Wing Commander #07 False Color

by William R. Forstchen

  When at length the CSTCC came on-line, Bondarevsky was ready to turn control of the section over to Commander Juliette Marchand, who had been designated as the carrier's Space Officer, more often referred to as "the Boss." Marchand, like Bondarevsky, came from the Confederation Navy. She had previously served aboard the TCS Ticonderoga, but had drawn a court-martial and dismissal from the service for willfully assaulting a superior—the Confederation Secretary of Defense, no less—after the man had interfered with her disciplinary decision with regard to a subordinate during an inspection of her carrier soon after the Battle of Earth. A small, dark-haired woman who tended to wear coveralls emblazoned with the motto "Boss," Marchand was nothing short of brilliant when it came to handling CSTCC operations, but she had a short fuse and a habit of regarding "her" bailiwick as a private fiefdom, not to be interfered with by anyone, even the Wing Commander who rated as her nominal superior.

  Under Marchand's iron hand, the starboard flight deck entered normal operation three weeks after the repair job began. But Bondarevsky's job had only just begun. Traffic Control could control the launch and recovery of small craft from the flight deck, but there was still plenty of work to be done. The three massive elevators that raised and lowered planes from the cavernous hangar deck beneath the starboard flight deck had to be overhauled before the carrier could pretend to be more than a platform for outside craft to land on. Unfortunately two of them had been seriously damaged, one by the hit that had crippled the approach deck, the other by Graham's scavenging missions, who had adapted some of the equipment that operated the aft elevator for use in repairing their planetside shuttles. By ruthlessly scrounging for parts from Graham's gear and the remains of the aft elevator they were able to make a start at fixing the forward one, but it was slow going at best and would leave them with just two working elevators on the starboard side. Bondarevsky knew from long experience that this would severely handicap flight operations in a combat situation, when a fast turn-around of planes was essential to maintaining the carrier's battle capabilities. He tried not to think too much about what they had deduced about Karga's last battle, since confirmed by Murragh. Limited flight operations had left the supercarrier unable to stand against a pair of cruisers which otherwise would never have been able to approach close enough to be so much as a nuisance.

  There was one bit of good news, though. In the process of getting the elevators and the hangar deck back into operation Sparks was able to pass on the report that many of the Kilrathi planes in the starboard side hangar deck were useable. Each flight deck had its own hangar area, so the starboard side represented roughly half of the complement of aerospace craft on board. Out of sixty-four fighters, bombers, and support craft allocated to the starboard side, thirty-seven were arrayed in their storage bays and appeared undamaged. There were also seven Darket light fighters and four Strakha stealth fighters on the surface of Nargrast, bringing the total up to forty-eight. The port side hangar hadn't produced nearly as many craft in any kind of shape to fly. Evidently these had taken greater losses during the raid on Landreich, and less than twenty were reported as spaceworthy. But other damaged craft would be useful sources of parts when they had to start getting the flight wing into active service.

  Bondarevsky was less sanguine when he considered the problems of training Landreich and ex-ConFleet pilots to use Kilrathi planes, and bumped a request for simulator programming and hardware repair up on the Flight Wing's priority list.

  Sparks was happy, at least, at the prospect of getting her hands dirty tearing down Kilrathi planes and then putting them back together so they could start flying. But Bondarevsky had to hold her back. By this time the starboard flight deck was starting to cycle regular flights on and off the carrier, and even the refueling and repair equipment was starting to come back into play. But with all this accomplished, they had to turn their attention to the port side and start all over again.

  In the meantime, work was proceeding in other parts of the ship. The flag bridge, which had never been seriously damaged, was back in operation on a limited basis early on, and as more and more of the shipwide systems came back on-line the role of the crew manning it expanded. This was the domain of Admiral Richards, who spent most of his time poring over the intelligence files extracted from the computer during the reprogramming process. With the addition of Murragh's experts he was no longer needed to explain every bit of Kilrathi technology to the salvage team or the carrier's crew, which meant he was under much less strain now. But he continued to drive himself to become as familiar as possible with the ship, and to keep himself fully updated on the strategic situation that faced the Landreich.

  Tolwyn, meanwhile, started in on CIC, cheerfully working side-by-side with the lowest-ranking technicians to tear down control systems and put them to rights. The Combat Information Center had been damaged by the same hit that had crippled Primary Flight Control, but there wasn't as much destruction here as on the navigation bridge four levels up and all the way forward on the carrier's superstructure. That section was given a few rough patches and then given up as a bad business, to be repaired later as time and resources allowed. A working CIC would allow Karga to maneuver and fight, and that was all Tolwyn wanted of her. Each day, Bondarevsky was impressed with the change in Tolwyn's bearing and attitude. The demands of making the repairs work had narrowed the admiral's world so that he no longer spent so much time worrying about conspiracies and the interplay of politics and war across the whole of human space. Instead he had a job to do, something that he could measure day by day, and the way he threw himself into it was a positive inspiration for the rest of the officers, crew, and outside specialists.

