David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Very well, Amal," Terekhov said. "General signal to the Squadron. All units prepare to depart Montana orbit and proceed in company to Point Midway."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri acknowledged, and Terekhov glanced around his bridge.

Hexapuma was understrength, what with the Marines she'd left on Kornati, the casualties she'd suffered when Hawk-Papa-One was destroyed, and the detachment of Ansten FitzGerald's party to Copenhagen . The same number of casualties and detached personnel would have made a relatively minor hole in the company of an older ship, like Warlock or Vigilant . Aboard Hexapuma , it represented a significant reduction in manpower. He'd been tempted to "borrow" a few people from the other ships, but not very strongly. He knew the temper of his weapon. He preferred to see it slightly understrength rather than risk introducing flaws into it at this critical moment.

He turned his attention to the main plot. The green icons of twelve ships gleamed upon it now. In addition to Hexapuma 's own, there were two other heavy cruisers- Warlock and Vigilant -and three light cruisers- Gallant and Audacious , both sisters of his dead Defiant , and Aegis , one of the new Avalon -class ships, almost as modern as Hexapuma . That was the core of "his" squadron's combat power, but they were supported by four destroyers- Javelin and Janissary , both relatively modern, and the ancient (though neither of them was really any older than Warlock ) Rondeau and Aria . The ten warships were accompanied by the dispatch boat he'd impressed from its assignment to the Montanan government and by HMS Volcano .

He let his attention linger on Volcano 's light code for a moment, then laid his forearms precisely along the armrests of his command chair and rotated it to face Lieutenant Commander Wright.

"All right, Tobias," he said, his voice calm, unshadowed by any trace of uncertainty. "Take us out of here."

HMS Ericsson erupted over the hyper wall into the Spindle system in a starbust of blue transit energy twenty-seven days after leaving Dresden.

She sent her identity and notice that she carried dispatches to HMS Hercules via grav-pulse as soon as she made translation, and a trickle of consternation flowed uphill as the news of her arrival wended its way towards the superdreadnought's flag deck. Ericsson was a depot ship. She wasn't a dispatch boat, and she was supposed to be permanently stationed in Montana, supporting the Southern Patrol.

No one knew what she was doing here, but no one expected it to be good.

"Dispatches?" Captain Loretta Shoupe frowned at Hercules ' com officer. "From Montana?"

"That's what I'm assuming at the moment, Ma'am," the lieutenant commander said. "But assume is all I can do. Unless you want me to send a query back?"

Shoupe considered. According to the time chop on the arrival message, it had been receipted nineteen minutes before it was actually delivered to her. Allowing for decryption time and the fact that the communications officer had hand-delivered it to her, which had required him to walk it up six decks and down the next best thing to a quarter-kilometer of passages, that wasn't too bad. But the total transit time for Ericsson from the hyper limit to Flax orbit would be approximately two and a half hours, which meant it would be another two hours and fifteen minutes before she reached Hercules .

She scanned the brief message again. Whatever dispatch Ericsson was carrying, it was obviously important, since she'd listed it as Priority Alpha-Three. That called for it to be delivered via secure recording medium rather than transmitted.

"Yes," she said. "Ask them to confirm the originator and the addressee of their dispatches."

"From Terekhov, you say?" It was Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo's turn to frown. "Aboard Ericsson ?"

"Yes, Sir." Shoupe stood just inside the hatch of his day cabin, and he beckoned for her to come further in and take a seat. "It's from Terekhov," she continued as she obeyed the silent order, "but she didn't come direct from Montana. According to her arrival message, she's inbound from Dresden."

" Dresden? " Khumalo sat straighter behind his desk, and his frown deepened. "What the hell was she doing in Dresden?"

"I don't know yet, Sir. I'm guessing Terekhov sent her there for some reason before she came on to Spindle."

"But she's carrying Alpha-Three priority dispatches from Terekhov , not from anyone in Dresden?"

"That's correct, Sir. Lieutenant Commander Spears requested and received confirmation of that."

"That's ridiculous," Khumalo fumed. "If his message is so damned important, why send it so roundabout? Going by way of Dresden added almost three weeks to the direct transit time! Besides," his frown became an active scowl, "there's a dispatch boat assigned to the Montanan government, and she could have made the trip direct from Montana in ten days, a fifth of the time he he took sending it this way!"

"I know, Sir. But I'm afraid I don't have enough information even to speculate on what's going on. Except to say we'll know one way or another in about-" she checked her chrono "-another hour and fifty-eight minutes."

"He's done what ?"

Baroness Medusa wasn't doing any frowning. She was staring at Rear Admiral Khumalo in stark disbelief.

"It's all in his dispatch, Milady," Khumalo said in the voice of a man still dealing with his own disbelief. "He's come up with some wild suspicion that the Republic of Monica- Monica , of all damned places!-is preparing some lunatic military operation here in the Cluster."

"So he stole a merchantship-a Solarian merchantship-put a Navy crew on board her, and sent her off to violate Monica's territorial space?" the Provisional Governor demanded.

"Ah, actually, Milady," Shoupe said a bit nervously, "that part of it makes a certain amount of sense."

" None of this makes any sense, Loretta!" Khumalo snarled. "The man's chasing phantoms!"

"That's obviously one possibility, Sir," Shoupe acknowledged. "But it's not the only one," she added stubbornly. Admiral and Provisional Governor alike turned to stare at her, and she shrugged. "I'm not saying he's right, Sir. There's no way for any of us to know that at this point. But if he is right, the sooner we confirm it, the better. And if we can possibly keep the Monicans from realizing we have confirmed it, the advantage could be enormous. And-"

"And going to call on Monica to investigate with a Queen's ship would make that impossible," Baroness Medusa finished for her.

"Exactly. A freighter, on the other hand, especially a Solly freighter, probably has a pretty good chance of getting in and out without arousing any suspicion."

"But if it does arouse any suspicion, and it's stopped and searched, the discovery that it has a Navy crew-a Navy crew that stole the ship in the first place-will make the situation ten times as bad as if he'd sailed straight through Monica in Hexapuma !" Khumalo threw in.

"Excuse me," Gregor O'Shaughnessy said, "but I came in on this late. What makes Captain Terekhov think the Monicans are up to something in the first place?"

"That's… a little involved," Commander Chandler said. Khumalo's intelligence officer glanced at the rear admiral considerably more nervously than Shoupe had. "He's included a summary of all the evidence which forms the basis of his analysis, and he's copied his intelligence files for you and the Provisional Governor, so you can check both the evidence and his conclusions for yourself. The short version's that he and Van Dort have an informant who claims the Jessyk Combine delivered a large number of shipyard technicians, well versed in naval applications, to Monica. Apparently, according to this same source, Jessyk's sending in a flock of freighters configured as minelayers, as well. At Jessyk's cost, not Monica's. And the same ship that delivered the technicians saw what looked like two very large repair or depot ships in Monica, at Eroica Station, its main naval yard, when it dropped off the techs. And it was also the ship used to run arms to Nordbrandt and Westman."