sus-Airaalin stiffened. “Where?”
“Galcen, my lord.”
Impossible! thought the Grand Admiral. But he knew all too well that “impossible” was not a wise thing to say when Jos Metadi was involved.
“In what strength, Underlieutenant?” he asked.
The courier pilot, still kneeling, shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. Dozens of ships, maybe over a hundred by the sound of the comms chatter during the attack.”
“Stop,” said sus-Airaalin. “You’re telling the story backward. Metadi has attacked Galcen?”
“Yes. After the Adept-worlders took out the hi-comms links, I was ordered to leave the fighting and bring you word.”
“I see. And how do you know it was Metadi?”
“The attacking vessels used his name in their transmission.”
sus-Airaalin’s doubt vanished.
“It was a trap,” he said—partly to Taleion and the underlieutenant, but mostly to himself. “An attempt to make us split up our forces. But it isn’t going to work, Mael. I will not return to Galcen for the same reason I did not detach anyone for the relief of the homeworlds, or leave a garrison behind. We cannot dilute our strength even for that.”
He looked out the windows of the observation deck at the stars of Gyfferan space. This far out, Gyffer’s sun was only one bright star among many, and the planets themselves were invisible, swallowed up by the velvet darkness.
“No,” he said again. “We will wait here. The Gyfferans will investigate their initial contact, perhaps in force, and find nothing. As time goes by, after the first excitement, their guard will be lowered. The crews at their stations will grow tired—complacent—and become careless. And then—”
He paused. “Then we will press the attack.”
PART THREE
I. INNISH-KYL: WARHAMMER; RSF KARIPAVO GYFFERAN SECTOR: LDF CRUISER #97; SWORD-OF-THE-DAWN; RSF VERATINA
“DROPPING OUT … now.”
Reality flickered as Warhammer experienced the translation from hyperspace. All the shifting, pearly greyness outside the viewscreens went away in an instant, replaced by deep black and a sparkling web of stars.
Innish-Kyl, thought Beka. It’s been a long time since the last time.
She glanced over at Nyls Jessan in the copilot’s seat. The run to Innish-Kyl hadn’t been a particularly long one, as such things went, but she’d grown used to having the ship—and Nyls—to herself. Adding first Ignac’ LeSoit and then her brother and his apprentice had made the place seem overcrowded, even after Captain Yevil had gone back aboard RSF Lekinusa at the rendezvous. The unseen presence of Tarveet of Pleyver, locked in a cabin and tended by LeSoit, didn’t improve her outlook. Still, it was Klea whom Beka found herself brooding about.
“What do you think?” she asked Jessan. “Is that girl really Owen’s apprentice?”
“Klea Santreny? I don’t see why not. Would your brother lie about it?”
“In a heartbeat,” said Beka, “if he thought he had to.” She frowned at the control panel. “The question is, though—if she’s his apprentice, is she anything else?”
“I don’t think so,” Jessan said. “And let’s face it, she’s not the only member of the ’Hammer’s crew who’s a bit closemouthed about the past.”
She looked at him again. “You’re talking about Ignac’.”
“Well … yes.” Jessan paused. “That story of Captain Yevil’s, about the repairs—”
Beka sighed. “If you’re trying to tell me that Ignaceu LeSoit didn’t exactly spend the last ten years upholding law and order in the civilized galaxy, I already knew that. I’ve wandered through the edges of that life myself, remember. And I’m not asking Ignac’ for names.”
“You will, however, allow me to worry about it sometimes?”
“Don’t see how I can stop you.” She picked up the external comm and keyed it on. “Waycross Inspace Control. This is Freetrader Warhammer. Over.”
A clicking and beeping came over the link. Then the flat metallic-sounding voice of Waycross Inspace Control came on through the cockpit audio: “Roger, Warhammer, go.”
Hi-comms, Beka thought with relief. At least locally. Having to wait long minutes for lightspeed communications to travel back and forth would have been a sign of other, worse problems. She keyed on the link again.
“Inspace, Warhammer. Request permission to orbit with eight ships.”
