Wing Commander #07 False Color by William Forstchen (novels for students TXT) 📗

regretted letting himself be talked in to cooperating with the picture. Even now, it continued to haunt him. "This is Colonel Bhaktadil, Free Republic Marine Corps. And my aide, Lieutenant Harper."

"The fighter that escorted us in identified itself as Landreich Navy," Graham said, frowning. "But what are you doing out here, sir? A ConFleet officer . ?"

"A long story, Commander," Bondarevsky said. "For the moment, I hope you won't object to a little paranoia on our part. When you see Terrans and Kilrathi together on the same shuttle where neither group has any good reason for being alive in the first place, you get a little nervous. Colonel Bhaktadil would like to have some of his men look over your shuttle . . just a precautionary measure."

"Hell, sir, for all I care you can strip it down to scrap and sell it to the Firekkans as trade trinkets. There're about two hundred people, Terran and Kilrathi, down on that moon who are going to see home after nine months in purgatory. That's the only thing that matters right now."

Wardroom, FRLS City of Cashel Near Vaku VII, Vaku System 1822 hours (CST)

"So there we were, three shuttles packed full of survivors, coming in over the crash site. The Cat destroyer must've been worse damaged than they figured. Something failed on final approach, and that sucker set down hard."

Bondarevsky passed another cup of tea across the wardroom table to Commander Graham, who took it eagerly. Gaunt and drawn, the young engineering officer had spent most of the time since reaching what passed for civilization eating, drinking, and talking.

They had decided to send the City of Cashel to pick up the survivors on the moon, which Graham called Nargrast. Apparently that was the name for one of the hells of Kilrathi mythology, and the description his Cat opposite number had provided of the place it was an apt name indeed. Nargrast, the planet, was a frozen waste, habitable only by a generous application of the word's definition. It was a massive world, about twice the mass of Terra, with a gravitational pull of nearly two gs and a dense oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. A greenhouse effect allowed the planet to retain enough of the brown dwarf's energy output to keep it from being completely unlivable, and screened out the worst of the secondary radiation as well, but it also gave rise to fierce storms. Most of the survivors were sick from the overpressures and the cold, and they probably couldn't have lasted too much longer.

Now the transport was en route, and Richards had ordered Bondarevsky to accompany Graham and his party to arrange the rescue of the colonists, turning over the survey work to Sparks and Harper. City of Cashel, designed as a combat troop transport, was the logical choice for the job. She had plenty of space for extra passengers despite carrying the crew destined for the Karga, and her fleet of shuttles and assault craft could make a quick job of the evacuation of the planet's surface.

Bondarevsky was glad to get away from the Kilrathi carrier and its crew of ghosts and corpses. He doubted the Goliath project would have much chance of success anyway, and was glad the expedition could do some good, at least, by rescuing the castaways of the Battle of Vaku.

"Two of the shuttles mounted weapons pods, so we had a little bit of firepower available," Graham went on. "But the Cats weren't much of a threat. There were some survivors from the destroyer, but they were in a bad way. Some fighters had also put down there, Darkets and a pair of Strakhas. Those scared us, I've got to admit, but by the time they'd touched down they were out of fuel and weapons, so none of them even tried to come after us. And there were a couple of big lifeboats off the carrier, but they weren't armed either. I don't really know to this day when it dawned on me, but I decided to hold off opening fire until I had a parley with them.

I know it was stupid, but I couldn't see slaughtering a bunch of refugees who were in the same boat we were, enemies or not."

Bondarevsky shook his head. "Not stupid," he said. "You may have just proved that we can get along with the Cats . . . if we find a common cause that's good enough."

"Yeah, maybe so. They're not near as bad as they're portrayed in the propaganda back home, either. Sure, they're tough, and they don't think like we do, but there're a few of them I'd gladly trust my life to. Have, in fact, several times over the last few months." Graham took another long swig from his cup. "Anyway, their leader turned out to be this youngster, Murragh. He came out to meet me on the open field away from the crash site, and even though he tried to bluster he sounded like a scared kid even through the computer translation. I think it had all been just too much for him to take in, the fight, the mess planetside, his first command . . . he seemed relieved to find out he didn't have to fight to the death like a hero out of one of the Kilrathi Codices. We struck a deal. Both sides would share the resources we had available—our manpower and their wreckage, basically—and we agreed that we'd pledge to let the other side return home if our side was the one that found us first. There've been a few clashes, of course, but I've seen as much fighting between members of the same species, human against human or Cat against Cat, as I've seen between the two groups. Mostly we don't have time for that crap. We're too busy hying to keep everybody alive."

Bondarevsky frowned. "You could have some problems with your deal, Graham," he said quietly. "The Landreichers might not think they have to honor an agreement