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  “That’s what we thought,” Kruger said, “until last month.”

  “We got the news from a frontier scout looking for salvage out on the border,” Richards said. “We’ve been scrounging for anything we can find, and paying top dollar. This gal-her name’s Springweather or some such-was checking out the Vaku system when she registered one goddamned big source of magnetic readings…and an automated beacon.”

  “Karga?” Tolwyn asked.

  “We’re pretty sure of it,” Kruger responded. “The beacon was on a Kilrathi distress channel, but the coding was garbled by radiation. It was coming from orbit over a brown dwarf, so you can figure the kind of havoc that was screwing up the comm channels. The scout didn’t get close enough to eyeball it in case the Cats were active, but she got all the readings she could through that junk and brought ’em straight back here. And our people have been going over them in detail ever since.”

  “You’ve had a report?” Richards asked.

  Kruger nodded. “Mass about right for the Karga. Power signature low, but some of the harmonics match readings we got in the fights we had with her before she disappeared. Orbit is highly elliptical, and likely to decay before too long. No life signs, but we can’t be sure if that’s accurate with all the rads. And you have to figure that if the ship’s intact at least some of her crew could have survived. Somebody had to light off that distress call.”

  “Unless her screens went down after a power failure,” Bondarevsky mused. “Radiation would’ve killed everybody aboard in a few days or weeks if the screens were down-hell, they’d‘ve run up lethal dosages in a few minutes, but it wouldn’t have been a fast death.”

  “That’s what we’ve been thinking, too,” Richards said. “Think about it! That supercarrier’s just floating out there in space. If she can be put back into commission…”

  “A damned tall order. Vance.” Tolwvn said. “You don’t know how badly damaged she is…and working with alien engineering’s bound to give us no end of problems.”

  “But if it was possible,” Bondarevsky said softly, “we could sure as hell use a supercarrier when the bad guys come calling.”

  “If we can put her back in service…and before Ragark rolls over us or the Confederation changes policies again and decides we’re a threat to the peace,” Richards said. “Geoff’s right, it is a tall order. But it’s something we have to try. And you gentlemen are going to be involved…under the leadership of your humble servant, of course.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Tolwyn asked.

  “We’ve been getting pretty good at salvage ops, Geoff. Have a whole team that can work miracles. We’re going to take a battle group out to the Vaku system and take a look at that wreck. If there are any Cats still out there, we’ll take them down. Then we’ll put the salvage team aboard and see what we can do. Assuming we can reactivate her, I’ll command Karga’s battle group as senior admiral. You’ll be skippering her, Geoff. It’s a step down from leading a fleet, but we need talented ship-captains a hell of a lot more than we need senior flag officers. Interested?”

  Tolwyn leaned forward and gave a nod, more animated than Bondarevsky had seen him in a long time. “Just point me to the bridge,” he said. “If that thing’ll fly, I’ll take her anywhere you want to go!”

  Richards chuckled. “Easy does it, Geoff. If this doesn’t pan out, you’re likely to end up commanding some outpost…Hellhole, maybe. And we still don’t know if we’ve really got any hope of making it work.”

  “And me, Admiral?” Bondarevsky asked.

  “You’ll have to take a cut in grade too, Jason,” Richards told him. “But I think it’s a job you’ll be able to sink your teeth into. Wing Commander, with an acting rank of captain and all the pilots we can scrape together to fly off that oversized tub.”

  “Odds are she won’t be carrying much that’ll fly, sir,” he pointed out. “If she went down fighting, her squadrons would have been deployed.”

  “We’ll shuttle in fighters if we have to,” Kruger said. “We’re sending you out in our one large carrier, the Independence. Once you’ve decided what you need, the carrier will bring in additional birds to fill out your complement just as fast as we can get them mobilized.”

  Bondarevsky nodded slowly, his mind already racing ahead to grapple with the problems he knew would face them on the salvage mission. But while he was by no means confident of success on the venture, given everything that might go wrong, he realized that this was just the kind of challenge he’d been looking for. Win or lose, he’d put his best into it.

