In the sequel to The Phoenix in Flight, the chase is on, and unexpected detours await.
The Dol’jharians and their Rifter allies race ahead of the light-speed news of their attack to consolidate their victories. Eusabian of Dol’jhar, now master of the Mandala, awaits news of the Heart of Kronos, the missing key to ultimate power. Vi’ya and her crew wonder what to do about a royal prisoner with the price of ten planets on his head. And elements of the Panarchist Navy struggle to understand what’s happening, find surviving units, and strike back.
From his seat at the senior table, Lieutenant Commander Mdeino ban-Nilotis could see most of the junior officers bridge wardroom—not surprising, given that he topped most on Grozniy by a head. That didn’t help him see into the little alcoves that ensigns tended to hide in to avoid catching extra duty. But right now, an hour before watch change, the compartment zinged with nervous energy and he was sure those alcoves were empty.
Nilotis was better than most of his rank at the peripheral people-watching required of officers. He’d had to be, given that the heritage of the bomasof Nyangathanka had given him not only a elongated build but flaming red hair and night black skin. One did not overlook Mdeino ban-Nilotis in most company, no matter how much he might wish you to.
He needed every bit of that talent right now. The next watch would see the battlecruiser Grozniy’s emergence back into the Thousand Suns after seven months out-octant. The most animated conversations in the wardroom—those in which hands shaped air and lips shouted laughter—surely involved boasts and speculations about the coming liberty in Wolakota System, famous—or notorious—for its hospitality to Naval personnel.
Other colloquies were more sober, though no less intense, as revealed by the set of shoulders here, and fingers stiffly tapping the table over there. Beyond Wolakota, a few weeks further into Rouge Nord octant, lay the end of their tour of duty and the further definition of career trajectories: the summing up of rank points gained or lost, new assignments, new ships, new captains.
And then there were the junior officers Captain Ng was rotating into the alpha crew for the first time this next watch, the most senior of whom sat across the table from Nilotis right now.
Nilotis grinned at Lieutenant Rom-Sanchez, who was picking at his food. “Gee-flutters, Sergei?”
Rom-Sanchez dropped his fork on his plate and pushed his food away. Like the rest of his body, his hands were lean and quick-moving. Next to him Lieutenant Denil Methuen chuckled in a light baritone. “He’d rather be back in the lock of that bubbloid.”
Rom-Sanchez was spared the necessity of a reply as Lieutenant Tang dropped into the seat next to Nilotis. “I can never resist a look of misery,” she said brightly, her straight black hair swinging about her ears, a couple of centimeters past regulation. “Especially on the face of the most junior lieutenant in the wardroom an hour before his appointment with destiny.”
“Thanks, Mabel,” Rom-Sanchez muttered. “You’re such a comfort.”
“Anytime, Sergei. Just remember, all those Rifters could have done was kill you. Hero.”
Nilotis laughed. “That’s enough of that. Denil and I have had sufficient time to get his head back to normal size since the Captain’s momentary lapse in judgment.” He canted a look at the new lieutenant’s tabs Rom-Sanchez was trying not to finger.
“It’s our duty.” Methuen nodded soberly. “We have the ship’s reputation to think of.”
Everyone laughed, but Nilotis noted how forced Rom-Sanchez’s was, and dropped the teasing. “Sergei. Look at it this way. Giving you tactical on the alpha crew is the captain’s way of underscoring your success at Smyrna. As your last station on this tour, it will look good on your record, especially since it’s not for just any emergence, but our triumphant return to civilization.”
Rom-Sanchez snorted at the mockery in the last phrase, but shook his head doubtfully.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” said Methuen. “Wolakota’s a liberty port, not an out-octant hellhole like Smyrna or Breakpoint. Tactical’s a sinecure on an emergence like this: Captain’s actually going easy on you.”
“Right.” Nilotis tipped his chin towards a short, powerfully-built lieutenant watching two other officers playing L-4 Phalanx, the Tenno version forbidden in tournament play but popular throughout the Navy for both training and entertainment. “Mzinga, there, he’s on Nav—always possible to screw up at that station, no matter where we come out.”
