False Colors

CHAPTER 6

Flight Deck, FRLS Independence

Jump Point Three, Vaku System

0717 hours (CST), 2670.313

Jumpshock!

There was something fundamentally incompatible between living organisms and the realm of hyperspace, not powerful enough to kill but strong and unpleasant nonetheless. Nausea, dizziness, momentary disorien-tation, these were the symptoms of jumpshock, and Bondarevsky experienced them all in good measure as the Independence made the transition from the fringes of the Oecumene system to the jump point nearest Vaku’s brown dwarf companion and the derelict’s last plotted position. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes and get his bearings while fighting a feeling that reminded him of the worst hangover he’d ever awakened with. It didn’t help that his vacuum suit, designed for salvage and construction work in space, was bulky, stiff, and unwieldy compared to the issue flight suit he was used to wearing. He had a momentary flash of fear that he was about to vomit, one of the worst experiences known to man when it happened inside a suit and at times fatal if one was out in vacuum and couldn’t clear his breather. The wave of nausea passed and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Beside him Aengus Harper recovered more quickly, as younger men were apt to do. “My sainted mother always said that man wasn’t meant to travel through space, and Lord forgive me but I said she was wrong,” he said, his voice husky. “Remind me, sir, to let her know she was right.”

Across from the two men, Sparks was already playing her fingers across the keys of the small holo-projector set up between their seats. Bondarevsky had never seen her suffering from the effects of jumpshock. There were some people who claimed to be immune, and at times like this Bondarevsky would cheerfully have killed any one of them.

“Looks like everything’s going according to plan,” she commented cheerfully.

Bondarevsky blinked again and peered at the computer-generated holographic image floating in the air. He could discern the blips that represented Independence, Xenophon, and Durendal, grouped around the jump point but already beginning to shape their course inwards, toward the oversized gas giant the derelict orbited. There was nothing registering in the projection that might have been their target, only the brown dwarf and its attendant moons.

“Where’s our Kilrathi hulk?” That question came from Colonel Bhaktadil, seated beside Sparks. He didn’t have his turban on today, like the rest of them, he had his helmet ready at hand in the storage rack behind and above his seat, and his dark, curly hair looked all wrong somehow without its customary covering. “Don’t tell me we’ve come all this way for nothing!”

The marine CO had elected to go in with the squads assigned to the flight deck of the supercarrier, since that was the largest single space they’d have to secure and investigate and hence required the most marines to take it. The marines and Bondarevsky’s survey team were already strapped into the shuttle, ready to launch as soon as the all-clear was given by Kevin Tolwyn’s pilots. Other shuttles ready on the flight deck were similarly manned and set for launch. Although they had plenty of time left before they were close enough to launch, Richards and Tolwyn had ordered them to be ready to go at short notice. Even if something dangerous was waiting for them in the Vaku system, the fighting ships of the battle group might be able to lead it away while the shuttles went in to size up the situation, so preparedness was the order of the day.

“Probably obscured by the brown dwarf,” Sparks said. “You know the database better than I do, skipper. What do you think?”

Bondarevsky tapped a command into the projector controls and nodded as a trace appeared on the far side of the supergiant. “Yeah. That’s the computer estimate of where it should be, given Vision Quest’s data on orbital characteristics.” He switched it off again, leaving the original real-time plot. The four of diem studied the projection in silence as long minutes passed. At least there was no sign of a hostile reception committee, he told himself. So far, so good…

Aft of the carrier the tender Sindri popped into existence out of hyperspace, followed closely by the City of Cashel. Up ahead the leading escorts were spreading out to form a broader front, leading the way. It would take some time before the rest of the battle group came through. The huge factory ship’s jump engines were slow to charge up, and once she made it into the Vaku system her sheer bulk would limit her acceleration to a crawl. But they wouldn’t be needing the Andrew Carnegie soon. If the derelict couldn’t be salvaged, they wouldn’t need her at all.

