Wing Commander #07 False Color

by William R. Forstchen

  The admiral ignored the currents of uncertainty that ran through the bridge around him. He took up the knife he had used to kill Khirgh, knelt beside the command chair, and placed the point of the blade directly above his heart.

  Honor shall flow to the warrior who is true, to his hrai, to his comrades, to his people, and to himself, for only the true warrior shall know the gods hereafter.

  His last thought was of the warriors under his command. He wished them all a chance at glory in death.

  Then he drove the point of the dagger home, and felt the blood running free.

  Shuttle Juneau Delta Vaku Vila,

  Vaku System

  1747 hours (CST)

  The overloaded shuttle bucked and shuddered as it descended through the roiling atmosphere toward the planet's surface. Donald Graham held on to the stick and fought to keep the craft on course as it bled off speed, all too conscious of his precious cargo. Sadness vied with relief within him as he contemplated the planet below. Three of the cruiser's shuttles had escaped the Juneau's destruction, and they had collected enough lifepods en route to pack each of the craft with survivors. But many more had died, including Commander Lindstrom and the entire contingent aboard Shuttle Alpha, caught by the last explosions that had consumed Juneau while trying to rescue a cluster of lifepods that hadn't won clear of the ship.

  Three shuttles packed to the gills . . maybe a hundred men and women, all told, out of the cruiser's complement of three hundred sixty. It was hard to even think of the loss of two-thirds of his shipmates.

  But for the moment Graham couldn't afford to let emotion tear at him. He was the senior surviving officer left out of the Juneau's wardroom, and he had a responsibility to the survivors. The main job at the moment was to find a safe place to land and pray the conditions on the surface of this miserable planet wouldn't be too harsh. It was listed as "marginally habitable" in the navigation files, but his sensor readings didn't look promising.

  A few degrees off his heading, the sensors were registering a concentration of metal and a few sporadic energy readings. That would be the Kilrathi survivors who had made it down earlier, from the damaged escort ship and whatever fighters and escape vessels had managed to get clear of the carrier. His first impulse was to put plenty of distance between his survivors and the Cats.

  Then Graham considered again, and moved the stick to bank left and line up on the sensor readings.

  He had no way of knowing what had happened to the Cats. They might be strong enough to be a real threat to the human survivors, in which case a quick over flight before they realized there were humans in the area might be the one chance Graham would have for estimating the danger. And if they were in worse shape than the Juneau's survivors, there was always the chance the humans could overpower them and make use of whatever equipment and supplies they had on hand. After all, the shuttles carried plenty of people, but little else. They needed food, water, shelter . . . just about everything, in fact.

  The shuttle broke through a cloud layer and Graham saw the wreck of the Cat escort ship spread out below. They'd come down hard, no doubt about that. Close by were a handful of shuttles and a line of fighters drawn up on a reasonably smooth stretch of ground. Figures were racing back and forth across the open plain, some stopping to point or raise clawed hands to the sky in defiance.

  Graham swallowed, his eyes on those fighters. If they took off . . .

  He reached for the control that would activate the shuttle's weapons pod. Kilrathi had never been prone to surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds. But that ragtag group on the ground looked confused and unready to fight. Could he force them to surrender?

  Or persuade them that they had to work together with the human survivors if either group was going to see their homes again before the brown dwarfs strange radiation filtered through the clouds and killed them slowly.

  CHAPTER 1

  "Fortunate is the Warrior who meets Death in Battle; no true Warrior should die in bed with his claws sheathed."

  from the Second Codex

  3:18:12

  Shuttle Port Three, Moonbase Tycho

  Luna, Terra System

  1228 hours (CST), 2670.275

  Commodore (Ret.) Jason Bondarevsky leaned against the railing overlooking the reception area for Shuttle Port Three and shook his head in dismay. It was hard to believe so much could change in a matter of months, but the evidence was there before his eyes. It was the end of an era . . . or perhaps it was the start of a new one. Jason Bondarevsky wasn't sure he liked either option much.

