David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Aye, aye, Sir," Shoupe said crisply, eyes gleaming with approval.

"It's going to be too late to make very much difference to Terekhov, either way, Loretta," the rear admiral said quietly.

"Maybe so, Admiral," she replied. "But maybe not, too."

"I sure hope this is going to work, Sir," Aikawa Kagiyama said quietly.

He and Ansten FitzGerald sat on Copenhagen 's flight deck as the freighter accelerated steadily inward from the system's hyper limit. The merchantship's bridge was actually smaller than Hexapuma 's, but it seemed incredibly vast because it was uncluttered by the elaborate plots, data displays, weapons consoles, and multiple command stations of a warship. It had been rather nice, in many ways, to have the space during the thirty-three-day voyage from Montana. At the moment, however, it simply served to remind Aikawa that he was aboard an unarmed, unarmored, absolutely defenseless, slow merchant vessel about to enter a potentially hostile star system under false pretenses.

It was not a pleasant thought.

"Well," FitzGerald said thoughtfully, glancing across at the midshipman manning the freighter's sensors, such as they were and what there were of them, "it's got a better chance of working than a visit from the Nasty Kitty would have, Mr. Kagiyama."

Despite the tension, Aikawa actually chuckled, and FitzGerald was glad to see it. The young man's humor still lacked the spontaneity and edge of mischievous wickedness which normally typified it, but at least he was no longer troubled by obvious bouts of depression. The Captain had been right. Assigning him to Copenhagen and working his posterior off had done wonders. And FitzGerald was also grateful for the time it had given him to get to know the youngster better. With only five officers, including Aikawa, in the entire ship, he'd learned more about each of them in the last T-month than in the previous six.

Not that learning more about some of them had been as pleasant as learning about others.

The freighter's acting captain glanced at the small com screen which showed the view from the optical pickup mounted on Lieutenant MacIntyre's skinsuit helmet. The engineering officer's personnel management skills impressed FitzGerald even less here in Copenhagen than in Hexapuma . The smaller ship's company only magnified her ability to irritate and annoy the experienced ratings and noncoms under her command, and FitzGerald was beginning to question whether or not his and the Captain's original theory about the reason for that was accurate. Lack of self-confidence was one thing, but some people-and FitzGerald was starting to think MacIntyre might be one of them-simply had too much little-tin-god in them to ever make good officers. She was actually a superior technician, and it had shown as she and her skinsuited work party prepped the recon drone in Copenhagen 's cavernous cargo hold, however-

"Just hold it a minute, Danziger!" he heard the lieutenant snap suddenly. "I'll tell you when I'm ready to kick it loose, damn it! Don't you people ever pay attention to what you're doing?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. Sorry about that, Lieutenant," the senior sensor rating replied, and FitzGerald winced. Calling an officer by his rank was certainly proper procedure, but it could also become a backhanded swipe at one as junior as MacIntyre was. Especially when it was used in every single sentence… and delivered in the elaborately correct tone Danziger had just employed.

I'm going to have to have a little talk with her once we get back to Hexapuma. I hope it'll do some good. Although I'm not all that confident it will.

"All right," MacIntyre said more calmly a few minutes later. "All systems check. Let's get it out of here."

The working party lifted the massive drone-well over a hundred tons-easily in the depressurized cargo hold's micro-gravity. They walked it aft to the gaping hatch, big enough to engulf some destroyers bodily, and used presser-tractor jacks to kick it clear of the ship. MacIntyre kept her eyes on it, which had the effect of holding it in the center of FitzGerald's display, and the commander felt a flicker of relief as the drone's emergency reaction thrusters flared. Its onboard programming obviously had it, and it was adjusting its position to be certain it passed cleanly through the open kilt of Copenhagen 's impeller wedge before lighting off its own very low-powered wedge.

"Drone successfully deployed, Sir," MacIntyre announced over the com channel dedicated to her link to FitzGerald.

"Very good, Ms. MacIntyre. Get the hold secured, if you please."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Well, Aikawa," FitzGgerald remarked as he returned his attention to the midshipman, "so far, so good. Now all we need to do is recover it again before we leave the system."

"We've been challenged by Monica Astrogation Central, Sir," Lieutenant Kobe announced.

"And about time, too," FitzGerald replied with just a bit more studied calm than he actually felt. "Even a light-speed system should've been asking us who we are before this," he added, and Kobe grinned.

"Shall I respond, Sir?"

"Now, now, Jeff!" FitzGerald shook his head. "This is a merchie, not a Queen's ship, and merchies don't do things the way men-of-war do. Let's not make anyone suspicious by being too on the bounce about all this. Astrogation Central will still be there whenever we get around to answering them."

"Uh, aye, aye, Sir," Kobe replied after only the briefest of pauses, and FitzGerald chuckled.

"At least a third of the freighters in space leave their com watch on auto-record, Jeff," he explained, "and Sollies are even worse about that than most. Generally, there's an alarm set to alert the fellow who's supposed to be keeping an eye on communications that a particular incoming message is important. More often than not, though, the computers aboard a ship like this are too stupid to make that kind of evaluation reliably, so the system simply records anything that comes in and otherwise ignores it until a message has been repeated at least once. At that point, it figures someone really wants to talk to somebody and sounds an alarm to get the com officer's attention. That's why we often have to hail merchantships two or three times."

Kobe nodded, obviously filing away another one of those practical bits of knowledge that places like the Island so often forgot to pass along. FitzGerald nodded back and turned his command chair to glance at the midshipman.

"Anything interesting showing up, Aikawa?"

"Sir, if someone were obliging enough to set off a ten- or twenty-megaton nuke at a range of ninety or a hundred klicks, this ship's passive sensors might actually be able to pick it up."

FitzGerald snorted, and Aikawa smiled.

"Actually, Sir," he said more seriously, "I am picking up a few impeller signatures now. Not very many, though, and I can't tell you much more than that someone's moving under power out there. If I had to guess, I'd say four or five of them are LACs, but there's at least a couple acting like bigger warships. Maybe destroyers or light cruisers."

"What do you mean, 'acting like bigger warships'?" FitzGerald asked, curious about the midshipman's logic chain.

"It looks to me as if they're carrying out maneuvers," Aikawa replied. "Two of the ones I think are LACs are moving along under only about two hundred gees with a current velocity of less than twelve thousand KPS. From their vectors, it looks like they're pretending they just crossed the alpha wall and they're heading for Monica. And with that acceleration, they almost have to be playing the roles of merchantmen. Meanwhile, these other impeller signatures over here-" he indicated a pair of unidentified icons on the freighter's deplorably detail-free "tactical plot" "-are chasing after them from astern. Looks to me like they're pretending to be commerce raiders, and effective commerce raiders would just about have to be hyper-capable. Which probably makes these two destroyers or cruisers."