In Enemy Hands

"Yes, Citizen Captain." Luchner's own eyes lit with sudden understanding. "That's exactly what it is! If he'd simply made a ninety degree alteration in any plane, or even turned at right angles in the same plane, he'd have scooted back out across the limit before Nuada could possibly catch him. He'd have avoided all of us, unless he happened to stumble over a ship lying doggo like we were. But as it is..."

"As it is, she's drawn the pursuit of the only ship who could have interdicted the volume in which she made her alpha translation," Zachary said flatly. Kuttner swiveled his head back and forth between the officers, his expression baffled, and Zachary leaned back with a sigh. "That's a very clever captain over there," she said. "Aside from the fact that she doesn't know we're out here, she's done everything exactly right."

"Would you mind explaining what you're talking about?" Kuttner snapped, and Zachary turned her head to look at him.

"If the Citizen Commander and I are correct, Sir, it's very simple. You see..."

"Hyper footprint!" Citizen Lieutenant Allworth barked. "Multiple hyper footprints bearing one-oh-six by oh-oh-three!"

GNS Jason Alvarez led Convoy JNMTC-76 back into n-space. Ship after ship emerged from hyper, each in turn spangling the emptiness with brilliant azure fire as Warshawski sails hundreds of kilometers in diameter bled transit energy. No sensor array within forty light-minutes could have missed that massive signature, and on the flag bridge of PNS Count Tilly, Lester Tourville swore with vile intensity as CIC reported.

Nor was he alone. Every Peep skipper in the Adler System realized what Prince Adrian had done, and their sulfurous reactions to the enormity of the prize they'd been sucked away from mirrored their admiral's. Aside from Nuada herself, and, of course, the hidden Katana, every ship which had been pursuing Prince Adrian swerved away to go after the convoy. Not because they had any realistic hope of intercepting it, but simply because they couldn't see that huge, glittering opportunity and not pursue it.

Captain Thomas Greentree stood at Lieutenant Commander Terracelli's shoulder, looking down at the tac officers larger, more detailed plot. It would take a few minutes for Alvarez's sensors to sort things out, but in the meantime...

"Sir!" Greentree's turned quickly at his com officer's sudden, uncharacteristic exclamation. He started to open his mouth, but Lieutenant Chavez went right on speaking. "We're picking up a Flash Priority transmission from Lady Harrington, Sir!"

"Flash Priority?" Greentree repeated. "What does it say?"

"I don't know yet, Sir. It's FTL and it's still coming in. I..."

Chavez broke off, his eyes going wide, and Greentree made himself clamp his mouth shut. There was no point badgering the com officer with questions he couldn't answer yet, and despite many improvements over the crude original systems, the FTL com's one real drawback remained its slow data transmission rate. It could shoot pulses across light-minutes virtually instantaneously, but the time required to generate each pulse meant a simple declarative sentence could take as much as two full minutes to transmit. Which, of course, was why code groups were used. It was almost like a revision to the ancient wet-navy days of signal flags, when a flag could stand for a single letter of the alphabet or an entire sentence from the fleets code book, and...

"Orders from the Flag, Captain," Chavez said, and Greentree felt his jaw clench as he noted the com officer's shaken tone and jerked his head for him to continue.

"The convoy is to reenter hyper and return to Clairmont immediately," Chavez said, and now his voice was flat and utterly toneless. "You are to assume command, Sir... and inform Admiral Sorba

"I'm to assume command?" Greentree heard his own voice asking the question before he could stop it, and Chavez nodded.

"Yes, Sir. And return to Clairmont with the convoy. Immediately."

"But what about Lady Harrington?" Terracelli blurted. Greentree turned to glare at him, but his heart wasn't in it, for the tac officer's question burned in his own mind.

"I..." Chavez paused and looked back down at his display where more clusters of alphanumeric characters had continued forming even as he spoke. His eyes flicked over them, and then he swallowed. "Prince Adrian is drawing the Peeps into pursuing her, Captain," he said in that same flat voice. "She will proceed independently to rejoin the squadron at Clairmont. And..." his tonelessness wavered, and he looked back up to meet Greentree's eyes "...the order to hyper back out is repeated, Sir. Twice."

Greentree stepped quickly to the lieutenant's side and gazed down at the display, and his lips were a thin, tight line. Chavez was right, and the captains lips thi

"These orders are nondiscretionary, Thomas," it said, and his fists clenched. He looked up, meeting Chavez's eyes, and for just an instant he hovered on the brink of ordering the com officer to delete that final sentence from the message log. But he was a naval officer. However much his instincts might scream to go to Lady Harrington's assistance, he was a naval officer, responsible not just for himself but for all the ships of the squadron and all the merchantmen under their escort, and he had his orders.

"Sir," Lieutenant Commander Terracelli said into the silence, "I'm picking up incoming impeller signatures."

"How many?"

"At least five, Sir. Two are probably battlecruisers."

"How long?"

"Minimum of thirty-one minutes to extreme missile range for the closest, Sir."

"Thank you."

Greentree turned away, walked slowly back to his command chair, and lowered himself into it. Thirty-one minutes. It was plenty of time for the convoy to make its escape. Once back across into hyper, the grav wave they'd ridden to Adler would let them accelerate at thousands of gravities, and all his merchantmen were JNMTC ships. By the time the first Peep could translate in pursuit, they'd be too far down range for the Peeps even to track them, far less fire on them. All he had to do was abandon his commodore.

But he really had no choice, did he? He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and looked back at Chavez.

"General signal, Com," he rasped. "The convoy will reenter hyper in two minutes. Adrian," he didn't even look at his astrogator, "plot our course back to Clairmont and pass it to Lieutenant Chavez for transmission to all units. Santander will take point."

"There they go," Luchner said bitterly, and Zachary nodded in silent agreement. She shared his bitterness, a bitterness made all the worse because they'd figured out what was coming before it actually happened, but she also felt an unwilling professional admiration for the Manty cruiser skipper who'd sucked Nuada out of position to do anything about it. Not that she intended to let that stop her from destroying her opponent.

She watched the impeller signatures of the convoy vanish and raised her voice.

"How long were they in n-space, Tactical?"

"Approximately nine minutes, Citizen Captain, but their initial translation required over three minutes."

"Thank you," Zachary said absently, and looked at Luchner. "Not bad at all for a convoy that size, was it Fred?" Luchner shook his head, and she smiled thinly. "Well, now that they've put one over on us, let's just see if we can't give Ms. Cruiser a little surprise of her own. Pass the word to Engineering. I want maximum military power in four minutes."