Rom-Sanchez glanced in that direction, and his brows contracted in a quick frown. Nilotis realized that Rom-Sanchez wasn’t paying any attention to Mzinga. His attention was on the console, specifically the Tenno evolution one of the players was attempting.
Then Rom-Sanchez shook his head and turned back again. “Yeah, but Mzinga’s been alpha before.”
“He had a first time, too. We all did, at least on Grozniy. Lot of ships you can’t say that about.”
Rom-Sanchez grimaced but said nothing. As far as Nilotis knew, the younger officer was largely apolitical, although it was hard to tell whether that was innate or the regrettably necessary discretion practiced by Highdwellers like him in a Navy increasingly dominated by the Aerenarch Semion’s Downsider connections. Well, we don’t have to worry about that with Margot Ng at the helm, even if it does mean we spend most of our time out-octant.
As if to belie his words, the wardroom hatch slid open, and Nilotis didn’t need to look up to know who had just entered the compartment. The sudden bubble of quiet and the wariness of the two young lieutenants told him it had to be Lieutenant Commander Eisel ban-Tessler.
“Uh, oh,” said Tang under her breath. “Stuffcrotch has that brass-polishing look of his, and I’m on my tween watch, which means ‘available for scut work’ as far as he’s concerned.”
Accurate as the epithet was, Nilotis had to uphold the respect for rank that made Naval hierarchy work smoothly, and he glanced Tang’s way.
She flushed. “Tell you what, Sergei, why don’t you take another shot at convincing me that Warrigal’s L-5 Phalanx doesn’t rot your brain?” Her gaze flickered to Nilotis. “Lieutenant Commander Tessler won’t bother us there.”
Nilotis suppressed a smile. He’d heard the faint emphasis on Tessler’s rank and name. Tang was always trying for the lower orbit, trying to keep ahead, which tended to cost her rank points that her ability would otherwise garner.
“How about you, Denil?” Tang turned his way.
The other lieutenant shook his head theatrically. “Brrrr! No way I’m letting that wire-dream blunge into my head—that would be all I need, transposing her impossible Tenno into the middle of a real fire fight.”
“Who’s going to be looking at the screen?” replied Tang. “Not me. I like watching the players sweat.”
The three juniors excused themselves just ahead of Tessler’s arrival at the table.
Tessler was carrying a compad as was his invariable custom. As he sat down, he looked after Tang and Rom-Sanchez with a sour expression that deepened the frown lines on his long face.
“Our newest lieutenant seems pretty casual about his first alpha,” he said. “Or does he think that fantasy Phalanx is a good warm up for Tactical?”
“I can think of worse,” replied Nilotis mildly, with a glance at Tessler’s compad.
Tessler’s lips tightened. Scuttlebutt had it that Tessler had entered the Academy with high hopes for a fighting career, with patronage linked to the Aerenarch. That he’d ended up in Supply was, Nilotis suspected, in large part because he had found the Tenno tactical glyphs difficult to master. There was nothing wrong with that—the Navy needed logisticians as good as Tessler. But it wasn’t good enough for the man himself.
“Well, he’ll hardly gain any rank points kissing up to Warrigal.”
Kissing up. Like too many Downsider officers, whose families were satellites to the older Tetrad Centrum clans, Tessler tended to see things first in terms of Douloi preference, then Naval rank. A regrettably common viewpoint among many connected to the Aerenarch—especially those not invited to Narbon.
“They’re distantly related, I understand,” said Nilotis, “and both in Tactical.” Tessler’s face soured even more at the reminder that the two juniors would have to acknowledge some acquaintance, given their families’ relationship. “The Warrigals freighted Rom-Sanchez’s Highdwelling, I don’t know, three or four centuries back.” And the Warrigal shipping interests have helped start Highdwellings many times, since before there was a Panarchy, in fact. So Rom-Sanchez has little to worry about from you, especially since they’re both under me, not in Supply.
