Chapter Forty-One
Abigail Hearns sat at her station on HMS Tristram's bridge and concentrated on radiating a sense of calm. It wasn't easy.
Abigail had never put much faith in the notion of some sort of intuition or "second sight." Not where she was concerned, at least; she'd seen and heard enough about Steadholder Harrington not to discount it in the Steadholder's case. Some other officers she'd served with, like Captain Oversteegen, had seemed to possess something very like those reputed psychic powers, as well, but Abigail Hearns' psychic antennae had always been absolutely devoid of any sort of warning signals. Which was why she felt particularly nervous today, because something was definitely twisting her nerves into a solid, singing knot of tension.
She didn't know why, couldn't have explained it to a soul, but it was true. And she wasn't the only one who felt it, either. She'd seen it in several of her fellow officers, both on the bridge and off it, and she knew all of them were trying to project the same calm she was . . . and wondering how well they were doing it.
She glanced away from her own displays for a moment, checking the master astrogation plot, and the internal tension she was working so hard to conceal ratcheted up another notch or two. It wouldn't be long now, she thought.
No, it won't, and thank the Intercessor we've had the extra time to drill, she told herself. I don't imagine I'm the only person aboard who wishes we'd gotten a handle on the situation with New Tuscany sooner, but I can't honestly say the time's been wasted.
Tristram's tactical department still wasn't as well-oiled and proficient as Hexapuma's had been on the eve of the Battle of Monica, but it was immeasurably better than it had been. In fact, she thought it was as good as the Nasty Kitty's had been at Nuncio, and she felt a warm glow of solid accomplishment as she contemplated that improvement and knew it for her own handiwork. Yet there was also something else to keep that satisfied glow company; a dangerous something she'd seen in many of the better tactical officers she'd served with and had discovered lived deep inside her, as well. Abigail Hearns had killed enough people in her youthful existence to feel no pressing need to kill still more of them, and yet she could not deny that faint, predatory stirring. That awareness of the lethality of the weapon lying ready to her hand, like a steadholder's blade. She didn't actually want to use it, and yet . . . and yet . . .
There's always that "yet," isn't there, Abigail? she thought, remembering a conversation in Nuncio with Ragnhild Pavletic. There's always that hunger to test yourself, to prove you're just that little bit better than the next person. Or—let's be honest here—than anyone else.
She glanced at the captain's chair, where Naomi Kaplan sat looking even calmer than any of her subordinates. Unlike anyone else on Tristram's bridge, however, Abigail had seen Commander Kaplan sitting in the tactical officer's chair. She'd seen Kaplan's pre-battle face before, and she knew what she was seeing now.
"Excuse me, Skipper," Lieutenant O'Reilly said. "We have a com request from the flagship. It's the Commodore for you, Ma'am."
"Put it on my display, Wanda," Kaplan responded. There was an almost infinitesimal delay, and then she smiled down at her small private com screen.
"Good afternoon, Commodore. What can I do for you?"
Commodore Ray Chatterjee, commanding officer, Destroyer Squadron 301, smiled back at her from the flag bridge of his flagship, HMS Roland. His smile might have been a little more tense than hers, but, then again, he was responsible for all four ships of his first division (Captain Jacob Zavala and Chatterjee's second division had been sent straight to Pequod to relieve Reprise when Lieutenant Commander Denton returned to Spindle to give Admiral Khumalo and Admiral Gold Peak his firsthand impressions of the situation in Pequod), whereas Kaplan had to worry about only Tristram.
"I've been thinking, Naomi," the commodore said, "and while that's always a somewhat risky occupation in my case, I think I may have hit on something this time. Specifically, I've just as soon keep at least one or two of our cards tucked firmly up my sleeve. Just as a precaution, you know."
"Sir, given what's been going on in Pequod, I'd be in favor of keeping a pulser or two tucked firmly up our sleeves. And preferably one in each boot, as well!"
"Well, that might be a little overkill," Chatterjee observed mildly. "After all, this is supposed to be a diplomatic mission. But I've been going over everything we have on New Tuscany, and one thing that struck me is that they don't really have any deep-space sensor arrays worth mentioning."
Kaplan nodded. Any moderately prosperous star nation—or, at least, any moderately prosperous star nation which was concerned about military shenanigans in its vicinity—maintained deep-space sensor arrays. In the case of a star system like Manticore, those arrays could be literally thousands of kilometers across, with an exquisite sensitivity capable of picking up things like hyper-footprints and often even impeller signatures light-months out from the system primary, vastly beyond the range possible for any shipboard sensor.
But New Tuscany wasn't "moderately prosperous" by Manticoran standards. In fact, despite its oligarchs' often lavish lifestyles, New Tuscany was little more than a pocket of wretched poverty by the Old Star Kingdom's meter stick, and it didn't have anything remotely like modern deep-space arrays.
"These people are the next best thing to blind outside the hyper limit," Chatterjee pointed out. "I won't say they couldn't possibly see anything beyond that range, but the odds wouldn't be very good for them, and their resolution has to suck once you get out beyond twenty or twenty-five light-minutes from the primary."
"That's about what I'd estimate, yes, Sir," Kaplan agreed, yet there was an almost wary note in her voice, and he smiled again, thinly, as he realized she'd already guessed where he was headed. Well, in that case he supposed he might as well go ahead and confirm her suspicion.
"What I intend to do," he continued, "is to shift our formation to closeTristram up a little closer behindRoland and see if we can't use her footprint to screen yours. We'll make our translation at twenty-two light-minutes—if they want to think our astrogation is shaky, that's all right with me, but that gives us an extra light-minute and a half to play with. As soon as we make our alpha translation, though, I want you to go to full stealth."
"Sir, with all due respect—"
" 'With all due respect yada-yada-yada,' " Chatterjee interrupted with something that was much closer to a grin. "How did I know you were going to say that?"
Kaplan clamped her jaw tightly, although the gleam in her eyes communicated her unspoken thought quite well.
"Better," Chatterjee approved. Then his expression sobered.
"I'm not coming up with this brainstorm just to make your life hard, Naomi, I assure you. The problem is that nobody has a clue what the New Tuscans think they're going to accomplish, but we do know they've been fabricating incidents. In fact, we know they're willing to blow up one of their own freighters—which I hope to hell didn'treally have a crew on board at the time—and blame it on us. I don't think they would've done that unless they felt they'd been able to cobble up at least some sort of 'sensor data' to support their claims, and Commander Denton, unfortunately, wasn't able to give us really conclusive counter evidence.