David Weber - The Service of the Sword

"I'm aware that Navy personnel aren't trained in planetary evasion and concealment tactics the way Marines are, Sergeant. And if I had another choice, believe me, I'd take it. But you'll just have to take my word for it that there's no way this pinnace could possibly avoid detection, interception, and destruction if we try to stay in space. That's an area where we Navy types have a certain degree of expertise of our own." She gave him a thin smile. "So, the way I see it, that only leaves us the planet. Understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Gutierrez said. He remained clearly unhappy, and she suspected he also remained somewhat short of total confidence in her leadership ability, but he couldn't avoid the force of her argument, either.

"Well," she told him with a more natural smile, "at least we already had our survival supplies ready to go, didn't we?"

"Yes, Ma'am, we did." Gutierrez surprised her with a chuckle which acknowledged that he knew she'd given him the initial assignment just to yank his chain. She grinned back wryly, but then their moment of shared humor faded, and she nodded to him.

"All right, Sergeant. Once we're down, I'm going to be relying very heavily on your expertise. Don't hesitate to offer any suggestion that occurs to you. I know what I want to do, but this isn't an area in which I'm trained to know how to do it."

"Don't worry, Ms. Hearns," he told her. "You know the Corps motto: Can do! We'll get through it when we have to."

"Thank you, Sergeant," she said, and she was genuinely grateful for his attempt to bolster her confidence, even though she was just as aware as he was of how slender their chances actually were against any determined orbital and aerial search for them. She smiled briefly at him, then returned to the flight deck.

"How are we coming, PO?" she asked.

"Almost there, Ma'am," Hoskins replied. Her co-pilot had the controls while Hoskins and Chief Palmer put their heads together over the autopilot programming panel. The petty officer looked up at the midshipwoman with an expression that was half-smile and half-grimace. "Too bad we didn't have any canned routines on file for this."

"I know. But Sir Horace didn't have one either when he set it up," Abigail pointed out. "And at least you and Chief Palmer get to work with our own software instead of the Peeps'."

"True, Ma'am," Hoskins agreed, and Abigail smiled encouragingly and returned to the passenger compartment.

"We should hit Refuge orbit in about twelve minutes," Commander Thrush said, and Samson Lamar nodded in acknowledgment of his astrogator's announcement just as if he didn't think this hunt for the Manty pinnace was ridiculous. And pointless.

He doubted very much that the cruiser had taken the time to squeal any sort of detailed download to the pinnace's crew. Certainly it must have had other things on its mind once it realized Cutthroat and Mörder were both behind it. Despite what the Manty had done to Fortune Hunter , the chances of its successfully defeating two more heavy cruisers had to be low, especially in light of the way Mörder 's fire had smashed its after impeller ring. And if the cruiser was destroyed, then there was certainly no rush in hunting down its orphaned pinnace! If, on the other hand, the cruiser succeeded in escaping destruction by some unlucky chance, then there was no point in destroying the pinnace, either.

But that pain in the ass Ringstorff had insisted, and Lamar had been unable to come up with any logical reason why he shouldn't just as well do what Ringstorff wanted. On the one hand, there'd been no way to decelerate in time for Predator to join Cutthroat and Mörder 's pursuit of the Manty, and, on the other, Predator 's base course had already been almost directly towards the planet.

So here she was, a fully armed heavy cruiser hunting for a single pinnace. It was rather like sending a sabertooth tiger to hunt down a particularly vicious mouse.

"Anything yet?" he asked his tac officer.

"Not yet. Of course, if they're lying doggo, they're going to be a pretty small target."

"I know. But Ringstorff says the remote platforms tracked them back to the planet, so they have to be around here somewhere."

"Maybe so, but if I were a pinnace that figured a heavy cruiser might be hunting for me, damned if I'd park myself in orbit where it could find me!"

"Yeah? Where would you hide?"

"The planet's got two moons," the tac officer pointed out. "Well, one and a fraction. Me, I'd probably look for a nice crater somewhere and hide in a ring wall's shadow. Either that, or find myself a nice deep valley down on the planet, somewhere. Damned sure I wouldn't hang around in space!"

"Makes sense to me," Lamar acknowledged after moment. "But we have to start somewhere, so let's get on with it. If they're not in orbit, Ringstorff is just going to make us look somewhere else until we find them, after all."

"What a pain in the ass," the tac officer muttered, unaware that he was paralleling Lamar's own opinion of Ringstorff. Lamar smiled at the thought, and returned to his own console.

Fifteen minutes passed. Predator slowed, killing the last of her motion relative to Refuge as she slid into a high orbit, and her active sensors began a systematic search for any other artificial object in orbit around the planet.

It didn't take them long to find one.

"There she goes," PO Hoskins said softly, staring down at the palm-sized display of the portable com. The unit's transmit key was locked out to prevent any accidental transmission which might give away their position, but the signal from the orbiting pinnace came in just fine.

Not that it was much of a signal. Just a single, omnidirectional burst transmission which would give away nothing about its intended recipients' location even if it was picked up. But it was enough to let them know what was happening.

High overhead, the pinnace which had returned to parking orbit under the preprogrammed control of its autopilot recognized the lash of radar when it felt it. And when it did, it activated the other programs Hoskins and Palmer had stored in its computers.

Its impellers kicked to life, and the small craft slammed instantly forward at its maximum acceleration, darting directly away from the planet in an obvious, panicky bid to escape.

It was futile, of course. It had scarcely begun to move when Predator 's fire control locked it up. The pirate cruiser didn't even bother to call upon the pinnace to surrender. It simply tracked the wildly evading little vessel with a single graser mount... then fired.

There was no wreckage.

"Well, that seems straightforward enough," Lamar said with an air of satisfaction.

"Yeah," his tac officer agreed. "Still seems pretty stupid of them, though."

"I think Al may have a point, Sam." It was Tim St. Claire, Predator 's improbably named executive officer, and Lamar frowned at him.

"Hey, don't blame me ," St. Claire said mildly. "All I'm saying is that Al's right—only a frigging idiot would have sat here in orbit waiting for us to kill him. Now, personally, I figure there's a damned good chance that anyone who's just seen his ship haul ass out of the system with the bad guys in hot pursuit is gonna act like a frigging idiot. Panic does that. But if he didn't panic, then this was way too easy. And if we don't go ahead and look for him some more on our own now, Ringstorff is just gonna send us back here and make us do it later. Besides, it'd give the crew something to do while we wait for Morakis and Maurersberger."

"All right," Sampson sighed. "Break out the assault shuttles and let's get to it, then."