Wing Commander #07 False Color

by William R. Forstchen

  "Never tried," Graham said. "Nobody wanted to take the risk."

  "Risk?"

  "Yeah. Look, the Cats rigged that carrier to blow. Computer self-destruct system. As far as Druvakhthat's the Cadre Computer Officer—could tell, the computer went off-line a few seconds before detonation. There's a good chance that the destruct command will kick in if the computer net reboots, so we've been staying as far away from the power and computer systems as possible. Even then, it's scary, let me tell you. You don't know what might make some back-up system kick in and start the countdown up right at the point where the computers crashed. Hell, didn't you guys have that figured out yet? You were on board him."

  "You mean that thing is ready to blow?" Bondarevsky surged to his feet, hastening across the wardroom to the intercom terminal near the door. He stabbed at the keyboard, entering the code combination with savage haste. A face appeared on the screen.

  "Comm Duty Officer," the man said, sounding bored. "This is Bondarevsky," he said. "Get me a channel to Admiral Richards on the derelict, pronto."

  "Sir, all communications off ship have to be approved by Captain Steiger."

  "Damn it, man, I need that channel now! The salvage team . . ."

  "Wait one, sir, while I see if the Captain can talk to you." The screen went blank, leaving Bondarevsky to curse furiously. Of course a transport ship that carried thousands of people at a time would require special regulations to handle access to the commlinks. Otherwise the outgoing traffic would be swamped with messages every time the ship passed a planet where some of the passengers had family or friends. They'd need to be especially strict given the casual attitude of the Landreichers to most matters of discipline. But this wasn't the time for a bureaucratic screw-up!

  Karga was a ticking time bomb, and if the survey crew tried to bring the mains on-line or bring the computer network back up as part of the damage assessment, the whole carrier could go up in one massive chain reaction.

  He might already be too late. . . .

  Combat Information Center, ex-KIS Karga

  Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

  1838 hours (CST)

  Geoff Tolwyn was annoyed.

  He had strapped himself into the one seat that had somehow remained intact in the Karga's Combat Information Center, the combat bridge where the Kilrathi captain would have been stationed when he took the supercarrier into battle. It had taken heavy damage in that last fight, evidently from a hit to the adjacent section by a Confederation missile that had blasted through the bulkhead where the main sensor displays were mounted and sent a deadly hail of fragments across the compartment. There were bodies everywhere, including the Kilrathi captain's, and it was clear that none of them had lived long enough to suffer explosive decompression when the oxygen had rushed through the ruptured hull.

  That hit had been devastating. Probably the loss of the fighting bridge had played a large part in the death of the Karga, he thought, feeling bitter at the Confederation's success. CIC was an almost total write-off, and from all accounts so were the navigation bridge and several other crucial sections of the carrier. The prospects of getting her back into commission again weren't looking good. Richards had already started talking as if the failure of the Goliath Project was a foregone conclusion

  Now Tolwyn watched his experts working at one of the few reasonably undamaged panels with a black scowl on his face. Damn it all! He raged inwardly. They had to make Goliath work. The alternative was unthinkable.

  A spacesuited figure drifted through the rip in the bulkhead. Tolwyn recognized the markings on his suit. It was Diaz, who had left his team in Engineering to join the admiral in CIC.

  "What do you think?" Tolwyn asked him urgently. "Can we tap their computer? It looks like we're going to need to get the net back on-line if we're going to have any chance of doing a full damage assessment."

  "I think we can get access, at least to the ship's records," Diaz said, sounding abstracted. "That will give us schematics and maybe a picture of their damage control orders during the battle. I doubt we can get anything else yet, though. Certainly none of the automated repair systems, not until we get Engineering into some sort of shape. Even then . . . I don't know. It's not looking good."

  "How long?" Tolwyn insisted.

  "We'll try to reboot now, and see where it gets us. Even if it doesn't work the first time, we might get a better idea of what's needed just by watching how the system behaves."

  "Then let's get moving," Tolwyn said. "We've got to get something on this bloody boat working!"