  Most of the other officers were up to the challenge, too. Diaz and his people performed miracle after miracle despite the technological difficulties of working with Kilrathi gear. Contrary to popular belief, the Cats were by no means backward or primitive; they had been in space longer than Mankind, though their technology wasn't far ahead of the Confederation's in any major respect. Nor was their equipment simpler or more rugged despite the common conception back home of the Kilrathi as brutal and violent. Many of their systems were surprisingly fine and delicate, though of course there were differences in the size of components that reflected the larger bodies and hands of the builders. But it was differences in basic design philosophy that gave the specialists most of their headaches. Kilrathi naval architects believed in redundant and diversified systems, and not just for computers. They frequently designed subsystems that could back up not one but several radically different primary functions, which made it hard for Diaz or his people to point to one single place and say "There is the backup for the system we're working on." It made it difficult to know when backups were on-line, and almost impossible to discard any components, no matter how little they seemed to have to do with any particular ship's function, without extensive testing, physical tracing of connections, and heated discussions among the experts. Sometimes the Kilrathi Cadre could help out, but not always. Fifty specialists covered a number of critical fields of expertise, but they were not ship-builders, and their specialties were often in areas removed from the nutsand-bolts design process.

  By the time Bondarevsky was getting ready to tackle the port side flight deck, the carrier was close to functioning as a ship again. She had computers, sensors, environmental systems, and communications up and running. Of her eight laser turrets, six were back online thanks to the heroic efforts of Lieutenant Commander Dmitri Deniken, the Tactics and Gunnery Officer. The other two probably wouldn't function again this side of a keel-up repair at a major spaceyard, but Deniken had managed to come up with arcs of fire that covered the entire ship. He also had hopes of getting the numerous point-defense turrets working again once they managed to track down a computer glitch that made the automatic intercept function useless.

  The one area where repair work lagged behind was Engineering. Commander Kent, the chief engineer recruited by Kruger for the project, w
as another ex-ConFleet man, but turned out to be something of a plodder. The wild leaps of imagination and creativity needed to come up with improvised solutions to unexpected problems simply weren't for him. His by-the-book overhaul of the fusion power plants fell further and further behind schedule as he ran into trouble balancing the magnetic containment fields badly stressed by the final battle and the effects of long neglect and interaction with the brown dwarf's radiation. Finally Tolwyn, furious at the continued delays, had relieved him of duty after a blazing row. His choice to replace Kent was little short of brilliant. Donald Scott Graham, late of TCS Juneau, became Karga's new chief engineer. It was highly irregular—technically the man was still on active duty with the ConFleet, though they didn't know he was even alive. But Tolwyn himself retained his admiral's authority, and as ranking Confederation officer in the star system accepted Graham's resignation from the service, placed him in the inactive reserve, and then swore him in as a Landreich officer. Hopefully they would be able to sort out the paperwork later. In the meantime, though, Karga acquired a Chief Engineer who knew exactly how to go about the re-commissioning job. Many of his solutions to problems skirted the regs in more ways than one, but they got the job done. Slowly, the engineering department began to catch up with the others as Graham took hold of his new responsibilities.

  The end of the year was fast approaching, with two months of work behind them, and the Goliath Project crew could look back at solid progress. But the work ahead remained daunting. They had the second flight deck to put back into service, and all of the Kilrathi planes to check, overhaul, and put into action—if and when they could get pilots trained on the craft. Graham had the fusion plants back on-line and was working on the shield generators, but these were in particularly bad shape and were likely to be slow. In the interim they continued to rely on Sindri for anti-radiation shielding, but the tender's extended shields couldn't handle combat conditions, and until they could put up a reliable combat-rated force field the carrier wasn't anything more than a particularly large and unwieldy dock floating in space. And as yet nothing had been done about her engines, maneuver drives and the hyperspace jump system.

  Still, it was progress, more than Bondarevsky, for one, had ever believed possible at the outset. Another few months and they might actually have a fighting ship.

  If, in fact, Ragark gave them another few months.

  Operations Planning Center, FRLS Karga

  Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

  1445 hours (CST), 2670.356

  It was a measure of their progress that they now could hold their conferences aboard Karga, rather than assembling aboard Independence. The Operations Planning Center for the supercarrier was located adjacent to the admiral's ready room and the flag bridge, and was considerably more impressive than the escort carrier's cozy conference room. In the center of the large chamber was a holographic projection tank that could display anything from tactical dispositions of a squadron to starcharts of entire sectors. Seats rose in tiers on all four sides of the oval compartment, allowing senior officers from several ships in a battle group to attend the briefing at the same time. Each person had a computer terminal attached to his seat which allowed him to call up details from the holo-tank, and there was an excellent intercom system that allowed everyone, no matter where he or she was in the room, to take full part in the discussions.

  Jason Bondarevsky had chosen a seat near the top tier by the door, well out of the way. He'd learned to watch and listen at these conferences, but saved his input for times when he could tackle Richards or Tolwyn in private. Too many voices arguing over priorities or procedures was a sure recipe for chaos, and the Goliath staff had proven this on more than one occasion over the last two months.

