"As of the this date, CVE 8 Confederation Fleet Ship Tarawa is hereby officially stricken from active list and placed in inactive reserve. Unless otherwise noted in attached form below, all officers and crew are hereby discharged from active fleet service upon completion of all proper discharge procedures and placed on inactive reserves. Signed C-in-C ConFleet."

The officer folded the paper and hesitated for a moment.

"Sir, its a bit out of form but I also received a note from the Commander of Third Fleet, Admiral Banbridge, which he asked me to read."

Jason nodded, and the officer unfolded the piece of paper.

"Never in the annals of the fleet has so much been accomplished by a ship such as yours. I am proud to have served with all of you. The name Tarawa will not be forgotten, God bless you all."

The officer handed the paper to Jason, who smiled.

"Sir, for what's it's worth I hate this job," the officer said quietly. "A lot of the other ships I don t really care about, but your ship, sir," and he hesitated. "Sir, I'm sorry I have to take over this old girl. She's a proud ship."

"So am I," Jason sighed "Just take good care of her."

"We'll do our best."

He turned and looked back at his crew.

"Time you folks shipped off. I'll be along shortly."

One by one they filed off the bridge, Jason standing by the door and shaking the hand of each until finally he was alone except for Westerlin.

"I'll leave you alone if you want, sir," the officer said, as if he were a mortician withdrawing from the side of a grieving widower, and he silently stepped off the bridge.

Jason walked around the bridge one last time. It had been his bridge for really only a very short time. After the raid on Kilrah the ship had been laid up for a year. It would in fact have been far cheaper to simply scrap her and build a new one from scratch, but public opinion was dead set against it. During that year he'd been stuck Earthside, assigned to the fleet war college for advanced training, finishing up with a brief stint at the Academy to run their latest holo combat simulator training program. But the ship had sailed at last, only to serve in one final brief action before the armistice. Yet, it was his ship, it was in fact, since Kilrah, the only thing he really loved.

He could have stayed longer, but then farewells should never be drawn out. Leaving the bridge without a backward glance he went into his cabin and hoisted the duffel bag off his bed. The room looked sterile now, just another standard ship's room, painted the usual light green, with one closet, a bed, a desk, and a computer terminal and holo projection box. The few pictures on his desk, his brother and himself taken before Joshua had gone off to the Marines, and died on Khorsan, a faded two dimensional image of his mother and father taken on the day they were married, and a shot of Svetlana that one of her friends in the Marines had sent along after her death — they were in his duffel.

He closed the door behind him and walked down the now dimmed corridors. He passed the flight ready room and had a flash memory of his first day aboard, chewing out his new pilots, and passed on into the hangar deck. The Rapiers, Ferrets, and Sabres lined the deck and it felt strange to hear the silence. No engines humming, no shouted commands blaring over the loudspeakers, the hissing roar of the catapult or the thunderclap of engines kicking in afterburners on a hot launch. It was a silence that was as complete and deeply disturbing as if he were walking through a tomb.

He turned to face the bulkhead and the roll of honor listing all those who had died while serving aboard the ship. Coming to attention he saluted the honor roll and then noticed that the commissioning flag which should be to the right of the honor roll was missing. He felt a flicker of anger over that, wondering who had taken it down, and turning started for the airlock door which was secured to the shipyard docking station. Turning the corner, he saw a small line of men and women waiting for him: Doomsday, Sparks (his head of fighter maintenance), Kevin Tolwyn, and last of all Ian Hunter looking strange indeed dressed in civilian mufti, having been already retired from the fleet the day before. The group came to attention, saluted, and Kevin stepped forward to hand Jason a folded flag, the commissioning pennant of Tarawa.

"Thought you'd want this, sir," Kevin said with a grin. "Someday you might want to hang it back up again."

"Thanks, Kevin."

