Command Decision

by Elizabeth Moon

  “She may be playing stupid,” Hugh said. “Trying to lure them in.”

  “Broken-wing act?”

  “Something like that. Dangerous, though—”

  “There’s something on the pirates’ channel, Captain,” the comtech said suddenly. “I’m recording—”

  “Let’s hear it,” Ky said.

  “ALL SHIPS INSYSTEM! HEAVE TO AND IDENTIFY YOURSELVES! THIS IS THE BLUERIDGE DEFENSE ALLIANCE!” The voice was heavily accented; the face on the screen was of a clean-shaven dark-haired man in a medium blue uniform with gold braid on the collar and epaulets dripping gold fringe. Behind him, they could see what looked like other officers in the same shade of blue, with similar collar markings but no epaulets.

  “What the—?”

  “Who’s the Blueridge Defense Alliance?” someone said. “I never heard of them…”

  “Someone else with the same bright idea?” Hugh asked, his brow furrowed. “It’s not unheard of for even legitimate forces to fire a warning shot before hailing.”

  “Who just happened to have shipboard ansibles with the pirates’ channels? I don’t think so,” Ky said. “I think that’s the pirates trying to act legitimate. Give me Captain Ransome.”

  When Ransome came on, Ky said, “Can you strip their beacons yet? They’re using the pirates’ channels to claim they’re the Blueridge Defense Alliance. I don’t believe them.” He should understand that without being told, but she wanted to make sure.

  “Of course, Captain Vatta. Just a moment—got ’em. At least, we’ve got the first three—here—”

  The beacon data indicated that the first three were Blueridge Battersea, Blueridge Belinda, and Blueridge Backfin. Next came Blueridge Alba, Blueridge Ardent, and Blueridge Asera. All had supposedly been built by Blueridge Space Industries, on Blueridge, where all were registered on dates that varied across fifteen years.

  “That’s not much like a real space militia’s way of naming ships,” Ky said. “There’s a heavy and two mediums in each triad…everywhere else I know about, related names are for related hull designs. And why would Alba be registered thirteen years before Asera when they’re the exact same hull type…and look at the serial numbers…squirt that over to the others, see if anyone has any ideas. And where is Blueridge? I never heard of it. Is that their real home base, or have they captured another system?”

  “PIRATE VESSELS BASSOON, VANGUARD, SHARRA’S GIFT. HEAVE TO OR YOU WILL BE FIRED UPON. VESSEL METAIRE, HEAVE TO AND PREPARE TO EXPLAIN YOUR ASSOCIATION WITH THESE PIRATES.”

  “They sound like a legitimate space force,” Dannon said. “That might fool traders or even a system defense force.”

  “How long would it take pirates to get themselves some pretty uniforms and patches and so on?” Ky said. “No longer than it took us, I’m betting.” But would the ordinary tradeship captain think of that? If she’d been hailed on normal channels, back when she was a novice captain, she’d have believed the transmission legitimate.

  “There’s something about that fellow on the screen,” Ky said. “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere.”

  “Blueridge isn’t in the directory,” her navigator said suddenly. “If it’s legitimate, it’s outside this whole region.”

  “Captain Vatta!” That was a call from Pettygrew, on one of their channels.”

  “Here,” Ky said.

  “One of those serial numbers is—was—on a Bissonet Defense Force heavy cruiser. A friend of mine commanded her; that’s how I know. It wasn’t built on Blueridge, wherever that is; it was built by Masawa Fabrication, in Bissonet System. I don’t know about the others, but I’d bet that all those beacon IDs are faked. And they could all be captured Bissonet warships.”

  “Aha,” Ky said. “So it’s our old friends Gammis Turek and company. You have the weapons specs for Bissonet ships of those classes, Dan?”

  “Yes, but the short answer is we’re in trouble. Kev’s ship was built only five years ago; the ’tronics are all up to date as of the time I left. We can’t possibly fight them and survive, let alone win.”

