by David Weber
“Kill our acceleration, XO,” the captain said after a moment. “Com, is Pasha’s station in laser range?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Sulini Hira said.
“Lay a laser on the station and transmit a request for any stored messages.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Transmitting now.”
Travis checked the status board. Casey had been in-system for an hour and forty minutes, putting her roughly five minutes and four point eight million kilometers inside the hyper-limit, sixty-two million kilometers short of Pasha’s orbit. At that range, a round-trip transmission delay was almost seven minutes.
Stifling a sigh, Travis, along with Clegg and everyone else on the bridge, settled in to wait.
The seven minutes passed, plus four more, before a soft chime sounded.
“Transmission from Pasha Station, Ma’am,” Hira reported.
“Very good, Com,” Clegg said. “Decrypt and switch to my display.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”
For a few seconds Clegg gazed at her display. Surreptitiously, Travis looked at her, saw her eyes tracking back and forth as she read. Then, her lips compressed briefly.
“Missed him by less than fifteen hours, XO,” she said, looking across at Woodburn.
Travis winced. Fifteen hours, after a journey of nine light-years. Clegg was not going to be happy.
To his surprise, the expected explosion didn’t happen. “I guess we follow them to Sachsen,” she added.
“Assuming he’s actually there,” Woodburn said, a bit sourly.
“He will be,” Clegg said calmly. “Captain Kane indicates his route hasn’t changed; he just managed to clear Lau Hiler almost seventy-two hours earlier than he’d anticipated. So we ought to catch up with him in Sachsen.”
She glanced at Travis, with no particular emotion he could detect, then turned to the astrogator.
“Take us back across the limit, Ms. Lukanov,” she ordered. “Then put us on course for Sachsen.”
* * *
Eleven days later, Casey crossed the Sachsen hyper limit and headed inward.
“We’d better find some good news, Sir,” the ATO, Lieutenant Kojong Ip, commented from the TO spot. “I think the captain’s going to start chewing hull plates if we don’t.”
“Watch what you say about senior officers, Mr. Ip,” Travis warned. Under some circumstances he would have let Ip’s comment pass, but as Officer of the Watch he had to maintain higher standards.
Not that he disagreed with the ATO. Over the last few days he’d watched Clegg’s quiet tension slowly ramping up as they approached Sachsen.
Once, he would have assumed she was mad at him, or at Chomps, or at somebody aboard, and reacted with his usual approach of walking on eggshells and waiting for the explosion to happen. But after a long talk with Chomps three days ago, and some of the insight that the Chief had that Travis sorely lacked, he finally understood.
It wasn’t just Clegg’s natural irascibility, though there was certainly some of that in her personality. Mostly, it was her deep awareness that her actions here in Silesia would set the pattern for the entire RMN.
Andermani captains like Kane served in a navy that routinely deployed its ships across multiple star systems, and had done so for years. Cruising the interstellar lanes, far from any immediate contact with superiors, was something to which they’d had ample opportunity to become accustomed. For that matter, back when Gustav Anderman had been perhaps the Solarian League’s most successful mercenary commander, the ships under his command had never known where they might travel in any given month, or the month after that.
The pattern for the Royal Manticoran Navy had been almost the exact opposite. Ever since the days of the Brotherhood’s reign of terror its ships had rarely left the home system. On the few occasions when they had they’d usually gone in squadron or at least divisional strength.
Clegg was breaking new ground here. She and Casey were on their own, farther away from home space than any RMN ship had ever before operated. Clegg wasn’t simply Manticore’s senior naval representative, but also its senior diplomatic representative. Her words, her decisions, her actions—all of them could have far-reaching repercussions for the Star Kingdom.
If she committed herself too closely to a relationship with someone like Kane, perhaps creating expectations which Queen Elizabeth’s government chose to repudiate, the consequences for future relations with the Andermani might be dire. By the same token, if she offended the Andermani by declining to cooperate with them, that could have equally serious repercussions. And those same diplomatic considerations applied to every other star system in the area that Casey visited.
