Chapter Fifteen

"Still nothing from Commodore Yeargin?" Alistair McKeon asked. Forty minutes had passed since Prince Adrian's translation back into normal-space. She'd moved almost two and a quarter light-minutes deeper into the Adler System, her velocity was up to 21,400 KPS, and the silence of her com section had become more than merely puzzling a half-hour ago.

"No, Sir." Lieutenant Sanko's reply was tense, despite its professional crispness, and McKeon turned his head to look at Honor. His gray eyes were worried, and Honor felt Nimitz twitch his tail uneasily as the emotions of those around him seeped into him.

The tension on the cruisers bridge had begun as little more than vague disquiet, a sort of itch no one knew how to scratch, at the absence of any challenge from the system pickets, but it had grown steadily as Prince Adrian continued to accelerate in-system at a constant four hundred gravities. She might not be capable of transmitting FTL herself, but the ships of Task Group Adler were, and Sarah DuChene’s course had been plotted to emerge from hyper within the envelope of one of Commodore Yeargin’s limited numbers of sensor platforms. As such, Prince Adrian should have been detected, identified, and reported to Yeargin’s flagship via the platform’s grav pulse transmitter... and she should have picked up an FTL challenge from Enchanter within ten minutes of arrival.

She hadn't, and Honor had done her best to look unworried as the minutes stretched out. There was almost certainly a simple explanation, she told herself. Yeargin doesn't have all that many sensors, so maybe she decided to change the deployment of the ones she does have from the pattern we were told about. But if she were going to do that, why didn't she post a picket to cover the hole? We're right on the most logical approach from Clairmont. Surely she'd want to be certain it was covered, wouldn't she?

For that matter, it was possible Yeargin had picked Prince Adrian up and simply saw no reason to challenge a ship her sensors had already identified. If that were the case, however, it displayed an appallingly casual approach to the security of her command area. Honor would never have assumed a contact was in fact what it seemed to be until she'd absolutely confirmed its identity, and she found the thought of a system commander who would make such an assumption distasteful. Yet there was only one way to find out what Yeargin thought she was doing, and that was to go see.

But cautiously, Honor told herself. Very cautiously. Better to be paranoid and wrong than overconfident and dead.

McKeon was obviously thinking along the same lines, for he had quietly instructed Geraldine Metcalf to launch a pair of recon drones down his projected track. The stealthed RDs would sweep the area ahead of the ship, and their small FTL transmitters would report whatever they found in near real-time. Drones weren't cheap. Even when they could be recovered, as these probably could, it cost thousands to overhaul and refurbish them for reuse. Despite that, McKeon hadn't even asked for her approval to cover his decision to use them, which said a great deal about his state of mind.

Not that Honor would have hesitated for a moment if he had asked. The one thing no captain could ever have enough of was information, and McKeon had none at all. Without a position fix on at least one of Yeargin’s ships, Russ Sanko couldn't even align his com lasers on it, so there was little point trying to contact anyone closer than Samovar itself. In the absence of an FTL challenge, McKeon had, in fact, transmitted a light-speed message to the planet ten minutes after arriving in-system. Unfortunately, Samovars current orbital position put it over a half light-hour from Prince Adrian, so assuming an instant response, they still wouldn't hear anything back for another ten minutes. And if one thing was likely, given the general slackness which seemed to be the rule here, it was that there would be a delay before any acknowledgment was sent, so...

A sharp tone sounded, and Honor looked up quickly. She turned towards the tactical station, forcing herself to move with much greater calm than she actually felt, and watched Lieutenant Commander Metcalf bend over the shoulder of one of her techs. The slightly built tac officer twirled a lock of sandy-blond hair around one finger and pursed her lips, dark eyes thoughtful as she studied the plot, then looked at Alistair McKeon.

"We've got a contact, Skipper. It looks..."

Another tone sounded, and she broke off to recheck the plot. Her pursed lips turned into a puzzled frown, and she tapped in a command of her own. Her eyebrows rose, then flattened as the computers obediently brought their enhancement capacity to bear, and her voice was more than professionally flat when she looked back up.