  “That’s most unfortunate,” Ky said. “And we have to assume they know how to use what they’ve got, though that premature shot suggests incomplete familiarity. I wonder if that talking head is Gammis Turek after a haircut.” She turned to Martin. “Pull Turek’s image out of our files and compare, please. If we’ve got a chance to wipe out Turek—”

  “ISC should show up on our scans any moment,” Hugh reminded her. “If your source was right about the downjump time.”

  “Contacts,” said the scan tech. “Jump-point entry, low relative velocity, five…eight…twelve…fourteen. High-powered beacons…yep, that’s the ISC contingent. It’s tightening up; they didn’t come in fast, and this shows them working their way through the minefield.”

  “I think our dance card is about to get full,” Ky said. “I wonder what they’ll say to each other. With any luck, one set will turn tail and run—preferably the pirates. And I hope the ISC ships pick up their messages from the ansible before they do anything else.”

  “We have lightspeed data coming in from the Blueridge pirates,” her comtech said. “Same message…”

  “They aren’t sure we have the ansibles; they don’t know if we all have them. I wonder what ISC ships will make of it.”

  “ISC doesn’t heave to for anyone,” Lee said. “Er…sorry, Captain.”

  “It’s not that message I’m worried about,” Ky said, “but the one where they label us pirates. ISC doesn’t know that the Blueridge Defense Alliance is actually pirates.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Large battles in space, Ky remembered being told in advanced tactics, had two main problems: command and control, when ships were far enough apart to suffer lightlag in communications and scan; and debris fields that rapidly made large volumes of space very unpleasant places for ships.

  Weapons continued until they ran into something; debris from damaged ships did the same. In the long run, that something might be a gravitational sink, like a planet, but in the short run—in the period of the battle itself—microjumping around anywhere near a space battle risked returning to normal space right in front of—or attempting to occupy the same space as—something lethal.

  Already, the tac computer had marked out swaths of the system as potential killzones where it would be extremely dangerous to come out of jump, just from Pettygrew’s data on the pirate ships.

  “We’re going to have to jump out farther,” Ky said. “Dan, would Bissonet ships’ computers display our view of things?”

  “Yes,” Pettygrew said. “To anticipate our movements.”

  “So…they will, or already have, filled what now look like safe zones with bad stuff. I think it’s time we put a good healthy distance between ourselves and them…say, a couple of days…”

  “That’ll put us a long way from the jump point, if we need to get out of the system,” Argelos said.

  “I don’t think we’ll need to leave the system entirely,” Ky said. “ISC will figure out soon enough that we’re not the enemy, and Mackensee already knows it. If Mackensee and ISC team up against the pirates—” She shook her head suddenly. “Wait. We need to tell the ISC ships that the Blueridge bunch are the real pirates. They may not believe us, but we have to warn them. Send it as text, not audio,” she said to her comtech. “Tight-beam, from Ky Vatta to the ISC commander: ‘Blueridge ship IDs are faked; former Bissonet militia personnel with our force recognized serial number as from Bissonet defense forces. We believe these are the same pirates who attacked Bissonet and other systems. Extreme caution; the Bissonet ships are modern and well equipped. Specs follow.’ And then squirt them the weapons specs we got from Pettygrew.”

  “Yes, Captain. It’ll be hours before they get this,” he said as he sent it.

  “And it may be too late. I understand that. But the evidence that we tried will be around for a long time.”

  “Message from Metair
e,” her comtech said. Hours old that would be, too, but better than nothing. “They said get out now; they’re jumping to that place you talked about.”

  “That’s no good now,” Ky said. “Not with ISC already in the system…I hope they changed to the alternate—” She looked at the tac computer’s plot again. “Captain Argelos—you can do a two-day jump, right?”

  “Yes, that’s no problem.”

  “All right. Ransome! Are you there?”

  “Right here, Captain Vatta. Want us to blow one away for you? I’ve got him in my sights. That’ll shake ’em up a little.”

  “No, I want you to microjump to these coordinates—” She sent them, one for each of his ships, safely separated by a couple of thousand kilometers. “On my mark. All ships in Space Defense Force prepare to microjump to assigned coordinates—” She counted down, and at “Now!” the monitor screens blanked momentarily, then lit again as Vanguard skipped two light-days away from its previous position.

