CHAPTER EIGHT

"We've picked up a threefold increase in signal traffic within the last six hours, chief."

Vance nodded wearily, looking through the report handed to him by one of his assistants. He was exhausted. Against all rules of proper procedure, he had put his people on eight hour on, four hour off duty shifts. He knew exhaustion was cutting into their performance, that it'd be best to give everybody a day off to unwind, but it was getting too hot. Earlier in the day they had made a quantum jump in cracking Fleet Code A, bringing the translations up to nearly sixty percent. It was increasingly revealing the full extent of the conspiracy, ranging from continual updates of military actives and deployments around Earth, but also a thousand other details down to spare part requests, and shipping orders for the transport fleet that was slipping deep out into Hari space, hauling the millions of tons of supplies needed to build a new fleet from scratch. A signal earlier in the day reported the transfer of more than a thousand pilots, their plane maintenance crews and the fighter craft off of carriers in drydock, and thus supposedly deactivated to the reserves, to the new fleet.

Something was definitely up. The Kilrathi were acting, but on what, and for what reason? And now the signal increase.

"We're also getting ship to ship communication increase within this system. Two light cruisers have moved in along with one heavy cruiser just detected."

That made Vance sit up and take notice. He looked at the report that the analyst pointed out on the screen, a real time translation of the messages, broadcast on a low priority code racing across the screen.

"They're setting up for an intercept from the looks of things," Vance said "Send a messenger down to Captain Bondarevsky, tell him to come here at once."

There were times when security got on his nerves. All communication lines between the fighter bay and the rest of the ship had been sealed off based upon the near infinitesimal chance that a member of the ship's crew, and one of his own people might collaborate in trying to get information off the ship.

The analyst turned and started for the door while Vance punched over to his head of Alpha team security, informing the captain to let the analyst pass into the ship and return with Jason.

A side channel suddenly leaped into activity on the display screen, originating from inside the system they were now occupying. It was one of the standard Confleet bands. But from where?

The D-5 had already locked on to it, a reflected signal skipping over the horizon of the planet, the message breaking up. "Just what the hell is this?" Vance whispered, turning more of the computer's power loose from other activities to focus in on the signal and enhance it.

It was an audio signal, and he turned on a speaker.

"Green one, Green one, this is Green two over."

"That's Paladin!"

Vance turned to see Jason coming up behind him.

"Green one, where the hell are you, am under attack, over.

"Where's it coming from?" Jason asked.

"Looks like from directly on the other side of the planet. Getting some skip through the atmosphere, wait a second."

He typed in a quick order and the D-5 turned one of its antenna array to aim at the small moon of the planet which was nothing more than an oversized rock orbiting half a million clicks overhead.

"Getting a reflection signal from the moon as well, give me a second here . . ." and he punched in another command.

"There, got it. Triangulate the signal as coming from near directly behind us, thirty five million clicks back."

"Straight back towards the jump point towards Hari," Jason said, turning to look at a holo map of the system which one of Vance's assistants activated, a blinking yellow dot showing where Paladin must be.

"We're getting in the clear attack signals from the Kilrathi cruisers, one of them is launching fighters," the assistant announced.

"They're moving in to cut Paladin off," Jason said quietly, looking at the map which was now showing the enemy ships in the sector. Several corvettes were already moving to set up a picket across the jump point leading out towards Confederation space while the cruisers positioned themselves for an easy kill.

"Either they found him out before he got the information, or after he picked it up; it's one of the two," Vance said quietly.

"Why are you telling me this?" Jason asked, suddenly aware that Vance was staring at him in a coldly detached way.

"If he doesn't have the data, and we go up to try and save him, our cover is blown and we'll have to get the hell out. For that matter I wonder if we can get out now considering the hardware they've brought in here."

"Are you suggesting that I do nothing and let them blow Paladin and Ian apart?"

"The mission comes first, Captain."

"And suppose he does have the data we need?"

"I haven't heard it yet, and frankly, son, his chances of finding them were slim to none to start with when we sent him on alone."