  “That’s the plan in a nutshell, gentlemen,” Richards concluded. “Karga’s just waiting for us out there. She’s named for a Cat folk hero. His story reads something like David and Goliath, except Goliath’s the good guy and David gets beat to a bloody pulp. But in honor of it, we’ve designated this as Project Goliath. May it be successful!”

  “Hear, hear,” Kruger said, clinking his beer can against the admiral’s. “The battle group’s almost assembled, so you’ll be leaving in a day or two. Start thinking of anything you think we’ll need…or anyone, for that matter. Goliath has top priority. And God help us all if you fail out there.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “Brave comrades are the Warrior’s most cherished gift.”

  from the Fifth Codex 2:17:38

  Shuttle Independence Alpha

  Orbiting Landreich, Landreich System

  1447 hours (CST), 2670.298

  “We’re ready to begin final approach now, sir. Would you like to be tryin‘ your hand at the trap?”

  Bondarevsky turned to look at Aengus Harper across the narrow confines of the shuttle cockpit. “It’s been a while since I flew a shuttle, lieutenant,” he said. “And onto an unfamiliar carrier deck…” Despite his words he was sorely tempted. Taking the stick on a spacecraft, even a slow-moving, antiquated shuttle, would be a taste of everything Bondarevsky had lost in the last few months and years. But he was out of practice, and it wouldn’t do at all for the newly appointed Wing Commander of the Goliath Project to crack up the first time he tried to make a landing…and on someone else’s ship at that!

  “Maybe ’tis not so unfamiliar at that, sir,” Harper told him. “If you’ll be lookin’ at your monitor…”

  Bondarevsky glanced down at the display in the center of his console. The shuttle was taking them up to the Independence, the pride of the Landreich fleet. Admirals Richards and Tolwyn, together with a small Cadre of staffers, were riding in back, but Harper had extended the invitation to Bondarevsky to join him in the cockpit for the flight. It was the young lieutenant’s way of thanking him for wangling him a spot on his personal staff, with the promise of an assignment to the Goliath Project Flight Wing if and when such an organization materialized. With the priority status President Kruger had granted the operation, it had been easy to arrange Harper’s transfer from Themistocles.

  For an instant he didn’t see anything special on his monitor, but then Bondarevsky did a double-take. He knew the ship that was framed in that screen, knew every line and curve the way a man might know his lover. Even the regular pulse of the ID beacon was familiar. Every one had its own special character, and Jason Bondarevsky had learned this one by heart in years gone by.

  “Tarawa,” he said softly. It wasn’t just an escort carrier of the same class…it was Tarawa herself.

  “Aye, sir, that it is,” Harper said with a grin. “We picked the old girl up for a song when the confees started scrapping the fleet. She wasn’t in very good shape, I’m afraid…but Old Max turned his salvage crew loose on her, and now she’s ready for action.”

  Bondarevsky didn’t respond. He was studying the magnified image on his monitor, thinking about all this old ship had come to mean to him.

  He’d served as Wing Commander on her maiden voyage, and back then he’d been critical of the old girl. Terra’s desperate need for carriers at a crucial stage of the war had prompted some unknown naval procurement officer t
o make the decision to take nine transports under construction and convert them in midstream into escort carriers, and the compromise design had been less than efficient in a lot of ways. But he’d come to love the makeshift carrier. On that first tour he’d loved and lost Svetlana…carried out the deep-penetration raid on Kilrah…seen the captain and bridge crew killed when a Kilrathi missile took out her bridge, leaving Bondarevsky to take command and lead the battered carrier out of enemy territory.

  Tarawa had still been his for the Landreich expedition and at the Battle of Earth, too. It had been hard to give her up afterwards, when he took command of DesRon-67 and hoisted his broad pendant aboard the Coventry, harder still when he’d learned Tarawa had been crippled in a clash with the Kilrathi just a few weeks later. Bondarevsky had assumed she’d been scrapped…but here she was, after all these years, with a new name and new colors, but the same old Tarawa despite it all.

