David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"You have the board, aye, Ma'am," Helen Zilwicki said, and Kaplan looked at her.

"Nervous?" she asked in a voice too low for anyone else on the bridge to overhear.

"Not really, Ma'am," Helen replied. Then paused. "Well, not if you mean scared ," she said in a painstakingly honest voice. "I guess I probably am worried. About screwing up, more than anything else."

"That's as it should be," Kaplan told her. "Although you might want to reflect on the fact that just because we think we're bigger and nastier than they are, we're not necessarily right. And even if we are, we're still not invulnerable. Somebody can kill you just as dead by hitting you in the head with a rock as with a tribarrel, if she gets close enough and she's lucky."

"Yes, Ma'am," Helen said, remembering the breaking-stick feel of human necks in the shadows of Old Chicago's ancient sewers.

"But you're right to concentrate on the job," Kaplan continued, unaware of her middy's memories. "That's your responsibility right now, and responsibility is the best antidote to more mundane fears, like being blown into tiny pieces, that I can think of." She smiled at Helen's involuntary snort of amusement. "And, of course, if you should happen to screw something up, I assure you that you'll wish you had been blown into tiny pieces by the time I'm done with you."

She frowned ferociously, brows lowered, and Helen nodded.

"Yes, Ma'am. I'll remember," she promised.

"Good," Kaplan said, and turned back to her own plot.

Zilwicki was a good kid, she thought, although she'd had some reservations, given the midshipwoman's connection to Catherine Montaigne and the Anti-Slavery League. Not to mention her super-spook father's working association with the technically proscribed Audubon Ballroom. Unlike altogether too many officers, in her opinion, Kaplan didn't figure politics-hers or anyone else's-had any business in the Queen's Navy. Personally, she was a card-carrying Centrist, delighted that William Alexander had replaced that incompetent, corrupt, fucking asshole High Ridge, although she normally stayed out of the political discussions which seemed to fascinate her fellow officers. As a Centrist, she wasn't particularly fond of Montaigne's bare-knuckled political style, and she'd never cared for the Liberal Party, even before New Kiev sold out to High Ridge. But she had to admit that, whatever Montaigne's faults, there was absolutely no doubt of her iron fidelity to her own principles, be they ever so extreme.

Still, Kaplan had wondered if someone from such a politicized background would be able to put it aside, especially now that Zilwicki's kid sister had become a crowned head of state! But if there'd ever been a single instance of Zilwicki's political beliefs intruding into the performance of her duties, Kaplan hadn't seen it. And the girl was a fiendishly good tactician. Not as good as Abigail, but she had the touch. So if someone had to sub for Abigail, Zilwicki was an excellent choice.

But I don't want anyone subbing for Abigail , Kaplan thought, and felt a flicker of surprise at her own attitude. The youthful Grayson had a knack for inspiring trust, on a personal as well as a professional level, without ever crossing the line to excessive familiarity with superiors or subordinates. That was rare, and Kaplan finally admitted to herself that she was worried. That she disliked letting Abigail out of her sight, especially out amongst those primitive, sexist Nuncians.

Of course, she thought wryly, she's probably had one helluva lot more experience dealing with primitive sexists than I ever have! There's probably quite a few of them in her own family, for that matter.

She snorted at her own reflections, and checked the time.

Nine hours since the remote arrays had first detected the intruders, and so far, everything was ticking along right on schedule.

"Ma'am, I think you should look at this," Helen said after rechecking her data twice, very carefully. It had come out stubbornly the same each time, however preposterous it seemed.

"What is it?" Lieutenant Commander Kaplan said.

"The Alpha-Twenty array just picked Bogey One back up, Ma'am. It got a good look at her, too, and I don't think she's exactly what anyone's been expecting."

Kaplan looked up from the missile attack profile she'd been reviewing and turned until she could see Helen's plot. She'd had Helen monitoring the sensor arrays-largely to give her something to do, Helen suspected. But now she looked at the data codes and the library entry sidebar CIC had thrown up on the plot at Helen's request, and her eyebrows rose.

"Well, Ms. Zilwicki," she said dryly, "I see you have a true Gryphon's gift for understatement."

She studied the display for another few moments, and Helen watched her as unobtrusively as possible.

The data had come in on a laser, not FTL, to insure that the bogeys didn't pick anything up, so it was several minutes old. But that didn't matter for ID purposes, and after a moment, the TO shook her head and reached for her com key. She pressed it and waited two or three seconds until a voice spoke in her own earbug.

"Captain speaking."

"Sir, it's Kaplan. We just got a positive relocation on Bogey One. She's right where we'd expected her to be, and the array got a pretty good look at her. Ms. Zilwicki-" she gave Helen a quick smile and a wink that made her feel astonishingly good "-patched the data through to CIC, and we have a tentative identification."

"And?" Terekhov asked when she paused.

"Skipper, according to CIC, this is a Mars -class heavy cruiser."

"A Peep?"

There was something in the Captain's voice. A sharper edge, or a pause. A fleeting break, perhaps. Something. But Kaplan couldn't quite put her finger on it, whatever it was. And if she'd actually heard it at all, it had disappeared by his next sentence.

"CIC is confident of that?" he asked.

"Reasonably, Sir. They're still calling it tentative, but I think that's just ingrained caution. There is one weird thing about it, though, Skipper. The sensor array crossed astern of Bogey One, right through her stealth field's keyhole, and got a read on her emissions. That's how we were able to ID her. But according to CIC's analysis of the neutrino data, this ship appears to have the old Goshawk-Three fusion plants."

"Goshawk -Three? "

"Yes, Sir. And according to ONI, their yards upgraded to the Goshawk -Four at the construction stage with the third flight for the class, and they've systematically updated the surviving older members of the class-there aren't many of them left-since the armistice. There were some serious design flaws in the Goshawk-Three, and the Four not only corrected those but boosted output by over fifteen percent, so they've made a real effort to upgrade across the fleet. According to ONI, they shouldn't have any of the old Threes left."

"That's… very interesting, Guns." Terekhov's voice was slow and thoughtful. He was silent for a few moments, then said, "There's no indication that they picked up the array as it passed?"

"None that I can see, Sir. They're still just drifting along, exactly the way they were. That's a very stealthy array, Skipper, and we've got the grav-pulse transmitters locked down on all the platforms. I think it's extremely unlikely they've seen a thing yet."

"Agreed," he said. "All right, Guns. Thanks for the update."

"We strive to keep the customer satisfied, Skipper." Kaplan heard him chuckle as she cut the circuit, and she smiled herself, then looked back across at Helen.

"That was good work, Ms. Zilwicki. Very good work, indeed." Which , she didn't add aloud, is why I made certain the Skipper knew who did it in the first place .