To one side he saw a group of technicians, the mothballing crew, who would finish the shut down of the ship for cold storage. Though the government had agreed to the armistice and with it an immediate cut back of fifty percent of the active fleet, at least they were not taking the ships out and simply cutting them up as the Kilrathi had first suggested; the military had managed to stop that mad idea. It had become a major fly in the ointment in the four weeks since the armistice, with the Kilrathi threatening to pull out of the peace talks but so far the civilian government had not budged, though Jamison was screaming for even deeper cutbacks. The inactive fleet was therefore, at least for the moment, secured, the ships hooked to orbital bases for power and maintenance. Rodham, however, had agreed to the ship's crews being paid off and assigned to inactive reserves as a cost cutting measure, a fact which meant that hundreds of thousands of highly trained personnel were being pulled from their ships and demobilized as quickly as ships were pulled from the front and sent to the main bases either above Earth, Sirius, or out at Carnovean Station.

He turned to face back down the corridor and bowed his head for a moment.

"Good-bye, my friends," he whispered, remembering all those who in a way would be forever young, and forever bound to his ship. Fighting back the tears he turned without another word and went through the airlock, his friends following in silence.

"Rear Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn, approach the court."

Walking stiffly, Geoff came up before the court martial officers and saluted.

Admiral Banbridge, as the presiding officer, stood up, his hands shaking as he unfolded a single sheet of paper.

"Rear Admiral Geoffrey Tolwyn, it is the decision of this court that you have been found guilty of disobedience of fleet orders, in that you knowingly attacked a vessel of the Kilrathi Empire after being made fully aware of General Order number 2312A, ordering the suspension of all hostilities.

"It is the decision of this court that you hereby be stripped of your rank and suffer a dishonorable discharge with the loss of all privileges and honors due your rank."

Banbridge lowered his head and nodded. A Marine captain came forward and took Tolwyn's ceremonial sword, which had rested on the desk of the court martial officers since the opening of the trial. He placed the tip of the sword on the ground and held it at an angle. Raising his foot he slammed his heel down on the side of the blade, snapping it in half. The crack of the sword breaking echoed through the chamber and Geoff winced at the sound. The Marine tossed the hilt of the sword on the floor by Geoff's feet and then stepped up to Geoff.

The Marine looked him straight in the eyes and Geoff could see that the man hated what he was about to do.

Grabbing hold of the insignias of rank on Geoff's shoulders the Marine tore them off with a violent jerking motion so that Geoff swayed and struggled to keep at attention. The Marine again looked him in the eyes.

"I'm sorry, sir," he whispered and Geoff nodded a reply.

The Marine turned back to face the court and placed the torn bits of fabric and brass on the desk.

Geoff looked squarely at Banbridge and snapped off a salute, trying not to notice the tears in his old mentor's eyes. Breaking with tradition he leaned over and picked up the broken hilt and blade of his sword, turned, and marched out of the room. After he left a side door opened and a lone figure came through it, bending low and then standing up to his full height.

"Ambassador Vak'ga," Banbridge said coldly, "the fleet wishes to extend its apologies over this incident and as you were informed this morning, restitution will be paid to the families of those killed in the incident. Admiral Tolwyn has been dishonorably discharged from the service in punishment."

"Does that mean that he will now commit Zu'kara?"

"Zu'kara?"

"How do you say it?" Vak'ga rumbled. "Yes, ritual suicide in atonement for an act of shame to ones hrai, I mean family."

"That's not our way, Banbridge replied coldly. "And besides, the carrier he was attacking had also launched a strike after the armistice and Tolwyn could be justified in his action by acting in self-defense. Good God, Ambassador, we've logged more than a hundred such incidents during the first day, and hundreds more since. Shutting off thirty years of war is not easy."

"So that is it?" Vak'ga snapped. "He is simply told to go away with no further punishment? With us, for such a crime, he would not even be allowed the glory of Zu'kara, his throat would be slit and his body hung by its heels like a prey animal."

Banbridge bristled.

"I'm sure that would be the case for you," he finally replied, the sarcasm in his voice evident. "As for Geoff Tolwyn, losing the fleet and his rank is the worst punishment imaginable. After all it was the only family he'd had for the last twenty years."

He knew that the Ambassador was most likely aware that Tolwyn's wife and boys had been killed in a raid; most of the holo news reports had played on that theme as a motivation for his spectacular career and his final downfall.

"I lost my family too," Vak'ga snarled, "or didn't you know that?"

Banbridge nodded but said nothing.

