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

"There are many dissimilarities in technologies to be overcome, whatever you are trying to do," Murragh said. "If you had the assistance of Kilrathi officers who knew his systems, your work would be speeded considerably."

Richards frowned. "I'm not sure . . ."

"If you accept, you will have each kil's word of honor to support your work honestly and fully," Murragh said. "My people will not attempt to sabotage your efforts. I have already told Bondarevsky and Graham that I view your people as my allies against Ragark, who would set himself up as an usurper on the throne that belongs to my hrai. Cannot an ally assist an ally in a venture to their mutual advantage?"

Graham spoke up. "He's serious, Admiral. Hell, I wouldn't mind joining your little party myself, as a volunteer, since I'm not likely to be getting a ride back to Terra anytime soon to report in. And me and my guys and gals have a lot of experience in splicing Cat and Ape gear together without having it blow up in our faces. We're willing to help any way we can. And I think it would be to your advantage to have us on board."

Richards didn't answer right away, and Bondarevsky could see that he was wavering between the paranoia that went with his training and the hope that he might obtain precious help.

"I think you should consider it seriously, Admiral," Bondarevsky said quietly. "Let's face it, these folks could make all the difference in actually making this harebrained scheme work. Let's sign them up."

After a moment, Richards nodded. "I think you're right, Jason. Very well, Lord Murragh. Commander Graham. Welcome to the Goliath Project."

CHAPTER 11

"No Warrior should fear honest labor, as no Warrior should shirk onerous duty."

from the First Codex04:22:10

FRLS Karga Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System 2670.321-355

They had plenty of volunteers from amongst the Nargrast survivors, both human and Kilrathi. All of Murragh's Cadre officers were eager to follow their prince's lead. That, Bondarevsky decided, was only to be expected. They were loyal to the hrai of his uncle, the late Admiral dal Nokhtak, and Murragh was now the last living representative of that clan in addition to being heir presumptive to the throne. Their branch of the hrai had long been rivals of Thrakhath's, so they had no great feelings of loss regarding their erstwhile war leader. As for Ragark, he was considered something of an upstart, and evidently wasn't thought of as a proper Kilrathi warrior at all. So the collection of Kilrathi experts were willing to mobilize at Murragh's word to aid the humans in restoring the ship. Their comrades, crewmen from the crashed escort and a number of surviving fighter pilots off the carrier, were more suspicious. A few, taking their cue from the embittered Kuraq and others like him, refused to have anything to do with the hated "apes." They remained in open confinement aboard the City of Cashel while their comrades got down to work.

The Goliath Project staff needed all the help they could muster, and inside of a few days the assistance of Murragh's people was already proving invaluable.

Time after time it seemed as if they would not be able to get the job done, but time after time the men, women, and kili working on the Karga rose to the challenge and somehow made things work. Bondarevsky was continually amazed at the adaptability humans and Kilrathi could bring to bear when they tried. Slowly, painfully, it began to look as if the Karga would one day sail the void once again.

With the tender docked and the bodies rounded up and cleared, the first job was to repair Karga's shattered hull. The ship had suffered major penetration damage in a score of places, and minor holes in countless other compartments. The tender's force fields allowed the carrier to retain an atmosphere, but the hull needed to be patched as soon as possible so that the energy expended on keeping the atmosphere from leaking away could be used for more productive purposes.

So the first order of business was brute-force space construction on a massive scale. It started with survey crews swarming over the hull, measuring, recording, locating the major breaks in the hull and transmitting detailed images of each to computer records aboard the dozens of shuttles detailed to support their work. The computers analyzed these records and produced detailed specifications for the sections of hull plating needed to fill the gaps. A pair of naval architects attached to Diaz's team pored over each of the computer models as they were completed, double-checking the work. Humans were far slower than computers, but it still sometimes took an organic mind to make sense of engineering designed for organic life, and despite the bottleneck created by these reviews Admiral Richards overruled Tolwyn and ordered the process to go on.

The factory ship Andrew Carnegie had settled into orbit close by the Karga. Swarms of smaller carried craft had been dispatched to Nargrast loaded with automated vehicles and small supervisory crews. They set up camp near the site where Graham and Murragh had settled with their castaways, the vehicles ranging outwards in search of needed raw materials according to a list provided by the computer analysis of the needed components and modified by Diaz's team where the computer parameters couldn't be easily met. Unfortunately Nargrast was poor in many of the elements that would have been best suited for the job, but there was plenty of iron ore, and that was still the basis of the most basic parts of the hull that needed repair.

The vehicles excavated and extracted ores where they were discovered, carried them back to base, and loaded them aboard the ships waiting there. A constant string of vessels operated back and forth between Nargrast and the Andrew Carnegie, endlessly feeding the insatiable demands of the factory vessel for the raw materials necessary for