"I understand, sir," Han said, hoping she sounded equally calm.
"Very well, Commodore. Ashanti and Scythian will report to you shortly. Good hunting."
"Thank you, sir," Han said, and the screen went blank.
"All stations report closed up, Captain."
Lieutenant Chu was clearly more nervous over filling in for Sung than he was over the prospect of being blown to atoms, Han noted wryly.
"Thank you, Lieutenant." She glanced at a side screen which held the faces of Sung and Reznick. "Are you ready, gentlemen?"
"Yes, sir," Sung said. "Data net is operational and ECM is active."
"Very well. Let's go, Mister Chu."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
Longbow quivered as her drive engaged, and Han felt a familiar queasiness as the grav-damping drive field warred briefly with the artificial shipboard gravity. There had to be a better way to do such things, she told herself absently, but her attention was on Battle One.
The battlecruiser nosed into the warp point to Aklumar, and her entire hull writhed as the tidal stress of transit twisted her. It was a brief sensation, but one which could be neither forgotten nor described to anyone who hadn't felt it, and Han gritted her teeth against the sudden surge of nausea. Some people claimed not to mind warp transit, or even to enjoy it. Some people, she thought, were liars.
The tactical display shimmered as delicate, shielded equipment hiccupped to the transit stress. Then the image steadied as the computers stabilized, and she was staring at a blank screen. Within the range of Longbow's scanners, space was empty.
She felt herself relax as the emptiness registered. She'd expected it, but the confirmation was still a vast relief. Now all she had to do was sneak up on the ship watching the Cimmaron junction.
"All right," she said softly, leaning back. "I want a sharp watch. We should come into scanner range in-" she glanced at the chronometer "-sixty-four hours and ten minutes, but if he's decided to move, we may meet him much sooner and where we don't expect it. So stay on your toes."
Her bridge crew made no reply, and she nodded in satisfaction. So far, she told herself, toying with the seal of her vac suit, so good.
"You know, Lieutenant, I thought right up to the last minute that we were going to have to down check Hanbo's zoot, but it looks to me like we're actually ready, after all," Sergeant Huang said, as he and Stanislaus finished the equipment checklist.
"Aye, so it does," Stanislaus agreed. He input his electronic signature on the battalion armorer's certification of the suit of powered armor in question, and tipped his chair back. He sat gazing at the neat lines and columns of characters on the display for a few more seconds, then sighed and closed the file.
"I think our people are ready, too, Sir," Huang said, and Stanislaus hid a mental smile at the sergeant's just-that-too-casual tone. Third Platoon's senior noncom couldn't very well ask the platoon's commanding officer if he was ready.
"As ready as we can be, Tse-lao," Stanislaus agreed, after a moment. "There's going to be some dry-mouth, whatever happens, but over all, I'm satisfied. Very satisfied. And," he smiled slightly at the short, blocky sergeant, "we all know who I have to thank for that, don't we?"
"No idea what you're talking about, Lieutenant," Huang replied.
"Of course not," Stanislaus said with a slightly broader smile. "Well," he continued in a brisker tone, "in that case, I'd say we're done here, Sergeant Huang. I'll see you at final equipment check."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Huang acknowledged. He pushed back his own chair, stood, came very briefly to an abbreviated position of attention, and left.
Stanislaus watched the hatch slide shut behind him and allowed his smile to become still broader. He'd been extremely lucky to draw Huang Tse-lao as his platoon sergeant. Huang was almost half-again Stanislaus' own age, and he'd spent the better part of twenty standard years learning to do his job very well indeed, even by the standards of the Marine Corps. He couldn't have been very happy to receive a brand-new platoon commander less than two months before his platoon (and whatever officers might think, the platoon always belonged to its senior noncom) went into combat, but he hadn't let that faze him. Instead, he'd dug in and gotten Stanislaus squared away in record time, and between them, he and Stanislaus had run Third Platoon ragged over the past six weeks.
Along the way, the platoon's personnel had found their own ways to test their new lieutenant's mettle, just as he'd been testing theirs, and he hoped they were as satisfied as he was with what they'd discovered. He wished passionately that they had still more time to shake down together, but despite their abbreviated settling in period, the platoon was a smoothly functioning, well integrated machine. A machine Stanislaus Skjorning had been neatly inserted into by Huang Tse-lao. The fact that Stanislaus had always had an excellent memory for names and faces, and that doomwhaling was probably one of the galaxy's half-dozen or so riskier occupations hadn't exactly hurt, either. A master doomwhaler had to be alert, flexible, and as close to immune to panic attacks as any human being was ever likely to become. And he also required a sense of situational awareness at least as acute as any long-term combat veteran's. Anyone who failed to develop those qualities was . . . unlikely to survive long enough aboard the doomwhale catchers to earn his master's shoulder patch.
Which didn't make Stanislaus any more immune to the anxiety of a junior officer about to lead his people into combat for the first time than anyone else.
He grimaced at the thought. Of course, if the intelligence pukes were right, the people of Cimmaron were going to regard the Republican Navy's arrival as a liberation, not a conquest. The troops which had been dispatched to Cimmaron to assure that it remained "loyal" to the Rump were another matter entirely, but assuming that the Republic won the naval engagement for the system, any ground forces would be at a hopeless disadvantage. If they had a grain of sense, they would recognize the inevitable, and Stanislaus' "combat mission" would turn into little more than an alert, wary occupation, instead.
Murphy might have other ideas, but even so, Stanislaus suspected he would enjoy his time on the planet more than he would enjoy his spectator's role in the upcoming naval battle. Unlike Bao Jai-shu, who would be fully occupied with his duties in Longbow's point defense, Stanislaus and his entire platoon would be sitting helplessly, strapped into an assault shuttle in Longbow's boat bay while they waited to go dirt side. It would keep them out of the Navy types' way, and he supposed that-in theory, at least-it would give them the best chance available of getting out if something unfortunate happened to the ship. But he was bitterly envious of the fact that his friend would actually have something to do-besides sweat, of course-during the battle itself.
Still, a man couldn't have everything in this imperfect universe. And if dropping out of an assault shuttle onto a planet garrisoned by Corporate World Marines might not be exactly the safest thing he could be doing, it probably wasn't any riskier, when all was said, than going after a wounded forty-meter doomwhale in shallow water. Less, actually. And, if he was going to be honest, he couldn't deny that he felt more than a trace of eagerness, as well. Not to kill people, and certainly not to see any of his people killed, but to test himself. Prove himself. A man didn't become a doomwhaler if he didn't relish challenges . . . or if the thought of conflict and danger was likely to deter him. And after the endless catalogue of manipulation, abuse, and murder the Corporate Worlds had heaped upon the Fringe, there could be no fitter challenge, no better cause, than this.