The Shadow of Saganami

Chapter Eighteen

"I think we have something here, Sir."

Ansten FitzGerald sat up straight, pulling his attention away from the routine departmental reports he'd been sca

It was late at night by Hexapuma 's internal clocks, and the Fourth Watch had the duty, which meant the assistant tactical officer ought by rights to be the officer of the watch. Normally, neither the captain nor the executive officer aboard a Manticoran warship stood a regularly scheduled watch, since, in theory, they were always on call. The communications officer, astrogator, tactical officer, and assistant tactical officer usually took the regularly scheduled watches, with Tactical getting the additional slot because of the Manticoran tradition that made Tactical the fast track to command. The theory was that if tactical officers were going to be promoted to command responsibilities faster than others, they needed the additional early experience.

But rank had its privileges, and usually the junior officer on the totem pole got the least desirable-latest (or earliest, depending upon one's perspective)-watch assignment. Unfortunately, in this case, the ship's assistant tactical officer was a mere junior-grade lieutenant, just a bit too junior to be routinely saddled with full responsibility for an entire heavy cruiser and her company. Lieutenant Guthrie Bagwell might have been able to take the slot, but EW was still the odd man out, and some people being assigned as EWOs didn't really have that much watch-standing experience of their own. Besides, Guthrie was so overworked-even with d'Arezzo helping out-that he was on the same sort of "always on call" status as the captain and the XO. And rather than pull the assistant astrogator or assistant com officer, both of whom were senior-grade lieutenants, into the queue, FitzGerald had opted to take Fourth Watch himself, with Abigail Hearns at Tactical.

He'd wondered at first if she was likely to take offense, to feel he didn't trust her competence. He'd also been prepared to live with her unhappiness if she had because, in the final analysis, he didn't trust her competence. Not because he doubted her ability or motivation, but because her actual experience remained so limited. The most capable officer in the universe still needed to be brought along carefully, needed the seasoning only experience could provide, if he was going to reach his full potential. And so Ansten FitzGerald had made a habit of bringing routine paperwork to the bridge with him and burying himself in it while Abigail quietly stood "his" watch, gaining the requisite seasoning with the reassuring knowledge a far more experienced officer was immediately available if something unexpected came up.

She seemed to understand what he was doing, although it was hard to be certain. She was such a self-possessed young woman that she probably wouldn't have allowed any resentment to show, even if she'd felt it. He sometimes wondered how much of that was because of her belief in the Doctrine of the Test which was so central to the Church of Humanity Unchained's theology, but whatever its origin, he'd quietly marked it down as yet another point in Lieutenant Hearns' favor.

Besides, he'd discovered, she was simply an immensely likable young woman.

"You think we have what, Lieutenant?" he asked now.

She was leaning forward, studying her plot intently, and he saw her reach out one hand and tap a complex series of commands into her touchpad without even looking at her fingers. His command chair was too far from her display for him to make out any fine details, but he could see data codes shifting as she refined them.

"I think we may have a reading on Commodore Karlberg's intruders, Sir," she said, still never looking away from her display. "I'm shunting the data to your repeater plot, Sir," she added, and he looked down as the small display deployed itself from the base of his chair.

Two of the trio of icons on the display strobed with the bright, quick amber-red-amber flash that CIC used to indicate questionable data, but it certainly looked like a pair of stealthily moving impeller wedges, creeping in above the system ecliptic. Much more interesting, however, in some ways, was the third icon-the one burning the steady red which indicated assurance on CIC's part. That one obviously belonged to a merchantman, although what a merchantship would be doing that far above the ecliptic-and that far outside the system hyper limit-was an interesting question. Especially since it seemed to be following in the strobing icons' wake.

He checked the range and bearing data, and his lips pursed in a silent whistle. They were even farther out than he'd thought. Nuncio-B's hyper limit lay 16.72 light-minutes from the star. At the moment, Hexapuma, in her parking orbit around Pontifex, was about ten light-minutes from the star, but the ship or ships Lieutenant Hearns was tracking were at least forty-five light-minutes out. There was absolutely no legitimate reason for any ship to be stooging around that far from any of the system's inhabited real estate.

"I wasn't aware we'd deployed our remote platforms that far out," he said conversationally.