“As you say,” said Tessler, somewhat stiffly, pushing his chair back a bit. Nilotis tended to loom over just about anyone on the ship. He called Nyangathanka home, a planet deep in the Tetrad Centrum that had joined the Panarchy in the first century of Jaspar’s Peace. There I go, doing the same right back at him. Disgusted with himself, Nilotis leaned back in his chair.
“I suppose it’s harmless enough,” Tessler continued. “It’s not as though she’s likely to have much to do otherwise, given the circumstances of her transfer from Narbon. No rank points, came out as she went in, an Ensign.”
Nilotis shrugged. “Captain seems happy enough with her. So am I. Her doctorate in tactical semiotics, coming so early, doesn’t hurt.”
“Doesn’t help much, either that I can see,” replied Tessler. “Close to a calculated insult to turn in a game as a thesis. A game,” he repeated in disgust. “While the Aerenarch struggles to build up the Navy to face a real threat.”
Nilotis managed not to roll his eyes. Dol’jhar again.
“Sorry, Eisel, I just can’t see a failed serial-chip empire as a real threat. It shattered like glass after Acheront. What’s left is maybe ten or fifteen planets with raving sociopaths barely in control, while Sodality syndicates make a fortune smuggling and jacker raids keep them off balance.” Nilotis laughed. “If they start to get out of line, there are entire Rifter fleets willing to take them on if we open up the Dol’jharian sector for bidding on a Writ.”
“You just don’t get it,” said Tessler in exasperation. “Why did we just spend seven months out-octant from Rouge Nord? Because Eichelly dropped out of sight two years ago, just like Charterly and others.”
Nilotis snorted. “No surprise there. There were enough derogations to have put his Writ under litigation a dozen times over. The Justicials vacated it just before we left on patrol.”
“Exactly. It took them over a year, which ended up costing the Navy three battlecruiser tours of duty, plus who knows how many destroyer squadron tours? And that’s just for our assigned recognizance. It’s happening elsewhere. Raving sociopath or not, the Avatar of Dol’jhar is dispersing our forces.”
“To do what? With one capital ship?” asked Nilotis, wearying of the familiar argument. Tessler could hardly be expected to feel otherwise, not and expect to retain his connection to the Aerenarch, who would never forgive the murderer of his mother.
“You know how I see this. Eichelly, those others, are just part of the natural expansion of the Peace. He’s deep out-octant by now, establishing some petty fiefdom. He’ll either end up plasma, Shiidra food, or the founder of a polity that a few centuries from now will be petitioning for a protectorate. Yes, it costs tours of duty. That’s how it works, so I think it’s pretty senseless to build up a core fleet that never leaves the Tetrad Centrum.”
The first watch-change bells sounded, interrupting Tessler’s reply, and Nilotis shifted his attention, watching the group around Warrigal break up and hurry to the hatch, on their way to the ready room. Tessler watched, too, stiff with disapproval.
They are cutting it close, Nilotis thought.
Warrigal, now alone, was still tapping intently at her compad as though nothing had changed. She often seemed to be in a world of her own, as though walking in the Dreamtime of her ancestors on Lost Earth. Was that why Captain Ng hadn’t yet given her a shot at alpha, despite her tactical skills?
Tessler followed the direction of his gaze, and snorted. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” He scooped his compad off the table and stalked out of the wardroom.
Relieved, Nilotis settled back to his watching-not-watching. He’d been working hard, and this was his wind-down before he hit the rack. He’d sleep through emergence so he could be fresh for Wolakota. Rom-Sanchez could handle this emergence in his sleep. Once he got used to being on the bridge under the captain’s eye. After all, what could possibly happen?
o0o
In the last few seconds of the countdown to emergence, Ng looked around Grozniy’s bridge, wishing she could have more time with this new alpha crew, young as some of them were. They were smart, ambitious, and several of them were perhaps a bit too unconventional for their own good—just as she had been twenty-five years back. She hoped that their new captains would recognize their potential. Especially Rom-Sanchez. Aside from a regrettable emotional distraction of the sort she’d dealt with before, he’d demonstrated command potential on this cruise, and not just at Smyrna.
“Emergence.”
