One thing: The food had improved, as promised. The inhabitants of P’Vip, surly and graceless as they were, had a biochemistry closer to human and Grallt than the last few they’d visited, and tasty items were again appearing on the menu. One of them was something like pasta, flat strips of a starchy substance, and another was a spicy preserved meat. Combined with tomatoes and a few spices from the Grallt supply, they made a very acceptable substitute for spaghetti that almost everyone, Grallt or human, liked and took whenever it was available.
The watch finally dragged to an end, as watches do no matter how seemingly interminible, and Peters surrendered the duty belt and sidearm to his relief. Gonsoles donned the gear, having to let the belt out to accomplish that, and set himself at parade rest in the dead center of the opening, facing outward at the stars. Peters snorted to himself. He hadn’t thought the roughneck was that imaginative.
Chow and a nap, in that order. Flight ops at the beginning of the next ande.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The planet framed slightly off-center in the forward bay door was called Irkinnik, and its inhabitants were “bür”. Most of the sailors had trouble with the umlaut, but “beer” was close enough for most purposes. Dee had said they were warlike, and very, very good. She’d also said she thought the Navy pilots were better. That was about to be tested.
Peters checked off another statuette. Here were the “Draculas”: tall, thin to the point of shoulder blades and hipbones showing clearly in their kathir suits, with long narrow faces, bright red lips, sharply pointed jaws and noses, and close-cropped head hair with distinct widows-peaks. All they needed was long black cloaks, especially when one smiled, bringing distinct, and sharp, canines into view. Either there wasn’t much difference between their sexes or only one sex was represented among the visitors to Llapaaloapalla.
They were nice people, soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, and didn’t have much use for military drill or formal punctilio, but they weren’t the least sloppy. They’d approached in well-kept diamond formations, individuals peeling off to land while the others circled around, and their ships were parked in neat echelon alongside the demo plane, which was a Hornet this time. All their kathir suits were marked the same, a rich blue with red simulated briefs, except for different numbers and designs of yellow stripes on the sleeves, probably rank designations.
“Well, now we know where this bucket of bolts came from,” Tollison rumbled cheerfully. Todd had expounded his theory about different “flavors” or “feels” of technology, and the two First Classes had talked it around; it was now the consensus of the humans, or at least the enlisted, and the evidence was persuasive. Bür ships were rectangular blocks with rounded corners, painted white with geometric designs here and there, collateral descendants of Llapaaloapalla if not direct ones.
“The theory seems sound,” Mannix observed, “but perhaps we should ask someone likely to know more about it. Dee, did the bür build Llapaaloapalla?”
“I don’t know,” Dee confessed. “If so, it was before I was born.” Theoretically she was now liaison between the enlisted and the Grallt, and she was useful in dealing with the Trade organization—even after all this time none of the sailors had met her superiors—but that wasn’t necessary very often, and in fact Peters had better relations with the zerkre than Dee did. If the sailors needed to know something, usually Dhuvening or Linvenig told Peters, Peters told Dee, and Dee told the Master Chief.
It kept Peters out of Joshua’s sight; he was even beginning to rub along fairly well with Howell. The fact that it didn’t make sense wasn’t worth considering.
“Now hear this,” Joshua said over the general push. “Flight operations will begin in three-two minutes. All hands, rig for flight operations. I say again, flight operations will begin at the turn of the next ande. All hands rig for flight operations. That is all. “
“I wish he’d decide whether to use Earth time or Grallt time,” Peters groused. “Mixin’ ‘em up that way’s likely to get everybody confused.”
“Look on the bright side,” Mannix advised. “At least he’s using the ship’s designations sometimes. He started out using nothing but Earth time and bells.” Peters just grinned and headed up to collect his deck gear. Aunt Lulu had believed in ouija boards. Peters was certain that he’d never accept a message from beyond the grave as being from Mannix if it didn’t include the phrase “Look on the bright side” or some equivalent.
Rupert was waiting at Retard Three, and Jacks ambled up as Peters was checking the settings: all correct. One of the ways the bür had endeared themselves to the sailors was by sending pathfinders—the first out of six alien encounters—with the proper mass and speed settings, and by seeming content to allow humans to operate the retarders instead of supplying their own crews. Not that they really needed them. The ships the bür flew might not look sleek and flashy, but they handled them with sure deftness, matching speeds so perfectly that the fields were rarely deployed. Peters recalled Keezer’s comments, but made sure the settings were correct anyway.
The humans’ planes were first out as usual, Hornets in the lead this time, so the visitors could see how the system worked. Over the voyage they’d refined their plane-handling techniques with the enkhei remarks about “performances” in mind. The result was highly stylized, and would probably get them in trouble when they got home and had to operate twice as many planes in a quarter of the space, but it sure as Hell looked pretty. When the bür’s turn came they made an attempt to go along with the gag, mistaking a few of the ground-guides’ wand signals but not doing badly for newbies.
Recovery wasn’t quite so pretty. The bür trapped first, coming in a little hotter than they had when coming aboard the first time and gathering in clumps along the side of the ops bay to watch. “Look alive,” said Howell when all the bür were in. “From the look of it things didn’t go all that good for our guys this time.”
Commander Collins was hot enough to twang the first two retarders, the first time that had happened in quite a while, and almost all of the other Hornets were either hotter, sloppier, or both than usual. The first flight of Tomcats was about the same, and in the short pause after they trapped all the retarder crews double-and triple-checked their consoles. The second flight was manned by the alternate crews, and despite improvement they simply weren’t as good as the primaries.
105 managed to twang number three before getting down to deck-maneuvering speed. The sailors exchanged looks as it taxied away. As they understood it, the low-powered lasers used in the mock combats caused a shock that was transmitted distinctly through the airframe. They also scarred the paint, and from the look of it Mr. Carlyle had gotten as much as he could dish out if he hadn’t actually come out second best. Multiple splotches marred the Navy blue of the wings and tail surfaces, and several irregular areas of peeled paint marched down the midbody, definite kills if the weapons were on their normal settings.
106 and 107 were a little calmer but still hotter than usual, and bore similar if less extensive evidence that the bür were several cuts above the opponents they’d encountered before. Number 108 was lagging, and Howell pulled out his binoculars and took a look. “Shit,” he said. “It looks like he’s lost it. This could get interesting.”
“Who is it?” somebody asked.
“Carson,” another replied.
“Oh, shit.” It was obvious to the naked eye that his attitude was wrong. Carson’s problem seemed to be that he couldn’t bear to head directly for the ship. Peters could sympathize a little—the times he’d been outside it had been much easier to think of the ship as “down” than “over there”—but if the pilot was too rattled to get the nose down it was likely to cause problems.