Terekhov and his subordinates looked at one another for a moment. Then the exec grinned and shrugged, and all three of them picked up their coffee cups.
"As I say," Terekhov picked up his previous thought along with his cup, "pulling Hexapuma out of the inner system's unacceptable. There's no way we could expect Commodore Karlberg to take on two modern warships. And, frankly, capturing or destroying those two ships has a far higher priority than retaking a single captured merchie."
"Agreed, Sir," Kaplan said, but her tone was sour. It cut across the grain for any naval officer to abandon possible survivors to pirates, and the naturally combative tactical officer found the notion even more repugnant than most.
"I don't especially like that either, Guns." Terekhov's tone was mild, but his expression wasn't, and Kaplan sat just a bit straighter in her quarters. "In this case, however, it's possible that what we're looking at aren't your regular, run-of-the-mill pirates."
He paused, holding the coffee cup in his left hand as he gazed back and forth between his subordinates with an oddly expectant light in his eyes, as if waiting for something.
"Sir?" FitzGerald said, and Terekhov made the right-handed throwing away gesture he used to punctuate his thought processes.
"Think about it, Ansten. We've got two warships here. So far, we don't know much about them, except that their stealth capabilities and EW were good enough to keep our sensor array from getting a hard read. Admittedly, we're only using passives, they're coming in under emcon, and the range is very long, but there's no way a typical pirate has that kind of capability. Especially not the sort who'd normally operate out here in the Verge. And while word of the Lynx Terminus must have spread pretty much through the League by now, along with the news that shipping is going to be picking up in the vicinity, we're quite a long way from Lynx at the moment. So just what's sufficiently important about a system as poverty stricken as Nuncio to attract pirates with relatively modern vessels?"
FitzGerald frowned. He'd been focused on the tactical aspects of the situation, and the Captain's question hadn't even occurred to him. It took him a few more seconds to work through the logic chain which Terekhov had obviously already considered, but Bagwell got there first. He looked at Terekhov, tilting his head to the side.
"Sir," he said slowly, "are you suggesting they weren't 'attracted' at all? That they were sent ?"
"I think it's possible." Terekhov tilted his chair back and sipped coffee, gazing up at the holo display as if it were a seer's crystal ball. "I can't assess how probable it is, Guthrie, but I find those ships' presence here... disturbing. Not the fact that raiders are operating in the area." The right hand moved again. "Weakness always invites predators, even when the hunting isn't all that good. But I am disturbed by their evident capability. And if I were an outside power intent on destabilizing the area to hinder or prevent the annexation, I'd certainly consider subsidizing an increased level of pirate activity."
"That's not a happy thought, Skipper," FitzGerald said.
"No, it's not," Terekhov agreed. "And I'd say the odds are at least even that I'm being overly suspicious. It's entirely possible we have two genuine pirates here, and that they're simply taking the long view and scouting the area with an eye to future operations. In either case, taking them out has a higher priority than retaking the merchie. But the need to determine which they really are, if we can, lends weight to the desirability of taking at least one of them more or less intact."
"Yes, Sir," FitzGerald agreed, and Kaplan nodded.
"But that's going to mean getting them in a lot closer," the exec went on. "I think Abigail's right, and these people aren't any bigger than a pair of cruisers. In that case, taking them with missiles would be fairly straightforward. Unless they're Peeps with heavy pods on tow, of course, which is sort of unlikely this far from home."
Terekhov's lips twitched in a smile at FitzGerald's massive understatement, and the commander continued.
"Range advantage or no, though, we don't want to be throwing full broadsides at them unless we intend to go for quick kills and risk destroying them outright. And unlike their merchie, these people will have hot nodes and generators, despite the wear on the components. If they're outside the hyper limit, they'll probably have time to duck back across it before we can disable them with smaller salvos. So we need to let them in deep enough to give us some time to work on them before they can make a break over the hyper wall."
"At least." Terekhov nodded. "And, while taking out the actual pirates may have a higher priority than retaking the freighter, I fully intend to attempt both."
All three of his subordinates looked at him in surprise. Surprise, he noticed, which held more than a hint of incredulity, and he smiled again, thinly.
"No, I haven't taken leave of my senses. And I'm not at all sure we can pull off what I have in mind. But there's at least a chance, I think, if we play our cards properly. And if we can pull the preparations together fast enough."
He set down his coffee cup and let his chair come fully upright, and all three of his officers found themselves leaning forward in theirs.
"First," he said, "we have to deal with Bogey One and Bogey Two. As you say, Ansten, that's going to require getting them close enough to Hexapuma for us to work on them. If I were in their place, I wouldn't come inside the system hyper limit at all. If these ships are as modern and capable as their stealth capabilities seem to suggest, they probably have the sensor reach to get a good read on any active impeller signatures from at least twelve or thirteen light-minutes. So they could stop that far from Pontifex, which would leave them at least two light-minutes outside the limit, and easily spot any of Commodore Karlberg's LACs which happened to be under way. They probably wouldn't be able to pick up anything in a parking orbit with its impellers down, but if they're really modern units and they're prepared to expend the assets, they could punch recon drones past the planet. And they could feel fairly confident that nothing Nuncio has could intercept their drones even if they managed to detect them in time to try.
"At the moment, we know where they are with a fair degree of certainty. Moreover, we're pretty sure what course they intend to follow, and I think Lieutenant Hearns is right that they intend to coast in ballistic all the way. So it wouldn't be very difficult to accelerate out on an interception heading. We'd be able to localize them with our remote arrays, and they wouldn't be able to see us with their shipboard sensors until it was too late for them to avoid action. Unfortunately, that would mean we'd encounter them well outside the hyper limit, where they'd have the opportunity to escape after the first salvo, and we'd also have a high relative velocity at the point at which we overflew them if they didn't run. Our engagement window would be short, and we'd be right back with the options of either destroying them outright or letting them escape.
"The only other possibility is to entice them into coming to us . Which suggests that it's time we consider a Trojan Horse approach."
"Use our EW systems to convince them we're a freighter, Sir?" Bagwell asked.
"Exactly," Terekhov agreed.
"Pulling it off would depend on how stupid they are, Sir," Kaplan pointed out from his com display. Her diffident tone suggested she had her doubts about that, but her dark brown eyes were intent.
"I've had a few thoughts on that already, Guns," Terekhov said. "The biggest problem I see, actually, is that I want to hold our accel down to something that would be on the low side even for a merchie."
"How low were you thinking about, Skipper?" FitzGerald asked.
"I'd like to hold it to under a hundred and eighty gravities," Terekhov replied, and the exec frowned.
"That is on the low side," he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I'm assuming you want them to think we've panicked and we're trying to run away from them?" Terekhov nodded, and FitzGerald shook his head. "For us to be 'running' at that low an acceleration, we'd have to be up in the six— or seven-million-ton range. I don't see them believing a freighter that big would be here in Nuncio. Merchant traffic may be picking up in the area, but no shipping line I can think of would tie up a hull that size this far out in the sticks."
"Actually, Sir," Bagwell said, "I might have an idea there."
"I hoped you might," Terekhov said, turning to the EWO.
"There are a couple of ways we could approach it," Bagwell said. "We're going to have to get Commander Lewis involved in this, but taking some of the beta nodes out of the wedge and playing a few games with the frequency and power levels on the ones we leave in should let us produce an impeller wedge that's going to be pretty hard for anyone to tell apart from the wedge of, say, a three— or four-million-ton merchie. And if Commander Lewis is as good as I think she is, she ought to be able to induce an apparent frequency flutter into the alpha nodes, especially if she lets the betas carry the real load."