“One hundred meters, closing,” the sensor technician reported from his post behind the captain’s chair.
“Approach profile nominal,” Lieutenant Kaine, the first officer, added.
As if oblivious to it all, the helmsman manipulated his controls like a concert pianist giving the recital of a lifetime. The rate of approach slowed steadily as the tender moved closer, dragging out the maneuver until Dickerson was ready to shout in frustrated impatience.
Then the ships touched, so gently that the contact was hardly noticeable.
“Deploying magnetic grapples,” Kaine announced. “We have positive contact!”
“Secure from maneuvering stations, gentlemen,” Dickerson ordered, breathing out. “Set the special duty watch and begin tender operations. Engineer, shields to maximum power. And make a note in the log that we have docked with Karga.”
“Damn it all, skipper,” the helm officer said, “don’t we even get a chance to smoke a cigarette?”
“Very funny, Clancy,” Dickerson said, forcing down a smile at the helmsman’s ancient joke. “Since you’re not going to be doing anything on the bridge for a few weeks, what say you go over to the carrier and lend a hand with the salvage crew? I’m sure they’ll benefit from your experience with helm systems. And your sense of humor, so-called.”
Clancy gave him a grin. “Aye aye, skipper,” he said cheerfully. Dickerson watched him leave the bridge wistfully. The challenge of taking part in a project as big as rebuilding a Kilrathi carrier appealed to him, but unlike the helmsman he had plenty to do right here aboard Sindri.
The tender was riding piggyback on the supercarrier’s massive superstructure, clamped in place by magnetic grapnels. Her maneuvering drives were powered down now, but the massive banks of fusion generators that made up most of the tender’s mass were still on-line. For the next several weeks, as the repair process swung into full operation aboard Karga, little Sindri’s power plants would play an enormous part in the job.
Already Sindri’s shields had extended around the supercarrier. They weren’t up to combat standard by any stretch of the imagination, but they would protect work crews from the brown dwarf’s strange radiation and put an end to the continual bombardment of tiny particles of matter against the derelict’s hull. When their orbit took them through the gas giant’s ring system once, which happened on the order of once every three days, the shields would also block all but the very largest chunks of ice from further damaging the ship. Already the unshielded Kilrathi hulk had taken a great deal of additional damage from multiple passes through the rings, minor hits by small pieces of junk, perhaps, but at orbital speeds the damage was magnified by kinetic energy unleashed by each of those hits.
Once the basic shielding was up, the engineers would set up a second set of shields specifically attuned to retain gases. Then the process of reintroducing an atmosphere on to the ship could begin. It would still be necessary for work crews to wear suits until the hull of the carrier had been fully patched, because of the constant danger of a shield failure that could open the ship to hard vacuum, but many of the most basic tasks of repair would be considerably easier with an atmosphere to work in.
Meanwhile, one hole in the carrier’s superstructure would not be targeted for repair for a while, a small, jagged opening Dickerson had deliberately aimed for during the docking approach. This was now positioned directly below one of several airlocks leading out of engineering. Soon engineers from the tender would be running leads through this opening to hook into the Karga’s power grid and computer network. Although the supercarrier was still generating some energy, the repair job would eventually require her power plant to be taken off-line so the equipment could be examined and overhauled. While this was going on Sindri would provide the power for Karga to operate light, environmental controls, and artificial gravity, and to run through instruments as they were tested. At the same time they would be busy downloading the carrier’s computer network. The Kilrathi computer files already had intelligence experts in the battle group salivating in anticipation of the potential data they might hold. Once the files were duplicated, the Kilrathi network would be fully purged and then brought back on-line with the programming and data files needed for the ship to operate as a part of the Free Republic Navy.
It would be a monster job, Dickerson thought. Sindri had been involved in similar work before, including the refitting of the Tarawa-now the Independence-a few months earlier. That had been a bear of a project, but this one would be worse. The damage to the Kilrathi carrier had been far more extensive to start with, and Dickerson didn’t even want to think about all the problems of mating human and Kilrathi systems aboard Karga.
Still, he envied the techies who’d have hands-on work to do in the weeks ahead. The captain of the Sindri would have plenty of headaches and more demands on his time than there were hours in the standard day to deal with them, but he knew from experience that his work would be far less interesting or absorbing than the refit his ship was going to make possible.
“Captain,” the first officer interrupted his train of thought. “Chief Engineer’s compliments and could you please get together with Admiral Tolwyn and Mr. Diaz to settle the priorities on power demands? He says they’re both demanding more power than we can deliver and neither one of them is willing to budge.“
Dickerson sighed. They’d only been docked a few minutes and the headaches were already starting. “Very well, Mr. Kaine. Have Communications put the gentlemen through to my ready room.” He rose from his seat. “You have the bridge, Lieutenant.”
Operations Planning Center, FRLS Independence
Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System
0843 hours (CST), 2670.320
“I’m telling you, Admiral, my crew is not going to like this. Frankly, I don’t like it either. I didn’t sign up in the Landreich Naval Reserve to be some kind of ferryman for a load of dead Cats, and neither did my people.”
The atmosphere in the escort carrier’s OPC was charged with tension today, and Jason Bondarevsky had to force himself to keep from jumping into the argument with an angry comment. Everyone connected with the Goliath Project was exhausted after days of nearly constant work, and in consequence tempers were frayed. The daily conferences aboard the Independence to coordinate work schedules and iron out conflicts were apt to produce more confrontations than solutions, and today’s was a good case in point.
Vance Richards looked older than ever, tired and drawn. He worked as hard as any man on Karga, perhaps harder. His wide experience as Chief of Intelligence for ConFleet during the war had given him wide contact with Kilrathi technology, and he was the indispensable man in directing the repairs. But the work was taking its toll, and Bondarevsky was beginning to worry that he’d burn himself out long before he had to take up his duties as battle group commander if and when the supercarrier really was put back in commission.
“Listen to me, Captain Steiger,” the admiral said slowly. “I know all the arguments, but I’m not buying any of them. You have your orders.”
Steiger looked stubborn, but didn’t answer right away.
The Kilrathi dead were the issue today, specifically the disposal of the bodies of the carrier’s crew. The grisly reminder of Karga’s last cruise had to be dealt with, and soon. Now that they had atmosphere and heat decay would rapidly become a major factor, and until those bodies were removed they would impede the repair work. The first major task Richards had ordered the crewmen brought across from the City of Cashel to undertake was the collection of Kilrathi bodies.