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

the final battle and the effects of long neglect and interaction with the brown dwarf's radiation. Finally Tolwyn, furious at the continued delays, had relieved him of duty after a blazing row. His choice to replace Kent was little short of brilliant. Donald Scott Graham, late of TCS Juneau, became Karga's new chief engineer. It was highly irregular—technically the man was still on active duty with the ConFleet, though they didn't know he was even alive. But Tolwyn himself retained his admiral's authority, and as ranking Confederation officer in the star system accepted Graham's resignation from the service, placed him in the inactive reserve, and then swore him in as a Landreich officer. Hopefully they would be able to sort out the paperwork later. In the meantime, though, Karga acquired a Chief Engineer who knew exactly how to go about the re-commissioning job. Many of his solutions to problems skirted the regs in more ways than one, but they got the job done. Slowly, the engineering department began to catch up with the others as Graham took hold of his new responsibilities.

The end of the year was fast approaching, with two months of work behind them, and the Goliath Project crew could look back at solid progress. But the work ahead remained daunting. They had the second flight deck to put back into service, and all of the Kilrathi planes to check, overhaul, and put into action—if and when they could get pilots trained on the craft. Graham had the fusion plants back on-line and was working on the shield generators, but these were in particularly bad shape and were likely to be slow. In the interim they continued to rely on Sindri for anti-radiation shielding, but the tender's extended shields couldn't handle combat conditions, and until they could put up a reliable combat-rated force field the carrier wasn't anything more than a particularly large and unwieldy dock floating in space. And as yet nothing had been done about her engines, maneuver drives and the hyperspace jump system.

Still, it was progress, more than Bondarevsky, for one, had ever believed possible at the outset. Another few months and they might actually have a fighting ship.

If, in fact, Ragark gave them another few months.

Operations Planning Center, FRLS Karga Orbiting Vaku VII, Vaku System 1445 hours (CST), 2670.356

It was a measure of their progress that they now could hold their conferences aboard Karga, rather than assembling aboard Independence. The Operations Planning Center for the supercarrier was located adjacent to the admiral's ready room and the flag bridge, and was considerably more impressive than the escort carrier's cozy conference room. In the center of the large chamber was a holographic projection tank that could display anything from tactical dispositions of a squadron to starcharts of entire sectors. Seats rose in tiers on all four sides of the oval compartment, allowing senior officers from several ships in a battle group to attend the briefing at the same time. Each person had a computer terminal attached to his seat which allowed him to call up details from the holo-tank, and there was an excellent intercom system that allowed everyone, no matter where he or she was in the room, to take full part in the discussions.

Jason Bondarevsky had chosen a seat near the top tier by the door, well out of the way. He'd learned to watch and listen at these conferences, but saved his input for times when he could tackle Richards or Tolwyn in private. Too many voices arguing over priorities or procedures was a sure recipe for chaos, and the Goliath staff had proven this on more than one occasion over the last two months.

Richards was in the place reserved for the Kilrathi admiral, near the head of the oval in a private box seat something like a small throne. Tolwyn had a less impressive version of the same accommodations at the other end of the holo-tank, the spot where a Kilrathi intelligence or political officer would have been accommodated in an Imperial vessel.

The rest of the room was well-filled. This particular conference was far more extensive than the usual daily briefings, including officers from other ships of the battle group as well as the carrier's department heads and other important members of the team. The progress made to date had allowed Richards to convene this meeting to begin a new phase of the project.

"All right, people, the sooner we get started the sooner we can get out of here." Richards' voice came through clearly over the intercom headset Bondarevsky, like the rest of the assembled staff, was wearing. The original Kilrathi earpieces had been too large and bulky for humans to use, so Lieutenant Vivaldi, the Communications Officer, had raided the City of Cashel for a supply of marine tactical transceivers. Murragh and his fellow Kilrathi wore the original gear. They were clustered on one side of the holo-tank, a block of nonhumans who somehow seemed out of place now on their own ship. "Mr. Bondarevsky. Status?"

Bondarevsky cleared his throat. "Primary Flight Control will be on-line this afternoon, or so Mr. Diaz has assured me." He glanced toward the salvage specialist, who gave a little self-satisfied nod. "That means that by tomorrow morning we'll be able to start pretending we're a real carrier. If the sensors behave themselves, we should be able to track anything in this part of the system, although I'm still worried about the interference from the brown dwarf's strange radiation. A brown dwarf just isn't supposed to cause this much trouble. And the ring system still drives our sensor probes crazy."

Richards smiled. "Why should the sensors be any different from the rest of us?" he demanded. That raised a few laughs, from humans and Kilrathi alike. "Excellent work. With PFC and the starboard hangar deck up and running-and Mr. Deniken's weapons in place-this boat can start looking after herself. Commander Tolwyn?"

Kevin Tolwyn nodded. "Your capacity will be limited for a time, but I'd say