The Ambassador turned as if to leave.

"Mr. Ambassador, one question before you go."

"Yes?"

"The issue of POW exchange. A full accounting within twenty four standard days was promised on the day the armistice was signed. We have fully complied and you have not."

"For us it is no issue," the Ambassador replied. "Anyone who allowed himself to be captured has lost all honor, he is sa'guk, one who is already dead to his hrai. We do not care. I do not see why it is of such great concern to you."

"Because it is, damn it," Banbridge snapped. "We've lived by the agreement on every point. You are already dragging your feet. I demand a full reporting of all POWs immediately."

"Demand? We demanded the head of Tolwyn and you slap his wrist and send him away. We demanded the suppression of your raiders based on your frontier worlds and an apology from the Firekka for their belligerent statements. I will not listen to demands from you in turn on such trivial things."

He turned and strode from the room.

War was a hell of a lot easier," Banbridge said darkly.

Jason looked up from his drink as Hunter came into the Vacuum Breathers Bar.

The "Vacuum Breather" was one of the favorite watering holes just off the main military base on the moon. It had an old tradition that any patron who had breathed vacuum, that is experienced the hulling of his ship, and survived, received an honorary beer mug with his name on it. The far well of the bar was lined with hundreds of mugs. The first beer of the day was always free for such an honoree when he came in and his mug was pulled down from the rack.

Gallagher, the owner of the bar, was legendary for his love of the service. He was an old fleet lifer with over thirty years service before retiring, thus his "boys and girls" as he called them, were almost like his own family and he was always ready to loan an extra twenty, or stand a free round.

"Any luck?" Ian asked, pulling his mug down from the back of the room and coming back to settle in by Jason and Doomsday. The barkeep came up, took the mug, filled it and slid it back to Ian who nodded his thanks.

Sighing, Jason shook his head. Jobs, at the moment, were scarcer then a good bottle of Firekka Firewater. There'd been a lead that an old Victory-class transport, a ship that was already out of date when it was mass produced in the first years of the war, needed a co-pilot and flight engineer. When he showed up at the office he already knew it was hopeless. At least a hundred others were there to apply, a few of them old comrades that he hadn't seen since his days on Gettysburg. It was a great reunion but no job, the slots filled by the former captain of a frigate and her first officer who were willing to take pay fifty percent below standard. If it wasn't for forty/one hundred benefits — one hundred a week for forty weeks — and free housing in former barracks and training centers, nearly everyone in the fleet would be starving to death.

"How about you?"

"Same story," Ian said with a sigh as he settled down to the bar beside him.

"I always knew it'd come to this end," Doomsday said quietly, and Jason groaned

"Damn it, man, for years all I've heard you prophesy is that the war was going to kill you. You've got eight campaign ribbons, a medal of honor, two silver stars, the Vegan victory Award with diamonds, half a dozen fighters shot out from under you and how many kills was it?"

"I lost count after sixty."

"And never a damn scratch," Jason said. "Besides that you cleaned us all out in that poker game last night. You're the luckiest damn pilot in the fleet and the most depressing."

Doomsday sighed, mumbled softly in Maori, and motioned for another beer for himself and for Ian who nodded a thanks.

"And I lose all my hard won earnings buying you guys drinks."

"Well, at least we're here to drink," Jason replied, raising his voice.

"Yeah, great, brother, beer money for us all from a grateful Confederation," someone announced from the other side of the bar.

A chorus of sarcastic laughter echoed in the room and then fell silent as first one, and then the rest of the patrons of the Vacuum Breathers Club turned and looked at the door.

A heavily built Kilrathi filled the entryway and though his frame was imposing he somehow looked a bit lost and nervous.

"Sire!"

"Oh god, it's Kirha," Ian sighed, coming to his feet and approaching the Kilrathi as he leaped down the steps. He started to drop to one knee and Ian grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Not here," he hissed, "and besides, remember I released you from your oath of fealty."

"But such an oath can never be truly broken, sire," Kirha said

"Just what the hell are you doing here? It's been years since I've seen you, I thought you were exchanged or something. Why aren't you going back home?"

