Wing Commander #07 False Color by William Forstchen (best books to read in life .txt) 📕

of instructions from Admiral Tolwyn, who ordered him to conduct a thorough survey of the crashed escort while he was there. Accompanied by Travis, Harper, and Graham, Bondarevsky explored the interior of the shattered vessel, recording everything possible with portable computer-imaging rigs. He supposed that Tolwyn wanted to salvage parts and spares from the downed ship, though Bondarevsky wondered what good it would do with the Karga barred to them courtesy of the quiescent but still potentially lethal destruct order ticking away inside its computer banks.

Still, he carried out his orders. There wasn't much to see inside the escort. Graham and his colleagues had pulled out most of the onboard systems and stripped them down for parts themselves, leaving the empty compartments to be used as quarters or storerooms. Where they'd left systems in place, like the auxiliary power generators, they'd made any number of repairs using anything and everything at hand. Bondarevsky had to credit the survivors with plenty of imagination, but he didn't want to even think about the number of ways Graham had put the whole colony of survivors at risk by his improvised solutions to technical problems.

Eventually, everything started to sort itself out. The shuttles began arriving to evacuate the survivors, and the technical survey was wrapped up. Bondarevsky ordered some of the personnel intended for Karga's crew to come down to the planet's surface and continue the work he'd started. They would cannibalize as much as they could from the various Kilrathi systems, including the intact fighter craft and the useless shuttles.

For himself, though, he was pleased when he could finally take a shuttle back up to the City of Cashel. He had stayed on the planet less than nine hours all told, and he found it hard to believe that anyone could have lasted nine months there and stayed sane.

Whatever was fated for the Goliath Project, he would be glad to get back to Tarawa . . . Independence

Council Hall, Government House, Newburg Landreich, Landreich System 1830 hours (CST)

"The motion to adjourn has been moved and seconded!" Max Kruger bellowed. "All those in favor, say `aye'!" There was a chorus of assent. "Opposed, 'nay'!"

There were probably nearly as many delegates in the Council Hall who wanted to continue the debate, but Kruger pounded the gavel. "In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it! This session is adjourned." He pounded his gavel, wishing it could be on a few heads belonging to members of the so-called Loyal Opposition. Muttering, grumbling, arguing, the members of the Council of Delegates began to drift toward the door. Kruger sat down in one of the chairs beside the speaker's podium, feeling exhausted. He would much rather have faced a Kilrathi warship armed to the teeth and swooping in for an attack than put up with another of these interminable meetings of the Council.

Today it had been particularly bad. First there had been the move to cut funds for the refitting of the Landreich's newest carrier purchased from the Confederation Navy, formerly Saipan, now renamed Arbroath in honor of one of the earliest declarations of independence in human history. The charge to block the refit program had been led by Councilman Galbraith's party, who seemed determined to keep the military expansion program from getting any further. Kruger had nightmares of what might happen if they learned about the Goliath Project, especially if it turned out the Kilrathi ship couldn't be refitted. With the amount of money and personnel he'd channeled into the effort, a failure would be enough to bring the whole government down—if Galbraith and his faction discovered what Goliath was all about. So far it was simply one line on the supplemental military appropriations bill, classified top secret.

Enough delegates still supported the government - Kruger - to go along with his assertion that the project wasn't something to be discussed in open Council. But it would only take a few shifts in party alliances to open up Galbraith's demands for a hearing. . . .

He could only hope that Galbraith's son would remember his military oath and put the Navy ahead of his family's political ambitions. One of the key reasons for keeping the whole refit project compartmentalized in the Vaku system with only minimal contact to and from the capitol was the need for secrecy—not so much from the Kilrathi, though that was important too, but from Kruger's own political opponents at home. Sometimes they were a worse enemy than all the Cats from here to the Galactic Rim.

He'd overcome the budget fights by sheer force of personality. In the early days of the Republic he'd presided over the writing of Landreich's constitution, and Kruger had managed to give the Presidency considerable power. He or a chosen Speaker had to preside over all meetings of the Council, which gave the Executive Branch quite a bit of control over the direction of debates. But it was exactly that facet of the constitution that was forcing him to stay at the capitol now, when he really wanted to be elsewhere. Enough of Kruger's political supporters were dead or defected to make it difficult to find anyone he could really trust to run the meetings of the Council, but Kruger himself was still a voice many heeded.

But it made it hard to do his job as he perceived it. Max Kruger was a fighting man, first and foremost, and if he couldn't be leading a fleet into battle he at least felt the need to be supervising the defense of the Republic. His advisers had probably been right in urging him not to accompany the Goliath mission. Richards, Tolwyn, and the others would be out there for months if they had to refit the derelict, and there wasn't that much Kruger could do to justify being away from the capitol for so long. But he should at least have been able to take a battle group out for a tour of the frontier. Ilios,