Jason looked back at the screen.

"Green one, Green one, am under attack, where the hell are you?"

Jason closed his eyes and tried to focus his thoughts, while. Paladin's insistent call for help echoed across the deck.

"Green one, Green one, this is Green two over."

Paladin, exasperated and filled with a frustrated rage, punched the channel off and slammed his fist down on the console.

To have come so far back and now to be cut off. The next jump point out of this system was blocked, and already half a dozen ships which had been pursuing him for days were coming through behind, a fact made worse by the more than fifty patrol craft and three cruisers currently in the sector. The heavy cruiser was already launching its squadron of fighters which would close with him within the hour.

The game was up and Bannockburn was about to get fried. As soon as he had jumped, the pickets waiting on the far side plastered him with high energy radar bursts and then threw on laserlocks he simply couldn't shake.

Just before they hit him he'd try one more burst signal, feeding every erg of power he had into it, but the chance of it reaching Confed space at this range was remote and made even more implausible by the fact that it was dicey at best if someone had a listening array focused on this region. If only he knew where Tarawa was he could transfer the info off and the they'd have the power to punch a signal through, plus they would also know where to aim it for an intercept.

"Damn it all to hell, if I get out of this I quit," Paladin snarled. "I'm heading back to Scotland and I'll be damned if I ever let my two feet get off the ground again.

"Ian, you'd better launch now. I'm glad that the Admiral managed to get a jump capable Ferret tucked into this ship's cargo bay. I thought he was a wee bit crazy trying that out. I'm ordering you to break off and try and make it through the jump point. I'm loading the information into your fighter's computers now. You've got to get that information back to Confed territory. Tarawa's either gone or bought it."

Ian looked over at Paladin. He knew Paladin was right. The swarm of enemy fighters was closing.

He wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.

Paladin looked up and forced a smile.

"Lift one for me at the Vacuum Breathers Club, laddie. Now get the hell out of here."

Ian turned and headed for the door.

"Good luck, Paladin."

Paladin shook his head and laughed.

Ambassador Vak'ga paused for a moment and looked back at the holo image on his desk. Again he felt the tug of pain and silently cursed himself for still feeling it. After all, the mourning should have ended on the first Sivar after the death of his sons. That was, after all, six years back. But no, the pain had never stopped. His seed was gone and when he died, his hrai would die with him.

He thought yet again of the agreement he had made with Prince Thrakhath on the eve before leaving for Earth. When Thrakhath had first suggested it to him his blood had burned with the thought of at last gaining vengeance. But now, it was so cold, there was no rage, no pain, just a detachment, a coldness, as if the goddess had already reached into his heart to still its beating.

The coded message to commit the act had arrived this morning, and soon the pain would stop. At least I will see my sons again, my sons taken from me by the humans. At least we will again embrace and go forth on the hunt with our ancestors.

He thought of the detonator and antimatter explosive buried in his chest cavity. Strange, there will be nothing more of me, nothing to be found to be buried. Fitting perhaps, since there will be no one to mourn me.

The Ambassador walked out of his office, not even bothering to close the door.

"How are you doing, Geoff? It's damn good to see you again."

Admiral Banbridge came around from behind his desk, hand extended. Former Rear Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn grasped it, and to his surprise Banbridge grabbed hold of him in a friendly bear hug. Turning he looked at Kevin, who stood at attention, and smiled.

"I heard you're one of the fleet's best," Banbridge said approvingly.

Geoff smiled broadly at the compliment to his nephew. The long transit back to Landreich, and from there hidden aboard a high speed smuggler craft to Earth, had given him the opportunity, for the first time, to really find out just who his nephew truly was. In the back of his mind, in spite of Kevin's actions aboard Tarawa, he still perceived him as a child. That was now dispensed with, their relationship changing to the close bond that can form between an uncle or father, and his son who is now a man.

"Kevin, I hate to ask this, but would you mind waiting for us? My steward will show you a damn nice shower and cook up some food for you."

Kevin saluted and followed the steward into the rear of the small apartment Banbridge had down in the basement of Fleet headquarters.

