"They couldn't get past the jump point garrison!" That was Akhjer nar Val. If that skeptic was now so confident, perhaps Ragark's cause really was prospering despite the setbacks they had suffered. "How could Terran ships even get into position to threaten the orbital dock, or Vorghath?"
Ragark looked at him. "How did the Terrans destroy Kilrah, with the whole fleet preparing there? How did they get within two light minutes of the orbital dock? Cloaked ships could penetrate our defenses."
"They have no cloaked ships larger than scouts," someone protested. "Certainly no capital ships that could evade detection."
"None that we know of," Ragark corrected. "And the Temblor Bomb was delivered by a mere fighter. No, we must not take chances. We know the strength of Kruger's fleet. We must send a strong enough raiding force against a key world, one that will guarantee that they will have to commit their full force to defending against us. In the meantime, we maintain a strong garrison here . . . just to be sure. If we stalk the prey correctly, they will never have a chance to strike at Vorghath before he is ready to sail again. And once we reach that point, the two strike fleets can converge on Landreich and end this farce once and for all." It sounds like an excellent plan, my Lord," Jhorrad said. His good eye was shining with anticipation. "When will the strike force depart?"
"We will take time to put the operation together," Ragark replied. "And to guard the system here in case Kruger attempts an immediate sortie, though I think that is unlikely. Say two eight-days to assemble our forces. After that . . . we strike!"
"I wish I was coming with you, my Lord," Jhorrad told him.
"Your part will come soon enough," Ragark assured him. "And your name will be remembered long after high-born fools like Thrakhath and that scum Ghadhark have been forgotten."
CHAPTER 17
"The true leader offers his Warriors in sacrifice only when there is no alternative; the true Warrior offers himself in sacrifice in the knowledge that only thus will the battle be won"
from the Seventh Codex
12:16:07
Shuttle Mjollnir Echo
Orbiting Nargrast, Vaku System
1622 hours (CST), 2671.033
The Kilrathi-made shuttle hung in space, dwarfed alongside the bulk of the carrier now called Mjollnir. From the cockpit, Lieutenant Aengus Harper and his Wing Commander, Captain Bondarevsky, studied the repairs to the outside of the port side flight deck, recording everything on video and computer-imaged still pictures. It was painstaking work, but an essential part of the refit, making sure there were no obvious weak spots in the refurbished hull. So Bondarevsky had assured Harper several times now, though Harper suspected his commanding officer was growing as weary of this "essential duty" as he was. Still, as the wing commander had pointed out earlier, it was better to invest the time and effort now that to discover they'd overlooked something crucial when an unlucky hit opened up the hull in the middle of a battle.
Harper quite frankly couldn't see any spot that didn't look weak. The hurry-up repair job on the port side flight deck had definitely stressed speed over all else, and the haste showed in rough patches and crude welding jobs. He hoped the computer's structural analysis would belie the look of the work, and yield results within acceptable limits.
"Section one-twenty-five," Bondarevsky said, sounding tired. He pressed a button on the co-pilot's console. "Recorded. That's the last of them, Lieutenant."
"Thank God and all the Saints for that, sir," Harper said with a grin. "Shall I be taking her back to the barn, then?"
"Take the scenic route," Bondarevsky said. "I want to get a better look at the old girl . . . a wider view, something with fewer rivets and weld marks."
"Aye, sir, that would be a big improvement." His hands danced over the shuttle controls. "Do you think the work will pass the inspection?"
Bondarevsky let out a sigh. "God, I hope so." He paused. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it will. At least it'll do for routine ops for a while, until we have time to do a better job on her. Richards told me this morning that it's likely we'll still be overhauling her six months from now . . . unless Ragark tries something sooner."
"Six more months of this, sir?" Harper made a face. "I think I'd rather have Ragark charging across the border with guns blazing."
"Be careful what you wish for," Bondarevsky told him. Tact is, we need all the refit time we can get. I never thought we'd get this far, Aengus, but we still have a long way to go before this old lady can stand toe-to-toe with hostiles in a real fight."
