David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

"CIC reports that Lieutenant Hearns has executed her attack, Ansten."

"Yes, Sir." FitzGerald nodded to the visual pickup. "Ms. Zilwicki just brought that information to my attention."

"She did, eh?" Terekhov smiled. "It sounds as if you have a fairly competent team over there, XO."

"Oh, not too shabby, I suppose, Skipper," he said, glancing up to give Helen and Marshall a quick wink. Then he returned his full attention to Terekhov. "I don't suppose we have direct confirmation from Lieutenant Hearns, Sir?"

"No, but that's not surprising," Terekhov replied, and FitzGerald nodded. The question had been worth asking, but neither Abigail's pinnaces nor Einarsson's LAC could possibly have hit Hexapuma direct with a communications laser at that range-certainly not without Bogey One knowing they had. Still, she might have tried relaying through one of the other arrays.

"The sensor data was picked up by one of the epsilon arrays and relayed around the periphery to one of the delta arrays via grav-pulse," Terekhov continued, as if he'd read at least part of his XO's thoughts. "The delta array was far enough out on the flank to have a com laser transmission path to us that cleared the bogeys by a safe margin. All of which, by the way, means it took just over forty minutes for the information to reach us."

He looked expectantly at the exec, and FitzGerald nodded again.

"Which happens to be five minutes longer than it would've taken for a transmission direct from Bogey Three to Bogey One," he said.

"Indeed it is. And Bogey One hasn't so much as blinked. So there's at least a chance Hearns managed to knock out Three's communications."

"Or just to do enough damage to knock them back temporarily , Skipper," FitzGerald pointed out. Terekhov grimaced, but he didn't disagree. Nor was his grimace aimed at FitzGerald; it was one of an executive officer's responsibilities to present every reasonable possible alternative analysis to his CO.

"At any rate," Terekhov continued, "they're continuing on, and if they keep it up for another forty minutes or so, they're ours."

"Yes, Sir." FitzGerald nodded again. Actually, the bogeys were already "theirs." Their overtake velocity was down to under sixteen thousand KPS, and the range was down to less than fifty-two light-seconds. Given that Hexapuma 's maximum powered missile range from rest was over twenty-nine million kilometers and that the range was less than sixteen million, both those ships were already within her reach… and probably doomed, if Aivars Terekhov had been prepared to settle for simple outright destruction. Which, of course, he wasn't.

"I have to admit, Skipper," the exec said after a few seconds, "when you first came up with this idea, I had my doubts. Mind you, I couldn't think of anything better, given all the balls you had in the air. I was still afraid this one was tailor-made for Murphy, but it looks like you've outsmarted him this time."

"That remains to be seen," Terekhov cautioned, although an eager light flickered deep in his blue eyes. Then his expression sobered. "And whatever happens here, there's still a damned good chance we've already killed some of the good guys, if there were any left aboard Bogey Three."

"We probably have," FitzGerald agreed unflinchingly. "And if so, I'm sorry. But if I were a merchant spacer aboard that ship, Skipper, I'd damned sure want us to at least try to retake her, even if there was a chance I'd be killed!"

"I know, Ansten. I know. And I agree with you. None of which will make me feel a lot better if I have just killed some of them."

There wasn't much FitzGerald could offer in the way of comforting responses to that. Especially not when he knew he would have felt exactly the same way in the Captain's place. That he did feel exactly the same way, for that matter.

"Well, Skipper," he said instead with a grim smile, "in that case, I guess the best thing for us to do is to concentrate on taking out our frustrations on Mr. Mars and Friend."

"Sir, we're being hailed by the bogeys."

Terekhov turned his chair to face Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri and cocked one eyebrow.

"It's voice-only," the com officer added.

"Voice- only? That's interesting." Terekhov stroked the underside of his chin with a thumb. Actually, he'd expected to hear from the bogeys long before. Almost twenty minutes had passed since they'd received confirmation of Lieutenant Hearns' initial attack. The range was down to less than four and a half million kilometers, well inside even the Peeps' powered missile envelope, and the bogeys' overtake velocity was down to only seventy-six hundred kilometers per second. Had Hexapuma 's pursuers deliberately waited, letting the "freighter's" crew sweat under the knowledge that they were in missile range, as a psychological measure? Then he shrugged. "Put it on speaker, please."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Freighter Nijmegen , this is Captain Daumier of the heavy cruiser Anhur . Cut your accel immediately and stand by for rendezvous!"

The voice was harsh, hard-edged, with the flat accent of the slums of Nouveau Paris. There was a chill menace to it, despite the absence of any overt threats, and it was female.

"Odd, wouldn't you say, Ansten?" Terekhov murmured, and the executive officer nodded.

"In a lot of ways, Skipper. That's a Peep talking, all right. But why voice-only? And why not identify Anhur as a Havenite vessel?"

"Maybe she's pretending to be a 'regular' pirate, Skipper," Ginger Lewis offered from her own quadrant of Terekhov's com screen, and he made a small gesture, inviting her to amplify her thought.

"On my first deployment to Silesia, the Peeps had organized a complicated commerce-raiding operation designed, at least in part, to look as much as possible like regular pirate attacks on our merchant traffic," she said. "Could this be more of the same?"

"Why bother?" Naomi Kaplan's question wasn't a challenge. The tac officer was simply thinking aloud, and Ginger shrugged.

"One of their objects then was to keep ONI guessing about whether what we faced were Peeps or simply the normal scum, taking advantage of how the war was distracting us from Silesia. But another one-and more important in their thinking-was to keep the Andies from realizing they were operating in the Empire's backyard. They didn't want to drive the Andy Navy into our arms by looking as if they were threatening Imperial territory. Could they be thinking the same way about the Sollies now?"

"Trying to avoid provoking the League by stepping on OFS' toes in an area it's always considered its private turf, you mean?" Terekhov said.

"Yes, Sir." Hexapuma 's Engineer shrugged again. "Mind you, Skipper, I can't see any reason why they should be worried about it. We're the ones trying to expand into the area, not them, and the Sollies must know that. So I'm not saying it makes a lot of sense, just that it's the only explanation for their behavior that springs to my mind."

"Well, they're not likely to make anyone believe they're 'regular pirates' with a woman in command," Kaplan observed sourly. "Too many real pirates are neobarbs from backwaters even less enlightened than Nuncio. Some of them remind me of those hard-line bastards on Masada, actually." She grimaced. "The idiots are convinced no one can run a hard-assed lot like them unless he shaves and has testicles!"

"Now, Naomi," Nagchaudhuri said soothingly. "There are some female pirate skippers. Just not very many."

"And by and large, the women who've commanded pirates have been one hell of a lot nastier than the men," FitzGerald agreed.

"True." Terekhov nodded. "Still, there's something about this-"