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Chapter Fifty-Four
HMS Hercules departed Flax orbit exactly eight hours and thirty-six minutes after Rear Admiral Khumalo's meeting with the Provisional Government.
It was unlikely that the elderly superdreadnought had ever taken such precipitous leave of a star system in her entire previous career. Captain Victoria Saunders had certainly never expected to do so, and she felt more than a little out of breath at the sheer whirlwind energy which Khumalo and Loretta Shoupe had brought to the task of getting her ship and every other hyper-capable RMN unit in the Spindle System underway.
Saunders stood beside the captain's chair on her command deck, hands folded behind her, and watched the master plot as Hercules , the light cruisers Devastation and Inspired , and the destroyers Victorious , Ironside , and Domino accelerated steadily away from Flax. Ericsson , her sister ship White , and the ammunition ships Petard and Holocaust followed in the warships' wakes, and Khumalo had commandeered five additional dispatch boats. It was, at best, a lopsided and ill-balanced "squadron," although Hercules certainly looked impressive as its flagship. Unless, of course, one knew all of the old ship's manifold weaknesses as well as Saunders did.
But she's still a damned superdreadnought, Khumalo's flag captain told herself. And we're still the Queen's Navy. And I will be damned if Augustus Khumalo hasn't actually remembered that.
She shook her head, bemused and, to her own astonishment, proud of her Admiral. She'd skimmed Terekhov's dispatches-she hadn't had time to actually read them-and she couldn't decide whether Terekhov had brilliantly deduced the essentials of a complex plot or whether he was a raving lunatic. But if he was right, if the Republic of Monica really was in bed with the Jessyk Combine-which meant with Manpower-then he was probably also in for the fight of his life.
Which is saying quite a bit, given what he went through at Hyacinth.
In fact, it was possible, perhaps even probable, that if his fears were justified, Aivars Terekhov would be dead long before Hercules and her mismatched consorts ever got to Monica. For that matter, it was possible Khumalo's relief force might find itself destroyed, as well. But whatever happened to Terekhov, or to them, the Admiralty would have been warned, and the Republic of Monica would damned well find out that it should never have screwed with the Star Kingdom of Manticore.
"Excuse me, Ma'am."
Saunders turned towards the voice. It belonged to Commander Richard Gaunt, her executive officer.
"Yes, Dick?"
"The last of the perso
"Good, Dick. Good!" She smiled. "Do we have a headcount yet?"
"It looks like the shore patrol managed to round up just about everyone," he replied. "At last count we're about six warm bodies short, but for all I know, they could be aboard one of the other ships, given how frantic this entire departure's being."
"Tell me about it," she said feelingly, looking at the repeater plot that showed the ungainly gaggle of shuttles and pi
"Ma'am?" Gaunt's voice was much lower, and she looked back at him, one eyebrow arched.
"Do you really think all of this," he continued, still pitching his voice too low for anyone else to hear, and gesturing at the icons moving steadily across the plot, "is necessary?"
"I don't have any idea, Dick," she told him frankly. "But I did have the chance to look over Terekhov's projected ops schedule. If everything's going the way he projected, his kidnapped Solly freighter got to Monica about sixteen hours ago. Terekhov'll be arriving at his rendezvous-this 'Point Midway' of his-in about another seventy-two hours, and the freighter will meet him there about a week later. Call it ten standard days from now. And if he decides on the basis of its report to move directly on Monica, he can be there in another six days or so. We, on the other hand, can't reach Monica for twenty-five days. So, if he goes ahead, whatever he does is going to be over, one way or the other, at least one full T-week before we can possibly get there."
"I can't believe he'd really be crazy enough to pull something like that, Ma'am," Gaunt said, shaking his head. "He must know we're coming-the glory hound didn't leave us any choice about that! Surely he's not so far gone he won't wait one more week if it means the difference between going in unsupported and arriving with backup."
Saunders regarded her XO with a slight, rare frown. Gaunt was an efficient executive officer, the sort who always got the details right and developed an almost unca
His last comment had just settled the question, and she was guiltily aware that an executive officer was what he would remain. That was what happened when a CO endorsed an officer's evaluation with the fatal words "Not recommended for independent command."
"Perhaps you're right," she said, looking at the man whose career she'd just decided to kill.
He wasn't, of course. But there was no point trying to explain that to someone of his seniority who didn't already understand.
"It's Copenhagen , all right, Sir," Naomi Kaplan a
"Thank you, Guns," Terekhov said calmly, and Helen glanced sideways at Paulo. The two midshipmen stood beside Lieutenant Commander Wright, where he'd been ru
It was the tiniest expression shift imaginable, but to Helen, it might as well have been a shout. She'd come more or less to grips with her emotions where he was concerned, although she wasn't positive he'd done the same for her. It didn't really matter. One thing the Neue-Stil Handgemenge taught was patience, and she was willing to wait.
She'd get him in the end. Even if she had to use some of that same Neue-Stil to beat him into submission.
She pushed that thought aside-or, rather, into a convenient pigeonhole for later consideration-and returned his lifted eyebrow with an abbreviated nod of her own. They were in agreement. The Captain couldn't possibly be as calm as he sounded.
The Squadron (everyone was calling it that now... except the Captain) floated in the absolute darkness of interstellar space, over six light-years from the nearest star. Starships seldom visited that abyss of emptiness, for there was nothing there to attract them. But it made a convenient rendezvous, so isolated and lost in the enormity of the universe that even God would have been hard-pressed to find them.
Many of Hexapuma 's people had found the visual displays... disturbing over the last week or so. The emptiness here was so perfect, the darkness so Stygian, that it could get to even the most hardened spacer. Commander Lewis, for example, made a point of avoiding any of the displays, and Helen had noticed Senior Chief Wanderman watching her every once in a while. There was something going on there, she thought. Something more than the uneasiness some of the ship's company seemed to feel. Whatever it was, Lewis wasn't letting it affect her performance of her duty, but Helen had the peculiar impression that Hexapuma 's Engineer would welcome even the prospect of taking on an entire system navy if it only got her away from this lonely spot which the rest of existence had forgotten.
Personally, Helen wasn't bothered a bit. In fact, she rather enjoyed her visits to the observation dome to watch the other ships of the squadron with their lights drifting against the soul-drinking dark like friendly, nearby constellations.
"Lieutenant McGraw."
Terekhov's voice pulled her back out of her reverie.
"Yes, Sir?"
"Please challenge Copenhagen ."
"Aye, aye, Sir," the com officer of the watch replied, and Terekhov nodded and settled back in his command chair to wait.
Helen was confident Kaplan had identified the incoming ship correctly. And she felt equally certain Commander FitzGerald was still in command of her. But it was typical of the Captain to make absolutely certain. It was interesting. He took infinite pains, taking nothing for granted, and if she'd seen only that side of him, she'd have written him down as a slave to The Book. One of those fussy martinets who never stuck their necks out, never took a chance.
But that wasn't how the Captain's mind worked. He took such care over the details, whenever he could, because he knew he couldn't always do that. So that when the time came for the risks which must be run, he could be confident of his ship's readiness... and his own. Know he'd done everything he possibly could to disaster-proof his position by perfecting his weapon before the screaming chaos of battle struck.
It was a lesson worth taking to heart, she thought, trying to focus her mind on Wright's voice as the Astrogator resumed his analysis of her latest navigational effort.
"Captain on deck!"
Ginger Lewis, still officially Terekhov's acting executive officer, barked the traditional a
Eleven men and women in that compartment, including himself, wore the white berets of starship commanders, and he saw uncertainty, concern-even fear-on some of those faces. He wondered what they saw when they looked at him?