hat the taxi ramp was not yet cleared. The Ferret with the light corvette engine he admired earlier bolted straight out of its hangar to his right, not even bothering to go for the runway and not needing one anyhow as it pitched its nose back, and within fifty yards stood on its tail, flame slamming off the concrete taxiway as it screamed straight up into the sky, riding a column of fire. To his left he saw the armored bunker which contained the surface to space missiles peel open, the silver tips of half a dozen Sprints pointing straight up. "Hunter cleared for takeoff, once lifted depart angle nine zero," the control officer's voice crackled in his headset and he grinned with the order to go for a full burn vertical ascent into space. The crew chief uncrossed his arms and leaped to the side of the Sabre, crouched, and pointed forward. Ian released his brakes, slammed in full afterburners and all aft maneuvering thrusters. The Sabre leaped forward and within seconds he was up past a hundred and ninety clicks an hour. He yanked back on his stick, pulling it into his gut, the nose lifted up and he was off. Ian toggled up his landing gear as his Sabre pointed straight up into the red sky, the altimeter spinning. Inertial dampening didn't work all that well inside the gravity well of a planet and he started to breathe in short convulsive grunts as the Gs built up. He knew his sonic boom was blasting out across the landscape but it was almost silent inside the cockpit except for the teeth-rattling rumble of the twin Tangent-class engines burning white hot behind him. He punched through the thin clouds and the color of the sky shifted, turning from a deeper red into violet, the first stars starting to appear. He looked to his left to see the curvature of the world and what looked like another Ferret rising up to close on his port wing. "Combat information, this is Hunter, what's the trade today?" "Forward scouts report detecting an ionized trail emerging from Jump Point Beta 233. There have been weak radar detects and one laser scan lock indicating a fighter of Kilrathi Stealth design is approaching. Patrol grid is already fed into your auto-nav. If you encounter unknown you are cleared to shoot to kill without warning." "Just what I wanted to hear," Ian replied as he locked in on the auto nav system and released his controls, the autopilot taking over. Cleared into space, and with fuel scoops closed he continued to accelerate so that within minutes the full sphere of the Hell Hole hung in space behind him. The attempt to ship fighters to the Landreich was known by the Kilrathi thanks to the peace commission and a scouting attempt had to be expected. At least the colonials didn't fool around with diplomatic niceties, Ian thought. If someone violated their space in a suspicious manner they were taken out, no questions asked He scanned the comm channels, listening in as pilots tersely called out their check points and the search spread outward. The frustrating part of it was that unless they had some really good luck, they could very well pass right over a Stealth and not even know it. The mere fact that the Empire was sneaking a very precious and rare fighter into this sector meant that they had a good idea of what was going on. He heard a call of a brief contact by Doomsday and then two more by colonial pilots, in each case the Stealth was lost. Punching into his nav computer he checked the three sightings and then overlaid the points into a map of the system. "Combat control, request break of my standard sweep, wish to investigate region around coordinates 233 by ADF." "Will advise," and the link clicked off. A moment later it crackled back to life. "This is Kruger, good thinking, Hunter; proceed at your discretion. Grinning, he broke off the auto nav, opened his fuel and maneuvering scoops, and turned. The coded coordinate was the location, at the moment, of the Hell Hole system's largest planet, a gas giant named Thor. The three brief sightings roughly matched a standard Kilrathi evasive maneuver called the reverse claw, and it pointed towards Thor, which would be an excellent place to hide out until the patrols simmered down. Punching in the new nav coordinates, Ian closed his fuel scoops and within minutes was up over three thousand clicks a second and climbing. Thor was nearly twenty million clicks away and he settled back, nearly dozing off as the Sabre closed, half listening to the commlink chatter as the scrambled forces continued to prowl for the needle in a very big haystack. Approaching within a million clicks of Thor he finally started into reverse thrust, extending his fuel scoops to create drag. The stray hydrogen atoms found in space impacted on the energy field surrounding his ship and were then swept into the fuel tank. Each strike slowed him down by an ever so minute fraction, which built up with each passing second. He started a close scan of his instruments, knowing that any sweep radar was next to useless. "Now where would I go," he whispered, as if he could almost he heard by his opponent and he felt that prickly uneasy feeling, knowing that some how the Kilrathi was near. He had learned never to discount "the gut feeling." Any fighter pilot who did not believe in the instinctive feel usually didn't live very long. Too close into Thor, he reasoned, and the passage of the ship would be noticeable as a disturbance in the intense magnetic fields. If he went into the atmosphere he'd kick up the soup and really give himself away. The one advantage of chasing a Stealth, Ian knew, was that he was just as blind, running on scan shut down, otherwise he'd be given away. He spared a quick look at the map of the system. Two moons, one nearly the size of Earth's, the other half the size. Get into the lee of the orbit of the moon is what I'd do, Ian thought, blocking direct approach from one entire side, hide out and then wait for the patrols to give up before a final run in on the recon sweep. But which one? If he had had a coin on him he would have flipped it. Ian shrugged his shoulders and started for the smaller of the two, shutting down all scanning systems. He maneuvered so as to approach the moon from the forward side relative to its orbital direction. He throttled back and then came in a mere hundred clicks above the surface, crossing up over the pole and moving down the other side. Ian punched up a full high intensity burst scan, diverting nearly all ship's power into radar. If there was anyone within a million clicks the radar burst would damn near rattle the fillings out of his head, Ian thought, suddenly wondering if the Kilrathi even had fillings. He waited, watching his screen. The trick was that, even if it didn't detect a Stealth, it just might panic the pilot into thinking that he had actually been found. There! Just under two thousand clicks away. Damn, he had found the needle! A faint echo blipped on his screen, the computer working to gain a lock, narrowing the radar beam down and firing off another pulse, this one concentrating nearly all the energy of the previous pulse into a narrow cone. It was enough energy to fry out every circuit on an unshielded vessel a hundred thousand clicks away. The second burst hit, painting the enemy ship clearly on his screen at a range of eight hundred clicks. The target acquisition computer, upgraded to handle Stealths, threw a laser lock on the ship. The lock hung on and held as the pilot fired up to full throttle and went into evasive. "Combat control, this is Hunter. Got him! One Kilrathi Stealth, on his tail and closing." A high pitched whine suddenly cut in on his headset. The Kilrathi had dumped three missiles which Ian's computer told him were IFFs. Ian countered by punching in an IFF scramble. In a full running fleet engagement such an act could be suicide because the moment his transponder switched there was still no guarantee that the enemy missile which had already gained lock would veer away. On the other hand, everything else flying around, either human or computer guided, would assume that he was not on the same side and act accordingly þ but out here it was a safe maneuver. The computer raced through thousands of possible transponder codes, searching for the right one to throw the missiles off, but they kept closing. Ian toggled off a guided bolt in return, which used the laser beam as a guide in to its target. He continued the chase, running blind. There was nothing to see, only a blip on the screen. The Kilrathi ship suddenly dropped out of Stealth mode, flashing full visible, and at the same instant Ian picked up a high energy burst signal. The pilot was good, he realized, never forgetting his mission, even while flying to evade death. Whatever he was sent here to find out, he was making sure word got out. "Combat control, bogey has sent burst signal, repeat, bogey has sent burst signal." The first incoming missile closed in. Ian nosed over hard and then banked back up, the missile jinxing down to follow and then shooting past. The second and third missiles, momentarily thrown off by his attempts at jamming, regained lock but missed as well due to the same maneuver. Ian felt the sweat streaking down the small of his back. His own bolt was leaping forward, guiding straight in. There was a brilliant flash of light as bright as the sun and then darkness. It took Ian a second to realize that his own missile was still a dozen clicks away. The Kilrathi had self-destructed with a small matter/antimatter warhead, vaporizing himself and his ship. Now there would never he any evidence at all of the violation of the armistice since a missile hit tended to leave a lot of wreckage behind which could be evaluated later. Watching the ship, he momentarily forgot what was now behind him, and suddenly a high undulating warble sounded in his headphones. One of the IFFs had turned around, regained lock and was closing straight in. He punched hard over, aiming straight back towards the moon, popping out chaff and a noise maker. He turned his transponder off completely, slamming off all energy sources. The damn thing kept closing, following his every turn and then a high energy ping sounded. What the hell was this? "Combat control, combat control!" "Control here." "Kilrathi seem to have new prototype weapon. It's ignoring chaff and noise maker. It registered first as an IFF missile but the damn thing must have a smart weapon program that continues to recognize its target once locked," Ian shouted, realizing that even if he bought it, it was essential that his friends knew exactly why and learned from it. It was part of the training and it was loyalty as well. He had no tail gunner to pop the missile at the last second, or wingman to peel it off his back, or the mad confusion of a hundred fighters and ships filling space with metal and energy. He was naked and alone, the IFF following remorselessly, like a cold deadly shark that could kill without thinking or feeling. He skimmed down over the moon's airless surface, weaving a low sharp turn into a narrow canyon and the missile impacted against the side of cliff behind him. