Heart Of The Tiger (7 page)

He shrugged. "Formalities tend to be forgotten when you spend most of your time just trying to survive, wouldn't you say?" He smiled, lifted his drink, and took a sip. "What little spare time we have should not be wasted on practicing salutes and mastering the intricacies of military make-work."

Blair looked him over, liking the man despite Chang's irreverent manner, or maybe because of it. "With that attitude, I'm surprised you've been able to adapt to the military life at all."

Vagabond shrugged again. "I've always felt that the military should learn how to adapt to me, Colonel," he said with another grin. "After all, I'm a genuine high-flying hero type, with pilot's wings and everything!"

Blair was about to make a sarcastic reply when his attention was drawn to Hobbes. The Kilrathi had finished his drink in silence and turned from the bar, heading for the door again, probably uncomfortable in the crowd of humans. Ralgha, a Kilrathi noble before his defection, never relinquished his aversion to large groups and noisy surroundings, especially when they involved non-Kilrathi gatherings. It was one of the reasons people found him so aloof and seemingly unfriendly, but it was nearly as much a matter of carnivore instinct as of aristocratic breeding.

As he approached the exit he brushed against the woman Blair had seen watching him earlier, Lieutenant Buckley. She reached the door just before Hobbes and stopped to listen to someone. Hobbes barely touched her, but she spun quickly to confront him with an angry expression which marred her attractive features. "Don't touch me!" she grated. "Don't ever touch me, you goddamned furball!"

Ralgha recoiled from her as if stricken, started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Instead he gave one of his bows and circled cautiously around her. She glared at him until the door closed behind him.

"Excuse me, Lieutenant," Blair said, suppressing the anger welling inside him. "I have . . . a matter that needs to be attended."

Chang looked from Blair to Buckley and back again, his smile gone. "I understand," he said with a nod. "But I hope you'll keep something in mind, Colonel. We've got a lot of good people on this ship. Even the ones who may not fit in with your idea of . . . decorum."

Blair stood up and crossed to the door. Buckley was still standing nearby, flushed and angry. He took her elbow and pointed toward the door. "Time we had a little talk, Lieutenant," he said quietly. "Outside."

She let him lead her into the corridor. When the door closed and the party sounds were no longer heard, they faced each other for a long moment in silence.

"Want to tell me what that little outburst was all about, Lieutenant?" Blair asked.

Buckley fixed him with an angry stare. "Ain't much to say, Colonel," she said, managing to make the rank sound more like a swear word. "You insisted on flying with it, and even after it let you down you'll probably still take its part. Doesn't leave much scope for conversation, does it?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Ralgha nar Hhallas is a superior officer, Lieutenant," Blair said sharply. "You will refer to him with respect. I will not have one of my officers treating another member of the wing with such blatant bigotry and hatred. Some day you might have to fly on his wing, and when that happens . . ."

"That won't happen, Colonel," she said stiffly. "I can't fly with . . . him, and if you order it, I will resign my commission on the spot. That's all there is to it."

"I should take you up on that resignation right now, Lieutenant," Blair said. "But you're a good pilot, and we need all the good pilots we can get. I'd rather work this thing out. If you'd just give Hobbes a chance —"

"You don't want me flying with him, sir," she said. "Because I won't defend him in a fight. Better we go our separate ways . . . one way or another."

"Why? What's he ever done to you?"

"He's Kilrathi," she said harshly. "That's enough. And there's nothing you can do to change the way I feel."

"I . . . see." Blair studied her face. It was a bad idea to let something like this simmer inside the wing, but he wasn't willing to force a confrontation. Not yet, at least. "I'll try to keep the two of you apart for the moment, Lieutenant, but I expect you to behave like a Confed officer and not a spoiled brat. Do you understand me?"

"I wasn't asking for special favors, sir," she said, shrugging. "Just thought you should know how things stand."

"Just so you know where you stand, Lieutenant," he said softly. "If I have to pick between the two of you, I'll pick Hobbes every time. I'd trust him with my life."