  Here they were safe—for a while—from any weapons that had fired at them before they jumped, and their position would not register on those ships’ scans for days. Only the luckiest of random skip-searches would locate them. Unfortunately, they could not see what was going on; their scan lag was the same as the others’.

  Within a few minutes, Ransome called Ky. “Why don’t you let me go take a look closer in? I can relay scan data to you—you’d know what was going on. I can find Metaire and make sure she’s not in danger, or even get really close and tell her where we are. It was helpful before, wasn’t it? And it would be much more fun than sitting out here wondering and worrying.”

  “It’s really dangerous,” Ky said. “If the pirates and ISC start shooting at each other—and I expect they will—a very large volume of space will be a killzone. Including hanging out behind one of the pirate ships.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Ransome said. “None of us are.”

  “You should be,” Ky said. “Have you ever been in a large multiship battle? It could overwhelm your computing capacity.” His offer was tempting, though. She wanted very much to know if the ISC contingent would collect its message from the ansible, if the pirates were taking on ISC or fleeing, if the Mackensee relief convoy had arrived.

  “There’s risk in everything,” Ransome said. “And we’re small, and harder to find and hit. It would be great sport, eh? Sneak in behind those Blueridge fellows again? And if I blew one up, then ISC would know we weren’t the enemy, wouldn’t they?”

  “Not if the pirates have convinced them that Blueridge is a legitimate military organization.” Ky looked into Ransome’s eager face. She had the distinct feeling that he was going to do something rash no matter what she said, and after all he had insisted that they weren’t completely under her command. “Look, Captain Ransome, your Rangers are very valuable to me as scouts. Now that the larger ships are safe for some hours—as long as we’re not located—I appreciate your offer and agree that we should have some closer-in observation. But I want to be sure you’re fully aware of the hazards. Scan can’t detect everything, in a crowded battle zone. Precisely because you’ve proven yourselves so valuable, I don’t want to lose any of you.”

  Ransome grinned at her, already eager, she could tell, to throw himself into something risky. “Thank you, Captain Vatta. But I’m sure we can get the information you need without getting caught. We’ll toss for the honor; I went last time, and it’s only fair to give the other fellows a chance at glory.”

  Or death. Ky had seen what ship weapons could do; some of the casualties still clung to life in sickbay. But they needed the information, and Ransome and his fellows were all adults. “Go ahead then,” she said. “If you can disperse safely, and give me more than one observation point.”

  “Oh, splendid!” he said. “I’ll just tell the fellows and we’ll be off.”

  “Cannon fodder,” Hugh said, when Ransome disappeared from the screen. “But he’s right and you’re right—we need to know what’s going on. Especially if some of them start hopping around the outer system looking for us.” He shook his head. “I’ll say this for him and his bunch: they’re brave and they’re good ship handlers. No more sense than a bunch of schoolboys, but that much they have.”

  Ky called the other ships and explained that the Rangers would be going back to provide more current data on the situation. “Do you want to be linked to the reports as they come in?” she asked. “If you’d rather take a shift off and rest your crew, I’ll have it recorded for you to play later.”

  “I could go back as well,” prize-captain Yamini said. “After all, this ship can be stealthed.”

  “No,” Ky said. “I don’t want to risk my last scout ship. If you want to move back about one light-day, fine, but no closer.”

  “Then I might do you more good taking high guard,” Yamini said. “Looking for anything coming in away from the jump point.”

  “Good idea. Since we know the pirates have onboard ansibles, they could call in reinforcements.” Reinforcements could even be in the system, but far out, able to jump in within seconds to minutes. Ky shivered at the thought of the entire pirate fleet showing up, smashing ISC’s fleet and the Mackensee relief convoy, and then coming after her little group. Would ISC—even Rafe—believe it had been pirates who destroyed their fleet when they knew it had come after her?