"I was with the first batch of prisoners to be released last week. It was a sad sight, my lord. Many did not know where to go, what to do, not sure if their hrai will still recognize them. I heard I could find you here and thought you might know what to do."

Ian slowly grinned.

"You saved my butt once, my friend, and I must say it's a pleasure to see you again. Come on, let's have a drink.

Kirha came up to the bar, looked at the chairs which had no place for his tail to stick through, and simply leaned against the railing, towering over all the others in the room.

"Hey, we don't serve his kind in here," the bartender growled.

"Listen, buddy, the war's over, or haven't you heard, Doomsday said quietly.

"I don't care, we don't serve him."

"Say, brother, how long you been working in this bar?"

"A week."

"If Gallagher, the owner of this dive, heard you talking like that in his joint he'd throw you out on your butt. This Kilrathi's a friend of ours and that buys him a drink anywhere we are."

"I don t care, I'm not serving him."

Kirha looked around nervously.

"If this will cause trouble, sire, I can withdraw."

"Hey, Hunter, who the hell's your buddy?" a pilot wearing the insignia of a fighter squadron leader on his lapel shouted from the other side of the bar.

"You blokes heard how Paladin and me rescued that Firekka princess?" Ian replied.

Most of the men and women in the dimly lit room nodded their heads, laughed, and groaned. Ian's ability at telling stories of his heroics was legendary in the Vacuum.

"Well, this is the furball that saved my butt. I'd have been dead along with Paladin and that Firekka princess if it hadn't been for him."

The crowd nodded their approval and several came up to shake Kirha's paw, a human ritual which he still obviously found to be disconcerting.

Ian turned back to the bartender.

"So serve him his damn drink."

The man looked around nervously, and mumbled to himself.

"What was that you said about my Cat friend?" a pilot at the edge of the group snarled.

The bartender looked at Kirha

"Whatya have?" he said quietly.

"Scotch, single malt, make it a triple.

A chorus of laughter echoed around the room, breaking the tension and even the bartender forced a weak grin as he filled the glass and pushed it over. Ian started to slide a bill across.

"Sorry about the mistake, Captain. Keep it, it's on the house," the bartender replied and turned away.

Kirha took the drink up, and bowed to Ian.

"To peace between the hrai of the Kilrathi and of Humans."

He downed the drink in a single gulp and a flash of sharp canines signaled his delight. The bartender shook his head

"I guess you're all right."

"I've waited a long time for this drink," Kirha sighed, and Ian ordered up another round.

"So what do you think of all of this?" Ian asked.

"You mean the peace agreements?" Kirha asked

"Yeah."

"It is, how do you humans say it, warmed leavings of a male cow."

A ripple of laughter echoed around the room and even the bartender smiled

"Why?"

"I know of this Baron Jukaga of the hrai of the Ki'ra. They are the most ancient of the families, their blood even thicker than that of the Imperial line. Their hatred of the Imperial family is well known."

"How's that?" the bartender asked, coming over, obviously curious.

"Before we gained space, in the Seventh Dynastic War, the family of the Emperor gained dominance over Kilrah, defeating the Ki'ra who were forced to swear allegiance. It surely would have become an Eighth Dynastic war, except for the arrival of the foolish Utara."

"The who?" the barkeep asked, leaning against the side of the bar and pouring Kirha another drink.

Kirha laughed, nodded his thanks and downed the drink in a single gulp.

"The Utara came to Kilrah offering friendship, trade, and peace. They showed us how to make spacecraft, and the secret of the jump points."

Kirha shook his head.

"As soon as we gained space we slaughtered them. They were a weak and foolish people."

Kirha laughed and pounded the bar as if he had just told an hysterical joke. His audience looked at him in silence.

"Some thanks," Ian mumbled.

"It's considered quite funny by us," Kirha said, looking around the room, still chuckling though finally realizing that his audience wasn't all that amused.

"I guess you don't see the humor."

"Maybe something got lost in the translation, mate," Ian interjected.

Kirha nodded, looking at the bar patrons.

"I see here, yet again a difference between us," he finally said. "To us, such weakness was stupidity so pathetic that it becomes funny. I take it you don't see it that way."

"Something like that," a voice from the back of the room said.