She gave him a chilly smile. "That, Colonel, is your mistake to make."

The rec room was much quieter tonight than the night of the party and considerably less crowded. Blair finished another long shift of poring over reports and requisitions. He decided that a quick drink and a few moments of simply sitting alone, perhaps watching the stars through the compartment's viewport, would help him get over the feeling of confinement and constriction which plagued him more and more lately. As he walked briskly through the door, he was hoping for some solitude. He wanted to forget, just for a few minutes, that he had anything to do with Victory, or the flight wing . . . or the war.

But the impulse for solitude left him when he spotted Rachel Coriolis at a table near the bar, viewing a holocassette that seemed to be displaying schematics of a fighter Blair didn't immediately recognize. The Chief tech was one of the few people on board he felt comfortable around, and he was certain she would know more than what information appeared in his official files: real stories of some of his pilots and their backgrounds. After the incident with Cobra Buckley the week before, Blair was still in the dark about the woman's attitudes, and so far he hadn't been able to find any answers.

He stopped at the bar and ordered a glass of Tamayoan fire wine, then walked over to Rachel's table. She looked up as he approached, giving him a welcoming smile. "Hello, Colonel, slumming with the troops today? Pull up a chair, if you don't mind being seen with one of us lowly techie types."

"Thanks, Chief," he said. He sat down across the table from her and studied the holographic schematics for a moment. "Don't think I recognize that design."

"One of the new Excaliburs," she said, her voice tinged with excitement. "Isn't she a beauty? Heavy fighter with more guns and armor than a Thunderbolt, but increased maneuverability to go with it. And I've heard a rumor they're going to be mounted with a sensor cloak, so the little darlings can sneak right past a Kilrathi defensive perimeter and nail the hairballs at close range!"

"Don't they classify that stuff any more?" Blair asked with a smile.

She gave an unladylike snort. "Get real, skipper. Maybe you flyboys don't hear anything until it gets declassified, but the techs have a network that reaches damn near everywhere. We know what's coming off the line before the brass does . . . and usually have all the design flaws spotted up front, too."

Blair chuckled. "Well, I hope your techs don't decide to turn on the rest of us. I doubt we'd last long if you did. You like your job, don't you, Chief?"

She switched off the hologram. "Yeah. I always liked working with machines and computers. An engine part either works or it doesn't. No gray areas. No double talk"

"Machines don't lie," Blair said, nodding.

"Not the way people do. And even when something's wrong with a machine, you always know just where the problem is."

Blair didn't say anything for a few minutes. Finally he looked her in the eye. "I've got a people problem right now, Chief. I was wondering if you could help me with it."

"It ain't what I'm paid for," she told him, "and my free advice is worth everything you spend for it. But I'll take a shot if you want."

"Lieutenant Buckley. What can you tell me about her? The straight dope, not the official file."

She looked down at the table. "I heard about her little blowup with Hobbes last week. Can't say anybody was surprised, though. She's never made any big secret out of the way she feels about the Kilrathi."

"What I want to know is why? I've been in the Navy for better than fifteen years, Chief I've been in all kinds of crews, seen all kinds of shipmates and their hangups. But I never met anybody so single-minded about the Kilrathi before. I mean, Maniac's got good reason to resent Hobbes personally . . . but with Cobra, we're talking blind hatred. She won't even give him a chance."

"Yeah. Look, I don't know the whole story, so don't take this as gospel." The tech leaned closer over the table and lowered her voice. "Right after she came on board a buddy of mine from the old Hermes pointed her out to me. She served there a year before she transferred here . . . her first assignment."

"I was curious about that in her file," Blair commented. "She seems older than that. I'd have put her at thirty or so . . ."

"That's about right," Rachel told him. "She got a late start. My friend told me that the story on Cobra was that she'd been a Kilrathi slave for ten years before the Marines rescued her from a labor camp. She spent some more time in reeducation, then joined up. She won top honors piloting, and just cut through everything with this single-minded determination. I think sometimes that the only thing holding Cobra's life together is the hate she has for the Kilrathi. And I can't really say I blame her.