  Diaz looked at him for a long moment. "Admiral, I hope you're not expecting miracles. My team's damned good, but they can't produce results to order if the ship is just too far gone to fix. And I believe that's what you'll find here. This carrier may not be salvageable. Period. No amount of wishing otherwise is going to make it so."

  "Just try it," Tolwyn growled. "Do what you can, and spare me the bloody lectures!"

  He tried to get a grip on his temper as the smaller man pushed off from the bulkhead and drifted over to the controls where the other technicians were hard at work. Tolwyn remembered how his temper had flared during the last stages of the Behemoth project, how he had pushed himself and everyone around him right up to the breaking point in his determination to finish the weapons platform and get it into service. Perhaps that had contributed to the disaster that had ended the operation before it had fairly begun. He had to regain something of his old equilibrium if he was going to avoid a repeat of those mistakes he'd made then. Was it almost a year now since Behemoth's short and inglorious career? It seemed like only a few days had gone by, sometimes . . . and like an eternity other times.

  "All right, people," Diaz was saying. Tolwyn knew he was speaking not only to his technicians, but for the benefit of a recording being made back on Independence of every step they took in the salvage process which would be reviewed later to look for mistakes or missed possibilities. "First computer reboot test. Report readiness by the numbers, please."

  "Ready on panel one," someone said.

  "Ready, panel two."

  "Ready on the power grid," another voice added.

  "All ready, Mr. Diaz," the team leader told his superior.

  "Good. Then let's get started. Power to the—"

  "Karga, Karga, this is Bondarevsky on the City of Cashel." Bondarevsky's voice was as close to panic as Tolwyn had ever heard it, and he had seen the man fighting horrific odds time and again during the war. "Karga, cease all salvage operations immediately! Repeat, cease all operations and respond to this call immediately!"

  "Hold test!" Diaz snapped. "What's going on here, Admiral?"

  "Let's find out," Tolwyn said. He switched comm frequencies to transmit by way of the relays aboard the shuffles that kept the survey team in contact with the rest of the battle group, the same channel they'd used earlier to monitor Babcock's encounter with the survivors. "Jason, this is Tolwyn. What the hell are you playing at?"

  "Admiral, I strongly recommend you get everyone off the Karga ASAP," Bondarevsky responded, sounding relieved. "I've just learned that the computer self-destruct system was activated aboard the carrier, and never shut down. A computer failure kept her from going up as planned, but there could still be the potential for activating the system again if you try to activate power or computer systems."

  "Self-destruct? Are you sure, Jason?" Tolwyn was torn between incredulity and relief. "If the computer went down, wouldn't that have purged the command from the system?"

  "Not according to Commander Graham, sir," Bondarevsky replied. "He worked closely with a Kilrathi engineer scavenging the carrier for parts and supplies. The Cats evidently back up their destruct system very thoroughly. Once the command is entered, it is embedded in the very deepest layers of the net. Without a deactivation code, there's no way to be sure of taking it out again. So if the computers come back on-line, even for a few seconds, you could find yourself at the end of a self-destruct countdown."


  Tolwyn looked across the compartment at Diaz. "Does this sound right to you, Major?" he asked

  "Possible, certainly," Diaz responded. "But I couldn't tell you if it's true or not. We haven't worked on a Kilrathi ship before, Admiral. This is all new territory."

  "Wonderful," Tolwyn said caustically. "All right, Jason, we'll pull back until we can some up with a way to deal with this mess. Thanks for the call. You caught us in the nick of time."

  "I'm glad, Admiral," Bondarevsky said.

  "You copied that, Vance?" Tolwyn went on.

  "Yeah." Even over the commlink from the flag bridge Richards sounded like a death row inmate after a reprieve. "I'm not going to ask how close you were to that computer test you guys were talking about a little while back. Okay, general orders to all survey personnel. Shut it down, reboard shuttles, and head for home. We've got some serious thinking to do before we go any farther" He paused. "If we go any farther"

  Tolwyn let out a ragged breath. Another obstacle!

  But, by God, he'd figure a way around it. Because they needed this ship, and he was determined they would have it, come what may. He looked around the bridge and finally smiled. If the plan within the plan ever needed to be used, learning mastery of how a Kilrathi carrier operated just might come in handy some day.