“Fighters launch! Fighters launch!” That came from the comm channel, set to monitor squadron operations. Bondarevsky had a momentary vision of what Kevin Tolwyn must be seeing right now as his Raptor led the way off the carriers flight deck into deep space. He wished he was out there, with a bird to fly and a solid mission to carry out, instead of being cooped up in a shuttle waiting for the chance to go aboard an enemy derelict and survey it for damage. Bondarevsky wasn’t entirely sure he’d be much use at that anyway. For most of his life he’d been learning how to inflict damage on Kilrathi warships, not analyze it.

But his job wasn’t out there any more. Best he came to terms with that fact, no matter how distasteful it might be.

Raptor 300, VF-88 “Crazy Eights”

Deep Space, Vaku System

0735 hours (CST)

Commander Kevin Tolwyn felt a surge of pure adrenaline in his veins as his fighter cleared the flight deck and steadied on course toward their destination. “Raptor 300. good shot, good shot,” he reported over the comm system, letting the flight controllers know that he’d launched without difficulty.

“Roger that, three-double-zero,” came the reply. “Captain says ‘good hunting,’ Commander. And be careful.”

“Be sure to tell him I’ll be careful not to scratch the paint,” Tolwyn said. It was the kind of remark he could never have gotten away with in the Confederation Navy, admiral’s nephew or not. The casual side of life on the frontier did have a few advantages.

He waited as other heavy fighters joined him in formation off the carrier’s bow, taking the time to get the feel of the Raptor. The bird had been state-of-the-art fifteen years back, during the famous Vega campaign. Now it was fit for second-rate fleets like the Landreich’s, though Tolwyn had found it to be a sturdy, reliable craft in practice flights. He hoped it would do as well in actual combat, if and when it came to that.

“Lone Wolf, Lone Wolf, this is Doomsday. You copy?” The radio call jerked him out of his introspective mood. The last of the Raptors had left the flight deck and joined him. It was time to get the mission under way.

“Five by five, Doomsday,” he said. “You boys think you can keep up with me okay? Or should I hold back?”

“Don’t go asking for trouble, there, kid. You may be the Wing Commander now, but I remember when you were a wet-behind-the-ears newbie who didn’t know a high-g turn from a hole in the ground.”

Tolwyn chuckled. Etienne “Doomsday” Montclair was one of his oldest and best friends from back on the end run to Kilrah all those years ago. He’d been senior to Tolwyn then, a cocky veteran who tended to slam the new kid whenever the opportunity arose, but he’d been a damned good friend and a fine wingman. Unfortunately,

Doomsday had been part of the Free Corps mission to the Landreich during the period leading up to the Battle of Earth, serving under Jason Bondarevsky on the Tarawa while Tolwyn was in the thick of the action with the Confederation fleet that faced the Kilrathi at Sirius and in the Solar System. As a result, and because of his high-placed connections, Tolwyn had shot onto the fast track and advanced more quickly in rank than Doomsday. So now he was senior to Montclair in this new navy, probably once again because of his uncle’s influence, but Doomsday being Doomsday there was little chance of the Wing Commander getting a swelled head.

“Everybody stick to the game plan,” Tolwyn ordered. “Babe, are you ready to make your run?”

“That’s affirmative, skipper.” The soft contralto voice of Darlene “Babe” Babcock answered him. “Waiting for your orders.”

For a moment Tolwyn wished he’d strapped on a Hornet for today’s mission, instead of picking the Raptor. Babcock’s squadron, VF-12-more usually known as the “Flying Eyes”-was equipped with the Hornet light fighter, a fast, high-performance craft that was ideal for reconnaissance missions but limited in the fighting it could handle. Today they carried even lighter combat loads than usual to make room for a Mark VI APSP, a sensor pod containing a battery of cameras, imaging systems, and other survey gear that was normally used to conduct long-range scans ahead of a fleet or target identification runs in a planetary atmosphere. So Babcock would be taking her planes in low over the Kilrathi hulk to get a good look at the supercarrier ahead of the rest of them, while the heavier Raptors of Doomsday’s VF-88, the Crazy Eights, waited to provide cover if they ran into trouble.

Tolwyn’s instincts were still those of a combat pilot, and the recon mission had tempted him mightily. But though he still used his old handle, “Lone Wolf,” he knew that his responsibilities as a wing commander ran deeper than satisfying his personal desires. Some wing commanders would have directed operations from the carrier’s flight control center, but that would have been too much of a leap for Kevin Tolwyn. Instead he’d fly the support part of the mission, where he could sit back and oversee the whole operation but still get into the action personally if a furball developed.