"It is why I, and those still prisoners, roared with laughter when we heard you agreed to this thing you call an armistice. It was an act of weakness. It will cause a loss of face for you, a loss of respect that you have in some way earned by your valiant resistance against the might of the Empire. There is an old Kilrah saying 'steel against iron is not a testing.' Though we hated you, and wished to overthrow you, still we came to see that our own courage could be honorably tested by matching it against your own. That is the way of finding honor and glory.

"Your leaders have thrown that away. When we come again, it will be with contempt and the slaughter will be brutal beyond your darkest nightmares."

There was a stirring in the room.

"And will you help them out, buddy?" the barkeep asked quietly.

"I am without hrai, without country," Kirha said in reply. "I have sworn allegiance to Hunter; it is now impossible for me to ever go back."

He looked almost mournful and there were even a couple of nods of sympathy from the others in the room.

"You were telling us about this Jukaga," Jason asked.

"Ah yes, Jukaga. With the freeing from our planet and the outward rush to wars with races we had never dreamed existed, our own civil wars became a thing of the past, for at last we had found others to test our steel against. But the clan of Ki'ra never reconciled itself to the fact that it was not upon the Imperial throne, seeing this as the fluke of but one battle lost ages ago. In Jukaga this disdain became more openly voiced with the reversals of our war against you. That is something I suspect your leaders have not given full weight to."

"How so?" Jason pressed.

"The fact that it was Jukaga who made the first overture of peace I find to be surprising. It was not someone of the Imperial line. It means that he has gained enough power to actually allow the Emperor to permit him to be the voice of the throne.

"It is an interesting point of balance. The Emperor must have agreed to this peace because there was some pressure, either from your fleets, or from the other clans, perhaps both. Yet if he allows the peace to continue, without a clear cut victory, he and his grandson the Crown Prince will fall and Jukaga will rise to seize the throne their hrai has coveted for so long. Jukaga must know as well that if he seizes the throne, but the war is not then immediately started, he will fall as well, for the drive to killing is so strong in our blood that we will quickly turn upon each other."

"Did anyone from Intelligence ever talk to you Cats about this?" Jason asked.

"Oh many times. They were quite nice, some could even speak Kilrah, a wondrous and strange thing coming from the mouth of a human. We laughed and told them what we thought."

"And the reports were ignored," Ian said coldly.

"There is a game here," Kirha said, "and you humans are, how do you say it, paki, pawns, for the power play of Jukaga. I think his wish is to use the peace to somehow then blame the Emperor, eliminate him, and then successfully finish the war himself."

"You sound like you don't like Jukaga."

Kirha growled, his fur bristling.

"He and his hrai think my coat not red enough, my blood not thick enough; my own hrai is descendent from the Ragitagha," and as he pronounced his clan name his teeth flashed, his mane standing out so that he appeared to nearly double in size and the crowd backed up a bit, looking at him wide eyed.

"The Ki'ra," and he hissed, spitting on the floor, "if they think they can take the throne under the Baron, they must bring a great Victory. By the blood of my clan I promise you there will be war again and your leaders are fools not to see it."

"Just like Tolwyn figured it," Jason said coldly, and he heard a lot of angry mutters of agreement.

"Tolwyn, that traitor," a voice announced from the back corner of the room, "they should have shot the bastard"

The room went silent, everyone turning to look at the speaker, who sat at a dimly lit table, surrounded by half a dozen men and women who looked around nervously. Jason could tell instantly that they were outsiders and that reaction he found to be curious. He'd been around military types for so long a group of obvious civilians in a military bar seemed strange.

Nearly everyone who frequented the place now were either the few still serving with the fleet or ex-service, easily identified by the gold star of the army, fleet pin, or fouled anchor pin of a Marine on his collar. There was also an unexplainable something else that so easily set the veteran aside, a bit of a distant far away look, from having seen the far reaches of known space, from having fought, and far too often having seen friends die. The six in the corner were not of the club.

The room went quiet for a moment and Jason finally broke the ice.

"It's a free Confederation, go ahead and speak up if you want to," he announced.

A short portly man stood up and came over to the bar, followed a bit nervously by the rest of his group.

