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"Good." Michelle nodded. "What about the status of their impellers?"
"Hard to be absolutely certain about that, Ma'am," Tersteeg admitted. "Commander Kaplan didn't want to get the platforms too close when she left them behind, so we're a bit far out for definitive readings. From what I can see, though, they aren't hot."
"Good," Michelle repeated, and patted him on the shoulder. "Keep me advised of any changes."
"Of course, Ma'am."
Michelle nodded and walked slowly across to her own command chair and settled into it. Naomi Kaplan's decision to leave the stealthy Ghost Rider platforms behind had just been amply justified, although Michelle had felt a certain undeniable concern over that decision when she'd first learned of it. Ghost Rider was one of the RMN's greatest advantages, and the thought of the Solarian League getting its hands on one of the platforms and figuring out how to reverse-engineer the technology hadn't been particularly comforting. But even then, she'd felt Kaplan's decision had been the right one. They were designed with every self-destruct device and security fail-safe R&D could figure out how to build into them, which probably meant the Navy in general, and one Michelle Henke in particular, worried more than they had to about their being compromised by simple capture, and even if that hadn't been true, the things had been designed to be used. Right off the top of her head, Michelle hadn't been able to think of a more important place to have used them, and the chances of anyone's managing to localize one of them, far less snag it for study without its on-board suicide charge destroying it first, had been minuscule. So any concern she had felt had been far too small a thing to prevent her from firmly endorsing Kaplan's decision in her own pre-departure dispatches to the Admiralty.
And as it happened, that decision was turning out to have been just as good as Michelle had thought it was. In powered-down passive mode, the way Kaplan had left them, their endurance had been good for far longer than the twenty-three T-days since the destruction of Commodore Chatterjee's destroyers. Now, in response to the properly authenticated command codes, they were fully awake once more, faithfully reporting everything they'd seen over those three T-weeks via grav-pulse, which amounted to real-time reporting at this range.
So I know where you are, Admiral Byng, she thought coldly. That's nice. If I have to kill people anyway, I'd like to make sure the idiot asshole responsible for it is on my little list when I do.
"What do you make of it, Ma'am?" Gladys Molyneux asked very quietly, and Abigail Hearns glanced at her. The junior-grade lieutenant's battle station was missile-defense, which put her at Abigail's elbow. Despite the quiet, waiting hush of Tristram's bridge, Abigail doubted anyone could possibly have overheard the nervous question.
"It's a little too early to be making anything of it, Gladys," she replied, equally quietly but with a slight smile. She saw confidence seeping back into Molyneux as the smile registered, then shook her head.
"The one thing I can tell you," she continued, "is that if those people over there"—a flick of her head indicated the icons of the orbiting Solarian battlecruisers—"have even a clue about what this task force can do, then they're a lot more nervous than we are right this moment."
She smiled again, and this time it was a cold, cruel smile.
Mother Church says vengeance is the Tester's, she reminded herself, and I believe that. But I also believe He can use anyone He wants as the instrumentof His vengeance. And right this minute, I'm not feeling very forgiving, Gladys.
"Sir, Captain Mizawa would like to speak to you."
Josef Byng paused in the act of slipping into the tunic someone had fetched for him and looked at the bridge communications rating who'd spoken. He managed not to scowl, although it wasn't easy.
"Did the Captain say why?" he asked, sliding the tunic the rest of the way on and sealing it.
"No, Sir," the rating replied. His careful tone only emphasized the fact that everyone aboardJean Bart knew all about the hostility between Byng and his flag captain.
"Very well." Byng tried to keep his own voice coolly professional as he acknowledged the rating's message, then took the two steps to his command chair. Rather than seat himself, he swiveled the com display around to face him and punched the acceptance key.
"Captain Mizawa," he said as the Frontier Fleet officer's face appeared.
"Admiral," Mizawa replied.
"I'm just a trifle busy at the moment, Captain," Byng said as pleasantly as he could. "What can I do for you?"
"Sir, I don't know if CIC has reported it to you, but Commander Zeiss is picking up a sudden cascade of gravitic pulses."
"Gravitic pulses?" Byng repeated just a bit blankly.
"Sir, according to the latest intelligence reports, the Manties have an effective FTL communications ability over relatively short ranges. One that's based on grav pulses."
"I'm aware of that fact, Captain." A hint of frost crept into Byng's tone in response to the patience edging Mizawa's voice, as if the Frontier Fleet officer were trying to explain Newtonian physics to a village idiot. Especially since those never-to-be-sufficiently-damned memos had touched upon the same point.
Now the bastard's going to pretend that he personally warned me all about it, isn't he? the admiral thought bitterly.
"Yes, Sir. I'm sure you are," the flag captain agreed. "But what concerns me are the reports that they've built the same capability into their reco
"Reco
"Yes, Sir. I think the Manty destroyers probably deployed them on their way in. Now these new Manties have tapped into them, and they're receiving real-time reco
"I see."
Byng couldn't quite keep his incredulity out of his expression, although he managed to keep it out of his voice. But really! He was willing to concede that the Manties had at least some sort of ship-to-ship FTL communications ability—ONI had tentatively confirmed that much—but to build the same capability into something the size of a recon drone? Not even that stupid lieutenant of Mizawa's had suggested that! Or, at least, Byng didn't think he had, and he suddenly found himself wondering if perhaps he ought to have read those memos for himself rather than simply accepting Thimár's summary of their content.
He brushed that thought firmly aside. There'd be time enough to worry about it later; right now he needed to concentrate on the matter at hand, and he tried—really tried—to consider Mizawa's preposterous notion dispassionately. But no matter how hard he tried, it remained just that: preposterous.
R&D was begi
"I appreciate the warning, Captain," he said after a few moments, choosing his words with some care as he spoke for the benefit of the flag bridge recorders, "but I strongly suspect that the reports about faster-than-light recon drone transmissions have . . . grown in the telling, let's say. As you may know, our own research people"—by which, of course, he meant Battle Fleet's researchers—"have been looking into this alleged capability of the Manties. Our own R and D indicates that it probably is possible, at least on the level of gross communication, but the sort of bandwidth which would be required for any useful reports from something like a recon drone is highly unlikely. And even if it were possible, the energy budget and the sheer mass of the hardware would almost certainly limit it to something the size of a starship."