"The stakes are less . . . personal, now. Is that it?" He kept his own tone serious.
"I guess so, sir," she said. "I hate to admit it. I mean, when I took my oath it was to the Confederation, not to any one planet. But Locanda was so much more real to me, when it went down. I could see it, in my mind: the places, the people. It made a difference."
"If it didn't, you wouldn't be human," he said. Blair studied her for a moment. She seemed too small, too fragile to be a combat pilot. "The problem is, you made me a promise once before, and you didn't keep it. Do you want to get back in that cockpit bad enough to follow through this time?"
"I can't prove that unless you give me the chance, Colonel," she said. "When I'm out there with that bird strapped around me and a cat in my sights . . . that's the only time I really feel alive."
Blair nodded sadly. He remembered Angel saying something like that once, back on the Tiger's Claw. I knew . . . I know someone who felt the same way. She lived to fight 'the good fight,' as she called it."
"For me, it's the flying," Flint told him. "I love the purity . . . nothing holding me back. Knowing I'm in complete control, for better or worse."
"Yeah," Blair said, nodding again. "Yeah, only a pilot knows that feeling."
"Well, Colonel, if you understand how I feel, then you have to know what I'm going through now. I wasn't designed for cheerleading from the sidelines, or playing traffic director in Flight Control. I'm requesting reassignment to flight status." She paused. "Please. . ."
"I don't usually give third chances, Lieutenant," he said slowly "But we could have used you out there yesterday. Next time we'll need you even more. You're back on the roster, effective immediately, Flint."
"Thank you, sir. . ."
He held up a hand. "But if you screw up again . . . heaven help you. Because I won t."
"Understood, Colonel." She stood up. "This time you won't regret it."
A jagged, irregular chunk of rock eighteen kilometers across dominated the view from the rec room. A few moving lights marked the passage of shuttles and service pods back and forth between carrier and asteroid. In the three hours since Victory matched orbits with Delius Station, a thorough inspection of the ship's hull and external fittings had already been completed, and the captain had authorized liberty for the off-duty watch. There weren't as many takers as might be expected — Delius Station was reputed to be one of the most boring stopovers in the sector — but there was a definite easing of tensions on board at the realization that they really were back in friendly territory at last.
Blair sat alone at a table, sipping his scotch and gazing at the planetoid and the star field beyond. In one corner of the room, Vaquero was softly strumming his old guitar, a quiet, mournful sound. Lieutenant Lopez had been certified fit for flight duty by the ship's Medical Officer the day before, and Blair restored him to the roster. But he still wondered if Lopez was fully recovered from the battering he had taken in the first clash in the nebula.
He heard Maniac Marshall call a greeting as he entered the rec room, and half-turned in his chair to watch the major at the bar. Marshall was his usual self, boisterous self-assured, wearing a broad smile as he took his drink from Rostov and waved an airy greeting to Flint and Cobra, who were sitting together at a nearby table.
To Blair's surprise, Maniac ambled to his table. "Colonel," he said, giving him a nod.
"Major," Blair replied. He waited a moment before going on. "Something I can do for you."
Maniac grew visibly uncomfortable, all his cockiness disappearing as he stammered a response. "Er . . . fact is, I wanted to tell you . . . I wanted to say . . . Maverick, that was a damned impressive show back at Ariel. The way you faked that first bunch out of position . . . and the way you kept your cool after the cats pulled their little magic trick." He looked embarrassed. "I know we don't always operate on the same frequency. . . but I thought I should give credit where it's due."
Blair raised an eyebrow. "Well. . ." He wasn't sure how to respond. Maniac Marshall had never before made such an overture. "Thanks for the vote of confidence. It was touch and go there for a while, though."
"Yeah," Marshall agreed. "Tell me about it. When they made that jump point disappear . . . God, I almost lost it. I never thought I'd feel that way, Maverick. Never.
"You kept your head pretty well, all things considered," Blair told him. "We couldn't have nailed that destroyer without you and Flash."
"We could have taken her out by ourselves, if you and Cobra had let us," Maniac said with a trace of his old spirit. "But . . . yeah, it was a good score all the way around." He looked out the viewport and continued with a sour note in his voice. "You think Chief Coriolis was right about the Kilrathi using a cloak on the jump points, Maverick?"
"That's the official verdict," Blair said. "The analysis the captain ordered turned up sensor traces consistent with the use of cloaking generators. That's the report he ordered dispatched to Sector HQ."
"So we only have to worry about them pulling something like that in a nebula, huh?" Marshall looked solemn. "I guess that's good news, at least."
"It also means we won't be stuck, next time out," Blair said. "It might take longer, but we could use a cloaked jump point providing we already had it thoroughly plotted on our charts."
"Does that mean we're going back? To finish the mission? Or with this weapon everybody's talking about?"
"That'll be up to the brass," Blair told him. "But I doubt it. If we're going to use an experimental weapon under difficult conditions, why borrow even more trouble? Of course, I'm not an admiral. Maybe they could find a good reason, but it seems like a silly risk to me."
"Hope you're right," Maniac said. He studied the view outside in silence for a long moment. "Nebulas and asteroid belts . . . I'll be glad to see the last of them. Give me a stand-up fight, not all this dodging and ducking and worrying about what your sensors aren't showing you."
"Look at the bright side, Maniac," Blair told him.
"There's a bright side?"
"Sure. The bad guys don't like flying through all this space junk any more than we do."
"Maybe not," Maniac said. "But they can take more risks out there than we can. After all, they've got nine lives."
"NOW, GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS! REPEAT, ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS!"
Blair turned in his chair to face a monitor and punched up an intercom link to the bridge. "This is Blair. What's going down?"
The screen showed Rollins in the foreground, with the running figures of bridge crewmen hurrying to their posts visible behind him. From somewhere out of the picture the sensor officer was talking. "I'm reading multiple contacts, Captain. Eight . . . no, ten capital ships. Four of them are carriers. Configuration. . . they're Kilrathi, sir. No doubt about it."
Rollins turned to look into the camera. "We've got a mountain of trouble out there, Colonel," he said "A whole damned cat task force just popped onto our scopes."