End Run Page 6

  And saw a tiny oblong in the center of the Southern hemisphere, halfway down her screen. It was too regular to be a natural formation.

  Triumph flamed through her veins as she punched to isolate the oblong into the buffer, then swelled it to fill the screen…

  It was a fairy-tale castle.

  It was a bird's-eye view of a fairy-tale castle, all turrets and alabaster and sapphire, glowing in the sunset as though it were all made of jewels.

  All about it lay only desert, empty rock, empty sand…

  The words leaped unbidden into her head:

  "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  This was it. She didn't know how or why she knew it, didn't know what it was or why it was important—but this was it. This was why Vukar Tag was so heavily guarded, why it was crucial. Some ancient treasure of the Kilrathi, some source of racial pride, an emotional anchor, a ceremonial site—whatever it was, it was vital to them, drastically important.

  A beep came from the sentry screen. She turned, staring at it, saw the red triangle closing on the green dot in the center of the screen that was her own hulk.

  She leaped, and hit the "Transmit" button.

  Above her, atop the hulk, the microwave dish sent a half-second burst of encoded data spinning after the Johnny Greene at a hundred times its speed…

  Ramona felt the final, surging euphoria of victory. She stood next to her recording equipment, watching the empty sand unroll before her, feeling the singing victory, but with the horrible dread coming up beneath it, the certainty of doom.

  There was nothing she could do. The ship had no engines, no thrusters, no way to steer or run at all. She could only wait, only trust to blind luck, only hope that she would live to see the completion of her orbit, to once more see the Joh—

  * * *

  Aboard the Johnny Greene, Billy saw the flash and let out a high, keening wail.

  "They got her." Grounder sat rigid.

  "Annihilated!" Billy mourned. "Nothing left but atoms! Brave woman! Valiant warrior!"

  "Did she die for nothing?" Coriander barked.

  "No," Billy said. "I got her burst transmission five seconds before the flash. Stored on crystal, and I just backed it up. Heaven only knows what it was!" His voice sank low, tragic in tone. "Lord, I hope it was worth her life!"

  Grounder stared at him, amazed, realizing Ramona had made far more of an impact on Billy than any of them had known—including him. He had a thing for her. Shrew though she was, he had it bad.

  "I hope it's worth our lives!" Harcourt's voice snapped them out of it. "No point in going back for her now. You're sure she's dead, Billy? Not the slightest chance?"

  Billy shook his head, already deep in grief. "When a blue dot turns yellow and takes up that much space on the screen, Captain, there's nothing left but ions. I don't know what they hit her with, but it did a real thorough job."

  "Then the hell with Vukar Tag, and the hell with their asteroid belt," Harcourt snapped. "We can make her death worth something, by getting that data back to the Admiralty."

  The ship began to shudder, ever so slightly.

  "How much longer can we take the stress of full thrust, Chief?" Harcourt snapped.

  "Half an hour sure, forty-five minutes maybe." Coriander watched the battle display, transfixed.

  "How far to the jump point at this velocity, Barney?" Harcourt demanded.

  "Twenty-five minutes, if those fighters from the gas giant don't get us first," Barney answered.

  "Range!" Billy shouted, his face suddenly savage. "Tear 'em apart, gunners!"

  "Fire," Harcourt said quickly, so that Billy wouldn't have been giving an order beyond his rank.

  Harry's whoop echoed through the intercom, with Flip's warbling yell right behind it. The guns were in phase, so they felt nothing, they heard nothing—but the battle display showed dots of blue breaking out all along the line of red arrowheads. Blue met red; they turned yellow, expanding.

  But something big was coming up behind them—a destroyer.

  "Missiles!" Harcourt snapped. "Fire One! Two!"

  Larger blue dots shot away from the Johnny Greene, through the red arrowheads—but the arrowheads converged on them like bees on a bear. One blue circle turned yellow with the dozen arrowheads that had beset it—but the other broke through.

