He called up what navigation charts he had and looked them over, something he hadn’t bothered with before. It was impossible to tell where he was, yet in general the longer a ship was in FTL flight, the farther it went, and there were some accepted correlations. If Turek’s entry vector had been this…and if Turek had not already made other jumps on other vectors…then they should be somewhere in this area, within three to four light-years. Unfortunately, not one of the safely blank areas, but still—
“Bajory, prepare for downjump transition,” Teddy said. He could hear the different timbre in his voice; the entire bridge crew glanced at him.
“Time, Captain?” Bajory asked.
“As soon as possible,” Teddy said.
“Excuse me, but are you—are we—giving up the pursuit? Or do you have information—”
“We’re dropping into normal space for navigational purposes,” Teddy said. Again the curious looks. He’d better do something about that. “I…have had an episode.” Now they looked worried. “Brain-bend,” he said. They still looked worried.
“So…you’re not a Romantic anymore?” Bajory said.
“Not at the moment, no,” Teddy said. “And it’s not settled yet, but I see no reason to run on blindly…”
“Captain Baskerville, sir?”
Damn. Brain-bend had affected his memory temporarily. Des Baskerville, commanding Courageous, was probably speeding on, still in his Romantic phase, unless he, too, had suffered an episode of brain-bend. And Des was one of his oldest friends. They’d sworn to stick together forever, back in school. But—with no way to contact Des while in FTL flight—he couldn’t tell Des he was dropping out.
“We don’t even know if he’s still on our trail,” Teddy said. “A lot can happen in seven days.”
“So—”
“So we will drop out of FTL, try to get a location, see if anyone’s had word of Captain Baskerville, and then—if it seems reasonable—continue the pursuit.”
“Yes, Captain.” Bajory nodded sharply and turned to his work, while Teddy leaned back in his command seat and tried to figure out what he’d become.
Sometimes brain-bend did simple reversals—from Romantic to Cynic, for example—but he didn’t feel particularly cynical—not as he understood cynical. He felt almost…analytical. The way he imagined Ky Vatta thought, weighing options, considering plans of action…really, even if she was a merchant’s daughter from Slotter Key, she was remarkable, if she could think like this.
Downjump, when it came a few minutes later, felt normal, but emergence was at high relative vee and scan showed nothing useful in real time. Teddy sweated out the interval before they had slowed and scan began to show reliable data. Their own downjump had left a noticeable disturbance, the typical concentric-ring dimple, sharper for being a high-vee insertion. Scan picked up no ships at first run, which only meant nothing was nearby now. No accurate position yet, but the uncertainty box was within the segment he’d expected. He felt happier now.
“When scan clears, see if there’s any trace from someone coming through in FTL.” Unlikely, but any malfunction in the FTL drive might show a temporary effect scan could pick up. “Contact Courageous,” he added. “Let’s see if Des dropped out somewhere. Then give a listen on the pirates’ channel, just in case we pick up one of their general broadcasts. And then we’ll call back to Moray.”
Moray System, Aboard Vanguard II
“Admiral! It’s Ransome!”
“Ransome?” Ky pulled her attention away from the chapter of Gershaw & Xrilin discussing staff organization in multinational forces; it took a moment to think who Ransome was. “Teddy Ransome?”
“Yes. He’s calling on his shipboard ansible. Says he has important news. Do you want to talk to him yourself?”
“Yes,” Ky said. “I want to see his face when he finds out I’m alive. Just in case he’s playing both sides.”
Teddy Ransome looked different, but Ky could not at first define the difference, in his slack-jawed astonishment. “You’re alive,” he said. “I thought you were dead…your ship blew up.”
“Yes, it did,” Ky said. “Care to explain what you thought you were doing?”
“You were dead and I wanted revenge,” Ransome said. “So I followed Turek into FTL.”
“Just like that,” Ky said.
