Wing Commander #07 False Color

by William R. Forstchen

  At least that was what everyone in the Goliath Project hoped. Murragh was no computer specialist, and so far Richards and Tolwyn had chosen not to reveal what they were doing to the Kilrathi computer officer in the prince's Cadre, just in case that officer was less sympathetic to their aims than Murragh had so far proven to be. So there was no guarantee that they were right in their approach. All they could do was hope they would be successful.

  Murragh punched a keycode combination into the terminal, his fingers a little clumsy and awkward because of the gloves of his suit. More characters scrawled across the screen, and the kil gave a satisfied grunt. "I'm in," he said curtly. "Time for security scans."

  He made a hardwire connection between his suit and the computer terminal, then hung motionless for long moments while the humans waited tensely. His suit's built-in medical monitors could provide the information the computer needed to identify Murragh as an authorized member of the admiral's staff with a legitimate reason for accessing the files.

  In response to some query, Murragh recited a few words in the snarling Kilrathi tongue. Then, to the others, he went on in English. "The computer is processing the security data now. Stand by."

  "Everything looks good here," Voorhies reported.

  "Security clearance granted!" Murragh said. His fingers danced over the keyboard as fast as the gloves would allow them. "I'm starting the download."

  They had agreed that the most effective way to obtain the information they wanted was to download everything they could from the admiral's secured files into the data chip, rather than searching for the specific material they wanted and quite possibly tempting fate a little too long. But the downside to this approach was the volume of material contained in the terminal's local memory, which took a long time to transfer . . . and, of course, the risk that the command codes might not be in the data they obtained, forcing another attempt later.

  It seemed to take hours before Murragh finally announced that the chip was full, though Bondarevsky knew it was only a matter of minutes. The kil disconnected his hardwire lead, then carefully removed the data chip before gesturing to Mayhew to cut the power. The computer screen faded back to blackness.

  "Bondarevsky to Shuttle. Ready for pick-up." It was pure relief to utter those simple words.

  Flag Bridge, ex-KIS Karga

  Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

  1218 hours (CST), 2670.319

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the Karga is operational."

  Bondarevsky held his breath as Admiral Richards uttered the words and then tapped a combination into the control board in front of him. There was a long pause in which the silence hung heavy. Then, suddenly, orange-tinged emergency lights flickered on in the compartment, and a bank of consoles lit up. The men and women of the Goliath team gathered on the flag bridge gave a ragged cheer.

  Karga was alive again, if only barely.

  Murragh had extracted the command codes from the data chip on the shuttle trip back to Independence, using a Kilrathi wrist computer that had been part of his gear on Nargrast. Overnight the salvage crew had returned to the ship in force to go to work on the computer system, bringing it back on-line long enough to purge the self-destruct order, then starting to work on basic systems repairs. The ship had emergency power now, a precious few instruments, lights, and the possibility of at least partial artificial gravity with a few more hours' work in Engineering. But before they got back to the job, Richards had ordered the Goliath personnel to suspend everything for a few minutes. All over the ship space-suited personnel, most of them from Diaz's salvage team but with the addition of a picked handful of the crew who had traveled aboard the City of Cashel, stopped what they were working on to listen to the general address comm channel.

  With one leg hooked under a seat to hold him in place in weightlessness, Admiral Geoff Tolwyn cleared his throat.

  "Attention to orders!" Aengus Harper announced unnecessarily. There was no need. Everyone was silent as Tolwyn began to speak.

  "To Geoff Tolwyn, Rear-Admiral, Free Republic of Landreich Navy," he began. "Sir. By direction of the President and the Admiralty of the Free Republic of

  Landreich, you are hereby requested and required to take up the charge and command of Landreich hull number 106, formerly designated KIS Karga, and to proceed to render all possible repairs to said vessel in order to render it spaceworthy . ."

  As the admiral's voice droned on, reading the formal phrases from a projected image on the HUD display of his suit helmet, Bondarevsky's attention wavered. The stilted ceremonial had an archaic feel to it, and he suspected that Max Kruger, a self-taught man who relished the odd bit of obscure antiquarian knowledge, had probably adapted it from some old Terran source. At first glance it might have seemed foolish to go through this ceremonial now, with so much to be done, but Bondarevsky recognized the reasoning behind it. Even though Karga wouldn't be capable of functioning as an independent unit of the fleet for a long time to come, she would soon be receiving most of her designated crew from the City of Cashel, men and women who would be facing the enormous job of refitting her from stem to stern. And in order for that crew to function, they must officially become part of a Landreich naval command. By "reading himself in" Tolwyn was establishing his legal authority as master of the Karga, the officer whose word would be absolute law as long as she was in space.

  ". . . nor you, nor any of you, will fail, at your peril," Tolwyn finished with a flourish. "Signed Maximillian Kruger, President and Commander-in-Chief, Armed Forces of the Free Republic."

  The admiral paused before going on in a more conversational tone of voice. "We've overcome the first hurdle, but I won't try to hide the fact that we've got plenty of other problems to deal with if we're going to get this old girl into some kind of shape. With your talents and God's help I think we can manage it . . . we have to manage it, for the good of the Landreich and for the future of all Mankind." He fell silent again for a moment, then turned toward Admiral Richards. "Sir?"