  “She’s a tricky approach,” he said, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “The entrance to the flight deck is narrow…”

  “The shuttle is yours, sir,” Harper said, a twinkle in his eye. “Seeing as you’re the old hand at this, and all.” He released the joystick, and Bondarevsky tightened his grip around his own stick automatically.

  “The shuttle is mine,” he acknowledged. A thrill surged through him. It had been a long time since he’d had his own craft to handle and the flight deck of the old Tarawa inviting him to come home.

  “Independence Alpha to Independence Landing Control.” Bondarevsky spoke crisply into his flight suit radio mike, and the years fell away. “Ready for final approach now. Vectors are matched and I have you on my navscreen.”

  “Roger, Alpha,” the voice of the landing signals officer crackled in his ears. “You are go for final approach. Change vector and start your run when you’re ready. Watch for traffic. Two Rapiers, outbound, one supply shuttle in holding orbit. Confirm please.”

  Bondarevsky checked his radar scope. “Roger that, Independence. I have all three on my scope. Commencing final approach maneuver…now.”

  Bondarevsky nudged the throttle and kicked in the steering jets to settle the shuttle into the groove that would bring her over the approach deck at the escort carrier s bow. He allowed himself a momentary frown as he was forced to overcorrect; a shuttle was a lot less responsive than a fighter, and he was out of practice in making a trap on a carrier deck with any bird at all.

  The carrier was visible through the viewscreen now without computer enhancement, swelling as the shuttle swept towards her on a precisely calculated course. Bondarevsky could pick out her forward armament bristling around the approach deck, a quad-barreled neutron gun flanked by mass drivers and anti-torpedo batteries. But he didn’t linger on the sight. There was too much to do to bring a small craft in on the deck of a carrier in space, and it took all of a pilot’s attention to do it.

  In the old days of atmospheric flight, aircraft carrier landings had been considered the most difficult operations a pilot could attempt, but now that carriers were used in deep space those old atmospheric fliers were commonly held to have had it easy. Despite advances in computers and electronics, it still took the inborn skill of a talented pilot to get exactly the right feel for handling a bird. And a zero-g approach under power was a hell of a lot harder to manage than an old-style aircraft carrier trap, with tiny differences in inertia or thrust adding up to giant-sized headaches for the pilot and the flight control crew alike.

  “One degree starboard,” the LSO told him calmly. “Reduce your angle of attack…good. Very nice, Alpha. Reverse thrusters…steady… Call the ball.”

  Bondarevsky studied the looming approach deck until he made out the shape of the Ehrenberger Optical Approach Signal above the entry port. It helped a pilot establish his final vector by giving him a set of lights to line up on. With a practiced eye he gauged his course. “Alpha, shuttle, ball, forty-three point seven percent,” he said, identifying his craft’s designation and type, the fact that he had the optical signal in sight, and the shuttle’s power reserves, all by the book.

  “Roger ball,” came the imperturbable reply.

  The shuttle was moving very slowly now as it closed toward the carrier. This was the trickiest part of a carrier landing. If the pilot didn’t have a perfect line on the port, he’d plow straight into a bulkhead and destroy his bird…and a fair chunk of the carrier, too. Too much thrust was bad even if the alignment was perfect, because once through the opening you ran out of maneuvering room quickly inside. But too little speed had its own difficulties.

  That, as Bondarevsky had often remarked to non-pilots in countless late-night drinking sessions, was why the flyboys got the big bucks and most of the glory.

  He steered through the narrow opening of the carrier’s entry port, remembering how he’d once regularly cursed the naval architect who had designed it. Passing through the energy airlock, the shuttle was abruptly in atmosphere, but Bondarevsky had anticipated the change in the boat’s handling characteristics and caught her deftly. The transition through the barrier had killed most of his remaining forward momentum, and Bondarevsky eased her forward to make a smooth touchdown right in the center of the landing deck.

  “Shuttle Alpha, on the deck,” he announced. “Powering down main engines.”

