David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Of course," Ottweiler acknowledged. "At the same time, though, I'm sure all of us feel just a little anxious at the possibility that Manticore's maintaining a naval presence in Talbott. The Cluster is only a couple of light-centuries from Mesa-almost five hundred light-years closer than the Manticore home system."

"I doubt any of us are unaware of that, Valery," Anisimovna agreed dryly. "No one's arguing that we don't need to chop the Manticorans back down to size and get them the hell out of Talbott. I'm just not prepared to back any plan to provoke a full-scale war between Manticore and the League. Not at this point, at any rate."

"Still," Bardasano said thoughtfully, "Volkhart had a point, even if he didn't come right out and say it. If we succeed in pushing the Manties hard enough by supporting indigenous resistance movements, we could start a process which would slide out of control. Especially if someone like him was busy deliberately trying to provoke an incident serious enough to produce the general war he wants."

"Only if we let Verrochio and Yucel confront the Manties directly," Anisimovna said, and smiled unpleasantly. "I think it's time we suggested to our dear friend Junyan that it might be appropriate to have a word with Roberto Tyler."

"Junyan? Not Verrochio?" Ottweiler's tone was that of a man making certain he understood his directions, not of a man who questioned them.

"Junyan," Anisimovna confirmed, and Ottweiler nodded. Vice-commissioner Hongbo was far more deft at the sort of hands-on maneuvering any conversation with Tyler would entail.

"Understood." Ottweiler sipped at his own drink for a moment, his eyes unfocused as he contemplated possibilities. Then his gaze returned to the here and now and shifted to Anisimovna's face.

"I think I see where all of this is going," he said. "But even assuming Tyler's willing to play ball and Hongbo's prepared to give him-or, rather, get Verrochio to give him-the guarantees he'd want, the Monicans don't begin to have the firepower to confront Manticore."

"That's one reason why I have a private meeting with Izrok Levakonic scheduled for tomorrow," Anisimovna told him. "I think I can probably convince TIY to provide a small force augmentation for our friend Tyler."

"Even after what happened at Tiberian?" This time there was a trace of surprise, possibly even skepticism, in Ottweiler's voice.

"Trust me," Bardasano said before Anisimovna could respond. "Technodyne's Directors would sell their own mothers to Aldona for a crack at direct access to frontline Manty military hardware. In a lot of ways, I imagine Izrok would really be happier throwing in with Volkhart. They could steal a lot more tech if they actually took over the Manticore System's shipyards, after all. But I don't think they're very likely to get into a pissing contest with us. And they're too deep into the 'legitimate business community' of the League to act openly on their own." She shook her head. "No, they need someone to front for them. An 'outlaw' bunch like us… or like Tyler. So if we ask them, and especially if we're prepared to ante up the cash, they'll come through for the Monicans."

"Bogey Three is altering course, Captain! She's coming around… another twelve degrees to port and climbing above us. Acceleration is increasing, too. Call it five-point-niner-eight KPS squared."

"Acknowledged." Helen Zilwicki gazed down at the repeater plot deployed from the pedestal of the captain's command chair at the center of Hexapuma 's auxiliary bridge. The display was smaller than the master plot at Tactical, but she could manipulate it as she chose, without disturbing the main plot. Now she tapped a command sequence into the keypad on the arm of her chair, and the repeater obediently recentered its display on the icon of Bogey Three.

The Havenite destroyer was indeed sweeping farther out to port, and another keypadded command projected her new vector. She was obviously trying to skirt Hexapuma 's missile envelope in order to get at the convoy beyond while her consorts maneuvered together to hold the Manticoran ship's attention. And she was accelerating at over six hundred gravities. Even with the newest generation of Havenite inertial compensators, that meant she was pulling over ninety percent of theoretical max. Assuming her maintenance people knew their jobs, she could risk cutting her safety margin that way, but it was a fair indication of how much importance the Peep force's commander attached to hitting the convoy.

"Status of Bogey One?" she demanded crisply.

"Maintaining profile at two-niner-six KPS squared, Captain," Paulo d'Arezzo replied from Tactical, his Sphinx accent equally crisp. "Her wedge is still fluctuating," he added.

"Acknowledged," Helen said again. She still didn't much care for d'Arezzo, and the fact that his voice was exactly the sort of musical bass that went with his Preston of the Spaceways face didn't help. But she had to admit Aikawa's friend had been right about the fair-haired midshipman's competence. She would have been happier to have him working the electronics warfare station, since he seemed to have some sort of arcane arrangement with the Demon Murphy where the ship's EW systems were concerned. The additional hours he'd been putting in since he'd been tapped as Lieutenant Bagwell's understudy were only refining what was obviously a powerful native talent.

And, she reflected, at least the time he's been spending with Bagwell is keeping him out of my hair in Snotty Row.

The thought was unfair, and she knew it, but knowing didn't change the way she felt. Or make the standoffish d'Arezzo any more convivial as a companion. Still, she would dearly have loved to be able to put his skills to work handling Hexapuma 's electronic warfare suite for this engagement. But Lieutenant Hearns had assigned Aikawa to EW, with Ragnhild ( not Leo Stottmeister, of course) at Engineering. Intellectually, Helen understood why the acting OCTO was deliberately rotating their assignments for the simulations, but she didn't like the way it left her feeling subtly off-balance.

"Helm, come to zero-four-one by two-seven-five," she said. "Roll ship fifteen degrees to port, and increase acceleration to six KPS squared."

That was considerably higher than the "eighty percent of maximum power" The Book called for under normal circumstances, but it still left an almost ten percent reserve against compensator failure.

"Coming to zero-four-one by two-seven-five, roll one-five degrees port, and increase to six KPS squared, aye, Ma'am," Senior Chief Waltham replied, and the cruiser altered course smoothly under his practiced touch.

"Aikawa, I want to knock back Bogey Three's sensors-especially for her missile defense," Helen said. "Suggestions?"

"Recommend an immediate salvo of Dazzlers," Aikawa said promptly. "Then fire a second salvo to precede the attack birds by, say, fifteen seconds. That should seriously degrade their -sensor capabilities. Then seed half a dozen Dragon's Teeth into the broadside itself."

"I like it," Helen said with a wicked smile. Dazzlers were powerful jammer warheads which would tear holes in the destroyer's sensors but leave the targeting systems in Hexapuma 's missiles unaffected. Unlike the destroyer, they would know exactly what pattern the Dazzlers had been set for, and could be adjusted to "see" through the erratic windows the electronic warfare birds' programming provided. And if the destroyer's battered electronic eyes could see past the jamming at all, the Dragon's Teeth, each loaded with enough false emitters to appear as an entire salvo of attacking missiles, ought to do a pretty fair job of completely swamping their victim's tracking capability.

"Make it so, Tactical," she instructed d'Arezzo. "And set up a double broadside. I want to finish this tin can and get back to the main event."