"Correction, Skipper. We've got at least two contacts, and they're both operating stealthed."

"Two?" McKeon cocked his head, and Metcalf nodded.

"Yes, Sir. The closer is pursuing us from astern, coming in from about one-seven-eight by zero-zero-four. CIC is calling this one Alpha One, and range is approximately five-point-nine light-minutes. It's on a direct pursuit course with an acceleration of five hundred and ten gravities, but present velocity is barely twelve hundred KPS. The other one, designated Alpha Two, is almost dead ahead, bearing zero-zero-three, zero-one-four, range about fifteen-point-eight light-minutes. Alpha Two is on an intercept heading at seven-six-five-zero KPS, accelerating at five hundred and twenty gravities."

"How in hell did Alpha One get that close before we spotted him?" McKeon demanded.

"At her current velocity and acceleration, she can't have been under power for more than six minutes, Sir, so there was nothing to detect on passives. According to CIC's analysis, her EW seems to be quite efficient, too, and we've been concentrating on the area ahead of us. Given the contact's EW activity, CIC did well to spot him this quickly. And we only saw Alpha Two because our Beta Drone is practically on top of him." Metcalf's tone was that of a professional trying hard to sound neither defensive nor exasperated, and McKeon raised a hand to acknowledge her point.

"What can you tell me about Alpha One now that we do see him?"

"All we've got so far is a fairly fuzzy impeller signature. I've never seen anything quite like this bird's EW, and we're still trying to get a good enough fix on his systems to get through them. My best guess would be that he's either a battlecruiser or a really big heavy cruiser, Skipper, but it's only a guess."

"Understood," McKeon said, and glanced at Honor. "Ahead and astern? Under stealth?" he half murmured, then shook his head and turned to his com section. "Still nothing from Commodore Yeargin?"

"Nothing, Sir," Lieutenant Sanko replied, and McKeon's frown deepened. He rubbed an eyebrow, then climbed out of his command chair and crossed to Honors side.

"Something's out of whack here, Ma'am. Badly," he said softly.

"Agreed." Honor's voice was equally low, and she reached up to rub Nimitz's ears as the 'cat shifted uneasily on her shoulder. She let her eyes sweep the bridge, watching the officers who were very carefully not watching her confer with their captain. Their earlier uneasiness had become something much sharper, not yet fear, but more than anxiety, and it suffused her link with the treecat like smoke.

"They're maneuvering to intercept," she said, and her mind ticked quickly and urgently as McKeon nodded.

There was no reason for Commodore Yeargin’s units to intercept Prince Adrian rather than challenging her by com unless for some reason they'd decided to assume she was hostile, and that was ridiculous. A wise system commander always assumed that anything not definitely identified as friendly was potentially hostile, but pulling pickets off station for a physical intercept opened holes through which other potential hostiles could penetrate your perimeter, so the first step was always to challenge the unknown unit. And what Metcalf had just said about Alpha One's EW worried her. If the contact had been using Allied systems, CIC’s database should have recognized them. But if they weren't Allied technology, they were better than anything the Peeps were supposed to have, which...

"Additional unidentified contacts!" Metcalf’s senior petty officer sang out. "Two unidentified contacts in close company!"

"Designate as Alpha Three and Four and give me a position!" Metcalf snapped.

"We've got them on the Alpha Drone, Ma'am. Bearing zero-one-one by zero-zero-four, range approximately eighteen light-minutes. Present velocity is two-five-zero-zero KPS, accelerating at five KPS squared. Whatever they are, they're running under stealth, too, Commander, and I don't think they're using Allied systems. We've got better reads on their impeller signatures than our EW would give up to a drones sensors." The petty officer turned her head to meet her officer's eyes. "CIC's calling Alpha Three a definite heavy cruiser and Alpha Four a possible battlecruiser, Ma'am, but Four's EW looks a lot like Alpha Ones and the ID is tentative. Whoever they are, they're on intercept courses."

