End Run Page 2

  And fresh air!

  Stars shifted in the vision port, and Harcourt knew they had completed the last jump to Xanadu. He smiled in anticipation of a sandy beach under a clear sky. "Tell them we're coming, Number One."

  "Yes, sir." Grounder pressed a switch. "CS Johnny Greene to Xanadu Base. Come in, Xanadu."

  Harcourt pressed "All stations."

  "Gunners and engineer to the bridge." He knew he wouldn't be able to keep them away from the first sight of the paradise that awaited them, so he made it official. For himself, he stared at the port, trying vainly to pick out the star that was Xanadu. The jump point was one and a third AU's from the planet, which wasn't much larger than Terra, so of course it appeared as a star—but not yet a discernible disc.

  The planet had been named for its climate. It was mostly water, with a few archipelagos. The largest island, of course, held the Fleet repair base. The second largest held the main R & R station, and vacationing spacehands dispersed from there to their own secluded lazy places on the smaller islands—if they wanted to be alone. If they didn't, the main station had casinos, restaurants, holo palaces, golf links, tennis courts, a shoreline that was one long beach where the surf rolled in perfect tubular waves, and a temperature that always ranged between sixty and eighty degrees Fahrenheit—all the amenities for a few weeks of sybaritic luxury before the tired spacedogs had to return to the lines. It may not have been Paradise, but it was close enough for Government workers.

  The gunners crowded in through the hatch with Lorraine, the engineer, between them. Harcourt looked at his crew and saw the same glassy-eyed smile of anticipation on all their faces.

  "Xanadu Base to CS Johnny Greene."

  Grounder looked up, eyes glinting. "Johnny Greene here. Do you have a landing assignment for us?"

  "'Fraid not, Johnny Greene. We have a message, instead—orders. Do not land on Xanadu. Repeat, do not land."

  Grounder stared in shock.

  Then she recovered. "Fleet base, our oxygen generation plant is shot—literally and figuratively. We have enough O2 for a week's breathing, no more."

  "We know, Johnny Greene, but orders are orders, and a week is enough breathing space."

  "Let me double-check that supply with Damage Control, Xanadu." Grounder looked up at Coriander. "Chief?"

  "Yeah, it'll last that long," Coriander grated. "They better have a damn good reason!"

  "Damn good," Harcourt seconded. "Relay that up here, Number One."

  Grounder hit the switch with a look of relief.

  "Yeah, we have a week's oxygen left," Harcourt growled. "Captain Macmillan Harcourt here. We've been standing picket duty for two years, and my crew is going crazy for some R & R while their ship is being repaired. What's the problem, Xanadu?"

  "Only orders, Captain Harcourt—signed by Admiral Banbridge."

  Harcourt stiffened. That was coming from awfully high up. Why was Banbridge concerning himself with a lowly corvette?

  "Orders are to divert to Hilo Base," Xanadu said.

  "Hilo Base?" Harcourt turned to the astrogator. "Where's that, Barney?"

  Barney scanned the chart on his screen, shook his head. "Nothing I ever heard of, Captain. I'll scan." He punched the name into the computer.

  Harcourt decided to help him a little. "Coordinates for Hilo Base, please, Xanadu?"

  "It's not on any of our charts," Barney reported.

  "Thirty-two degrees right ascension, seventy-two degrees east," Xanadu replied. "Sixteen light-years outward."

  "Thirty-two, seventy-two, sixteen," Barney echoed, punching the numbers into his computer.

  Then tension on the bridge fairly thrummed. Everybody stared at the astrogator.

  "Yeah, it's there." Barney shook his head. "I wouldn't call that much of a world, Captain. Says it has a couple of big lakes, though, and an inland sea. Plus a couple of R & R domes."

  The crew let out one massive groan.

  "Well, there goes our month on the beaches," Grounder sighed.

  "They can't do this to us!" Flip erupted. "Two years on picket duty, two years!"

  Grounder killed the audio pickup in a hurry.

  "Two years!" Flip yelled. "We never griped, we never complained, we never said, The hell with this!' and headed for home! Two years! Fifty-three fights, our ship getting shot away piece by piece! We put up with the stink, we put up with the smoke, we patched and finagled and made things work somehow! We earned this leave, damn it!"