"We haven't, really, Sir," she replied. He looked up to raise an eyebrow, and she colored slightly but met his gaze levelly. "All the remote arrays are operating inside the zones Captain Terekhov and Commander Kaplan specified," she said. "I just moved them to the outer edge of their assigned areas."

"I see." He tipped his chair back, resting his left elbow on the arm rest and his chin in his left palm while the fingers of his right hand drummed lightly on the other chair arm. "You're aware, Lieutenant," he continued after a moment, "that if you push the platforms that far out on a spherical front you virtually eliminate their lateral overlap?"

"Yes, Sir," she said crisply. "I thought about that, and if the Exec would look at the main plot?"

He glanced at the display. At the moment, it was configured in astrogation mode, and a complex pattern of vectors appeared on it. He studied them for a few moments, then snorted in understanding.

"Very clever, Lieutenant," he conceded in a neutral tone, watching the pattern evolve. She'd sent the remote platforms dancing through a carefully choreographed waltz that swept them back and forth across their zones. There were moments when they moved apart, widening the gap between them and weakening the coverage, but they always moved back towards one another again.

"What's the timing?" he asked.

"It's set up so that a ship would have to be traveling at at least point-five cee to cross the zone without being in detection range of at least two platforms for at least fifteen minutes, Sir. It seemed unlikely to me that anyone would try to sneak into the i

"I see," he said again. He frowned at the display for several more moments, then grunted. "It's obvious you put a lot of thought into designing this maneuver, Lieutenant. And, as I say, it's very clever. Moreover, I doubt very much that we would have picked these people up this soon if you hadn't done it. However, may I suggest that in future you also put a little thought into clearing your ideas with the officer of the watch? It's considered the polite thing to do, since he's the one officially responsible if anything should happen to go wrong, and he tends to get his feelings hurt if he thinks people are ignoring him."

"Yes, Sir."

Self— possessed or not, he saw her blush this time. He considered giving the point one more lick, but it clearly wasn't necessary. And, perhaps even more to the point, initiative was one of the rarest and most valuable qualities in any officer. If she'd suffered her brainstorm and gotten her calculations for the remote arrays' courses wrong, she might have left a dangerous hole in Hexapuma 's sensor perimeter, and she'd needed to be whacked for taking it upon herself to assume she'd gotten them right. But the fact was that she had, and if she had requested permission to execute her plan, he would have granted it.

"Well, in that case," he said instead, "suppose you tell me what it is you think we've found?"

"Yes, Sir," she said. Then she paused for just a moment, as if marshaling her thoughts, and continued. "Obviously, Sir, the information we have on the two closer signatures is too vague to extrapolate any meaningful details. I've refined and backtracked from the datum the computers first recognized, and we can back plot their vectors for about twenty minutes before recognition, now that we know what to look for. On that basis, I can tell you they've been decelerating slowly but steadily. At the moment, all I'm prepared to say, besides that, is that one of them-the one I've designated Bogey One-is larger than the other one. Neither of them's larger than a cruiser, that much I'm sure of. But that leaves a lot of wiggle room.

"Bogey Three, the freighter, is actually more interesting at the moment. I think whoever they are, they figure they're far too far out-system for anything the Nuncians have to see them. I've only got them on passives, so I don't really have many details, even on the freighter, but I think its presence alone is significant. The one thing these people aren't is any sort of bobtailed convoy-not coming in from that far out and above the ecliptic and decelerating at their observed rate-and the freighter isn't squawking a transponder code. So I think what we're looking at here is a pair of pirates accompanied by a prize they've already taken. If you'll notice, Commander, the freighter's decelerating harder than Bogey One and Two. She's killing velocity at a steady hundred and twenty gravities, and she's already down to just over seventy-eight hundred KPS, so she'll come to rest relative to the system primary in another hour and fifty-six minutes. Which will leave her forty-six-point-three light-minutes from the primary and approximately thirty-six light-minutes from the planet."

"And what do you think they're up to with her?"

"I think they just want to park her somewhere safe while they go sniffing further in-system, Sir," she said promptly. "They're coming in so slowly and cautiously that-"

She broke off, and her hand flicked over her keypad again.

"Status change, Sir!" she a