But stacked right alongside those were the military considerations. Casey had no support, no backup. If anything happened to her that couldn’t be repaired with local resources, or if there was an ordinary operational accident, she’d be marooned in one of the local star systems until a relief could be sent from Manticore.
If she was lucky. If she wasn’t, Casey might simply disappear, never to be heard from again.
And every bit of that responsibility devolved upon Captain Trina Clegg. She wasn’t just a subject of the Star Kingdom of Manticore. She was the Star Kingdom of Manticore.
“Whoa—there we go, Sir,” Ip said, and there was no mistaking the relief in his voice. “Happy days, Commander.”
“Happy days, indeed, Lieutenant,” Travis said, gazing at SMS Hamman’s transponder beacon burning brightly on the plot. Sachsen was a busier system than Lau Hiler, with a more sprawling infrastructure, and Kane’s message had explained that he would require more time here for his search. Currently, the Andermani freighter was orbiting Dresden, the system’s single inhabited planet, and Travis wondered briefly how much of Kane’s investigation he’d completed.
He also wondered how Kane was going to react to what he and Chomps had discovered at Walther.
He pressed the intercom button.
“Clegg,” the captain’s voice responded.
“Long, Captain,” he said. “We’ve just crossed the hyper-limit. We’re picking up Hamman’s transponder at niner-point-five light-minutes, in Dresden orbit.”
“Very good, Mr. Long,” she half-grunted. “Transmit our initial message. I’ll be there in five.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”
* * *
Captain Kane, to Travis’s relief, was delighted to hear from them. He listened carefully to Clegg’s report about Walther, asked a few questions and seemed eminently satisfied with her answers.
And then, instead of inviting them inward to Dresden, he suggested they all head out to the hyper limit and follow him somewhere.
Clegg had asked a few questions of her own. The only answers Kane would give boiled down to promising the journey would be well worth the Manticorans’ time.
For the past sixteen hours, Casey had followed Hamman through the alpha bands. Finally, four and a half light-days from Sachsen, Kane signaled that they’d arrived.
Hamman apparently had a very good astrogator. After a moment’s orientation, Kane announced they’d arrived five light-minutes from their goal, and again invited Casey to follow.
Two hours of acceleration, followed by two more hours of deceleration. Travis gazed at the displays, listening to the silence of Casey’s bridge, wondering what Kane was up to.
And then, ten minutes from their final destination, they began to see the lights.
“XO?” Clegg invited. She was leaning forward in her seat, as if putting herself that much closer to the display would give her a better view.
“There appear to be several ships out there, Ma’am,” Woodburn said. “Lying to—no wedges. They seem to be waiting.”
“For Kane?” Clegg asked. “Or for us?”
“Hopefully, both,” Woodburn said, his voice coming through the speaker from CIC. “Assuming those are running lights, that one closest to us is probably a cruiser. That one further back and to portside may be a battlecr
uiser. The two to starboard look to be a destroyer and another cruiser—“
And then, behind the frigate and battlecruiser, another set of running lights abruptly came on.
Travis caught his breath. What the hell was that?
“XO?” Clegg called. Her voice was mostly calm, but there was a definite edge to it. “Tell me what we’re seeing.”
“It’s not a battlecruiser, Ma’am,” Woodburn said, his voice about as stunned as Travis had ever heard it. “It’s too big, and we’re reading too many launchers. Unless the Andermani have dreamed up some kind of customized hull—” He paused, and Travis could visualizing him shaking his head “—Captain, I believe that is a genuine, honest-to-God battleship.”
Someone on the bridge whistled softly. The sound broke Travis’s own awed paralysis, and he keyed for the files.
“That’s…impressive,” Clegg said into the silence. “I was under the impression that only the League had warships that big. TO?”
“That’s what Jane’s says, Ma’am,” Travis confirmed. “According to them, the SLN’s the only navy with battleships.”
“Apparently, their bean-counters missed one,” Clegg said.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Travis agreed.