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and then a second warble kicked in, showing that another of the missiles had regained lock as well. Damn! The missile was above him, streaking down. He blew his remaining chaff and the missile streaked straight through and closed. He was boxed in. The warble climbed in tone and then plateaued on a high spine-tingling pitch, the warning of an unavoidable impact. He yanked his stick back hard, popping up off the moon's surface, then reached between his legs, grabbing hold of the ejector D ring and pulled, even as the explosion engulfed him. "I think we know why we are here," Baron Jukaga said, his voice quiet, low pitched, his mane lying nearly flat so as to show neither dominance nor submission. "It is the fault of the hrai of Vak," Qar'ka Baron of the Qarg clan hissed, springing to his feet and pointing accusingly across the table. "Low born scum," Vak snarled in reply, reaching for the claw dagger at his belt. "Silence!" Jukaga roared. "Damn all of you, I want silence! and his golden red mane bristled up. The two stopped and turned, fixing the Baron with hate-filled eyes. "Jukaga, either one of us could cut your guts out and spill them on the floor for the rats to eat," Vak said coldly. "You of the Ki'ra hrai are weaklings compared to either the Qarg the Ragitagha, or any of the other families." "And if you did," Jukaga replied smoothly, "then you truly would have civil war and the humans would finish up with what was left." "Sit down," Baron Ka'ta of the Kurutak clan hissed, "Baron Jukaga is right. Let us listen to him first." Jukaga nodded his thanks to Ka'ta. At least he knew that the Ka'ta out of all the eight families of the Empire was solidly behind him. It was almost amusing. The Kurutak, along with the Sihkag, had always been viewed as the lowest of the eight, their blood never considered as thick. It was almost a guarantee that when approached by his own clan, the ancient family of Ki'ra, that the Kurutak would grovel over the honor of being treated as equals. It was a mistake the Kiranka, the clan or hrai of the Emperor, never realized in their treatment of those residing in the royal palace. In public, of course, the positions of dominance and submission were closely observed during audiences and open ritual, but in private, it was something else, especially when all the other families viewed the Emperor's line as no better than their own. "This petty feud between the clan of Vak and that of the Qarg is to stop here and now," Jukaga announced. "It is a disgrace that royal blood has been spilled like this in feuds within the confines of the Imperial Palace. Five of the Qarg have died in duels and five of the Ragitagha. It is enough and it is finished." Vak started to open his mouth and Jukaga extended his paw, talons retracted in a sign of peace. "It is enough," he said quietly. "You are not the Emperor," Vak replied, "you have not the power to order me or Qar'ka to stop," and he looked across the table at Qar'ka, whom only a moment ago he would have gladly knifed, for support. Qar'ka nodded his head in agreement. The Baron inwardly sighed. The fools, could they not see the weakness revealed in that simple statement? It was something he had learned in his years of study and it had come to him with a crystal clarity. The wars against other races, the ritual of Sivar, were designed above all else as a civilizing factor to the race of the Kilrathi, to quite simply keep them from killing each other. Aggressive combat, the instinct to hunt and to kill was far too close to the surface. Within the hrai, the clan and families were controlled by the rigid system of caste. But the clan instinct only extended as far as the clan. Though all might espouse the concept that they were Kilrathi it was only in the face of a prey outside of themselves. War and Sivar were essential for the survival of the race, to keep it from killing itself off and nothing more. It was something he did not discuss, for to even question the divinity of Sivar as nothing more than a social tool would be his ruin. All the wars had so well served that purpose, the humans, the Hari, the Gorth, Sorn, Ka, and Utara. Thank Sivar for the Utara who in their foolishness had come to Kilrah in peace, gave them space travel as a friendly gesture, and died as a result. If it had not been so, we would have destroyed ourselves when the secret of atomics came into our hands, the Baron thought, even as he surveyed the other clan leaders in the room. Aggressive races rarely survived the move into technology and made it to the point where space offered them an outlet. He looked around the table. Qar'ka was a fool, Vak not much better; they would not see such things. All they knew was that there was no war for the moment and the pressure within their own hrai was building, petty quarreling, long forgotten feuds building to the flashing of claw daggers. And yet, when Vak had turned to Qar'ka and offered him Jukaga as an opponent that they could unite against, Qar'ka was ready to agree. "The feuding in the palace must stop," Jukaga said coldly. his mane still flushed outward. "And I say you are not the Emperor to so order me," Vak snapped in reply. Jukaga smiled. "Is he really our Emperor?" There was a moment of stunned silence. "Are you mad?" Qar'ka asked "He and that fool grandson have led us into one too many disasters," Jukaga replied coldly. "How many of us have lost our sons, the best of our hrai, to the Terrans? How many of us have listened to our first chosen ones and concubines crying at night, their faces buried in their pillows to muffle the sobs, crying for those lost in this war?" The other hrai leaders lowered their heads and even Vak, who only moments before wanted to knife him, nodded in agreement. "Vak, you lost your first born of your first litter at Vukar Tag, I know, I saw his gallantry, his heroic death when he tried to ram the enemy carrier. He died kabaka, his soul winging to Sivar for his courage." Vak looked up at Jukaga, his eyes cold with anger at the wasted death of his eldest son. Jukaga almost felt guilty for so easily manipulating him thus. "He would be alive today, sitting by your side, sharing your feasting cup but for the Emperor. It was the Emperor that ordered the splitting of the fleet and Thrakhath agreed. If all our carriers were there for that fight we would have smashed the Confederation and pressed the war to victory. I was blamed and you now know the lie of that. I languished in exile, expecting at any moment that the Emperor's poisoner would come." He looked around the room and stood up. "We must stay united, we must control our hrai and stop this petty feuding which threatens to turn the palace into a slaughter pit. Don't you think the Emperor is quietly encouraging us thus to fight against each other, to thus keep us from standing united against him?" He could see more than one nod of agreement to his statement and smiled "Then start the war now!" Qar'ka snarled. "End this ridiculous farce. We have lulled the humans to sleep, now let us rip their throats out and be done with it." Qar'ka hesitated for a moment as if not willing to speak. "We must finish it before the Mantu return," he said quietly, "and take us in the back while we still fight the Confederation." The others looked over nervously at Qar'ka and then back to Jukaga Jukaga nodded and said nothing. Just after the defeat at Vukar, a report had come in from a deep space remote probe, far beyond the edge of Hari space, a probe so far removed that it had taken a year even to bring it in. There was an indication that the Mantu, who had once before invaded Kilrathi space, had completed their war against an unknown neighbor and might very well return. Seventy years past there had been a brief encounter with them, and though the fight had been a draw, it was suspected that the Mantu might in fact be far superior in their weapons technology. They had disappeared, drawing back to fight other foes, but it was always suspected that there would come a day when the Mantu might turn their full attention on the Empire, a concern that deeply troubled Jukaga as he watched their resources being spilled against the humans. Jukaga turned away and pointed at a long list of figures displayed by a holo projector. "This war against the Confederation has lasted over thirty years, the borders barely shifting after our first gains. War is not just fighting, it is economics, and resources, and production and morale and perhaps most importantly the learning of the way our enemy thinks. I know some of you might scoff at such concerns but that last factor has been my chief concern and responsibility." "You and the nobles of your hrai have remained safe at home, playing with numbers and reading while we spill our blood," Vak laughed coldly. "Without the weapons my hrai designed and the intelligence my spies and remote devices have gained, you would have been frozen meat floating in space," Jukaga replied. "He speaks the truth," Talmak of the Sutaghi interjected before Vak could reply. "Now let him finish. If Thrakhath had listened to Jukaga's concerns before Vukar the battle would have turned out far differently." "The war had become a balanced match without end in sight until now," Jukaga continued. "We almost had the edge until Vukar and their raid to our base on our moon. If it had not been for Thrakhath and the Emperor, as I already said, we might very well have taken Earth. "Earth, that has always been the key, and Thrakhath forgot that. A human warrior once wrote that in war one must find the focal point that will cause the collapse of his enemy and then throw all resources against it "This time I want no mistakes. Give this armistice just a little more time until the enemy is asleep and our secret fleet is completed. Let the fools get used to peace. Let them believe in this friendship. Let our secret fleet continue to be built even as we make a show of decommissioning our current ships. Then we will strike and crush them." "But the Sivar," Vak replied. "Where is the Sivar to be this year? Our people demand that." "You have the prisoners that we have kept hidden, do it to them," Jukaga replied coldly. "Prisoners, there is no honor in that. I still say that in eight eight of days, when Sivar comes, then we should launch our strike and turn the rivers of Earth red with the blood of the slaughter." "And I tell you that it must be yet five eighty of days. Look at the charts, can't you see the truth in them?" and he pointed to the wall." "War is not simple numbers, it is blood," Vak snorted. "Four more carriers at Vukar is a simple number, Vak and that number is the difference between your first born still floating in space, his body unclaimed, versus his living and breathing this day." Vak snarled and Jukaga was not sure for a moment if the anger was aimed at him, or at the humiliation over the useless death of a son. "Listen to me, my takhars," and he deliberately chose the word which meant brothers of equal rank. He looked around the room and saw that even Vak was at last willing to listen, unable to argue with the cold facts of numbers. "Let the plan unfold. When the time is ripe, over a dozen carriers will leap forward, slashing through their near defenseless border region. Before they can even hope to mobilize, we will jump straight to Earth, and there I promise you a slaughter like no other. In our plan we already have our agents at work, weakening their will to fight, ready as well to kill their leaders of war when the time is right. When we cut the heart out of the Terran Confederation, then in the years to come we can go at our leisure from planet to planet, saving some for Sivar, others destroying if they are a threat. Thus we will win, and thus we will be ready as well if our old enemy the Mantu should again return." He settled back in his chair and waited. Vak looked around the room, saw the nods of agreement and finally lowered his head. "The feud stops, you have my support," he said quietly. Jukaga did not allow himself to show his teeth in a gesture of triumph. "Then I have the promise of all of you to control your hrai in the palace." "It will be difficult, but it will be done," Qar'ka finally said. "But what of your other words about the Emperor?" Jukaga nodded. "In the days to come just consider this. He is old, he will not live forever. When he goes to his fathers, Thrakhath will take the golden throne. Given the leadership both have shown, do we truly want them to lead us to our final victory, or even more importantly against the threat of the Mantu if they should return?" "Are you suggesting the breaking of our oath-sworn word?" Vak asked. Jukaga slowly shook his head. "Just that I want you to consider my question, nothing more, Jukaga replied. "Other than that I suggest nothing." Vak smiled, and for an instant Jukaga was not sure if it was a sign of aggression at himself or towards the Emperor and without another word he got up and strode