David Weber - A Rising Thunder

Commissioner Floyd was inclined to think they hadn’t.

Rear Admiral Pyun was inclined to think Commissioner Floyd was an idiot.

“Anything from their picket commander, Ephram?” he asked out loud.

“No, Sir. Not yet, at least.”

“I see.”

Pyun turned his attention back to the master display.

* * *

“I don’t suppose we’ve heard anything back from our visitors, Justin?” Captain Ivanov asked. “No transponder signals? No snappy little comebacks to Captain Arredondo’s instructions?”

“No, Sir,” Lieutenant Justin Adenauer replied.

“Somehow I thought you would have mentioned it if we had,” Ivanov said dryly, then looked down at the display screen connecting him to Auxiliary Control at the far end of HMS Sloan Tompkins ’ core hull from his own command deck.

“I guess it’s time we got into the act, Claudine,” he observed.

“Bound to get interesting when we do, Sir.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.” Ivanov smiled grimly. “It seems we’ve been cursed to live in ‘interesting times.’”

“True.” Takoush nodded. “Of course, we can always try to make things more interesting for others than for us.”

“My goal in life,” Ivanov agreed, then turned back to Adenauer. “Record for transmission, Justin.”

* * *

“Admiral, we have another message,” Ephram Turner announced. “This one’s not from Astro Control.”

“No?”

Pyun turned away from the master display and crossed to Turner’s station. Zambezi Treasure (and his battlecruisers) had been in n-space for almost exactly ten minutes. During that time they’d covered almost a million kilometers and raised their closing velocity relative to the terminus to approximately 2,200 KPS. He’d wondered how long the picket force commander was going to wait to contact him. In fact, he’d just won five credits on a side bet with Captain Steinberg on that very point.

“Go ahead and play it, Ephram,” the rear admiral said, standing at Turner’s shoulder and looking down at the com officer’s console.

“Yes, Sir.”

Turner touched a stud, and a brown-haired, green-eyed man in the uniform of a senior-grade RMN captain appeared on a small display.

“I am Captain Hiram Ivanov, Royal Manticoran Navy.” Ivanov’s voice was crisp and professional, and if he was dismayed by the disparity between Pyun’s force and his own there was no sign of it in those green eyes. “I’m aware that you’ve been instructed by Astro Control to activate your identification transponders and that no Solarian warships or Solarian-registry merchant vessels are allowed to approach within eighteen million kilometers of this terminus. Be informed at this time that while my Empress continues to desire a peaceful resolution to the current tensions between the Star Empire and the Solarian League, I have orders to enforce my government’s directives concerning this terminus by force. Moreover, I also hereby inform you that I have no choice but to construe the presence of so many ‘unidentified’ battlecruisers in company with a single merchant ship as a deliberate effort on your part to defy those directives. Should you continue to approach this terminus without active transponders and close to a distance of less than thirty million kilometers, I will engage you. I would prefer to avoid that, but the choice is in your hands. Ivanov, clear.”

Ivanov nodded almost courteously, and Turner’s display blanked. Pyun stood gazing down at it for a heartbeat or so, then inhaled deeply.

“Thank you, Ephram.” He patted the com officer on the shoulder and walked back across the flag bridge to Captain Gilmore.

“Well, that’s clear enough, too,” he observed dryly.

“Yes, Sir. And that thirty million-klick tripwire of his is consistent with what they say happened at Spindle, too.”

“Agreed. On the other hand, it would be consistent, don’t you think? Whether the ‘Battle of Spindle’ ever really happened or not.”

Gilmore nodded, but his expression was unhappy, which pleased the rear admiral no end, since it indicated the presence of a functioning brain. Plenty of Frontier Fleet officers were just as wedded to the notion of Solarian invincibility as any Battle Fleet pain in the ass, but Pyun hadn’t chosen his staff from among them. No one could ever reasonably call Steven Gilmore an alarmist, yet he was at least willing to admit the Manties might actually have learned a little something — or even developed a few new weapons systems — in the course of surviving a twenty-T-year war against the far larger People’s Republic of Haven.

Of course, neither he nor Pyun had been anywhere near the Talbott Sector when that incomparable military genius Josef Byng managed to get his flagship blown away at New Tuscany. Nor had they been in the vicinity when Sandra Crandall set out to avenge her fellow genius, so there was no way they could have any firsthand impression of the weapons Manticore might have used. Unlike Gilmore, however, Pyun had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of actually meeting Crandall, and based on that, the Manties’ version of what she’d done at Spindle carried a pronounced ring of truth. Which suggested the rest of their version of the Battle of Spindle was also at least reasonably accurate. Pyun might be willing to play devil’s advocate with Gilmore, but he shared his ops officer’s disinclination to simply dismiss the “preposterous” ranges which had been reported by at least some Solarian observers even before whatever happened to Crandall. Thirty million kilometers still sounded like too much to be true, but…

Pyun considered his orders once again. They were as clear as they were nondiscretionary, yet he hadn’t earned flag rank in the Solarian Navy without discovering how much easier it was for people who were going to be far, far away at the critical moment to issue such unflinching directives.

Maybe it is, but he’s still the Commissioner, and you’re still a Frontier Fleet officer assigned to his sector .

“Copy Captain Ivanov’s message to Captain Zyndram, Ephram. Inform the Captain that I see no reason to alter our intentions at this time.”

“Yes, Sir.”

He folded his hands behind himself and stood gazing into the master display once more.

* * *

“I don’t suppose the Admiral actually replied to this, Vincent?” Captain Nereu Zyndram, CO of SLNS Belle Poule , asked.

“No, Sir,” Lieutenant Vincent Würtz replied. The com officer started to say something else, but then he closed his mouth, and Zyndram smiled thinly.

Würtz was young, the flag captain thought. In fact, he was younger than he thought he was, prey to both the confidence and the trepidation of his youth. There was no way, in young Würtz’ worldview, that any neobarb Navy could possibly stand up to the SLN. As far as the lieutenant was concerned, the Manty accounts of the Battle of Spindle could only be disinformation. No other possibility was admissible. Yet despite that, another part of the youngster was secretly afraid the Manty claims might contain at least a particle of truth, after all. And like the vast majority of Belle Poule ’s company, Würtz had never seen actual combat. The possibility that he might see it very soon now had to be gnawing away inside him.

Fair enough , Zyndram thought. You have seen combat, Nereu. And you’ve been around long enough to have a better feel than young Vincent for when someone’s shooting you a line of shit, too. Which is why you’re feeling a little nervous just this moment, yourself .

Nereu Zyndram had felt profound reservations about this operation from the moment Rear Admiral Pyun shared their orders with him. Those reservations hadn’t grown any smaller since, either. On the other hand, he’d known Pyun for a lot of years. There wasn’t much chance the admiral was going to start ignoring orders just because he thought they were stupid.