And apparently he, Clegg, and everyone else aboard had seriously underestimated how badly Gustav wanted Gensonne put out of business.
“Com, let’s open a hail,” Clegg continued. “See who we’re dealing with here.”
“Already have one coming in, Captain,” Chief Hira announced. “It’s from an Admiral Gotthold Riefenstahl, Graf von Basaltberg.”
“Thank you,” Clegg said. “Put him through.”
The com display lit up to show an elderly man with a lined face and a close-trimmed skullcap of pure white hair. His haircut, as well as his overall demeanor, reminded Travis of Gensonne.
But whereas Gensonne’s uniform had been hidden by a vac suit, with only the collar peeking out, Basaltberg’s elaborate white uniform, edged in red piping and encrusted with gold braid, was on full and grand display.
“Captain Clegg,” the man’s booming voice came from the speaker. “This is Admiral Gotthold Riefenstahl, Graf von Basaltberg, commanding His Majesty’s Ship Vergeltung. I apologize for the inconvenience of our rendezvous point, but I’m sure you can appreciate that our presence in the Confederacy must be kept very quiet so as to avoid alerting our quarry.”
“I understand completely, Admiral,” Clegg assured him. “I was starting to wonder if Captain Kane had decided that tracking you down would be a good test of our patience.”
“He is certainly not above such tests,” Basaltberg agreed with a smile. “But in this case, he recognizes, as do I, that time is of the essence. He tells me you have discovered the location of the traitor Gensonne’s base?”
Traitor. Travis noted the word with interest. Clearly, there was more going on than Kane had told them.
“We do,” Clegg confirmed. “Has he also described the quid pro quo we’re asking in exchange for that information?”
“He has,” Basaltberg said. “He also suggests you have doubts that an admiral and noble of the Andermani Empire would listen to a lowly freighter captain.”
“I’ll admit to having some reservations, yes,” Clegg said. “Though to be fair, I also had certain reservations about just how lowly a freighter captain he truly was.”
“Clearly, you have the gift of insight, Captain,” Basaltberg said, his smile fading into seriousness. “I have personally known many freighter captains who would say and do whatever would maximize their profits. But I think you will find—” his eyes flicked to the his side “—that in this case, your reservations were unnecessary.”
The com screen split in half, and Captain Kane appeared beside the admiral.
But he was no longer wearing the utilitarian coveralls he’d worn during their meeting aboard Hamman. Now, he was dressed in a version of the same uniform Basaltberg wore.
“Permit me to introduce Major Chien-lu Zhou,” Basaltberg said. “Director of Silesian Operations for Abteilung III, our Department of Intelligence.” He smiled wryly. “He is also my son-in-law. He believes that a joint operation between our two forces would be a good and proper idea.”
“As do we, Admiral,” Clegg said calmly, to Travis’ somewhat grudging admiration. The surprises were coming fast here, and she was taking each of them in stride. “And as you said, time is of the essence.”
“Time and information both,” Basaltberg agreed. “Now. Major Zhou tells me that your request in return for Gensonne’s location is our aid in capturing his base’s computer intact.” He learned forward a few centimeters. “I believe we can work with that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“So much work,” Commodore Charnay said, shaking his head. “So few results.”
“Yes,” Lisa murmured as she ran her eye down the list of serial numbers, manufacturers, buyers, and destinations. The analysts had been sifting through the possibilities for two and a half weeks, and about all they’d been able to say with certainty was that much of equipment the RMN had blown into pieces during the Battle of Manticore had been made by Haven manufacturers and sold to buyers in Silesia.
Which everyone had mostly already known.
“Still, it hasn’t been a complete waste,” Marcello offered. “A couple of the Silesian buyers are almost certainly general importers who then resell to their clients. If we can dig into their records, we may be able to track the nodes to their ultimate destination.”
