William Fortchen - Action Stations

Hans smiled softly. "They want your ass, don't they?"

Turner nodded.

"Like I said before. You had Confed Intel written all over you."

"Fleet Intel. Confed's civilian intel is thought to be compromised."

"You know, we didn't even turn a profit from our trip out here. I'm at least six thousand down."

Turner chuckled. "Just do what I tell you and it's fifty thousand when we get back."

Hans said nothing for a moment.

"What are you out here for?"

"We think there's a war coming."

Hans snorted disdainfully. "Hell, there is a war on."

"A war?" Turner replied disdainfully. "I'm talking about the real damn thing, not some dumb ass phony show of force. The Cats are gearing up and we've got to find out where, and damn soon. We were sent out here to get the hard facts."

"Well, damn it, Turner, I could have told you that back at the Hell Hole. The rumors have been flying for months now. Everybody in the Landreich knows it."

"It's one thing for you to know it, it's another thing for the president and the Senate to know it. That's what I was sent out here to try and pin down."

Hans snorted disdainfully. "Put their fat asses up on the border. Make their hides the trip wire and you'd see how fast they'd be putting the fleet on alert. Hell, it was the same thing when Xerxes invaded and the governments of Athens and Sparta could only argue with each other. It's the same today, the politicians who aren't doing the dying are always the last to get it."

Geoff looked at Hans in surprise, never expecting an allusion to the Second Persian War of ancient Earth history to be cited by the smuggler pilot.

Hans looked at him and grinned. "Just because I ain't highbred Academy doesn't mean I haven't read."

Turner laughed out loud and then leaned over and pointed at Hans' plot board.

"Look, that ship we just took apart was an Imperial counter intel team."

"How do you know that?"

Turner reached into his pocket and withdrew a twenty-five-credit coin. He held it up. Taped to one side was a small memory wafer.

"They have a leak somewhere. They were tracking him, waiting for the handoff so they could nab us all. If the confusion hadn't broken out, with their regular fleet jumping in so quickly, they most likely would have had us. Or maybe they were just looking for us and this courier, whoever he was, stumbled in at the wrong time. Either way, we're what they're looking for now."

Turner looked over at Vance.

"Do you think you jammed their burst transmission in time?"

"Part of it got out, sir, before I could nail it. Two seconds later they were all dead."

"So, what do you think?"

"They transmitted an identification of us, we have to assume that."

Hans looked back at the plot board, pulling down Geofl's calculations. The screen was lit up with streams of ships breaking towards their escape points. Suddenly, one of the streams started to break apart and turn. An open radio frequency crackled to life.

"All ships. All ships. Imperials blocking jump point Delta. All ships… all ships-" The signal disappeared as a jamming wave washed over it.

Hans looked back at Turner. "You really put my butt in the wringer on this one."

"You already had that figured when you signed on."

"Guess I owed you one for dumping that Sarn goon. Not that I wouldn't have nailed him. I already had the bastard cased out."

Turner simply smiled and then, without asking, he leaned over Hans' shoulder and turned back the scale on the plot board so that the entire system was shown, the known jump points highlighted in blue. He studied it intently for a minute and then, tapping the screen's joystick, he placed a crosshair over the jump point resting right on the edge of the event horizon and clicked once. Nav lines appeared, tracing their best trajectory in.

"We'll skim the event horizon, use the gravity to slingshot us around and in through the point."

"That'll be a hairy run," Vance said. "Hell sir, off by even the slightest and we go over the edge. Remember, there're fluctuations in the gravity waves that close in. We can't be sure on this."

"And it takes us into unknown Cat territory. I was told the Imperials might not even know about that point," Hans interjected quietly.

"That's what they're not expecting. I can't see them coordinating a block on a dozen jump points simultaneously. They'll most likely cover the obvious ones and that's it."

"Too bad we couldn't have gotten ten or fifteen of our ships together," Hans said wistfully.

"Why?" Geoff asked.

"Cause if we could've, I'd lead them back and kick the asses of those Imperials closing in."

"One of them's a cruiser," Vance replied.

"So? They fight by the book. We don't. We'd kick their asses right into vacuum."

Vance shook his head and laughed, but Geoff could see that Turner was looking intently at Hans.

"You handled yourself well against that ship back there."

Hans ignored the compliment.

"All right, we take that point out. We're gonna skim close to the horizon so you better strap yourselves in. Old Lazarus' inertial dampening ain't the best and it's going to get rocky."

Geoff started to climb back to his position and noticed Turner looking at him.

"You did some good shooting back there. Perfect deflection as we turned."

"Who do you think the courier was?"

"Damned if I know. Too bad they ventilated him before we could find out. Could be anything, maybe even one of our intel teams that we wrote off but is still out there. Could even be a false lead. Once we get out of here, I'll run a check on the wafer, see what it says."

Geoff climbed back up into his turret and pulled his harness straps tight. Looking straight ahead he could see the whispers of light streaking in towards the black hole before they disappeared into the unfathomable void. He knew that slingshoting into the precise location of a jump point was going to be a tricky bit of navigation, and it suddenly dawned on him that the responsibihty for that was actually his. None of the other three had commented on it, and the acceptance that implied gave him a newfound sense of confidence. Leaning over his board he started to check and recheck their run, which would take them yet deeper into Cat territory.

Kilrah.Confederation date 2634.220

The alarm for jump transit sounded. Jukaga sat and strapped himself into his chair. The excitement on the bridge was electric as the admiral's staff and helm officers secured themselves and then started to break into their battle chants.

Jukaga looked up at the view screen. To port he could just barely make out the pinpoint of reddish light that was Kilrah. It disappeared from view as a heavy battleship, the Kitagki, swung in behind them. A swarm of nearly a hundred ships was gathered at the jump point; light frigates, destroyers, transports, courier vessels, intelligence surveillance ships, supply vessels, fuel tankers, mine layers, and heavy landing assault craft. It would take the better part of a day for the ships to complete transit through the jump point. It was one of the advantages, though, of being on the admiral's flagship that there was no waiting for access to a jump point. As soon as his vessel arrived, a way was cleared for him and the other battleships traveling in line astern.

The only ones who had gone ahead were the forward picket ships and the Crown Prince's six carriers.

Jukaga still felt a ripple of resentment over what his father had done. He should be on the carrier Ukshika rather than a hanger-on to Nargth's staff. The glory was to be found in a fighter, and in his feverish dreams he had imagined himself leading the first strike in to destroy an enemy carrier. Instead, he had to endure the quiet stares of contempt from the admiral's staff, for they undoubtedly knew that he had been given the position because of influence and some undoubtedly suspected that he was a coward who did not want to fight.