"Thank you." Terekhov's tone was calm, almost absent, as he studied his own repeater displays, and no one else had to know how difficult it was for him to keep it that way.
If CIC's estimate was accurate, then five of the unknowns fell squarely into the tonnage bracket for ships of the wall. And if that was what they actually were, their arrival could be nothing but bad news for HMS Hexapuma and the rest of her squadron, because there weren't fiveManticoran wallers in the entire Talbott Cluster. So if five of them were turning up now, they had to belong to someone else . . . like the Solarian League.
Although, now that I come to think about it, just what the hell would Solly wallers be doing way out here? This is Frontier Fleet's bailiwick, not Battle Fleet's, so they shouldn't have anything bigger than battlecruisers in the vicinity, either. On the other hand, none of the local systems have anything the size of a dreadnought or a superdreadnought in inventory. So . . .
"Bring the Squadron to readiness, Mr. Nagchaudhuri," he said.
"Aye, aye, Sir," the communications officer replied, and sent the order (which Terekhov was quite certain was thoroughly unnecessary) to the other three ships of his battered "squadron."
The good news, such as it was and what there was of it, was that the missile pods deployed about his ships contained all-up Mark 23s, not the Mark 16s which normally lived inHexapuma's magazines. The Mark 16's laser heads produced greater destructive power than almost anything else below the wall of battle, but they'd never been intended to take on superdreadnought armor. They could inflict a lot of superficial damage, possibly even cripple the heavier ship's sensor suites or rip up the vulnerable nodes of its impeller rings, but good as they were, they had far too little punch to actually stop a waller.
But the Mark 23 was a very different proposition, he thought grimly. His control links were still too badly damaged to manage more than a few dozen pods simultaneously. Certainly he couldn't come close to matching the multi-thousand-missile salvos the Manticoran Alliance and the Republic of Haven had become accustomed to throwing at one another! But he could still fire almost four hundred attack birds in a single launch, and if those were Solly dreadnoughts or superdreadnoughts, they were in for an extraordinarily unpleasant surprise when three badly mauled cruisers and a single destroyer opened fire on them with that many capital missiles from well outside their own engagement range.
And what if they are? that corner of his mind jeered. Even if you destroy all five of them outright, so what? Great! You'll begin the war with the Sollies with a resounding triumph. That should be plenty of comfort when two or three thousand ships of the wall head for Manticore with blood in their eyes!
At least he'd have four or five hours before he had to start making any irrevocable decisions. Not that—
"Sir, we're being hailed!" Nagchaudhuri said suddenly, spinning his chair to face his captain. "It's FTL, Sir!"
Terekhov twitched upright in his own chair. If the unknowns were transmitting using FTL grav-pulses, then they damned well weren't Sollies! In fact, if they were transmitting FTL, the only people they could be were—
"Put it on my display," he said.
"Yes, Sir!" Nagchaudhuri said with a huge grin, and punched in a command.
A face appeared on the small com display by Terekhov's knee. It was a dark-complexioned face, with a strong nose and chin and thinning hair, and Terekhov's eyes widened in surprise as he saw it.
"This is Admiral Khumalo," the owner of that face said. "I am approaching Monica with a relief force. If Captain Terekhov is available, I need to speak to him immediately."
"Available," Terekhov thought with a sort of lunatic glee as the first outriders of almost unimaginable relief crashed through him. Now, there's a word choice for you! He probably thinks it would have been bad for morale to say "if he's still alive," instead.
"Put me through, Amal," he said.
"Aye, aye, Sir." Nagchaudhuri punched in another command. "Live mike, Sir."
"Terekhov here, Admiral Khumalo," Terekhov said into his com pickup. "It's good to see you, Sir."
Their relative positions putHexapuma and Khumalo's flagship the better part of thirty light-minutes apart, and even with a grav-pulse com, that imposed a transmission delay of over twenty-seven seconds. Terekhov waited patiently for fifty-four seconds, and then Khumalo's eyes sharpened.
"I don't doubt that it is, Captain," he said. "May I assume there's a reason your ships are sitting where they are?"
"Yes, Sir, there is. We found it necessary to remain close enough to Eroica Station to keep an eye on the evidence and, ah, present President Tyler with an argument sufficient to prevent any hastiness on the part of his surviving navy."
" 'Surviving navy'?" Khumalo repeated the better part of a minute later. "It would appear you've been quite busy out here, Captain Terekhov." His smile was decidedly on the wintry side.
Terekhov thought about replying, then thought better of it and simply sat there, waiting.
"May I assume you've already written up your reports on this . . . incident?" Khumalo asked after several more moments.
"Yes, Sir. I have."
"Good. Let me have them now then, if you would. I should have ample time to review them, since my astrogator makes it roughly seven and a half hours for us to reach your current position. At that time, please be prepared to come aboard Hercules."
"Of course, Sir."
"In that case, Captain, I'll see you then, when we don't have to worry about transmission lag. Khumalo, clear."
Seven hours and forty-five minutes later, Aivars Terekhov's pinnace drifted out of Hexapuma's boat bay on reaction thrusters, rolled on gyros, reoriented itself, and accelerated smoothly towards HMS Hercules. The trip was short enough that there was no point bringing up the small craft's impeller wedge, and Terekhov sat back in his comfortable seat, watching the view screen on the forward bulkhead as the superdreadnought grew steadily larger.
Khumalo must have pulled out of the Spindle System literally within hours of the arrival of Terekhov's dispatch informing him of his plans. In fact, Terekhov was frankly astonished that the rear admiral had obviously responded so promptly and decisively. It was clear he hadn't waited to call in a single additional ship; he must have simply ordered every hyper-capable hull in the star system to rendezvous with his flagship and headed straight for Monica.
His scratch-built force was even more lopsided and ill-balanced than Terekhov's "squadron" had been. Aside fromHercules—which, for all her impressively massive tonnage was still one of the only two or three sadly obsolescent Samothrace-class ships lingering on in commission as little more than depot ships on distant stations—it consisted solely of the light cruisersDevastation and Intrepid, and the three destroyers Victorious, Ironside, and Domino. Aside fromVictorious, not a one of them was less than twenty T-years old, although that still made them considerably more modern and lethal than anything Monica had possessed before the sudden and mysterious infusion of modern battlecruisers.
The other four "superdreadnought-range" hyper footprints had belonged to the ammunition ships Petard and Holocaust and the repair shipsEricsson andWhite. Terekhov was relieved to see all of them, but especially the two repair ships, given the state of his own command.