The descending tones of the bells blended with the quiet voice of the navigator as the battlecruiser Grozniy dropped back into fourspace with a barely perceptible shudder.
After a pause Lieutenant Mzinga looked up, puzzled. “No beacon, sir.”
Captain Margot O’Reilly Ng leaned forward in her command pod.
“Siglnt. Verify.”
Yeo Wychyrski at Siglnt tapped scrupulously at her console, her profile intent. Lieutenant Rom-Sanchez glanced at Ng from the tactical pod; she briefly checked his display echo next to the main screen and noted with approval that he was already setting up the appropriate range of presets for a no-beacon emergence.
“All sensors functional, sir,” Wychyrski sang out. “No beacon.”
“Navigation, tactical skip, now.” The fiveskip’s faint basso profundo hummed momentarily. “Confirm our position. Engage drunkwalk skip-orbit around our emergence point at five light seconds. Tactical, take us to threat-level one.” Grozniy had come in using a standard trojan attractor point, so there was little doubt of where they were within a few light minutes.
Ng saw the impact of her orders in the postures of the crew, especially those new to alpha: transformed from nervous, under-the-captain’s-eye alertness to eager anticipation. Mzinga and Rom-Sanchez barely had time to echo her orders before the engineering officer sang out “Engineering reports teslas at threat-level one,” a heartbeat ahead of other station confirmations.
The Tenno rippled, accommodating the sudden change in position. “No ship traces within skipmissile range,” reported Wychyrski moments later.
Aside from the derogation at Smyrna, which had turned out to be a private Rifter feud that the losing party had tried to turn around by bringing in the Navy, it had been a long, boring patrol out-octant from Rouge-Nord. Lots of time for drills, including, just a few weeks ago, the standard beacon-bashing scenario, where jackers destroyed the navigational beacon and fivespace conditions transponder, hoping to delay passing ships long enough for an intercept. Not very likely, now that they had returned to the Thousand Suns proper: Wolakota was just inside the ill-defined outer border of Rouge Nord octant. But still . . .
Decision crystallized in her. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“Lieutenant Rom-Sanchez,” she said.
He turned to her, startled, reminding her even more of a puppy, with his large brown eyes and curly dark hair that had the vestige of an cowlick over one eye, strictly clipped.
She’d used his name rather than his station. She saw comprehension dawning in him just ahead of her next words.
“Your captain just dropped dead, and you’re senior.” She smiled at the stricken expression on his face. “But I’ll leave you the rest of the crew, and I’ll take Tactical. You have the con.” With a swipe of her hand she transferred control to him, and took the tactical feed.
Rom-Sanchez blushed to the ears, then shifted his focus to the unremarkable starfield now on the main screen. Ng saw some of the crew watching him, especially the two other members of what some officers derisively called “the L-5 Loonies” that she’d chosen for alpha: Ensigns Wychyrski and Ammant, SigInt and Communications. To the crew’s credit, there was no trace of schadenfreude or malice in anyone’s expression, often a problem when a potential lower-orbit junior officer was put on the spot.
Lieutenant Mzinga was not watching Rom-Sanchez. His fingers were dancing over the nav console, correlating the data delivered by the sensors scattered over the seven-kilometer-long hull of the Grozniy. The precision lent by its size enabled a battlecruiser to orient faster than any other ship in the absence of the flood of data furnished by a navigational beacon. The older officer appeared absorbed, but Ng detected the faintest compression of lips indicating a suppressed laugh.
A bit more quickly than she’d expected, Rom-Sanchez spoke, with only a trace of a stammer before he dropped into bridge cadence, the almost-singsong speech pattern that they learned in the academy as part of bridge protocol, meant to project a uniform impression of calm and control. “AyKay. I have the con. SigInt, crunch a ship-centric mass and energy summary for me while nav is working.” He hesitated briefly. “Tactical, work up a threat assessment assuming we’re at the Wolakota leading trojan. If jackers took out the beacon, what are we likely facing, given the strategic situation here?”
Ng saw from the tactical setup now on her console that he hadn’t gotten to threat assessment before she’d ambushed him, but he was doubtless more concerned about that lack than she was. So far, so good.