As the shuttle lifted slowly away from the carrier's baffle-scarred hull, Harper remained silent, mulling over the wing commander's words. After a truly Herculean effort by the entire crew, Mjollnir was more or less operational. She had powered up her maneuvering drives a few days earlier and lifted clear of her long elliptical orbit around the brown dwarf, exchanging it for a high planetary orbit over Nargrast. The rest of the battle group occupied various similar orbits, spread out now to cover possible approach vectors and give the carrier warning in case of further unfriendly visits to the system. Both flight decks and all of the remaining planes were available now, and Bondarevsky had been holding daily training exercises in simulators and out in space to familiarize the pilots assigned to the Kilrathi squadrons with their planes, and to get the entire Black Cats wing used to working together.
That had meant more than just exercising the fighter squadrons, too. The support craft—electronic warfare birds, resupply boats, command and control planes had all been put through their paces. In some respects the Kilrathi had a superior system to the Confederation and Landreich navies, using such auxiliary craft very effectively in conjunction with fighters and bombers. Bondarevsky had decided early on to adapt the same techniques to the ex-Kilrathi carrier's operations, to bridge a gap in technologies that reflected the difference in doctrine. The supercarrier itself had fewer onboard systems adapted to the roles filled by those special planes, and Bondarevsky had quickly decided it was easier to get used to operating like Kilrathi pilots rather than attempting to upgrade the onboard support systems to carry out these same tasks. So fighters and bombers were often re-armed and refueled on the fly instead of coming back aboard for servicing, and lightly armed recon planes performed the scouting duties of a human light fighter squadron. The Primary Flight Control center aboard the carrier extended its reach by handing off coordination duties to the Command/ Control birds.
It all took a lot of getting used to, and Harper had heard plenty of grumbling and cursing from the rest of the wing. But slowly they were getting accustomed to Bondarevsky's demands, and starting to show pride in their roles.
Harper wondered about the Admiral's estimate of needing another six months to finish the refit. Graham was still working on the jump generators, the last major ship's system that hadn't been tested under field conditions. But there were fewer problems there than the engineering crew had first feared, and the work was going quickly. After the jump drive was pronounced ready, Mjollnir would probably be as ready as she ever would be. There would be plenty of minor things to take care of, to make the ship more efficient and more comfortable, but already she had engines, sensors, guns, and a working flight deck. That, to Harper's way of thinking, qualified her as a fighting ship.
They had pulled far enough away by now to be able to view the entire carrier. From this distance the individual damage didn't show much, except for the scar on her superstructure where the original Maneuvering Bridge had been patched without being restored. The unearthly lines of the Kilrathi-built supercarrier never failed to make Harper just the least bit uneasy. There was something about a Kilrathi ship that summoned up an instinctive desire to fight or flee. Even the giant supercarrier was all knife-blades and sharp angles, a deadly sword to be wielded in battle.
"Very nice, Mr. Harper," Bondarevsky commented. "From out here you can almost picture her as a warship, and not a collection of repairs waiting to fall apart."
Harper frowned. Of late Bondarevsky
had been sounding more pessimistic about the whole refit project. He worked hard, driving himself even more unrelentingly than he drove his subordinates, but he had been badly shaken by the encounter with the pirates. Sometimes it seemed as if he blamed himself for the loss of Sindri, and was frustrated by the continual problems that cropped up to remind them all of how big a job the refit process really was.
"Beggin' your pardon, sir," Harper said quietly. "I know 'tis not my place to say so, but I think you should lay off the cracks about the ship."
Bondarevsky looked at him with a puzzled frown. "What's that supposed to mean, Lieutenant?" he asked.
"A lot of the crew has started to take some real pride in Mjollnir, sir. She may look like hell and be held together by spit and good intentions, but she's ours. Like the Landreich itself. We're no Terran Confederation out here on the frontier. We can't afford the best ships or the best crews, so we make do with what we have. And we're proud when we can achieve something good by the sweat of our brows and the skill of our hands. 'Tis bad for morale to hear Mjollnir being put down as second rate, sir."
Bondarevsky shook his head, then smiled suddenly. "Sometimes, Mr. Harper, you really do make me think," he said. "Okay, you win. From here on out she's the best ship in the fleet, bar none." He paused. "But I hope you won't mind if I try not to sneeze too hard. I'm still afraid of what might happen."