It was the kind of decision he figured Jason Bondarevsky would have made…or at least he hoped so. It was hard to live up to the standards set by a man like Bondarevsky, but Tolwyn was determined to do his best.

On his tactical plot the white dots representing the Flying Eyes were beginning to sweep past the green symbols of VF-88, gathering speed as they accelerated at maximum military thrust. Tolwyn kept his eye on the screen, letting the Raptor maintain course and speed on autopilot while he devoted his full attention to the unfolding recon flight.

As the minutes crept past a new indicator came alive on the plotting board, a fuzzy red symbol that indicated a large and potentially hostile target.

“There she is,” Babcock announced calmly. “Tally ho!”

“Maintain your watch,” Tolwyn reminded her. “Don’t get so wrapped up in the target that you miss any loiterers who might be planning to crash the party.”

“Roger that. Snake, Lefty, you two are on high guard. The rest of you peel off according to the recon plan. Stick to your wingmen and make sure your cameras are hot. Go!”

“Good luck to you all,” Tolwyn muttered under his breath.

Flight Deck, FRLS Independence

Deep Space, Vaku System

0805 hours (CST)

“Look at that thing,” Bondarevsky said softly, almost reverently. “My God, just look at it. I’ve never really been able to just sit back and watch when one of these was on my screens. I was too busy dodging Double-A-S to do anything more than fly and fight.”

Sparks had shifted from the tactical plot to a realtime computer-enhanced relay from the sensor pod mounted on the bow of Babe Babcock’s Hornet. The four officers grouped around the three-dimensional display had almost lost track of time as they waited and watched, but now, at last, the fighters were getting a good view of the derelict spacecraft.

“Seems kinda funny not to be locking on,” one of the pilots said over the commlink, echoing Bondarevsky’s sentiments.

“Keep your eyes on your displays and your mind on the job, Drifter,” Babcock growled. “They’re not paying us to sightsee out here…that’s why God invented sensor pods.”

“Aw, Babe, you got no romance in your soul,” Drifter replied in a mock-sad voice. Then, a moment later, he switched to a completely business-like voice and manner. “You see the spike on the emissions readout?”

“Yeah. I copy it. Her shields may be down, but she’s got power running through her grid. Not much, but power.”

“Stay focused, people,” Kevin Tolwyn broke in. According to the latest position check, his Raptor squadron was still five minutes from the hulk, and Bondarevsky could hear a trace of nervousness in his voice. He knew the feeling, the fear that something could go down that would cost good pilots’ lives while the support squadron was still killing off velocity to match vectors and join an engagement.

Sparks leaned closer to the display. “I’d say something blew up pretty damn close to her, skipper,” she said. “See the pattern of damage along her forward hull?”

“Yeah.” Bondarevsky frowned. “I don’t think that’s what did her in, though, Sparks. Doesn’t look like the blast damage did all that much to any critical areas of the ship. Just breached the hull in about thirty or forty places, that’s all. Her shields were already down when that happened, or nothing much would have got through.”

“That’s battle damage there, Captain,” Bhaktadil said, pointing to the shattered blister on the forward part of the carrier’s massive superstructure. That was the main bridge, Bondarevsky thought. “All the signs of a burnthrough on the shields and a fairly heavy missile strike following it up.”

“Looks like our Cat friends had some unfriendly company, all right,” Bondarevsky said. “Those two cruisers must have caught up with her and given her more than she could handle. Pretty unusual for a ship-to-ship battle to develop around a carrier, though. Her fighter screens should have kept cruisers at arm’s length.”

“Let me check something, skipper,” Sparks said. Her fingers played across the controls, calling up the images from a different Hornet. “This is Hornet One-oh-nine,” she said. “He’s assigned to skim past the port side flight deck.”

“Sweet Mother of God,” Aengus Harper said out loud. “Will you look at that bit of a tangle.”

