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

to rally our race to their standards, and that will mean more fighting we can ill afford when our first need is to rebuild what we lost when Kilrah was destroyed. The Codices teach us that the first duty is to the Race, and even my claim to the throne is less important in this pass than giving you the means to stop Ragark before he rekindles the fighting. I will do what I can, and hope that it is enough."

Bondarevsky looked from the Prince to Tolwyn and back again. It seemed there was someone willing to take Tolwyn at his word.

Admiral's Ready Room, ex-KIS Karga Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System 0721 hours (CST), 2670.318

"That's as ready as it's ever likely to get. If you ask me, though, we should all just turn around and head back to the carrier."

Bondarevsky shook his head inside his helmet before he realized that Graham couldn't see the movement. "I don't like this any better than you do, Commander," he said aloud. "But now that we've come this far I think we'd better go ahead and give it a shot. As long as Murragh agrees."

"I do," the Kilrathi prince said.

They had led a small team of volunteers aboard Karga to attempt to retrieve the computer codes from the admiral's day cabin adjacent to the flag bridge of the battered supercarrier. This time there was no marine security detachment. Murragh had to be there, of course, and despite his continued protests Graham had volunteered to come as well, either out of pure friendship for the prince or because he felt the need to continue sharing the danger with his erstwhile fellow castaway. Bondarevsky had decided that someone from the Goliath Project leadership needed to be part of the operation; they couldn't ask strangers to take risks they weren't willing to face themselves. A pair of computer specialists from Diaz's salvage team rounded out the boarding party. Kevin Tolwyn and Aengus Harper had volunteered to fly the shuttle that had brought them across, but Bondarevsky had ordered them away once the salvage team had suited up and crossed over to the derelict. He wasn't about to put those two at risk.

If things went sour, there was no sense in risking anyone who didn't have to be there. At that, he wished Graham had stayed behind, especially since the man continued to voice all the doubtful sentiments Bondarevsky was trying to keep from thinking of himself. But he'd proven himself invaluable since coming aboard, his engineering expertise doubly valuable because he'd acquired a working knowledge of Kilrathi technology and how to make it work with human gear.

"Well," the engineer said, "I guess it's true what they say. Insanity really is contagious. Let's get it over with."

"Are you ready, Mr. Mayhew?" Bondarevsky asked the senior of the two salvage crew computer specialists.

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure we've got this terminal isolated from the rest of the net." The technician didn't sound very sure of himself, but Bondarevsky sympathized with his plight. The Kilrathi design philosophy emphasized multiply redundant systems, and it was difficult to be sure they had disconnected the flag officer's personal computer from the rest of the network of computers that made up Karga's system. "I just hope we've got the power connections right. If we've screwed something up on the conversion, it'll fry the whole unit and we'll be right back where we started."

"It's right," Graham said. "Believe me, I've jury-rigged enough combinations of ConFleet and Imperial hardware to know what I'm doing. Right, Murragh?"

The kil's response had a mocking note. "At least you've improved since the first few times, my friend," he said

Since they were reluctant to tap into the ship's power grid to activate the terminal, they had decided to use a portable power pack instead. But the power specifications for Kilrathi and Terran systems were different, and Graham had been forced to improvise an adapter—he called it a "Nargrast Special"—to make the link-up possible.

"Ready on the monitor," Kristine Voorhies said from the far side of the compartment. She had hooked a computer analyzer into another terminal, one still connected to the system, and was ready to track the behavior of Karga's network as they started to work. Hopefully she would be able to warn them if anything they did had an effect beyond the single terminal, but Bondarevsky privately doubted it.

"Power . . . now," Murragh said quietly, inserting a data chip in the receptacle beside the monitor.

"Power is on," Mayhew announced.

A yellow light came on beside the terminal, and after a long moment the screen glowed. Alien letters flowed across the screen.

Bondarevsky realized he was holding his breath, and forced himself to relax. He almost succeeded.

"The terminal is functioning," Murragh said quietly. His voice was calm and level, and Bondarevsky envied his control. For a young officer on his first deep-space assignment, he was one cool customer. If he ever did make it to the Imperial throne, he was likely to prove an excellent ruler.

"Now for the hard part," Graham muttered. "Cross your fingers, folks."

The Kilrathi computer network functioned differently from the systems used on Terran ships. Confederation computers tended to be highly centralized, fast, efficient, but vulnerable. Computer rooms were heavily armored and shielded, and a complete back-up system was installed in case the primary computer went down at a critical moment. On Kilrathi ships, though, numerous separate computers were linked together, like cells in a living brain spread out through the entire ship. Response time was slightly slower, but large chunks of the net could be knocked out without significantly impairing the computer functions of the vessel, and the network was capable of rerouting connections to bypass damaged or destroyed areas.

With Admiral dai Nokhtak's personal terminal isolated from the rest of the ship, they had no access to the network. That was exactly the way they wanted it, given the danger from the self-destruct mechanism. What they hoped they would be able to get at, though,