“Unless the final transfer was done off the books,” Charnay pointed out. “It probably wouldn’t have been in the case of a reasonably honest mercenary, like Gustav Anderman used to be, but that doesn’t exactly describe your friend Tamerlane. There are dishonest arms brokers in every star nation, and that’s the sort he’d be dealing with. You can certainly try to find his suppliers, but I’m guessing you’ll hit a dead end every time.”
“You may be right,” Marcello said. “But that decision will be someone else’s headache, not mine. Regardless, we greatly appreciate your help.”
“Glad to do it,” Charnay said. “I’ve been assured that we’ll continue to dig into things at this end after you leave. Tamerlane probably isn’t another Brotherhood cult leader; but then again, he might be the beginning of one. It’s in Haven’s best interests to get a handle on him and whatever his long-term plans are.” He glanced at his uni-link. “Excuse me, please—I have a screen coming in.”
He raised the uni-link to his lips. “Charnay.”
“He’s right about the wheel-spinning,” Marcello said quietly to Lisa. “And I doubt the Admiralty’s going to be overjoyed at the cost-per-datum ratio we’ve racked up this trip.”
“Everyone knew it was a long shot, Sir,” Lisa reminded him. “And we did confirm they’re somewhere in Silesia.”
“We confirmed they were somewhere in Silesia,” Marcello countered. “That doesn’t mean they’re there now. The Brotherhood was famous for moving their whole infrastructure around with them. Tamerlane wouldn’t have to be a cultist leader to take a page or two from their book.”
“True,” Lisa conceded. “So do we head home, or wait and let the analysts take another run at the data?”
Marcello pursed his lips—
“Excuse me, Captain; Commander,” Charnay broke in, his voice suddenly grim. “Something’s come up. They need us in Command One right away.”
* * *
Command One was four floors up in the enormous Octagon Building which housed the central nervous node of the Republic of Haven’s military. It was also down what seemed like the better part of no more than ten or twelve kilometers of corridors from the conference room in which they’d been working, and the lengthy trek put the difference between the Octagon and the Manticoran Admiralty’s far more modest housing into stark contrast. Commodore Charnay led them through the bustling command center and into a smaller, secure briefing room on the other side.
“I tell
you, I don’t know who they are,” the older of the two men seated in the witness chairs growled, his eyes flashing at the semicircle of Havenite officers gathered around a large conference table as Lisa, Marcello, and Charnay slipped into the room. “All I know is that Master Baird has been a prisoner of these criminals for six months, and someone has to do something about it.”
A Havenite officer wearing admiral’s insignia on his collar and the name Dorvelle on his nameplate spotted the newcomers.
“Ah—Commodore,” he spoke up, his voice grim as he beckoned to Charnay. “Welcome to hell’s little hectare. This is Captain Lionel Katura, fresh in from the Walther System over in Silesia. He tells us that his employer, a Solarian merchant named Max Baird, has been captured by a gang of pirates.”
“Not captured; kidnapped,” Katura corrected tersely. “Captured makes it sound like Master Baird was attacking them or provoking them. He wasn’t. We were reaching out to the Silesians, as per Master Rowbtham’s instructions, when we were attacked. Attacked.”
“Who’s Master Rowbtham?” Charnay asked.
“Master Rafe Rowbtham,” the man in the second chair said. Unlike Katura, he spoke with a Havenite accent and had the look and posture of a civilian. “Solarian merchant, quite well-off. He opened a local office on Danak Alpha twelve T-years ago. I met him myself on one of my regular business trips to Danak. According to our records, he’s only been there a couple of times himself, but it’s used by his sales and marketing agents whenever they’re in the area.”
“This is Daval Weissman,” Dorvelle put in as Charnay raised an eyebrow. “He’s our representative on the Jerriais Consortium board. Major development group,” he added to Lisa and Marcello. “They’re doing a lot of work in the Danak system.”
“I see,” Charnay said. “And we know for a fact that Captain Katura is one of Master Rowbtham’s people?”
“Of course,” Weissman said, bristling a little. “The system authorities always check ship credentials, as do the Consortium’s security personnel. Besides, they have the entry passcodes.”
