"Commander Sassinak—" This mode of address, perfectly correct but slightly more formal than usual to a ship's captain on board, made it clear to her just how upset her bridge crew were. She glanced at Arly, senior weapons officer, who was pointing at her own display. "We finally got a good readout on their weapons systems . . . that's one more hot ship."
Sassinak welcomed the diversion, and leaned over the display. Since the escort vessel had tampered with its own IFF transmission, they had had to use other detection methods to figure out its class and armament . . . methods which were supposed to be indetectible, although they'd not yet been tested against any but Fleet vessels. Now she'd find out—in the fabric of her own ship if the designers were wrong—just how accurate and indetectible they were.
"Patrol class: 'way too big and too hot for anyone but Fleet to have legally," Arly went on, pointing out the obvious. "Probably modified and refitted from a legal insystem escort or patrol vessel . . . although it might be a pirated hull from something consigned to scrap."
"I hope not," said Sass. "If there's a hole in our scrap and recycling operation, we could find ourselves facing a pirated battle platform—"
"Best fit of hull and structure is to a Vannoy Combine insystem escort. Then if they retrofitted an FTL drive component—" The weapons officer's fingers danced over the controls, and the display split, one vertical half showing a schematic with the changes she proposed. "—and beefed up the interior a good bit—they'd lose crew space, but gain the reinforcement they need to mount these." A final flick of the finger, and the armament that the Zaid-Dayan's detectors and computer had come up with came up as a list.
"On that!?" Sassinak stared at it. A vessel only one third the mass of her own was carrying nearly identical weaponry, with a nice mix of projectile, beam, and explosives.
"Just as well we didn't sail in to take an easy kill," said the weapons officer quietly. Her expression was completely neutral. "Could have been messy."
"It's going to be messy," said Sassinak, just as quietly. "When we catch them."
"We are following—" It was not quite a question.
"Oh, yes. And as soon as we have their destination coordinates, we'll be calling in the whole bloody Fleet."
But it was not that easy. The two ships moved away from the planet they'd raided, boosting toward a safe range for FTL flight. Sassinak would like to have checked the planet itself for survivors (unlikely though she knew that to be) and evidence, but she could not risk losing the ships when they left normal space. She waited as the ships built speed, until their own scans must be nearly blind as they approached their insertion velocity. The Ssli had queried twice when she finally gave the order to shift position and pursue. Just before they entered FTL flight, she had a burst sent to Sector HQ by lowlink, explaining what happened to the colony and her plan of pursuit.
Then it was the same blind chase as they had had following the transport in the first place. Sassinak could only imagine how it must seem to the Ssli on whose ability to sense the trace they all depended. Their lives were hostage to the realities of such travel . . . the Ssli concentrated so on the traces of their quarry that it could not warn them of potentially fatal anomalies in their path.
With the Ssli controlling the ship's movement through its computer link, the crew had all too little to do. Sassinak spent some time on the bridge each shift, and much of the rest prowling the ship wondering how she was going to find her subversives—without driving the perfectly loyal and honorable crew up the walls in the process. Dhrossh, their link to their quarry, would not initiate an IFTL link without her direct command, but someone still might loose a message by SOLEC or highlink, not to warn the raiders, but their allies. That would require knowing the coordinates of either a mapped Fleet node or receiving station, but an agent might. She considered sending regular reports to Fleet by the same means, and decided against it. Better to have some conclusion to report, after that disaster at the colony.
Sassinak worked out a duty schedule that involved keeping a Weft on the bridge constantly—at least they could contact her, instantly, if something happened, and they were exceptionally able in reading the minute behaviors of humans. She had to hope that her human crew would not guess her reasons.
She was acutely aware of the crew's reaction to her decision not to engage the raiders before they attacked the colony, or during the attack. She imagined their comments . . . "Is the captain losing it? Has someone bought her off?" Volume 8 of the massive Rules of Engagement managed to be lying around the senior officers' wardroom more than once, although she never caught anyone reading the critical article. Some of the crew sided with her, and she heard some of that. "Pretty sharp, figuring out we were outgunned before we'd come in close-scan range," one of the biotechs was saying one day as Sassinak passed quietly along on a routine inspection of the environmental system. "I wouldn't have guessed that the initial readouts were wrong . . . whoever heard of someone fooling with an IFF?" Sassinak smiled grimly: that wasn't a new trick, and bridge crew all knew it. But it was nice to have credit somewhere. Too bad that she discovered a minor leak in the detox input filter line, and had to file a report on the very tech who'd been defending her.
