Страница 32 из 99
CHAPTER TWELVE
The buzzing com terminal jerked Raoul Courvosier awake. He sat up in bed quickly, scrubbing sleep from his eyes, and hit the acceptance key, then straightened as he recognized Yanakov. The Grayson admiral was bare-chested under a bathrobe, and his sleep-puffy eyes were bright.
"Sorry to wake you, Raoul." His soft Grayson accent was clipped. "Tracking just picked up a hyper footprint thirty light-minutes from Yeltsin. A big one."
"Masada?" Courvosier asked sharply.
"We don't know yet, but they're coming in from oh-oh-three oh-niner-two. That's certainly right for a straight-line course from Endicott."
"What do you have on impeller signatures?"
"That's mighty far out for us." Yanakov sounded a bit embarrassed. "We're trying to refine our data, but—"
"Pass the locus to Commander Alvarez," Courvosier interrupted. "Madrigal's sensor suite is better than anything you've got. Maybe he can refine it for you."
"Thank you. I hoped you'd say that." Yanakov sounded so grateful Courvosier frowned in genuine surprise.
"You didn't let that asshole Houseman make you think I wouldn't?"
"Well, no, but we're not officially allied, so if you—"
"Just because we don't have a piece of paper doesn't mean you and I aren't aware of what both our heads of state want, and one of the advantages of being an admiral instead of a diplomat —" Courvosier made the word an obscenity "—is that we can cut through the bullshit when we have to. Now pass that info on to Madrigal." He paused, about to cut the circuit. "And may I assume I'm invited to Command Central?"
"We'd be honored to have you," Yanakov said, quickly and sincerely.
"Thank you. Oh, and when you contact Alvarez, see where he is on that project I assigned him Monday." Courvosier smiled crookedly. "We've been monitoring your C? systems, and I think he can probably tie Madrigal's sensors directly into Command Central's net."
"That is good news!" Yanakov said enthusiastically. "I'll get right on it. I'll pick you up in my car in fifteen minutes."
Printers chattered madly as the admirals arrived at Command Central, and the two of them turned as one to the main display board. A dot of light crept across it with infinitesimal speed. That was a trick of scale—any display capable of showing a half light-hour radius had to compress things—but at least gravitic detectors were FTL so they could watch it in real time. For all the good it was likely to do them.
Madrigal had, indeed, gotten her CIC tied into the net. The board couldn't display individual impeller sources at such a long range, but the data codes beside the single blotch of light were far too detailed for Grayson instrumentation. That was Courvosier's first thought; his second was a stab of dismay, and he pursed his lips silently. There were ten ships out there, accelerating from the low velocity imposed by translation into normal space. Not even Madrigal could "see" them well enough to identify individual ships, but the impeller strengths allowed tentative IDs by class. And if Commander Alvarez's sensor crews were right, they were four light cruisers and six destroyers—more to
A projected vector suddenly arced across the display, and Yanakov cursed beside him.
"What?" Courvosier asked quietly.
"They're headed straight for Orbit Four, one of our belt mining processing nodes. Damn!"
"What have you got to stop them?"
"Not enough," Yanakov said grimly. He glanced up. "Walt! How long till they hit Orbit Four?"
"Approximately sixty-eight minutes," Commodore Brentworth replied.
"Anything we can intercept with?"
"Judah could reach them just short of the processors." Brentworth's voice was flat. "Nothing else could—not even a LAC."
"That's what I thought." Yanakov's shoulders slumped, and Courvosier understood perfectly. Sending a single destroyer out to meet that much firepower would be worse than pointless. "Signal Judah to stand clear of them," the Grayson admiral sighed, "then get me a mike. Orbit Four's on its own." His lips twitched bitterly. "The least I can do is tell them myself."
The holo sphere sparkled with individual lights and shifting patterns of information as Matthew Simonds stood in Thunder of God's CIC. Captain Yu stood beside him, face relaxed and calm, and Simonds repressed a flare of disappointment. He should be on Abraham's bridge, not standing here watching one of his juniors lead Masada's most powerful attack ever on Yeltsin's Star!
But he couldn't be. And powerful as this attack was, it was but one aspect of the overall plan—a plan whose entirety not even Captain Yu knew.
Orbit Four's CO watched his com, and a drop of sweat trickled down his face. The transmission had taken almost half an hour to reach him, but he'd known what it was going to say for over twenty minutes.
"I'm sorry, Captain Hill, but you're on your own," High Admiral Yanakov's voice was level, his face like stone. "Aside from Judah, nothing we've got can intercept, and sending her in alone would be suicide."
Hill nodded in silent agreement. His own lack of bitterness surprised him, but there was no point condemning Judah to share his command's death. And at least he'd gotten the collector ships out; three were down for repairs, but the others were well away, packed with Orbit Four's dependents, and his gravitics had already picked up the squadron headed towards them from Grayson. Unless the Masadans broke off from Orbit Four to pursue the fugitives in the next five minutes or so, they could never intercept short of the relief force. At least his wives and children would survive.
"Do your best, Captain," Yanakov said quietly. "God bless."
"Put me on record," Hill told his white-faced com officer, and the lieutenant nodded choppily.
"Recording, Sir."
"Message received and understood, Admiral Yanakov," Hill said as calmly as he could. "We'll do what we can. For the record, I concur completely in your decision not to send Judah in." He hesitated a second, wondering if he should add some last, dramatic statement, then shrugged. "And God bless you, too, Bernie," he ended softly.
Captain Yu's expression had yielded to a slight frown. He leaned to one side, checking a readout, then straightened with a small shrug. His frown disappeared, yet there was a new intentness in his eyes. It was almost a look of disappointment, Simonds thought. Or of disapproval.
He started to ask what Yu's problem was, but the range was down to three and a half million kilometers, and he couldn't tear his attention from the sphere.
"They're late." Admiral Courvosier's statement was barely a whisper, yet Yanakov heard him and nodded curtly. The Masadan commander had missed his best chance to kill Orbit Four from beyond its own range ... not that it was going to make any difference to Captain Hill's men in the end.
The Masadan ships' velocities mounted steadily. Their courses were already curving up in the arc which would take them inside Orbit Four and back the way they'd come, and weapons crews crouched over their consoles as the range dropped. There was tension in their faces, but no real fear. They had the protection of their impeller wedges and sidewalls; the weapon stations guarding Orbit Four were naked to their fire, protected only by point defense.
"We've got a good target setup, Sir."
Admiral Jansen looked up aboard the light cruiser Abraham, flagship of the Masadan Navy, as his chief of staff spoke.