from the room, the other clan leaders following. Jukaga sighed with relief as the door closed behind them. How the feuds had truly started was all too evident. The Emperor had manipulated the hrai of Vak into feeling slighted at the court rituals by the other clans. He had not intervened when blood started to spill as a result. It was masterful on the Emperor's part, keeping the clans from uniting and turning their aggressive energy against him. Jukaga closed his eyes to clear his thoughts. The Emperor by now must see the threat forming. The Emperor must somehow sense that he was actually contemplating the unthinkable, the actual elimination of the Imperial line. If the war was on, such an act would be absolutely intolerable, in peace it might just be successful. The Emperor therefore needed peace to finish the building of the fleet, but at the same time needed war to secure his throne. Jukaga reached over to a side table and poured himself a cup of wine and quietly lapped it up. And yet there was far more. If he had learned anything from his study of the humans, it was that there was more than one way to win a war. Direct and brutal combat was the only thing the Kilrathi knew and understood. Yet there were so many other ways. It was already evident that the humans were weakening themselves in a foolish bid for peace. A year from now, if all could be kept quiet they would cripple themselves beyond all hope of recall. If he could eliminate the Emperor and the Prince, and then personally lead the new fleet into Terran space they would most likely capitulate in despair. Thus the fleet would be preserved. For if the Mantu were coming, the fleet, and far more beyond it, would be needed to stop them; a subjugated race of humans, and the vast resources they controlled, would help in that survival. The Emperor was too much a Kilrathi to see that. Brutal all-out war was the only path the Kilrathi had ever understood. It had, for so long, been the fundamental key to their success. Now, it might very well be the path to their destruction, fighting themselves to exhaustion only to then be conquered by others. He even half suspected that this was part of the Mantu plan, for surely they must know what was going on. The Emperor would have to go, it was that simple, and he found that he could indeed contemplate something that the humans so often practiced in their political struggles but which was unknown to the Kilrathi, political assassination of a superior without direct confrontation and challenge. As he contemplated he smiled remembering his favorite readings of the human English author and his play MacBeth. It was that reading which had first planted the thought Tolwyn. The English race of humans and their cousins the Americans were an interesting study. So violent but also so imbued with a strange idealism. Tolwyn fascinated him, a cultured man, and yet a complete warrior. He knew that there was something hidden behind the downfall of Tolwyn's career, and his reported move to the Landreich reinforced that. Tolwyn was too honorable to break the old English code of warfare with its bizarre notion of fair play and rules. He was following orders from someone above him, to be removed so he could go to the Landreich. But for what? Jukaga called up a holo map of the Landreich sector and its jump point pathways into the Empire. The realization finally came. Tolwyn was being sent out as a spy, to try to find the fleet, and if discovered, his link to the government could be denied "Masterful," Jukaga said softly. The information matched into the report he had obtained from one of his operatives inside Thrakhath's military intelligence. Thrakhath must have surmised this concern as well, and thus sent out a precious Stealth to investigate. Tolwyn had to be blocked. If the humans found out the truth, the peace would indeed be shattered, the timing of his own plans destroyed. Though he hated to do it, he would have to send a message to Thrakhath outlining his concerns for security and to recommend that it be doubled. Tolwyn was a fascinating challenge, a worthy foe. Though he would not openly admit it even to himself, he was finding in his heart that the humans were a race he had almost come to like, and more importantly, a race he was even willing to spare in his own quest for power. "Well look what the birds dragged in," Jason laughed, trying to conceal the fact that he had been sweating out the last twenty hours, increasingly convinced that his old friend had bought a permanent piece of space. K'Kai, ignoring Jason's teasing remark, led Ian up to the bar. Ian looked around the room with a grin, though Jason could see that the rescued pilot had most definitely had the wits scared out of him. "Yeah, I know, the drinks are an on me, "Ian announced, and a cheer went up from the pilots who swarmed up to the bar. Ian looked around a bit glumly, realizing that the old fleet tradition could be rather expensive. "I'll have this thing Ian talks so much about, a single malt scotch," K'Kai announced The bartender looked at Ian. "For that kind of sippin' liquor it's ten dollars for a shot." "Give it to her," Ian sighed, "the bird was the one that rescued me. The bartender seemed to relax a bit, especially when Jason reached into his pocket and fished out a wad of bills, hard Confederation currency, and tossed them on the counter. "I don't think you've got much change on you at the moment, Jason said looking over at Ian. "You can pay me back later." Ian nodded his thanks and called for a Scotch as well, downing it in one gulp. He looked over at Jason and smiled weakly. "I was scared out of my wits," Ian said quietly. "Maybe I might have been able to dodge that second missile, but it just kept boring in on me. When I popped out of there my ship was already blowing." Jason could easily see that by the scorching on Ian's flightsuit. "By popping up at the last second I had enough forward velocity to go into a low orbit around the moon. I looped over a mountain range not clearing it by a thousand meters. Every time I circled the moon my orbit kept degrading until finally the mountain range was straight ahead and I knew I was going to slam in. If K'Kai had gotten there thirty seconds later I'd have been splattered. Her tractor beam caught me just in time." He raised his glass and Jason could see the trembling which Ian struggled to control. Everyone who flew experienced it sooner or later, especially with the life expectancy of pilots being what it was. There was a point though when one too many close brushes simply drained the well dry. If they were back with the Confed Fleet, Ian would have been in to the psych officer and most likely stood down for a couple of weeks of R&R before being sent back in. But there wasn't any time, and in this stripped down fleet a psych officer was a luxury that Kruger would have considered pure idiocy. "Captain Bondarevsky, Captain St. John?" The two looked over their shoulders at a colonial officer. "You got us." "You're wanted by Kruger." "On our way," Hunter said, forcing a smile. Jason looked around at the bar, fished into his pocket and pulled out what he had left and tossed it to the bartender. "Keep it flowing on me till the money runs out" The colonial pilots cheered a thanks, as Jason left. Hunter looked back at K'Kai, and silently nodded a thanks as he went out the door. The bar was conveniently across the street from the entry into the command post. Following their guide they passed the security guards and went back down into the basement command post. Kruger and Tolwyn looked up as Ian and Jason came into the room. "Glad you're alive," Geoff said. "So am I." "But you lost a Sabre," Kruger interjected, "a first line ship in return for one Kilrathi Stealth, not a good trade in my book at all." "Return with your shield or upon it, is that it?" Ian said dryly. "Something like that," Kruger retorted. "You Confed boys might think it's all right to blow a ship apart or prang one up on a bad landing, get out, and then have another one handed to you, but out here it's different. We're at the butt end of any supplies. With your asinine Confed signing that article 23 of the armistice forbidding the resale of fighter aircraft, a Sabre is precious." "Sorry," Ian replied, "next time I'll make sure to blow up with my ship." "At least we know about their new missile," Tolwyn interjected, while pouring himself a cup of tea and motioning for Ian to come over and join him. "You go too easy on your boys," Kruger said, looking over at Tolwyn. Jason found it hard to suppress a low chuckle. "Something I say amusing to you, mister?" Kruger asked, looking back at Jason. "As a matter of fact, yes, sir," Jason replied. Kruger looked at him coldly and again Jason found himself wondering if his honesty would get him into hot water. Whether Kruger could really discipline him or not was problematic, he was after all a "volunteer" in the Landreich's Free Corp, not even officially sworn in, but he did suspect the gaunt one-eyed leader could make life difficult. "We've got a little surprise for you two," Tolwyn said handing a cup of tea to Ian and moving to get between Jason and Kruger. Glad for the excuse to break eye contact Jason focused his attention on Tolwyn. "What is it, sir?" "The special equipment we were hoping to get made it out of the Confederation and will arrive here tomorrow. It's the real reason I wanted to get these carriers out here," and he looked over at a frowning Kruger and smiled "besides helping out our allies in the Landreich. "Therefore Tarawa and Normandy aren't going out on forward patrol with the other three carriers." "Why, sir?" and the disappointment in Jason's voice was evident. "I couldn't let you in on it till now, but your ship has been selected for the real mission. Let's head up there now, Paladin's moved over from Normandy and he's already on board waiting for us." "What is it, sir?" Jason asked, feeling like a child who was being held back from looking under the Christmas tree. "Let's just say we've decided to add to Tarawa a little something special that just came in." CHAPTER SIX Hard docking completed, Jason followed Geoff Tolwyn to what usually served as the entry bay for his fighters and was now blocked by the side of the heavy transport which was almost as big as Tarawa. The crew worked around him, extending the docking collar through the magnetic field which separated the pressurized flight deck from the vacuum of space. The collar snapped onto the side of the transport and the deck officer turned to Jason nodding that an airtight seal had been secured. The side of the transport popped open and a thin, nearly bald man, who Jason judged to be in his early sixties, came through. "So the Cats have been snooping around?" the man asked, coming up to shake Tolwyn's hands. "They know we're here." "And they'll be back for a closer look. I think I managed to get here without their knowing and I can tell you what's inside my hold is secure." Tolwyn looked back at his companions. "Admiral Vance Richards, I'd like to introduce you to Captain Bondarevsky." Jason came to attention and the Admiral motioned for him to stand at ease. "Everyone here's retired at the moment, Captain, so let's cut all the saluting crap." Jason took Richards' hand, surprised at the firmness of the grip. Tolwyn went down the line introducing him in turn to Hunter, Doomsday, Kevin, and finally Paladin. "Ah, Vance, tis good to see ya again," Paladin said with a laugh, the two slapping each other on the shoulders. "Did you bring me my new toy?" "That I did," Richards said, "it's tucked into the forward cargo bay." Paladin grinned with delight Jason watched the familiar greeting with surprise. Admiral Richards, until his retirement only days before the armistice, had been head of military intelligence for the entire Confederation. He was, to the members of the fleet, a shadowy figure, a name without a picture, an individual never seen þ though it was often rumored that he traveled into more than one action, hidden away as a