The environmental system was, in fact, a nagging worry. Among the modifications made on station, a rerouting of most of the main lines had meant shifting them into cramped, hard-to-inspect compartments rather than out in the open where inspection was easy. Sassinak remembered her first cruise, and the awkwardness of it. Supposedly the equipment now mounted in midline was worth it, in the protection it gave from enemy surveillance, but if the environmental system failed, they would have a miserable trip back—if they survived. Sassinak glared at the big gray cylinders that lay in recesses originally meant for pipelines. They'd better work. In the meantime, either because of the less efficient layout, with its more variable line pressures, or because the line was harder to inspect, minor leaks repeatedly developed in one or another subsystem.
Of course, it could be sabotage. That's why she walked the lines herself, struggling to relearn the details of the system so that she knew what she was looking for. But in any complicated system of tubing and pumps, a thousand opportunities exist for subtle acts of sabotage, and she didn't expect to find anything obvious. She was right.
As the ship's days passed in pursuit, with the Ssli certain that it had a lock on the ships ahead, Huron finally came around. Literally, as he appeared at her cabin door with a peace offering: wine and pastries. Sassinak had not realized how much she'd missed his support until she saw the old grin on his face.
"Peace offering," he said. Typically, he wasn't trying to pretend they'd had no quarrel. Sassinak nodded, and waved him in. He set the basket of hot, sugary treats on her desk, and opened the wine. They settled down in comfortable chairs, one on either side of the pastry basket, and munched in harmony for a few minutes.
"I was afraid they'd split up, or we'd lose them," he said with a sideways glance. "And then when we got the final scan on the escort—that it might have been fatal to take it on—I knew you were right, but I just couldn't—"
"Never mind." Sassinak leaned back against the padded chair. Just to have someone to talk with, to relax with—it wasn't over, and it was going to get worse before it got better, but if Huron could accept her decision . . .
"I wish we knew where they're going!" He bit into his pastry so hard that flaky bits showered across his lap. He muttered a curse through the mouthful of food, and Sassinak chuckled. Problems and all, life was more fun with Huron in her cabin some nights.
"Huh. Don't we all! And I don't dare send anything back to Sector HQ in case something intercepts it. . ."
"Remember when Ssli and the IFTL system were new, and we were sure no one else had them?" He was still swiping crumbs from his lap, and looked up at her with the mischievous lift of eyebrow she'd come to love.
"Sure do." Sassinak ran her hands through her dark hair, and flipped the ends toward him. His
eyes widened, then narrowed again.
"One track mind." He shook his head at her.
"You're any different?" Sassinak pointed to the now-empty pastry basket and the bottle of wine. "Think I can't recognize bait when I see it?"
"Brains with your beauty—and a few other things . . ." His eyes finished what she had started, and they were more than halfway undressed when Sassinak remembered to switch the intercom to alert-only. The bridge crew knew what that meant, she thought with satisfaction, before dragging the big brilliantly rainbowed comforter over the pair of them.
* * *
"And what I still don't understand," said Huron, far more awake than usual for 0200, "is how they could mount all that on a hull that size. Are they crewing it with midgets, or what?"
Sassinak had taken a short nap, and wakened to find Huron tracing elaborate curlicues on her back while he stared at the readout on the overhead display. She yawned, pushed back a thick tangle of hair, and reached up to switch the display off. "Later . . ."
He switched it back on. "No, seriously—"
"Seriously, I'm sleepy. Turn it off, or go look at it somewhere else."
He glowered at her. "Some Fleet captain you are, lazing around like someone's lapcat after a dish of cream."
Sassinak purred loudly, yawned again, and realized she was going to wake all the way up, like it or not. "Big weapons, small hull. Reminds me of something." Huron blushed, extensively, and Sassinak snapped her teeth at him. "Call your captain a cat, and you deserve to get bit, chum. If we're going to go back to work, I'm getting dressed." She felt a lot better, relaxed and alert all at once.
Now that she was awake, she realized that she had not followed through on the analysis of the escort vessel as carefully as she could have. She'd been thinking too much about her main decision and its implications. Together she and Huron ran the figures several times, and then adjourned to the main wardroom. She called in both Arly and Hollister. They arrived blinking and yawning: as mainshift crew, they were normally asleep at this hour. After a cup of stimulant and some food, they came fully awake.
"The question is, are we sure of our data, even that last? Is that thing built on a patrol-class hull, and if so does it really carry those weapons, and if so what's their crew size and how are they staying alive?" Sassinak took the last spiced bun off the platter the night cook had brought in.
Hollister shrugged. "That new detection system isn't really my specialty, but if that's the size we think—dimensional and mass—then it'll depend on weaponry. With up-to-date environmental, guidance, and drive systems, they'd need a crew of fifty to work normal shifts—plus weapons specialists. Say, sixty to seventy altogether. If they work long shifts, maybe fifty altogether, but they'd chance fatigue errors—"
"But they don't expect to need top efficiency for long," Sassinak said. "They come in, rout a colony, escort the transport to their base, wherever that is . . . and most times they never see trouble."
