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  "I want the straight line, no butt covering for a superior."

  "I don't think he can cut it, sir. He's going to crack before we're done. That briefing scared the hell out of him."

  "Exactly what I thought. But he's the fair-haired boy of someone back at headquarters who made sure his efficiency reports look like they were written out in fourteen-karat gold. He's also got more than one enemy and I think that's why they put him on the Tarawa. Figured you're all dead anyhow once the show starts, so why waste a good officer."

  "Can you get him transferred out?"

  "Too late. I told Banbridge what I thought, but all he saw were those reports and he wants him to stay. Though I hate like hell to think about what I got you into, at the same time I'm glad you're on that ship to balance things out a bit. I hate to put you in this spot son, but if O'Brian should crack you know what you'll have to do and I'll back you all the way."

  Jason nodded.

  "Anything I can do for you, son?"

  Jason shook his head. He had no real life outside the fleet. The only woman he was really interested in was going out there with him. His mother? At least the insurance would go to her. Damn, she had given everything, a husband, one son, and now another. A lot of money from a grateful nation, three blue stars hanging in her window, and loneliness. He could imagine the letter that Tolwyn would send, to be folded away with the other two. No, there was nothing the admiral could do now.

  He realized Tolwyn was the same in a way. Wife and sons killed early on in the war. Nothing except the fleet, and one spoiled nephew. He hesitated and then decided to go ahead anyhow and make the offer.

  "Sir. I've grounded Kevin as you know. If you want I could transfer him off the Tarawa for an evaluation and discipline review. He'll get cleared—hell most pilots have pulled similar stunts at one time or another. We'll be gone and you can transfer him over to Wolfhound. Put him in with Hobbes' unit, that Kilrathi is a damned fine leader."

  Tolwyn's features grew dark and Jason instantly knew that he had made a mistake,

  "I'll be damned if I'm going to show favorites," the admiral growled. "The boy's assigned to the Tarawa and by God that's where he'll stay. A Tolwyn doesn't run from a fight. I'd rather lose him than have to live with the shame both for myself, and for him."

  Jason felt a warm glow of pride for his commander and he drew up stiffly.

  "It's always been an honor to serve under you, sir," he said softly.

  Tolwyn nodded, and then extended his hand.

  "Good luck son, and good hunting."

  CHAPTER VI

  Jason paused for a moment and waited. He felt the shudder and didn't even bother to look at the shifting starfields on the other side of the launch bay airlock. Seconds later the ship's nav computer announced successful jump and started the countdown for the next jump which would hit in just over eleven hours.

  So they were on their way in.

  He turned back around.

  "No way, no damned way, I need a cleared launch area and taxiway for my ships. Now either that landing craft gets moved or I'll order it pushed over the side right now!"

  "Listen here, young sir," Merritt growled, stepping up closer to Jason. "These ships are my responsibility, and if I don't have them I don't land. And I'll tell you this, if you lay a hand on that landing craft I'll kick your butt from here to Earth and back."

  "You damned grunt," Jason growled. "If you don't have fighter cover, this carrier will get cooked before you're even out of the airlock."

  He could sense that the entire deck was going quiet. Hundreds of marines were bunked out under the wings of the Sabres and in any spare corner that could be found. Tension was already high and they would most likely enjoy a good demonstration of hand-to-hand combat just about now to break the boredom.

  The deck was crowded beyond anything he had ever imagined possible. Each of the landing craft was damned near the size of a Broadsword, capable of carrying up to a hundred men, two M-77 light ground assault vehicles, an array of medium caliber weapons, with a full battery of ground bombardment missiles slung to the undercarriage. That alone gave him the creeps. Ten landing craft, each loaded down with enough missiles to rip the Tarawa apart a dozen times over, were sitting fully exposed on deck. Except for the hot-loaded planes, all armament aboard Tarawa was stored in blast-proof lockers beneath the flight deck, only to be hoisted out and loaded on just before launch. But no one in the design of the carrier had envisioned the addition of ten marine landing craft. There simply was no place to store the armament other than on the racks of the ships, a fact which Jason felt was the equivalent of handing a lit bomb to Maniac and then telling him to go blow something up—sooner or later something would indeed blow.

