David Weber - Honor17 - Shadow of Saganami

by Shadow of Saganami(lit)

  This time, her smile was actually a grin, although neither of them really found the probability that the freighter had sent a warning to her armed consorts especially amusing.

  "No, Ma'am, I imagine not," Ragnhild replied, after a moment, with a smile of her own. She'd been a bit surprised, initially, by the fact that Lieutenant Hearns showed absolutely no inclination to proselytize for the Church of Humanity Unchained. But if the Lieutenant made no attempt to recruit active converts, she also made no effort to disguise her own religious beliefs-which appeared, truth to tell, to be far less rigid than Ragnhild had always assumed most Graysons' convictions must be-even surrounded by a secular lot of Manticorans.

  "In any case," Abigail said, indicating the time display which showed just over sixteen minutes had passed since they began their deceleration, "we should be finding out just who these people really are for ourselves in another hundred and four minutes or so."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  "Update the tactical log, if you please, Ms. Zilwicki," Commander FitzGerald said.

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Helen acknowledged crisply.

  Her hands flicked across her panel, entering the proper commands, even though she and the Exec both knew the AuxCon computers had already updated the tac log backups automatically, just as they did every five minutes whenever the ship was at General Quarters. Despite that, The Book called for a manual doublecheck every half-hour. The tactical logs were the detailed record of every sensor datum, every helm change, every order or computer input which affected Hexapuma's tactical stance in any way. On ships like Hexapuma, which boasted an Auxilliary Control position, they were maintained by AuxCon personnel in order to free the primary bridge personnel from that distraction. On ships without an AuxCon, their maintenance was overseen by the tactical officer's senior petty officer. Their purposes were manifold, but especially included analysis by BuWeaps and Operational Research, the Navy commands charged with evaluating and updating tactical doctrine. And, in the event that any court of inquiry was ever called, the logs would form the crucial body of evidence for all concerned. Which was why The Book was just a tad paranoid about making certain those logs were properly backed up.

  And, in this case, she suspected FitzGerald also saw it as a way to keep at least one of his snotties' minds occupied doing something besides fretting. Which wasn't necessarily a bad idea.

  In a way, Helen found her present assignment immensely satisfying. It wasn't often a mere midshipwoman was allowed to assume the position of a heavy cruiser's tactical officer, even if only as backup. For the next few heady minutes or hours, Auxiliary Control's entire tac section was hers-all hers. Well, hers and the Exec's. And, she conceded with just a hint of sourness, Paulo d'Arezzo's, too, if she counted the electronic warfare subsection. The keypads and computer links at her fingertips controlled all the sleek, deadly firepower of an Edward Saganami-class cruiser, and for the first time it was as if she could actually feel all that power, all that potential for maneuver and combat, as if it were an extension of her own muscles and nerves.

  It was odd, really, she reflected. She'd participated in-and performed well in-training simulations in which she'd been the tactical officer of everything from a Shrike- or Ferret-class LAC to a Medusa-class pod superdreadnought. Others in which she'd been not the tactical officer, but the "Captain" herself. Many of those scenarios had been intensely, even terrifyingly, lifelike, and some had been conducted right here, aboard Hexapuma, using AuxCon as a simulator. And yet not one of them had given her the same sense of fusion with a warship's power as the one she found herself experiencing now, in the hushed, cool quiet of Hexapuma's fully manned Auxiliary Control.

  Probably, because this time I know it really is real.

  Which, she admitted to herself, was also why her satisfaction wasn't unalloyed. Because it was real... exactly as her responsibilities would be if anything happened to the bridge. And that was more than enough, however unlikely it might be, to send icy butterflies cavorting through the stomach of even the hardiest midshipwoman.

  Unless, of course, the snotty in question is a complete and utter idiot. Which I hope I'm not... Daddy's occasional observations to the contrary notwithstanding.

