David Weber - The Short Victorious War

Yet despite her own reasoning, she felt undeniably tense. She was almost to turnover, so where were the bastards? They should have shown up by now... unless they'd decided to abandon Hancock without offering battle.

Assuming her information on their strength was accurate, that would certainly be a rational move, yet it would also be completely at odds with her own assessment of the Manticoran Navy. Edward Saganami had set the RMN's standards in his final engagement when he died defending a convoy against five-to-one odds. His inheritors had proven themselves worthy of their founder over the centuries, and that sort of tradition wasn't built in a moment; somehow she couldn't picture any Manticoran admiral letting it be torn down without a fight.

No, he was out there somewhere, and he was up to something. She couldn't see him, but she didn't have to see him to know that.

"Drive shutdown in five minutes," Oselli reported.

"Thank you, Charlotte." Honor looked down at the screen, which now showed Mark Sarnow's face, and started to open her mouth.

"I heard," he said, and his expression was less tense than it had been before. In fact, it was almost relaxed, as if he, too, were relieved that the moment was approaching. And, she thought dryly, that they'd gotten this far without being spotted. The Peep dreadnoughts had made turnover twenty-eight minutes ago, and they'd hardly be continuing their deceleration if they knew the enemy was now directly ahead of them.

"Yes, Sir. Any orders?"

"None, thank you."

"Very well, Sir."

She leaned back again, resting her elbows on the arms of her command chair, and looked back at the plot. Six and a quarter hours had passed since the Peeps' arrival; now the crimson data codes of enemy ships of the wall plowed up their wake, decelerating steadily but still overtaking at over twenty thousand KPS, and the fact that that was exactly what Hancock's defenders wanted them to do didn't make it any less unnerving.

"Argus is reporting something, Sir."

Rollins stopped pacing to dart a quick look at Captain Holcombe. The chief of staff was bent over Captain Santiago's shoulder, watching the ops officer's display, and the admiral made himself wait without comment while the data coalesced.

"Five ships, Sir," Holcombe said finally. "Acceleration about four-point-niner KPS squared. They're on the far side of the inner system, headed directly away from the Manty base—and Admiral Chin—toward the hyper limit." He glanced at a time readout. "Transmission lag is about thirty-three minutes from the platforms that picked them up, Sir."

"IDs?"

"They're pretty big, Sir," Santiago replied. "Pulling that accel, they're probably battlecruisers, but there's no way to confirm that."

"Escorts?"

"No sign of any, Sir."

"I see." Rollins stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets and resumed his pacing. Five probable battlecruisers headed away. It made sense, especially if the defenders had been completely surprised. They couldn't possibly have crammed the base's entire personnel aboard that few ships, but if they'd had to respond to an emergency and organize an evacuation on the fly to get out what they could, the timing was about right. Only where were their escorts?

He frowned and paced a bit faster. Argus had spotted quite a few destroyers and cruisers clustered to cover the most likely approaches from Seaford, not to mention the tin-cans clinging to Chin's flanks. It was possible the Manties had deployed all their light units as pickets, which, in turn, would explain the absence of any screen for the battlecruisers, but even so—

"Ed, signal New Boston, " he said. "Inform Admiral Chin that Argus confirms the departure of five enemy units, possibly battlecruisers. Give her their vectors and emphasize that our IDs are only tentative."

"Aye, Sir. Shall I instruct her to go in pursuit?"

"Hell no!" Rollins snorted. "There's no way she could overtake, and if they're up to something sneaky there's no reason to do what they want."

"Yes, Sir."

"Coming up on shutdown... now," Oselli said, and Chief Constanza killed Nike's drive in instant response.

"Rotate," Honor said quietly. "George, confirm the same order to the rest of the task group."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Monet spoke into his pickup, for the task group com net emanated from his panel now, just as Chandler's controlled the tactical net. Admiral Sarnow's com section was tied into Nike's gravities, reading direct from the FTL sensor platforms and feeding the data to CIC.

"Rotating now, Ma'am," Chief Constanza murmured, and her hands gentled the battlecruiser through an end-for-end turn that left her bows-on to the oncoming Peeps. It wasn't a very quick maneuver, for with her wedge down Nike maneuvered like a pig—a lazy pig—on attitude thrusters alone. The parasite pods trailing astern didn't help, either, yet they were also the reason for the turn. Nike's stealth systems could do a lot to hide her from the enemy, but the tractor-towed pods extended beyond their effective coverage. The only way to hide them was to put them in the ship's shadow.

"All units rotated, Ma'am," Monet announced at length.

"Thank you." Honor looked down at her link to the flag bridge, and Sarnow nodded to her.

"And now," he said quietly, "we wait."

"Another message from the flagship, Ma'am," Chin's com officer said. The admiral quirked an eyebrow at him. "Argus reports the impeller sources departing the base are still holding vector for the hyper limit."

"Thank you."

Chin exchanged glances with her chief of staff and ops officer. Commander Klim's frown was as intent as her own, but Commander DeSoto seemed unconcerned. Which didn't mean much. The ops officer was a good, sound technician, but he lacked the chief of staff's imagination.

She scooted down in her command chair and crossed her ankles as she leaned back to think. She no longer felt any inclination to fidget, as if the appearance of those drive signatures on the far side of the base had erased some of her tension, yet a nagging little spike of doubt jabbed at her mind.

They almost had to be battlecruisers to pull that accel, and they'd been doing it too long for them to be EW drones. Yet she'd been too convinced the Manties would try something before tamely surrendering a base they'd spent so much time, money, and effort building to accept it without reservation.

"Range to their base?" she asked DeSoto.

"Coming down on one-oh-eight million kilometers, Ma'am."

"Range to base is now one-zero-one million kilometers, Sir," Honor told Mark Sarnow, and the admiral nodded.

"Stand by to rotate and engage." His tenor's slight harshness was the only sign of the last two hour's nerve-wracking strain, and Honor's respect for him clicked up another notch. The dreadnoughts had closed the range by more than ninety-three million kilometers, and their velocity remained almost fifty-six hundred KPS higher than his own. If they went in pursuit at maximum power now, they could force him into energy range, despite his higher accel. She knew all about the ploys he hoped would slow them down, for she'd helped him devise them, but she also knew what would happen if his stratagems failed. There were too many enemy ships back there for merely scattering to save his battlecruisers if they pressed a resolute pursuit, and he'd deliberately accepted that to maximize the one truly heavy blow he could deliver. It required either immense moral courage or a total lack of imagination to do something like that.

She looked back at her plot and let her thoughts turn to the missile pods. Nike's redesigned inertial compensator and more powerful impellers let her tow a total of seven of them; Achilles, Agamemnon, and Cassandra could manage six each, but the older, Redoubtable-class ships could tow only five. "Only" five. The right corner of her mouth twitched at the thought.