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No, there was very little chance of the Manties tumbling to the tiny robotic spies—it was the mailmen who collected their data who had to sweat. Because small as it might be, a starship was larger than any sensor array, and harvesting that information meant a ship had to radiate, however stealthily.
"Light beam standing by, Sir. Coming up on transmission point in... nineteen seconds."
"Initiate when we reach the bearing."
"Aye, Sir. Standing by." The seconds ticked past, and then the com officer licked his lips. "Initiating now. Sir."
Ogilve tensed, and his eyes returned to his display with unseemly haste. He watched the Manty destroyers with painful intensity, but they continued along their blissfully unobservant way, and then—
"Dump completed, Sir!" The com officer didn't quite wipe his brow as he killed the laser, and Ogilve smiled despite his own tension.
"Well done, Jamie." He rubbed his hands and gri
"An excellent idea, Sir." The tac officer returned his grin, then began querying the data dump. Several minutes passed in silence, for the last Argus collection had been a month and a half earlier. That left a great deal of information to sort through, but then she stiffened and looked up sharply.
"I've got something very interesting here, Sir."
The suppressed excitement in her voice drew Ogilve out of his chair without conscious thought. He crossed the bridge in a few, quick strides and leaned over her shoulder as she tapped keys. Her display flickered for a moment, then settled, and a date and time readout glowed in one corner.
Ogirve sucked in sharply as the data before him registered. A score of heavy capital ships—no, more than that. By God, there were over thirty of the bastards! Jesus, it was the Manties' entire wall of battle!
He stared at the display, holding his breath, unable to believe what he was seeing as the massive fleet movement played itself out. The time scale was enormously compressed, and the incredible mass of impeller signatures slid across the star system at breakneck speed.
It had to be some sort of maneuver. That was the only thing it could be. Ogilve told himself that over and over, like some sort of mental incantation against the disappointment that had to come.
But it didn't come. The stupendous dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts went right on moving, sweeping out from Hancock until they hit the hyper limit.
And then they vanished. Every goddamned one of them simply vanished, and Ogilve straightened with slow, almost painful caution.
"Did they come back, Midge?" he half-whispered, and the tac officer shook her head, eyes huge. "Would this sector's platforms necessarily have spotted them if they had come back?" the commander pressed.
"Not automatically, Sir. The Manties could have come back on a course outside their search envelope. But unless they knew about the sensors and deliberately set this up to fake us out, they would've come back in from any maneuvers on roughly reciprocal headings. If they'd done that, the platforms would have seen them ... and they've been gone for over a week, Sir."
Ogilve nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was incredible. The idea that the Manties would conduct some sort of exercise that took them away from Hancock at a time of such tension was ridiculous on the face of it. But impossible as it seemed, they'd done something even stupider. They'd pulled out entirely. Hancock Station was wide open!
He drew another deep breath and looked at his astrogator.
"How soon can we get the hell out of here?"
"Without our hyper footprint being detected?'
"Of course without being detected!"
"Um." The astrogators fingers flew as he worked through the problem. "On this vector, niner-four-point-eight hours to clear known Manty sensor arrays, Sir."
"Damn," Ogilve whispered. He rubbed his hands up and down the seams of his trousers and forced his impatience back under control. This was too important to risk blowing. He was going to have to wait. To make himself sit on it for another four days before he could head home with the unbelievable news. But once they reached Seaford—
"All right," he said crisply. "I want a complete shutdown. Nothing goes out from this ship. Jamie, abort the remainder of the data dumps. Midge, I want you to damned well live up here with your passive sensors. If anything even looks like it could be coming our way, I want to know it. This data just paid the entire cost of this operation from day one, and we're getting it home if we have to hyper out of here right under some Manty's nose!"
"But what about operational security, Sir?" his exec protested.
"I'm not going to call any attention to us," Ogilve said tightly. "But this is too important to risk losing, so if it looks like they may be going to spot us, we're out of here, and the hell with the rest of Operation Argus. This is exactly what Admiral Rollins has been waiting for, and we, by God, are going to tell him about it!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Honor nodded to her Marine sentry and stepped through her cabin hatch without a word. Her face showed no emotion at all, but Nimitz was tense on her shoulder, and MacGuiness' welcoming smile congealed into nonexpression the moment he saw her.
"Good evening, Ma'am," he said.
She turned her head at the sound of his voice, and her eyes flickered, as if only now noting his presence. He watched her lips tighten for just an instant, but then she drew a deep breath and smiled at him. To someone who didn't know her, that smile might have looked almost natural.
"Good evening, Mac." She crossed to her desk and dropped her beret on it, then ran her hands through her hair, looking away from him for a moment, before she moved Nimitz from her shoulder to his padded perch, sat in her chair, and swiveled back to face the steward.
"I've got to finish my report on the maneuvers," she said. "Screen my calls while I deal with it, will you? Put anything from Commander Henke, Admiral Sarnow or his staff, or any of the other skippers through, but ask anyone else if the Exec can handle it."
"Of course, Ma'am." MacGuiness hid his concern at the unusual order, and she smiled again, gratefully, at his neutral tone.
"Thank you." She booted her terminal, and he cleared his throat.
"Would you like a cup of cocoa, Ma'am?"
"No, thank you," she said without raising her eyes from the screen. MacGuiness looked at the crown of her head, then exchanged silent glances with Nimitz. The 'cat's body language radiated his own tension, but he flicked his ears and turned his head, pointing his muzzle at the hatch to the captain's pantry, and the steward relaxed slightly. He nodded back and withdrew like a puff of breeze.
Honor continued to stare at the characters on her screen until she heard the hatch close behind him, then shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. She hadn't missed the silent exchange between MacGuiness and Nimitz. A part of her hunkered petulantly down deep inside, resenting it, but most of her was intensely grateful.
She lowered her hands and tipped her chair back with a sigh. Nimitz crooned to her from his perch, and she looked up at him with a weary, bittersweet smile.
"I know," she said quietly.
He hopped down onto her desk and sat upright, holding her dark eyes with his grass-green gaze, and she reached out to caress his soft cream and gray fur. Her fingers were light, barely brushing him, but he didn't push her for more energetic petting, and she felt his concern reaching out to her.
For as long as Nimitz had been with her, Honor had always known he did something to help her through spasms of anger or depression, yet she'd never been able to figure out what it was. As far as she knew, no one who'd been adopted by a 'cat had ever been able to do so, but the strange intensification of their link since Grayson was at work now. She felt his touch, like a loving mental hand reaching deep inside her to soothe the raw edges of her emotions. He wasn't taking them away. Perhaps that was beyond his ability—or perhaps he knew how she would have resented it. Perhaps it was even simpler than that, something which would have been against his own principles. She didn't know, but she closed her eyes once more, hands gentle on his fur while his equally gentle caress comforted her i