“It sounds like an excellent plan, my Lord,” Jhorrad said. His good eye was shining with anticipation. “When will the strike force depart?”
“We will take time to put the operation together,” Ragark replied. “And to guard the system here in case Kruger attempts an immediate sortie, though I think that is unlikely. Say two eight-days to assemble our forces. After that…we strike!”
“I wish I was coming with you, my Lord,” Jhorrad told him.
“Your part will come soon enough,” Ragark assured him. “And your name will be remembered long after high-born fools like Thrakhath and that scum Ghadhark have been forgotten.”
CHAPTER 17
“The true leader offers his Warriors in sacrifice only when there is no alternative; the true Warrior offers himself in sacrifice in the knowledge that only thus will the battle be won.”
Shuttle Mjollnir Echo
Orbiting Nargrast, Vaku System
1622 hours (CST), 2671.033
The Kilrathi-made shuttle hung in space, dwarfed alongside the bulk of the carrier now called Mjollnir. From the cockpit, Lieutenant Aengus Harper and his Wing Commander, Captain Bondarevsky, studied the repairs to the outside of the port side flight deck, recording everything on video and computer-imaged still pictures. It was painstaking work, but an essential part of the refit, making sure there were no obvious weak spots in the refurbished hull. So Bondarevsky had assured Harper several times now, though Harper suspected his commanding officer was growing as weary of this “essential duty” as be was. Still, as the wing commander had pointed out earlier, it was better to invest the time and effort now that to discover they’d overlooked something crucial when an unlucky hit opened up the hull in the middle of a battle.
Harper quite frankly couldn’t see any spot that didn’t look weak. The hurry-up repair job on the port side flight deck had definitely stressed speed over all else, and the haste showed in rough patches and crude welding jobs. He hoped the computer’s structural analysis would belie the look of the work, and yield results within acceptable limits.
“Section one-twenty-five,” Bondarevsky said, sounding tired. He pressed a button on the co-pilot’s console. “Recorded. That’s the last of them, Lieutenant.”
“Thank God and all the Saints for that, sir,” Harper said with a grin. “Shall I be taking her back to the barn, then?”
‘Take the scenic route,“ Bondarevsky said. ”I want to get a better look at the old girl…a wider view, something with fewer rivets and weld marks.“
“Aye, sir, that would be a big improvement.” His hands danced over the shuttle controls. “Do you think the work will pass the inspection?”
Bondarevsky let out a sigh. “God, I hope so.” He paused. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it will. At least it’ll do for routine ops for a while, until we have time to do a better job on her. Richards told me this morning that it’s likely we’ll still be overhauling her six months from now…unless Ragark tries something sooner.”
“Six more months of this, sir?” Harper made a face. “I think I’d rather have Ragark charging across the border with guns blazing.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Bondarevsky told him. “Fact is, we need all the refit time we can get. I never thought we’d get this far, Aengus, but we still have a long way to go before this old lady can stand toe-to-toe with hostiles in a real fight.”
As the shuttle lifted slowly away from the carriers battle-scarred hull, Harper remained silent, mulling over the wing commanders words. After a truly Herculean effort by the entire crew, Mjollnir was more or less operational. She had powered up her maneuvering drives a few days earlier and lifted clear of her long elliptical orbit around the brown dwarf, exchanging it for a high planetary orbit over Nargrast. The rest of the battle group occupied various similar orbits, spread out now to cover possible approach vectors and give the carrier warning in case of further unfriendly visits to the system. Both flight decks and all of the remaining planes were available now, and Bondarevsky had been holding daily training exercises in simulators and out in space to familiarize the pilots assigned to the Kilrathi squadrons with their planes, and to get the entire Black Cats wing used to working together.
That had meant more than just exercising the fighter squadrons, too. The support craft-electronic warfare birds, resupply boats, command and control planes-had all been put through their paces. In some respects the Kilrathi had a superior system to the Confederation and Landreich navies, using such auxiliary craft very effectively in conjunction with fighters and bombers. Bondarevsky had decided early on to adapt the same techniques to the ex-Kilrathi carrier’s operations, to bridge a gap in technologies that reflected the difference in doctrine. The supercarrier itself had fewer onboard systems adapted to the roles filled by those special planes, and Bondarevsky had quickly decided it was easier to get used to operating like Kilrathi pilots rather than attempting to upgrade the onboard support systems to carry out these same tasks. So fighters and bombers were often re-armed and refueled on the fly instead of coming back aboard for servicing, and lightly armed recon planes performed the scouting duties of a human light fighter squadron. The Primary Flight Control center aboard the carrier extended its reach by handing off coordination duties to the Command/Control birds.
It all took a lot of getting used to, and Harper had heard plenty of grumbling and cursing from the rest of the wing. But slowly they were getting accustomed to Bondarevsky’s demands, and starting to show pride in their roles.
Harper wondered about the Admiral’s estimate of needing another six months to finish the refit. Graham was still working on the jump generators, the last major ship’s system that hadn’t been tested under field conditions. But there were fewer problems there than the engineering crew had first feared, and the work was going quickly. After the jump drive was pronounced ready, Mjollnir would probably be as ready as she ever would be. There would be plenty of minor things to take care of, to make the ship more efficient and more comfortable, but already she had engines, sensors, guns, and a working flight deck. That, to Harper’s way of thinking, qualified her as a fighting ship.
They had pulled far enough away by now to be able to view the entire carrier. From this distance the individual damage didn’t show much, except for the scar on her superstructure where the original Maneuvering Bridge had been patched without being restored. The unearthly lines of the Kilrathi-built supercarrier never failed to make Harper just the least bit uneasy. There was something about a Kilrathi ship that summoned up an instinctive desire to fight or flee. Even the giant supercarrier was all knife-blades and sharp angles, a deadly sword to be wielded in battle.
“Very nice, Mr. Harper,” Bondarevsky commented. “From out here you can almost picture her as a warship, and not a collection of repairs waiting to fall apart.”
Harper frowned. Of late Bondarevsky had been sounding more pessimistic about the whole refit project. He worked hard, driving himself even more unrelentingly than he drove his subordinates, but he had been badly shaken by the encounter with the pirates. Sometimes it seemed as if he blamed himself for the loss of Sindri, and was frustrated by the continual problems that cropped up to remind them all of how big a job the refit process really was.