The image being relayed now hardly looked like a flight deck entrance at all. The tangle of wreckage around the entry port was twisted and blackened, and beyond, only partially glimpsed as the Hornet flashed past, it looked as if the interior of the flight deck had suffered equally serious damage. Bondarevsky frowned. If they had to put all that to rights, it was going to take time and effort on a Herculean scale.

“Looks like this flight deck was knocked out,” Bondarevsky said. “Might have been a lucky hit, or even a landing accident by one of the Cat pilots. Hard to tell.”

Harper had a pocket computer terminal out. “The way I’m rememberin’ the database, sir, it was the port side flight deck that was reported hit during the battle over Landreich,” he said. “Aye, here it is, indeed. Blitzkreig scored on the old girl late in the battle by making an unexpected run in to point blank range and firing a barrage of torpedoes. Barely escaped the scrapyard herself, but Himself has a charmed life when he gets out there in the thick of it all.”

That sounded like typical Kruger tactics, all right. Brilliant, unconventional, daring, and suicidal. “This is the starboard side,” Bondarevsky said. “No wonder they got in a ship-to-ship duel. It looks like they went into battle with only one flight deck operating, and lost that early on. Probably to a pilot who blew a trap. If she only had a few birds out for scouting when she blundered into the two cruisers, it would have turned into an old-fashioned slugfest. And big as she is, that supercarrier doesn’t carry all that much offensive weaponry.”

“Enough to take out the two cruisers, though,” Bhaktadil commented. “But not in time to save herself.”

“We might find a bunch of her fighters intact in the hanger decks, skipper,” Sparks pointed out. “Assuming they were snugged down there when the blast swept through the flight deck, and not already up and ready for an Alpha Strike.“

“Maybe so,” Bondarevsky said. “But it’s too early to say. We’ll have to eyeball it in person to know what’s possible over there. Looks like it really is a derelict, not bait in some Cat tactician’s trap, so I guess we’ll be going across. But I don’t like the looks of her. That battle damage is pretty damned extensive. It’s not going to be easy to put her back in fighting trim again.”

“Tell me, Sparks, me darling, is that computer gettin’ any trace of the signal Captain Springweather picked up on her visit?” Harper gave a casual grin and a self-deprecating shrug, as if to apologize for bringing the matter up.

“Nothing,” she said. “Not even a carrier wave.”

“So…if there were survivors, they’re either dead, rescued, or their transmitter’s out,” Bhaktadil said. “Radiation in an unshielded ship would play merry hell with her electronics. Probably fried most of the systems within a few minutes of the shields going down. like taking an EMP from a nuke-even with internal armor as redundant protection against radiation surges, you’ve got about as much chance of keeping electronic components in service in that as a Cat has of keeping his claws sheathed on a hunt.”

“Good point,” Bondarevsky said. “So if someone did set up a transmitter at some point, or get one of the shipboard comm systems operating, it wouldn’t have had much of a life expectancy.”

“That’s the way I figure it,” the colonel agreed. “Frankly, I think it’s confirmation that there aren’t any survivors over there. If they did have a few compartments rigged with makeshift shield generators to block out the radiation, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have kept repairing their transmitter. The fact that it’s silent now means there’s nobody there to repair it. For whatever reason.“

“Well, that’s good news, at least.” Bondarevsky studied the images in silence for a few moments. “I hope all our problems turn out to be this easy to deal with.”

“Now hear this! Now hear this!” The voice of the carrier’s Flight Control Officer rang through the shuttle. “All shuttles prepare for launch. Repeating, all shuttles on the flight line and prepare to launch!”

“Looks like the admirals have been reaching the same conclusions we have,” Bhaktadil commented, showing startlingly white teeth as he grinned. “Now is when we start earning our pay, I suspect.”

“If I know Richards and Tolwyn, and believe me I do, they’d have proceeded to this phase of the op even if every Cat in this part of the sector was swarming out there with guns blazing,” Bondarevsky told the Gurkha. “They didn’t bring us all this way to turn around and go home without seeing what’s over there.”

Inwardly he could only hope that their enthusiasm for winning a supercarrier for the Landreich wouldn’t warp their judgment and blind them to what needed to be done.

