David Weber - The Service of the Sword

"That's a Solarian design," he said suddenly, his aristocratic drawl momentarily in total abeyance.

"A Solly ?" Blumenthal looked up over his shoulder in disbelief.

"I'm almost certain," Oversteegen said, and leaned closer to point at the visual image. "Look at that gravitic array," he said as more recognition features sprang out at him now that he knew what to look for. "And look at the impeller ring. See the offset on the beta nodes?" He shook his head. "And that might explain how good their EW is."

Blumenthal stared back down at the image, as if seeing it for the first time.

"You could be right, Sir," he said slowly. "But what in God's name would Solly heavy cruisers be doing here ?"

"I don't have the least idea," Oversteegen admitted. "Except for one thing, Guns. If what they're here for was legitimate, they would have responded t' our challenges by now. And the fact that they're Solly-built, doesn't mean a thing about who's crewin' them, now does it?"

"But how would garden variety pirates this far from the League get their hands on Solly hardware? And if they could do that in the first place, then why waste their time on chicken-stealing level piracy in an area where all of the system economies are so marginal?"

"All very good questions, Guns," Oversteegen acknowledged. He straightened and clasped his hands behind him. "And it occurs t' me that they're also the sort of questions our friends out there aren't goin' t' want anyone to be askin'... much less answerin'. Which may explain why they're comin' in on us so steadily now. Of course, it still leaves the question of why they waited so long before they did, now doesn't it?"

He rocked slightly on the balls of his feet, eyes slightly unfocused as he thought hard. Then he nodded to himself.

"A nasty thought just occurred t' me, Guns. If these are Sollies—or, at least, Solly-built—and if the EW we've actually observed is this good, then what's their stealth technology like?"

"You think there are more of them around, Sir?"

"If there's two of them, I don't see any reason why there couldn't be more. After all, two of them are so unlikely, on the face of things, that I'm no longer prepared t' even hazard a guess as t' what they could be up to. But I think it's time we checked our back."

"Absolutely, Sir," Blumenthal agreed, and looked at his assistant.

"Deploy four more of the Sierra Romeo platforms, Mr. Aitschuler. I want a conic sweep of our after aspect immediately!"

"Shit!" Jerome Tyler, captain of the heavy cruiser Fortune Hunter , swore with feeling. No ship he'd ever commanded, or even served upon, before Fortune Hunter would have boasted the sensor sensitivity to have spotted the Manty's recon platform when it came in on her. Nor would they have been capable of spotting the additional platforms the bastard had just deployed astern of himself. Not even Fortune Hunter 's systems could manage to hold the drones once they cleared their mother ship's wedge and brought their own stealth systems fully online, but he knew where they had to be headed. Which meant they were probably going to find Juliette Morakis' Cutthroat and Dongcai Maurersberger's Mörder before they got properly into position.

This was all that asshole Ringstorff's fault! He was the one who'd figured it had to be the Erewhonese again. Now he'd committed them to taking on the Royal Manticoran Navy, and the one thing anyone who had ever operated in Silesia knew was that if you took on a single Manty warship, you'd better be damned sure you killed every member of its crew. Because if the Manties knew you'd hit one of their ships, and they had any clue that would let them identify you, they would stop coming after you only after you were dead... or Hell was a skating rink.

Tyler forced his thoughts out of their ever tightening circle and drew a deep breath.

Yes, it was all Ringstorff's fault. And, yes, they were up against a Manty. But that just meant their options were clearer.

And that they couldn't let there be any survivors at all.

"There is another one back there, Sir!"

Michael Oversteegen frowned ever so slightly as his repeater plot updated with the drones' report. The stealthed cruiser creeping up on Gauntlet' sport quarter was much closer than any Peep could have gotten without being detected. On the other hand, she wasn't as close as another Manticoran ship might have managed, which suggested that the RMN's hardware remained superior to the other side's, even if those were Solly-built ships. Unfortunately, the margin of superiority looked like being much thinner than it should have been, and there were three of them.

That he knew about so far , that was.

He crossed his legs, considering the situation. The two ships he'd already known about were almost dead ahead of him now, but they'd been cautious, maneuvering along the outside arc of the hyper limit without ever crossing it while letting Gauntlet gradually close the range. The discovery of the third unknown unit might very well explain that caution; they'd shaped their course to draw Oversteegen into a position which would permit their consort to maneuver around astern of him.

But now that the third cruiser was almost into position, they'd changed their own vectors to head directly towards him. The current range was just over fourteen million kilometers, with a closing velocity of just over sixty thousand kilometers per second. Given that geometry, the effective powered missile range for a Peep missile would have been just over fifteen million klicks at 42,500 g , which would give them a minute and a half of drive time. Gauntlet 's missiles could pull 46,000 g over the same time envelope, which gave her a current powered engagement range of over sixteen-point-three million klicks, but that theoretical advantage was rather cold comfort, given that both sides were already in their own range of the other. On the other hand, the other side's timing hadn't been perfect—not surprisingly, given the limitations of light-speed communications and the perennial difficulty of coordinating with someone whose stealth systems hid him from your sensors as completely as from the enemy's. Oversteegen knew the trailer coming up astern was there now, and that she'd need over eleven more minutes to get into missile range at all... assuming he let her do so.

"Things seem t' be gettin' a little complicated," he observed mildly into the silently roaring tension of his bridge. He drummed the fingers of his right hand lightly on his command chair's armrest and considered his options, which were becoming progressively less palatable.

"How do your targetin' solutions on Number One and Number Two look, Guns?" he asked.

"They're not as good as I'd like, Sir," Blumenthal replied honestly. "Against a Peep, my confidence would be high. Against whoever these people are, though—" He shrugged. "They haven't brought their ECM fully on line yet, so I can't be certain how it will affect our targeting solutions when they do. But given what they seem to be able to do to our passive sensors, I have to say I'd be cautious about their reliability."

"But they don't have it up yet," Oversteegen murmured.

"Not fully, no, Sir."

"Captain," Commander Watson said quietly from the com screen at Oversteegen's right knee which linked him to the exec and her backup command crew in Auxiliary Control, "it's my duty to remind you that the current Rules of Engagement require demonstration of hostile intent before one of Her Majesty's starships is authorized to open fire."

"Thank you, Ms. Exec." Oversteegen smiled thinly at her. "I'm aware of the ROE, but you're quite correct t' remind me of them, and the log will indicate you did so. However, under the existin' circumstances, and given these people's refusal t' respond t' any of our challenges, coupled with the obvious effort t' position their third ship t' ambush us from behind, I'm willin' t' consider that they've already demonstrated hostile intent."