“Mostly.” He bit his lip. “It was a lucky guess, I suppose you’d say. I was monitoring their transmissions, as you know, and heard the order to withdraw—well, I think that’s what it was, but it contained navigation data, a blip to computers. I fed it into mine and—”
“And didn’t come out in a star…where are you, anyway?”
“I’ve found them,” he said. “They’re in the same system.”
“They didn’t notice when you popped out of jump next to them?”
“Er…no. I didn’t downjump here. That was days ago. What happened…I had…changed my intelligence. It happens sometimes. Anyway, I thought it too risky to just run blindly wherever they were going, and I still had the data in the computer. So we ran an analysis on that, and then followed very carefully…”
That didn’t sound like Ransome. Charging headlong had always been more his style than following carefully. Ky pushed that thought aside. “You found them…where?”
“It’s not really charted,” Ransome said. “At least, not on my charts. I’ll blip you everything we have, course and all.”
“Good,” Ky said. “What do you mean, changed my intelligence? Does it mean you’re not a Romantic anymore?” His voice did sound more mature, less emotional. He hadn’t gushed about anything yet.
“Exactly,” Ransome said. “I’m not a Romantic. I certainly didn’t plan to change. I have no idea what triggered it. But on the seventh day of FTL, it suddenly…changed.” His expression was rueful. “It was more fun being Romantic, but I can’t get back to it. So now I’m stuck in whatever I am.”
An adult, finally, was Ky’s thought. “You don’t know?”
“No. It can take as long as sixty days, I’ve been told, for the new intelligence to declare itself, if it’s singular. At home, I’d go to a specialist and be sorted out more quickly, but here—I don’t know.”
“How do you…er…feel?”
“Quite well, thank you. I ran through some evaluative tests, and apparently I’m thinking very well, and have no memory impairments or gaps in reasoning ability. I’ve instructed my second in command to inform me immediately if he sees any disordered thinking, but so far—nothing of the sort.”
“So what—besides the data you just sent us—can you tell me about Turek’s force? What are they doing?”
“There’s significant time lag on their non-ansible transmissions. They don’t use the ansible much when they’re in their base, so what we’ve got is probably a day or so old. All we know is that they’re provisioning their ships, taking on munitions. We did get a transmission from an incoming ship apparently loaded with munitions.”
“Send us your recordings, too,” Ky said. “And we’ll send you the latest translation keys we have. But do you have any idea where they’re headed next, or when?”
“No. They’ve never said, or we can’t understand it.”
“Can you stay where you are and keep monitoring?”
“Certainly. Are you going to come here and attack?”
“It’s what…an eight-day transit?”
“More like ten, if you come in sneakily. And I know they’ve mined the entrance they used from Moray. But there are no jump points on the chart, and no big masses nearby. Anyone could come in other ways.”
“If we’re in FTL, we won’t know if they leave. Or where they’re going, even if you’re able to tell us. Do you have any idea what the FTL time is from there to Nexus or Cascadia?”
“Not really. There are no mapped routes from here to anywhere on my charts; I don’t know if they’d need intermediate jump points and, if so, where they might be. But they’re definitely gearing up for a ma
jor attack, as you expected before Moray.”
Ky found it easy now to believe that Ransome had changed in some fundamental way. No flamboyance, no flowery language, no compliments—not that she missed those—but the kind of sober, rational assessment any good officer might provide. His face even seemed older, less boyish. But if he wasn’t the Romantic-hero-Ransome anymore, who was he? Was he, for instance, loyal to her, to their cause? If not, he could do them immense harm with that shipboard ansible.
“What about Captain Baskerville?” she asked. “He’s with you, I presume.”
“No, he’s not.” Ransome shook his head. “I have tried to contact him, without success. I had no way to tell him I was leaving FTL flight…I would have expected him to drop out by now, somewhere, but though we’ve tried a contact every four hours, there’s been no word.”
“I’m sorry,” Ky said.
Ransome lifted his hand and let it fall. “We’ll keep trying,” he said. “Now—what do you want me to do? If part of their force leaves, if they all leave—?”
