Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

Aric held his breath, unconsciously bracing himself as he watched the displays. The timer counted down....

"Vector shift!" Quinn snapped. "Coming around toward us—"

And then, suddenly, there they were: two ships, milky-white, the same linked-hexagon configuration that the Jutland watchships' records had burned into Aric's memory. A little below them, falling into an orbit roughly parallel to theirs.

Barely two kilometers away.

"Quinn!" Aric barked. Practically right on top of them—!

Quinn didn't answer. Aric looked down at him, a hand reflexively coming up to point at the display.

He froze, finger still pointed at the board. Quinn was sitting motionlessly in his seat, his forehead creased with concentration, his eyes staring with a chilling blankness at the display and the Conqueror ships visible there.

And on the board beside the computer-link jack, two pale-green lights had come on.

Aric looked back at the display, a tingle of eerie unreality clouding over the surge of panic. The Conqueror ships were starting to rotate their edges toward the fueler, the Corvines in sight now as they darted toward the alien ships like angry hawks defending their nest. Deadly silent, deadly serious, deadly precise. Four fighters, one fueler, working now as a single unit.

Copperheads.

Out of the corner of his eye Aric saw a light flick on beneath the display—

And with a suddenness that made him jump, the display shimmered and the Conquerors and planet vanished. "Quinn! What—? Did we mesh out?"

For a half-dozen heartbeats there was no answer. Then, slowly, Quinn's eyes came back to focus. "Yes," he said, his voice sounding strange. "We got the readings we needed and left. No damage."

"Ah," Aric said, feeling oddly out of breath. "What about the Corvines?"

"Should be right with us," Quinn said. The two lights beneath the jack had gone out; reaching over, he pulled out the Mindlink cable. "We're doing a two-minute parallel jump."

"I see," Aric said. He'd seen people try parallel jumps on occasion, never with optimum results. The twin problems of timing and drift... but then, those pilots hadn't had Copperhead synchronization. "Did anyone get a static bomb off?"

"No," Quinn said, his voice a little grim. "There wasn't enough time. That's why we're just doing two minutes."

Aric looked at the display, now functioning as the fueler's main status board. "What happens if they track us?"

Quinn shrugged, pulling the other end of the cable out of the jack hidden under the hair beneath his right ear. "We fight, I guess. Don't worry, though—there's a good chance they won't be able to find us. Two minutes is considered optimum timing for the enemy to get a track on your wake-trail and mesh out after you. Since we'll be meshing in about that same time, they should wind up shooting right past us."

"That assumes they can't track a wake-trail while in stardrive," Aric pointed out. "Or that they won't wait that extra minute and notice that we've meshed in again."

Quinn shook his head. "Doubt it. So far their stardrive seems to work the same way as ours. It's unlikely their tracking system would work any differently."

"As unlikely as their meshing in only two kilometers away from us?"

For a moment Quinn was silent. "You're right," he conceded. He sat there another moment, then picked up the connector cable and reinserted it into the jack behind his ear. "Max, I want an immediate tactical scan as soon as we mesh in," he ordered, plugging in the other end of the cable.

"Yes, Commander."

One of the two green lights beside the jack came on. "Stand ready, El Dorado," Quinn said. "Here we go."

Once again the seconds counted down; and with another shimmer the stars were back. Holding his breath, Aric stared at the display. "I don't see them," he murmured. "The Corvines. Where are they?"

Silence. "Quinn?" Aric demanded. "Where are they?"

"There," Quinn said, relief evident in his voice. "There, and over there. Just had a little drift problem, that's all. They're on their way. Damage... not reading any."

"Great," Aric said, rubbing his hand across his forehead. It was like coming off one of those terrifying amusement-park gravity rides that he'd always hated. The kind Pheylan and Melinda had always tried to drag him onto when they were kids.

Unfortunately, this ride wasn't over yet. "What do we do if the Conquerors show up? Run for it?"

"Immediately," Quinn nodded. "Don't worry, the others all have the contingency rendezvous point. Max, how's the analysis on those ships coming?"

"It's finished, Commander," the computer said. "I'm afraid it's not going to be as useful as you hoped."

"They never are," Quinn said. "Let's hear it."

One of the side displays lit up with a false-color diagram of the two Conqueror ships. "Here are the raw data," Max said. "You'll see that aside from the beginnings of edge-effect dissipation, the infrared pattern is remarkably uniform. This implies either an extremely cool drive mechanism or else a highly efficient heat-redistribution system."

"Hull-based superconductors?" Aric suggested.

"That's one possibility," Max agreed. "Unfortunately, that uncertainty coupled with our lack of data on the hull material itself leaves us with a considerable margin of error for any distance calculation. It will be better than the Jutland was able to obtain, though, given the immediacy of these readings."

"Bottom line, Max," Quinn said. "Let's have it."

The false-color images were replaced by a star chart, with a vector marked in red. "I estimate the ships had traveled between twenty-five and seventy light-years," Max said.

Quinn snorted. "Twenty-five to seventy?" he echoed. "Why don't you make it an even zero to one billion while you're at it?"

"I'm sorry, Commander," Max said, sounding genuinely regretful. "Without better data that's the best I can do."

"I know," Quinn sighed. "Forget it."

Aric looked at the chart. Delphi's estimate had been right: there wasn't a single system on or near that line for nearly a hundred light-years. "It has to be a space station," he said. "That's the only way it can make any sense."

"I know," Quinn said. "I know. The problem..." He broke off, waving a hand helplessly at the chart.

Aric nodded, a hard knot of gloom settling into the pit of his stomach. To find a single deep-space station along a line forty-five light-years long... "It can't be done, can it?" he asked quietly.

"No," Quinn said. "There's not a chance in hell. Not if we had every ship in the Commonwealth to help us."

Aric looked at the red line. "So what do we do?"

Quinn looked up at him. "We go home, sir," he said. "There's nothing else we can do."

The control room was suddenly as silent as a tomb. Pheylan's tomb. "Not yet," Aric said. "We can't go yet. We can do two more systems—the others promised they'd help us search that many."

Quinn waved again at the chart. "Fine. Which two do you want?"

Aric shook his head. All those stars. Where even to think about beginning?

"It's over, Mr. Cavanagh," Quinn said into the silence. "We did everything we could. It wasn't enough. It's time to go home."

"You that eager to face trial?" Aric bit out.

"No," Quinn said. "I'm not eager to prepare for war, either. But we'll probably have to do both."

Aric grimaced. "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean it that way."

For a minute Quinn was silent. "We need to release the others to go back," he said at last. "That was our agreement. But if you want to continue... I guess I'm willing to keep going. We could probably go another month on our own before we had to turn back."

"And where would we look?" Aric countered.

Quinn shrugged slightly. "Wherever you wanted."