William Fortchen - Action Stations

The star field spun violently as they continued to tumble. Geoff caught a quick glimpse of a cruiser streaking past them. Startled, he realized it was the first time he had actually seen a Cat heavy ship up close. Rolling on all three axes, he caught sight of it again for a brief instant, then lost it to view.

A topside thruster, just forward of his gun position, winked on and held for several seconds. The tumble started to straighten out on at least one axis. In spite of the inertial dampening Geoff continued to get slammed back and forth in the turret and, to his embarrassment and disgust, he suddenly vomited.

The tumble straightened out on a second axis so that Geoff tried to train his guns on it, but his disorientation was now complete, and attempting to focus on the target reticule only made him want to vomit again.

The spin flattened. Rotating his turret aft he saw half a dozen Kilrathi ships moving in line, one of them disappearing with the telltale flash of a vessel going into jump.

The Kilrathi ships were already out of visual range. He punched out a standard sublight radar sweep which showed that they were barely moving, and that three of them were starting to come about. Two had launched missiles, but Lazarus was far outstripping the pursuit, at least for the moment.

"Damn it, Geoff, you puked in my lap," Vance cried.

Geoff looked down at Richards, who was angrily trying to wipe the splattered liquid off his legs. Hans chuckled softly and looked up.

"You remind me of somebody," he said with a distant smile, then motioned for Geoff to come down.

"What the hell was that?" Geoff asked.

"We hit something going the other way," Turner announced. "Thought we'd bought it. As it was we damn near ripped apart. We must have been pulling twenty g's or more in that spin."

Turner looked over at Hans and nodded. "Good piloting, son."

Hans did not even bother to acknowledge the compliment.

"It'll be a half hour or more before those boys start to close," Hans announced. "We ain't out of this yet."

"I suggest we skim the event horizon again, and get the hell into the next system."

"What I was thinking. The trick is, which jump point?"

"Whichever one they haven't sealed. We've got to get back home now."

Turner looked back over at Geoff.

"Pull that sweep up on the system down here. I want backup copies made of it as well, in case our main computer gets fried." As Turner spoke he stepped into the head, came back out, and tossed Geoff a towel.

Embarrassed, Geoff wiped himself off, ignoring the disgusted look on Vance's face.

"Must have been the dinner we had back on The Pit," he said defensively.

The other three said nothing and Geoff felt a flash of anger, wondering if they thought he had vomited out of fear rather than simple motion sickness.

Throwing the towel down a disposal hatch he leaned over a plot data screen and quickly plugged the sweep into a memory cube. Pulling out the cube he handed it to Turner, then pulled the data up on the screen. Turner sat down and slowly started to scan through it. The images were fuzzy, details blurring into wavery smudges of light and shadow.

"Wish I had an A-23 system for this," Turner mumbled.

After several minutes of examining the screen he looked back at Geoff.

"Two battleships, I think Yar class, older design but still good. A full squadron of cruisers, a hell of a lot of lighter ships, and at least ten heavy assault landing ships."

He paused for a moment.

"It's an invasion fleet. I'm willing to bet the Landreich and the bordering frontier is the target. They don't have any of their main fleet carriers here though, looks like just one cruiser conversion."

Geoff stood silent, looking down at the screen.

"I think we got what we came for," Turner announced. "The trick now is to live long enough to tell somebody. Hans, how close can you squeeze us to the event horizon?"

"How close do you want to go?"

"Close enough that they think we went in. Start mimicking control failure, keep us spinning. As we loop around, we'll be lost to view. There's most likely a hell of a lot of debris floating around, they were shooting up a lot of ships as we were getting out. Let's see if we can throw them off and dodge for the nearest jump out of here."

Even before he finished talking Hans had already hit the thrusters, which set Lazarus to spinning. Geoff looked around and swallowed hard.

Turner smiled. "You picked a good time to graduate, Tolwyn."

"Hows that, sir?" he asked, trying to stay focused.

"'To a long war or a bloody plague, used to be the old drinking toast in your ancestors' army. It means quick promotion. Hell, son, you might be captain in six months when this show blows up."

Unfortunately for ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn, promotion was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

Confederation Fleet Headquarters

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY COPY ONE OF ONE TO: COM7FLT MCAULIFFE-BASE ALEXANDRIA FROM: CICCONFEDFLT

This communication is strictly off the record and should be destroyed after reading. I shall retain a copy in my personal files in case, at some future date, questions are raised as to your actions.

Consider this letter to be an official warning of attack directed, and I repeat, directed only from my office. I discussed my concerns this morning with the president, and for reasons of state he refused to make an official statement from the Confederation Government to this effect. I am therefore taking it upon myself to do so personally. Unfortunately, this memo cannot be sent by burst transmission due to security concerns, therefore it must take the slow route of arriving by official courier. Upon receipt of this memo I am directing you to disperse Seventh Fleet from McAuliffe into the next system inward without delay. Ships will rotate back to McAuliffe and orbital base Alexandria only for essential repairs. This is to be done under the guise of maneuvers and this procedure shall be maintained until you receive orders to the contrary.

All leaves are to be canceled, all ships are to depart from port with full load of armaments and to maintain a class two level of readiness. If any ship of the fleet is approached by an unidentified vessel, they are to shoot first and ask questions later. That order is to apply especially to our picket ships guarding the approach from the old demilitarized zone.

I am not operating on any hard evidence. Call it instinct, that I smell a storm on the horizon. More than anything else, I wish we could send a forward picket line deeper into Kilrathi territory, but to even suggest such a provocative action against the Kilrathi, other than in the Facin sector would mean my dismissal from the service along with the cashiering of any officer who complied with such an order.

I also request that if Commander Winston Turner should appear within your area of control, any messages he might have for me should be given the highest priority. This message should arrive the day before Confederation Day leaves begin. I am sorry to ruin the holiday for you and your personnel, but for the good of the Confederation I deem it to be essential.

Banbridge-CICCONFEDFLT

Skip examined a hardcopy of the letter one more time and cursed under his breath while taking a sip of Scotch.

Hell of a way to run the fleet, he thought coldly as he folded the letter and sealed it inside a secured, scanproof envelope. The envelope, in turn, went into a red-Class A Priority-Fleet Dispatch Pouch. A ship was departing from Houston within the hour to rendezvous with a priority shipment of spare parts heading straight to McAuliffe. McAuliffes translight burst signal station was again on the blink, probably due to the damned solar storms rippling between its two suns. Even if the line was open, he still preferred to send a message of this nature by hardcopy. There was no telling if the Cats had broken their latest coding.