  “Nice job, Alpha,” the LSO said. “You’re getting a ‘Pass’ on this one.”

  Beside him, Harper chuckled. Squadron pilots aboard a carrier were graded on each approach they made by the LSO, and the results posted in the ready rooms. It was a form of competition designed to keep everybody sharp. “Passed” was the highest rating given out. Plainly the LSO didn’t know that he had just graded a visiting Wing Commander.

  “Thanks, Control,” Bondarevsky responded. He saw the same humor in the situation that Harper did, but he couldn’t help but feel a little smug at making the grade. After all, it really had been a lot of time since he’d handled a shuttle docking…and a long time since he’d negotiated the tricky approach down to Tarawa’s deck. “Independence Alpha securing from flight stations. VIP party preparing to disembark.”

  He shut down the cockpit controls and glanced over at Harper. “Well, Lieutenant? I hope my performance was satisfactory…for an old man.”

  “Aye, sir, more than satisfactory,” Harper said with a grin. “I’ll fly alongside you any day, and that’s a fact.”

  They unstrapped and left through the rear hatch that led into the passenger compartment, where the two admirals were just standing up while they continued a technical conversation about the design philosophy of Kilrathi warships. Other officers, staff members and a few techies-Sparks among them-held back, waiting for Richards and Tolwyn to exit the shuttle. The age-old rule of the high seas still held: senior officers were last to board a small craft, and first out.

  Harper cracked the hatch. “They’re ready for you, sirs,” he said.

  Richards led the way through the shuttle’s hatch, followed closely by Tolwyn and Bondarevsky. The flight deck looked just the same as it had the last time Bondarevsky had been aboard, with bustling technicians hard at work on a number of planes close by, and a fresh team swarming toward the new arrival with an assortment of hardware to get the shuttle moved out of the way and into the maintenance cycle as quickly as possible.

  They paused at the top of the door ramp. Right in front of them the organized chaos of flight operations swirled around a side party of Landreich marines in full dress uniforms. A bosun’s whistle shrilled in greeting, and Richards started down the ramp.

  The officer who advanced to meet him was dressed in a uniform several grades fancier than any Bondarevsky had seen in Landreich’s navy, better than the one Richards had worn for his meetings with Confed VIPs at Tycho. There were gleaming captain’s bars on his collar and plenty of gold braid just about everywhere else, and a patch on each shoulder carried the name Independence.

  “Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” he said. His accent tended toward the f
aint drawl of the Landreich aristocracy, and he seemed rather young for the responsibility of commanding a carrier. On the other hand, Bondarevsky himself had still been in his twenties when he took over command of Tarawa. It was just strange seeing another young officer taking the job. “My name’s Galbraith. Captain John Calhoun Galbraith, at your service. Welcome aboard the Independence.“

  The name rang a bell. He’d heard of Galbraith when he’d served in the Landreich before. The man’s father was one of the wealthiest industrialists on Landreich, a robber baron who owned just about everything that was worth owning. His influence had ensured a smooth rise through the navy for his son, who’d commanded a destroyer when Bondarevsky had last heard of him. Galbraith was said to be competent enough as an administrator, and he’d never marred his combat record with a lost fight, but he was generally regarded as too soft and lazy to make a good combat skipper.

  And now he was in command of the old Tarawa. What a comedown for a grand old lady…handed over to the man because Kruger needed the Galbraith family’s continued goodwill to keep the Landreich on its feet.

  “My senior officers,” Galbraith went on with a casual wave at the cluster of faces behind him. “My XO, Commander Roth. My Chief Engineer, Commander Watanabe.” He paused, looking at Admiral Tolwyn. “And you, at least, Admiral, should know my Wing Commander.”

  Bondarevsky suppressed a surprised exclamation as the last-indicated figure stepped forward.

  “Kevin, my boy, its good to see you,” Admiral Tolwyn greeted his nephew in a tone that was pleased, but by no means surprised. So he had expected to meet Kevin Tolwyn out here in the Landreich. He might, Bondarevsky reflected ruefully, have mentioned something about it.