figured Kruger's crew could find a place for her holding together some of those old tubs of theirs."

  Richards shrugged. "Oh, I'm sure of that. Just so long as there aren't any . . . entanglements. Things are going to be tricky enough without introducing any extra distractions."

  "I can assure you, Admiral, that entanglements are about the last thing I'd want right now, myself. You can count on my full attention, sir. But if you have any doubts, I'll tell her I didn't have any authority to suggest she sign on with the Republic."

  "That won't be necessary, Jason," Richards said. "Even if you were involved with her . . sometimes my newfound casual Landreich face slips and I revert to type. You'll have to put up with it sometimes, I'm afraid, if you're going to be
working with me again."

  The admiral changed the subject to ask for details about the Behemoth fighting and Coventry's brush with the Kilrathi. From long experience of Richards and his secretive ways Bondarevsky didn't ask where they were going or who they were supposed to meet. Instead he answered the older man's questions, and the talk shifted to postwar politics and the question of defense policy as they continued to walk through the long, empty corridors. It was no surprise that Richards took a dim view of the situation that had developed in the three months since the signing of the peace treaty.

  "I'm telling you, Jason, the Confed government won the war and then turned right around and lost the peace," Richards said angrily. "Instead of making sure the Cats finally got the idea of what it really means to surrender, those dumb bastards pulled back at the last minute and left so damned many loopholes I wouldn't be surprised to find they were right back where they started in another ten or twenty years."

  "Admiral?" Bondarevsky fixed him with a surprised look. "Everything I heard about the treaty sounded

  pretty damned good." He hesitated. "And if we'd made the terms any harsher we might have ended up with another Versailles."

  "Twentieth Century, right? You were always the history buff."

  "Yes, sir," he answered. "World War One. The Allies toppled the Germans and then imposed an impossible

  peace settlement on them. Twenty years later they were

  at war again, and one of the big factors was the German anger over the way they'd been treated. When the

  Second World War ended, treaty terms to Germany and Japan were a lot less restrictive, and both powers evolved into stable allies for the Western powers."

  "Yeah," Richards said. "I've studied the period too, lately. Max Kruger likes history as well, you know. Well, there's a big difference. After World War Two the Allies moved in on the Axis powers. Occupation. Foreign aid. Enforced development of Western-style democracies.

  But the Confederation didn't do that with the Kilrathi, Jason. We wiped out their leadership and damn near destroyed their entire culture when we took out Kilrah with the Temblor Bomb. But we didn't offer anything constructive to replace what they lost. Since the end of the war the Kilrathi clans have been allowed to do pretty much whatever they please, and what a hell of a lot of them please involves trying to put together petty clan-run states that don't care about the treaty at all. There've been raids all along the frontier, and the Confederation doesn't do a damn thing about them. That's my real reason for being here, you know. Max Kruger wants me to deliver another protest to the Confed government over the latest string of Kilrathi raids across the Landreich border. Not that it'll do a damn bit of good."

  "You're sure the government won't act?"

  "We've got our sources, Jason. Fact is, the level of collective guilt inside the government is so damned high right now that I doubt they'd stop a Kilrathi fleet if it raided Terra right now."

  "Guilt, sir?"

  Richards nodded. "Over using the Temblor Bomb. Think about it, Jason. It wasn't quite genocide-blowing up one planet isn't going to wipe out a star-faring race as widespread as the Kilrathi, after all—but any way you look at it we took out a hell of a lot of innocent civilians just to get rid of Thrakhath and his doddering grandfather. And the effect on the Kilrathi culture . . . I've seen copies of some of the studies made when the strategy of going after Kilrah was first hatched, and most of them predicted the Kilrathi race wouldn't be able to weather losing their cultural center nearly as well as they've managed. Even so, the effects are serious. We took out their Emperor, their homeworld, their religious and cultural shrines, most of their major clan leaders and everything they recognized as holding their civilization together. What we've got left out there are a bunch of angry warriors who are likely to become barbarians of a sort . . . but barbarians who still have plenty of spaceships and high-tech weapons to use when they decide it's time for revenge." Richards stopped and looked at Jason with bleak eyes. "But what the Confed leaders are seeing doesn't go that far. They're just looking at the short-term effects. And they're bending over backwards to not seem to be kicking the Kilrathi while they're down. Did you notice how quickly the media started calling the peace accord the 'Treaty of Ko-bar Yagar'? It was originally announced as the Treaty of Torgo. That's their name for the system, even though they only captured it from us near the end of the war. Originally they were supposed to be out of there in six months, but rumor has it they've been given an indefinite extension on pulling out. And meantime we use their nomenclature 'to preserve the dignity of the Kilrathi people.— He gave an undignified snort.