  If the Sabre lost in the training flight crashed on the deck now, it would ram straight into several of the landing craft—and the Tarawa would simply disappear.

  "Ah, sirs?"

  Sparks, moving fast, pushed her way in between the two.

  "Just what the hell is it, Sparks?"

  "I've been thinking, sir. Take a look straight up."

  "Damn it, Sparks, not now."

  "Look up, sir. See them hooks on the ceiling? They never pulled them out when this ship was converted over from a transport. We could hang eight of the landing craft up there, and there'd be just enough room underneath for the taxiway. If we jiggle the other planes around, we'll be able to squeeze in the other two landing craft and still have room to spare."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Merritt snapped. "Each of those craft weigh nearly a hundred tons unloaded."

  "I know that, sir. I was thinking, though, we could rig up a null gravity unit inside each landing craft. Move it up there and it'd hang weightlessly. How the hell do you think they do it on cargo ships?"

  "Well I'll be damned," Jason sighed.

  He looked over at Merritt who broke into a grin of approval.

  "Make it so, Sparks," Jason said, and he started to walk away, glad that his body was still intact.

  "Commander."

  Jason looked back and Merritt came up alongside and put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Care for a drink?"

  "Maybe later, Colonel," Jason said coldly.

  "Look, Commander, I'm sorry. I'm used to getting my way. It's part of being a marine I guess. I know you were trying to do things right, I just wanted to see how you'd do it."

  "Checking me out, is that it, sir?" Jason retorted.

  Merritt smiled.

  "Don't blame me. I know the odds on this mission. I guess you have to have a death wish to be a commando to start with. But the other missions I've been out on, I always figured there was a fair chance of coming back. I just want to know if I can count on you in the pinch."

  "And I pass the grade so far, right?"

  Merritt smiled.

  "Svetlana's told me a lot about you already. You're all right in my book," and he made a display of shaking Jason's hand so that everyone on the flight deck would see it.

  Jason realized he had been manipulated in a little morale-boosting game, but he couldn't help but like the blunt forthrightness of this squat plug of a man who didn't just cut his hair short but rather shaved it bald—an affectation that many of his troops followed. Jason was glad that at least Svetlana hadn't picked that marine habit up. Merritt broke into a grin that showed several chipped teeth and Jason found that the smile was simply far too winning, like an ugly dog that suddenly had broken into a fit of tail wagging.

  "I'll take that drink with you later, sir," Jason said, playing the game as well so that his own people would hear him.

  "By the way," Merritt asked, lowering his voice to a near whisper, "I heard that your captain used to run a transport."

  "That's right, sir."

  "Then why the hell wasn't he down here to supervise this loading? He's got the experience; he could have figured this problem out in a second."

  "He's most likely busy right now," Jason said, keeping his voic
e even, not willing to admit that the captain had stayed locked in his cabin since returning from the briefing.

  "Well, my reading is he's so damned scared it'll be a week before he can unplug."

  "I can't comment on that, sir," Jason replied.

  "See you for that drink later, Commander," and with a heavy pat on the shoulder Merritt stalked off, pausing for a moment to cut loose with an excellently chosen string of expletives aimed at a group of commandos sleeping under the wing of a Sabre.

