look.
The shuttle doors opened up, and a single stocky figure appeared at the top of the ramp. Blair stared, wide-eyed as the man glanced around the hangar deck and gave an approving nod of his graying head. Rachel Coriolis appeared at the bottom of the ramp, holding out a PDP so that the shuttle's pilot could log in, but she nearly dropped it as she took in the rank insignia on the man's well-worn flight suit.
It wasn't often that a full general visited the flight deck of a carrier.
Blair wasted no time in getting to the flight deck to join Rachel. By the time he reached the shuttle, General James Taggart had descended to the deck, taking the data pad from the chief technician's hands. He was smiling as he signed it and thrust it back at her.
'There, now, lassie, satis all legal and proper,' the general said, his thick Scots accent a welcome reminder of better days. He caught sight of Blair and his grin broadened. 'Och, lad, dinna hurry! I'm nae sae old that ye maun rush tae see me before I keel over!'
'Paladin!' Blair said, saluting the man who had been his first squadron leader on the old Tiger's Claw. 'Er . . . General . . .
'Paladin I'll always be tae my auld mates, laddie,' Taggart told him, returning the salute carelessly and then seizing Blair's hand in a warm handshake.' 'Tis aye good tae see ye again.'
'Why didn t someone tell us you were on the shuttle?' Blair demanded. 'We would have laid on a proper welcome.' He was thinking of the contrast between Taggart's arrival and Tolwyn's just two weeks earlier.
'Och, lad, I cannae be bothered with all the pomp and circumstance. Ye should ken that well enough by now. The business I'm on doesna allow time for all that folderol.'
'Business?'
'Aye, lad.' Paladin stroked his salt-and-pepper beard and fixed Blair with a steely stare. 'The business of putting right the mess Auld Geoff made of things, at Loki. I just hope satis nae too late tae salvage this mess.' The general gave him another smile. 'So, if ye dinna mind, lad, I need tae see Captain Eisen as soon as may be. But I'll be wanting tae talk to ye, as well, soon enough.'
General Taggart strode briskly toward the door, leaving Blair behind. Rachel exchanged glances with him.
'That was General Taggart?' she asked as Paladin's broad back disappeared through the doorway.
Blair nodded. 'In the flesh.'
'Good God,' the woman said softly. 'I feel sorry for the Kilrathi who gets in his way . . .'
'The last one who tried ended up with a Paladin-sized hole in him,' Blair agree. 'I just wonder what the hell he's doing here. . . ?'
The door buzzer made an irritating noise, and Blair swung his feet from his bunk and said 'Enter' just to shut it off. He wasn't surprised to see Paladin when the door slid open. 'Come in, General,' he said formally.
Taggart cocked an eyebrow at him. 'General, is it, again? Have ye decided tae go all formal on me, lad?'
Blair shrugged wearily. 'It's hard to think of you as Paladin any more, you know. It's been a long time.'
'Those were the good days, though, laddie,' Paladin told him, crossing the cramped cabin to perch on the only chair. 'I wish I was still out on the firing line with you young lads and lasses, instead of flying a bloody desk.
'I wish you were out here, too,' Blair told him. 'A few more pilots like we had in the old gang and we might've saved Behemoth last week.'
'That bucket of bolts,' Paladin said, making a face. 'Auld Geoff really thought that monster of his would work. He always believed that bigger was better.'
'You had a better solution, I take it? Kevin said you had some scheme cooked up, over in Covert Ops.' Blair couldn't help letting some of his anger show in the comment.
Taggart studied him. 'I hear you . . . heard about Angel,' he said, answering Blair's tone rather than his question. 'In a tangle with Thrakhath, no less.'
'Yes, I did, you son of a bitch.'
'I'm sorry that ye had tae find out that way.'
'How long have you known?' Blair demanded.
Paladin didn't answer right away. 'Since. . . since before Concordia was lost,' he admitted.
Blair felt the anger surging within, his fists clenching with the sudden desire to strike out at the man. 'You bastard,' he said. 'When I asked, you stood there and lied to me.'
'Laddie, I had to do it. I was under orders myself. . . .'
'All the missions we flew together — they didn't mean a damn thing, did they?' Blair demanded. 'You out there on my wing, protecting me . . .'
'Don't you see that's what I was doing by not telling you?' Paladin said. 'Look, ladie . . . look what ye almost did out there, when ye learned of it all. I was protecting you again . . . from yourself.'
Blair looked away, at the holo projector sitting beside his bed. He hadn't played the message again since learning she was dead, but he heard it in his dreams all too often. 'You know what she meant to me.'
'Aye, lad, I do indeed.' Taggart paused. 'But we're fighting a war, son. We've all lost someone close to us. It doesna make you special.'
'Yeah, right,' Blair said. 'I've heard the whole routine before. It doesn't get better with repetition.'
Paladin shrugged. 'I suppose not. But the fact is, lad, that we couldna tell anyone about Angel. Not until now. Not without ruining the work she did before she died.'
He didn't answer, but he met Taggart's eyes.
'Her last mission was a part of my project, laddie. Not sae grand, perhaps, as Auld Geoff and his Behemoth, But a way tae end this war, once and for all. And satis up tae you, Chris Blair, tae finish what Angel started.'
Like his arrival, the briefing Paladin gave the next morning was a low-key affair. Instead of an audience of aides and ship's officers, the general limited the briefing to Blair and Eisen. He wasted no time on useless preliminaries or self-congratulation.
'We've got a lot to cover, and damned little time to do it in.' Blair always noticed that Paladin's accent faded as he focused on important matters, and today was no exception. 'Covert Ops lost out to Admiral Tolwyn when it came time for HQ to decide on a response to the Kilrathi biological threat, but like him we've had an operation in train for several years. Its a long shot, I'll grant you, but it can work. It has to.'
Blair noticed a look of distaste on Eisen's face. After Behemoth, another long shot was the last thing any of them wanted.
'You hae already been briefed on the seismic instability of Kilrah,' Paladin went on. 'It was central to the whole Behemoth project, the notion that even if the weapon wasn't able to bust a planet cold, it could at least shake the place apart when applied against the right target. Our project tackled the same concept from anither angle, one more in keeping with the philosophy of Covert Ops.'
He punched a code into the keypad in front of him and the map table came to life, projecting an image of a