“Spectrum match to Wolakota primary. Elevated asteroid density around the ship,” reported SigInt. “Looks like a lot of collisional evolution, not much to hide behind. A good deal of asteroid thermal scatter sunward. Matches a trojan point emergence.”
Like most systems with one or more gas giants in it, the Wolakota system had an asteroid belt inward from the sunward giant.
Ng watched Rom-Sanchez drumming his fingers on the arm of his pod as he stared at the main viewscreen. She would have preferred to see him observing the crew: the scattered points of light displayed there would reveal nothing. If it’s Rifters, they’ll skip the second they see our pulse. A battlecruiser generated an emergence pulse that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Depending on how far out the Rifters were hiding, the Grozniy had only minutes before its prey fled.
“Very well,” Rom-Sanchez said. Again, the slight hesitation. “Tactical, give me a sigma on hiding places.”
Ng popped up one of the Rom-Sanchez’s preset windows on the main screen, a colorful probability plot centered on the assumed position of the ship. The plot shifted as Mzinga straightened up, his task finished.
“Position confirmed, sir. Wolakota system, absolute bearing 30.6 mark 358.8, plus 47 light-minutes.” His mellow voice was even, but Ng heard his excitement in the quicker pace of his words. “That puts our initial emergence within one light-minute of the beacon’s position at the leading trojan attractor of Wolakota Six.”
That was as expected: their by-the-book approach had let the fivespace well created by the trojan attractor pull them into the system.
“No alerts on local widecasts. No links found,” reported Ammant at Communications. The local authorities were either not alarmed or playing it safe.
Ng glanced at the sigma plot, reading the Tenno glyphs overlaid on it with the facility born of twenty-five years’ practice. The asteroid belt sunward of their position was indicated on the plot by a series of faint green ring segments—k-zones—separated by the Kirkwood gaps where the periodic interaction with Wolakota Six swept away the debris left over from the system’s formation. The rings’ patterns, and various glyphs, indicated probable density, composition, and other tactically important information. A few yellow dots marked the position of major asteroids.
The plot had one lobe flaring the red of maximum probability, about fifteen light-minutes away, concentrated in the ecliptic in the closest k-zone to Six. Nothing there we didn’t already know—the average calc time for commercial traffic is about thirty minutes or so—probably more given the fivespace conditions in this stellar neighborhood.
Commercial traffic at the leading trojan was ships passing through the system, who couldn’t skip locally any great distance without further compromising their safety on the next leg of their fivespace journey. That’d give their hypothetical Rifters—no doubt hiding behind a chunk of rock or ice, as usual—sufficient time intercept their prey.
It also meant that the Grozniy now had something less than fifteen minutes to find the intruders—if the beacon’s destruction had indeed been deliberate.
Rom-Sanchez tapped his console and a countdown windowed up in a corner of the main screen, starting at ten minutes. Good! He was settling into his role as acting captain, and pushing the crew. His next order was crisp.
“Navigation, take us in to within five light-seconds of the attractor point. Siglnt, run a scan for debris and radiation. Extrapolate time of destruction if you find traces.”
The plot shifted as the fiveskip burped. One glyph indicated the presence of a Fleet tactical transponder nearby. Rom-Sanchez tapped at his console, highlighting the tacponder.
“SigInt, pop that tacponder and update Tactical immediately for threat assessment. Check its monitor status.”
Ng saw the impact, minor as it was, of the unnecessary last order: a slight hitch in the otherwise smooth flow of activity on the bridge. There was a brief silence on the bridge as Ensign Wychyrski began the scan. A window from Communications popped up on Ng’s console.
“No data from transponder,” she said. “Last update plus four months, no new threats reported, monitor mode off. Latest Wolakota data plus seven months, Pulwaiya tacponder.” That had been on their way out-octant.
“Tactical, assessment?”
“Worst case, Eichelly’s back, sine lege. Four Alphas in his fleet, three of them third-tranche.” It took a minimum of three destroyers to take on a battlecruiser, so the possibility they were facing a renegade Writ-holder with four of them made Eichelly a credible threat, even though one of his destroyers was more than 400 years old.