  Jason looked around the flight deck and couldn't decide whether he should stick around or simply just give it over to the deck officer. He decided for the latter and walked off, checking out the marines as he passed. He knew they were putting on a show for the "blue suits," as they called fleet personnel and they were certainly going all out. Most had their personal and combat gear stacked up around them, and were lounging on their equipment, sharpening knives and cleaning weapons. Few of them carried the standard issue M-47 semiauto laser gun. A couple had neutron mini guns, which pumped out a thousand bursts a minute, with shoulder slings to help carry the thirty kilos of weight. Others were armed with mass driver scatter guns, which fired five hundred naillike flechettes in a single burst. Others carried a bizarre assortment of non-military sporting equipment including a couple of sniper scoped Stenson Drakon rifles, capable of dropping a twenty ton Vegan saber tooth from a mile away, and near all of them had at least one or two Kilrathi items, especially the famed claw knives which could disembowel an opponent with the mere flick of a wrist. Those not working on their weapons had pried open the lids of self-cooking meals and the deck was filled with the scent of standard ration packs.

  "Care for a souvenir, sir?"

  Jason looked over at four marines who were sitting in a small circle playing cards. They were all wearing the standard adjustable camo which, chameleonlike, would sense its surroundings and then shift the color of the uniform to match, so that all of them, for the moment at least, looked as if they were dressed in deck plate steel gray.

  "Not really," Jason said politely and started to move on.

  "Just a moment, sir," and a marine reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a small gem-encrusted gold statue. Jason looked at it. It was a beautiful work of art, with a free flowing style representing a Kilrathi female, but it was done in an abstract so it was hard to tell for sure. It conveyed a sense of felinelike grace and beauty that he found appealing. It was a side of the Kilrathi he tried never to think about, the fact that beyond the war, they also had private lives, had their own literature, music, and art traditions that were even older than that of humans. He had once heard a cycle of Kilrathi poetry, about the loss of a lover, being read by Hobbes, and found it strangely moving.

  He looked at the statue and could not help but admire it. Though he wanted it, he also felt that its presence in his room would be disturbing. In his war, the killing of Kilrathi was impersonal, except for an occasional taunt on the comm link. There were no bodies, no wounded, only the quick and the living, and those who were dead. The statue threatened to somehow put a face and feelings on the enemy, something he could never afford to let happen.

  "Got it out of that furball palace. A real nice bargain for three hundred."

  He was tempted anyhow but shook his head.

  "I'll pass."

  "Well maybe this will interest you," a female marine said, grinning sardonically, and her friends started to chuckle as she reached into her duffel.

  She pulled out a small loop of braided rope, half a dozen dark leathery circles hanging from the coil.

  He knew better than to ask but had to find out.

  "What is it?"

  "Cat ears," the marine said, "cut 'em off myself. Now one set still smells a bit, got it on Vukar, but the other two sets are nice and cured, fifty for the lot. It's a great gift to send home."

  He wanted to explode but knew he was being set up.

  "I'll skip it, Marine," and he kept on going, ignoring their low burst of laughter.

  Damn. It made him sick. What was this war doing to us, are we becoming like them?

  He left the deck area and headed for the ready room. Doomsday was sitting in the room alone, nursing his usual cup of overbrewed coffee.

  "How you doing?"

  Doomsday looked up.

  "One of the problems with being a manic-depressive is that you know that someday you'll be right and the crap really will hit the fan."

  "Oh, that's great to hear," Jason replied, pouring a cup of coffee for himself and settling in beside his friend.

  "We've got a coward for a captain for starters."

  Jason nodded. He seemed to have real luck that way. He'd already been in one mutiny against a total jerk, now he was stuck again, but this time in the hands of a coward rather than a ruthless tyrant.

  "And we're on a one-way trip."

  "You can say that around me buddy, but not around our pups."

  Doomsday nodded glumly.

  "They already got it figured out in spite of the security lid. Oh, they'll do the old stiff upper lip routine around you, try and look like a bunch of John Waynes."

  "Who the hell is that?"

  "Didn't they teach you any history in school?"

  Jason shook his head.

  "From the rather self-contradictory film records it's believed he was a great war hero. But anyhow, it's almost reassuring to have some depressed people around me for a change; it could actually cheer me up."

  "Just great," Jason replied.

