“Paranoia?” Bondarevsky asked.
“Most paranoids have real enemies, son,” Richards said. “This guy could be legit…or he could be a human captive with a Kilrathi laser pistol pointed at the back of his head. And if that shuttle turns out to be carrying something dangerous, like enough explosive to do some real damage…well, this old girl’s already seen enough trouble that a little more won’t make much difference.”
She passed on the instructions to the pilot of the shuttle, who made a brief acknowledgment but sent no further messages. Shuttle and fighter continued on course, with Drifter’s Hornet following at a discreet distance.
Darlene Babcock heaved a sigh of relief as Karga came in sight. It looked like she wasn’t going to have to face the Cats today after all.
Starboard Flight Deck, ex-KIS Karga
Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System
1040 hours (CST)
The Confederation shuttle came in through the stern end of the flight deck, where there was less damage, but the craft still maneuvered carefully. Watching the boat settling to the deck using magnetic clamps to hold her down in zero-gravity, Bondarevsky felt a sense of relief. Despite the admirals continued fears of a possible Cat trick, it looked as if they’d been lucky indeed. It was rare for anyone to survive the loss of a capital ship in combat, but apparently some had managed it here at Vaku.
Still, they didn’t take any chances. Bhaktadil had his marines deployed watching the shuttle, and most of the survey team was still strapped in and ready to fly at the first sign of trouble. Bondarevsky, accompanied by Harper, had persuaded the colonel to let him help greet the new arrivals. As the most recent ex-Confederation senior officer available, he might be able to elicit more information from them than the colonials could.
They waited for the shuttle to open up, and Bondarevsky passed the time studying the battered craft s hull. It had clearly taken quite a beating at some point. The plating along the port side was pitted and scarred, and several external weapons and sensor mountings were missing. There was no sign of a commlink antenna, either, which probably accounted for their inability to communicate. That bird was lucky to still be flying.
Then the port side hatch began to open, and the tension among the watching marines became thick enough for Bondarevsky to feel. A pair of humans were standing at the top of the ramp, clad in Confederation-issue suits.
Behind them, a bulkier figure moved, then another one.
“Cats!” one of the marines shouted, raising his rifle to the ready.
“Don’t shoot!” someone called. “Don’t shoot…they’re friends!”
One of the humans, the man, climbed down the ramp. He was wearing magnetic boots, and moved awkwardly, but it was plain he was trying to hurry before the situation got any worse. “I’m Commander Graham,” he said. “Chief Engineer of TCS Juneau. The former TCS Juneau.”
“Do all your friends have fur, Commander?” Bhaktadil asked.
“They’re castaways just like us,” Graham responded. “From two Imperial ships we engaged nine months back. One of them this carrier here. This is Jhavvid Dahl, Assistant Communications Officer of the Karga. And Mirrach lan Vrenes, Supply Officer from the escort Frawqirg. And my Engineering CPO, Ellen Quinlan.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Commander, we’re glad to see you,” Bondarevsky said. “But you have to admit the company you’re keeping doesn’t recommend itself to just anyone.”
Graham shrugged. “When both groups made it down, we had a choice between fighting to the death or cooperating and staying alive. We decided we could always kill each other later, and we’ve been working together down there ever since. We struck an agreement that whichever side got here first, the others would surrender to with the understanding they’d be repatriated.” He paused. “Believe me, friend, neither group would be here today if we hadn’t teamed up. It’s been rugged.”
“Well, it’s over now. I’m Jason Bondarevsky.” He stepped forward, extending his hand.
“First to Kilrah!” Graham said, gripping it firmly through their suit gloves.
“It wasn’t much of a movie,” Bondarevsky said dourly. He still regretted letting himself be talked in to cooperating with the picture. Even now, it continued to haunt him. “This is Colonel Bhaktadil, Free Republic Marine Corps. And my aide, Lieutenant Harper.”
“The fighter that escorted us in identified itself as Landreich Navy,” Graham said, frowning. “But what are you doing out here, sir? A ConFleet officer…?”
“A long story, Commander,” Bondarevsky said. “For the moment, I hope you won’t object to a little paranoia on our part. When you see Terrans and Kilrathi together on the same shuttle where neither group has any good reason for being alive in the first place, you get a little nervous. Colonel Bhaktadil would like to have some of his men look over your shuttle…just a precautionary measure.”
“Hell, sir, for all I care you can strip it down to scrap and sell it to the Firekkans as trade trinkets. There’re about two hundred people, Terran and Kilrathi, down on that moon who are going to see home after nine months in purgatory. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”
Wardroom, FRLS City of Cashel
Near Vaku VII, Vaku System
1822 hours (CST)
“So there we were, three shuttles packed full of survivors, coming in over the crash site. The Cat destroyer must’ve been worse damaged than they figured. Something failed on final approach, and that sucker set down hard.”
Bondarevsky passed another cup of tea across the wardroom table to Commander Graham, who took it eagerly. Gaunt and drawn, the young engineering officer had spent most of the time since reaching what passed for civilization eating, drinking, and talking.
They had decided to send the City of Cashel to pick up the survivors on the moon, which Graham called Nargrast. Apparently that was the name for one of the hells of Kilrathi mythology, and the description his Cat opposite number had provided of the place it was an apt name indeed. Nargrast, the planet, was a frozen waste, habitable only by a generous application of the word’s definition. It was a massive world, about twice the mass of Terra, with a gravitational pull of nearly two gs and a dense oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A greenhouse effect allowed the planet to retain enough of the brown dwarf’s energy output to keep it from being completely unlivable, and screened out the worst of the secondary radiation as well, but it also gave rise to fierce storms. Most of the survivors were sick from the overpressures and the cold, and they probably couldn’t have lasted too much longer.
Now the transport was en route, and Richards had ordered Bondarevsky to accompany Graham and his party to arrange the rescue of the colonists, turning over the survey work to Sparks and Harper. City of Cashel, designed as a combat troop transport, was the logical choice for the job. She had plenty of space for extra passengers despite carrying the crew destined for the Karga, and her fleet of shuttles and assault craft could make a quick job of the evacuation of the planet’s surface.
Bondarevsky was glad to get away from the Kilrathi carrier and its crew of ghosts and corpses. He doubted the Goliath project would have much chance of success anyway, and was glad the expedition could do some good, at least, by rescuing the castaways of the Battle of Vaku.
“Two of the shuttles mounted weapons pods, so we had a little bit of firepower available,” Graham went on. “But the Cats weren’t much of a threat. There were some survivors from the destroyer, but they were in a bad way. Some fighters had also put down there, Darkets and a pair of Strakhas. Those scared us, I’ve got to admit, but by the time they’d touched down they were out of fuel and weapons, so none of them even tried to come after us. And there were a couple of big lifeboats off the carrier, but they weren’t armed either. I don’t really know to this day when it dawned on me, but I decided to hold off opening fire until I had a parley with them. I know it was stupid, but I couldn’t see slaughtering a bunch of refugees who were in the same boat we were, enemies or not.“