Rom-Sanchez’s eyes flicked towards Ng, and this time he hesitated a bit longer— too long—but then his shoulders straightened. “Very well. Take us to threat-level two.”
By the book, so far. “AyKay. Ship status to threat-level two.” Rom-Sanchez betrayed mingled relief and desperation as Ng fell into bridge alert cadence and echoed his order, followed by the other stations’ secondary confirmations: relief that she hadn’t countermanded him, desperation that she wasn’t taking the con back.
I’m not taking you off the hook yet. They still didn’t have confirmation of hostile activity, and tactically, it was impossible that more than one destroyer would be able to take a shot at them at the beginning of an engagement, given a battlecruiser’s sensor platform. Not that any jacker would be insane enough to do so. In any case, there was no danger to Grozniy, now that its shields were powered up sufficiently. They were still tracking the standard scenario: nothing Rom-Sanchez couldn’t handle, if he didn’t over-think things.
The brassy tones of the alert pealed out, followed by the hiss of the tianqi increasing the airflow into the bridge. Ng breathed in, aware of the faint bergamot scent fading, replaced by a complex of pine, jasmine, and less familiar scents, calculated to promote alertness, balanced with rose and jumari, for relief of stress. She knew, but could not sense, that the conditioners were also raising the ionization level slightly, and cycling faint subsonics at irregular intervals in a pattern that reached deep into the human thalamus with the age-old message: thunderstorm coming, be alert!
The aft hatch whispered open. Commander Krajno slipped into the pod on her left side, giving her a glance of muted surprise as he brought up his console.
“Dead again, eh?” Krajno’s gravelly voice perfectly matched his craggy, amiable face, like that of a boxer whose guard had been less than perfect during his career. It was a deceptive facade—Ng considered him one of the sharpest officers in the Fleet.
Wychyrski sang out, “Debris detected. Crystalline stress patterns of debris consonant with skipmissile impact. Dispersion indicates destruction about one hour ago, plus or minus ten minutes.”
Skipmissile, and only an hour past—that’s like a front-row seat.
Ng grinned at Krajno. His answering grin was feral, anticipating action after months of tedious patrol and training; Perthes was too scrupulous an executive officer not to get out of the rack when his captain ran drills at all hours, even if he didn’t have to.
Rom-Sanchez glanced their way. Ng kept her manner neutral, and knew Perthes was doing the same. Show time. Her fingers tingled, longing for the feel of the command console, but taking control now would teach entirely the wrong lesson, possibly even destroy a budding career. She had to demonstrate her confidence in him.
Ng watched him take a deep breath as he pitched his voice for firmness. “General quarters. Engineering, rig engines for tactical maneuvers. Fire Control, ready all ruptors. Charge skipmissile.”
As the general-quarters klaxon rang out—a sound Ng knew dated back to the oceanic navies of Lost Earth—excitement and purpose showed in straightened spines and a quick exchange of grins. She could read them so easily—general quarters, no question whether it was real or a drill, and they were on alpha! On Grozniy, alpha crew stayed on through general quarters, which was why that status was both feared and sought after.
“Navigation, SigInt, coordinate a light-cone convergence on the beacon’s destruction and position us for observation. Start one light-hour out, normal to the ecliptic. Communications, full-scan record, give me a visual.”
The Grozniy leapt briefly into fivespace and as quickly out. The transitions were rougher this time: the lower frequency skip required for fine tactical movements was hard on the engines. A faint whisper of datacode commenced.
“Beacon acquired,” said Wychyrski. They had skipped to a point outside the expanding wavefront marking the beacon’s destruction.
Another set of transitions, the fiveskip burping so briefly that an eyeblink would have missed it. The whisper ceased.
“No beacon.” Inside the wavefront.
Ng noted sweat on Mzinga’s brow, and his massive arms bulged against his trim uniform as he jumped the battlecruiser back and forth, struggling to get it to the desired position as quickly as possible. The countdown ticked off fifteen seconds more as the big ship continued its series of skips, which seemed on the edge of divergence.