The shuttle quivered a little as it rose from the flight deck on thrusters, but that was the only sign they were under power. It wasn’t anything like a fighter launch, the sudden high-g thrust that leaked through the onboard inertial compensators and slammed you back into your seat as you leapt outward into the void. Slow and stately, the shuttle left Independence, fourth in line and followed by the rest of the survey contingent, shaping a course for the enigmatic hulk that circled Vaku’s gas giant and drew the humans in like the lure of a Siren’s song.

Starboard Flight Deck, ex-KIS Karga

Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System

0849 hours (CST)

Bondarevsky was glad that he was a passenger on this shuttle run, and not up in the cockpit trying to bring her in. They watched the approach in the holo-prqjected display, and he found himself holding his breath as they made the final cautious course corrections to clear the wreckage that partially obscured the entry port on the starboard side flight deck of the Karga. In some ways it would have been easier than a standard carrier trap, since there was no force field across the port to complicate the final seconds of maneuvering and no internal gravity fields to deal with once they were within the confines of the ship. But without guidance from the carrier, without a working optical signals system, and most of all without an unobstructed flight deck it was a tricky bit of flying to bring the shuttle aboard.

When they finally touched down and the shuttle pilot cut in the magnetic clamps and announced “Down and safe,” Bondarevsky let out an audible sigh of relief.

He wasn’t the only one. He’d forgotten they were all wearing full pressure suits and helmets now, and their radios picked up every breath. Even the hardbitten Bhaktadil seemed happy that the flight was over and they’d made it in one piece.

“Marines!” the colonel said crisply. “By the numbers! Prepare to deploy!”

“Sir!” That was Gunnery Sergeant Martin, Bhaktadil’s senior NCO. “All right, people, look lively there! Positions for boarding! Standard dispersal pattern! Move it! Move it!”

As the twenty-eight armored marines scrambled to take their positions by each of the shuttle’s three exits, Bhaktadil spoke in calm, even tones. “Remember, the gravity’s off-line out there. You’re operating in zero-g and no atmosphere, so make sure you take it into account. Keep your eyes open-and don’t just look for trouble on the deck. Check all the angles, and then check them again. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” came the reply, all the men speaking as one. Bondarevsky was impressed. Kruger’s marines, at least, knew how to function as an elite unit should. They waited for the air to bleed off from the passenger compartment. In situations like this, a potentially hostile action in vacuum, no one wanted to waste time going through conventional airlocks, so in effect the entire rear compartment became one for the duration of the op.

“All right, you sons-of-Cats,” Martin said at last, after the tone had sounded in their headsets to tell them they were in vacuum and the shuttle pilot was ready to open up the hatches. “Are you ready to earn your paychecks today?”

“Hoo-YAH!” the marines responded, loud enough to make Bondarevsky’s helmet radio crackle.

“Ready to deploy, sir!” Martin told Bhaktadil.

“Mr. Ortega.” Bhaktadil’s words were directed at the shuttle’s pilot. “Drop the hatches…now!”

All three hatches-rear, port, and starboard-swung open at the same time. Two of the six fire teams went out through each exit, the men diving through into zero-g and twisting right and left in turn, weapons ready. The lack of gravity extended those dives considerably, but they were expert at this kind of drill and used the handholds outside the shuttle to check their progress so smoothly that it looked easy, though Bondarevsky knew for a fact that it was one of the trickiest moves a man in zero-g had to make.

They kept their weapons at the ready until the deployment was complete and the shuttle was ringed by armed men, scanning their surroundings in all directions. Martin ran them through a roll call, and each man sounded off with an “All clear!” as he responded. Finally Martin reported to the colonel.

“Initial deployment complete, sir!” he said. “All clear.”

“Very good, Sergeant,” Bhaktadil said. “Two-Six, this is Marine-Six. Do you copy?”

Two-Six was the call sign of the lieutenant commanding the other squad of Second Platoon assigned to the starboard flight deck reconnaissance. The shuttle carrying his men had approached from the opposite end of the flight deck, over Karga’s stern.

“Copy you five-by-five,” Lieutenant Kate Loomis responded. “Both squads deployed. All clear.”