  "Ms. Zilwicki, I have something," Sensor Tech 1/c Marshall said quietly, and Helen turned towards the tracking rating responsible for monitoring the outermost shell of Hexapuma's remote sensor arrays. All of them were reporting only via relayed, light-speed channels to prevent the bogeys from realizing they were out there, so whatever was coming in was at least thirty minutes out of date, but naval personnel got used to skewed information loop timing.

  Now a data code strobed brightly on Marshall's display. It hadn't been there a moment before, and even as the sensor tech tapped it with her fingertip, the single code turned into a spilling stream of data.

  Helen leaned closer, and her eyes widened.

  "Good work, Marshall," she said, and turned her chair to face FitzGerald. "Commander, we've just received confirmation that Lieutenant Hearns and Captain Einarsson have executed their attack on Bogey Three. The outer shell picked up their impeller signatures right on the projected time chop and detected at least two heavy bursts of laser fire approximately thirty seconds later. According to the emissions data Marshall is pulling in from the array, the pinnaces and the Nuncian LACs are all went to maximum decel approximately thirty seconds before the attack... and Bogey Three was still sitting exactly where she was after it."

  "Very good, Ms. Zilwicki," Ansten FitzGerald replied. And it was very good, he reflected, watching the com display which tied him to the bridge. Marshall and Zilwicki had spotted, evaluated, and passed on the data a good ten seconds faster than CIC's highly trained and experienced personnel had managed to get the same information to Naomi Kaplan. And, almost equally as good, Zilwicki had seen to it both that he knew Marshall had brought the information to her attention and that Marshall knew Zilwicki had made certain he did. Of course, one reason they'd been quicker off the mark than CIC was that they hadn't wasted any time double-checking their information before reporting it to him. But it was still excellent work, and he was about to say something more to them when Captain Terekhov spoke over the AuxCon-to-Bridge com link.

  "CIC reports that Lieutenant Hearns has executed her attack, Ansten."

  "Yes, Sir." FitzGerald nodded to the visual pickup. "Ms. Zilwicki just brought that information to my attention."

  "She did, eh?" Terekhov smiled. "It sounds as if you have a fairly competent team over there, XO."

  "Oh, not too shabby, I suppose, Skipper," he said, glancing up to give Helen and Marshall a quick wink. Then he returned his full attention to Terekhov. "I don't suppose we have direct confirmation from Lieutenant Hearns, Sir?"

  "No, but that's not surprising," Terekhov replied, and FitzGerald nodded. The question had been worth asking, but neither Abigail's pinnaces nor Einarsson's LAC could possibly have hit Hexapuma direct with a communications laser at that range-certainly not without Bogey One knowing they had. Still, she might have tried relaying through one of the other arrays.

  "The sensor data was picked up by one of the epsilon arrays and relayed around the periphery to one of the delta arrays via grav-pulse," Terekhov continued, as if he'd read at least part of his XO's thoughts. "The delta array was far enough out on the flank to have a com laser transmission path to us that cleared the bogeys by a safe margin. All of which, by the way, means it took just over forty minutes for the information to reach us."

  He looked expectantly at the exec, and FitzGerald nodded again.

  "Which happens to be five minutes longer than it would've taken for a transmission direct from Bogey Three to Bogey One," he said.

  "Indeed it is. And Bogey One hasn't so much as blinked. So there's at least a chance Hearns managed to knock out Three's communications."

  "Or just to do enough damage to knock them back temporarily, Skipper," FitzGerald pointed out. Terekhov grimaced, but he didn't disagree. Nor was his gri
mace aimed at FitzGerald; it was one of an executive officer's responsibilities to present every reasonable possible alternative analysis to his CO.

  "At any rate," Terekhov continued, "they're continuing on, and if they keep it up for another forty minutes or so, they're ours."