  "Credit for your thoughts, skipper," a soft contralto voice spoke up from behind him.

  "Don't waste your money, Sparks," he said, turning to meet the newcomer. Lieutenant (Ret.) Janet "Sparks" McCullough was dressed in civilian clothes, though like Bondarevsky she was entitled to wear the Terran Confederation Navy uniform if she so desired. Her taste, though, ran to plain coveralls, the garb she'd been comfortable with ever since she'd started out in the service as an enlisted technician. Since then she'd risen through the ranks, and later earned a commission, but Sparks still had a taste for the nuts and bolts of technical work, and dressed to suit that taste.

  Still, even her baggy coveralls couldn't hide the fact that she was an attractive woman, though she often seemed determined to ignore that fact completely.

  "Seems strange to have this mausoleum so empty," she said. "You think they're going to sell the whole place off for scrap, or what?"

  "Wouldn't put it past them," he said.

  The last time he'd been here the decades-long war with the Kilrathi Empire had still been raging on, and Moonbase Tycho had been a busy hub of the Terran war effort. That had been only ten months ago, when the fortunes of war had been anything but smiling upon humanity. Bondarevsky had been rotated back to Tycho suffering from multiple wounds suffered during the desperate battle when the Terran Confederation's monster weapons platform, Behemoth, had been destroyed by the Kilrathi after a traitor had betrayed details of its weaknesses to the Empire. The Coventry, flagship of his beloved destroyer squadron, had been heavily engaged in the fighting and nearly torn apart before the whole thing was through.

  Back then, Bondarevsky had been sure the end was near for all Mankind. After a war that had gone on for so long that most of the combatants had grown up never knowing peace, the Kilrathi had been poised for a last strike that would have knocked Earth's defenses out and left the Empire unchallenged in this part of space The air of desperation at Tycho Moonbase had been palpable.

  And then, abruptly, everything had changed.

  Bondarevsky's gaze sought out the oversized video rig that dominated one wall of the reception area. He remembered watching the ISN news update while he and Sparks awaited the arrival of Admiral Geoff Tolwyn's shuttle . . . the reports, carefully slanted by a worried Confederation government but all too clearly conveying word of a string of fresh defeats on the frontiers . . . the woman sitting beside him who cursed the Kilrathi and the Administration with equal vehemence as she listened to the newscaster . . .

  And then came the bulletin. A daring raid with an experimental planet-busting bomb had penetrated deep into Kilrathi space, to the Imperial homeworld itself, and when the bomb went off it literally shook Kilrah apart. The Emperor and his power-hungry grandson had perished along with swarms of their subjects, and the shocked survivors of the Imperium had sued for peace, a concept alien to their warrior natures until that stunning moment of utter defeat.

  That moment had changed everything. The peace talks had dragged on before a treaty was finally signed at Torgo, but from the moment of Kilrah's destruction everyone had known the war was over at last. Bondarevsky remembered how the same woman who'd been cursing had started cheering, hugging and kissing everyone in sight. She'd embraced him so tightly that his shattered arm had hurt like hell, but in the general euphoria it hadn't seemed very important. Mankind had won a splendid victory, and with the end of the fighting the citizen-soldier
s of the Confederation could lay down their weapons and return to the plow, to the ways of peace.

  Looking at the shuttle port now, Bondarevsky wondered if they hadn't been far too hasty in their rush to renounce a lifetime of fighting.

  The Confederation had started demobilizing even before the final details of the treaty were hammered out at Torgo. Ships were decommissioned; soldiers, spacemen, and marines were mustered out in droves. The Confederation's military machine was transformed in an incredibly short time.