  "You're starting to sound a lot like President Kruger, Admiral," Bondarevsky commented. "You haven't turned against the Confederation entirely, have you?" Inwardly he couldn't help but feel disturbed by the old spymaster's words. They dovetailed with his own reservations about the direction the Confederation had taken since the war . . . and he respected Vance Richards too much to simply dismiss the man's opinion.

  "There's plenty who'd say that's exactly what I've done, Jason," the old man said softly. Every day of his sixty-five-plus years was evident in his tired voice. "But the fact is, I'm still doing the same job I was doing when we took the Free Corps out to the Landreich. The best hope for old Terra is a strong defense on the frontiers, especially now when the Confederation seems determined to drop the ball. Out there in the Landreich Max Kruger's trying to hold the line, and I figure if I can help him, I'm still doing my part for Earth as well." He fixed Bondarevsky with a steely eye, and all at once seemed to gather his old energy again. "What about you? You had your doubts about joining us, but you showed up here anyway. What kind of a life do you want to lead, now that the war is over?"

  "Admiral, I respect you too much to lie to you," Bondarevsky said slowly. "For a while all I wanted was to see the war over, but once it was done with I found out I don't really know what to do with my life. Maybe if Svetlana had made it . . ." He pushed aside that memory, too. "So I decided to take you up on your offer of a job in the Landreich because it looked like the closest thing to the old life I was likely to find. Now . . . I don't know what to think any more. To hear you talk, the war might as well not be over at all. But I can't say if my motive is selfish, or if I can share the vision you're laying out, or what. If you're looking for sincere converts, maybe I'm not your man after all."

  Richards smiled. "I'm too cynical to want converts, my boy. I'd rather put my faith in enlightened self-interest. It pays better dividends in the long run. I don't care about your motives, as long as you're willing to get back out there where you belong and make sure the Kilrathi don't cross the frontier again."

  They had reached the door of one of the base VIP lounges, and Richards gestured for Bondarevsky to precede him into the large, opulent room. Like so much else in Moonbase Tycho it was almost empty, and the figure seated at the table near the center of the room caught his eye immediately. A stocky man with a shock of graying hair and the aquiline features of a born aristocrat, the figure wore the dress uniform of a Confederation rear-admiral and had decorations every bit as impressive as the ones Richards wore. He stepped forward with a welcoming smile on his face, extending his hand, his words coming in the clipped British accent Bondarevsky remembered so well.

  "Vance! Good to see you again, after all this time. You still like the rustic life on the frontier?" Then he turned to Bondarevsky with an equally hearty greeting. "And you, my boy. I'm glad to see you, too."

  Again he had to force himself to take the other man's hand in his bionic grip. "It's . . . good to see you again, Admiral," he said, trying to hide his surprise.

  He hadn't thought to see Rear Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn again, certainly not at a Confederation military base. Not Tolwyn, the man who had come so close to losing the war . . . the man whose Behemoth project had shattered a Terran squadron and cost Bondarevsky his command and his arm.

  The man whose court-martial had been a sensation across the Co
nfederation, and whose acquittal had aroused indignation on nearly every world in the human sphere.

  CHAPTER 2

  "Fang and claw, sharp eyes and alert ears and the nose of a hunter, these are the tools of the Ideal Warrior, but they are as nothing without the spirit and heart of a fighter"

  from the Fifth Codex

  10:23:05

  VIP Lounge, Moonbase Tycho

  Luna, Terra System

  1310 hours (CST), 2670.275

  Jason Bondarevsky studied Admiral Tolwyn as they all took seats around the table and punched in their drink orders on the small keypads in front of them. Over the years Bondarevsky had come to regard Tolwyn as one of his most powerful navy patrons, a man willing to recommend him for promotions and important assignments and generally helping along his career. Ever since his attack on Kilrah and the mission Tolwyn had staged against orders to pull him out Jason felt as if his very life was owed to the Admiral and it was debt he would never forget. He'd always looked up to the man, even when one or another of the admiral's schemes was putting him squarely in the line of fire somewhere out on the Kilrathi frontier. But, like most of the rest of the Confederation, he'd been stunned to find Tolwyn masterminding the Behemoth project. And when it was all over, the collapse of the plan and the high cost Bondarevsky had personally paid had certainly colored his opinion of the man who'd been so important to him for so many years.

  "So, Vance," Tolwyn was saying, "how was the trip in?"

  "The usual," Richards told him with a grimace. "When I retired from Intelligence I was used to quarters you could stand up in. Ever since I got out to that benighted frontier all I ever get to travel on is destroyers or cruisers, and they've got just about enough room to think about swinging a pet cat . . . but only if you want to risk banging your head when you think it."

  Bondarevsky joined in the laugh, but he could still remember how good it felt to have a ship, any ship, around him. He'd loved the little Coventry, fast, responsive, and maneuverable despite the minor inconveniences of her small size.