"Captain, I..." Metcalf began, then broke off, one hand pressing her earbug more firmly into her ear while she listened intently. Her face paled, and she cleared her throat. "Captain, CIC has just reclassified our contacts as definite hostiles. I am redesignating them Bandits One through Four. Bandits One and Four are still indeterminate, but the other two are definitely using Peep EW."

McKeon whirled to her, but Honor didn't even feel surprise. Not really. In fact, she was astonished by how calm she felt, as if her instincts had realized that something like this had to be happening from the moment Commodore Yeargin had failed to challenge their arrival. She folded her hands behind her and gazed at Metcalf's plot for perhaps four more seconds, then turned her gaze to the tac officer.

"Thank you, Commander Metcalf," she said, and the calmness of her voice would have fooled anyone who didn't know her. She stood for another moment, rocking gently on the balls of her feet, then turned back to McKeon. "Captain McKeon," she said formally, "we must assume the enemy has taken the Adler System."

A ripple of shock flowed outward from her. Alistair McKeon’s bridge officers were veterans. Even before CIC reclassified the unknowns as hostile, the same explanation for the lack of a challenge had to have been nibbling at the backs of their brains, however unlikely and however much they would have preferred to deny the possibility, yet hearing their squadron commander actually say it was still a shock.

"But why come after us this way?" Venizelos asked. "The stealth I can understand, at least on the ones ahead of us, but we must've been right on top of Bandit One when we made our alpha translation. He had to see our footprint and get a good mass estimate off our impeller signature, so why wait, what? Over thirty-five minutes?, to start chasing us? Especially if he's a battlecruiser?"

"I don't know, Andy," McKeon said, never taking his eyes from Honor's. "Somebody must have picked up our footprint and warned the bastards in front of us, they certainly don't have the sensor range for it. So maybe that's what Bandit One's been doing: waiting until he was sure his buddies had received his alert."

"Probably," Honor agreed. "Not that an explanation really helps at this point." She crossed to Sarah DuChene's console and touched the astrogator on the shoulder. "Excuse me, Commander. I need to borrow your panel," she said almost absently. DuChene gave her a startled look, then moved out of her way, and Honor slid into the emptied chair.

Her eyes were as intent as her whirring thoughts, and her long fingers flicked over the number pad with crisp assurance. Usually she worked slowly and carefully, double-and even triple-checking her calculations, but now concentration overcame her normal lack of confidence in her mathematical ability and her fingers flew. A series of complex vectors, some red, some green, flashed across DuChene’s display in rapid succession, but no one spoke as she worked, despite the ticking seconds.

It's going to be tight. Probably too tight, but there's no other way, is there? she thought, still with that inexplicable inner calm, looking at the results of her efforts. She felt something very different, something harsh and ugly with fear, gibbering on the far side of that calm, but she refused to let it affect her as she gazed at the last of the evasion courses she'd tried.

Had Prince Adrian been operating solo, Honor would already have ordered her to begin accelerating straight "up" from the ecliptic on a course which would have given her an excellent chance, not a certainty, but a chance any bookmaker would have taken, of getting away clean from all of her enemies. But she cruiser wasn't operating solo, which meant that simply running away, however tempting, was an unacceptable option.

"Commander Metcalf," she said into the silence about her.

"Yes, Milady?"

"When will Bandit One cross the hyper limit at his present acceleration?"

"In approximately... seventy minutes, Milady," Metcalf replied, and Honor heard McKeon inhale sharply as his tac officer confirmed what Honors own calculations had already told her. She sat quietly for a moment longer, then stood and nodded to DuChene.

"Thank you, Commander. I'm finished now," she said quietly, and another nod of her head drew McKeon back over to the captains chair. She stood for several seconds, looking into her old friend's eyes, then sighed.

"I don't know why Bandit One delayed his pursuit so long, either," she said, "but it's certainly working for him. Do you suppose he's clairvoyant?"

"That's one explanation, at least." McKeon tried to match her feeble attempt at humor, but his eyes were worried. "He's going to be right on top of the convoy at the moment it makes transit."