  Before she had time to worry more about that, the Rangers began to report in. Furious, with St. Cyrien in command, tucked in behind one of the Blueridge pirate triads. “We can pick up the pirates’ ansible transmissions on their channels,” St. Cyrien said. “But we only understand a word every now and then; they speak the most awful jargon. I think it must be a private language or something. Here’s a sample—” He forwarded an audio file; Ky shunted it to storage for later analysis. “They’re also active on regular com, not tight-beam, to the ISC fleet. Same thing they told us about themselves—a regular military outfit chasing pirates. Claiming you’re a notorious privateer turned pirate, on a stolen ship, convicted in absentia of a whole string of crimes. Asking ISC to join them in hunting you down. The ISC commander’s answered that he has to pick up any messages on the system ansible first, and they’re trying to get him to ignore that. Our jumping out is evidence of guilt, and all that rot. One of the ISC ships has left their initial formation and looks to be headed for the system ansible. If the pirates have an inkling what that message is, I’ll bet they scupper him.”

  “Good work,” Ky said.

  Glorious, positioned just outside the jump point, offered an analysis of inbound tracks. “No more ships have entered since the ISC ships, and they’re now under acceleration; we can’t pick up their transmissions easily, but the ship that seemed headed for the system ansible should be there in another four hours. We’ll stay here so we can monitor jump-point usage.”

  Courageous, with Baskerville commanding, was standing by Metaire. “They’ve had no damage so far, but Colonel Kalin says the captain would like to move farther out. That’s a long way from where the action is; unless you need me for direct communications with them, I’d just as soon stay in close.”

  “We need the communications,” Ky said. “When the Mackensee convoy shows up, we need to be able to tell them where their ship is. At least they know, from that one message, that we’re on the same side.”

  Baskerville did not quite pout, but Ky could tell he was disappointed.

  “Besides,” she said, “Metaire may be a warship, but at the moment she’s out of ammunition and full of wounded. She needs protection. She’s safer alone than with us at the moment, but you’re the only way she can have real-time communications to call for help.”

  “Oh…” Baskerville’s expression changed. “So we might be attacked anywhere—”

  “Yes,” Ky said. “And you will be an enormous help to her. I understand it may seem like just standing out of the way—”

  “No, no, that’s all right. I understand now. Of course, I’ll be g
lad to escort Metaire.”

  “Good work, Captain,” Hugh murmured from out of pickup range.

  “Everyone but bridge watch, stand down and get some rest,” Ky said. “I want extra people on scan and communications, power up and weapons on standby.”

  Time passed, then Ransome appeared on the onboard ansible’s screen again. “Mackensee ships just arrived,” he said. “Six…I think two troop carriers, two cruisers, a supply ship, and something small—not sure what type. Weapons hot, slow insertion; they’re broadcasting a call for Metaire.”

  “What’s your distance on them?” Ky asked.

  “About ten light-seconds.”

  “Give them a situation update while you relay their call to Baskerville so he can pass it to Metaire; the two of you can assist with their communications after that.” To Martin, she said, “Ask Master Sergeant Pitt to come to the bridge, please. If the Mackensee relief commander wants to talk to me, I’d like Mackensee representative standing by.”

  “Captain Vatta!” That was St. Cyrien on Furious. “They just fired on the ship approaching the ansible—I detected discharge. If that ship doesn’t change course, in two minutes it’ll be a goner. Their cross-ship chatter has increased a lot.”

  “Either they suspect what’s in the ansible message, or they think Mackensee and ISC will automatically hook up—now they’ll run,” Ky said. “They won’t want to face odds against.”

  “Not until they’ve done some damage,” her weapons officer said. “They might blow the ansible or attack any of the ships out there.”

  As if to underline those words, St. Cyrien reported again. “They’ve accelerated; we’re sticking with them. Looks like they’re going for the ISC ships—which aren’t responding…wait…transmission from ISC, Dopplered…I’ll get it stretched and send it along…there. ISC got your message, Captain, that Blueridge were pirates, and they’re asking about that. That must’ve triggered—” St. Cyrien’s transmission ended.

  Ky waited. No one on the bridge said a word; they all looked at her. “Something happened, and I doubt it was good,” she said finally, when he didn’t come back.