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 ъ&ъ 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."
     "ъeturn 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."

        CHAPTEъ 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  ъichards,  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 ъichards'  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," ъichards said, "it's tucked into the forward cargo bay."
     Paladin grinned with delight
     Jason  watched the  familiar greeting  with surprise. Admiral ъichards,
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 Ч 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" ъichards  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," ъichards 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," ъichards said quietly, closing
the door behind them.
     "Something then with signal intelligence, is that it?"
     ъichards 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 ъichards 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 ъichards 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," ъichards 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."  ъichards
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," ъichards 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  ъagitagha 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.  ъemember  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 mi