  Everybody stared straight ahead, shaken. It was only the second time in two years that they had heard Flip raise his voice in anger. The first time had been right after their premier encounter with a Kilrathi raider, when a near miss had burned off the brand-new paint job on Flip's beloved ship. The rest of the time, he had always been cheerful to the point of being nauseating, always joking, always laughing. To hear him flare up shook them worse than Banbridge's orders.

  "The domes will keep things warm," Harcourt sighed. He nodded to Grounder, and she opened the audio pickup again. "What're the rest of the R&R facilities, Xanadu?"

  "Danged if I know, Captain," Xanadu replied. "Never heard of the place."

  Flip had calmed down substantially; his voice had turned cold. "Mutiny, Captain. I move we desert."

  Grounder stabbed frantically at the audio switch.

  "Don't tempt me," Harcourt groaned. "I've got a wife and kids back on Terra."

  The bridge was silent; everybody knew that Flip had married just before they left for this last tour of duty. His new wife lived on the same planet as his parents, Flip's home, which was now entirely too close to the front lines.

  Flip sighed, like the air gushing out of a punctured tire. "Right, Captain. We go where we're told in this man's fleet."

  "That's what we swore." Harcourt felt like doing a little of the other kind of swearing right then, though. He nodded at Grounder, and she turned on the audio pickup again. "Orders understood, Xanadu," Harcourt sighed. "Johnny Greene en route to Hilo. Signing off."

  "Bon voyage." Xanadu said, the tone sympathetic. "Signing off."

  Hilo loomed in the vision port, filling its center—bland, tan, and arid with only a few dots of blue and a crescent of azure at its rim.

  The gunners and Lorraine jammed the hatchway. "I can almost feel that baking desert wind," Flip groaned.

  "No, you can't," Coriander countered. "The temperature never gets above fifty there."

  "And this is R&R?" Billy griped.

  "Belay that, folks," Harcourt sighed. "Wake 'em up, Number One."

  "CS Johnny Greene to Hilo Base," Grounder said. "Come in, Hilo Base."

  "Hilo Base to Johnny Greene" a husky contralto answered him.

  Every male head on the bridge whipped about to stare at the screen in front of Grounder. They saw a beautiful tanned face with a cascade of black hair, deep red lips, and long lashes over big dark eyes, giving them a collective wink. "Good to see you, Johnny Greene. We've been expecting you."

  Grounder bristled. "Oh. This was your idea?"

  "Lieutenant!" Harcourt reproved her.

  The contralto just laughed, low and warmly. "It wasn't my idea, Lieutenant, but we have some hunks here who will claim it was theirs, once they get a look at your face."

  Grounder stared, at a loss for words. She had never thought of herself as pretty—but she had been thinking about hunks. At least, until they hit Xanadu.

  Harry stepped up for a look over Grounder's shoulder, Jolie crowding right behind him, eyes snapping. "Cat!" she hissed.

  "You mean she's pretty?" Barney was stationed in front of Grounder; he couldn't see.

  Lorraine groaned. "Just what we need, on leave—competition!"

  Grounder finally managed to find her voice again. "What's the weather like down there, Hilo?"

  "Outside the dome," the contralto said, "it's forty degrees Fahrenheit with a thirty-knot breeze, kicking up a lot of loose sand."

  Coriander stifled a moan.

  "Inside the dome," the
contralto said brightly, "it's seventy-two degrees, water at sixty-eight. The slot machines are loaded to make sure you can't lose too badly, the croupiers have curves you never learned in Calculus, and the dealers look like Don Juan should have, with very soft, sensuous hands."

  Jolie, Lorraine, and Grounder perked up, and began to look interested. So did Coriander, but she looked wary, too.

  "Of course," the contralto went on, "we've just finished our second dome, where it's twenty-eight degrees, three different grades of slopes, three chair lifts, and two feet of fresh snow every morning. Skis supplied, of course. The chalet has a loaded bar, a hot band, and dancing all night."

  "This… just might be… an interesting leave, after all," Billy mused.

  The dark-haired beauty on the screen smiled and gave them another wink. "We don't promise anything but dancing, mind you. You'll have to do the rest yourselves."

  Harry glanced at Coriander, thinking of all the passes he'd put off making for the last two years; emotional complications in a war zone were something none of them needed. Coriander glanced back at him, saw he was looking, and turned away quickly, blushing.

  "Oh, I think we can manage," Harcourt said easily. "Where do we land, Hilo?"

