David Weber - In Enemy Hands

Under other circumstances, that would have made Zachary nervous. The citizen captain was no coward, but only a fool (which she also was not) would try to deny the combat edge Manticoran ships enjoyed. But Katana had powerful support ready to hand in the form of PNS Nuada , which would enter extreme engagement range barely ten minutes after Katana opened fire. More than that, the system defenders had been given ample time to identify their target. It was one of the older Prince Consort -class cruisers, not a more modern Star Knight , which meant she and Katana would be well matched.

Or would have been, Zachary thought with a sharklike smile, if not for the half-dozen missile pods trailing astern of her own ship.

"I realize you can keep him in missile range, Citizen Captain," Kuttner's somehow petulant voice cut into the citizen captain's thoughts, "but you won't be able to bring him into energy range. Are you sure that fighting such a long-range action is wise, given the, ah, disparity in our antimissile capabilities?"

Zachary bit back an injudiciously candid response, but it was hard. She thought—briefly, but with intense longing—of sudden pressure losses and helmets which bounced away from idiot commissioners who combined a sense of their own importance with just enough knowledge to make them dangerous. My, but he'd look nice with his lungs oozing out of his nose, she reflected, but she also made herself smile gravely.

"I understand your point, Citizen Commissioner," she said, "but the conditions are a bit atypical, and I'd like to keep them that way." Kuttner frowned in puzzled confusion, and Zachary reminded herself to keep things literal—and simple. "What I mean, Sir," she went on, "is that, at the moment, the enemy can have no idea we're here. If she did, she would have chosen a different heading, or at least already changed course."

The citizen captain paused politely, quirking one eyebrow to ask if he followed her logic. It could have been an insulting expression, and part of Zachary longed to make it just that, but it wasn't, and Kuttner nodded his comprehension.

"That being the case," Zachary resumed, "I prefer to keep her ignorant of our presence until it becomes impossible for her to avoid us. In order to do that, I intend to hold our acceleration down to something I'm positive our EW can hide until she's at least two minutes inside the range at which she could avoid action with us. You're quite correct that waiting that long will mean we'll be unable to match velocities with her before she crosses the hyper limit, and that we'll be unable to force her into range of our energy weapons. However, the only headings on which she can avoid our energy envelope will force her closer to Nuada , which will push her deeper into Citizen Captain Turner's missile envelope."

She paused once more, and Kuttner nodded again, this time more positively.

"And, of course," she finished up, "while it's true our antimissile defense hasn't yet caught up with the Manties', we do have the advantage of our pods. That means we can open the action with a salvo of eighty-four birds. I doubt she'll be expecting that kind of fire, and even if she is, it should saturate her point defense."

"I see." Kuttner frowned importantly for another moment, then nodded a final time. "Very well, Citizen Captain. I approve your plan."

"What's your best estimate of Bandit One's engagement time now, Gerry?" Alistair McKeon asked.

"I make it no more than eleven minutes from the time she can first range on us, Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Metcalf replied instantly. "She was late making her first turn." The tactical officer looked up at her captain. "I'm starting to think there's something wrong with her sensors, Sir. If her gravitics are unreliable, it might explain why she was slow starting after us. And if she has to wait for light-speed telemetry from an RD or sensor updates from other ships, it could also explain why she was late adjusting to our evasion."

"I see." McKeon rubbed his chin. "Any better read on her mass?"

"It's firming up some as the range drops, Skip, but whatever she's using for EW is a lot better than anything the Peeps are supposed to have. CIC still wants to call her a battlecruiser, but I think this may be one of those new heavy cruisers ONI warned us about. Unless she's red-lining her compensator—and I don't see any reason for her to take that kind of risk just to catch a single Manticoran cruiser—her accel's too high for a battlecruiser. If I had to bet money, I'd say Bandit Four's the same class, whatever it is."

"I see," McKeon repeated. He patted her lightly on the shoulder and turned back towards his own command chair, then paused. Honor stood beside that chair, hands clasped behind her. Her spine was ramrod straight, and her expression was composed, but she, Andreas Venizelos, and Andrew LaFollet, unlike anyone else on the command deck, wore no skinsuits, and McKeon's stomach muscles tightened once again at the sight.

He drew a deep breath and walked over to stand beside her, and she turned her head to regard him gravely.

"Eleven minutes," he said quietly.

"I heard," Honor replied, and took one hand from behind her to rub the tip of her nose. She glanced at the time readout in the corner of McKeon's command chair repeater plot, then gestured at the small icon that represented the convoy's projected arrival point.

"Ten minutes," she said softly, and McKeon nodded.

"Ten minutes," he agreed. "And Bandit One's not going to be able to range on them before they hyper back out."

"We also serve who run away," Honor replied with a small smile, and McKeon surprised them both with a genuine chuckle.

But his moment of humor was short lived, and his eyes returned to the plot as if drawn by magnetism. Prince Adrian 's effort to lure Bandit One away from the convoy's translation point had worked, but it had also demonstrated just how much firepower the Peeps had deployed to ambush them. In addition to the four ships Metcalf had originally picked up, she and her recon drones had since located five more, including three destroyers, a light cruiser, and what could only be a battlecruiser. None of the additional units she'd picked up had any chance of overhauling Prince Adrian , but their sheer numbers and the fact that they were trying to overtake her said ominous things about the person who'd set this ambush up. Whoever was in command over there had positioned his ships with such care that even with her early detection, Prince Adrian would have found it all but impossible to evade all of them. Having done that, the enemy commander obviously intended to bring all the strength he could to bear. He wanted not equality or a simple advantage in firepower but a crushing superiority, and where many a CO would have given up and whistled his rearmost units back to their initial positions, this one had done nothing of the sort. The numbers said they would never catch Prince Adrian , but those numbers didn't include the possibility that the Manticoran ship might be damaged in the coming clash with Bandit One, now bearing down on her from starboard. If Adrian took heavy impeller damage or some other freak hit—or even if she was simply forced to turn sharply away from her opponent—one or more of the trailers might conceivably get into range to engage her yet. The odds against it were long, but this character was going to keep coming with everything he had for as long as there was the smallest conceivable chance that it might do him some good, and that was a most un-Peep-like attitude.

McKeon drew his eyes from the plot and looked back at his commodore, and his lips tightened. He hesitated a moment, and then leaned close to her.