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  Starboard Flight Deck, FRLS Mjollnir

  Jump Point Nine, Vordran System

  2345 hours (CST)

  Bondarevsky crouched behind a bank of instruments, uncomfortable in full space armor. With his helmet set to infra-red imaging to compensate for the dim lighting of the flight deck, he was starting to get a headache. And the waiting was starting to get to him. He wondered how the marines could bear it. This was nothing like being in the cockpit of a fighter on the way into battle…or even holding down the command chair on the bridge. There you had enough to do to keep you from having to think about what was coming. All he could do now was hunker down and try to keep from worrying.

  The Kilrathi shuttle passed slowly through the airlock force field and stooped in for a landing on the flight deck. It was an older design than those used aboard the Mjollnir, somewhat smaller but standing high on landing gear that gave plenty of clearance for the loading ramp that opened from its belly. The design allowed for savings in space aboard cramped ships like the escort, where the ventral ramp would open up into an airlock through the outer hull of the escort when the shuttle was secured to its piggyback position aft of the bridge.

  Bondarevsky could almost feel the intensity of the emotion on the flight deck now. He wondered what they were thinking aboard the shuttle. With no Kilrathi in sight to greet them, they were probably getting edgy.

  He gave a hand signal that he knew Sparks could see from the windows of Primary Flight Control overlooking the flight deck. They had planned for the contingency of boarders, and the sequence had been rehearsed, but Bondarevsky’s heart still beat a little faster, knowing that this time it was for real.

  If all was going according to plan, the carrier was now broadcasting on the same frequency they’d picked up from the shuttle on its way across, a panicky broadcast as if from the CSTCC claiming the shuttle was in trouble on final approach. There was a localized jamming field here on the flight deck, though, to keep the Cats from realizing they were featuring in an imaginative drama playing for the benefit of their suspicious friends. The Kilrathi communications expert, Dahl, would be playing his role to the hilt. The tough old peasant had seemed to enjoy the notion of putting one over on the aristocracy when he’d helped them hatch the scheme during a council of war at Oecumene.

  The ventral ramp opened slowly, and a pair of Kilrathi in armor came cautiously down. After a moment they were joined by more. It looked as if there was entire squad of assault troops there, plus a single Cat in the cockpit of the shuttle. With the troopers beginning to fan out, and no more in evidence, Bondarevsky gave a second hand-signal for Sparks.

  In an instant, the silent, darkened environment of the flight deck changed dramatically. The lights came up to full intensity, a siren began hooting an urgent warning, and the artificial gravity cut off.

  Then the airlock force field cut off, and a wind like a sudden, unexpected tornado swept through the long, tunnel-like flight deck.

  The Kilrathi troops, armored and trained for work in space, were in no actual danger from any of it, but the sudden combination of distractions was enough to confuse them for a few crucial seconds. Unable to see clearly, and instinctively clutching to save themselves as they were blown free from the deck in sudden zero-g by a torrent of escaping air that threatened to carry them into the vacuum of space, none of them was in any position to think of anything beyond the immediate crisis. Even the pilot in the shuttle was caught by surprise, rushing to help his friends.

  Colonel Bhaktadil’s marines, on the other hand, were braced and ready.

  They had been posted in the shadowy corners of the flight deck, wearing full space armor and magentic clamps that secured them into position. Like Bondarevsky, they had set their helmet vision aids to infrared, so the sudden change in lighting didn’t bother them. And, most importantly, they knew what was coming. Neither the rush of air nor the loud blare of the siren disoriented them for an instant. Instead they opened fire with low-power lasers, and sixteen Kilrathi troopers were cut down almost as one. A sniper took out the pilot as he hesitated for an instant at the top of the ramp. It was over almost before it had started, and Sparks cut off the distractions and restored atmosphere and gravity a few seconds later. Bodies hit the deck with loud thumps. Most of the Cats were only wounded, but suddenly being slammed against a metal deck did nothing to improve their already grim condition.

  Bhaktadil and his marines swarmed out into the open, moving in to disarm and secure the survivors.