staff officer under an assumed name. "Let's start unloading and get to work" Richards said with an almost boylike enthusiasm, and he motioned for the group to follow him off the deserted hangar bay. The group started down the corridor back to the bridge and Jason looked back to see a team of black cover-alled personnel emerging from the transport ship, each of them saluting the lone Marine guard by the hatch and requesting permission to come aboard. "Who are those people?" Jason asked, motioning back towards the stream of personnel filing off the transport. "That's part of our surprise," Tolwyn said with a grin. The new arrivals started to maneuver long black canisters from out of the transport, moving them with small hand-held null gravity units. They had a certain look to them, tech personnel he could almost guess out of hand, but beyond that a cold professional look as well. "Since I am captain of this ship, sir," Jason said, looking over at Tolwyn, "can you finally let me in on what's going on? You've been looking like a cat that just swallowed the canary." "We're installing a D 3S 5 on board your ship, Jason," Richards said, motioning for Jason to turn into the wardroom off the bridge and indicating that Ian, Doomsday, Paladin, Geoff, and Kevin were invited to join as well. "Just what the hell is a D 3S 5?" Ian asked. "Deep Space Surveillance System Five," Richards said quietly, closing the door behind them. "Something then with signal intelligence, is that it?" Richards smiled and sat down on the small table that filled most of the room, motioning for the rest of group to sit down. It suddenly caught Jason that Richards was awfully familiar with light escort design, having made it straight from the hangar to the bridge wardroom without a single false turn. "The sig intel department's been working on this new design for years, in fact they were just getting set to deploy it when the armistice hit. This system was a black project. The only ones who knew about it were the chiefs of staff and several hundred design and research techs working on a base buried inside one of Neptune's moons, and that was it. Security was so tight that the techs were only allowed to bring their spouses and children with them and then were listed as killed in a transport accident." Jason noticed that Richards had neglected to say if anyone inside the civilian government knew of the project. Chances were not even the president fully understood it, nor perhaps did he want to. "I should add it is strictly a military project," Richards said, as if reading Jason's thoughts. I think it's fair to tell you that we've suspected a mole in the inner circle of government for some time now. The money for this project has therefore been buried, and no one else knows about it. "So what's so important about all of this?" Ian asked. "Since this war started, signal and photo intelligence has been crucial. From the little bits of information that we've been able to occasionally get, victory or defeat in some of the major battles of the war has often been decided. Vukar started because of a recon survey and in a lot of those missions good people died as a result. "We ve even got picket ships specially designed for the work, and they've been hiding on the edge of the frontier for years, quietly parked in asteroid fields. Hell, some of them are camouflaged to look like asteroids. Gods, it must be boring work, but to the sig intel crowd it's like a giant game, figuring out one puzzle after another. "The problem is that we're trying to listen in on everything from old sub light ship-to-ship radio communication, through newscasts, right up to fleet command high density translight burst signals. It comes down to hundreds of billions of signals floating around, made even more complicated by old radio waves, signals maybe five hundred years old, drifting by. The Kilrathi of course, assume we're listening in, so throw in language and coding and you see how complex it gets. "D 3S 5 might be a partial answer. It's not only the detecting equipment, it's also the analysis software which can sort through these millions of signals, crack codes, figure out which ones have certain things we're looking for and then give them as hard copy to intelligence. When they started the design work twenty years ago, the antenna nets were twenty miles across, it took five hundred personnel to run it, and it needed a ship bigger than a carrier. The early models were, as result of these limitations, well inside Confed space for security reasons, trying to squeak out information from as much as five hundred or more light years and ten or more jump points from the front. Now we've finally got it down to something we can deploy inside the flight deck of a light escort carrier, with a fifty meter antenna array mounted outside." "So that's why the other ships got the fighters, leaving us just four, and you wanted them moved to a corner of the hangar?" Jason asked, looking over at Tolwyn. The Admiral smile. "Tarawa's got a different job, in fact the real reason behind our moving out here to the Landreich. The Landreich needed the carriers, to be sure, and some of us wanted to keep a light strike force ready and available on the edge of the frontier. But it also served as a smoke screen for the real mission, the mission you and your carrier have been chosen for. We re going to take our new ears inside the Empire, and get the evidence we need to pull the mask off what they're doing. When we have the proof of what they're doing, believe me, things will hit the fan." "Just one question then, sir," Ian asked. "Sure, what is it?" "How the hell did we get this equipment? It must be worth hundreds of millions." "Just roughly over eighty billion and some odd change." Richards replied. "What's inside those boxes piling up on the flight deck cost more than the entire Concordia." "So how then?" "Don't ever ask," Tolwyn replied quietly. "People have died for knowing a hell of a lot less and I suspect there's more than one person who'd be glad to kill all of us if they knew what we were up to." "And my ship?" Paladin asked. "Once we off load the equipment to Tarawa, we'll leave the Hell Hole and head off to a quiet corner a couple of jump points up, and then off-load your new toy." "Off-load what?" Doomsday asked, unable to hide behind his usual mask of disinterest and depression. "A light smuggler craft with Stealth technology," Paladin said with a grin. "How the hell did we get that?" Kevin asked excitedly. "Oh, let's just say a Kilrathi Stealth fighter they thought was killed somehow wound up in our hands," Richards replied. We've yet to really figure out how it works, but we did manage to take it apart and install it in one of our ships and the damn thing actually works!" "Paladin's going in as our point man on this operation, so we thought we'd give him a little something extra this time around," Tolwyn interjected. "And its about time, considering what you folks pay me, Paladin replied with a grin. "Enter." Bowing low, Vak, baron of the hrai of the Ragitagha slipped into the darkened room, went down on both knees, head bowed to the floor and waited. "You may arise, the voice whispered hoarsely and Vak came to his feet. The bent figure motioned for him to approach and sit by his side, an act of great honor, and Vak moved quickly to obey. "You at least I still know are loyal." "As always, my Emperor," Vak said softly, not daring to raise his voice much above a whisper. Though the room was supposedly secured and swept, and the walls were mounted with vibration dampeners, it was still possible that something might have been overlooked. The Emperor touched a control panel by his side and Vak felt the electrostatic tingle of a force field clicking in. Nothing now could hear them, unless a bug had been planted in the very chair in which the Emperor sat. "We can talk freely now," the Emperor said. Vak tried to relax. "I have read the report you sent to me regarding this meeting. They are fools if they continue to follow Jukaga." Vak nodded. "I think you should know that you are not the only one to report to me thus." Vak felt a cold uneasiness. Was this a lie or not? If not, then it meant that at least one other of the eight families had had second thoughts about Jukaga. Could it be that all the others might very well be playing both sides in this? Or was the Emperor truly alone and simply making him nervous, to insure that he told the truth? He tried to analyze this bit of information. He had no love for the Emperor, and that he had led them to the brink of disaster was obvious. But he feared civil war as well, knowing that if it came it would be his worlds that might very well be swallowed up if the humans should attack in the wake of the chaos. We need the Emperor to hold us together, yet in the needing of him we are destroying ourselves as well, that is the paradox of it all, as Jukaga would say. "You're wondering who?" the Emperor said with a cold laugh. "Of course I would wonder such a thing." "And of course I will not tell you. In fact, you've already thought I might be lying; I'll leave that for you to meditate on." "Don't you trust me?" Vak asked, his voice and demeanor showing a genuine concern. "Don't be a fool, of course I don't trust you. Remember that, Vak, anyone who wears the Imperial crown must learn that lesson first. I did not trust even my own son and in the end I ordered his death. There are times I am not even sure of my grandson, the heir." He paused for a moment as if the memory did in fact still pain him in spite of his apparent lack of remorse in the years since the execution. He lowered his head again, growling softly. "You know that when I go," the Emperor finally said, "if my grandson is not supported, civil war will be the result. My hrai has ruled the Empire for centuries, that must continue, for no family will support the rise of another to rule over them." Vak said nothing. "But tell me," the Emperor chuckled, "why have you betrayed Jukaga's intentions to me?" "Because I am loyal sire." The Emperor leaned back and barked out a laugh. "Do not play the fool, the real reason. I know you hate my grandson and me, blaming us for the death of your first born." Vak was taken aback. His first answer had actually been the truth. If loyalty to a sworn oath was viewed as nothing more than a political toy, to be abandoned without thought, then they were indeed truly lost. The Emperor looked at him closely and finally nodded. "I believe you actually are loyal." Vak, feeling insulted that such an issue had even been questioned, remained silent. The Emperor looked away from Vak. Jukaga, as head of intelligence, had placed his spies not only beyond the borders but within even the palace itself. There was nothing he did not know. Poisoning him would be the easiest answer, but that might very well make the loyalty of Vak and the other family heads waver. The tacit agreement between hrai leaders and Emperors had stood for generations: both sides will support the other, neither will attempt to kill the other. He thought of Thrakhath. He was tempted to recall him from his assignment with the new fleet but then thought better of it. The new fleet was not only the tool for the final offensive against the Confederation, but also a replacement for the home fleet lost in the last two years of campaigns. Three carriers were ready, at the very least six more had to be completed if the next campaign was to be a guaranteed success. He could not afford one more lost opportunity, for it would shake whatever power they had left to the very core and perhaps trigger open rebellion. Yet if they waited, Jukaga in his slyness might very well gain even more power. It was an amusing question to ponder and he knew if he pondered long enough he would find the answer. "You know just how munificent my reward might be if you provide me with information valuable enough, including perhaps even the marriage to one of my great nieces. It could very well mean that your family might even thus be in line for the Imperial