Storm From the Shadows

"And whether that happens or not, my decision has been made. Although we still have to complete the detailed plans for a scaled-back Oyster Bay, our studies indicate that it will be completely feasible for us to do so. And on that basis, I have instructed Benjamin to plan for an execution date of a modified Oyster Bay strike no later than six T-months from today."

Chapter Thirty-Four

"Contact!" Isaiah Pettigrew called out. "Multiple contacts, bearing zero-one-five, two-eight-eight, range three-point-eight-niner light-minutes, closing velocity six-zero-niner-one-six kilometers per second, accelerating at four-eight-seven-point-three gravities!"

"Acknowledged," Abigail Hearns said crisply. "Number of contacts?"

"Uncertain at this time, Ma'am," Pettigrew replied. His eyes never moved from his display's sidebars as he andTristram's Combat Information Center both worked the contacts, trying to pry more information out of them, and his voice was just as crisp, just as professional—and just as devoid of any excess "My Ladies"—as Abigail's.

"It looks like they just got close enough to the beta platforms for their impeller signatures to burn through stealth. Shall I go active on the platforms, Ma'am?"

Abigail considered for a moment, then nodded.

"Go active on the betas," she said, "but remain passive with the others."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Going active on the beta platforms only."

Pettigrew tapped in commands at his console, and the data codes on his display began to shift and change.

"CIC makes it three destroyer-range and three heavy cruiser or battlecruiser-range signatures," Pettigrew reported as the beta line of Ghost Rider reco

"Understood." Abigail turned her head and looked at Lieutenant (JG) Gladys Molyneux. "Any IDs?"

"Negative, Ma'am," Molyneux replied. "CIC is still—Wait a minute."Tristram's junior tactical officer peered at her own displays, then raised her head. "CIC has tentative class IDs on the heavies. Alpha One is a SolarianIndefatigable-class battlecruiser, and CIC's calling Alpha One and Alpha Two Mikasa-class heavy cruisers. No positive ID on the destroyer-range contacts at this time."

"Acknowledged."

Abigail gazed at her own display, thinking hard and fast. This particular simulation had been loaded toTristram's computers before the ship ever left Manticore. There were whole reams of similar sims tucked away in there, and she'd had no more idea than any of her subordinates had of what the computers were about to throw at them. They would hardly have constituted learning experiences if she'd known ahead of time what she was going to have to do in them, after all. Lieutenant Nicasio Xamar,Tristram's assistant tactical officer, on the other hand, knew exactly what this particular simulation contained, since it had been his job to tweak the parameters just a little, just as Abigail did for him when it was his turn in the barrel. Fortunately, Xamar didn't seem to resent the fact that someone with over seven T-months less in grade than him had been assigned as his boss. On the other hand, he'd have been more than human if he hadn't taken advantage of the simulation to see what he could get past her.

Okay, she thought. We've got these six coming at us from starboard and low, and they're headed almost directly for the convoy. That means they knew where we were long enough ago to build an intercept vector, and a pretty respectable one, too. So that means they've had us under observation, probably using their own remote platforms, for quite a while. Now, it's unlikely their passives are sensitive enough to track the Ghost Rider platforms, especially under thesesensor conditions, but I don't know enough about Solly tech levels to be positive about that. They might have known exactly where we deployed our recon shells, and if they do, then that means they have to be pretty confident we'd manage to pick them up pretty soon now. Their stealth is pretty good for them to get this close without our seeing them, but even if we hadn't seen them coming with the remotes, we'd start picking them up ourselves on shipboard passives by the time they got down to a light-minute and a half. So, assuming they have working brains over there, they'd figure that we had to pick them up sometime in the next twelve minutes or so . . . unless they dropped their acceleration a lot.

She felt the pressure to start making decisions, but she resisted it. Even at their present closing velocity and acceleration, it would take eleven and a half minutes for anyone equipped with single-drive missiles to get into their powered attack range, and they weren't going to fire before that. Admittedly, they were going after a convoy of merchantman, which meant any last-minute evasive maneuvers by their targets were going to be sluggish, at best, but even a merchie had a darned good chance of outmaneuvering a missile which had gone ballistic. They couldn't get out of the range basket of the attack bird's laser heads (unless the missile in question had one almighty long ballistic component), but they could maneuver to interpose their impeller wedges between those laser heads and their own hulls, which would be just as good. So there was still time for her to think things through.

But not a lot of it, she reminded herself grimly.

The problem was that she didn't know whether this particular simulation had been set up with a smart and sneaky op force or a sloppy one. With a sloppy one, the force Pettigrew and CIC had picked up would be the only threat, and its commander could probably be excused for thinking it was a pretty darned good one, actually. A battlecruiser and two heavy cruisers packed a lot of firepower, and the convoy's escort was only five destroyers. So a head-on attack, disdaining subtlety in order to get into decisive range as quickly as possible, would probably work. And if the bad guys didn't know the defending destroyers were allRolands, with magazines full of Mark 16 dual-drive missiles, then they didn't know Tristram's powered missile envelope was three times their own. Which, assuming the geometry remained unchanged, meant Tristram and her consorts could open fire at over fifty-one million kilometers. But if the bandits didn't realize that, then they were probably anticipating a massive superiority in missile firepower when they entered their own effective range.

But missile superiority or not, they're still going to get hurt, at least a little, and if they'd just reduced their impeller strength—or even come in ballistic—they wouldn't have burned through their stealth fields yet. They didn't have to let us know they were coming. Not this soon, anyway. Not in h-space. So why . . . ?

Her eyes narrowed suddenly as she realized that whoever had designed this simulation—or tweaked it, she reminded herself, thinking about Xamar—had assumed a very smart and sneaky op force, indeed.

Detection ranges in hyper-space were far lower than in normal-space, due to the higher particle density and general background levels of radiation which obtained there. The attackers had caught the convoy between gravity waves, where their impeller nodes were configured to produce standard impeller wedges, rather than the Warshawski sails necessary to navigate in the stressed and potentially deadly volume of a grav wave. And where impeller-drive missiles could be used. But that detection difficulty, coupled with the fact that the attackers had obviously known where to wait for the convoy and—especially—the intercept vector they'd managed to generate, told her a lot. In particular, it told her they knew exactly where she and every ship of her convoy was, and that there'd been absolutely no need for them to come in this close under power at all.