  The unfriendly visitors had been secured. Now they had to take the next step…and the clock was ticking.

  Bondarevsky moved to the nearest intercom terminal and signaled CIC. Tolwyn’s face appeared on the small monitor screen with barely a pause. “The shuttle is secure, Admiral,” he reported.

  “Good. Have the Colonel get his platoon aboard.” Tolwyn paused. “That escort’s the same class as the one that went down on Vaku. Some of your people went over that ship while you were pulling the castaways out.”

  “Yes, sir. I was one of them.”

  “I want a couple of people who know the layout of a Kilrathi escort with the marines. Time is crucial. If someone can save them a few minutes by knowing the layout, it could spell the difference between success and failure.” Tolwyn seemed to hesitate. “It’s a volunteer mission…”

  “I’ll go,” Bondarevsky told him. “And I’ll see who else I can round up.”

  He cut the intercom and strode across the flight deck, shouting as he walked. “Harper! Somebody get me Harper!”

  A small knot of flight wing personnel were helping the marines load up on the shuttle. Harper was among them, swapping low-velocity projectile weapons for marine lasers. In the open flight deck, in ambush, lasers had been the best weapons to use, but if the marines were going to fight a boarding action in the smaller confines of a Kilrathi escort, they’d want weapons less likely to cause accidental structural or equipment damage. Using magnetic pulses to fire small projectiles at variable initial velocities, the Marscorp MPR-27 was the best possible weapon for the job. Bondarevsky joined Harper, explaining the situation. The aide nodded cheerfully. “I’m with you, sir,” he said.

  “Me, too.” That was Alexandra Travis. He hadn’t even seen her there, passing out webgear hung with grenades and extra magazines. He remembered that she had been one of the party surveying the downed Cat ship on Nargrast, but he shook his head.

  “Harper and I can handle it, Amazon,” he said, using the nickname she’d picked up after the fight with the pirates.

  “You said it was a volunteer mission,” she said stubbornly. “I’m volunteering.” She lowered her voice. “Look, Captain, you might need an extra person who knows that layout…”

  There wasn’t time for arguments. “Fine. Gear up and get aboard. Harper, leave off this detail and give Boss Marchand my compliments. She can deploy the symphony now.”

  Harper grinned and hurried off to carry his message.

  The frantic preparations went on.

  Captured Kilrathi Shuttle

  Near Jump Point Nine, Vordran System

  2356 hours (CST)

  The shuttle made contact with the Kilrathi escort with only the gentlest of bumps, and Bondarevsky momentarily forget his apprehension as he silently praised the skill of the Cat pilot, Jorkad lan Mraal. Stiff and pompous he may have been, but he was also one hell of a good flier.

  They had needed a Cat to be visible in the shuttle’s cockpit, and Jorkad had volunteered for the job. Though he wasn’t part of the Cadre, he was fanatically loyal to Prince Murragh, and had developed a genuine liking for many of the humans in the flight wing. Bondarevsky had been faintly concerned at what might happen if his new-found allegiance was tested too hard, but so far he’d done an admirable job.

  The operation was moving into the final phase now. The broadcasts from Mjollnir had shifted to reporting that all was well with the shuttle, except for a minor problem with the computer and communications systems. Jor
kad had bolstered the story by using a searchlight semaphore code to communicate with the escort on the way across, the same technique Graham had used when they’d first encountered him at Vaku. An obviously Kilrathi pilot, flashing a well-known emergency semaphore code from the cockpit of the shuttle, should have been reassuring to the captain of the picket boat. At least they had allowed the shuttle to dock, and no further messages had been hypercast regarding the carrier.

  They wanted only one additional message to be sent from the picket boat, and that would have to be one of their own composition, since they hadn’t been able to keep the suspicious captain from investigating. Now the trick was to capture the escort with its communications codes intact, so that they could transmit the word to Baka Kar that the carrier was a friend. In the meantime, nothing further could be allowed to go out.