“Contact us first, but also Cascadia Defense. If we’re in FTL flight, they can pass the data on to Nexus Defense. If some of them stay, you stay put, so you can report on their movements; if they all depart, and you can’t reach me, go directly to—” Where should she send him? Cascadia or Nexus? “Cascadia,” she said.
“If I stayed here,” he said, “I would be able to give you current information when you arrived…”
“That’s true. Let me think about this for a few hours. I’ll get back to you.”
Ky called in her senior staff. Most attended on screen rather than take the time to shuttle to the flagship. She explained what she could about Ransome. “We need to figure out where he is on our charts, and then decide how to move next. If we could hit Turek in a base he thinks is secure—even a glancing blow could knock out some of his fleet. Ransome’s is the only onsite intel we’ve got.”
“The latest report from our people says there’s been his lingo here—” Pitt pointed to a set of coordinates. “It’s just a blip in the stream, for most traders—the only reason it was ever colonized was raw materials. It’s only a two-day FTL hop from Gingervin; miners go over there and break off pieces. Finally someone installed a station, three or four space-based processors, and they have a kind of back-of-the-hills trade for anyone who drops in. Rough bunch. Anyway, one of our people knows someone who knows someone, and they reported some odd transmissions.”
“Wouldn’t they want a place with a relay ansible?” one of the Moray officers asked.
“No—they have their own,” Ky said. “They don’t need relay ansibles, and if they’re in an empty system, or between systems far from an ansible, less chance of being noticed.” She stared at the display. “Did they actually come to this miners’ place, Master Sergeant?”
“Word was somebody made a beer run, Admiral. But it’s third-hand.”
“I can’t see Turek letting any of his people wander off just to find liquor—surely he’d have his own setup, if he allowed it.”
“It’s a way to find out what rumors are floating around,” Major Steen said. “Hang out in a bar and listen, the same way the Mackensee informant did.”
“Well, we can’t sit here waiting forever,” Ky said. “We’re stuffed with supplies; we’ve done the run-in tests. We could always use more training, but I don’t expect Turek to wait for us to move, and we dare not wait for him. At the least we need to be closer to his likely targets—and this is in the right direction.”
From the sudden alertness in the room, Ky was sure that the others agreed. “Orders, Admiral?” asked the Moray senior commander.
“Make up formations,” Ky said. “Just what we’ve talked about—we’ll head for the jump point, use the same vector as Ransome, seven standard days in FTL, drop out and contact him. Maybe we’ll get a better fix on location before we jump, but we have more extensive charts to use when we get there, even if not. Captain Yamini, I want you to be advance scout: precede formations to the jump point, extend your FTL to seven point two five standard days, and come in dead slow.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Yamini blanked his screen.
“Any questions?” Ky asked the others. No one had any. “Fine. I estimate we’re twenty or more hours before the fleet’s in formation on the right vector to the jump point; I’ll have more detailed orders for downjump by two hours prior so you can pass them to your formations. Let’s go.”
Ky set to work drafting orders to cover the possibilities she recognized: Turek’s force within firing distance, Turek’s force light-hours, or-days, away, mines in the downjump destination, everything she could think of. The same basic five or six formation assignments covered them all, thanks to the work she and her staff had done in the past tenday. Shields up. Weapons hot. Passive scans only on downjump. She handed the draft orders to Pitt and Stanley, a Moray officer.
“Here. Nitpick. What did I forget?”
“What about microjumping the forward formations out two minutes? Your spacing’s five, right? That’d give some margin of error.”
“Good point,” Ky said. With this many ships, and less training time than she’d have liked, best leave more room for the inevitable errors. “But into a pincer formation—gives us more options, whatever we find.”
“Admiral Vatta, we have a location!” The navigation officer was grinning. “It’s on a mapped route, but not a green one—it’s yellow due to flux disturbances near a pulsar here—” He pointed. “In fact, there are mapped jump points all through this area—” With a touch he highlighted a region. “But no green routes. An open cluster here, a pulsar there…really more trouble to commercial vessels than ours, but it’s a wonder Captain Ransome didn’t run into something.” Ky gave him a look, and he hurried on. “Turek’s force is here. Mapped jump point PRTB-1512, in the current Pritchard-Robarts atlas.”