  He'd stood through plenty of ceremonies, heard more

  high-minded speeches than he'd ever thought he could endure. Thank you . . . credit to the Service . . . conspicuous valor in action against the Kilrathi . . . heroic dedication to duty . . . But in the end it had been clear that the Confed Navy wasn't looking for heroes any more. They wanted peacekeepers, timeservers, administrators and bureaucrats, men and women who knew how to carry out policy and show the flag, not fighters who would push the envelope in the name of winning at any cost. Bondarevsky hadn't bothered to wait for the Navy to let him know his services wouldn't be needed any longer. He'd put in for retirement, with a courtesy promotion to commodore, a half-pay pension, and the prospect of a long and frustrating recovery from his wounds.

  He looked down at his right hand and flexed it, frowning. The doctors hadn't been able to save the arm, and the bionic replacement still didn't feel like it was really a part of him yet. But he'd been pronounced fit two weeks earlier. If the war had still been on, he'd have been bombarding the brass with daily requests for a chance to return to active duty, and devil take the physical therapist's recommendations. But Bondarevsky wasn't in the Navy any more. He didn't belong any more.

  Too many changes . . . In Tycho Moonbase, working on a complement less than a quarter of the wartime establishment. In the Confederation Navy, beating swords into plowshares with dizzying speed.

  And in Jason Bondarevsky, who'd looked forward to the day the war ended for most of his life, but found he wasn't equipped for the peacetime existence he'd always hoped for.

  Sparks followed his glance to the plastilimb arm and gave him a quirky half-smile. "Afraid the warranty is running out?" she asked. "Don't worry about it, skipper. You've nearly got it now. All you need is some more practice."

  "If I do, it's because of your help, Sparks," he said. She'd been aboard Coventry during the last battle as Damage Control Officer, and she had led the party that had saved his life after the Kilrathi missile had struck the flag bridge, killing the other six people in the cramped compartment. Bondarevsky would have perished with the others, from blood loss or decompression or lack of oxygen, if it hadn't been for her quick thinking that day. And when he'd taken retirement after the treaty was signed she'd left the service as well, looking after him during his convalescence and overseeing his physical therapy. "I don't know how I've made it without you."

  She shrugged and grinned, her very best "Aw, shucks" routine. "The way they were downsizing the fleet, skipper, I wouldn't have lasted long anyway. During wartime a maverick can come up to officer's country through the cargo hatch the way I did, but nobody wants you around in peacetime unless you're an officer and a gentleman . . . or lady, as the case may be. I figured you needed the help."

  He studied her for a long moment. Sparks had served with him for a long time now, ever since the days of the Tarawa's deep penetration raid on Kilrah back before the Battle of Earth. The relationship between a fighter pilot and his crew chief was almost always incredibly close, because the pilot put his life in the crew chief's hands every time he took his craft out of the hangar. The two had hovered on the edge of a romance for a time following the death of Bondarevsky's first love in Tarawa's raid, but he'd pulled back from anything serious. Not only was it a bad idea for a ship's captain to have a dalliance with one of his officers while on active service, but Bondarevsky hadn't been willing to risk losing another Svetlana. Since that one brief kiss a few years back, he and Sparks had been friends unwilling to risk anything more.

  But one way or another Bondarevsky had always placed absolute trust in Sparks, a trust that had carried over after she'd earner her commission and moved on to other duties. Somehow, though, he'd never really considered what drove her. Fact was, Sparks could have stayed in the service without any trouble at all. After the devastating battles of the decades-long Kilrathi war, technical officers with her talents were much in demand even with the Fleet's downsizing program. But she had elected to follow him into retirement in the seaside home he'd purchased in Odessa . . . and now into what amounted to a self-imposed exile.

  An announcement over the PA system cut short his reverie before he could say anything further. "Attention, attention, Landreich Shuttlecraft Themistocles Alpha now docking at Shuttle Port Three."

  "That's us," he said quietly. "Got your gear?"

  Sparks nodded as Bondarevsky hitched his kitbag over his shoulder and turned toward the lift that would take him into the reception area below. She followed him along the empty catwalk, and somehow the fact that she was there made it easier for Bondarevsky to make the short but monumental trek

  He'd put one era behind him. Today it was time to start a new one.