  Finally, after two years, they opened the Johnny Greene's main hatch. The airlock equalized pressure, but they still wore their suits—Hilo didn't have all that much mass, and none of them were used to breathing thin air. The crew filed out, looking brightly about them. The sun was shining, the sky was a very dark blue, and…

  The sand stretched for miles and miles and miles.

  But the airbus was waiting, and an officer in a pressure suit stepped up, holding out a gauntleted hand. "Captain Harcourt? Captain Tor Ripley. Welcome to Hilo."

  "Thank you, Captain." Harcourt took the hand, a bit surprised to see someone of his own rank for the welcoming committee—almost as surprised as he was by a handshake instead of a salute. "May I present my first officer, Lieutenant Grounder… my astrogator, Ensign Barnes…"

  He made the rounds, each of the crew members saluting, Ripley returning. Then, the formalities done, he said, "Welcome to Hilo! Welcome!" and ushered them onto the bus.

  The doors closed; air hissed in; the green patch lit.

  "Okay, we can crack our helmets." Ripley gave his headpiece a half-twist, then tilted it backward to bare his face. Harcourt did the same.

  "Now, Captain," Ripley said, "I'd like to talk to you about getting off picket duty for a while."

  As one, all the crew's heads swiveled, staring at Ripley.

  "It's… certainly something I'm willing to consider," Harcourt said slowly, somewhat dazed—but instinctively looking for the worm in the apple. "What's the nature of the assignment?"

  Ripley told them.

  Grins broke out on all faces. The crew nodded.

  "I volunteer, Captain."

  "So do I."

  "Me, too!"

  "And me!"

  "Guess I do, too," Harcourt said slowly. "We'll take the assignment, Captain Ripley."

  Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

  In fact, it sounded like a milk run. All they had to do was make an orbit or three around a small, insignificant planet the Kilrathi called "Vukar Tag." It was way out in the Kilrathi boondocks. Okay, so it was in enemy territory, but it was closer to the Fleet than to Kilrah, and they had the jump points very clearly mapped.

  "One of our destroyers was chasing a Kilrathi raider home," Ripley explained. "He was following the cat just a little too closely through the jump point, and something in the turbulence got the angle wrong. When the stars stopped shifting, there was no sign of the raider—but they did spot a Kilrathi corvette going into Vukar Tag."

  They were sitting at a poolside table, watching the rest of the crew with a few of their hosts and hostesses, disporting themselves like blowing whales and courting dolphins.

  "You know," Billy said, "I never realized Jolie had a figure…"

  "Under combat fatigues, who would know?" Harcourt agreed. "But all the figures we need right now are the ones in your notepad." For himself, though, he was finding it difficult to keep his eyes off Lieutenant Grounder. Her swimsuit was very demure, but he would never have called it "innocent…"

  He wrenched his mind back to the topic. "That's how they found out the name?"

  "Right—not that they could understand it, of course. Nobody aboard spoke much Cat. But the captain had the good sense to slap on the recorder, and when he got back to base, our experts deciphered it."

  Billy glanced at Harcourt.

  Harcourt nodded almost imperceptibly.

  Billy turned to Ripley. "If you don't mind, sir—professional interest. What did they find?"

  "'Professional interest' is right," Ripley answered. "It was just the usual greeting and landing instructions—but they did pick out of it that the planet's name is 'Vukar Tag.' " He shrugged. "What it means, nobody seems to know. What's even more of a puzzle, is why there's a cruiser in orbit around the dustball."

  "A cruiser." Harcourt had a nasty suspicion. "Any moons?"

  "One, and small—but big enough to hold at least a wing of fighters, if that's what you're thinking." Ripley nodded. "I thought the same thing."

  "'Well guarded' is right!" Harcourt scowled. "What are they hiding there?"

  "Well, I hope you're curious enough to want to find out, Mac," Ripley said. "I really hope you are."

  "Minerals?"

  Ripley shook his head. "It's mostly desert, and no sign of a mining operation, though they did see shuttles coming up to a transport ship. They may be exporting something, but according to spectroanalysis, the only thing it could be is high-grade silicon."

  "Silicon isn't exactly rare," Harcourt pointed out. "There has to be a good supply on every Kilrathi planet."

  "Has to," Billy agreed. "The sand from Vukar Tag must be very pure, or something."