Ky transmitted the navigation data and her orders to the rest of the fleet and watched as the ships edged into formation. Squadrons combining the new heavy cruisers from Moray, the Cascadian and Moray warships, the privateers, the support ships—supply, minesweepers, all moving to her plan.
It had better be the right plan. The wraiths of her dead rose around her for a moment, reminding her of mistakes made, deaths she had not prevented, and then her implant intervened. She would do her best; she had taken the best advice she could get; what happened would happen.
She left her office and began a walk through the ship after notifying her flag captain. Hugh would have known her routine, known she walked the ship daily, and they had their understanding of his limits and hers. This new Vanguard had become more familiar with every passing day, but it was not the old Vanguard and Captain MacKay was not Hugh. Its crew was a mix of Slotter Key, Moray, and Cascadia citizens…all new to her…she had them all in her implant now, knew the cooks in the galley—a space as large as the largest crew compartment had been in the old Vanguard—and the moles in Environmental, as well as the weapons crews and the engineers.
The ship smelled right, its original sharp odor from outgassing of new synthetics now mellowed by filters and hydroponics. Chemical sensors along the bulkheads checked constantly for toxic vapors, but Ky knew the human nose made a good early warning for some things. The ship sounded right, too…the barely heard vibrations were those of good adjustment…nothing was phasing in and out. The voices in compartments she passed had the right timbre, even if the accents were different. Crew were excited, eager, but not anxious.
The day before she had walked the portside first; today she started at the starboard bow. This Vanguard mounted multiple beams along the long axis; the massive supports and heat-radiating structures crowded the center of the ship on the weapons deck, narrowing both lateral passages. Ky reached out and ran a finger along the red stripe—the red Turek had ordered, and which she had not bothered to change. The deck gleamed under the overhead light-bars; the bulkhead itself, matte-finished except for the stripe, curved gently
toward the bow.
At the starboard forward missile battery, Ky looked in. Chief McIntosh of Moray was drilling a team on fusing options; one of them spotted her and leapt to his feet. “Admiral on deck!”
“At ease,” Ky said. Despite the obvious advantages to having uniforms that were uniform, only the officers had acquired Space Defense Force uniforms. Chief McIntosh, in a dark tan shirt and slacks tucked into brown ship boots, had a tartan armband with four black stripes angling across it; the team he was drilling included two in Moscoe Confederation green, and three in Slotter Key blue. “So, Chief, how’s it going?”
“Fine, ma’am,” he said. “Crews are meshing well. Never thought I’d get to serve on a ship like this, y’know.”
“Nor I,” Ky said. “I thought Slotter Key cruisers were big, back when I was in the Academy, but this thing’s twice that size at least. I can spend more than a shift going from compartment to compartment and not see them all.”
He grinned. “That’s right, ma’am. We’re one of the few places that can build ’em this size.”
“Well, carry on, Chief. I’d better keep moving. Admirals are supposed to spread their interruptions around…” She moved aft, pausing in each of the weapons bays to speak to crews, all busy with something.
Cascadia Station
Stella Vatta pored over the financial data Ky had sent. She had in fact sold the ansibles to Teddy Ransome for the sum Stella had suggested. But she had given others away…there was the amount owed to Crown & Spears on Gretna, already taken care of. But the purchase of indentured servants was illegal here in the Moscoe Confederation. Traffic in humans was illegal most places…and she didn’t think they’d understand that it had been the only way to save those people from a worse fate. Were any of them still with Ky? Could they testify if necessary? It would help if she could talk to Ky, not have to pass everything through her staff…silly, that. She was family. Family should always have access to family.
“Aunt Stella!” Zori tapped on the door. She had come to call Stella “Aunt” only in the past few days. Though she now lived with her mother, she showed up at Stella’s at least once a day, trailed by her escort.
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