Not to land; not until she had some of the information that she’d come here for. Most of Captain Yevil’s Suivan detachment couldn’t go into atmosphere, anyhow; orbit would be as close as they’d get. And the armed merchantmen—Claw Hard, Calthrop, and Noonday Sun—wouldn’t be setting down either. Not without some kind of word on just who was running the port of Waycross these days, and in whose interest.
The pause at Inspace’s end was longer this time.
“I wonder what’s keeping them?” Jessan said.
“Eight ships coming in at once,” said Beka promptly. “They’re probably trying to figure out whether it means a Mageworlds invasion or party time on the Strip.”
The external link clicked and beeped again. “Warhammer, Inspace. Who vouches for you?”
Beka stared at Jessan. “Vouches?” Her voice rose in outrage—but she was careful not to key on the link. Later, if necessary, there would be plenty of time to put the fear of hell, damnation, and Beka Rosselin-Metadi into Waycross Inspace Control. “Vouches? What is this nonsense … . Nyls, are you getting anything on the sensors that might explain what the hell is going on down there?”
“Not yet, Captain.” Jessan was already calling up the sensor readouts and running matches against main ship’s memory. “It looks like our friends in Waycross have their own way of doing things these days. We’ve got IDs coming up now on some of the ships in the area—ah, here we are.”
“What have you got?”
The Khesatan tapped a line of data on the flatscreen with his index fingernail. “Republic cruiser Karipavo is in high orbit over Waycross.”
“I remember the ’Pavo,” Beka said. “She was patrolling the Net when we went through on that hell-run to Galcen. Commodore Gil had her then.”
“She was the flagship of the whole Net Patrol Fleet,” said Jessan. “If the ’Pavo survived—”
“—then maybe some other ships in the fleet survived,” Beka finished. “And Dadda’s little girl may have a chance of winning this thing after all.”
She keyed on the link. “Inspace, this is Warhammer. Commodore Gil aboard RSF Karipavo will vouch for us.”
“Warhammer, Inspace. No officer by that name listed.” Beka clamped her lips down hard on a curse—/ater, later—and looked over at Jessan. “What now?” she asked, with the link still off. “If the ‘Pavo’s gone renegade or been captured, we might as well jump out of here and head for the neutral worlds.”
Jessan was looking thoughtful. “Wait one. Let me try something first. You’re not the only person in the galaxy who went to space under something other than your full set of names.”
“Go ahead,” she said, handing over the link. “But I’m figuring a jump route away from here just in case.”
“Good idea. Never hurts to be careful.” Jessan keyed on the link. “Inspace, Warhammer. Check Jervas, Baronet D’Rugier. If he’s in your database, tell him Warhammer, same CO, is here and requests conference.”
“Roger, wait, out.”
The pause this time was several minutes long, enough for more than one message to shuttle back and forth over the inspace comms. Beka drummed her fingernails on the arm of the pilot’s chair and waited.
Another click-beep from the link. “Warhammer, this is Inspace,” came the comm call. “Baronet D’Rugier vouches for you. He requests that you join him on his vessel soonest.”
Beka closed her eyes and drew a long breath. I hate playing these games. I really, really hate it.
“Negative, Inspace. Inform Baronet D’Rugier that if calls are to be made, he shall c
all on the Domina of Entibor aboard her vessel. Over.”
“Roger. Permission granted Warhammer to orbit with eight ships. Out.”
Beka leaned back in her seat, stretching. “Well, well. Jervas Gil and Karipavo. Things are starting to look up.”
RSF Veratina and other ships formerly of the Infabede sector fleet, now under the command of General Jos Metadi, were lying in wait—spread out in a loose formation orbiting a gas giant in the Gyfferan system. This close in, the planet’s huge presence dominated the ’Tina’s external viewscreens, filling them with constantly changing swirls and bands of color, visible tracks of the eternal storms below.
The planet’s wild beauty, however, had nothing to do with Metadi’s choice of a hiding place. That decision had been based on the gas giant’s fluctuating electromagnetic discharges, now effectively masking the presence of the General’s fleet. All the “noise” also made it harder to collect information; fortunately, RSF Selsyn-bilai had carried among its stores a number of sensor drones, small enough to escape all but the most careful search.
