“How’s our angle?”
“Well . . . it’s close, sir. If they believe that we believe Despite is leading us straight to them, then we could miss a signal . . . for a while . . . but the normal cone would pick it up as a primary signal.
“And their insertion barrage?”
“There’s nothing between us to cause detonations before we run into it, and the drives should be off by now, realtime.”
Time passed. Heris had walked most of the ship by now, letting the crew see her . . . dangerous but necessary. If they were going to fight well, they had to know who commanded them, one of the textbook rules that actually seemed to work in the real world. They were busy; she had told her officers to use whatever training drills they could to get the crew up to peak efficiency. That included rest and food; she herself had left the bridge for a hot meal and a short nap in the captain’s quarters, with Ginese keeping watch outside. Now she was back on the bridge, restless as always in the last minutes before action.
“We should be noticing them now,” Koutsoudas said. Heris glanced over, and his screen flared as something blew. The enemy icons rippled, their confidence-limit markers spreading out.
“Damn!” Koutsoudas hunched lower. “They blew some of their own barrage screen—they really want us to see them.”
“The Benignity hates uncertainty,” Heris said. “It must have been driving their commander crazy when we didn’t seem to notice them.”
The Vigilance’s screens flicked on at full power, as Heris had planned, and Weapons brought all boards hot. Heris said nothing; she had given the orders hours ago, and so far all was going as planned. They were far enough from Xavier now to jump safely; the cruiser popped in and out, a standard maneuver, slipping back out with a lower relative velocity—not a standard maneuver. The low-vee exit on a very short jump meant minimal blurring of scans on exit.
“Got ’em again.” Now the scan lag, with Koutsoudas’s special black boxes, was less than ten minutes. “Captain, they’ve brought the heavies with ’em.”
“So we expected,” said Heris. “Let me see the data.” The CH ships had their beacons live; they were not pretending to be anything but what they were, an invading force, and they were in more danger from each other if they went blank. Heris recognized the classes, but not the individual ships, whose names meant little to her. She knew the composer class was usually named for composers—and she knew Paganini—but who was Dylan? Or Zamfir? Not that it mattered. The Benignity cruiser was a third again the mass of Vigilance, and thus could mount more weapons. Three cruisers meant impossible odds. Assault carriers held atmospheric shuttles, assault troops for groundside action if needed, and the components for an orbital station that would serve a larger fleet later. Two of these were more than adequate for assault on a planet with Xavier’s population and defenses. And the final two ships, much smaller killer-escorts, had the maneuverability the others lacked, along with the firepower of an R.S.S. patrol ship. Which meant Heris’s meagre force would have been outgunned even if Despite had stayed. Which meant staying was suicidal. The best she could hope to do was delay the invasion long enough for the R.S.S. to defend the jump points exiting this system. So much for “complete confidence” in her decisions.
She could still run. Legally, logically . . . but not as Heris Serrano.
“Those two we thought were lagging are farther behind,” Koutsoudas said suddenly. “Not their usual formation.”
“A new trick?” Someone across the bridge laughed. The Benignity weren’t known for minor innovations like trailing a ship or so from a standard formation. When they changed, they changed radically, usually because new technology provided new opportunities.
“A precaution,” Heris murmured. “What class?”
“One cruiser, one killer-escort. The cruiser’s really dropping back. It must’ve come out of FTL with low relative velocity.”
“Got to be a feint,” Svatek said. “I wish we could eavesdrop.”
“Admiral Straosi, the drive continues unstable. If the admiral wishes, it can be confirmed—” Straosi didn’t want to hear this.
“What do you want to do about it?”
“We’re still losing power. If it drops much more we can’t support the weapons—” In other words, they would be slow, unarmed, helpless. Fat sheep in the path of wolves. Admiral Straosi allowed himself a moment of gloating: he hadn’t wanted Paulo along, and this whole mess was, ultimately, the fault of the Chairman. But experience suggested that the Chairman would not be the one whose neck felt the noose, whose liver danced on the tip of a blade. At the least, he must conceal his gloating.
“Captain, I apologize for my earlier remarks.” That would go on the records. “I am sure you would not have missed such a major problem in your drive. Have you considered sabotage?”
“I—yes, sir, I have.”
“There are those who opposed this mission, Captain. I will make sure that no blame accrues to you for your ship’s failure to participate in this action . . . and I’m sorry, Captain, but I cannot jeopardize the invasion for your ship alone.”
“Of course not, sir.” As he’d expected, Paulo didn’t want to appear cowardly. Perhaps he wasn’t.
“As one man of honor to another, may I suggest that you could do us great service by conserving power for your weaponry, even though that places your ship in greater danger. . . .” It was not a question, and not quite an order. They both would understand. Zamfir was doomed, but it might kill a Familias ship with its death.
“It would be my honor, Admiral Straosi. If the Admiral has specific suggestions—”
“I trust your judgment, Captain.” And that was that. Let the boy figure it out for himself, and if he killed that pesky Serrano, Straosi wouldn’t mind a bit recommending him for a posthumous medal.
“We’ll drop a few buckets of nails on their road,” Heris said. She and the weapons crews had already discussed the fusing and arming options. They hadn’t nearly the number of mines she really needed, but the more of the enemy, the greater the chance of a hit. She presumed the enemy would see them drop the clusters, and that would provoke some kind of maneuver. “And immediate course change, getting us the vector for jumps two, three, and five.”
The trailing pair of enemy ships, cruiser and killer-escort, worried her. Why were they hanging back? If the rest of the Benignity formation reacted normally, flaring away from the mines, how would that final pair react? Too much to hope they were back there because they were scan blind or something, and would just sweep on majestically into the mine cluster.
That thought, however unlikely, brought a grin to her face. She had not anticipated how happy she would be, back on the bridge of an R.S.S. cruiser. It was ridiculous, under the circumstances: she had come back only to find herself in a worse tactical mess than any she’d experienced. She had less chance of surviving—let alone winning—this engagement than she had had with the Board of Inquiry. But that didn’t sober her. This was where she belonged, and she felt fully alive, fully awake, for the first time since she’d left. Not that she regretted the experience of the past years, but—but this was home.
And Vigilance answered her joy with its own. Every hour she could sense the lift in crew morale; they believed in her, they accepted her. From their reactions alone, she learned things about Garrivay that erased the last doubts she’d had. A man might be a traitor to the Familias, and a good leader for his own people, but Garrivay had been a user, someone who abused power.
If they’d had time to prepare, even ten or fifteen days, she’d have had a reasonable chance, she was sure. Now—she didn’t even bother to calculate it. Either luck—and whatever training Garrivay had done—would be with them, or it wouldn’t. She intended to give luck all the help she could. While she wouldn’t mind dying in action, it wasn’t fair to the people of Xavier.