She turned a sunny grin on him. “Why, surely, sir. Just as long as you remember to be careful of my planes.”
“Oh, great,” he groaned. “Somebody else who wants to take over our birds! Just what we didn’t need.”
“Hey, let’s face it, Commander, those birds have always belonged to the techies. We just loan them out to you flyboys…and we don’t let the spit-and-polish navy even get near them!”
“Don’t tell our illustrious Captain Galbraith,” Tolwyn said. “He thinks he owns the whole shooting match.”
“When you figure it was probably his father’s money backing Kruger when he started buying decommissioned ships from the Confederation, you can see where he might get the idea,” Bondarevsky pointed out. “I always knew Max Kruger was playing things entirely too fast and loose back in the old days, but it’s gotten a lot worse since then. He’s let Galbraith and the other big money boys get a stranglehold on his government, and all because he couldn’t be bothered with the petty details of playing president the way he was supposed to.”
“You think it’ll be a problem down the line, Jason?” Tolwyn asked. “I mean, some of us have burned our bridges back home, and if it falls apart out here too…”
“Keep your priorities in order, Kevin,” Bondarevsky advised. “First we’ve got the Kilrathi threat to deal with. Then we’ve got to deal with the Confederation and whatever their silly little game is. It’s only if we weather both those meteor swarms that we’ll have to worry about the long-term health of Max Kruger’s government. I figure the odds of it ever being a problem we’ll have to cope with are long enough that we don’t need to bother worrying.”
“Cheery these days, isn’t he, Sparks?” Tolwyn said.
“You don’t know the half of it, sir,” she told him.
“I call them like I see them,” he said. “Tell me something, Kevin. Do you have any idea what’s got your uncle acting so paranoid? He was always big on secret schemes, but since I met him on the Moon I’ve had the feeling he’s got something really big going on, something he won’t tell either me or Vance Richards.”
Tolwyn nodded. “I know something’s up, but I couldn’t tell you what. All I know for sure is that getting me to sign up out here with Kruger’s gang wasn’t intended to further my career. It went against everything he’s ever tried to do for me before. I invested half a lifetime in a Confederation Navy career and threw it out in five minutes because Uncle Geoff suddenly thought it was important I take this deal instead.”
“Why?”
Tolwyn shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me. But I had the definite feeling he was worried about my safety…about my physical well-being. A couple of times he let slip things that suggested he thought Terra was not a very healthy place to be a Tolwyn for the next few years.”
“Bad feeling from the court-martial, maybe?” Sparks suggested.
“Maybe,” Tolwyn said. “But that was a nine-day wonder at best. Nobody’ll ever forget it, and he made a few more enemies before it was all done with, but I just don’t see it being a raging topic of controversy that would leave him worrying about our security.”
“True enough,” Bondarevsky said. “Well, look, Kevin, I’m not going to ask you to spy on your uncle or anything like that. But if you pick up anything you think I should know about, please pass it on. I respect the old man’s judgment in most things, but ever since Behemoth…“
“Yeah. Ever since Behemoth.” Tolwyn shook his head. “That was a goddamned shame. Screwed up from start to finish. To think that Hobbes was the one who betrayed him, too. One of the only two Cats I ever met that I would have trusted with my life.”
“Whatever happened to the other one?” Sparks asked. “Kirha…the one I met in Britain when we were getting ready for the Free Corps mission.”
Bondarevsky looked down at his empty glass. “You know he was bound by oath to Hunter…took the strongest possible Kilrathi vow to be the loyal servant of amp;ldsquo;Ian St. John Who Is Also Known As Hunter.’ Well, Ian bought it when we were out here. You remember, Sparks?”
She nodded sadly, and so did Tolwyn. Captain Ian St. John had been one of the old band of brothers…and the best friend a man could have on his wing in a furball.
“Kirha was shipped off to Ian’s ranch Down Under for the duration. The brass was worried that he might get wind of what we were doing with the Free Corps operation, shipping ships and men out to serve with Kruger’s boys while the Confederation was in the middle of those phony peace negotiations. I flew down there after the Battle of Earth to let Ian’s folks know what had happened first-hand. I couldn’t put that kind of thing in an internet bulletin, you know.” He paused, staring down at the drink again, wrapped up in unpleasant memories.
“And?” Sparks urged. “Did you see Kirha?”
He shook his head. “No, I was too late. The news had got there ahead of me. And Kirha did the only thing he could do under the circumstances, given the vow he’d sworn. The big orange bastard took a knife and stabbed himself through the heart. Zu’kara…ritual suicide. Without his adopted clan leader, he was alone in a strange culture, and I don’t think Kirha wanted to live without Hunter to lead him.“
“Cats,” Tolwyn said. “I can’t figure them. Barbaric, stupid buggers if you ask me.”
“You’re wrong there, Kevin,” Bondarevsky said sternly. “The Kilrathi have been civilized a lot longer than we have, and they’re anything but stupid. Or else the war would have been over with a long time back, and without all the blood and pain we’ve had to invest just to fight them to a standstill. No, they just have a different outlook on things. If more of our political leaders would stop treating them as if they were humans in furry suits and start recognizing just how different their culture is, we might be able to deal with them better. Find common ground, even. It’s only when you insist on holding somebody to your own narrow standards that you shut off all hope of ever reaching them. Hearts and minds and all that.”
“I still prefer the old approach,” Tolwyn said. “When you’ve got ‘em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
CHAPTER 6
“The brave Warrior is not without fear. He is a friend of his fear, embracing it, intimate with it, but never allowing it to overcome him.”
Flight Deck, FRLS Independence
Jump Point Three, Vaku System
0717 hours (CST), 2670.313
Jumpshock!
There was something fundamentally incompatible between living organisms and the realm of hyperspace, not powerful enough to kill but strong and unpleasant nonetheless. Nausea, dizziness, momentary disorien-tation, these were the symptoms of jumpshock, and Bondarevsky experienced them all in good measure as the Independence made the transition from the fringes of the Oecumene system to the jump point nearest Vaku’s brown dwarf companion and the derelict’s last plotted position. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes and get his bearings while fighting a feeling that reminded him of the worst hangover he’d ever awakened with. It didn’t help that his vacuum suit, designed for salvage and construction work in space, was bulky, stiff, and unwieldy compared to the issue flight suit he was used to wearing. He had a momentary flash of fear that he was about to vomit, one of the worst experiences known to man when it happened inside a suit and at times fatal if one was out in vacuum and couldn’t clear his breather. The wave of nausea passed and he breathed a sigh of relief.
Beside him Aengus Harper recovered more quickly, as younger men were apt to do. “My sainted mother always said that man wasn’t meant to travel through space, and Lord forgive me but I said she was wrong,” he said, his voice husky. “Remind me, sir, to let her know she was right.”