  Richards, in his turn, began to speak, reading from a prepared text similar to Tolwyn's. The phrases were different in places—" . . . charge and command of Admiral commanding Provisional Battle Group Karga operational command of ships and vessels previously assigned to Battle Group Independence . . . lend all support to the repair and refitting of the ex-KIS Karga . . ."—but the intent was the same. By his words Richards was "hoisting his flag" as the CO of the battle group which would be built around Karga, always assuming the salvage effort was successful. Independence would remain technically under Camparelli and Galbraith, standing by to furnish protection for as long as she was needed. But the rest of the ships that had accompanied the escort carrier to the Vaku system would henceforth take their orders from Richards.

  His orders read out, Richards declined to make any sort of speech. He merely paused, then inclined his helmeted head back toward Tolwyn. "Proceed with the project, Captain," he said quietly. They had agreed beforehand that Bondarevsky's reading-in ceremony would take place later, among his own people on the flight deck.

  Tolwyn responded with crisp authority. "Let's get this show on the road, people," he said. "Survey details to commence operations immediately according to the prepared schedule. Notify City of Cashel we will be ready to receive shuttles whenever they wish to begin off-loading our people. And contact Sindri; tell Dickerson that we're ready."

  The crew on the flag bridge was already in motion by the time the orders were given. Grasping a handhold near the rear of the compartment, Bondarevsky watched them turn to with a feeling of pride. Whatever happened in the weeks and months ahead, this was a good team, and if anyone could restore life to the shattered remains of the supercarrier, they could.

  Bridge, FRLS Sindri

  Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

  1232 hours (CST)

  "Thrusters at twenty percent," Captain Charles Dickerson ordered. "Bring us in nice and slow."

  Sindri was floating above and behind Karga in orbit aroun
d the brown dwarf, edging closer as the helmsman deftly manipulated the tender's thrusters to approach the derelict. After hundreds of years in space, the most difficult maneuver to carry out continued to be docking one ship to another, but Sindri's pilot was skilled at close-in handling and Dickerson had every confidence in his ability.

  Still, it was a time for crossed fingers and held breaths. Dickerson knew tender captains who relied on rabbits' feet for luck, though he scorned them. He preferred the sprig of Taran pseudo-clover he carried in his pocket.

  "One hundred meters, closing," the sensor technician reported from his post behind the captain's chair.

  "Approach profile nominal," Lieutenant Kaine, the first officer, added.

  As if oblivious to it all, the helmsman manipulated his controls like a concert pianist giving the recital of a lifetime. The rate of approach slowed steadily as the tender moved closer, dragging out the maneuver until Dickerson was ready to shout in frustrated impatience.

  Then the ships touched, so gently that the contact was hardly noticeable.

  "Deploying magnetic grapples," Kaine announced. 'We have positive contact!"

  "Secure from maneuvering stations, gentlemen," Dickerson ordered, breathing out. "Set the special duty watch and begin tender operations. Engineer, shields to maximum power. And make a note in the log that we have docked with Karga."

  "Damn it all, skipper," the helm officer said, "don't we even get a chance to smoke a cigarette?"

  "Very funny, Clancy," Dickerson said, forcing down a smile at the helmsman's ancient joke. "Since you're not going to be doing anything on the bridge for a few weeks, what say you go over to the carrier and lend a hand with the salvage crew? I'm sure they'll benefit from your experience with helm systems. And your sense of humor, so-called."

  Clancy gave him a grin. "Aye aye, skipper," he said cheerfully. Dickerson watched him leave the bridge wistfully. The challenge of taking part in a project as big as rebuilding a Kilrathi carrier appealed to him, but unlike the helmsman he had plenty to do right here aboard Sindri.

  The tender was riding piggyback on the supercarrier's massive superstructure, clamped in place by magnetic grapnels. Her maneuvering drives were powered down now, but the massive banks of fusion generators that made up most of the tender's mass were still on-line. For the next several weeks, as the repair process swung into full operation aboard Karga, little Sindri's power plants would play an enormous part in the job.

  Already Sindri's shields had extended around the supercarrier. They weren't up to combat standard by any stretch of the imagination, but they would protect work crews from the brown dwarf's strange radiation and put an end to the continual bombardment of tiny particles of matter against the derelict's hull. When their orbit took them through the gas giant's ring system once, which happened on the order of once every three days, the shields would also block all but the very largest chunks of ice from further damaging the ship. Already the unshielded Kilrathi hulk had taken a great deal of additional damage from multiple passes through the rings, minor hits by small pieces of junk, perhaps, but at orbital speeds the damage was magnified by kinetic energy unleashed by each of those hits.

  Once the basic shielding was up, the engineers would set up a second set of shields specifically attuned to retain gases. Then the process of reintroducing an atmosphere on to the ship could begin. It would still be necessary for work crews to wear suits until the hull of the carrier had been fully patched, because of the constant danger of a shield failure that could open the ship to hard vacuum, but many of the most basic tasks of repair would be considerably easier with an atmosphere to work in.