  The security doors leading into the shuttle bay still hadn't been opened when the two officers reached them. Bondarevsky couldn't tell if that was because the work crews were short-handed, or because of some perverse desire on the part of those in authority to make the new arrivals wait before they could gain admission. Landreich was still regarded as a haven for outlaws and criminals, even though the frontiersmen there had made the difference between victory and defeat when the Kilrathi attacked Earth itself and a Landreich squadron had turned the tide when everything seemed to be coming apart.

  The news was full of continuing problems between the Confederation and Landreich these days. The colonials refused to accept Terran authority; the Confederation accused Landreich of deliberately provoking trouble with their neighbors on the frontier, including the newly peace-loving Kilrathi. Knowing President Kruger as Bondarevsky did, it was a sure bet that Landreich would never back down, right or wrong.

  Maybe that was why he'd accepted Landreich's offer of employment. They could be an exasperating bunch, but one and all they were the kind of people he could relate to, fighters who never backed down from a challenge, and threw out the rule book and winged it when they were in a furball.

  A marine sergeant behind the desk at the security door cocked his head and raised one white-gloved hand to his earpiece receiver. Then he touched a stud on the console in front of him and stood up, drawing himself to attention. With his crisp dress uniform and his precise motions, he might have been an android responding to a carefully-composed protocol program

  The officer who stepped through the opening doors was a contrast to the wooden-featured sergeant in every possible way. He was young—probably not yet twenty standard years—and he was anything but stiff and solemn as he stared around the shuttle port with wide eyes and a broad, easygoing grin on his open but weather-beaten features. His shock of ginger hair was longer than Confederation regulations would have permitted, and there was a cheerful spark in his eyes. As for his uniform . . . well, the less said about that the better, Bondarevsky decided. Landreich had never had the money, time, or inclination to organize their military forces into anything as rigid as the Confederation's, and they generally relied on what they could steal, scavenge, salvage, or buy on the cheap when it came to uniforms and equipment. Bondarevsky recognized elements of the young officer's uniform as coming from Confed supplies, probably salvaged from Bannockburn or one of the other Terran ships that had operated in Landreich space back in the old days. But the man's jacket was decidedly non-regulation, looking like something out of a holo-vid Western—leather, with plenty of pockets and old-fashioned buttons running down the front. The youngster wore a pistol on one hip, and the holster and the protruding butt of the weapon itself had the look of frequent use. Had they been l
ike that when they'd come to this young man? Bondarevsky had a feeling that was something he shouldn't take for granted. Young he might be, but growing up in the Landreich with the constant threat of Kilrathi attack only one of many dangers a colonial faced had a way of making a kid grow up fast . . . and dangerous.

  The Marine saluted him stiffly, and the newcomer returned it with a casual, offhand flourish. "At ease, man, at ease," he said, the lilt in his voice fitting his appearance. They tell me there's a pile of forms I'm to be seeing to, so the sooner you turn me loose on 'em the sooner me and my mates can start putting in some shore leave."

  "Excuse me, er . . ." Bondarevsky knew from his shoulder patch that the youngster was an officer, but he couldn't spot anything that looked like rank insignia.

  "Harper," the young man replied, turning his easy smile on Bondarevsky. "Aengus Harper, Lieutenant in the Navy of the Free Republic of Landreich, at your service, sir."

  "Jason Bondarevsky, Lieutenant. I'm—"

  "The Bear himself?" Harper exclaimed. "Should have recognized you from your pictures! After Old Max, you're one of the biggest names back home, you know. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir, right pleased!"

  Bondarevsky was a little taken aback. He wasn't used to the younger man's tone, which hovered somewhere between mocking respect and outright hero worship. "I was supposed to meet one of your passengers, Lieutenant," he said slowly. "Admiral . . ."

  "Richards, of course. Never you fear, sir, he'll be along in a minute or two. Is it true what they're telling me about you joining up with us, sir?"