  Bondarevsky checked his wrist computers timepiece. In another diirty seconds…

  When the countdown hit zero, he nodded to Colonel Bhaktadil. “They should be starting,” he said.

  While the shuttle had made its way across the gap between the two vessels, a second plane had lifted from the far side of the Mjollnir. A Zartoth EW craft had remained loitering in the shadow of the carrier. Now it would be accelerating toward the escort, looking like a Vaktoth fighter out on routine patrol. But it would be starting the “symphony” they had planned, a full-spectrum jamming effort to block all possible communications from the escort.

  Right about now the captain and crew would know their suspicions had been right after all…

  Bhaktadil strode to the head of the loading ramp, kicking the pedal that operated the ventral door. As it slid open he calmly pulled a grenade from his webgear and dropped it through the gap. Five seconds later it exploded in a blinding flash of light and a deafening clap of noise. The flash-bang wasn’t designed to do damage, only to distract and disorient.

  The marines poured down the ramp, guns at the ready. A few shots echoed from below as they took care of their stunned targets. After a moment Gunnery Sergeant Martin called up that the docking area was secured. Bhaktadil led Bondarevsky, Harper, and Travis down to join his men.

  The small docking compartment was crowded. Thirty-six marines, their colonel, and the three Navy officers made a fair-sized party to be crowded in this one fairly small chamber. At Bhaktadil’s signal one of the marines hot-wired the door. It slid open, and a pair of his men rolled through the opening with their MPRs blazing away on full auto. The others followed after the two on point announced the corridor clear.

  It proceeded like that for the first few minutes, with the marines leapfrogging their way forward, trying to get to the bridge. But they ran into a stiff pocket of resistance in the warren of control rooms under the main bridge, where ten or twelve Kilrathi with small arms contested their approach from cover. The marines bogged down, unable to clear the Cats from the strong position without risking unacceptable casualties.

  Bhaktadil dropped to a crouch beside Bondarevsky and Travis. “Any suggestions?” he asked coolly.

  The two Navy officers exchanged looks. “Seems to me I remember some kind of an access tunnel running from somewhere around here to the rear of the bridge,” Travis said, frowning.

  Bondarevsky nodded. “You’re right. I remember it too.” He called up a tiny schematic on the screen of his wrist computer. “There…behind that bank of instruments.” He pointed.

  “Loomis! You take Bravo Squad. Follow these two.” Bhaktadil jerked a thumb at Bondarevsky and Travis.

  They found the entrance to the hatch easily enough, pulled off the access plate, and started in. The tunnel ran upward at a sixty degree angle, with rungs planted inside at intervals just slightly too far apart to be entirely comfortable for human hands and feet. It would have been cramped for Kilrathi technicians, but it was reasonably wide and open for the Landreich party.

  Travis insisted on leading the way, with her own wrist computer displaying the route. There were several tricky branching before the tunnel reached the bridge. Bondarevsky would have preferred to lead, but as a senior officer it was foolish for him to take the lead in something like this…as foolish as Max Kruger personally leading every foray by the Landreich’s fleet.

  They had nearly reached the top when they realized they were in trouble.

  Up ahead, a clang of metal on metal and a sudden gleam of bright light alerted them to the fact that the Cats had opened up an access plate. Bulky figures clambered into the tube, then stopped, obviously taken by surprise by the sight of the human marines climbing toward them. Evidently someone had hit upon the same idea as Bhaktadil, of using the alternate route as a way of outflanking their enemies.

  There was a pause when nothing happened. Then the lead Kilrathi opened fire. Mag-pulse projectiles whined through the tunnel, ricocheting as they hit the bulkhead. The first burst sent Alexandra Travis tumbling back against the marine just behind her, both of them crying out.

  The only thing that saved the Landreicher party was the heavy build of the typical Kilrathi. Lieutenant Loomis, third in line, was able to get off a clear shot past the two sprawled figures, and her fire brought the first Cat down. The one behind him, hampered by the massive figure of his comrade, went down as well. If there were other Kilrathi at the entry, they backed off fast.