"He reminds me of you at that age, Geoff," Banbridge said with a smile, as he led his old student into his office and closed the door.

"Glad you're back safe. Have a seat and fill me in."

Geoff settled down into the proffered chair, his old boss sitting down across from him.

"First of all, what the hell was this signal you had me send?"

As Geoff explained Banbridge's features lit up.

"Same trick we Americans once used against the Japanese at Midway with the fake report of a water distillery breaking down. The Japanese picked it up and reported to their fleet that retarget X was short of water, and by that little trick we knew their next target was Midway. Vance always did know his history."

"Have we had any word yet from out there? Since I left Landreich I've been out of touch."

Admiral Banbridge shook his head and Geoff silently cursed.

"What's been happening back here on Earth?"

Banbridge blew out noisily and reached around to his desk, pulling out two glasses and a small decanter of port wine, pouring out a drink for himself and Tolwyn.

"The damn fools are eating up the crap that Vak'ga and Jukaga keep feeding them. Hell, Rodham has even agreed to a cultural exchange, with a bunch of Kilrathi singer's and dancers coming to Earth next month. The damn brie and wine crowd at the capital are eating it up, begging for tickets to the performance. The Chief of Staff raised holy hell about it, pointing out that we'd have over a hundred Kilrathi running around the capital and damn near everyone of them an intelligence operative. He was hooted down by Jamison and told to, 'relax, the war is over.'"

"It's nuts, I tell you. Anyone who talks about preparedness, about keeping the fleet appropriations up, is denounced as a war monger."

"And just how is the fleet?" Tolwyn asked.

"Four fleet carriers are still on line.

"Just four?"

"It's worse. Two of them are drydocked at the moment but it's claimed they can be brought back up to operational status within thirty days.

"What about the others?"

"In drydock, reactors pulled, crews on extended leave."

"What the hell for?"

Banbridge sighed.

"Jamison convinced the President, and he convinced the Senate, that if the Kilrathi were going to make a move we'd have plenty of warning and she pointed out that all but six of the Kilrathi carriers had been put into inactive reserve as well. So as a cost cutting measure the carriers were pulled in for major refitting and overhaul. Getting them on line could take up to three months."

"God help us," Tolwyn whispered, draining his glass and then accepting a refill.

"Forty-eight percent of the rest of the ships of the fleet are still on line, the rest are skeleton crewed in reserve. Operationally we're losing our edge. Flight training time for the fighters has been cut by nearly half, even our main battle fleet ships still in active service, our heavy cruisers, are tied off with crews on leave. It'd take weeks, maybe a month to two months to even get one full Task Force Group organized and back on line.

"What's worse is the freeze on construction. We should have had a new fleet carrier and four more cruisers operational by now and a number of other ships started. We tried to get through a government decree requiring all shipyard works to stay on their jobs; that caused a hell of an uproar and some of our best technicians are quitting to look for work else where. Key war industries, which during hostilities were forbidden to strike, are now having walkouts with people wanting higher wages, made worse by what looks like an economic depression due to a freeze on new defense contracts.

"Morale is down in the gutter. The career people are sore as hell. They wanted this thing seen through to the finish. Most of our old line people know that this war won't really be over till we storm through the rubble of the imperial palace and raise the Confederation flag. Anything else is a prelude to defeat. The reservists and draftees on the other hand are all clamoring to get discharged. Hell, senators are getting flooded with letters from parents, wives, and even our own troops demanding demobilization, the old 'bring the boys and girls back home.'"

"I guess it's kind of hard to blame them when you think of it. To them it really does look like it's over."

Banbridge nodded.

"I tell you, Geoff, I think a democratic republic is the only way to run the show; you English are the ones who really invented it and then we Americans picked it up. But there's always been one flaw in it and that is the sustaining of a long-term war. It's hard at times for civilians to truly understand the military; we have a thousand year tradition of always being at odds with the civilians we're sworn to defend. The military at times gets turned into the Greek messenger who gets blamed for simply telling people the truth of how the universe works. People get too caught up in the wish for peace and forget that the law of the jungle is still the law in most parts of this universe, and they don't like it when we try to tell them differently.

