“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Harper said quietly. “I know ’tis not my place to say so, but I think you should lay off the cracks about the ship.”
Bondarevsky looked at him with a puzzled frown. “What’s that supposed to mean, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“A lot of the crew has started to take some real pride in Mjollnir, sir. She may look like hell and be held together by spit and good intentions, but she’s ours. Like the Landreich itself. We’re no Terran Confederation out here on the frontier. We can’t afford the best ships or the best crews, so we make do with what we have. And we’re proud when we can achieve something good by the sweat of our brows and the skill of our hands. ’Tis bad for morale to hear Mjollnir being put down as second rate, sir.”
Bondarevsky shook his head, then smiled suddenly. “Sometimes, Mr. Harper, you really do make me think,” he said. “Okay, you win. From here on out she’s the best ship in the fleet, bar none.” He paused. “But I hope you won’t mind if I try not to sneeze too hard. I’m still afraid of what might happen.”
Harper grinned. “Aye, the Cats could take us out of action for good with one strong dose of the flu.”
“Take us home, Lieutenant,” Bondarevsky ordered. “Before you have me convinced that old lady is actually as good as you seem to think she is.”
The return to the port side flight deck took longer than they had planned, thanks to an unexpected new arrival. A courier shuttle, light, fast, and fitted with jump drives, had arrived while they were conducting their survey, and was on final approach when Harper contacted Boss Marchand for landing clearance. They held clear of the flight deck until Marchand came on the line to let them know it was safe.
The shuttle settled onto the deck just aft of the courier. As Harper and Bondarevsky exited, the hatch on the top of the courier opened up and a suited figure clambered down the ladder on the port side. When he undogged his helmet and lifted it clear of his head, Harper saw the new arrival was Kevin Tolwyn.
Bondarevsky advanced, hand extended. “Kevin! What are you doing here? And why the flying coffin?” Courier shuttles were notoriously cramped and uncomfortable, with just enough room for a pilot-and a passenger if they were very friendly-with a cockpit and a tiny cabin mounted in front of nothing but fuel tanks and engines.
Taking the proffered hand, Tolwyn shrugged. “Old Max sent me. I’m his new fair-haired boy these days, and he wanted me to bring you guys the latest news.”
Bondarevsky stepped back. “Captain’s bars, is it? You’re not bucking for my job again, are you?”
“Not me,” Tolwyn told him. “We had a little dust-up with some Cats a few days back, and Max thought I had earned a promotion. He even gave me a case of beer after we got back to Landreich!” The younger man paused. “Look, Jason, I’ve got dispatches and orders for Admiral Richards. We’ve got troubles, and I’m afraid Karga is in for a rough time.”
“She’s Mjollnir, now,” Bondarevsky said absently. “What kind of troubles, and how rough a time?”
Tolwyn dropped his voice, but Harper could still hear. “The Cats have a dreadnought,” he said. “Under repair at Baka Kar. And our intell says they’re getting ready to sortie against Ilios with a carrier task force.”
“A dreadnought?” Bondarevsky’s face went pale. “If that thing comes calling, we might as well just start the evacuation now…”
“There’s more,” Tolwyn said. “A lot more. But the big thing is your orders. Kruger wants you guys to take the carrier in and try to kill the dreadnought. And soon.”
Bondarevsky’s bionic hand clenched into a fist, then went into the worst set of spasms Harper had seen in weeks. “God damn it!” he said sharply. After a long moment he regained control of the appendage, but his scowl was black. He lowered his voice. “Is he crazy? This heap of junk is supposed to take on a dreadnought?”
Tolwyn nodded. “I’m afraid so. I have the orders here. Too sensitive to hypercast.” He looked Bondarevsky in the eye. “I have to report to Admiral Richards. But I think you’d better come too…and my uncle. You’ll all need to hear this.”
Bondarevsky looked back over his shoulder at Harper. “Finish the post-flight, Lieutenant,” he said. It was almost a growl. “I’ll be with the Admiral.”
He and Tolwyn walked off before Harper had a chance to respond. The lieutenant watched them, trying not to betray his whirling emotions. A little while ago he’d been hoping for action. Now, it seemed, they would get it. But from the sound of it, Mjollnir’s first real combat op was likely to be her last as well.
Flag Officer’s Ready Room, FRLS Mjollnir
Orbiting Nargrast, Vaku System
1715 hours (CST)
The holo-image showed a man in a sick bay bed, breathing with considerable difficulty and speaking in a ragged, throaty voice. Zachary Banfeld didn’t look much like a ruthless pilot, Bondarevsky thought. More like the frightened survivor of a disaster.
Apparently that’s just what he was.
“Will you repeat that last statement, please?” The voice off-camera belonged to Max Kruger. “How big was this ship?”
“Best estimate was twenty-two kilometers long,” Banfeld said. “Mass was right off the scale. It was huge, Kruger! Huge! And it must have had thirty heavy energy batteries. Turrets everywhere!”
“A dreadnought.” It was strange to have Kevin Tolwyn’s voice interjecting the comment on the recording, while he sat beside Bondarevsky and stared down at the table in silence.
“That’s enough,” Admiral Richards said, shutting off the recording and bringing the lights back up. He looked around the ready room. Aside from Bondarevsky and Kevin, Admiral Tolwyn was the only other one present. Richards had even dismissed Lieutenant Cartwright, his flag lieutenant. “It must be the Vorghath. We kept hearing rumors of a dreadnought that had escaped from the destruction of Kilrah, but nobody could track down anything solid. Her captain refused to acknowledge Melek as Thrakhath’s successor, apparently, and he set off in search of someone he could sign on with.”
“Ragark,” Admiral Tolwyn said.
“Ragark,” Richards echoed. “With that thing in his arsenal, there’ll be no stopping him. Not in the Landreich, and not in the Confederation. I suppose if we assembled most of ConFleet in one place we could fight Vorghath to a standstill, but the rest of Ragark’s fleet will be able to do pretty much as he damn well pleases in the meantime.”
“The President thinks the same,” Kevin said. “He says the only way to stop it is to hit it while it’s still at spacedock.”
“We don’t even know how long that will be,” his uncle said gloomily.
“Banfeld said that it looked pretty badly beat up. His estimate was for several weeks of repairs.” The younger Tolwyn looked away. “But there wasn’t any reliable data left in the scoutship’s computers to back up what he said. Hell, the whole story could be a fake. But I doubt it. He sounded sincere to me. And frightened. After all, if that monster sorties, it’s the end of the Guild as well as the Landreich.”
“Even if the estimate he made was accurate, it could still have enough firepower to swat the whole Landreich fleet,” Richards said. ‘There’s no way of telling what we’re up against, and damned little chance of getting any additional intelligence.“
“President Kruger went so far as to approach Clark Williams again,” Kevin said. “He went armed with our footage of the battle, and Banfeld’s recorded statement. He figured the ConFleet was about the only hope left to take the dreadnought out while it was still relatively defenseless.”
“And no doubt he got thrown out on his ear,” the elder Tolwyn growled. “It was stupid to waste the time.”