Harper grinned. "Aye, the Cats could take us out of action for good with one strong dose of the flu."
"Take us home, Lieutenant," Bondarevsky ordered. "Before you have me convinced that old lady is actually as good as you seem to think she is."
The return to the port side flight deck took longer than they had planned, thanks to an unexpected new arrival. A courier shuttle, light, fast, and fitted with jump drives, had arrived while they were conducting their survey, and was on final approach when Harper contacted Boss Marchand for landing clearance. They held clear of the flight deck until Marchand came on the line to let them know it was safe.
The shuttle settled onto the deck just aft of the courier. As Harper and Bondarevsky exited, the hatch on the top of the courier opened up and a suited figure clambered down the ladder on the port side. When he undogged his helmet and lifted it clear of his head, Harper saw the new arrival was Kevin Tolwyn.
Bondarevsky advanced, hand extended. "Kevin! What are you doing here? And why the flying coffin?" Courier shuttles were notoriously cramped and uncomfortable, with just enough room for a pilot—and a passenger if they were very friendly—with a cockpit and a tiny cabin mounted in front of nothing but fuel tanks and engines. Taking the proffered hand, Tolwyn shrugged. "Old Max sent me. I'm his new fair-haired boy these days, and he wanted me to bring you guys the latest news." Bondarevsky stepped back. "Captain's bars, is it? You're not bucking for my job again, are you?"
"Not me," Tolwyn told him. "We had a little dust-up with some Cats a few days back, and Max thought I had earned a promotion. He even gave me a case of beer after we got back to Landreich!" The younger man paused. "Look, Jason, I've got dispatches and orders for Admiral Richards. We've got troubles, and I'm afraid Karga is in for a rough time."
"She's Mjollnir, now," Bondarevsky said absently. "What kind of troubles, and how rough a time?"
Tolwyn dropped his voice, but Harper could still hear. "The Cats have a dreadnought," he said. "Under repair at Baka Kar. And our Intel says they're getting ready to sortie against Ilios with a carrier task force."
"A dreadnought?" Bondarevsky's face went pale. "If that thing comes calling, we might as well just start the evacuation now . . ."
"There's more," Tolwyn said. "A lot more. But the big thing is your orders. Kruger wants you guys to take the carrier in and try to kill the dreadnought. And soon." Bondarevsky's bionic hand clenched into a fist, then went into the worst set of spasms Harper had seen in weeks. "God damn it!" he said sharply. After a long moment he regained control of the appendage, but his scowl was black. He lowered his voice. "Is he crazy? This heap of junk is supposed to take on a dreadnought?"
Tolwyn nodded. "I'm afraid so. I have the orders here. Too sensitive to hypercast." He looked Bondarevsky in the eye. "I have to report to Admiral Richards. But I think you'd better come too . . . and my uncle. You'll all need to hear this."
Bondarevsky looked back over his shoulder at Harper. "Finish the post-flight, Lieutenant," he said. It was almost a growl. "I'll be with the Admiral."
He and Tolwyn walked off before Harper had a chance to respond. The lieutenant watched them, trying not to betray his whirling emotions. A little while ago he'd been hoping for action. Now, it seemed, they would get it. But from the sound of it, Mjollnir's first real combat op was likely to be her last as well.
Flag Officer's Ready Room, FRLS Mjollnir
Orbiting Nargrast, Vaku System
1715 hours (CST)
The holo-image showed a man in a sick bay bed, breathing with considerable difficulty and speaking in a ragged, throaty voice. Zachary Banfeld didn't look much like a ruthless pilot, Bondarevsky thought. More like the frightened survivor of a disaster.
Apparently that's just what he was.
"Will you repeat that last statement, please?" The voice off-camera belonged to Max Kruger. "How big was this ship?"
"Best estimate was twenty-two kilometers long," Banfeld said. "Mass was right off the scale. It was huge, Kruger! Huge! And it must have had thirty heavy energy batteries. Turrets everywhere!"
"A dreadnought." It was strange to have Kevin Tolwyn's voice interjecting the comment on the recording, while he sat beside Bondarevsky and stared down at the table in silence.