succession," the Emperor said softly. And Vak smiled. "Jump transition on automatic sequencing and counting at ten, nine, eight . . ." Jason settled back into his chair and waited. A cold rush of excitement tingled down his spine. No matter how many times he had jumped he always felt the same, especially when going into hostile space. One of the key tactical points with jumping was the simple fact that you never knew what was on the other side. Inside secured shipping lanes behind the lines there were beacons placed at both points, monitoring traffic, sent up to avoid the possibility of a ship materializing in the same point of space occupied by someone else, an event that always had spectacular results. But beyond that was the question of just who was waiting. Paladin, piloting his new ship which he had named Bannockburn, with Ian aboard as his co-pilot, had already gone ahead to scout. The fifteen minutes' wait had passed and now it was time to follow through and the potential for an unpleasant surprise was always there. He felt Tarawa drop away, and there was a momentary queasiness then the flash of rematerialization. He looked over at his navigation officer who was peering intently at her holo display. "Correct jump alignment confirmed," she announced. "Bannockburn reporting in on laser lock." Paladin's image appeared on the screen. "This Stealth works like a charm. We found a remote sensor and took it out, it never even put out a signal. Optical scan shows the entire system's clear right up to the next jump point." Jason looked over at Tolwyn and grinned. "It looks like we got through. We've crossed from the frontier into the heart of the Empire." He looked up at his aft visual and less than a minute later his escort CVE-6 Normandy came through. "All ships through," communications announced, "all systems running nominal, Bannockburn reports successful take-out of remote drone without detect signal being activated." Geoff Tolwyn, standing behind Jason, nodded, letting out an audible sigh of relief. Jason found that alone to be surprising; he was used to his old chief being absolutely unflappable. They were now four jumps into the Kilrathi Empire, tracking down one of the hundreds of transition points leading from neutral territory into the Empire in the one direction and Confederation space on the other. Surveillance drones of course monitored these points, but "accidents" like the one Paladin had just arranged for the drone covering this jump point were easy enough to set up. It could be days or even weeks before a picket ship came out to replace the drone with a new one. "Let's hit the flight deck and see what Richards is up to," Tolwyn said, motioning for Jason to follow. Excited, Jason came out of his seat. He had been waiting for days to get a look at what Richards was doing. Leaving the bridge they went down the main corridor to the forward part of the ship. At the airlock door two guards came to attention at Tolwyn's approach but did not step aside. Internal ship security was nothing new to Jason but this was different. The two men were not dressed in the usual Marine class B uniform, for after all this was not a Confederation ship any longer. There was something disquieting about the black khaki uniform the two guards were wearing without a single insignia or marking on them. The easy way they held their laser rifles told him that these two were highly trained professionals. Only seven members of the Tarawa's operating crew were allowed on to the hangar deck, Tolwyn and himself, along with Kevin, Doomsday and two Landreich pilots cleared to fly one of the four craft still left in the very forward part of the hangar, and finally Sparks as the one overworked maintenance officer permitted to work on the fighters. Everyone else aboard ship had already been told that the guards had standing orders to shoot first and then ask questions. Jason could tell this was simply not rhetoric, these two would do it without batting an eye. Clearing the doorway, they stepped out into the hangar deck. Equipment was spread out across almost all the floor space which once was occupied by forty-four fighters. He realized that he was, in fact, looking at perhaps the single largest concentration of computing power anywhere in the Confederation except, perhaps, for the administrative centers of Earth and the moon, and even then he wondered. Banks of storage systems were arrayed along one wall, dozens of holo display fields were already up and running, and he approached one of them, a field nearly half a dozen meters cubed. A technician was standing inside the display field, which showed a three dimensional model of what he recognized as the near space environment around Kilrah. Bright hovering points of light represented the stars, their planets, and transition jump points, with blocks of data appearing above them, the information readable from any angle one looked at it. The technician standing inside the holo display looked almost godlike as she walked about inside it. He was totally mystified by what she was doing as she pulled out what looked like a laser pointer, aimed it at the orange size planet floating in the middle of the field and squeezed. Another holo field popped into action next to the first, this one a close up of the planet the first technician had pointed at. The entire field was occupied by what looked like a solid ball, its continents covered with hundreds of flashing lights "That's Kilrah," Jason whispered. "Using this, they can lock in on any one of millions of sources even while continuing to scan all other traffic and look for new sources at the same time," Tolwyn replied softly, Several white overall clad techs gathered around the globe, pointing, talking softly, arguing, and then aiming pointers at particular flashing lights. Behind them, two dimensional flat screens flared into light, streams of data flashing across some, others showing pictures, one of which caught Jason's eye, of Kilrathi wearing heavy leather armor slashing at each other with swords. Vance came up to the two and nodded a greeting. "Say, what the hell is that on the monitor?" Jason asked, pointing to the screen. "A Kilrathi drama from the Gakarg Period." "What?" "Their ancient history. They love holos about the ancient wars when the various clans were feuding with each other before the unification. We monitor every such station from Kilrah, their media links are translight signalled throughout the Empire. It cost them a bundle but it helps keep them unified. Watching their stations might give us clues as to internal politics. We have a lot of software tied up with analysis of their popular shows, since there might be some subtle clues as to what's going on based upon the type of entertainment the government is broadcasting. In the last three days we've noticed an increase of Gakarg Period dramas dealing with Emperor Y'taa'gu. "Who?" Vance chuckled. "I never heard of him either. Seems to be an evil emperor who was insane and finally killed by a virtuous warrior in order to save his people. It's worth watching. It's interesting that since the armistice we never see a single drama about the war with us, or any of their previous ones, only ancient history. Their news programs are the same, really tight on war news and only one brief announcement of the armistice and then nothing. These furballs are mighty security conscious on such things, but we still gleam occasional facts; that's why it's worth monitoring." Lance led them around the holo display of Kilrah raised a pointer and aimed it at a flashing blue light "Blue means commercial communication line," and he nodded back to a screen which was filled with what looked like shipping orders, instantly translated into standard English. "This D-5 is monitoring everything that's reaching the antenna arrays mounted outside this ship. If it's non-coded it immediately translates it. We have the computers programmed to look for certain things on the commercial channels. For instance, a shipping order for IFF missiles gets tagged into a higher priority slot. We can even look for orders related to just one component of an IFF missile. If certain patterns of shipping develop or if something outside of the ordinary happens, the computer will alert a human operator who then analyzes it and decides if there's something important enough that it has to be kicked upstairs. That's the key job, looking for the little nugget of gold inside the tons of gravel and mud. "One of the first things that started to tip us off to the fact that the Kilrathi might be building something was that certain commercial links for the ordering of military parts suddenly went into a new code system, which was changed every eight days. Significant orders for supplies, parts, and shipping became highly classified. "That started some real questions being asked. The problem was that they shifted this classified work to the part of the Empire out beyond Kilrah, as far from our listening posts as possible The question of why really put the pressure on us to get this D-5 on line and also caused the loss of a lot of good intel people behind the lines. The jump we just completed is the deepest in we've ever been able to take equipment like this. You can see already the streams of data pouring in. Richards led them over to his command booth and offered a couple of cups of coffee to his guests. Jason noticed that these people seemed to live on caffeine, and a fair number of them were addicted to Ian's habit of tobacco, a practice he found totally mystifying and somewhat disgusting. "The D-5 can monitor any signal within its six hundred light year range and pinpoint its origin. The hard part is programming it to figure out what is worth looking at out of the billions of messages it picks up every day and then passing it to a human analyst for evaluation. "The analyst's job is the toughest. It takes someone with a sixth sense to decipher what appear to be unrelated facts but actually are part of a pattern. "We do the same thing for the media channels, the public communication lines, and of course the military and government lines," and he pointed to the flashing red and yellow lights back on the holo display of Kilrah. "Those are the tough buggers, a lot of it is burst signalled and highly encoded." "Damn, there's hundreds of them," Jason said. "Something must be up." Vance laughed softly. "Over ninety percent are dummy channels, broadcasting complete gibberish, total nonsense words that actually tie up most of our decoding equipment since we're not sure if its garbage or the real thing. Sometimes you might have a burst signal with a million words in it, all encoded, and the real message is twenty words in the middle, each word separated from the next by say six thousand four hundred words. "Why that number?" "Remember they have eight fingers and we have ten, so their numerical system is base eight. We tend to look a bit more intensely at base eight numerical lines as a result. What gets frustrating is that they are using at least a dozen different codes at any given time, with the highest level material going on what we call Fleet Code A, which tends to change every twenty-four to forty days. The real messages are hidden in a lot of garbage and we have to wade through each message and might spend weeks tracking down promising stuff only to discover its a decoy." "Some of their people even have a sense of humor about it. One message, when finally translated, was a simple óHey, stupid, we fooled you,' and another was a long excerpt from what I guess was a Kilrathi dirty book. Decoding and translating each of those things took up time and equipment. We can't ignore a single message because we never know if we might hit paydirt or not. So we wade through all of this, figure out the real signals from the fake, then spend a hell of a lot of time cracking the code, and just when we think we've got it, they go and change the code and we're back to square one. Then to top it off they might have a station that's quiet for weeks or months, and