“Very good, Two-Six. Proceed with phase two. Make sure your people don’t mistake one of us for a Cat.”

“Phase two. Roger.”

“Sergeant Martin, move them out. Expand perimeter to meet with the other squad. Stay sharp, people.”

Bondarevsky and the rest of the noncombatant team remained inside the shuttle, following the progress of the marines by their radio calls and images relayed from their suit cameras, displayed now as flat pictures on their helmets’ HUD screens. Switching from one marines viewpoint to another as their careful, leapfrogging advance unfolded at an efficient but unhurried rate, Bondarevsky was able to get an initial idea of the situation on the flight deck long before the area was secured.

There was no doubt the flight deck had suffered terrible damage. Much of the interior around the entry port was filled with twisted wreckage, jagged chunks of the bulkheads torn loose in a pattern that could only have been caused by a fair-sized explosion right at the mouth of the portal. He could also make out what looked like a part of the fuselage of a Kilrathi Darket-class light fighter that had smashed up against one bulkhead, probably not the cause of the disaster but a victim sitting on the flight deck as the explosion ripped down the vast chamber. Details, though, were hard to pick up on the video images. They’d have to go in for a closer look to see the full extent of the damage.

Finally Bhaktadil called for phase three of the op. This was the signal that his men had secured the flight deck well enough for the survey team to risk deploying and getting to work. Of course, two squads weren’t much to hold a compartment that stretched nearly the full 920-meter length of the carrier, much less probe all the possible places where the enemy might be hiding, but the first sweep had turned up no sign of the Kilrathi…none that were alive, at least.

The dead were another story.

Bondarevsky only gradually became aware of the bodies that littered the flight deck. There were dozens of them, some floating free, others trapped under wreckage. In many cases it was hard to be sure he was even looking at something that had once been alive. Many of the flight deck crew had been caught unsuited when the airlock field collapsed. Explosive decompression was no prettier an end to a Kilrathi than it was to a human being.

He fought back nausea as the impact of the dead grew. For most of his life Jason Bondarevsky had been trained to kill Kilrathi, and he’d been good at his job. But seeing this…

More than ever, all he wanted was an end to it.

“Survey Leader to Team Four,” the voice of Admiral Richards gave him something other than bodies to concentrate on, and Bondarevsky was relieved at the distraction. “Progress report.”

“We’ve only just started our sweep, Admiral,” Bondarevsky told him. “The techies are busy getting the portable shield generators in place so we don’t have to worry about the rads. So far…general impressions only.”

“You’re taking your time down there, Jason,” Richards said with a hint of irritation plain in his voice.

“It’s a big flight deck, sir,” he replied. “The jarheads only gave us the phase three go-ahead a few minutes ago.”

“Right. Sorry. We’ve been at it for about half an hour up here.”

“How does it look, sir?” he asked.

“Flag bridge is mostly intact,” Richards told him. “A little peripheral damage, but it was never hit in the fight.”

“Casualties?”

“God, yes.” The admiral’s voice sounded suddenly old. “Looks like they had a full crew manning the stations here. Twenty or so, including Admiral Cakg himself. They’re dead.”

“How?”

“Well, it looks like one of them was killed in a brawl. An old adversary of mine in the Intel game, Baron Grathal nar Khirgh. One of Thrakhath’s favorite toadies. We wondered what the hell had happened when he dropped out of sight last year. From the looks of things he lived up to a long and well-deserved reputation for letting his mouth get the better of his brain, and somebody stuck something sharp through his throat.”

“And the rest, sir?”

“Suicide, son,” Richards said heavily. “From the admiral right down to the most junior console jockey, they all suicided. The full-blown Zu’kara ritual.“

“God…”

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too. The best I configure they knew they weren’t going to get clear of the radiation before they took lethal dosages, so they all decided to give it all for the glory of the Emperor.” Richards gave a humorless, rasping chuckle. “What a waste. The Emperor probably didn’t last more’n a week or two longer than they did.”

“Down here it’s battle casualties so far,” Bondarevsky said. “The flight deck took a real pounding. I’m not too sure we can get it put back together, sir. It’ll be a hell of a lot of work.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions yet. Do your survey. We’ll compare notes later.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Bondarevsky had just switched off the comm channel to the admiral when Harper attracted his attention. “Sir, I’m thinkin‘ we’ve got something strange goin’ on here.”