  Richards was in the place reserved for the Kilrathi admiral, near the head of the oval in a private box seat something like a small throne. Tolwyn had a less impressive version of the same accommodations at the other end of the holo-tank, the spot where a Kilrathi intelligence or political officer would have been accommodated in an Imperial vessel.

  The rest of the room was well-filled. This particular conference was far more extensive than the usual daily briefings, including officers from other ships of the battle group as well as the carrier's department heads and other important members of the team. The progress made to date had allowed Richards to convene this meeting to begin a new phase of the project.

  "All right, people, the sooner we get started the sooner we can get out of here." Richards' voice came through clearly over the intercom headset Bondarevsky, like the rest of the assembled staff, was wearing. The original Kilrathi earpieces had been too large and bulky for humans to use, so Lieutenant Vivaldi, the Communications Officer, had raided the City of Cashel for a supply of marine tactical transceivers. Murragh and his fellow Kilrathi wore the original gear. They were clustered on one side of the holo-tank, a block of nonhumans who somehow seemed out of place now on their own ship. "Mr. Bondarevsky. Status?"

  Bondarevsky cleared his throat. "Primary Flight Control will be on-line this afternoon, or so Mr. Diaz has assured me." He glanced toward the salvage specialist, who gave a little self-satisfied nod. "That means that by tomorrow morning we'll be able to start pretending we're a real carrier. If the sensors behave themselves, we should be able to track anything in this part of the system, although I'm still worried about the interference from the brown dwarf's strange radiation. A brown dwarf just isn't supposed to cause this much trouble. And the ring system still drives our sensor probes crazy."

  Richards smiled. "Why should the sensors be any different from the rest of us?" he demanded. That raised a few laughs, from humans and Kilrathi alike. "Excellent work. With PFC and the starboard hangar deck up and running-and Mr. Deniken's weapons in place-this boat can start looking after herself. Commander Tolwyn?"

  Kevin Tolwyn nodded. "Your capacity will be limited for a time, but I'd say you won't need us to look after you . . . if you have the planes to fly your own patrols."

  "Exactly." Richards frowned. "I'm not about to start using our Kilrathi planes yet, not until Mr. Bondarevsky's training and simulation program is running. In the meantime, by the power invested in me by our beloved leader, Old Max, I am hereby ordering half of the Independence Flight Wing detached for duty aboard Karga."

  Galbraith was quick to react. "Now wait just a minute, Admiral," he said. "I don't think—"

  "Spare me, Captain," Richards cut him off. "I've already discussed the matter with Admiral Camparelli. And you know my orders give me broad discretion for requisitions of this type. At any rate, you'll have replacements waiting for you at Landreich when you head back there next week."

  "Head back?" Galbraith frowned.

  "That's the point to all this," Richards said. "Old Max made it quite clear that he wanted Independence back on active service again just as soon as we felt we didn't need her for protecting Goliath any longer. Well, we have guns and we have a flight deck. With half a flight wing we can handle most standard operations, and when we get our people trained on the Kilrathi birds and get the other flight deck up to speed we'll have everything we need here to protect ourselves. Independence is to make her way back to Landreich to link up with a new battle group. You can make good your shortages of planes there."

  "I . . . suppose that will work out all right," Galbraith said.

  "Good. Commander Tolwyn, you may assign whichever of your squadrons you see fit, of course, though I would suggest that you balance the two wings as best you can. Consult with Mr. Bondarevsky. I'll approve whatever TO&E the two of you come up with."

  "Aye aye, sir," Kevin Tolwyn said, turning a brief grin on Bondarevsky.

  "Do you see any further difficulties in starting flight operations, Captain?" Richards asked, looking at Bondarevsky.

  "No, sir," he replied. "Nothing major, at least. Starboard side'll be crowded for a while, with all those Kilrathi birds in the hangars, but there's a fair amount of room to spare. Luckily the Cats b
uilt this tub with the idea of having to operate all their birds with one crippled flight deck."

  "Too bad for them they didn't actually do it," Marchand said from here place a few seats down from Bondarevsky. "You may not think it's a major problem, sir, but as far as I'm concerned juggling all those planes is going to be a nightmare. How soon until we can start shifting a few of the Kilrathi junk heaps over to port side?"

  "Probably a couple of weeks, Boss," Bondarevsky told her. "Until then, you'll just have to make do. I've seen

  you work. You'll handle it."

  "Good," Richards said. "Now, Mr. Graham, what's our schedule on shields and drives?"

  "That same couple of weeks, sir," Graham replied. "That is, if we don't run into any more trouble with the shield generators. I'm not happy about their power consumption. I'm pretty sure the battle damage was a bit more than the initial surveys showed. There was a hell of a lot of energy soaking through the whole system when Juneau and Dover hit the old girl, and I don't think Commander Kent's first estimates took into account the overload factor."