"Got any suggestions on how to change it?"

Banbridge smiled and shook his head.

"It's what I've spent forty-three years in the service fighting to defend. No, it's got its problems but I'd keep it.

"That's if it survives one year longer. Don't people realize what the Cats are up to?"

"Oh, a hell of a lot of ordinary people do, especially in the outer planets and the frontier. They've lived on the real edge of the war, sometimes in the middle of it. They know what even a momentary slip of vigilance can do. But the inner system of planets, and especially Earth, have been bearing the financial burden of a war that's been fought several hundred light years and a dozen or more jump points away, I think they're willing to grab at anything if it'll mean peace. We've got an entire generation that's been born and come to adulthood knowing nothing but war played out nightly on the holo screen, and the ruinous taxes to support it; to them peace is a dream as powerful as any narcotic."

"And it just might kill them."

Banbridge sighed

"The damn media is part of the problem. The Kilrathi have done a masterful job of feeding them selected footage of furball planets bombarded in the war, tearful interviews with widows who ask for peace, the usual propaganda crap. But try and send our own crews in to film freely and the curtain gets slammed down. It seems to be really popular of late, especially on the college campuses, to buy Jukaga's line that the war was a conspiracy of their military and ours to make themselves powerful and big industry rich. The majority of people see through it, but there's enough out there buying what ever they see on the holo to make things a bit hot.

"But enough on that, fill me in on what's happened with you over the last two months."

As Geoff described his arrangement of ship transfers to the Landreich and the mission into Kilrathi space with the D-5 team Banbridge remained silent, sipping on his port and refilling Geoff's glass when it went dry.

"When I got back to Landreich, that's when things started to get dicey with Kruger."

"How so?"

"He's absolutely furious with the Confed and the blockage of the fighter shipment. At least they were getting a trickle during the war, but the peace commission has shut off any further shipments of war-related supplies.

"I tell you, Wayne, those colonials are absolute masters at cobbling a fleet together and keeping it flying. What they're having an impossible time getting through legitimate channels are the latest high tech fighters, electronics, and ship to ship missiles."

"Legitimate channels?"

Geoff laughed.

"They're still getting some interesting equipment, but don't ask me how."

Banbridge nodded and smiled.

"Spare parts they get from cannibalizing, patching, and making do. They've even produced their own heavy fighters, by taking obsolete three-man patrol ships and jacking on the most god awful bizarre engines you've ever seen. Anyone who flies them deserves a medal of honor just for turning the engines on.

"Now for frontier raiding, dealing with Kilrathi colonial guard forces or even light raiding fleets they could teach us a thing or two . But if the main battle fleet ever hits through there, every planet in the Landreich will be glowing and Kruger knows it. By heavens, Wayne, the way he swore at you, the Chief of Staff and Rodham were a thing to behold."

"Will he stick with us though when the time comes?"

"Only as far as Landreich interests are concerned. Frankly, I think he'd be happy if the Confederation and the Empire blew each other the hell apart and the colonials were the only ones left."

"I just bet that old bastard does," Banbridge said with a smile. "He's the most amazing pain in the butt I've ever known, and also one of the best."

"When do you want me to go back out?" Tolwyn asked. "I think it's crucial that if things go bad that I'm out there with him. I know he sees through this little court martial game I went through. He knows I'm operating covertly for the Chief of Staff and intelligence, and I guess he sort of likes me as a result."

"That's part of the reason you got picked for the assignment, I had a gut feeling he'd see you as a bit of a renegade, and your fighting record was sure to impress him."

Geoff nodded and was silent. There was nothing really to be said. He had been asked to volunteer for the assignment, to deliberately provoke a court martial offense, to seek a dishonorable discharge in order to go into covert operations. It had destroyed his reputation, making him a pariah in his own service, except for the half dozen or so people who were in on the secret. If his old mentor and friend had asked him to kill himself for the good of the service he would not hesitate.