He made a graceful zero-g leap and crossed to where the lieutenant was working, a relatively undamaged area where a line of lockers overlooked one of the main elevators that lifted planes up from the hangar deck below. The doors were labeled in the familiar wedge-shaped Kilrathi script. Bondarevsky centered his suit video camera on one of the signs and cut in the computer imaging and translation program that operated in conjunction with the mainframe back aboard the shuttle. A moment later the computer overlaid the image on his helmet HUD with an English translation: Survival Stores.

“What’ve you got, Mr. Harper?”

“The locker’s empty, sir. So are three more I’ve checked so far.” He paused, but when Bondarevsky made no response he went on. “I’ve never heard of anyone not keepin‘ his survival kits stocked and ready on the flight deck, sir. One locker might’ve run out if they were passin’ them out to pilots about to launch on a mission, but three in a row?”

Bondarevsky nodded inside his helmet. “I see what you mean. Might be we have survivors after all, plundering the supplies to stay alive.“

“It’s more than supplies, skipper,” Sparks joined them, swarming along a line of handholds looking for all the world like a high-tech monkey climbing a tree. “Look over there.” She pointed. “There should be fuel pumps and a rack of external environmental feeds over there to service a plane waiting for launch. You can see where it used to be, but it’s gone. And not from battle damage, either. The blast effects didn’t do much this far in. Somebody dismounted a couple of tons of servicing equipment and hauled it out of here.”

“Survival gear I can see,” Bondarevsky mused. “But what would a survivor want with that stuff? Unless he was trying to get a bird up…”

“Maybe somebody did,” Harper said. “Packed up and left after the rest of the ship went belly-up.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Sparks said. “If they had a working plane, they didn’t need to pack up the gear and take it with them. And where else on the ship would they have a plane to service that would make them come here and strip out this stuff?”

“The other flight deck?” Harper suggested.

“No, I already checked with the team there,” Sparks told him. “Not only is it in even worse shape than this one, so that a launch or a landing is pretty near impossible for anyone but a particularly depressed lemming, but they’re missing all signs of their support gear too. It’s been stripped out, same as this.”

“I don’t like this at all,” Bondarevsky said. “It’s not so much a threat as a mystery…but I’ve never liked mysteries involving Cats. Too often they lead to one of their little schemes, like the fake armistice before the Battle of Earth or that elaborate espionage role they put together for Hobbes. Okay, good spotting, you two. Get back to work, and keep your eyes open. I’m going to have a chat with the colonel about the possibility of Kilrathi hanging around here.”

He didn’t have a chance to follow through on his intention, though. Before he could even spot Bhaktadil and Martin, his helmet commlink sounded an emergency tone.

“All teams, all teams!” Richards sounded tense. “This is Team Leader. Return to shuttles and secure! Abort survey! Repeat, abort survey and secure aboard shuttles!”

“All right, people,” Bondarevsky called. “You heard the man. Get aboard!”

Harper, Sparks, and the ten-man team from Diaz’s salvage group were already in motion, and Bondarevsky heard Bhaktadil issuing terse instructions to his marines on their tactical channel. He watched as his people started back for the shuttle in haste, and switched off all his comm frequencies except the command link to Richards.

“What’s going on, Admiral?” he asked.

“The Hornets picked up an incoming bogie,” Richards said. “Moving slow, but on a course to intercept us in another fifteen minutes. They’re not answering calls, and there’s no IFF signal.”

“Any idea what it is?”

“Not a clue yet, but I’m not taking any chances. I’ve got Babcock and her wingman closing in for a visual ID, but I want everybody ready to clear out in case that blip turns out to be a missile or an attack bird coming in to give us an old-fashioned Cat-style welcome.“

“Good idea, sir,” Bondarevsky said. “But I doubt it’s a missile…”

“Maybe not. But I keep remembering that the bomb that took out Kilrah was small enough to be carried in the munitions load of a heavy fighter. And big as this old rustbucket is, she ain’t exactly planet-sized.”