  "Yes, Sir." FitzGerald nodded again. Actually, the bogeys were already "theirs." Their overtake velocity was down to under sixteen thousand KPS, and the range was down to less than fifty-two light-seconds. Given that Hexapuma's maximum powered missile range from rest was over twenty-nine million kilometers and that the range was less than sixteen million, both those ships were already within her reach... and probably doomed, if Aivars Terekhov had been prepared to settle for simple outright destruction. Which, of course, he wasn't.

  "I have to admit, Skipper," the exec said after a few seconds, "when you first came up with this idea, I had my doubts. Mind you, I couldn't think of anything better, given all the balls you had in the air. I was still afraid this one was tailor-made for Murphy, but it looks like you've outsmarted him this time."

  "That remains to be seen," Terekhov cautioned, although an eager light flickered deep in his blue eyes. Then his expression sobered. "And whatever happens here, there's still a damned good chance we've already killed some of the good guys, if there were any left aboard Bogey Three."

  "We probably have," FitzGerald agreed unflinchingly. "And if so, I'm sorry. But if I were a merchant spacer aboard that ship, Skipper, I'd damned sure want us to at least try to retake her, even if there was a chance I'd be killed!"

  "I know, Ansten. I know. And I agree with you. None of which will make me feel a lot better if I have just killed some of them."

  There wasn't much FitzGerald could offer in the way of comforting responses to that. Especially not when he knew he would have felt exactly the same way in the Captain's place. That he did feel exactly the same way, for that matter.

  "Well, Skipper," he said instead with a grim smile, "in that case, I guess the best thing for us to do is to concentrate on taking out our frustrations on Mr. Mars and Friend."

  * * *

  "Sir, we're being hailed by the bogeys."

  Terekhov turned his chair to face Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri and cocked one eyebrow.

  "It's voice-only," the com officer added.

  "Voice-only? That's interesting." Terekhov stroked the underside of his chin with a thumb. Actually, he'd expected to hear from the bogeys long before. Almost twenty minutes had passed since they'd received confirmation of Lieutenant Hearns' initial attack. The range was down to less than four and a half million kilometers, well inside even the Peeps' powered missile envelope, and the bogeys' overtake velocity was down to only seventy-six hundred kilometers per second. Had Hexapuma's pursuers deliberately waited, letting the "freighter's" crew sweat under the knowledge that they were in missile range, as a psychological measure? Then he shrugged. "Put it on speaker, please."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Freighter Nijmegen, this is Captain Daumier of the heavy cruiser Anhur. Cut your accel immediately and stand by for rendezvous!"

  The voice was harsh, hard-edged, with the flat accent of the slums of Nouveau Paris. There was a chill menace to it, despite the absence of any overt threats, and it was female.

  "Odd, wouldn't you say, Ansten?" Terekhov murmured, and the executive officer nodded.

  "In a lot of ways, Skipper. That's a Peep talking, all right. But why voice-only? And why not identify Anhur as a Havenite vessel?"

  "Maybe she's pretending to be a 'regular' pirate, Skipper," Ginger Lewis offered from her own quadrant of Terekhov's com screen, and he made a small gesture, inviting her to amplify her thought.

  "On my first deployment to Silesia, the Peeps had organized a complicated commerce-raiding operation designed, at least in part, to look as much as possible like regular pirate attacks on our merchant traffic," she said. "Could this be more of the same?"

  "Why bother?" Naomi Kaplan's question wasn't a challenge. The tac officer was simply thinking aloud, and Ginger shrugged.

  "One of their objects then was to keep ONI guessing about whether what we faced were Peeps or simply the normal scum, taking advantage of how the war was distracting us from Silesia. But another one-and more important in their thinking-was to keep the Andies from realizing they were operating in the Empire's backyard. They didn't want to drive the Andy Navy into our arms by looking as if they were threatening Imperial territory. Could they be thinking the same way about the Sollies now?"

  "Trying to avoid provoking the League by stepping on OFS' toes in an area it's always considered its private turf, you mean?" Terekhov said.