"Exactly." Honor nodded and pinched the bridge of her nose. On its present course, Bandit One would cross the hyper limit within less than a minute of the moment Thomas Greentree brought the rest of the convoy out of hyper... and the convoy would emerge right in the heart of the Peep's missile envelope.

It was unlikely Greentree would have time to realize what was happening before the first broadsides arrived. The odds might be five-to-one in favor of the convoy escorts, but the overwhelming advantage of surprise would go a long way towards canceling that numerical edge even in a stand-up fight. And the Peep might not even choose to engage the escorts at all, might not even see them with all those fat, defenseless merchantmen and transports on his targeting display. There were almost a hundred thousand garrison troops and technicians aboard the personnel ships of JNMTC-76, and every one of them could die in a matter of seconds if Bandit One chose to ignore the escorts.

That could not be allowed to happen. It must not be allowed to, and Honor dared not assume the Peeps were any stupider than she was. Indeed, their presence here, and the ominous absence of Commodore Yeargin's command, was a clear indication that this batch of Peeps, at least, knew what it was about. Which was the reason why Prince Adrian couldn't simply run for it.

If Prince Adrian came to a heading which made it impossible for Bandit One to overhaul, the Peep might do one of several things. He might continue the pursuit anyway, however unlikely that he could overtake his prey, on the principle that someone else might head Prince Adrian off and force her to break back towards him. Or he might simply give up, decelerate, and return to his original station, leaving his consorts to deal with her. Or he might do what Honor would do in his place: head for the point at which Prince Adrian had made her alpha translation. Bandit One would have to consider the possibility that Adrian was a singleton, but a captain with imagination would also allow for the possibility that she wasn't. That she had, in fact, arrived as exactly what she was: the lead scout of a convoy which would follow her into normal-space shortly.

And that was why Honor had to throw away her best chance to avoid action.

"We can't let that happen, Alistair," she said, still quietly. "And I'm afraid I see only one way to guarantee that it doesn't."

"We make him chase us," McKeon said flatly.

"Yes." Honor reached out to the arm of his command chair and tapped a function key, throwing one of the evasion patterns she'd entered at DuChene's station onto McKeon's repeater plot. "If we alter course about thirty-five degrees to port and go to five hundred gravities for fifteen minutes, then break back for the limit in the same plane," she said, "we'll swing away from Two, Three, and Four. Two will still have a chance to overhaul us, but only if she's got some accel in reserve. But we'll be giving One a chance to cut the angle on us and bring us to action short of the limit. Not by much. I estimate we'll be in his engagement envelope for no more than twenty-five minutes. To get the shot, though, he'll have to conform to our movements... which should put the convoy's translation point outside his range on emergence."

"I see." McKeon studied the vectors on his plot, then cleared his throat. "I can't fault your logic, Ma'am," he said quietly, "and if he's the only one with a shot at us, he'd almost have to take it on the theory of a bird in the hand's being worth two in hyper. But suppose he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't, he doesn't," Honor replied, "but it's all we can do. Even if we turned immediately to engage him, we'd need over an hour just to decelerate to rest relative to Adler... and we'd be another forty-three million klicks further in-system. He'd certainly maintain his present course and acceleration until he was inside the hyper limit, and Bandit Two would have so much overtake by the time we started back out-system that he'd run right up our backside before we ever engaged Bandit One."

McKeon rubbed his chin for a moment, then decided not to ask what she intended to do if her proposed course took them into the clutches of yet another Peep, one which hadn't brought its drive up and so had no impeller signature to warn them it was waiting for them. She would have considered that just as he had, and, also as he had, come to the conclusion that there was nothing they could do about it if it happened.

"If I may, Ma'am," he said instead, "I'd suggest we also deploy an RD and program its grav transmitters to order Captain Greentree and the rest of the convoy to hyper back out immediately."

"Agreed." Honor nodded crisply and stepped back from his command chair. He smiled crookedly at her courtesy and seated himself.

