David Weber - The Service of the Sword

Oversteegen frowned thoughtfully. The possibility that the newcomers might have a legitimate reason for visiting Tiberian had become increasingly less likely. Without the RMN's FTL com capability, there'd been an inevitable light-speed transmission delay of just over thirty-two minutes built into any challenge/response com loop. But they'd passed that point some time ago, and the fact that the unknowns had completely ignored all of Gauntlet 's challenges and efforts to establish communications was certainly a bad sign. Unfortunately, neither the current RMN rules of engagement nor interstellar law gave him the right to preemptively attack someone simply because they refused to talk to him.

Normally, Oversteegen had no particular problem with that restriction. In this instance, however, he had quite a large problem with it. Although Gauntlet was only a heavy cruiser, without the magazine space or the launch tubes for the all-up multi-drive missiles which had given the Manticoran Alliance such a decisive advantage over the People's Navy during the final phases of the war, the missiles she did have were significantly longer ranged than those any other cruiser-sized vessel was likely to carry. But the unknowns were already inside his own theoretical envelope for a maximum-range engagement, and they were continuing to close. At the present rate of closure, in fact, he'd be inside their engagement range within less than another twelve minutes.

Which meant this was not a moment at which he wanted to discover that whoever they were had better hardware than they ought to have.

"We still don't have even a national ID, Sir," the tactical officer continued, "and I'm not happy about that."

"It's not just a class we haven't seen before?" Oversteegen's voice was more that of a man thinking aloud than that of someone actually asking a question, but Blumenthal replied anyway.

"Definitely not, Sir. I cross-checked what we do have against everything in the database. Whoever these people are, we don't know them. Not, at least, based on the emissions we've been able to pick up so far, even with the Ghost Rider platforms. That's what worries me. We ought to be able to make some stab at IDing them, and we can't."

Oversteegen nodded. The RMN's long-range, real-time reconnaissance drones gave it an enormous tactical advantage. At the moment, Blumenthal undoubtedly had a far better look at the unknowns than they could possibly have at Gauntlet . But that didn't help a lot if Gauntlet couldn't identify what she was seeing.

"Can you maneuver one of the platforms for a visual ID?" he asked after considering possibilities.

"I think so, Sir. But it'll take a while. And it'll have to be a down-the-throat look, and at that range, even Peeps could probably nail the platform, stealth or no stealth."

"Go for it anyway," Oversteegen decided.

"You know," Ringstorff said, "I don't think I've had an operation get this fucked up in the last ten T-years. A Manty. A frigging Manty !"

He scowled down at his plot. The information it displayed was over nineteen minutes old, given the distance between the depot ship and the cruiser they'd identified as "Erewhonese" on the basis of the sensor emissions their stealthed inner-system platforms had picked up. But they'd forgotten that the Erewhonese weren't the only ones with Manticoran Alliance hardware, and the relayed challenge this HMS Gauntlet had transmitted to Tyler left no doubt about her nationality. His scowl deepened as he considered the implications, but Lithgow, on the other hand, only shrugged.

"No way you could have known until they challenged Tyler," he said. "Who would have expected to see a single Manty cruiser this far from home now ?" He grimaced. "They've been pulling their horns in steadily ever since Saint-Just mousetrapped them into that cease-fire."

"Well, pulling in or not, they're here," Ringstorff grumbled.

"Doesn't really change anything, though, does it?" Lithgow asked, and Ringstorff looked at him. "What I mean is, they're obviously working with the Erewhonese, or they wouldn't be here. In that case, all of the arguments in favor of keeping them from passing on any scan data about us still apply, don't they?"

"Sure they do, but you heard Tyler's voice as well as I did. He's scared shitless by the very thought of crossing swords with a Manty!"

"So what?" Lithgow chuckled nastily. "He's already inside their missile range, so it's not like he has any choice about engaging them, anyway. And whatever the Peeps may think, I don't believe Manties are supermen. The Yahoos have state-of-the-art Solarian missiles and EW, and there are four of them. Two of whom the Manties don't even know are there yet!"

"I know." Ringstorff inhaled deeply and nodded, but despite that, he was far more anxious about the possible outcome than Lithgow was. Unlike Ringstorff, Lithgow was a Solarian himself, recruited by Ringstorff's superiors for the job. This was his first trip to what the League still referred to as the Haven Sector, and it had been obvious to Ringstorff for some time that Lithgow resented the enormous respect—one might almost say terror—which Manticoran technological superiority generated in the minds of the locals.

Part of that was the simple fact that Lithgow hadn't been here while the Manties' Eighth Fleet had been busy smashing every Peep fleet or task force in its way into rubble. But an even bigger part of it, Ringstorff was convinced, was the unshakable confidence in their own unassailable technological supremacy which seemed to be a part of the intellectual baggage of every Solly he'd ever worked with.

Still, he told himself, it was always possible Lithgow's view was at least as accurate as his own. He, after all, was an Andermani, and the Andermani—like their neighbors in the Silesian Confederacy, although to a lesser extent—were accustomed to the notion that the Royal Manticoran Navy was the region's premier fleet. No one in his right mind pissed off the Manties. That was a fundamental rule of survival for the various pirates and rogue regimes of Silesia.

Which was the real reason for his concern. Lithgow was certainly correct that Tyler and Lamar couldn't evade action at this point whatever they did, and he was also right that the Yahoos' capabilities were almost certain to come as a nasty surprise to the Manty. Not to mention the fact that the Manty seemed totally oblivious to the other two cruisers creeping up behind him. So by every objective standard, it ought to be the Manty who was in trouble.

Except that the Four Yahoos were all Silesians, which meant they were unlikely to see it that way.

"Who the hell are these people?" Commander Blumenthal demanded rhetorically as he glared at the visual image frozen on his display.

As he'd more than half-feared, the cruiser he was looking at had picked up the recon drone as it came sidling in for an optical pass. The target's forward missile defenses had promptly blown it out of space. In fact, they'd done it considerably more quickly than he'd anticipated, and he didn't like the acceleration numbers on the counter-missile they'd used. Nor did he care for the increasing evidence that their EW capabilities were much, much better than those of any "pirates" he'd ever heard of. For that matter, they were at least twenty or thirty percent better than anything Gauntlet had on file for first-line Peep systems!

"That, Guns," Captain Oversteegen murmured from where he stood at Blumenthal's shoulder, "is an excellent question."

The captain rubbed his lower lip while he furrowed his brow in thought. The visual imagery wasn't as good as he might have wished, and the angle was poor. But it was the first real look they'd gotten, and there was something about it. Something about the turn of the cruiser's forward hammerhead and the angle of the impeller ring...