The drones had been turned loose in-system immediately after the fleet emerged from hyper. So far, however, they hadn’t given Metadi anything particularly useful. If the Mage warfleet was attacking Gyffer, it wasn’t doing it anywhere that the drones were looking.
Metadi was getting restless. Even in the old days, he’d preferred taking the offensive, and patience had never been his strongest point. He’d learned a bit of it since then, however—or so he kept reminding himself. The reminders didn’t stop him from pacing about the ’Tina’s passageways, always returning to the Combat Information Center to frown irritably at the empty battle tank.
He was there again for the third time in an hour when the technician monitoring the sensor readouts sat up as if she’d been stung. “New data coming in from the farspace drones.”
“Evaluation?”
“Working … working … sir, massive energy discharges in patterns associated with ship-to-ship combat in realspace, sir. Insufficient data for positive location.”
“Well, that’s it,” said Metadi, with a certain grim satisfaction. “Here we go. Any activity coming up from Gyffer?”
The sensor tech shook her head. “Nothing, sir. Nearspace drones report no significant deviation from previous activity.”
Commander Quetaya moved up to look at the screen over the technician’s shoulder. “This doesn’t look like the main action, though … we got two really big bursts, and now nothing.”
“Sounds like a skirmish to me,” said Metadi. “The Mages are here, all right; the LDF just hasn’t run into the main force yet. But they know the fleet’s out here, and I’ll bet the Mages’ head man wants it that way.”
The General paused. “You have to admire a man who can think like that, Commander. He almost deserves to pull this one off.”
“Yes, sir,” said Quetaya. “In the meantime, do we offer our services to the Gyfferan LDF, or do we keep on lurking out here in the midsystem?”
“We lurk,” said the General. “And we monitor the drones for signs of major fleet action. Given the small size of our force, we can do more by keeping ourselves in reserve than we can by adding our strength outright.”
“You’re thinking of waiting for the main battle and joining it in progress.” Quetaya looked doubtful. “With respect, sir—again—that’s a dangerous move.”
“Of course it’s dangerous,” Metadi said. “If we wanted to be safe, we’d be sitting on Ophel at a beachfront bar, sucking down large, colorful drinks with fruit garnishes in them and watching the war on the holovid news.”
Commodore Jervas Gil—these days, for civilian purposes, the Baronet D’Rugier—had been hard at work in his pocket-sized office aboard RSF Karipavo when the messages came in.
Lieutenant Jhunnei brought the first one in person. “The courier you sent to monitor Galcen just showed up. In one piece, no less.”
“Excellent,” Gil said. He didn’t bother to hide his relief. The assignment he’d given the courier ship had been a dangerous one, but with hi-comms down or sketchy all over the civilized galaxy, personal reconnaissance was the only accurate source of information left. “What word has he got for us?”
Jhunnei laid a clipboard full of message flimsies on his desk. “Lots of stuff—he kept his eyes and ears open all the time like a good boy. The big news, though, is that, one, the main Mageworlds warfleet has departed Galcenian space—”
“Did he get a line on them?”
“It looks like they’re heading for Gyffer, sir.”
Gil wasn’t surprised. Gyffer was an industrial powerhouse with its own highly trained defense forces, and the whole sector had been staunchly pro-Republic—and anti-Mage—since the days of the last war. It wasn’t a target that anyone could afford to ignore.
“Do we have any current information on how Gyffer’s been doing?” he asked.
“Current, no,” Jhunnei said. “Admiral Valiant in Infabede is screwing around with the hi-comms nodes. But old stuff, backdoored through Perpayne, yes.”
“Go on, Lieutenant.”
Jhunnei smiled a little. “The Citizen-Assembly told Vallant to go play with himself. Then they seized all the ships that were in port and started fitting them out with shields and guns.”
“Good for them,” said Gil. “But you said something about two pieces of news—”
“Yes.” Jhunnei was smiling broadly now. “It doesn’t look like General Metadi’s dead after all.”