it pops off a lone burst signal then shuts down. Trying to even figure out where it came from out of a billion cubic light years of space was nuts until the D4 model, which could do a Doppler analysis and at least do a probable trace." "I'd go mad," Tolwyn said. "Some of us do," Vance replied. "It takes a special kind of person to do this. You fighter jockeys, your battle is one of skill and wits, but it gets played out in seconds. Some of our battles last years. Vance smiled. "I've been in this game for twenty-nine years. I've dreamed all those years of having something like this D-5. With the new antenna array we can pick up bursts from up to six hundred light years out; only a couple of generations back in the system we were lucky to get consistent reads from ten light years away. We used to spend billions on recon drones which would go in, store up data for a week, then send out a burst signal. Once it signalled the Kilrathi would be onto it and take it out. Now this one system can cover an area that would have required thousands of drones. "The big problem now is that counter intel believes they knew of the D-4 and maybe suspected our D-5. We've noticed a decrease in signal traffic and suspect they're shifting more to courier. So far we've yet to figure out how to read a dispatch pouch six hundred light years behind the lines." As they continued to talk, Vance led them around the flight deck. Small cubicles had been set up in the center of the room, and hunched over in each was an operator, going through data that the computer felt was of sufficient importance to bring to the attention of a human operator. "I've got a hundred and three analysts with me on this mission, each of them a specialist and the best in his field with eight or more years of training behind him. There are another forty programmers who feed in the requests and another twenty just to troubleshoot any glitches in the machine." Jason looked around the room, wondering just who indeed was paying for all of this. He had his suspicions but knew it was best not to ask. What was equally troubling was the matter-antimatter mine that was almost casually brought aboard with the rest of the equipment. It was placed in the center of the room and would be activated if it appeared as if Tarawa might be captured. In this case there was definitely no surrender although, technically, they were not even at war. A technician came up to Vance's side, looked over at Jason and Tolwyn and said nothing. Vance smiled and nodded. "I think Jenkins here has something to tell me that he'd rather not say in front of the two of you," Vance said quietly. Tolwyn, smiling, nodded and turned and walked away. "Hey, we're on the same team," Jason finally said as they went back down the corridor to the bridge. "Just remember, Jason, if there's no need to really know, then you definitely better not know. Believe me, son, there's a hell of a lot I wish I didn't know at this moment." Tolwyn looked over at him and smiled. "Come on, I think it's safe for us to have a short drink, help us unwind. It's going to be a boring float out here until something comes up." Jason was awakened by a gentle, but insistent shaking. Damn, what was it now, and then he was instantly awake. The room was dark, there was no klaxon, no attack. He suffered a moment of disorientation, the old dream had come back, the explosions silently bursting across the surface of the moon orbiting Kilrah. Svetlana . . . "Jason, it's Tolwyn, something's up." He stood up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and snapped on the light. "What's wrong?" "Nothing, but I want you in on this." Jason reached into his closet, pulled on a fresh jumpsuit, slipped into a pair of shoes and followed Tolwyn out the door. It was the midnight to four watch, one officer and four enlisted personnel manning the controls. Actually, the time was an artificial creation, complete to the dimming of all lights aboard ship except in work areas. He looked over at the chronometer, 0308 Confederation standard time and it certainly felt like it. He realized it had to be important if Tolwyn was pulling him out of the sack now. Well, at least it was some excitement for a change. They'd been on station eight jump points inside the Empire for twenty days, the three ships of their fleet rigged down for complete silent running, tucked into an asteroid field in a small system that didn't even rate a name on the charts, only a numbered designation. Jason followed Tolwyn on to the flight deck and saw a small crowd gathered around a monitor. They quietly approached. Vance looked up and nodded a greeting. "We've just had a break on cracking their latest A code and we've caught a burst signal from Kilrah but again it was garbled, emanating from the far side of the planet aimed towards Hari. They're only sending this particular burst when this one station is facing towards the Hari system and thus turned directly away from us. We get bounce reflections off of their moon, but the signal is degraded to near gibberish as a result. It's a pattern which seems to be adding up to something. We've also had a couple of partial locks on a burst coming out of the Hari system but it's still beyond our range to get a clear read and fix on it." "So?" Jason asked, wondering why he had been pulled out of bed to hear what was not any of his business to know anyhow. "I want to take us closer in," Vance replied casually, as if asking to do a little jaunt from Earth to the moon and back as a Sunday afternoon pleasure ride. Vance motioned for the two to go into an empty cubicle. He punched up a holo display and then a two dimensional screen on one wall. "This is why I wanted to get in closer," Vance said quietly, pointing at the holo map which floated in the corner of the cubicle and then to the flat screen where a long string of what appeared to be gibberish, marked by occasional intelligible words scrolled by. "It's definitely fleet code, their highest grade. We had a twenty-three percent decipher on the last one, then this new code came on line but is being used only by this one station aimed at Hari. It has all the markings of a highest priority fleet code. We got really lucky when one of my people saw a similarity to a code they used nearly eight years ago and pulled it for comparison. We immediately broke a string of words and can do a six percent translation and it's less than twelve hours old. In five or six days I can bring that up to thirty percent and from there comparisons of word groupings, even knowing the writing styles of certain operators and officials, can help us break the rest. "So why go deeper in now?" "Because in five or six days I might have enough of the code broken so that we can get some hard core information. When we do, I want to be in position to scoop those signals from Hari and also the signals going out from Kilrah." "That means getting some place between Kilrah and Hari," Jason said quietly. Vance smiled again and nodded "Do you know what you're asking? Only one ship's ever gone to Kilrah and back and that's this baby. I don't know how many Confed spy or recon ships have gotten into the area and back, but I bet it's precious few." "Enough to prove it's possible," Tolwyn interjected. "But you are not going in to Kilrah, you're going to circle the edge of the Empire out to the far side and head into Hari territory." "You didn't say we, you said you," Jason replied, looking over at Tolwyn. "I'm taking the jump-capable Sabre on this ship back to Landreich in an hour," Tolwyn said "Hell, that's at least a seven day run, it'll be a nightmare in a ship that small. It doesn't even have ahead on board." "Well, if you don't mind, I'm taking Kevin along to keep me company. It'll be a chance for us to catch up on family matters. We'll just have to make do and rough it a bit. One of us can sleep in the tail gunner's slot while the other flies." Jason smiled, glad at least for once that Tolwyn was dropping the stiff upper lip routine and allowing himself to show some open attachment to his nephew. "I'm putting you in command of this fleet Paladin is being sent out in Bannockburn within the hour, doing forward recon and moving ahead of you. His orders are to go straight into Hari territory, to track down their burst signal, monitor it, and if possible close in for a visual check on its location. "I'm ordering you to go cautiously, feel your way out around the edge of the Empire but don't go beyond extreme burst signal range to a relay drone that I'll make sure is deployed here," and he pointed to a map, which he quickly pulled up on a screen, showing a position four jump points inside of the Empire. "If something should come up, either with you or back home, we don't want you out of touch. I need to go back, some things have come up I've got to attend to and Vance has a little assignment for me." Vance nodded and pointed back to the screen. "There's several standard code words imbedded in these signals that we've seen before. They're just like Kilrathi general fleet communications during the war, daily updates on the various fronts that fleet commanders had to be made aware of. I suspect this word óNak'tara' that keeps coming up refers to a possible target of interest to those furballs. We're going to try an old trick to see if we can smoke them out. Geoff here has to take the message back personally. It's something I would never trust to a burst signal ócause it could tip off this whole operation. I don't even want it in writing. It goes out in his head, and he can see to it along with his other business." Jason looked over at the screen. This system was literally receiving and analyzing hundreds of millions of words, millions of conversations in Kilrathi, all its various dialects, and coded talk, hundreds of hours of video, and thousands of holo images every day. It was analyzing it, and boiling it down for info, and now because of a six percent translation of a half heard signal, he was being asked to jump Tarawa to the far side of the Empire. He had wandered into a shadow world of a quasi war which was beyond his ability to really understand. Either they were on to something, or they were all definitely nuts and he tended to think it was the latter. Baron Jukaga smiled as he read the report. It seemed that both the Emperor and his son were to take the Imperial cruiser out to Largkza, the second moon of Kilrah to attend the yearly ritual of Pukcal, the day of atonement at the famed temple to Sivar located on that planet. That the two would travel together was interesting in the extreme, a rare breach of security in allowing both the Emperor and the heir to travel aboard the same ship. It was an opportunity he had to take though the thought chilled him. It was, after all, the greatest sin possible, one even beyond the imagining of nearly all of his race, to strike down a liege lord in secret without direct and open challenge. It was impossible, for to do so was seen as being beneath the contempt of the gods, and beyond that, would usually solve nothing for without challenge, one could not take the place of the rival destroyed. And yet I would succeed to the throne in the end, he realized. And as for the sin of it, he thought, I do not believe in the gods, so it does not matter. Even as he thought that heresy, however, he still felt chilled by it. He found it interesting that some humans could believe thus, and therefore deny any ultimate reason for existence, but for one who knew the hierarchy of the hrai, the clan, and the Empire with the godlike Emperor above all, it was impossible to contemplate. For was it not evident that in the hierarchy of the living there was also a hierarchy in the universe with the gods above the Emperor so that even in death one would sit with his hrai in paradise? He knew that here again his study of humans had triggered this line of thinking which had taught him just how easy it was to gain power if one was willing to seize it; for after all did not a prince of ability have to reach for power for the benefit