David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"Bogey Three, the freighter, is actually more interesting at the moment. I think whoever they are, they figure they're far too far out-system for anything the Nuncians have to see them. I've only got them on passives, so I don't really have many details, even on the freighter, but I think its presence alone is significant. The one thing these people aren't is any sort of bobtailed convoy-not coming in from that far out and above the ecliptic and decelerating at their observed rate-and the freighter isn't squawking a transponder code. So I think what we're looking at here is a pair of pirates accompanied by a prize they've already taken. If you'll notice, Commander, the freighter's decelerating harder than Bogey One and Two. She's killing velocity at a steady hundred and twenty gravities, and she's already down to just over seventy-eight hundred KPS, so she'll come to rest relative to the system primary in another hour and fifty-six minutes. Which will leave her forty-six-point-three light-minutes from the primary and approximately thirty-six light-minutes from the planet."

"And what do you think they're up to with her?"

"I think they just want to park her somewhere safe while they go sniffing further in-system, Sir," she said promptly. "They're coming in so slowly and cautiously that-"

She broke off, and her hand flicked over her keypad again.

"Status change, Sir!" she announced, and FitzGerald's eyes went to his repeater plot, then narrowed. The blinking icons had changed abruptly. They continued to blink, but they were fainter now, connected to a single steadily burning red crosshair. A slowly spreading, shaded cone of the same color radiated from the crosshair, its inmost edge moving in-system with the strobing icons.

"Either they've just killed their wedges, or their stealth just got a lot better, Sir. And that far out, I don't think it's likely they just brought that much more EW on-line."

"Then what do you think they're doing, Lieutenant?" FitzGerald asked in his best professorial manner.

"They were still moving at approximately eighty-six hundred KPS when we lost them," she said after a moment. "I'd guess they're planning on coming in ballistic from this point, with their impellers at standby. That velocity isn't very high, but that would make sense if they want to be as unobtrusive as possible-they wouldn't want to have to spill any more velocity if they end up needing to maneuver. At that low a speed, they can decelerate using minimum power wedges, so as to hold their signatures down, if they decide that's what they want to do. But they're coming in on a shortest-distance flight path towards Pontifex, so they obviously want a look at the traffic in the planet's vicinity. I'd say they figure that leaving the freighter out there, beyond the hyper limit, will keep anyone from spotting her, on the one hand, and put her in a position to escape into hyper before anyone could possibly intercept her, on the other. In the meantime, they can come in, take a look around the inner system, and find out whether or not there's anything here worth attacking. Commodore Karlberg was obviously right-they have to be more modern and powerful than anything he's got, given how they managed to futz up our sensor arrays-so they probably figure that even if somebody spots them, they can fight their way clear without too much trouble if they have to."

"I believe I agree with you, Ms. Hearns," FitzGerald said.

He tapped a few quick calculations into his own keypad and watched the results display themselves on the plot.

The shaded cone continued to grow steadily, indicating the volume into which the strobing icons might have moved at their last observed acceleration and velocity since the array had lost its hard lock, and he frowned. It was possible the bogeys' stealth systems actually had baffled the arrays. In that case, it was also possible they'd begun decelerating unseen, as a preliminary to moving away from the system. But that possibility wasn't even worth considering. There wasn't much Hexapuma could do about them if they were, and they weren't going to pose any immediate threat to Nuncio, but he didn't believe for a moment that they were doing any such thing-not with the freighter still decelerating steadily towards rest.

No, it was far more likely that Abigail's analysis was right on the money, in which case…

The result came up on his plot. At their last observed velocity, the two strobing icons would drift clear to Pontifex in just over twenty hours. And if they continued to coast in, running silent on ballistic courses, nobody with Nuncio's level of technology would see a thing before they actually crossed the planet's orbital shell. Hexapuma , on the other hand, armed with a hard datum on where they'd killed their wedges and knowing exactly what volume of space to watch, should be able to find them again with her heavily stealthed remote arrays' passive systems without their knowing a thing about it. It would be simple enough to steer the remotes into positions from which they could observe Bogey One and Bogey Two's predicted tracks closely enough to defeat the level of stealth they'd so far demonstrated, at any rate. The trick would be to do it using light-speed control links. It was unlikely the bogeys had picked up the arrays' FTL grav pulses yet, given how far away from the arrays they still were and how weak those pulses were, but Hexapuma 's transmissions to them would be far more easily detected. So the data Hexapuma had was going to get older, but would still be enormously better than anything the bogeys had. Or that they would believe Nuncio could have, which meant…

The XO sat back in the command chair, thinking hard. The freighter was the joker in the deck. Captain Terekhov and his senior officers had discussed several contingency plans built around the possibility that one or even two pirate cruisers might come calling, but none of those contingencies had considered the possibility that they would bring a captured prize with them. Taking out the pirates themselves would be a good day's work, but it was possible some or even all of the merchantship's original crew was still on board her.

The thought of leaving merchant spacers in pirate hands was anathema to any Queen's officer, but FitzGerald was damned if he saw any way to avoid it this time. However good Hexapuma and her crew might be, she could be in only one place at a time, and she was the only friendly vessel in-system which could realistically hope to engage the pirate cruisers and survive. Yet she was also the only hyper-capable friendly warship in Nuncio, which meant she was the only unit which could pursue the merchantship if her prize crew got into hyper-space.

No matter how he chewed at the unpalatable parameters of the tactical problem, Ansten FitzGerald could see no way to solve both halves of the equation, and just for a moment, he felt guiltily grateful that the responsibility for solving them lay on someone else's shoulders.

He reached out and tapped a com combination on his keypad. The screen lit with the image of Hexapuma 's snarling hexapuma-head crest which served as the com system's wallpaper, and a small data bar indicated that it had been diverted to a secondary terminal for screening. Then the data bar blinked to indicate an open circuit as the recipient accepted the call sound-only.

"Captain's steward's quarters, Chief Steward Agnelli," a female voice which couldn't possibly be as wide awake as it sounded said.

"Chief Agnelli, this is the Exec," FitzGerald said. "I hate to disturb the Captain this late, but something's come up. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to wake him."

Aivars Terekhov took one more look at the immaculate officer in his cabin's mirror as Joanna Agnelli brushed a microscopic speck of lint from his shoulder. She looked up, brown eyes meeting his in the mirror, and her mouth twitched in a brief smile.