  "Yes, Sir." Hexapuma's Engineer shrugged again. "Mind you, Skipper, I can't see any reason why they should be worried about it. We're the ones trying to expand into the area, not them, and the Sollies must know that. So I'm not saying it makes a lot of sense, just that it's the only explanation for their behavior that springs to my mind."

  "Well, they're not likely to make anyone believe they're 'regular pirates' with a woman in command," Kaplan observed sourly. "Too many real pirates are neobarbs from backwaters even less enlightened than Nuncio. Some of them remind me of those hard-line bastards on Masada, actually." She grimaced. "The idiots are convinced no one can run a hard-assed lot like them unless he shaves and has testicles!"

  "Now, Naomi," Nagchaudhuri said soothingly. "There are some female pirate skippers. Just not very many."

  "And by and large, the women who've commanded pirates have been one hell of a lot nastier than the men," FitzGerald agreed.

  "True." Terekhov nodded. "Still, there's something about this-"

  "Excuse me, Sir," Nagchaudhuri interrupted. "Anhur's repeating her message."

  "Missile launch!" one of Kaplan's ratings announced suddenly. "I have a single missile launch from Bogey One!"

  Kaplan's eyes flashed back to her plot. A single inbound missile showed on it as a red triangle, apex pointed directly at Hexapuma while it moved steadily across the display. The tac officer scanned the data sidebars, then relaxed and looked back up at her captain.

  "Classify this as a warning shot, Skipper," she said. "It's coming in under max acceleration. From their current base velocity, that gives them a maximum range of less than three-point-two million klicks before burnout. Considering the geometry, the actual effective envelope against us is only a tad over two million at launch... and the range is four-point-four-point-eight million."

  Terekhov nodded. If Anhur had actually intended to hit an impeller-drive target-even a clumsy, lumbering, half-lamed one like "Nijmegen"-at this range, they would have fired at a much lower acceleration to extend the missile drive's endurance so that it could track the evading ship. This bird would be inert and harmless as it coasted ballistically past Hexapuma, which meant it was simply a pointed reminder that Captain Daumier's ship had the range to kill the freighter at any moment, if that was what she decided to do.

  "Same message?" he asked Nagchaudhuri.

  "Yes, Sir. Almost word for word, in fact."

  "Well," Terekhov made himself smile as he watched the missile icon continuing to speed in Hexapuma's general direction, "given that there's no one aboard ship who could produce a believable Rembrandter accent, I think we'll just decline to answer Captain Daumier for the moment."

  One or two people chuckled, and he looked at Kaplan.

  "Keep an eye on them, Guns. They may get frustrated by our silence and decide to fire something with a bit more lethal intent."

  "Aye, aye, Skipper."

  Terekhov leaned comfortably back in his command chair and crossed his legs, his expression serene, with the confident assurance expected of the commander of one of Her Majesty's starships. And if there was a hidden, fiery core of anticipation behind those blue eyes, that was no one's business but his.

  * * *

  Helen tried very hard to look as calm as everyone about her in AuxCon It wasn't easy, and she wondered how difficult it was
for the others. Especially, she thought with mixed resentment and reluctant admiration, for Paulo d'Arezzo. The overly handsome midshipman seemed impervious to the taut anticipation winding tighter and tighter at Helen's own center. The only possible indication that he shared any of her own tension was a very slight narrowing of his gray eyes as he sat with the three EW ratings Lieutenant Bagwell had assigned to assist him, watching his displays with quiet, efficient competence.

  Twelve minutes had passed since Anhur's first transmission. Despite the Captain's high reputation as a tactician, Helen had never really believed he would succeed in drawing his enemies into pursuing him so unwaveringly for so long. The range was down to 586,000 kilometers-less than two light-seconds, and barely eighty thousand kilometers outside theoretical energy weapon range-and Anhur's overtake velocity was barely two thousand KPS.