"You have a point, sir," Na-Tharla acknowledged with an ear-flick of bitter humor. "But that brings us back to our current problem. And whatever the Humans' design theories may be, these Bolo transports certainly don't appear particularly stealthy. So far, at any rate. Yet I must point out once again that I have absolutely no hard data upon which to base my estimates."
"No," Ka-Frahkan agreed again. "Still, I think you're probably correct, Captain. And if you are, then we can afford to lose contact with the convoy as a whole, so long as we retain contact with its escorts.
They will provide us with the signposts we require to find the other transports once again."
"Unless they decide not to rejoin the convoy themselves," Na-Tharla said.
"Unlikely." Ka-Frahkan flattened his ears decisively. "As you say, Captain, this Human who opposes us appears to be one who takes infinite precautions against even the most unlikely of threats. One who thinks that way would never separate his Bolos from the colony they were sent to protect, especially after his naval escort's total destruction. No. He'll take his responsibility to shield the convoy seriously. Even if he separates his transports temporarily from the rest of the ships, it will only be to rendezvous with it somewhere. And so, eventually, he will lead us back to the very thing he strives to protect, for he has no other option." The general bared his own fangs fully in a flash of ivory challenge. "It pleases me to use his own attention to detail against him."
Na-Tharla half-slitted his eyes while he considered Ka-Frahkan's logic, and his ears rose slowly in agreement.
"I believe you're correct, sir," he said. "And I confess that the idea pleases me, as well. But even though this should substantially improve our chances of successfully tracking the Humans to their destination without being detected, we must still destroy them when we've done so. And the fashion in which the Human commander is watching his back trail suggests to me that he'll maintain a similar degree of alertness and attention to detail even after his expedition reaches the end of its journey."
"I think you're right," Ka-Frahkan said. "And if you are, our task will undeniably be more difficult than I'd originally hoped. But it won't be impossible, especially if we succeed in remaining completely undetected."
And, he did not add aloud, if we don't lose too many of my troopers to your cryo tubes.
But we will do what we've come to accomplish, he told himself fiercely. We owe it to the People, and the Nameless Ones will see to it that we succeed, however capable this accursed Human commander may be.
"I think the Governor is getting more comfortable with the notion that you're in command,"
Hawthorne observed as Maneka cut the video link and terminated the conference with Agnelli, Berthier, and Jeffords.
She and Hawthorne sat at the conference table in Thermopylae's briefing room. It was quite a large briefing room for a vessel with such a relatively small crew, but, then, it wasn't really intended for the transport's crew's use. It was configured and equipped to provide the commander of the assault forces embarked aboard the ship with everything he needed to brief his officers and personnel. Which meant the two of them rattled around in it like dried peas in a particularly large pod.
"You do, do you?" Maneka tipped back her chair and cocked an eyebrow at him. That remark wasn't something she would have expected to hear out of him when she first came aboard Thermopylae, five and a half months earlier. Nor would she have expected to see the faint but undeniable twinkle in his brown eyes.
"Well," the naval officer said, tipping his own chair back from the table, "I don't believe he would have threatened to 'come over there and spank you, young lady' a couple of months ago. Certainly not in front of anyone else, at any rate."
"No, you probably have a point about that," she conceded with a slight smile.
"You know I do," Hawthorne said, and his voice was suddenly much more serious. Serious enough that she looked at him sharply, eyebrows lowered.
"Meaning what?" she asked just a bit crisply.
"Meaning that right after the commodore was killed, he was just about as pissed off to be taking orders from someone in your age as someone as controlled as he is could ever be," Hawthorne said flatly. "He tried to keep it from showing, but he didn't quite pull it off."
Maneka started to open her mouth, then closed it with an almost audible click before she automatically bit his head off. She wasn't certain why she'd stopped herself. There was a hardness, a sourness, in his voice, one at odds with Edmund Hawthorne's normal air of thoughtful calm. It also wasn't the way he or any of Maneka's officers should be talking about Governor Agnelli, and her first instinct was to jerk him up short. But something about not just the way he'd said it, but his expression ...
Why, he's angry about it, she realized. Now why ... ?
"Actually," she said, "I've been quite pleased with my relationship with the Governor from the beginning. It wasn't easy for him to accept that someone only about a third of his age and as junior as a mere captain, even in the Dinochrome Brigade, was going to be giving the orders."
"I know, but—" Hawthorne cut himself off with a sharp, chopping wave of his hand and grimaced.
"Sorry, ma'am. I guess I was probably out of line."
"Maybe." She regarded him thoughtfully. "On the other hand, I have to wonder if there's some reason this came up at this particular moment?"
He met her eyes steadily for a second or two, then looked away.
"There may be," he said, finally. "But if so, it's not a very good one. Or, at least, not one I ought to be paying any attention to, ma'am."
"Captain Hawthorne," she said, making her own voice coolly formal and deliberately emphasizing his role as Thermopylae's commanding officer, "I suspect that you may be guilty of considering a violation of Article Seven-One-Niner-Three."
His gaze snapped back to her, and her smile had vanished into a masklike expression.
"I—" he began, then stopped, and Maneka managed not to giggle. It was hard, and even harder to hang onto her official superior officer's glower. After all, what was he going to say? "Nonsense, ma'am!
I've never even contemplated making a pass at you!" wasn't exactly the most tactful possible response.
But, then again, "Actually, ma'am, I've been thinking about jumping your bones for some time now," wasn't exactly the sort of thing one said to one's commanding officer, either.
"That's ... absurd," he said, finally. With a noticeable lack of conviction, she thought rather complacently. "You're not simply my superior officer; you're the senior officer of this entire force."
"A point of which I am painfully well aware, I assure you," she told him. "Still, Captain Hawthorne," she cocked her chair back once again, "I continue to nourish the faint suspicion that certain ... improper temptations, shall we say, have begun to cross your mind. Or, perhaps, other portions of your anatomy."
His eyes widened, then narrowed in sudden suspicion as the grin she'd managed to suppress began to break free.
"Other portions of my anatomy, is it?" he said slowly. "And which 'other portions' did the captain have in mind, if I might inquire?"
"Oh, I imagine you can make a pretty shrewd guess," she replied, this time with a gurgle of mirth. He glared at her, and the gurgle became something suspiciously like outright laughter as she shook her head at him.
His expression gave a remarkably good imitation of a man counting—slowly—to a thousand, and she shook her head at him again, this time almost penitently.
"Sorry, Ed," she said contritely. "The idea just sort of ... took me by surprise." Something flickered in his eyes, and she shook her head again, quickly. "Not in a bad way," she hastened to assure him. "In fact, the surprise was mostly that I hadn't realized that the same sort of extremely improper thoughts have been occurring to me."