  "Or something." Harcourt didn't want to say it, but it was hard to keep from thinking of religious associations. "So it's a desert, and it's a backwater, and all we have to do is fly around it once or twice and get pictures." He looked up at Ripley. "That right, Tor?"

  Ripley nodded. "That's the mission in a nutshell, Mac. Of course, since it's a reconnaissance flyby, you'll be carrying a specialist."

  There was the worm in the apple that Harcourt had been braced for all along—if he didn't count a cruiser and a wing of fighters. "He's in charge of the cameras?"

  "Yes, and you'll pretty much have to go by her direction, once you get near the planet."

  Harcourt frowned, picking up on the correction in gender. "She knows navigation?"

  Ripley shrugged uncomfortably. "She's had the same training as you and I, and she's had fifty hours combat flying time in a Sabre."

  "That's just great," Billy groaned.

  "Billy, you're out of line," Harcourt said severely. Inwardly, though, he was grateful to his sentry for saying what he had wanted to, but shouldn't. Just enough training and experience to make her think she knew what she was doing, but not enough to really know… "Just so she understands she's under my orders, Tor."

  "Oh, of course, Mac!" Ripley dismissed the issue. "Now, about your route in…"

  The route in, of course, should have been no problem at all. Intelligence had the jump points mapped, and there was no particular reason to think there should be any Kilrathi shipping near any of them—no raiders, since it was inside the borders of the Kilrathi Empire; no pickets, since the fleets were a dozen light-years farther out from Kilrah, waiting to skirmish with the Confederation. There might be the odd transport freighter, but that shouldn't pose much in the way of a problem.

  "I don't understand, Tor," Harcourt said. "If all it is, is a ball of sand—why is it worth a close look?"

  "Because," said Ripley, "for a worthless dust ball, it's amazingly well guarded."

  "Oh, really?" Outwardly, Harcourt still looked relaxed and casual; inside, he was turning into a coiled sprin
g. "What is it? A refitting base? An auxiliary shipyard?"

  "Could be, but there really isn't enough traffic—just the occasional escort or transport." Ripley shook his head. "From what little we can see from a long way off, there's nothing there."

  "So why all the ships?" Harcourt asked.

  "That," said Ripley, "is what we want to know."

  Of course, Harcourt should have turned down the assignment right then—or at least talked it over with the crew, and let them turn it down. But two weeks of watching bikinis while soaking up sunlight and alcohol had left him with a warm, ruddy glow that made the worst a Kilrathi could do, seem inconsequential.

  Which was just what Ripley had intended, of course—sun, water, and no news, no other crews in from the war zone to trade notes with.

  No wonder they had been diverted—in more ways than one!

  Ramona Chekhova was only thirty-two. It was an inconvenient age—young enough to have rash, hot-blooded impulses, old enough that she should have known better.

  She carried her duffel bag up to the Johnny Greene, dropped it, and stood to attention, glaring at the crew who were drawn up in a semicircle to wait for her. They saluted. She returned the salute, then turned her glare on Captain Harcourt.

  "Lieutenant Commander Ramona Chekhova?" he asked.

  "The same," she confirmed. "I'm waiting, Captain."

  Harcourt stiffened, his face wooden. "I'm afraid you're forgetting a point or two of military etiquette, Commander. I am the commanding officer of the Johnny Greene—and I am waiting for your salute."

  Yes, a lieutenant commander outranked a captain—but not on board his own ship. There, the captain is the boss.

  And Ramona knew it, too. She finally flipped her hand in something vaguely resembling a salute, seething inwardly.

  Harcourt saluted crisply in response.

  The crew looked a little relieved, thinking Harcourt had won the first round.

  Harcourt knew better. "Lieutenant Commander Chekhova, my first officer, Lieutenant Janice Grounder… my astrogator, Ensign Morlock Barnes… my Damage Control Officer, Chief Petty Officer Darlene Coriander…"

  Chekhova nodded at each in turn as he completed the introductions. Then she turned back to Harcourt.

  "Permission to come aboard, Captain." She wasn't at attention, she wasn't at ease, she was just sort of slumping in place. Harcourt decided to ignore the insult and said, "Permission granted." He stepped over to the boarding ramp. Ramona hesitated for a moment, caught between military courtesy and old-fashioned courtesy—but she knew that a lady must insist on being treated as a lady, or she will sacrifice one of her strongest advantages, so she stepped up on the ramp.