  CHAPTER 8

  "The true Warrior perseveres against any and all obstacles, and gains the greater glory for his efforts

  from the Fourth Codex

  02:17:06

  Survivor's Camp

  Nargrast (Vaku VIIa), Vaku System

  0822 hours (CST), 2670.314

  The arrival of the first of City of Cashel's shuttles brought scores of figures, human and Kilrathi, surging out onto the frozen plain. Watching a video monitor, Bondarevsky felt his heart race a little faster at the sight of them all. The humans were thin, clad in ragged uniforms that didn't look able to cope with the cold weather. Even the Kilrathi looked less than healthy. All of Graham's descriptions had not prepared him for the realities of the situation.

  They had adapted to the climate as best they could, using the shattered wreck of the Frawqirg as the basis for makeshift shelters. But they had used dome-shaped survival modules scavenged from the ship to supplement the protection offered by the downed escort, so that they now had what amounted to a tiny village clustered around the twisted remains of the once-proud warship.

  "God, what a mess." The comment came from Commander Alexandra Travis. She had been assigned to the Karga's flight wing as a squadron commander, though as yet she didn't have any planes to command. She was an attractive woman, not very tall but with a face that reminded him of Svetlana's, framed by a helmet of short, lustrous dark hair, but behind her beauty was the heart and mind of a fighter. She had commanded a squadron of ground-based fighters prior to joining Goliath, and according to her files her squadron had consistently scored top honors in every exercise they'd taken part in. She had even turned down a job as an instructor at the Landreich's Fighter Training Center in order to stay on active duty.

  Today Travis and other members of the nascent Karga flight wing who had been available aboard the transport were Bondarevsky's chosen deputies for the difficult task of helping to organize the castaways and get them off of Nargrast. It should have been a job for the marines, but all the marines working with Bhaktadil's force aboard Karga, and Richards and Tolwyn had been adamant about not redeploying them now that they were already committed. So flight wing pilots, who were already under Bondarevsky's direct command anyway, made the best sense as his landing party for this mission.

  "You try scratching out a living in a garden spot like Nargrast, and see how good you look in nine months, Commander," Graham spoke up. He was struggling into a Landreich-issue parka.

  "No offense, sir," Travis said. "I meant it as a tribute . . . I don't see how anybody could survive in all that."

  "It was not easy," Mirrach lan Vrenes rumbled. His Confederation English was slightly accented, but easily understandable. His fellow Kilrathi, Dahl, knew little English and remained silent . . . an odd situation for a Communications Officer. Evidently, if Bondarevsky understood what he'd been told, Dahl was of lower birth than most Kilrathi officers, and had missed much of the basic education Cat nobles usually commanded—including a working knowledge of the chief language of their enemies. "I must admit that I was not in favor of working with humans at first . . . but I am sure we would not have survived without their help."

  Graham opened the shuttle's rear troop door. It was an assault craft, designed for moving marines in and out of danger in the quickest possible time, and the whole back end of the shuttle dropped to form a ramp capable of holding an armored personnel carrier. Outside a crowd of humans and Cats surged forward, noisy and excited. Stepping to the top of the ramp, Graham held up his hands and the mob fell silent.

  "We found a rescue ship," he said loudly. "They've come to take us home!"

  "Whose home, ape?" a large Kilrathi demanded, pushing to the front of the crowd. Even from inside the shuttle, Bondarevsky could see he was powerfully built, though the fur of his chest had been burned away and his skin was a criss-cross network of scar tissue. That he was still alive and kicking at all spoke volumes for the Cat's toughness, and Bondarevsky had to fight the urge to reach for his laser pistol. "Whose home, I say!"

  There was a muttered reaction from many of the Kilrathi in the crowd. But it died away as one of their number stepped out from among them and mounted the ramp to join Graham.

  "Kuraq," he said, facing the scarred Cat. He spoke in English, as the other had. Graham had said that they mostly used English in the castaway's camp these days, since more Kilrathi knew that language than Terrans knew their snarling tongue. There were several Cats translating what was said, though, for the benefit of those who didn't understand. "Listen to me, Kuraq. When we first agreed to cooperate with Graham, we pledged then that whichever side found us, we would all go willingly."

