David Weber - In Enemy Hands

"Um." Zachary scratched the tip of her nose. "How much delay would we build in if we simply alerted Turner and let him handle it?" she asked. She and Luchner both already knew the answer to that; she was asking it only to be sure the answer was officially on record before they stuck their necks out.

" Nuada 's about twenty-two light-minutes from us and eighteen from Dirk ," Luchner replied. "It would take Turner at least forty minutes from the moment we send him the alert to pass it on to Dirk , and another two minutes to hit Raiden and Claymore . If we pass the word to the others at the same time we inform Nuada , we'll cut a minimum of thirteen minutes off the time for every one of the other ships, but our current geometry will let us take a full nineteen minutes off the time for Dirk ."

"That sounds to me like ample justification for sticking our oar in," Zachary said, and shifted her eyes to meet Kuttner's on her own com screen. "Citizen Commissioner?"

"I agree. And we should probably alert Count Tilly , as well."

"Yes, Sir," Luchner said respectfully, forbearing to mention that standing orders required any contact to be reported to the flagship. Kuttner ought to know that—he'd certainly been present often enough when it was discussed—but it could be unwise to remind people's commissioners of things they were supposed to know.

"Very well, Fred. See to it. And keep us informed of any further developments," Zachary said.

"Yes, Citizen Captain." Luchner killed the circuit and turned to the com officer of the watch. "Fire up your transmitter, Hannah," he said.

"Still nothing from Commodore Yeargin?" Alistair McKeon asked. Forty minutes had passed since Prince Adrian 's translation back into normal-space. She'd moved almost two and a quarter light-minutes deeper into the Adler System, her velocity was up to 21,400 KPS, and the silence of her com section had become more than merely puzzling a half-hour ago.

"No, Sir." Lieutenant Sanko's reply was tense, despite its professional crispness, and McKeon turned his head to look at Honor. His gray eyes were worried, and Honor felt Nimitz twitch his tail uneasily as the emotions of those around him seeped into him.

The tension on the cruiser's bridge had begun as little more than vague disquiet—a sort of itch no one knew how to scratch—at the absence of any challenge from the system pickets, but it had grown steadily as Prince Adrian continued to accelerate in-system at a constant four hundred gravities. She might not be capable of transmitting FTL herself, but the ships of Task Group Adler were, and Sarah DuChene's course had been plotted to emerge from hyper within the envelope of one of Commodore Yeargin's limited numbers of sensor platforms. As such, Prince Adrian should have been detected, identified, and reported to Yeargin's flagship via the platform's grav pulse transmitter... and she should have picked up an FTL challenge from Enchanter within ten minutes of arrival.

She hadn't, and Honor had done her best to look unworried as the minutes stretched out. There was almost certainly a simple explanation, she told herself. Yeargin doesn't have all that many sensors, so maybe she decided to change the deployment of the ones she does have from the pattern we were told about. But if she were going to do that, why didn't she post a picket to cover the hole? We're right on the most logical approach from Clairmont. Surely she'd want to be certain it was covered, wouldn't she?

For that matter, it was possible Yeargin had picked Prince Adrian up and simply saw no reason to challenge a ship her sensors had already identified. If that were the case, however, it displayed an appallingly casual approach to the security of her command area. Honor would never have assumed a contact was in fact what it seemed to be until she'd absolutely confirmed its identity, and she found the thought of a system commander who would make such an assumption distasteful. Yet there was only one way to find out what Yeargin thought she was doing, and that was to go see.

But cautiously, Honor told herself. Very cautiously. Better to be paranoid and wrong than overconfident and dead.

McKeon was obviously thinking along the same lines, for he had quietly instructed Geraldine Metcalf to launch a pair of recon drones down his projected track. The stealthed RDs would sweep the area ahead of the ship, and their small FTL transmitters would report whatever they found in near real-time. Drones weren't cheap. Even when they could be recovered, as these probably could, it cost thousands to overhaul and refurbish them for reuse. Despite that, McKeon hadn't even asked for her approval to cover his decision to use them, which said a great deal about his state of mind.

Not that Honor would have hesitated for a moment if he had asked. The one thing no captain could ever have enough of was information, and McKeon had none at all. Without a position fix on at least one of Yeargin's ships, Russ Sanko couldn't even align his com lasers on it, so there was little point trying to contact anyone closer than Samovar itself. In the absence of an FTL challenge, McKeon had, in fact, transmitted a light-speed message to the planet ten minutes after arriving in-system. Unfortunately, Samovar's current orbital position put it over a half light-hour from Prince Adrian , so assuming an instant response, they still wouldn't hear anything back for another ten minutes. And if one thing was likely, given the general slackness which seemed to be the rule here, it was that there would be a delay before any acknowledgment was sent, so—

A sharp tone sounded, and Honor looked up quickly. She turned towards the tactical station, forcing herself to move with much greater calm than she actually felt, and watched Lieutenant Commander Metcalf bend over the shoulder of one of her techs. The slightly built tac officer twirled a lock of sandy-blond hair around one finger and pursed her lips, dark eyes thoughtful as she studied the plot, then looked at Alistair McKeon.

"We've got a contact, Skipper. It looks—"

Another tone sounded, and she broke off to recheck the plot. Her pursed lips turned into a puzzled frown, and she tapped in a command of her own. Her eyebrows rose, then flattened as the computers obediently brought their enhancement capacity to bear, and her voice was more than professionally flat when she looked back up.

"Correction, Skipper. We've got at least two contacts—and they're both operating stealthed."

"Two?" McKeon cocked his head, and Metcalf nodded.

"Yes, Sir. The closer is pursuing us from astern, coming in from about one-seven-eight by zero-zero-four. CIC is calling this one Alpha One, and range is approximately five-point-nine light-minutes. It's on a direct pursuit course with an acceleration of five hundred and ten gravities, but present velocity is barely twelve hundred KPS. The other one, designated Alpha Two, is almost dead ahead—bearing zero-zero-three, zero-one-four, range about fifteen-point-eight light-minutes. Alpha Two is on an intercept heading at seven-six-five-zero KPS, accelerating at five hundred and twenty gravities."

"How in hell did Alpha One get that close before we spotted him?" McKeon demanded.

"At her current velocity and acceleration, she can't have been under power for more than six minutes, Sir, so there was nothing to detect on passives. According to CIC's analysis, her EW seems to be quite efficient, too, and we've been concentrating on the area ahead of us. Given the contact's EW activity, CIC did well to spot him this quickly. And we only saw Alpha Two because our Beta Drone is practically on top of him." Metcalf's tone was that of a professional trying hard to sound neither defensive nor exasperated, and McKeon raised a hand to acknowledge her point.