Conquerors' Pride

And so here they waited. Sitting ducks, waiting for the Conquerors to arrive. Hoping that the newcomers would mesh in close enough for them to get a good reading, but far enough away that they wouldn't spot, track, and summarily vaporize the fueler.

"I wonder if we should change our orbit again," Aric said, drifting over to hover at Qui

"We're fine right where we are," Qui

"No, Commander. Still as originally computed."

"Watch out for a shift right at the end," Qui

"Acknowledged," Max said. "They'll be meshing in in approximately one minute."

Aric looked at the display, and the hazy horizon of the planet beneath them. "What do we do if they come out on the far side of the planet?"

"We'll have to see what their orbit insertion looks like," Qui

Aric held his breath, unconsciously bracing himself as he watched the displays. The timer counted down....

"Vector shift!" Qui

And then, suddenly, there they were: two ships, milky-white, the same linked-hexagon configuration that the Jutland watchships' records had burned into Aric's memory. A little below them, falling into an orbit roughly parallel to theirs.

Barely two kilometers away.

"Qui

Qui

He froze, finger still pointed at the board. Qui

And on the board beside the computer-link jack, two pale-green lights had come on.

Aric looked back at the display, a tingle of eerie unreality clouding over the surge of panic. The Conqueror ships were starting to rotate their edges toward the fueler, the Corvines in sight now as they darted toward the alien ships like angry hawks defending their nest. Deadly silent, deadly serious, deadly precise. Four fighters, one fueler, working now as a single unit.

Copperheads.

Out of the corner of his eye Aric saw a light flick on beneath the display—

And with a sudde

For a half-dozen heartbeats there was no answer. Then, slowly, Qui

"Ah," Aric said, feeling oddly out of breath. "What about the Corvines?"

"Should be right with us," Qui

"I see," Aric said. He'd seen people try parallel jumps on occasion, never with optimum results. The twin problems of timing and drift... but then, those pilots hadn't had Copperhead synchronization. "Did anyone get a static bomb off?"

"No," Qui

Aric looked at the display, now functioning as the fueler's main status board. "What happens if they track us?"

Qui

"That assumes they can't track a wake-trail while in stardrive," Aric pointed out. "Or that they won't wait that extra minute and notice that we've meshed in again."

Qui

"As unlikely as their meshing in only two kilometers away from us?"

For a moment Qui

"Yes, Commander."

One of the two green lights beside the jack came on. "Stand ready, El Dorado," Qui

Once again the seconds counted down; and with another shimmer the stars were back. Holding his breath, Aric stared at the display. "I don't see them," he murmured. "The Corvines. Where are they?"

Silence. "Qui

"There," Qui

"Great," Aric said, rubbing his hand across his forehead. It was like coming off one of those terrifying amusement-park gravity rides that he'd always hated. The kind Pheylan and Melinda had always tried to drag him onto when they were kids.

Unfortunately, this ride wasn't over yet. "What do we do if the Conquerors show up? Run for it?"

"Immediately," Qui

"It's finished, Commander," the computer said. "I'm afraid it's not going to be as useful as you hoped."

"They never are," Qui

One of the side displays lit up with a false-color diagram of the two Conqueror ships. "Here are the raw data," Max said. "You'll see that aside from the begi

"Hull-based superconductors?" Aric suggested.

"That's one possibility," Max agreed. "Unfortunately, that uncertainty coupled with our lack of data on the hull material itself leaves us with a considerable margin of error for any distance calculation. It will be better than the Jutland was able to obtain, though, given the immediacy of these readings."

"Bottom line, Max," Qui

The false-color images were replaced by a star chart, with a vector marked in red. "I estimate the ships had traveled between twenty-five and seventy light-years," Max said.

Qui

"I'm sorry, Commander," Max said, sounding genuinely regretful. "Without better data that's the best I can do."

"I know," Qui

Aric looked at the chart. Delphi's estimate had been right: there wasn't a single system on or near that line for nearly a hundred light-years. "It has to be a space station," he said. "That's the only way it can make any sense."

"I know," Qui

Aric nodded, a hard knot of gloom settling into the pit of his stomach. To find a single deep-space station along a line forty-five light-years long... "It can't be done, can it?" he asked quietly.