  The Cat paused. He was slimmer than most of his kindred, with an aura of authority Bondarevsky found startling in such a young officer. The human couldn't quite tell what his rank insignia meant, but thought they were the tabs of some kind of lieutenant. Yet he handled this crowd with an ease few admirals could have projected.

  Turning to look at Graham, the young officer went on. "We also agreed, Graham, that the side whose people came first would do everything possible for the rest of us."

  Graham nodded. "I haven't lost my grasp of it, Murragh," he said firmly. "We haven't had a chance to discuss it yet, but I'm sure Captain Bondarevsky and his people will treat the Kilrathi survivors with respect. I'll do everything in my power to make sure of that. Meantime, we've got a chance to get off this rock! I don't know about you Kilrathi, but I'd gladly live in a zoo if it was anywhere but Nargrast!"

  There was some cheering, then, mostly from humans but with a number of Cats adding the peculiar monotone chant that was their version of approbation.

  Graham led the young Kilrathi to Bondarevsky. "Captain, this is Murragh Cakg dai Nokhtak. He is the ranking nobleman from the Kilrathi half of our little community. Murragh, Captain Jason Bondarevsky, in the service of the Free Republic of Landreich Navy, formerly a Commodore in the Confederation fleet."

  Murragh extended a hand, a very human gesture. "I have heard of you, Captain," he said formally as Bondarevsky took it. "Your raid on Kilrah was most daring."

  "Er... thank you." Of all the things Bondarevsky had prepared for over the course of his life, meeting an urbane Kilrathi nobleman wasn't one of them. "Cakg dai Nokhtak. That was the name of the admiral commanding the Karga battle group, wasn't it?"

  "My uncle," the young noble said proudly.

  "I'm . . . sorry."

  Murragh frowned for a moment, then suddenly nodded. "Of course. Your human concept of the sadness of death. My uncle fought a long struggle with the God of the Running Death, Captain, and he killed himself to the greater glory of our hrai. There is no sadness i
n that."

  Beside them, Graham cleared his throat. "Could we save the philosophy lesson for later, 0 Great Prince," he asked with a sarcastic edge to his voice. "The natives are getting restless again out there, and these people have a lot of organizing to do."

  The evacuation of the refugees promised to be an organizational nightmare, and it took hours for Bondarevsky to get things running smoothly. City of Cashel had plenty of shuttles of all sizes and descriptions available to carry out the program, but lifting capacity was never one of the Landreich team's concerns.

  By far the most difficult thing was overcoming the transport captain's loudly voiced objections to taking on ninety-seven Kilrathi on top of the five-thousand plus crew destined for the Karga. It wasn't numbers that bothered him, it was the idea of carrying Cats at all. Captain Steiger didn't like Cats, and didn't see why they should bother taking them off Nargrast, since if they got what they deserved they would all end up getting spaced for war crimes against the Landreich anyway. Bondarevsky finally had to invoke the full authority of the Goliath Project, while hoping that Steiger wouldn't realize that the discovery of the self-destruct system aboard the supercarrier made it more unlikely than ever that Goliath would actually be anything more than a passing notion.

  Even after Steiger's cooperation was secured there were plenty of details to attend to. There were the sick and injured, for example. Nearly half the survivors were ill to some extent from the atmospheric overpressure and the bitter cold, and there were a number of Kilrathi still recovering from injuries received in the crash of the escort. Several members of both races were suffering from the lingering effects of radiation poisoning, as well. Juneau's Medical Officer, Bruno Abramowicz, and Karga's Cadre Surgeon Ghellen lan Dory, had done the best they could, but their medical supplies were running low and conditions had been declining steadily. So Bondarevsky had to arrange for the worst of the Sick Bay cases to be evacuated first. Up on the transport he drafted Karga's intended medical staff to work with City of Cashel's chief surgeon and the two castaway doctors. It created additional friction with Steiger, but in the end Bondarevsky made his decision stick.