"Fifty, then. That means . . . mmm . . ." He ran some figures into the nearest terminal. " 'Bout what I thought. Look—" A ship schematic came up on the main screen at the end of the table. "Fifty crew, here's the calories and water needs . . . best guess at system efficiency . . . and that means they'll need eight standard filtration units, eight sets of re-op converters, plus the UV trays—" As he talked, the schematic filled with green lines and blocks, the standard representation of environmental system units. "This is assuming their FTL route doesn't take more than twenty-five standard days, and they've got the same kind of oxygen recharge system we do. Most surveyed routes come in under twenty days, as you know. Now if we add the probable drives: we know they have insystem chem boosters as well as insystem mains, and FTL—" The drive components came up in blue. "And minimum crew space: access and living—" That was yellow. "Weapons?"
Arly took over, and the schematic suddenly bled with red weapons symbols. "This is what we got off the scans, captain. Their IFF was a real nutcase: no sense at all. But the passives showed two distinct patterns of radiation leakage: here, and there. And we saw how they knocked out those ground-space missiles . . . they do have optical weapons."
"And it doesn't fit," said Huron, sounding entirely too smug. "Look." Sure enough, the display had a blinking symbol in one corner: excess volume specified.
Arly looked stubborn. "I could not ignore the scan data—"
"Of course not." Sassinak held up her hand for silence when both mouths opened. "Look, Huron, both the scans and this schematic come in part from assumptions we made about those criminals. If they crew their ship to a level we think safe, if they aren't stressing their environmental system, if a few extra particles means that they've got a neutron bomb . . . all if."
"We have to make some assumptions!"
"Yes. I do. I'm assuming they sacrifice everything else to speed and firepower. They want no witnesses: they want to be sure they can blow anything—up to a battle platform, lets say—into nothing, before it can call in help. They want to be able to escape any pursuit. They're not out on patrol as long as we normally are: they sacrifice comfort, and some levels of efficiency. I will bet you that they're undercrewed and carry every scrap of armament our scans found."
"Less crew means they could have a smaller environmental system," said Hollister.
"And with any luck less crew means they're a little less alert to a tail."
"I wish I knew how good their fire-control systems were," said Arly, running a finger along the edge of the console. "If they've got anything like the Gamma system, we could be in trouble with them."
"Are you advising me not to engage?" asked Sass. Arly's face darkened a little. A senior weapons officer could give such advice, but under all the circumstances, it meant taking sides in the earlier argument: something Arly had refused to do.
"Not precisely . . . no. But they've got almost as much as we have, on a smaller hull with different movement capability. Normally I don't have to worry about something that size—with all its mobility, it still can't take us. But this—" She tapped the display. "This could breach us, if they got lucky . . . and their speed and mobility increase the danger. Call it even odds, or a shade to their favor. I'd be glad to engage them, captain, but you need to be aware of all the factors."
"I am." Sassinak stretched, then shook the tension out of her hands. "And you'll no doubt have a chance to test our ideas before long. If they're short-crewed and short on environmental supplies, surely they'll have a short FTL route picked out . . . it's been eighteen days, now."
"Speaking of environmental systems," said Hollister gruffly. "That number nine scrubber's leaking again. I could take it down and repack it, but that'd mean tying up a whole shift crew—"
Sassinak glanced at Huron. "Nav got any guesses on their destination?"
"Not a clue. Dhrossh is downright testy about queries, and about half the equation solutions don't fit anything in the books."
"Just keep an eye on the scrubber, then. We don't want Engineering tied up if we're suddenly on insystem drive with combat coming up."
* * *
Another standard day passed, and another. None of the crew did anything but what she expected. No saboteur or subversive stood up to expound a doctrine of slavery and planet piracy. At least her relationship with Huron was better, and the other hotheads in the crew seemed to follow his lead. She was squatting on her heels beside the number nine scrubber, with Hollister, looking at a thin line of greasy liquid that had trickled down the outer casing, when the ship lurched slightly as the Ssli-controlled drive computers dropped them out of FTL.
Chapter Ten
By the time Sassinak reached the bridge, Huron had their location on the big display.
"Unmapped," said Sassinak sourly.
"Officially unmapped," agreed Huron. "Sector margins—you can see that both the nearest surveys don't quite meet."
"By a whole lot of useful distance," said Sassinak. Five stars over that way, the Fleet survey codes were pink. Eight
stars the other, the Fleet survey codes were light green. And nothing showed in the other vectors.
"Diverging cones don't fill space," said Huron. She glowered at him; she'd hit her head on the input connector of the scrubber when the call came in, and besides, she'd wanted to be on the bridge when they came into normal space.
"They could have, if those survey crews had been paying attention. This is one large survey anomaly out here." Then it came to her. "I wonder, Huron, if this was missed, or left out on purpose." He looked blank, and she went on. "By the same people who found it so handy to have an uncharted system to hide out in."
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