Petris could hear the doubt in the man’s voice. “If I’m wrong, Lieutenant, I’ll ’fess up. But I don’t think I am. He made a tightbeam communication to an ansible in the system we just passed, and according to the com watch, it was addressed to one of a list of reportable addresses he’d gotten just before we left Sector HQ.”
Focalt swore. “I can’t believe he’d be so stupid.”
“I think he’s desperate,” Petris said. “I can’t imagine why, either. But we have to be careful.”
“I will be,” the man said. “I hope our tail’s with us.”
“You and me both,” Petris said.
Esmay could feel the increasing tension in her own crew as they followed Vigilance for jump after jump.
“I don’t understand,” her comm officer said. “Where are they going?”
“We don’t know,” Esmay said. “But we’re finding out.”
“It’s ridiculous, this course. Where could he be heading?”
Esmay did not tell him what Petris had relayed of his suspicions, though she did encode it for the next tightbeam she sent.
Another jump, this one into an uninhabited system. Vigilance had entered at low relative vee, this time, and now decelerated still more. After a couple of hours, during which she’d sent off the new data, Esmay shook her head. “He’s been jumping end-on-end or clearing a system within seventy minutes. I wonder what he’s waiting for?”
“We are on the border, Captain,” said her navigation officer. From the expression on his face, he was reconsidering her original explanation as well as Livadhi’s course. “He can reach Benignity space in one jump from here, if that’s where he’s going.”
“We can’t just let him cross,” Jig Turner said, looking horrified. “That’s handing them one of our newest cruisers, and the crew—”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what he’s up to,” Esmay said. “Right now he’s not doing anything. But that’s a possibility.”
“Is this what it’s been all along, Captain?” the nav officer said. “Did you suspect something?”
“I wouldn’t have,” Esmay said, “but for Heris Serrano’s old crew aboard Vigilance. They tightbeamed me that he was acting oddly; they didn’t understand, but they were worried.”
“Worried enough to risk court-martial—I hope you’re right, Captain.”
“I hope I’m not,” Esmay said. “I’d much rather be wrong, and in trouble, than faced with a traitor admiral in command of a ship like that.”
“So what are we going to do?” She noticed the change from “you” to “we.”
“If he jumps and we follow him over the border—”
“It could start a war. I know that.” Esmay turned. “Weapons, tell me what we have that could take Vigilance.”
“Take a cruiser? That cruiser? And survive a fight? We couldn’t, Captain. If they really don’t know we’re here, we might get some shots up the bustle, just as you did at Xavier. Stern shields have been beefed up since then, though—we might not get through in one salvo. In which case, Vigilance would blow us away and go skipping off where she liked.”
“Mmm. And slipping in to docking distance and trying to hold if she was running up to a jump would also blow us all. Keep working on it—we’re going to stop that ship somehow and I’d prefer to defend my actions in court rather than have one convened on a lot of debris and corpses.”
“You could contact him directly . . .”
“I don’t think so. If I had another ship to box him with, I’d try it. But he’s an admiral minor. Suppose he decided to come back—he could do it as an admiral dragging in a subordinate who had disobeyed orders. And then run another time, with another ship.” Esmay shook her head. “No, if he starts running to jump, I’ll challenge and fire on him if I have to.”
“What if he builds speed by microjumping?”
“We’re more agile, and faster,” Esmay said. “The problem’s not going to be catching him, but how to hold him when we have. I just hope he’s not waiting for reinforcements, for some Benignity ship to arrive and give him an escort. We should be able to do enough damage to one ship to prevent its taking off, but two—that will be harder.”
The hours passed. Esmay tried to stay calm, tried to think, but felt her nerves drawing tighter with every minute that passed. He could just jump: unlike a civilian ship, Vigilance could make a blind jump this far from a jump point and hope to come out in realspace somewhere near its intended destination. Livadhi had to be worrying about pursuit, had to feel, with that commander’s instinct, that he was in danger. What if he wasn’t waiting for a contact? What if he was waiting a specified number of hours, and might hop out again at any moment?
Her eyes felt gritty with sleeplessness, but she dared not leave the bridge and try to nap. Whenever he did something, she would have to act instantly. What should she do?
Commodore Admiral Minor Livadhi leaned close to the scan desks; Koutsoudas could smell the faint odor of his nervous sweat. “Are you sure there’s nothing out there?”
“Sir, I’m not finding anything,” Koutsoudas said. The scan computers had been told that Rascal did not exist; every few hours they kicked up a query, and every few hours he reassured them. Nothing is there, ignore it. He’d just dealt with the query again when Livadhi came on the bridge. He hated direct lying, but evasion didn’t bother him.
“I have a feeling,” Livadhi said. “You know that itch you get between your shoulders, when you know someone’s looking at you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want to fall into any mutineer traps,” Livadhi said.
“No, sir. Me, neither. And I don’t see any sign of mutineer ships, or any other ships. System’s clean, sir.”
Livadhi sighed. “You’re the best, Koutsoudas; if they were there, you’d know.” He paused. “How long have you been on duty?”
“Sir, you said you were worried, so I came on early—I’ve been coming on at every insertion and downjump, just in case.”
“Ah. Good man.” Livadhi turned away.
Koutsoudas busied himself with the scan system. Suiza was still there, yes, but if Livadhi was making deals with the Benignity, he didn’t want a flotilla of Black Scratch ships jumping in on top of them. He’d experienced that in the Xavier system; once was enough.
The hours passed, and Livadhi did not call for another jump. Instead, he paced back and forth, back and forth. He left the bridge for only moments at a time. Koutsoudas went off for a short nap, but couldn’t really sleep. When he came back, he stared at the display, wondering what would happen next. He wished Livadhi would change his mind, be what he’d always thought the man was, a fine Fleet officer, pleasant and competent and thorough.
Then he stiffened. There, far away from the system’s mapped jump point, a curious ripple in the scan, as if someone had dropped a very small pebble into the far edge of a pond. He snatched that input for his station.
“Sir!” he said.
“What?” Livadhi stayed across the bridge from him, where he’d been listening to some engineering reports, but Keller, the Exec, came over to look.
“Something coming in, sir, and not at the jump point. At least I think it is; it’s too far away. Could be an FTL trace.”
“Direction?” Livadhi asked, coming nearer.
“Unclear. It’s skipping—it’s definitely an FTL trace, someone with a badly tuned drive. Just sort of hitting the surface of normal space and bouncing back out.”
“Can you tell anything about mass?”
“Not yet.” Koutsoudas watched the screens; the two other scan techs on watch leaned toward him. He growled at them. “Benally, Vince—watch your own screens. There could always be more than one thing going on. I’ve got this.”