  Loomis squeezed past Travis and the marine and pulled out a flash-bang. She signaled to two of her troopers to join her, then flipped it past the two Cat casualties, through the hatch. Somehow she managed to get past the bodies and start pumping full-auto fire through the hatchway.

  Command Bridge, KIS Wexarrngh

  Near Jump Point Nine, Vordran System

  0010 hours (CST), 2671.042

  Vharr surged from his chair as the grenade clattered on the deckplates, snarling a Kilrathi battle-challenge. The blinding light and the overwhelming shock pulse as it detonated seemed to sear directly into his brain, and for long moments he couldn’t see, or hear, or think.

  Then mag-pulse weapons shrilled and chattered, and more by instinct than by coherent reasoning he hurled himself behind the protective bulk of his command chair.

  Most of the others on the bridge weren’t so lucky. The party that had reeled back from their attempt to use the tunnel as an alternate attack route were caught completely in the open. Most of them went down in clawing, screaming red agony. The Executive Officer got off a single wild shot with his sidearm before he fell.

  Summoning all his willpower, Vharr threw off the effects of the stun grenade and hurled himself across the bridge at the computer station, one massive hand upraised to initiate the sequence that would wipe the computer codes clear.

  A human-a human female, at that-intercepted him, planting the muzzle of her sidearm squarely in his chest. “My name is Lieutenant Katherine Loomis, Free Republic Marine Corps,” she said in flawless Kilrathi. “And you, sir, are my prisoner.”

  Access Tunnel, Deck Two, KIS Wexarragh

  Near Jump Point Nine, Vordran System

  0013 hours (CST)

  Bondarevsky didn’t pay attention to the firefight. He crawled to where the two human casualties lay, turning them over. The marine was clearly dead, a full burst of mag-pulse projectiles making a nice target grouping right over his heart. But Travis was still breathing, and moaned as he pulled her to one side so that the rest of the marines could work their way past.

  Her armor hadn’t been able to stop the bullets from such short range, and he could see where it had given way along her left side. Bondarevsky pulled off her helmet, checking the pulse at her throat, then unsnapped the chest plate and worked it free. The t-shirt she wore under the armor was wet with blood. He unhooked the first aid kit from his web gear and opened it up, then drew his knife.

  Her eyes focused on the blade, and she managed a faint smile. “C’mon, it can’t be that bad,” she said, wincing. “I mean, you don’t have to go through this ‘put her our of her misery’ routine…”

  “Stay still,” he ordered. “I have to
stop that bleeding.”

  He used the knife to cut open her shirt. The blood was still flowing freely from multiple lacerations on her side. A few centimeters over and she would have been dead.

  Bondarevsky used the t-shirt to clean the wound as well as he could. Then he began to apply a healstrip which would trigger clotting of the blood leaking out from the multiple wounds. Pulling her artificial blood pack from her belt, which was coded to match her type, he squeezed the bag. An energy cell inside the bag ruptured, mixing the dried blood with a frozen saline solution and heating it to body temperature. Wrapping the bag to her forearm, he took the needle attached to the side of the bag and slipped it into a wrist vein, then lashed the bag in place.

  It was touchy work, and he was afraid his artificial hand might go back into spasms again if he tried to do anything too delicate.

  He was so wrapped up in the job that he didn’t notice where his other hand rested as he tried to steady himself. Travis flashed a painful grin. “Most guys at least give me dinner and a holo-vid before they try something like that,” she said.

  Bondarevsky pulled his good hand away from her bare breast, flushing. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “All in a good cause. Just remember about the dinner if we get back to Landreich, okay?”

  “It’s a date,” he said, adjusting the healstrip one last time. “Can you handle the armor again?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. But I won’t be doing any dancing for a while.” He helped her back into the chest and back pieces of her space armor, uncomfortably aware of her bare skin now. When it was sealed up, he gathered up her helmet and pointed to the top of the ramp.

  “The firing’s stopped. Let’s see what’s going on.”

  She gave a nod, and allowed him to help her up the incline.