“Navigation,” said Rom-Sanchez. “Try—“ He stopped abruptly, and Ng knew that this time he had seen loss of flow when the crew shifted attention from their tasks to him. “Belay that. Carry on.” He leaned back in his pod, gaze taking in the bridge, then he relaxed as he comprehended everyone settling back into smooth action. Good! Least action, best action. You’re learning.
The fiveskip burped twice more.
“On screen.” Ensign Ammant at Communications tapped at his console. A small targeting cross blinked at the center of the screen, and the faint whisper of datacode once again squealed onto the bridge from the doomed beacon.
Nothing happened for nearly a minute. Then a tiny flare of reddish light bloomed near the cross.
“Emergence,” Wychyrski said. “Signature indicates Alpha-class destroyer.”
Ng stroked the keypads at her station. “Signature ID’d. Eichelly’s Talon of God.”
The short chain-of-pearls wake of a skipmissile briefly connected the destroyer with the beacon, which vanished in an ardent burst of light. Then the destroyer vanished, leaving behind a reddish pulse.
The Tenno rippled furiously as the destroyer’s orientation on skip and other betraying aspects of its signature propagated through the bridge systems. “SigInt, find his emergence,” Rom-Sanchez ordered. “Navigation, drop us in five light-minutes out from his emergence, long-range, and then take us in to ten light-seconds on my mark. Fire Control, prepare ruptors for barrage at skip-smash level. We want him intact.”
The seconds stretched into minutes. Finally Wychyrski spoke, disbelief betrayed in her voice. “No emergence, sir. He’s gone.”
Ng leaned forward in her pod, glaring at the screen as if she could compel the Rifter to emerge. But there was no arguing with what the sensors showed. At normal skip speeds, the Talon of God would already be light-days away—and they were watching from a vantage point over an hour in the past. She shook her head, looking from Krajno to Rom-Sanchez, whose expressions mirrored her own feelings of confusion and anger—with perhaps a tiny bit of relief in the lieutenant’s.
She spoke to Rom-Sanchez. “Very well done, Lieutenant. I have the con.”
He swiped at his console, his face flushed with pleasure at her compliment, but the tremble in his fingers betrayed his relief. “AyKay, sir. You have the con.”
She raised her voice. “Stand down to threat-level one.”
“He bashed the beacon and skipped out of the system?” Krajno’s bass rumble was hesitant. “What the hell for?”
Ng bit her lip. “There’s been some suspicion about the disappearance of Writ-holders like Eichelly. That maybe it was to distract us from something else by pulling patrols out-octant. This stinks of concerted action across systems, so perhaps that ‘something else’ is coming down—and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
She pitched her voice to bridge cadence again. “Navigation, SigInt, get me a precise vector on his skip.”
She stood up, motioning to Krajno and Rom-Sanchez. “Genz, will you join me in the plot room?”
“Captain?” Ensign Wychyrski’s voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. “There was something odd about that explosion. Spectrum’s wrong for a skipmissile impact.”
“Very well, Ensign. Log it for analysis and give me a report. Lieutenant Mzinga,” she continued, “you have the con. Give us the vector soonest and stand by. Communications, squirt a message to the Wolakota Node informing them it’s safe to replace the beacon. Set the Fleet tacponder to monitor status and ready a report for it, full record of this action. We’ll add our report in a few minutes.”
o0o
Rom-Sanchez watched the captain lean back and tap her fingers on the edge of the compad in front of her.
“So, Lieutenant, he obviously expects us to follow him. Where did he go?” she asked, her light hazel eyes quirked with humor.
Rom-Sanchez knew his surprise must have shown, for Commander Krajno chuckled. “She took the con, but you’re not off the hook.”
“His vector gives us only two other core members of the local stellar association: either Treymontaigne or Schadenheim,” Rom-Sanchez began, giving himself time to think. “Thirty and forty-two hours respectively, at full speed.”
