That was a sobering thought, but the computers had also coughed up the fact that all of Warnecke’s ships had been built in the same yard and fitted with the same derivative of the standard Silesian Navy sensor and EW systems. As far as Foraker had been able to determine, their radar was a unique installation, so all they needed was a good read on it, and they'd know they had the murderous bastards they wanted.
"I guess if we run into somebody else we'll just have to warn them off and send them on their way," he sighed finally. He hated the very thought. Pirates were the natural enemy of any man of war, but he knew he really had no choice. Jourdain was a good sort, but he'd balk at killing off regular pirates who might be expected to help put more pressure on the Manties.
"It's not going to feel right," MacMurtree murmured, and he laughed without humor.
"Just between you and me, Allison, I've felt that way quite a few times in the last three years," he said. She looked at him for a moment, eyes momentarily wide, then smiled and thumped him on the shoulder. Very few officers in the People's Navy would have dared to speak that frankly to anyone, however long they'd served together, and she started to reply, then closed her mouth with another smile as the lift reached its destination. The doors whispered open, and Caslet led the way out onto Vaubon's bridge.
"All well, Citizen Exec?" Jourdain asked MacMurtree, and she nodded.
"Yes, Sir," she said crisply. "Citizen Haines has already sent her dispatch boat off."
"Excellent!" Jourdain actually rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. "In that case, Citizen Commander, I think it's time we went looking for these people, don't you?"
"I do, indeed, Sir," Caslet said, and smiled. When Jourdain had first come aboard, Caslet would have wagered five years' pay that he would never be more than a pain in the ass. Now Caslet was only too well aware how fortunate he'd been, and his smile turned genuinely warm for a moment. Then he shook himself and looked at his astrogator.
"All right, Simon. Let's do it."
Harold Sukowski dropped into the chair beside Chris Hurlman's bed and smiled at her. It was easier than it had been, for she no longer looked like a trapped animal. Dr. Jankowski had kept a close eye on Chris, but the surgeon had decided to leave counseling for later and restricted herself to cleaning her up and treating her physical injuries. The fact that Jankowski was a woman had helped, no doubt, but Sukowski suspected it was the sense of safety which had made the real difference. For the first time since Bonaventure's capture, Chris felt genuinely safe, among people who not only didn't threaten her or her skipper but actually wished them well.
The first day or two had been little more than waiting. He'd sat beside her bed virtually every waking hour, and Chris had only lain there, staring at the deckhead. The hysterics hadn't started until the third day, and they'd been mercifully brief. Now she had her good days and her bad ones, but this seemed to be one of the former, and she managed an answering smile as he sat down beside her. It was only a shadow of her previous, infectious grin, and his heart ached at the courage it must take to project even that lopsided effort, but he only patted her hand gently.
"Looks like they do pretty good work here," he observed in a deliberately light tone. Her smile wavered but didn't disappear, and she cleared her throat.
"Yeah," she husked. Her voice sounded rusty and broken, but his aching heart leapt as she spoke, for she hadn't said a single word during their nightmare stay aboard the "privateer."
"Maybe I should've obeyed orders," she rasped, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.
"You should've," he agreed, reaching out to wipe the tear with a gentle finger, "but if you had, I'd be dead. Under the circumstances, I've decided not to write you up for mutiny."
"Gee, thanks," she managed, and her shoulders shook with a chuckle that was next door to a sob. She closed both eyes, then licked her lips. "They going to dump us in a POW camp?"
"Nope. They say they'll send us home as soon as they can." Chris turned her head on the pillow, both eyes popping open in disbelief, and Sukowski shrugged. "Nobody's said so, but they've got to be out here to raid our commerce. That's going to give them a heap of merchant spacer POWs. Sooner or later, they'll have to admit they've got them, and the civilian prisoner exchange conventions are pretty straightforward."
"As long as they bother to take prisoners," Chris muttered, and Sukowski shook his head.
"I'm no fonder of the Peep government than the next man, but these people seem pretty decent. They've certainly taken good care of us," he meant "you," and she nodded in agreement, "and they seem as determined to get the bastards who hit us as any of our skippers could be. I've had a chance to look at their visual records from another ship the bastards hit, and I think I understand why they're so hot to get them," he added with a slight shiver, then shrugged again. "Anyway, that's what they're doing right this minute, and that suggests they intend to follow the rules where civilians are concerned."
"Maybe," Chris said dubiously, and Sukowski squeezed the hand he still held. He couldn't blame her for anticipating the worst, not after what she'd been through, yet he was convinced she was doing Caslet and Jourdain a disservice. "I think..." he began, but he never finished the sentence, for it was chopped off by the sudden howl of Vaubon’s GQ alarm.
"Talk to me, Shannon!" Caslet said urgently while he watched the ugly picture developing on his plot. A whale-like merchantman wallowed desperately through space on a vector roughly convergent with Vaubon's own while no less than three smaller barracudas raced after it. They were all inside Foraker’s radar envelope, or would have been, if she'd been able to go active without blowing her "merchantman" disguise, and their impeller signatures burned clear and sharp in the display on vectors which could mean only one thing.
"Just a..." Foraker chopped off in midword. She bent over her readouts, fingers stroking her console like a lover as she worked the contacts, then straightened.
"It's our boys, Skip," she said flatly. "Looks like two a bit smaller than the one we already killed and a third a bit bigger, maybe our size. Hard to say from here without going active, but we're catching some scatter off the merchie, and the radars right. I'd say it's them... and from their maneuvers, they're definitely pirates. Only one hitch, Sir." She turned her chair to look at him, and her smile was grim. "That's a Manty they're chasing."
"Oh, shit." MacMurtree’s whispered curse was almost a prayer, so soft only Caslet heard her, and his own face tightened. A Manty. Wonderful, just wonderful! The odds sucked to start with, and the "privateers'" intended victim had to be a Manticoran merchantman.
He turned his head and looked at Jourdain as the people's commissioner crossed the bridge to him. Jourdain's expression was as troubled as Caslet's own, and the older man leaned over to speak very quietly into the citizen commanders ear.
"What now?"
"Sir, I don't know," Caslet said simply, watching the doomed Manty continue to run at her best, feeble acceleration. The pirates were spread in a cone off her port quarter, on the far side of her base course from Vaubon, but they were closing quickly. They'd be into missile range within the next twelve minutes, and it was already impossible for the freighter to evade them.
Caslet bent and punched a query into his own plot, then frowned as the numbers flickered and the various vectors projected themselves across the display. If everyone maintained his or her current heading, the bad guys were going to overtake their prey less than a million kilometers in front of Vaubon, which was much too close for comfort. Worse, given the way their courses were folding together and allowing for the raiders' inevitable deceleration to board the freighter, they'd be moving no more than a few hundred KPS faster than Vaubon at intercept, which would extend the time on any engagement and make things even dicier.