"Doctor Torg's the name, he said, "I didn't get yours."

"I didn't give it, but it's Bondarevsky."

"Oh yes," one of the women behind Torg gasped. "I saw the holo about you. Oh, the girl you loved was just so beautiful."

"The actress didn't look anything like her," Jason said quietly.

"But still it was so sad," and she came up to Jason's side and actually touched him on the shoulder and then looked back excitedly at her friends.

Another woman in the group looked at the excited girl and shook her head.

"Say, Lisa, just back off a bit, OK."

"But he's famous, Elaine."

"I don't think he really wants the attention," Elaine replied.

Jason nodded her a thanks and then looked back at Torg.

"You don t like the Admiral, is that it?" Doomsday growled.

Torg looked over at Doomsday and then turned away, ignoring him.

"Do you know how much this war's been costing us?" Torg asked.

"I think so," Jason said quietly.

"Just under eight trillion a year."

"That wasn't the cost I was thinking of," Jason replied slowly, his voice barely a whisper.

"The Baron is right. Didn't you see his interview on the holo yesterday?"

"We kind of missed it, Doomsday interjected, so please enlighten us."

"Why, he said that this war was nothing but a conspiracy on the part of the military to get power and make money. The longer the war dragged on, the more power your admirals, generals, and military suppliers got."

"Oh, Baron Jukaga said this," a pilot from the other side of the bar said, "how interesting, and what about their fleet? I guess they're innocent."

"Why, he admitted that their fleet and military had done the same thing too."

"Was this holo shown in the Empire as well?" Kirha asked.

Torg looked up at him nervously.

"I don't know, I guess so. He said that a full report would soon be issued by the Kilrathi-Human Friendship Committee."

"The what?" several patrons of the bar asked in unison.

"Why, it's just a wonderful idea," the excited girl announced as she walked to the far wall to look at the rows of silver mugs. "Doctor Torg is a member of the committee, he's even met the Baron."

"The Baron is organizing a friendship committee that will provide for peaceful exchanges between our peoples," Torg said. "I think he's really quite sensitive to our culture, to a tolerance for multicultural diversity in the universe, and the rights of indigenous peoples of all races to live in peace. I've even arranged for him to speak at my university on Earth about his understanding of our literature and how to strengthen our ties of peace."

"Just wonderful. I can't wait to attend," Doomsday said, the sarcasm dripping in his voice.

"I think you're being too narrow minded in all of this," Torg announced, looking at Doomsday and at the rest of the patrons who were shaking their heads.

"Narrow minded. I hung my hide out on the line for over fifteen years with the fleet and you're saying I'm narrow minded?" Doomsday snapped.

"That's the problem with military types like you," Torg replied with a superior disdain. "You forget to look at the broader issues. This war was a lot more complicated than kill or be killed. You military types just don't see the big picture, that's always been a problem throughout history. I have my doctorate in sociology, I've made a study of this war and the conspiracy of a number of people to keep it going."

"Say, I like these mugs up here," the woman who had been talking to Jason announced, going up to the wall and taking one down. The bar went silent.

"Especially the ones with the gold handle. How can I get one?"

"You get killed in action, that's how. Gallagher gilds the handle of the mug when he hears that the owner bought a permanent piece of space," Jason said quietly, and the woman looked at him wide eyed and then turned pale.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't know."

"That's all right," Jason replied softly.

She came back to Torg's side.

"Dave, maybe we should go."

"Just a minute, Lisa."

Come on, I think we've interfered enough here." Torg ignored her.

"Listen, pilot, I think I know a bit more about the complexity of this than you do. As a professor it's been my job to study and interpret these types of issues," Torg said. "Just because you got a service pin doesn't mean you own the Confederation. Remember the war's over, friend, so get off the taxpayers back, get a real job, and get a life."

Several chairs were kicked over and Jason held up his hand as if signaling his friends not to do anything.

"Listen, buddy," Jason replied. "You heard what Kirha said. This whole thing is a sham. The Baron's talking us into laying our necks on the chopping block and he'll be back with the axe. In fact I think some people in this government are so stupid they're even helping him sharpen the blade and drawing the line on our necks for us, and you'll be there to help them.