CHAPTER XXVII
'That's the last of them, Colonel. Eight Excaliburs, all ready for action.'
Blair stared at the flight deck through the transparent wall of Flight Control, studying the lines of the last of the new fighters as it rolled slowly to a halt inside the hangar area. On Paladin's orders, the Excaliburs came from Eagle in exchange for Gold Squadron's Thunderbolts. They certainly looked impressive enough. Blair hoped a few days of patrols would give the pilots a chance to get used to them before they went into action in Paladin's crazy scheme to attack Kilrah. 'I hope they're all they're cracked up to be,' he said quietly.
'Believe me, skipper, they're the hottest birds that ever hauled jets off a carrier deck,' Rachel Coriolis said. She wore an expression of sheer joy as she contemplated the new craft. 'These beauties are a mechanic's dream. At long last, I get to really show what I can do.'
'Oh, I don't know, Chief,' Blair said, glancing at her enraptured face and giving her a smile. 'I've been pretty impressed right from the start.'
'Yeah, but you haven't seen everything, not by a long shot,' she said, flashing an answering grin. She moved a little closer to him and lowered her voice. 'It might not be proper protocol to make the first move with an officer and all . . . but how about we get together later on and I'll show you the rest? Sooner or later, you and me, we've got to let go of the ghosts. Figure out if the parts'll fit somewhere else . . . if you know what I mean?'
Blair hesitated, looking into her dark eyes. He couldn't now deny being attracted to Rachel, her quiet strength and her irreverent humor. Always before it seemed too much like a betrayal of Angel. . . .
But Angel was gone, and she would have been the first one to want him to pick up the pieces of his life and move on. Rachel had already helped him over the first, most difficult adjustment. It seemed right, somehow, that they travel further down the road she helped him find that led out of the darkness.
'You think our parts might mesh, Chief?' he asked her, his smile broadening.
'You never know until you take a test run,' she said. 'Tonight, maybe?'
'Tonight,' he agreed quietly.
He was almost surprised at the intensity of the emotion behind that one simple word.
'Got a minute, Colonel? Before I have to go on watch?'
Blair looked up at Lieutenant Rollins and gave him a curt nod. 'Sure. Pull up a chair.' He hesitated, studying the young communications officer's worried expression. 'What's on your mind, Lieutenant?'
Rollins sat down, looking uncomfortable. 'I think I've finally turned up something solid, Colonel. In that . . . matter Cobra and I've been looking into.'
'And that is?'
'I figured out where I'd seen that harmonic pattern before,' Rollins told him. 'It's been used a time or two in psychiatric work. Personality overlays . . .' Rollins hesitated. 'Sometimes, with a subject, you want to be able to switch from a substitute personality to the original, or back again. They use it in therapy, overlaying a well-adjusted behavior pattern over a personality that's got problems, but the doctors want to be able to retrieve the original identity, locate the root of the problem.'
'Yeah, I've heard about it. You think it applies here?'
'If I'm right, the Kilrathi might have used that message from Thrakhath as a carrier for a personality trigger. When it was played, it brought up a different personality in a Kilrathi agent on board.' Rollins hesitated. 'If Cobra's right, it would have brought back an original personality in Hobbes, something overlaid by the one we've known all along. Or . . .'
'Or what?' Blair demanded.
'I . . . was thinking about what you said. About Cobra. She admitted there was something familiar about the signal, but she didn't say what. But it set me to thinking. What if the signal was supposed to bring up an implanted personality in her . . . something programmed by the Kilrathi to make her work as a spy. Hell, she might not even be aware of it any more, if the work was sophisticated enough.'
Blair looked down at his drink. 'Once again, there's no real proof,' he said slowly. 'We can hatch theories until the sun goes nova, but without real evidence . . .
'I know, sir,' Rollins said, biting his lower lip and looking worried. 'But . . . hell, I don't know what to think any more or who to trust. I think I've identified another part of Thrakhath's transmission that carries a low- frequency side message, but it seems like it's a pretty old code. It was discontinued a while back, and is no longer in our current files. I'm still trying to reconstruct it. Maybe we'll know more then. But meantime, what do I do? Tell Cobra? If she's the spy . . .
'Keep it to yourself, Lieutenant,' Blair said. His wrist implant chimed a reminder. 'Damn. I've got a meeting with Paladin and the Captain.' He stood up. 'You keep working on that signal, Lieutenant. Crack it fast because we have to find out if there really is a leak — before we start General Taggart's new mission.
Lieutenant Laurel Buckley studied the sleek lines of the Excalibur and gave a low whistle of appreciation. 'Man, oh man, that is a thing of beauty,' she said softly. Cobra was looking forward to trying the new craft out, even if it was only a routine patrol.
'I'll say,' Chief Coriolis said, looking up from where she was kneeling, checking the locking mechanism on the forward landing gear 'This is one nice piece of machinery.'
'Where's Ski, Chief?' Cobra asked. Technician First Class Glazowski was her usual plane captain, but he was nowhere in sight.
'Had to put all the Gold Squadron plane captains through a crash course on how to care and feed these beauties,' Rachel told her. 'I'm the only one who's up on the specs at the moment. Don't worry, he'll be done by the time your patrol gets back.' She looked around. 'Who's going out with you?'
'Vaquero,' Cobra said. 'Except he's late, as usual.' She moved over to the cockpit ladder. 'I swear he'll be late to his own cantina opening.'
'I'll have Flight Control put out a call for him,' Rachel said. 'You need any help strapping on this baby?'
'Nah. Looks like you're overworked as it is.'
'I'll say. I'm supposed to have five techs on every bird. Today I've only got three to get both you guys up and flying.' The tech looked disgusted. 'My watch roster looks thinner every day, seems like.'
'Well, I can run through my checklist just fine by myself. Just don't forget to send somebody out here to give me my clearance when it's time to launch!'
Rachel chuckled and turned away. Buckley paused at the bottom of the ladder and cocked her head to one