"I wish you were still aboard Alvarez," he said very, very quietly, and then turned his chair to face Commander Gillespie.

"Very well, Tony," he said calmly. "Bring us to battle stations and come thirty-five degrees to port at five hundred gravities."

Chapter Sixteen

"Well I'll be damned." Citizen Captain Helen Zachary leaned back in her command chair and gave the people's commissioner seated beside her a tight smile. "It looks as if we're about to have company, Citizen Commissioner."

"So I see." Timothy Kuttner nodded, but he also frowned, and the fingers of his right hand drummed a fretful tattoo on his helmet. Like everyone else on Katana’s bridge, Kuttner wore his skinsuit, but rather than rack his helmet on his command chair in proper naval fashion, he had it in his lap. Zachary had tried to explain (tactfully) to him why that was a bad idea, the shock of a hit could easily throw an unsecured helmet clear across a compartment, with potentially fatal consequences for its owner, but Kuttner liked to play with the thing. And, Zachary admitted, she hadn't really tried all that hard to convince him not to. He wasn't as bad as some commissioners, but he was a lot worse than others, and at the moment his expression was the one she least liked: that of a man looking hard for some suggestion he could make to prove he was on top of the situation. She'd had sufficient experience of that expression’s consequences in the past, and she turned her attention quickly to Citizen lieutenant Allworth in an effort to preempt Kuttner.

"How long until she enters the bag, Tactical?"

"Roughly another twenty-three minutes, if present headings and decelerations remain constant, Citizen Captain," Allworth said promptly, and Zachary nodded. She pondered for a moment, still carefully not meeting Kuttner’s gaze while she did so, then beckoned her exec over before she finally looked back at the people’s commissioner.

"With your permission, Sir," she told him briskly, "I intend to go to full power in twenty-five minutes."

"But if you wait that long, especially towing missile pods, you won't be able to match vectors with him before he breaks past us, will you?" Kuttner sounded surprised, and Zachary suppressed a sigh.

"No, Sir," she said patiently. "But there's no real reason for us to do so. Her closing velocity will be only six thousand KPS when we go to our own maximum acceleration, and at that point she'll be too close to avoid us. She'll have no choice but to accept action, and while our own velocity will never match hers, we can certainly keep her in range until she crosses the limit... assuming she lasts that long."

Her eyes flicked to Luchner's face, but the exec's attentive expression gave no sign of the exasperation she knew he had to share. Katana had gone to five percent power the moment it became clear the Manty's maneuvers were going to bring the enemy ship back towards her. Katana's EW could hide that weak an impeller signature even from Manticoran sensors at anything over thirty light-seconds, and Zachary, Luchner, and Allworth had made an almost perfect estimate of the Manty's course. Unless she changed heading in the next twenty-three minutes, she would enter Katana’s missile envelope, headed almost directly towards the Republican cruiser... and still a good half-hour's flight inside the hyper limit.

Under other circumstances, that would have made Zachary nervous. The citizen captain was no coward, but only a fool (which she also was not) would try to deny the combat edge Manticoran ships enjoyed. But Katana had powerful support ready to hand in the form of PNS Nuada, which would enter extreme engagement range barely ten minutes after Katana opened fire. More than that, the system defenders had been given ample time to identify their target. It was one of the older Prince Consort—class cruisers, not a more modern Star Knight, which meant she and Katana would be well matched.

Or would have been, Zachary thought with a sharklike smile, if not for the half-dozen missile pods trailing astern of her own ship.

"I realize you can keep him in missile range, Citizen Captain," Kuttner's somehow petulant voice cut into the citizen captains thoughts, "but you won't be able to bring him into energy range. Are you sure that fighting such a long-range action is wise, given the, ah, disparity in our antimissile capabilities?"

Zachary bit back an injudiciously candid response, but it was hard. She thought, briefly, but with intense longing, of sudden pressure losses and helmets which bounced away from idiot commissioners who combined a sense of their own importance with just enough knowledge to make them dangerous. My, but he'd look nice with his lungs oozing out of his nose, she reflected, but she also made herself smile gravely.

