David Weber - In Enemy Hands

"What can you tell me about Alpha One now that we do see him?"

"All we've got so far is a fairly fuzzy impeller signature. I've never seen anything quite like this bird's EW, and we're still trying to get a good enough fix on his systems to get through them. My best guess would be that he's either a battlecruiser or a really big heavy cruiser, Skipper, but it's only a guess."

"Understood," McKeon said, and glanced at Honor. "Ahead and astern? Under stealth?" he half murmured, then shook his head and turned to his com section. "Still nothing from Commodore Yeargin?"

"Nothing, Sir," Lieutenant Sanko replied, and McKeon's frown deepened. He rubbed an eyebrow, then climbed out of his command chair and crossed to Honor's side.

"Something's out of whack here, Ma'am. Badly," he said softly.

"Agreed." Honor's voice was equally low, and she reached up to rub Nimitz's ears as the 'cat shifted uneasily on her shoulder. She let her eyes sweep the bridge, watching the officers who were very carefully not watching her confer with their captain. Their earlier uneasiness had become something much sharper—not yet fear, but more than anxiety—and it suffused her link with the treecat like smoke.

"They're maneuvering to intercept," she said, and her mind ticked quickly and urgently as McKeon nodded. There was no reason for Commodore Yeargin's units to intercept Prince Adrian rather than challenging her by com unless for some reason they'd decided to assume she was hostile, and that was ridiculous. A wise system commander always assumed that anything not definitely identified as friendly was potentially hostile, but pulling pickets off station for a physical intercept opened holes through which other potential hostiles could penetrate your perimeter, so the first step was always to challenge the unknown unit. And what Metcalf had just said about Alpha One's EW worried her. If the contact had been using Allied systems, CIC's database should have recognized them. But if they weren't Allied technology, they were better than anything the Peeps were supposed to have, which—

"Additional unidentified contacts!" Metcalf's senior petty officer sang out. " Two unidentified contacts in close company!"

"Designate as Alpha Three and Four and give me a position!" Metcalf snapped.

"We've got them on the Alpha Drone, Ma'am. Bearing zero-one-one by zero-zero-four, range approximately eighteen light-minutes. Present velocity is two-five-zero-zero KPS, accelerating at five KPS squared. Whatever they are, they're running under stealth, too, Commander, and I don't think they're using Allied systems. We've got better reads on their impeller signatures than our EW would give up to a drone's sensors." The petty officer turned her head to meet her officer's eyes. "CIC's calling Alpha Three a definite heavy cruiser and Alpha Four a possible battlecruiser, Ma'am, but Four's EW looks a lot like Alpha One's and the ID is tentative. Whoever they are, they're on intercept courses."

"Captain, I—" Metcalf began, then broke off, one hand pressing her earbug more firmly into her ear while she listened intently. Her face paled, and she cleared her throat. "Captain, CIC has just reclassified our contacts as definite hostiles. I am redesignating them Bandits One through Four. Bandits One and Four are still indeterminate, but the other two are definitely using Peep EW."

McKeon whirled to her, but Honor didn't even feel surprise. Not really. In fact, she was astonished by how calm she felt, as if her instincts had realized that something like this had to be happening from the moment Commodore Yeargin had failed to challenge their arrival. She folded her hands behind her and gazed at Metcalf's plot for perhaps four more seconds, then turned her gaze to the tac officer.

"Thank you, Commander Metcalf," she said, and the calmness of her voice would have fooled anyone who didn't know her. She stood for another moment, rocking gently on the balls of her feet, then turned back to McKeon. "Captain McKeon," she said formally, "we must assume the enemy has taken the Adler System."

A ripple of shock flowed outward from her. Alistair McKeon's bridge officers were veterans. Even before CIC reclassified the unknowns as hostile, the same explanation for the lack of a challenge had to have been nibbling at the backs of their brains, however unlikely and however much they would have preferred to deny the possibility, yet hearing their squadron commander actually say it was still a shock.

"But why come after us this way?" Venizelos asked. "The stealth I can understand, at least on the ones ahead of us, but we must've been right on top of Bandit One when we made our alpha translation. He had to see our footprint and get a good mass estimate off our impeller signature, so why wait—what? Over thirty-five minutes?—to start chasing us? Especially if he's a battlecruiser?"

"I don't know, Andy," McKeon said, never taking his eyes from Honor's. "Somebody must have picked up our footprint and warned the bastards in front of us— they certainly don't have the sensor range for it. So maybe that's what Bandit One's been doing: waiting until he was sure his buddies had received his alert."

"Probably," Honor agreed. "Not that an explanation really helps at this point." She crossed to Sarah DuChene's console and touched the astrogator on the shoulder. "Excuse me, Commander. I need to borrow your panel," she said almost absently. DuChene gave her a startled look, then moved out of her way, and Honor slid into the emptied chair.

Her eyes were as intent as her whirring thoughts, and her long fingers flicked over the number pad with crisp assurance. Usually she worked slowly and carefully, double- and even triple-checking her calculations, but now concentration overcame her normal lack of confidence in her mathematical ability and her fingers flew. A series of complex vectors—some red, some green—flashed across DuChene's display in rapid succession, but no one spoke as she worked, despite the ticking seconds.

It's going to be tight . Probably too tight, but there's no other way, is there? she thought, still with that inexplicable inner calm, looking at the results of her efforts. She felt something very different—something harsh and ugly with fear—gibbering on the far side of that calm, but she refused to let it affect her as she gazed at the last of the evasion courses she'd tried.

Had Prince Adrian been operating solo, Honor would already have ordered her to begin accelerating straight "up" from the ecliptic on a course which would have given her an excellent chance—not a certainty, but a chance any bookmaker would have taken—of getting away clean from all of her enemies. But she cruiser wasn't operating solo, which meant that simply running away, however tempting, was an unacceptable option.

"Commander Metcalf," she said into the silence about her.

"Yes, Milady?"

"When will Bandit One cross the hyper limit at his present acceleration?"

"In approximately... seventy minutes, Milady," Metcalf replied, and Honor heard McKeon inhale sharply as his tac officer confirmed what Honor's own calculations had already told her. She sat quietly for a moment longer, then stood and nodded to DuChene.

"Thank you, Commander. I'm finished now," she said quietly, and another nod of her head drew McKeon back over to the captain's chair. She stood for several seconds, looking into her old friend's eyes, then sighed.

"I don't know why Bandit One delayed his pursuit so long, either," she said, "but it's certainly working for him. Do you suppose he's clairvoyant?"

"That's one explanation, at least." McKeon tried to match her feeble attempt at humor, but his eyes were worried. "He's going to be right on top of the convoy at the moment it makes transit."