of his state? He would do it, he had to. He looked again at the report. He would have to find a means of placing a small device on the cruiser, no easy task. He realized now that he was committed, and the thought brought him some comfort as he spun out his plan. CHAPTER SEVEN "You know, laddie, I think I'm getting a bit too old for this sort of thing." Ian shook his head and said nothing, waiting for the jump transit to hit. Space forward blurred and then snapped back into focus, his stomach dropping, flipping over, and nearly coming up his throat. Ian scanned the nav screen, waiting for the locks to set in on the various stars to confirm that they had jumped into the system they wanted. Anomalies in jumps were not uncommon even in the heavily traveled lanes in the heart of the Confederation. In the barely charted jump points beyond the outer border of the Kilrathi Empire it vas almost a guess at times where the next jump would lead Paladin leaned over Ian's shoulder to watch, the seconds ticking by, finally a confirm light flashed on the screen and both breathed a sigh of relief. "At least according to what our charts tell us, we're in the right place," Paladin said. "It's a bit hard to tell though. Hell, laddie, we're going down one narrow little road here, we might have passed hundreds of other jump points in between and not even known it. The last time I did this I had to feel my way blind through it all. "I can tell you this, though, I think we've definitely gone a good bit into Hari territory, and Kilrah is somewhere off there," and he waved his hand vaguely off towards the port side of his ship, "roughly three hundred odd light years away. Where we're heading towards, that signal is sort of this way," and he vaguely waved his hand straight ahead, a gesture which Ian found to be strange and somewhat amusing. "In the olden days they used to draw places on the map and say, here be'eth dragons," and Paladin chuckled. "It's a long way back home," Ian said quietly. "Aye," Paladin said quietly turning in his swivel chair to scan his surveillance instruments. "Oh, we've got a little company way out here," he announced and pointed to the screen. "Ionization wake coming through here, heading straight for what I think's the next jump point." "How old?" "Not very, hard to tell, sir, maybe ten hours." "Could he have spotted us on the other side and jumped out?" Paladin sat quietly for a minute thinking that question over yet again. One of the problems with this cat Stealth machinery was the simple fact they were not even sure if it was really working right anymore. At least when Tarawa was alongside they could get a very quick and easy read. They hadn't seen Tarawa in ten days; it was now a good eight jump points behind them, holding itself at extreme burst signal range back to the edge of the frontier in case it had to get an emergency signal out. He had figured out by now that the Stealth gear was to be used for only short periods of time, and the drain it made on ship's energy was tremendous. So they had finally agreed to use it only at the moment of jump, and then when the coast was clear to come out of it and recharge their power by running with full scoops open. There was the other simple question as well. The Stealth might work against Confederation ships, but no one had yet to figure out if the Cats had a simple way of detecting it themselves. "Hard to tell, he could even be hiding somewhere in this blasted system and we don't have time to check it all." Ian looked over at the chart which showed a dozen planets in orbit around the red giant star of this sector. Information beyond that was nonexistent, nothing on any of the planets, resources, whether they were even inhabited or not Paladin pursed his lips for a moment and then sighed. "Well, laddie, let's power her up, get our tanks full, then close scoops and run to the next jump somewhat straight ahead. It'll take some time, we'll have to sniff it down." Ian nodded, taking the helm, turning Bannockburn and headed towards where they hoped the next jump point was located. It was tedious work, jumping through, snooping on passive listening, and then hunting up the next jump point and moving forward again. The engines of Bannockburn powered up and hours later it was far across the system, zeroing in on the next jump point. Long after their passage, what appeared to be nothing more than a small boulder, floating through the darkness a million kilometers from the jump point, shed its exterior. The Kilrathi light picket ship turned and accelerated away towards another jump point. "I think he is planning to assassinate me," the Emperor said Prince Thrakhath was surprised by just how casual his grandfather was, as if discussing plans for yet another boring court ritual. His choice of the word assassinate was interesting as well. In the language of Kilrah there was no such term, the word having filtered into the language from the Hari during the war of three eight-of-eights years past. For the Hari such disgusting practices appeared to have been their means of selecting who would rule, a chaotic and degrading system that left them ripe for conquest "What purpose would it serve?" Thrakhath asked. "After all, I would then rise to power," and even as he spoke the words he felt foolish, realizing that if Jukaga were planning to kill his grandfather, he would be killed as well. He fell silent for a moment, lowering his head to lap up a gulp of wine. "We can't simply denounce him," the Emperor said. "The evidence is far too flimsy, a mere hint, an inquiry as to who would be on the security detail guarding our cruiser the night before we leave for the Pukcal, but it fits him and what he has become." Prince Thrakhath nodded in agreement. There was no denying that Jukaga was far too right in many of his criticisms of how the war had been run. He alone, out of nearly all the Kilrathi, had taken the time and effort to truly study the humans. It was, after all, his assignment as head of spying to learn the secrets of the enemy and how they thought. That fact in and of itself had been troubling. In the past victory had come so quickly and with such assurance that there was little or no need to study the enemy; they were merely prey to be hunted down and exterminated. The Mantu did not count; their onslaught had come suddenly and with near overwhelming power, and then they had simply disappeared back into the void, apparently threatened by another unknown race. The human war, however, had dragged on for years. The exposure to them had been constant, even to the point of having a city's worth of human slaves right here in Kilrah, some of them even laboring in the subterranean caverns below the palace. Such contact had to, in the end, bring about changes. Jukaga had embraced them in order to understand and thus defeat them. It had thus introduced to him other ways of thinking as well. But to assassinate? The mere thought of the alien word was repulsive, it was killing without any honor, without challenge. It was done in the dark, without any hope of then picking up the fallen sword of the slain in order to take his mantle of power and honor. "If we both were killed," Thrakhath said, "there is no direct heir. In the chaos that followed, as head of his hrai, he would be in position to take the throne himself by playing off one faction against the other, something which he is a master at." He said the words softly. The shame of even thinking it was hard to bear. There was no denying the horrifying fact that the seed of his family was weakening. His grandfather had sired many litters, most of them born dead, with but two sons surviving. His father had actually been executed by direct order of the Emperor, his uncle killed in the first days of the war. He was now the only heir, and not one son had been born to him, a sickly daughter his only surviving offspring from a single litter, and that from a lowly concubine of the second order. It was a humiliation almost beyond bearing. He should have sired dozens of offspring by now. He felt a deep and lasting shame. War was the only outlet left to him to vent his rage over his failure on the mating couch. There were a number of cousins descending from his grandfather's sister, so many that the chance of blood feud and civil war was the most likely result. Is that what Jukaga wanted, a civil war? He thought of his cousins. It would be easy enough to trigger a dynastic struggle with them, and Jukaga could weave his way through the alliances, weakening the family until finally it would be his own hrai that would be the strongest and could then finish them off. It would be a civil war unlike any fought since they had first ventured off their home world over eight eight-of-eights ago. It was a dreadful thought. He had always assumed that in the passage of years he would either sire a son to succeed him, or, when he was old, he would choose a cousin to sit upon the golden throne. His choice would then ritually kill him and thus take the sword and throne by right of blood. "We cannot kill him," the Emperor said, "not now. There is first of all the simple fact that his plan for the war has so far indeed worked, degrading as it is. The humans have been placed off guard, our shortage of transports is being rectified, and the new fleet is moving towards completion. If we ordered his death it would upset that plan, and beyond that, appear to be an act of jealousy. The other hrai leaders forced his return and the killing of him out of hand would bring their wrath down upon us. There is no denying the fact that, like it or not, his plan pulled us out of a difficult impasse." Thrakhath nodded in agreement. "And the onus of such an act we can place upon his shoulders," Thrakhath replied with a smile. "There is the other fact as well," the Emperor continued. "He heads the operation of our spies. He knows perhaps even more than I do. His operatives are everywhere. Any attempt to take him would be known long before we were ready to strike." The Emperor stood up and went over to stare at a tapestry hanging behind the throne, which showed an ancient hunt scene, all the time making sure to stay within the stasis field that blocked all detection devices. Thrakhath looked back at the Emperor, who looked at him sharply. "Could your fleet take the humans now?" he asked. "It is not certain. Four carriers are now ready, the fifth in two eights of days." "Could you win?" All the variables, all the calculations said that a swift attack with five new carriers would succeed, though there was a slim chance that the losses would be heavy. "Remember, the humans have weakened themselves," the Emperor said, "and our traitor in their ranks keeps us informed." Thrakhath nodded. He did not want to take any risks and then he wondered if this peace had made him weak as well. War was risk, that was the thrill of it. "We can take them with five carriers, my lord. However, we would have to strike with full and overwhelming surprise. Any warning before we cross the frontier could give them time to prepare a defense." "Then be sure that this unconfirmed report of their having a spy ship in our space is acted upon at once. They are not to get through or see anything, that is still crucial." Thrakhath nodded in agreement. "If he makes this attempt and we survive, politically it would still make us look weak, having first agreed to this disgusting peace and then suffering the indignity of having someone attempt to strike us." "Then kill him now and be done with it," Thrakhath snarled. "No. We would never have the evidence we need, he is too cunning for that. Let him make his strike, but then let us shift the blame on to the humans. It will serve a two fold purpose of discrediting his peace effort and help to enrage our own against both him and the humans. I think it is time as well to have a talk with our ambassador in their camp. He has waited too long for his revenge, let him have it. The radar burst pinged across the screen and Jason sat silent, watching, looking over at his counter