"I do have one question that's troubling me though," Geoff finally said and he hesitated for a moment.

"What about Project Omega?"

Banbridge looked over at Tolwyn in surprise.

"Son, you were never cleared to know that. Damn, if I had known you were on the in on Project Omega I'd never have let you go running off with Tarawa the way you did. You aren't supposed to know anything about it."

Tolwyn smiled.

"But I do, and don't ask me how."

Banbridge nodded.

"Still being supported through black funds. This project Rodham does know about, but no one else in the cabinet has been cleared. He agreed to keep it going, I guess in part as a lever to force the Chief into signing the armistice. Rodham thinks Omega is our ace in the hole."

"And how close is it to completion?"

Banbridge shook his head.

"A hell of a lot of snags, six months before we could even fire up the engines on the first ship, a year more likely, though the conservatives are saying eighteen months is a safe bet."

Tolwyn shook his head at the news. There was something ironic about the war that he felt an outside observer would find amusing. The Kilrathi had gone through incredible expense and effort to start the secret building of a new class of carriers, if indeed what flimsy information intel had been able to dig up so far was true. The Confederation was doing the same thing. It was not so much a super carrier along the lines of suspected Kilrathi design, but more a Stealth, heavily armored battlewagon with upgraded shielding that was proof against medium-yield antimatter warheads. There were rumors as well of a super weapon to be carried on the new ship, but that was an even darker secret. They were still a dream, however, and would have no impact on this war, hidden like the Kilrathi construction yard, as far as possible from the battle front.

"Any word yet from Tarawa?"

Banbridge shook his head.

"Silent, though forward listening posts have picked up orders pulling several cruisers off from patrol on the frontier to head back in towards the sector Tarawa and Normandy are operating in. It might be a coincidence."

"I don't believe in coincidence, the Cats must be on to something."

"That's what I thought as well."

"Wish I was back out there with them," Tolwyn whispered.

"Bondarevsky's a good man. If he's in a scrape he'll figure away out."

Geoff nodded in agreement. Jason had become like the son he had lost. If Reggie had not been killed twenty years ago he'd even be Jason's age.

"When do you want me to go back out to Landreich?"

"The Chief of Staff wants to hear a full briefing from you tomorrow morning," Banbridge paused to look over at his computer screen.

"Speaking of the old man, there's a staff meeting in ten minutes. Why don't you stay here, I'll have my aide get a meal into you, and for heavens sake, Geoff, let's see if we can get you some better clothes."

Tolwyn nodded in agreement. He felt absolutely ridiculous wearing the coveralls of a civilian maintenance worker, and the beard he had grown on the way back from Tarawa was itchy as all hell. It was a convenient enough cover for him to slip through the underground parking lot of fleet headquarters. Once he was inside, a Marine security team had ushered him down a private corridor the rest of the way to Banbridge's private quarters. He rubbed his chin.

"Wish I could shave this off."

"You do look kind of ridiculous, Geoff."

Banbridge stood up and grabbed his attached case.

"What's the meeting about?"

"Always curious, aren't you?"

Tolwyn smiled. "Working with Vance kind of rubs off on you."

"That damn Kilrathi ambassador asked for a meeting with the Chiefs of Staff and some of our fleet admirals. He's screaming over a list of grievances about border violations by military patrols, and incidents from the Landreich are top on the list. So just lay low here, there's bound to be some press trying to sneak around, and if they ever saw you, there'd be hell to pay."

Geoff shook hands with his old academy instructor and smiled as Banbridge headed out the door.

Banbridge paused and looked back at Geoff.

"You've done damn good, son; I'm proud of you," and then he was gone.

The aide came in a minute later and offered to lay out some fresh clothes while Geoff took a shower, an offer he eagerly agreed to after weeks in space, surviving the usual water rationing of one minute showers. As he walked past the small bedroom he saw Kevin stretched out on top of the sheets, fast asleep.

"Didn't even bother to eat, sir," the steward whispered. "He stretched out and was asleep like a baby inside of a minute."