  Meanwhile, one hole in the carrier's superstructure would not be targeted for repair for a while, a small, jagged opening Dickerson had deliberately aimed for during the docking approach. This was now positioned directly below one of several airlocks leading out of engineering. Soon engineers from the tender would be running leads through this opening to hook into the Karga's power grid and computer network. Although the supercarrier was still generating some energy, the repair job would eventually require her power plant to be taken off-line so the equipment could be examined and overhauled. While this was going on Sindri would provide the power for Karga to operate light, environmental controls, and artificial gravity, and to run through instruments as they were tested. At the same time they would be busy downloading the carrier's computer network. The Kilrathi computer files already had intelligence experts in the battle group salivating in anticipation of the potential data they might hold. Once the files were duplicated, the Kilrathi network would be fully purged and then brought back on-line with the programming and data files needed for the ship to operate as a part of the Free Republic Navy.

  It would be a monster job, Dickerson thought. Sindri had been involved in similar work before, including the refitting of the Tarawa—now the Independence—a few months earlier. That had been a bear of a project, but this one would be worse. The damage to the Kilrathi carrier had been far more extensive to start with, and Dickerson didn't even want to think about all the problems of mating human and Kilrathi systems aboard Karga.

  Still, he envied the techies who'd have hands-on work to do in the weeks ahead. The captain of the Sindri would have plenty of headaches and more demands on his time than there were hours in the standard day to deal with them, but he knew from experience that his work would be far less interesting or absorbing than the refit his ship was going to make possible.

  "Captain," the first officer interrupted his train of thought. "Chief Engineer's compliments and could you please get together with Admiral Tolwyn and Mr. Diaz to settle the priorities on power demands? He says they're both demanding more power than we can deliver and neither one of them is willing to budge."

  Dickerson sighed. They'd only been docked a few minutes and the headaches were already starting. "Very well, Mr. Kaine. Have Communications put the gentlemen through to my ready room." He rose from his seat. "You have the bridge, Lieutenant."

  Operations Planning Center, FRLS Independence

  Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

  0843 hours (CST), 2670.320

  "I'm telling you, Admiral, my crew is not going to like this. Frankly, I don't like it either. I didn't sign up in the Landreich Naval Reserve to be some kind of ferryman for a load of dead Cats, and neither did my people."

  The atmosphere in the escort carrier's OPC was charged with tension today, and Jason Bondarevsky had to force himself to keep from jumping into the argument with an angry comment. Everyone connected with the Goliath Project was exhausted after days of nearly constant work, and in consequence tempers were frayed. The daily conferences aboard the Independence to coordinate work schedules and iron out conflicts were apt to produce more confrontations than solutions, and today's was a good case in point.

  Vance Richards looked older than ever, tired and drawn. He worked as hard as any man on Karga, perhaps harder. His wide experience as Chief of Intelligence for ConFleet during the war had given him wide contact with Kilrathi technology, and he was the indispensable man in directing the repairs. But the work was taking its toll, and Bondarevsky was beginning to worry that he'd burn himself out long before he had to take up his duties as battle group commander if and when the supercarrier really was put back in commission.

  "Listen to me, Captain Steiger," the admiral said slowly. "I know all the arguments, but I'm not buying any of them. You have your orders."

  Steiger looked stubborn, but didn't answer right away.

  The Kilrathi dead were the issue today, specifically the disposal of the bodies of the carrier's crew. The grisly reminder of Karga's last cruise had to be dealt with, and soon. Now that they had atmosphere and heat decay would rapidly become a major factor, and until those bodies were removed they would impede the repair work. The first major task Richards had ordered the crewmen brought across from the City of Cashel to undertake was the collection of Kilrathi bodies.

  It would have bee
n easiest to simply consign them to space. Human dead were normally given a burial in space, with a brief ceremony, a launched casket, and an honor guard salute. The thinking among most of the Landreichers seemed to be that anything that elaborate would be a waste of valuable time, and that the expedient thing to do would be to simply jettison those thousands of bodies and get on with the business at hand.

  But that wasn't the way Vance Richards operated.

  As he'd explained at the outset of the meeting, Kilrathi burial customs went back many hundreds of years, to a time long before the race had developed space travel. Descended from carnivore stock, the Kilrathi race as a whole was extremely territorial, and the religious Codices established the need for each kil to return to the land so that his spirit would have a range in which to hunt and explore throughout the afterlife. Of course space travel had forced some alteration to the ancient beliefs, but the Kilrathi still preferred to return their dead to solid ground, be it planet, moon, or asteroid, rather than allowing them to be consigned to the endless void.

  So Richards had decreed that the nearly five thousand dead aboard the carrier should be given the kind of burial their religion called for—on Nargrast.

  It was going to require a major effort to carry out those orders, though. The dead, now stored in the carrier's port side flight deck in vacuum and zero-g, would have to be moved aboard shuttles from the City of Cashel and carried to Nargrast, where the shuttles would ground, unload their grisly cargoes, and deposit the bodies in a series of mass graves to be excavated by ore extraction vehicles from the factory ship. Richards also intended to have a burial service read, to honor the Kilrathi casualties who had given their lives for their Empire.