"That's enough," Admiral Richards said, shutting off the recording and bringing the lights back up. He looked around the ready room. Aside from Bondarevsky and Kevin, Admiral Tolwyn was the only other one present. Richards had even dismissed Lieutenant Cartwright, his flag lieutenant. "It must be the Vorghath. We kept hearing rumors of a dreadnought that had escaped from the destruction of Kilrah, but nobody could track down anything solid. Her captain refused to acknowledge Melek as Thrakhath's successor, apparently, and he set off in search of someone he could sign on with."
"Ragark," Admiral Tolwyn said.
"Ragark," Richards echoed. "With that thing in his arsenal, there'll be no stopping him. Not in the Landreich, and not in the Confederation. I suppose if we assembled most of ConFleet in one place we could fight Vorghath to a standstill, but the rest of Ragark's fleet will be able to do pretty much as he damn well pleases in the meantime."
"The President thinks the same," Kevin said. "He says the only way to stop it is to hit it while it's still at spacedock."
"We don't even know how long that will be," his uncle said gloomily.
"Banfeld said that it looked pretty badly beat up. His estimate was for several weeks of repairs." The younger Tolwyn looked away. "But there wasn't any reliable data left in the scoutship's computers to back up what he said. Hell, the whole story could be a fake. But I doubt it. He sounded sincere to me. And frightened. After all, if that monster sorties, it's the end of the Guild as well as the Landreich."
"Even if the estimate he made was accurate, it could still have enough firepower to swat the whole Landreich fleet," Richards said. "There's no way of telling what we're up against, and damned little chance of getting any additional intelligence."
"President Kruger went so far as to approach Clark Williams again," Kevin said. "He went armed with our footage of the battle, and Banfeld's recorded statement.
He figured the ConFleet was about the only hope left to take the dreadnought out while it was still relatively defenseless."
"And no doubt he got thrown out on his ear," the elder Tolwyn growled. "It was stupid to waste the time." "That's about the size of it," his nephew agreed.
"Williams accused us of faking the data and the statement both. Said Banfeld was a pirate and a renegade who just wanted to embroil the frontier in a major war, and that was that. ConFleet won't help."
>
"So instead he expects us to take a hand?" Richards sounded as incredulous as Bondarevsky had been . . . and almost as angry. "We've done wonders, but we're not combat-ready. Even with the whole damned Landreich fleet backing us up, Ragark would have us for breakfast before we got anywhere near Baka Kar."
Kevin Tolwyn flushed. "That's the problem, Admiral. The Landreich fleet can't attack Baka Kar. We've intercepted coded hypercast signals from Ragark's fleet calling in additional units for a strike on ilios. We can't ignore it. If the fleet isn't there to meet them, they could smash the colony and then go straight to Landreich. That would beat us just as surely as having the dreadnought sortie."
Richards frowned. "If that signal was intercepted, it was because Ragark wanted us to hear it," he said. "He's too good to entrust that much detail to a code unless he knows for sure we can't break it. In fact, odds are he'd've sent it by courier if he didn't want us to pick it up."
"That tells us he wants Kruger on the horns of this exact dilemma," Admiral Tolwyn said thoughtfully. "Which implies that he's worried about an attack before the dreadnought's ready. Don't you think so, Vance?"
Richards frowned. "I suppose so. He'll know Kruger's reputation. Old Max is just crazy enough to launch an all-out attack to try to cripple the dreadnought. Therefore, threaten a target Max can't ignore. He doesn't have the forces to do both . . ."
"And Vorghath escapes attack until her refit is finished," the elder Tolwyn finished. "It's elegant, you have to give the Cat bastard that much."
"Karga . . . Mjollnir is the President's ace in the hole," Kevin said. "He figures the fleet can give a good account of itself at Ilios. Without you, or your battle group." "We'd never get past the jump point," Richards said. "You can bet he'll have more than just Vorghath guarding his capitol. So we'd have to slog our way through all their defenses . . . and by the time we did reach the orbital dock, if we reached it, we'd be badly damaged and they'd be fully on the alert. Same thing with a fighter sortie, for that matter, eh, Jason?"
Wing Commander #07 False Color Page 33