electronics officer. She was hunched over her own screen staring at it as if mesmerized. The young woman, she could not have been more than twenty, punched an order into a flat touch screen, absently reaching up occasionally to push an unruly wisp of red hair from her freckled forehead. He felt as if she was not much beyond being a very young child, and the thought struck him as almost funny. He was, after all, only twenty-seven, the youngest carrier commander in the fleet. In any other type of life the woman would have been very dateable. Out here, in this situation, the difference seven additional years of war added was a chasm almost too deep to comprehend. Another ping washed over the screen. "They're close, they're very close," Vance whispered. Jason felt that if he went to a topside view port he could almost see the Kilrathi scout ship. A hundred thousand clicks was damn near next door in space. "Still an unfocused radar sweep," the electronics officer announced. Another ping hit "Doppler shifting away, he's moving past us, sir." Jason let out a sigh of relief. "Keep secure for silent running," Jason announced and he left the bridge, followed by Vance. "I thought you were crazy to land like this," Vance said and Jason looked over at him and smiled weakly. "Maybe I am." The move was unorthodox in the extreme. Less than twelve hours ago Vance's team had picked up a series of orders shifting more than a hundred scout and recon ships into the sector they were now occupying and to cover all the surrounding jump points. Apparently something had tipped the Kilrathi off to their presence. His first thought was to run and hide inside the atmosphere of a gas giant but there were none to be found within the system. There was, however, a green housed world cloaked in heavy clouds, its surface boiling hot and scored by deep canyons. Placing two light carriers down on the surface under the lip of an overhanging cliff had been tricky. If discovered they would be near defenseless. A light fighter armed with just a couple of antimatter warheads would make short work of them if they were caught and unable to lift off in time. So far the subterfuge had worked, and with the planet's extremely slow rotational period, Vance had been able to keep a watch on but signals from the direction of Kilrah, now three hundred and eighty light years away. However, the Hari system was blocked by the bulk of the planet. The only problem was that the scout ships simply refused to leave and had thus kept them pinned for three days, out of touch with Paladin, wherever he might now be. "Here we go, laddie, jump in ten seconds." Paladin cinched up his safety harness and waited. He spared a quick glance over at Ian who sat placidly next to him. This next jump was totally blind, leaping into a jump point without any idea where they were going. The last three jumps had taken them further than any human had ever ventured before, far beyond the outer run of the Kilrathi Empire and into the completely uncharted realm of the long dead Hari. The burst signal they were tracking down had fired off again only six hours ago and was very close, in a star system less than eight light years away. They had slipped through the sector using the Stealth, though it appeared as if one of the dozen picket ships they had passed had at least gotten a temporary lock on them. In a couple of seconds he would know if this jump would take them to their goal. The jump transit hit, blurring vision. The stars ahead disappeared. Paladin swallowed hard and waited. Maybe I'm getting too old for these sorts of games, he thought. Twenty years of fighting is pressing the edge of the envelope just a little too much. He pushed the thought aside, no sense dwelling on it. Besides, what the hell would I do with myself to kill the boredom? A new starfield snapped into focus and at the same instant the radar detection alarm started to shriek its warning. He leaned over in his chair, punching the alarm off and turned to look at the readout screen. "Well, lad, we're being tracked," he announced, trying to keep the fear from his voice. It always amazed him how all the others looked to him as someone with ice water in his veins. If only they really knew just how gut-wrenching the fear could really be. He watched his screen as optical mounts turned, tracking down the incoming paths of the radar, passively searching out the darkness for the enemy. "Got one sighted, make that two, now three, the closest standing at thirty eight thousand clicks, a light corvette." Another high energy radar burst snapped on them, this one a narrow focus beam. It could only mean that the Cats were on to him. He spared a quick look up at the unknown system they had just entered. The jump point was fairly close into the systems sun, a standard class M. He continued the optical sweep. He'd have a good five minutes before the corvette would start to close. Now that they'd been found out, they could at least do a quick scan before jumping back out and shaking off the pursuit in the system which they had just jumped from. "Getting an awful lot of sublight radio traffic in this sector," Ian announced. trying to get an optical lock on the signals." Ian, working the long range optical scanners, stayed hunched over his screen. A full radar sweep would have been better, but they would be long gone before the first returns even started to bounce back. The use of the narrow band translight pulse was out of the question. They'd have to drop completely out of Stealth and it'd reveal their true mission to the picket ships. "Paladin, switch to my screen," Ian whispered, his voice suddenly high and tense. Paladin switched into the long range optical scan, his eyes straining as Ian spun the optics up to their highest magnification, which could pick up an object the size of a one pound coin from two hundred thousand clicks out. "My lord," Paladin gasped, "hit the holo recorder switch." "Already running," Ian replied. Paladin stared at the screen in disbelief when Ian punched in a computer enhancement with scale gradients superimposed over the image. They were looking at a ship that was at least fifteen hundred meters in length. Several seconds later the computer, now armed with more information, cleared the first image from the screen and replaced it with a higher resolution enhancement, with the beginning of an analysis of what they were looking at. "Fifteen hundred and eighty meters, estimated half a million ton bulk weight," Paladin whispered. "Range 102 million clicks, orbiting the only planet in the system. "Dozens of ships orbiting that planet," Ian announced, "coming up now on second screen." Paladin spared a quick glance over to the secondary images forming, three more ships like the first one, half a dozen more apparently still under construction, a dozen cruiser type vessels that were bigger than the old Concordia þ battleships he could only guess would be the word for them, drawing the term out of ancient nautical history. Part of the screen was tallying off a count of transports, more than a hundred of them either docked into what appeared to be an orbital construction yard that filled half a dozen cubic kilometers of space, or hovering around it The alarm went off again, warbling with a high insistent tone and Paladin turned to look back at his tactical. We've got company, laddies. Looks like two Stealths just jumped in behind us. Prepare for evasive!" "We'll lose the visual lock, Ian shouted. "I don't have a full read on it yet." Paladin weighed the variables and in less than half a dozen seconds from the sounding of the second alarm he came to his decision. Turning back to his main screen he cleared it of the optical and punched in the order for a translight beam sweep, dropping his ship out of Stealth mode. The pulse went out, even as he swung his ship hard over into an evasive. The first Stealth already had a lock on him and dropped a missile which he assumed was one of the new and more deadly IFFs. Before the missile was even clearly away Paladin popped a scrambler, a decoy pulsing with a standard Confed IFF code and capable of reflecting back a radar image of a fleet light corvette, a counter he had rigged up based upon Ian's unpleasant experience. Ian looked over at him in surprise and grinned, as the transponder snapped to life. It was a clear give away as to who they really were along with the translight pulse sweep. Seconds later the data came sweeping back in with a high resolution read of the enemy fleet. The first missile at the same time streaked into the decoy and detonated. Two more missiles swept out from the Stealths which were turning to follow Bannockburn in its evasive and Paladin punched out another decoy while at the same time launching half a dozen dumb fire flechette bolts from his rear tubes that would fill space behind him with thousands of nail-sized shot that could rip a fighter to shreds if it got caught in the spread. Even as he piloted the ship he watched the other screen. A green flash indicated that the pulse had been successfully read and stored by the ship's computer. "Check it!" Paladin shouted. "We've got good data," Ian replied. "Load it along with the optical read and our coordinates into a burst signal, aim it back towards Tarawa." "Loaded!" Paladin toggled a switch into the burst signal line. "Green one, green one, this is green two, am under attack, cover blown, repeat cover blown, get the hell out and back to the barn." He hit the burst signal button and the light; in the cabin momentarily dimmed as nearly all the ship's energy was diverted to powering out the signal across the hundreds of light years of space back to Tarawa. At least they'd have the information even if they bought it. He realized that in the scheme of things his job was done, he had uncovered the suspected fleet. Within minutes Tarawa would have the information and it'd blow the lid right off the armistice when it came out that the Kilrathi were building the ships in clear violation of the terms. The political ramifications would be explosive, he realized. At the very least Rodham's government would fall. It'd also mean that the war would be back on. He thought again of what he'd just uncovered and the images still locked on the secondary screen chilled him. The carriers were more than twice as big as anything now in the fleet. Even if every ship was still active and on line the new Kilrathi ships had the power to do anything in space. The Cats undoubtedly knew that their cover had just been blown. The only hope was to fully remobilize before the ships already completed could be moved up into action and meet them on the frontier. If they gained confederation space with our defenses down it was over. The two missiles hit the second decoy and detonated. The Stealths dropped out of masking and came to full visual, transferring their energy to neutron guns and laser. A shot lanced into the portside stabilizer of Bannockburn and Paladin pulled hard to starboard, lining up a deflection shot on one of his tormentors. He flared off half a dozen more flechette rounds, followed by two dumb fired bolts. The flechette rounds broke open, each deploying a spread of sixty thousand nail-sized shot across a hundred meter wide piece of space. The wave slammed into the Stealth, shredding it to ribbons and the ship silently detonated. The picket ships were already racing in to join the fray, their speed well up past a thousand clicks a second with maneuvering scoops fully closed. "Turning in on jump point. Get ready for uncalibrated jump in fifteen seconds!" Paladin shouted. Another laser burst hit Bannockburn dead astern, overloading the shields, cutting into the Y-axis maneuvering thrusters, and Paladin cursed as he purged the thrusters fuel lines before they detonated. He spared a quick thought for the message he sent out, hoping that Tarawa was at least still alive to get it, otherwise this whole damn thing was for naught. "How the hell did I ever get into this business?" he shouted even as the jump transit hit. "We've got