Blair nodded slowly. "Maybe I can't, either," he said slowly. "I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to grow up a Kilrathi slave. She must have been taken as a kid, raised to think of her own race as animals . . ."

"So it's no wonder she can't stomach Hobbes," the tech said bluntly. "You and I know he's okay, but to her he just represents everything she grew up hating and fearing." Rachel took a sip from her drink. "So cut her some slack, Colonel. If you really want to fix the problem, that is."

"I do," he said quietly. "But there are limits, you know. I sympathize with her, but sometimes you just can't bend things far enough in the Service to make all the square pegs fit."

"That's why I'd rather work with machines," she told him. "Sooner or later, people just screw up the works."

"Maybe you're being too hard on people," he said. "Some of us are okay when you get to know us."

She looked him up and down with a slow smile. "They need to pass inspection, same as anything else." She stood up, collected the holocassette, then tucked it into a pocket of her baggy coveralls. "I got certain hours for that kind of quality control work, of course."

Blair returned her smile, warming to her. "You keep that schedule posted somewhere, Chief?"

"Only for a select few, Colonel," she told him. "The ones with the best schematics."

"I hope you're not expecting anything too exciting, Blair. This is probably just another milk run, from the looks of it. At least that's what we're hoping for."

Blair studied Eisen's face, trying to locate a hint of sarcasm in his expression. Since Gold Squadron's triumph over the Kilrathi cruiser and its escort, enemy activity in the Orsini system had virtually disappeared, and Victory had jumped to the Tamayo system, where they had been carrying out a seemingly endless string of routine patrols. Blair and Hobbes took their turn on the duty schedule along with the rest of the wing, but so far there was no further combat. The only excitement since the first big clash came when a pair of interceptors from Blue Squadron tangled with four light Kilrathi fighters, sending them running in short order.

Eisen was right about the missions to date being milk runs, but was there something more behind his comment? Meaning that was all Blair could handle, perhaps? His impassive face gave away nothing as he called up a holographic mission plan for Blair and Ralgha to study.

"The cats —" Eisen broke off, shooting a look at Hobbes. "The Kilrathi have been steering clear of the Victory, but they sent a couple of squadrons of raiders to work the edges of the system, near the jump point to Locanda. In the past week, they've picked off three transports outbound for the Locanda colony while we've come up empty."

Blair frowned. "I was posted in that system once, a few years back. There's not a hell of a lot there. I'm surprised we sent three transports that way in one week."

The captain didn't reply right away. Finally he gave a I shrug. "Some of our intelligence sources in the Empire received word that the enemy is planning a move against the Locanda System. Confed's been pumping resources that way to try to catch them unprepared. Apparently the main reason they are hanging around is to harass our supply lines." He looked from Blair to Hobbes, then back to Blair again. "Needless to say, that information stays in this room.

"Yes, sir," Blair said. Ralgha nodded assent.

"Right, then. Another transport is set to make a run today, but this time we're sending an escort. We want to see if we can break this little blockade of their's once and for all, then open the pipeline into Locanda again. Your job is to provide the escort and be ready for trouble. Like I said, with luck, they will miss this one. But if the bad guys return, we want that transport covered. Understood?"

"Aye, aye, sir," Blair replied formally.

"Good. Let's cover the details . . ."

It took a good ten minutes to go over the specifics of the mission, establishing rendezvous coordinates and other details. When it was all over, Blair and Hobbes stood. "We're ready, Captain," Blair said. "Come on, Hobbes, let's get saddled up."

"A moment more, Colonel, if you please," Eisen said, holding up a hand. He shot Ralgha a look. "In private."

"I will see you on the flight deck, Colonel," Hobbes said. The Kilrathi seemed calm and imperturbable as ever, but Blair thought he could detect a note of concern in his friend's tone.