Ng shifted slightly in her chair, letting him know his delaying tactic wouldn’t work. But then he had the answer. “It doesn’t matter which way we think he went,” he continued, “because the local transponder shows no change from what we popped at Pulwaiya: Prabhu Shiva in-system at Treymontaigne on detached duty at the Archon’s request.”
He tried to keep his voice even, detached, but that quirk of humor vanished from the captain’s face.
Commander Krajno did not hide his disgust. His lip lifted, the sneer in his heavy face making him look like a pirate in a vid chip, as the rest of the officers shifted, or looked away. Few Navy officers had much respect for an Archon who ran close to the edge under the Covenant of Anarchy, and then called for a battlecruiser to back him up when his subjects started to resent his excesses.
“Too much of that sort of thing going on lately,” Krajno said.
Ng opened a hand, which effectively shut down the topic of politics.
Rom-Sanchez continued. “So we can assume that Captain Harimoto will give Eichelly a warm welcome if he chose Treymontaigne, and we’re for Schadenheim in case he didn’t.”
Ng nodded. “Good.” She turned to the plot-pane, which responded with a red line, spearing through the Schadenheim system.
Krajno grimaced. “Awful name, that.”
“Ancient Doitch,” said Ng. “Means something like Home of Destruction.”
Krajno nodded. “Matches the people there—pretty bloody-minded bunch.”
Ng grinned at the XO. “Coming from you, Commander, that puts a visit to Schadenheim on a par with a vacation on Dol’jhar.”
Krajno laughed. Rom-Sanchez had come to learn that Krajno thoroughly enjoyed his reputation for a harsh, rough-and-ready approach to discipline, but no one had ever called him unfair.
Rom-Sanchez allowed himself to tune out the banter. He watched Ng instead, the way her short hair, the color of maple leaves in autumn, swirled against her face as she turned from Krajno to the plot pane and back. Her hair looked like silk. So did her skin, which was the goldy-brown hue that some called sallow. He found it beautiful. As she gestured toward the plot plane, he stole a peek at the way her faultless blues modeled her slight, muscular figure.
Then he shifted his attention to his compad, and slapped himself down mentally. He was fairly sure that those hazel eyes did not miss much. What he didn’t know was what she thought in personal terms: she never discussed private affairs, ever, with anyone—so far as he was aware.
Did she have a private life? Some officers didn’t. Some of those highborn Douloi from the Tetrad Centrum families acted as antiseptic as if they’d been decanted as adults from a steel tube straight into the Academy.
But Ng was not Douloi. Rom-Sanchez remembered Mdeino’s comment in the wardroom about everyone getting a shot at alpha. “Lot of ships you can’t say that about.” Rom-Sanchez had been lucky in his assignment to Grozniy, lucky to avoid a ship where his Highdweller origins might hold him back. Best not to screw it up with stupid fantasies about a captain almost twice his age, not to mention one who’d been awarded the Panarchy’s highest honor for her heroism at the Battle of Acheront that ended the Dol’jharian War.
He forced his attention back to the conversation.
“. . . maybe the Local Justice Option, Captain?” Krajno was saying, rubbing his hands with exaggerated pleasure.
That’s the real decision: what do we do with Eichelly when we do catch him? I think she’s already decided.
“Look who’s being bloody-minded!” Ng laughed. “A tribunal won’t need to make that decision. Can you imagine Schadenheimers in particular not posting on Eichelly? Best we can hope for is a crack at interrogating the survivors.”
She slapped the pane and it went dark. “That’s assuming our ruptors even leave enough for the Schadenheimers. “
She tabbed the compad. “Bridge.”
“Yes, sir?” Mzinga’s voice responded.
“Plot a full-speed course to Schadenheim and stand by.”
“AyKay, sir, full-speed course to Schadenheim and stand by.”
She tapped the compad off and turned to Rom-Sanchez. “We have a few minutes before the tacponder report is ready, which gives us time for a different kind of tribunal.”
Despite the hint of smile betrayed at the corners of her eyes, and the wink Krajno sent him, Rom-Sanchez’s stomach lurched.
“So, Lieutenant,” she continued. “Tell me what you did wrong...”