"A Manty?" Singleterry suggested unhappily.
"Possibly. On the other hand, it's more likely to be an Andie out here. For that matter, it could actually be a Silly. This is officially their territorial space, after all, even if everyone else seems inclined to forget that. One of them could have noticed us hanging around in Horus and gotten curious."
"I guess an Andie or a Silly would at least be better than a Manty," Singleterry said. "But either way, I don't think the Admiral is going to be very happy if there's anything to your suspicions."
"Tell me about it!" Dumais snorted. He gazed at his plot for several more seconds, frowning in thought.
Hecate would be transitioning from Warshawski sail to impeller wedge when she left the fringes of the grav wave in another three hours. At that point, she'd be within less than five and a half hours' flight time of her destination. And if that was a shadowing warship back there, then whoever she belonged to would have a very shrewd notion of where Dumais' ship was headed. Which meant that they'd have a very shrewd notion of where Second Fleet lay awaiting its orders from Nouveau Paris.
The lieutenant commander growled a silent mental curse. He'd worried about the decision to use his ship and her squadron mate Hector as Second Fleet's communications link with Ambassador Jackson in Horus from the moment he was assigned the duty. He understood the absolute necessity of making sure that link was secure, but it would have been a lot smarter to use a regular dispatch boat for the job. Unfortunately, whatever New Octagon genius had thought this one up had neglected to consider that possibility, and apparently no one thereor on Admiral Tourville's staffhad realized until Second Fleet reached Silesia that Ambassador Jackson didn't already have a dispatch vessel assigned to him.
Under the circumstances, the Admiral hadn't had any choice about making his own arrangements to cover the final leg of the communications link. And because he didn't have any dispatch boats of his own, he'd had to detach a couple of destroyers for the job.
The worst part of it was that Second Fleet had to be positive its communications were functioning properly. If the order to attack was sent from home, it had to get through. So Admiral Tourville had left not one, but two destroyers behind to ensure the maintenance of his communications with Ambassador Jackson. Two destroyers weren't going to be all that much more noticeable than one, and at least this way, the ambassador could use one ship to shuttle back and forth between Horus and Second Fleet, maintaining constant contact while keeping the other on station in Osiris orbit in case the actual attack order should come in.
Dumais wasn't at all sure what was in the sealed dispatches Jackson had instructed him to deliver to Admiral Tourville this time. Nothing the ambassador had said had given him any impression that they were truly vital, and he would really have preferred not to be sent off to play postman with some routine message. On the other hand, he supposed it did make sense to use his ship rather than risk hiring a commercially available dispatch boat and giving it the coordinates for Second Fleet's hiding place.
Which was how he found himself out here with that incredibly irritating sensor ghost dogging his heels.
"We don't have any idea of what his sensor capabilities might be, do we?" he asked Singleterry after a moment.
"Assuming he's hanging back at the very edge of his ability to hold us on his scanners," the tac officer replied, "I'd say that they aren't quite as good as ours are."
"Which would seem to suggest that there's a better chance it's a Silly than an Andy," Dumais mused aloud.
"Or," Singleterry countered, "that it's a merchie with a really good commercial-grade sensor suite. Given how risky a neighborhood this can be, a lot of the merchant ships that spend time out here have much better sensor packages than anything we'd see closer to home."
"Definitely a point to bear in mind," Dumais acknowledged. He thought for a few more moments, then grimaced.
"I don't think we can risk making any assumptions where this bird is concerned, Stephanie. I suppose it still possible that it's pure coincidence that he's back there, but it strikes me as unlikely. And the one thing we can't do is lead anybody straight to the Fleet. Unfortunately, we're already close enough to the Fleet rendezvous that anyone with half a brain should be able to narrow the volume down without much difficulty. So we'd better go see who it is."
"What do we do if it turns out it is a warship?" Singleterry asked.
"If it's a warship, then it's a warship." Dumais sighed. "There's provision in the ops order for the Admiral to shift to another star system if he has to. We don't want to do it, because it's always possible that the jump off order could reach Horus before we got Ambassador Jackson and Hector informed as to the new rendezvous point. Unfortunately, if this is a warship, we won't have much choice, unless I want to risk creating a fresh interstellar incident by opening fire."
"Even if it's a Manty?" Singleterry asked in a deliberately expressionless voice, and Dumais grinned crookedly.
"Especially if it's a Manty," he replied. "Not that the Admiral would thank us if we shot up an Andie or a Silly, either. And," he added conscientiously, "let's not forget that we don't know what size this fellow is. If he's a heavy cruiser, or a battlecruiser, then it might just be a bit...foolhardy of us to cross swords with him, don't you think?"
"Oh, yes," Singleterry said fervently. "Foolhardy is exactly the word I'd choose, Sir, and I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to hear you using it under the circumstances!"
"I thought you might approve," Dumais said dryly.
"And if it turns out this really is a merchie?" Singleterry asked.
"In that case, our options are a little broader," Dumais pointed out. "First of all, a merchie isn't going to argue with a warship if it tells him to heave to and be boarded. Secondly, we could put a prize crew aboard her and hand her over to Admiral Tourville. He could hold her at the fleet rendezvous indefinitely, if he had to, and the assumption when she didn't turn up at her destination as scheduled would simply be that one of the pirates operating out here had picked her off. If we're ordered to carry out the attack, he can release her after the fact with an apology and probably a fairly stiff reparations payment from the Government."
"And if we're never ordered to attack?" Singleterry asked very quietly, and Dumais grimaced again. He knew what she was really asking, because their orders had made it crystal clear that if no attack was ever launched, then Second Fleet had never been here. Exactly what the Republican Navy might be expected to do with a merchant ship full of people who knew Second Fleet had been here wasn't something he really wanted to consider. Even so, he knew it would be far better for that to be a merchantman rather than a warship.
"We'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it," he told his tac officer after a moment. "For right now, we have to concentrate on the matter at hand. If this turns out to be a merchie, we'll put enough of our people aboard to make sure everything stays under control and leave her right where she is while we take Hecate on to the rendezvous and report in to the Admiral. If he wants her brought the rest of the way in to him, we'll come back and get her. If he decides to shift the rendezvous, we'll come back, take our people off, apologize politely, and decamp." He shrugged. "It's not perfect, but it's the most flexible option we have, and the Admiral would expect us to show some initiative."
"It sounds to me like it should work, Skipper," Singleterry said thoughtfully.
"I hope so," Dumais said cheerfully. "Because if it doesn't, we're going to have a hell of a time explaining to the Admiral why we couldn't handle a single merchie!"