  Some of the red arrowheads were past the little blue dots.

  "Hit 'em, Harry!" Harcourt yelled,

  Harry answered with a cowboy's holler, and the blue dots peppered the red arrowheads. One went up in a yellow flash, another, another…

  The last spat a red dot of its own.

  The Johnny Greene rocked, the sound of the explosion echoing through its hull.

  "Harry!" Harcourt snapped.

  "Oh, I'm fine," Harry growled, disgusted. "There! And there!"

  The red arrowhead turned yellow, expanding.

  "Jump point ahead!" Grounder snapped.

  "Three Cats astern!" Billy cried.

  Jolie whooped over the intercom.

  On the battle display, another field of blue dots sprang out behind the Johnny Greene.

  "Got any use for a dead Cat?" Jolie shrilled. "I'll get you a few!"

  On the screen, one of the arrowheads turned into a yellow flash, expanding—but the other lanced through the arc of blue dots, closing on the green circle that was their ship, closing, closing…

  The ship bucked, as though it were a schooner that had just plowed over a submerged sandbank, then kept on. The stars in the viewscreen shifted drastically, to a totally different sky.

  Harcourt went limp. So did the bridge crew—except for Billy. "Jump completed!" he called out. "No bogeys in evidence, no hostiles at all!"

  "We're clear," Grounder whispered.

  "Only for the moment." Harcourt knew he had to keep them moving. They didn't dare let up—not for long. "Barney, plot the course for the next jump point. They could be right on our tails."

  "Course plotted and feeding!"

  "I might've known. Chief! Damage?"

  "None from the jump." Coriander scanned her board. "Just from that one shot that got through—a leak amidships."

  "Patched," Lorraine's voice said over the intercom. "But it won't last long."

  "It doesn't need to." Coriander picked up her tool kit. "I'm on my way."

  She had recovered amazingly quickly, Harcourt thought as he watched her slim figure dart out the hatch, a figure that was more remembered than seen. "Keep scanning, Billy. No real reason to expect them to have stationed an intercept out here, but you never know."

  "They will from now on, I betcha." Billy kept his eyes on the screen.

  "You don't really think they will, do you, Captain?" Grounder asked.

  Harcourt shrugged. "You always assume your enemy will do the worst—and the most unexpected, Lieutenant. You know that."

  More to the point, though, he needed to keep their minds off the gallant woman who had died doing her duty, to whom they really should have shown much more kindness…

  He felt the guilt sinking within him, fought it, knowing he had only done his duty. It was up to him, though, to make sure she had not died in vain. Whatever it was on Vukar Tag that the Cats guarded so closely, the Admiralty would find some way to use it against them.

  Kipling's lines echoed in his head:

  If there should follow a thousand swords

  To carry my bones away,

  Belike the price of a jackal's meal

  Were more than a thief could pay.

  Oh, the Kilrathi were thieves, all right—very vicious, but very competent, thieves—and the revenge for Ramona would follow.

  Oh, yes, the revenge would follow.

  PART II:

  END RUN

  By William R.
Forstchen

  CHAPTER I

  Cleared for landing, Lieutenant Commander Jason "Bear" Bondarevsky turned his Ferret in on final approach. The carrier off his port quarter was the newest addition to the fleet, emblazoned upon its armored bow the proud name CVE-8 Tarawa—and the sight of her did not impress him in the slightest.

  His idea of a carrier was more on the lines of the Concordia where, after the mutiny incident on the old Gettysburg, Admiral Tolwyn had taken him in for a tour of duty. With the casualties of the last two campaigns, promotion had been rapid, and he had never dreamed that at the ripe old age of twenty-five he would actually be in charge of an entire wing aboard a carrier… but what a carrier. He shook his head with disdain.

  Maniac had roared with sardonic delight when he had heard about the promotion and transfer to this new ship.

  "A carrier, you're kidding aren't you? Its a damned transport scow and a death trap," Maniac announced, and Jason could not help but agree.