"I understand your point, Citizen Commissioner," she said, "but the conditions are a bit atypical, and I'd like to keep them that way." Kuttner frowned in puzzled confusion, and Zachary reminded herself to keep things literal, and simple. "What I mean, Sir," she went on, "is that, at the moment, the enemy can have no idea we're here. If she did, she would have chosen a different heading, or at least already changed course."

The citizen captain paused politely, quirking one eyebrow to ask if he followed her logic. It could have been an insulting expression, and part of Zachary longed to make it just that, but it wasn't, and Kuttner nodded his comprehension.

"That being the case," Zachary resumed, "I prefer to keep her ignorant of our presence until it becomes impossible for her to avoid us. In order to do that, I intend to hold our acceleration down to something I'm positive our EW can hide until she's at least two minutes inside the range at which she could avoid action with us. You're quite correct that waiting that long will mean we'll be unable to match velocities with her before she crosses the hyper limit, and that we'll be unable to force her into range of our energy weapons. However, the only headings on which she can avoid our energy envelope will force her closer to Nuada, which will push her deeper into Citizen Captain Turners missile envelope."

She paused once more, and Kuttner nodded again, this time more positively.

"And, of course," she finished up, "while it's true our antimissile defense hasn't yet caught up with the Manties', we do have the advantage of our pods. That means we can open the action with a salvo of eighty-four birds. I doubt she'll be expecting that kind of fire, and even if she is, it should saturate her point defense."

"I see." Kuttner frowned importantly for another moment, then nodded a final time. "Very well, Citizen Captain. I approve your plan."

"What's your best estimate of Bandit One's engagement time now, Gerry?" Alistair McKeon asked.

"I make it no more than eleven minutes from the time she can first range on us, Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Metcalf replied instantly. "She was late making her first turn." The tactical officer looked up at her captain. "I'm starting to think there's something wrong with her sensors, Sir. If her gravitics are unreliable, it might explain why she was slow starting after us. And if she has to wait for light-speed telemetry from an RD or sensor updates from other ships, it could also explain why she was late adjusting to our evasion."

"I see." McKeon rubbed his chin. "Any better read on her mass?"

"It's firming up some as the range drops, Skip, but whatever she's using for EW is a lot better than anything the Peeps are supposed to have. CIC still wants to call her a battlecruiser, but I think this may be one of those new heavy cruisers ONI warned us about. Unless she's red-lining her compensator, and I don't see any reason for her to take that kind of risk just to catch a single Manticoran cruiser, her accel’s too high for a battlecruiser. If I had to bet money, I'd say Bandit Four's the same class, whatever it is."

"I see," McKeon repeated. He patted her lightly on the shoulder and turned back towards his own command chair, then paused. Honor stood beside that chair, hands clasped behind her. Her spine was ramrod straight, and her expression was composed, but she, Andreas Venizelos, and Andrew LaFollet, unlike anyone else on the command deck, wore no skinsuits, and McKeon's stomach muscles tightened once again at the sight.

He drew a deep breath and walked over to stand beside her, and she turned her head to regard him gravely.

"Eleven minutes," he said quietly.

"I heard," Honor replied, and took one hand from behind her to rub the tip of her nose. She glanced at the time readout in the corner of McKeon's command chair repeater plot, then gestured at the small icon that represented the convoy's projected arrival point.

"Ten minutes," she said softly, and McKeon nodded.

"Ten minutes," he agreed. "And Bandit One's not going to be able to range on them before they hyper back out."

"We also serve who run away," Honor replied with a small smile, and McKeon surprised them both with a genuine chuckle.

But his moment of humor was short lived, and his eyes returned to the plot as if drawn by magnetism. Prince Adrian's effort to lure Bandit One away from the convoy's translation point had worked, but it had also demonstrated just how much firepower the Peeps had deployed to ambush them. In addition to the four ships Metcalf had originally picked up, she and her recon drones had since located five more, including three destroyers, a light cruiser, and what could only be a battlecruiser.