Gil forced himself to stay calm. “Is this just a rumor, or is it a confirmed sighting?”
“Not a sighting, exactly,” Jhunnei said. “But somebody showed up over Galcen with a mixed bag of Space Force vessels right after the Mages left, and the courier says they were using Metadi’s name all over the comm frequencies.”
“Mmm,” said Gil. “Did they send anyone dirtside?”
His aide shook her head. “Just shot up all the hi-comms nodes, plus everything on the surface that looked like it might have a Mage ID. Then they jumped.”
“That sounds like the General, all right.” Gil found that he was smiling as well. “Our courier didn’t happen to pick up the General’s next port of call out of the bridge-to-bridge chatter, did he?”
“Sorry, no.”
“That’s like Metadi. He’s a cagey one—knows that the Mages probably got all our codes when they took Prime Base. How about his jump path?”
Jhunnei was grinning outright. “Gyffer. Just like the Mages.”
“You know,” Gil said after a moment, “deciding where we should go next just got a whole lot easier.”
“Head where the fighting is, eh, Commodore?”
“That’s what we joined up for, Lieutenant. And Gyffer’s arming ships—if we can beat the Mages into the system, maybe we can sell off those weapons and engine parts we brought back from this last cruise. Never hurts to make a little money.”
The comm link on Gil’s desk beeped at him. He keyed it on. “Commodore Gil here.”
“Message from Waycross Inspace Control.”
Gil tensed. The duty officer was supposed to handle any messages from Inspace as long as the ’Pavo was maintaining orbit. Either the CDO is slacking off, or we’ve. got something serious.
In either case, though, it wasn’t the fault of the comms tech on the other end of the link. The CDO could be dealt with later; meanwhile, it was Inspace’s turn.
“What’s their problem?” Gil asked.
“A starpilot claiming to be Beka Rosselin-Metadi just entered the system with eight ships,” said the comms tech. “Inspace wants to know if you’ll vouch for her.”
“Eight ships,” said Gil thoughtfully. “I wonder where she picked them up … . Is the lead vessel in the formation an old Libra-class armed freighter?”
A pause on the comm link, and then, “Sensor profile of lead vessel makes it a Libra-class.”
“Tell Inspace I’ll vouch for her, and ask her to call on me as soon as p
ossible. We need to talk.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
There was another, longer pause. Then the comms tech came back on, sounding apologetic this time. “Inspace says that the Domina told them quote inform Baronet D’Rugier that if calls are to be made, he shall call on the Domina of Entibor aboard her vessel unquote.”
Gil closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s her, all right. Tell Inspace not to worry, I’ll contact her again later. Gil out.” He keyed off the link and turned around in his chair to look at his aide. “Jhunnei, we have a problem, and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself for setting it up.”
“What kind of problem, sir?”
“The worst kind,” said Gil. “Protocol. As planetary nobility goes, the Domina of Entibor outranks an Ovredisan baronet any day of the week. But Entibor gave up its direct authority over the Space Force back in the last war, when Jos Metadi was bringing all the planetary fleets under one command.”
“Ah,” Jhunnei said. “And neither one of you can afford to take second place, either—not so long as people like Captain Merro are watching and figuring the odds.”
The scraps of broken metal drifted in the cold of space, each piece in its separate direction, as the fury of the Gyfferan energy guns had sundered them. To the sensors of Gyfferan Local Defense Force Cruiser #97, they barely registered at all.
The 97’s tactical action officer glanced at the cruiser’s main battle tank—now empty except for the eight blue dots of the Fast-Response Task Force, arrayed in an open lozenge with the 97 at its center. Then he double-checked the sensor screen.
“The area seems to be clear of hostile units, sir,” he reported to the captain. “Two non-Gyfferan units engaged; two destroyed. No messages sent from either ship—none that we intercepted, anyway.”
The captain nodded. “Quick and easy. Too damned quick and easy. Their main force is still out here somewhere.”
The TAO pulled thoughtfully at his earlobe and stared at the dots in the battle tank.
By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Page 22