  The CVE class had been a source of intense debate back in the Concordia's pilot ready room. This new class of ships was a rush job to try and plug the gaps after the heavy losses of the last campaign. Nine transport ships, already three quarters completed, were pulled out of the transport assembly stations and converted into escort carriers; and a single look at her convinced Jason of the folly of the whole damn thing.

  There was only a single landing and launch deck, no backup if they should ever take a hit. That was a tactic the Kilrathi were most fond of, and he remembered the surprise strike on the Concordia, which had shut down both launch bays and almost finished the ship off, except for some last minute help from Phoenix and his wingmate, scrambling up from a nearby base. New design doctrine was calling for three, even four launch bays, and now some idiot desk jockey back in headquarters had come out with this.

  As he cleared the forward bow he spared a quick look from his approach vector readout to look at the forward defense. A heavy quad-barreled neutron gun was mounted on the bow, obviously cobbled on to the transport's frame and held together with a little spit and glue. To either side of the approach deck were two mass driver cannons, medium caliber at least. As he came in on approach he had seen two more beam weapons and several launch racks for missiles along the bottom of the ship. He could only hope that at least the missiles had the new gatling launch system that could pop out a spread of ten of the new anti-torpedo rounds in under two seconds.

  Jason nudged reverse thrust and kicked in a little lateral move to starboard. The damn entry port was as narrow as a needle's eye and he felt embarrassed by the necessity of this last minute adjustment. Landing on fleet carriers had spoiled him; there wasn't the slightest room for error here.

  It wasn't the type of landing the new wing commander should put on in his first approach. He felt a flash of anger with himself, he had violated his own cardinal rule—a mission isn't over till it's over so don't think of anything else till the job's done.

  He cleared the energy field airlock and felt the slowing resistance of air on his wings. There was barely thirty meters of maneuver room inside the hangar and the deck was packed. To his port side was a squadron of F-54C Rapiers. On the starboard side was the squadron of strike fighter/bombers, F-57B Sabres, with the new upgrade of a copilot in a cramped backseat to handle the weapons launch while the pilot continued to fly. He still wasn't sure if he liked this hybrid design, created specifically for the CVE class, when it was realized that there simply wasn't enough hangar space for the battle-tested Broadswords. A pilot and flight officer crammed into a space originally designed for one was going to be a tight fit. He wondered if the design boys had thought this one out all the way. That was something that always bothered him—an instrument located in the wrong place might mean that a valuable bit of information was overlooked—or while wasting a second to take a look you don't see the shot coming straight into your face.

  It was far too tight a deck to take a last squirt off the reverse thrusters and Jason punched down hard on the deck, gritting his teeth at the screeching of the landing skids. From the corner of his eye he saw deck personnel step back to avoid the shower of sparks. He slid down the deck, the nose of his ship jerking to a stop just inches shy of the emergency barrier nets. Cursing, he leaned back in his seat and quickly ran through his checkout, ignoring the bump of the ladder and the shadow of a crew chief scrambling up to wait outside the cockpit.

  Shutting down the engine pumps, Jason double-checked that all weapons were on secured safety, and then leaned over to toggle the eject safety. After making sure everything was secure he finally toggled off the main engine and shielding circuits. More than one pilot had smeared himself on a hangar deck ceiling by not double-checking the eject safety before shutting down, since a full power failure and shield cut off would automatically initiate ejection unless overridden within five seconds. The design manual said that such an event was not supposed to happen if the ship was shut down in a pressurized environment, but more than one pilot had learned that sometimes the manual just didn't get it quite right. He hit the canopy switch and it flipped open.

  "Welcome aboard, sir!"

  "Well damn me if it isn't Sparks."

  The crew chief was looking down at him and grinning broadly.

  "So they got you on this bucket too," Jason said, glad to see the familiar and attractive face of the finest crew chief he had ever worked with.