  He suddenly didn't feel like hanging around. Doomsday was one of his closest friends and also had that rare ability to accept a friend, especially one far younger, in a command role. It's just that he wasn't the most cheerful of company at times and Jason felt as if he needed a real cheering up.

  "After the next jump there's nearly a twenty-hour transit time to the following point. Things should be squared away on the flight deck by then and I want our people out and practicing convoy defense and strike runs against capital ships. You and the other Sabres will be the aggressors; Janice and I will run the defense, so come up with a good simulation of a Kilrathi attack pattern."

  "I've seen enough; it'll be old hat stuff."

  Jason nodded and left the room. He was tempted to go back and join Merritt for that drink; there wouldn't be any flying for twelve hours. He thought for a moment of Svetlana, after all she was now on his ship, but pushed the thought aside; it was better to just let that pass. At the moment sleep seemed awfully tempting and he turned instead to go to his cabin. Before relaxing he settled into his chair and pulled up a flight line status report on his computer to check on the progress of repairs.

  There was a knock at the door.

  He groaned inwardly. The last thing he needed was someone else barging in wanting to talk.

  "Enter."

  "I could come back later."

  He looked over his shoulder and felt the old heart skip again.

  "Come on in, Svetlana."

  "I figured since we'd be taking this little cruise together, there was no sense in avoiding each other."

  She reached into a duffel bag and pulled out a bottle, two camouflaged field cups, and a corkscrew.

  "Delighted," Jason sighed, closing up his computer and pulling the one other chair in his office around for her to sit in.

  She uncorked the bottle and poured out two drinks. A warm cinnamon smell filled the room.

  "Got it in that Kilrathi palace. Can't read the label, even our translator was stumped; for all I know it might be furniture polish, but here goes anyhow."

  She tilted the glass back.

  Jason took a cautious sniff and then followed her lead. It hit like a sledgehammer and he felt his eyes water.

  "Damn, those furballs sure can make a potent brew."

  "Another?"

  Jason smiled and shook his head. "I think I'll just nurse the rest of this one," he gasped and she laughed softly.

  They sat in awkward silence for
nearly a minute. He found that he wasn't really sure of what he should start talking about. Business? There'd be plenty of time later to go over the strike plans. The past? Far too dangerous. Damn, you couldn't even lead off with the weather.

  "I'm sorry about blowing on you the other day," she finally ventured, "It's just, well, Jason it took a long time to get over you, and then suddenly there you are, that damned boyish grin of yours. It tore me up."

  "It's OK."

  There was another long silence.

  "Do you like the marines?" he finally asked.

  "Sure. They're good. I wanted to be with the best. Since I couldn't fly, I figured I'd pound the ground. I'm proud of them."

  "They're a hell of a tough bunch."

  "What do you mean?"

  He hesitated.

  "Go on," and she smiled.

  "I just had one of your grunts, a woman no less, offer to sell me some Kilrathi ears."

  "So it turned you off. A little too brutal?"

  "I thought we were fighting for some basic standards in life, and it struck me as something straight out of the middle ages. Though the Kilrathi might do it, we still play by certain rules, treat prisoners fairly and with respect, and non-combatants are off-limits. Hell, I put my career on the line once over that issue when I refused a direct order to dump a Kilrathi freighter loaded with women and children who wanted to surrender. I believe we can fight this war without becoming barbaric."

  "And what the hell else is war, a tea party?"

  "You're not following me."

  "For you it's nice and clean—end of the mission you come back to white sheets, a hot meal, and a nice young, clean, and well-scrubbed ensign or lieutenant with stars in her eyes to warm your bed."

  She spit the words out angrily.

  "You know it's not like that at all."

  "I've been in sixteen landings," Svetlana said, her voice suddenly sounding hollow. "Every friend I had in my first company died on what was to be my third assault. I was down wounded and missed that little jump on what was supposed to be a cold target. They said the landing craft covered a couple of square kilometers when the dust finally settled from the impact."

  "Wounded?"