  "You'll find quite a few of the old crowd here," Sparks said, "we're the only experienced hands on this ship. The admiral scrapped up a couple of dozen of us to help this ship along. The rest are all new, straight out of the training schools."

  He sighed and shook his head.

  "I wonder whose nest we took a dump on to get this assignment," he sighed.

  "Oh, she doesn't seem to be that bad a ship," Sparks replied, and Jason could detect the false sincerity in her voice.

  "I wish I could believe you, Sparks."

  "The Captain's waiting for you, sir, so I guess you should get moving."

  "How is he?"

  "I'll leave that for you to decide, sir," she replied, showing the age old diplomacy of a non-commissioned officer who didn't want to tell an upper rank just how she really felt.

  Jason unsnapped his harness and stood up to look around. He could sense that all eyes on the deck were focused on him. After all, he was the new commander of all the ships flying off the Tarawa. He ignored their stares, his attention for the moment focused solely on the gleaming row of fighter craft under his command. They all looked new at least; that was an advantage, and a curse, since there were always some bugs to be worked out in the first couple of hundred hours of flying. The squadron of Ferret scout and recon ships were crammed in behind the Sabres. That would have to be changed at once. Moving the heavier craft could waste several precious minutes if the crunch was on and they needed a quick recon launch.

  He was tempted to pass a comment on to Sparks but let it pass. He'd find out who the launch deck officer was later on and get it taken care of.

  Sparks scrambled down the ladder and he followed. As he hit the deck a shrill piping cut the air that sent a corkscrew shiver down his back. Damn, with the new promotion he now rated the ritual of a formal greeting for his first reporting aboard.

  He turned away from his Ferret and saw half a dozen deck crew lined up in shining dress blues, all at attention. Coming to attention himself, he saluted the Confederation flag which hung from the bulkhead wall and then saluted the young ensign commanding the detail.

  "Permission to come aboard," Jason snapped, trying not to sound too peeved by the pomp and circumstance.

  "Permission granted, sir," and her voice cracked, coming out like a high-pitched squeak.

  He stood for several seconds, not sure what to do next and then he saw a towering dark form lumbering through the main doorway onto the hangar deck.

  The fighter pilot approaching him came to attention and then with his usual, almost languid air, that seemed to drip w
ith depression and futility, Doomsday saluted.

  "The captain's waiting to see you, sir."

  Jason grinned as he returned the salute and quickly fell in beside his old comrade. The two left the deck, heading down a narrow corridor.

  "So my request came through," Jason said, barely able to keep from smiling.

  "What request?"

  "When Admiral Tolwyn laid the promotion of lieutenant commander on me and then sent me off to this bucket he said I could pick my squadron commanders."

  "So you're the damn jerk who got me pulled from R&R and sent back out here?" Doomsday groaned, looking over at Jason.

  "I needed somebody I could count on, and I wanted you to handle the fighter bomber squadron."

  "Something in my bones told me I'd wind up dying soon, and you're making sure it comes true."

  "Hey, I got you the extra stripe, what more do you want?"

  Doomsday allowed the slightest flicker of a smile.

  "Thanks, at least it'll mean a bigger pension for my family after you're done killing me."

  "How's the captain?"

  "I'll let you decide," Doomsday said, and pointed towards the wardroom door. "He's waiting in there for you, Jason."

  Without offering to come along Doomsday turned and disappeared back down the corridor.

  Jason went up to the door and knocked.

  There was a long pause and he was tempted to knock again when he heard a soft, almost distant voice.

  "Come."

  He opened the door and stepped into the room.

  The captain of the ship was standing with his back to the door, his attention focused on a 3-D holo map of the sector. The captain stood, shoulders slightly hunched, as if deeply absorbed in thought, all his attention concentrated on the map, as if attempting to divinate out some hidden meaning.

  Jason felt uncomfortable with the pose, his discomfort magnified when he noticed that the leather of the captain's empty chair was gradually shifting outward, a sign that the commanding officer had been sitting, and then got up and turned to the map before calling for Jason to come in.