by David Weber
* * *
The transit surge passed, and Maariaah's ships vanished into cloak. After Shanak and Kliean, the Alliance had no choice but to assume the Bugs maintained pickets in every explored system, however useless. Henceforth, every survey force would operate only in cloak, which made sense but was expensive in both equipment wear and time. A cloaked vessel could not use active sensors, which cut its sensor reach by seventy percent, with a consequent increase in the time required to cover a given volume. Using larger survey forces could offset some of that, yet every ship added to a flotilla also increased the odds that it would be detected, despite its ECM.
And, of course, a Bug picket in precisely the right place might pick them up on transit, before they could bring their cloaking systems up, setting all their efforts at stealth at naught.
But in this case, Maariaah decided, it was unlikely any picket was present. Their entry warp point was a Type One five light-hours from the G8 component of a binary system. Component B was a dimmer K8, almost six light-hours from Component A and five hundred light-minutes from Harkhan as the light cruiser emerged from warp. But the important point was that Component A had a planet at six light-minutes, well within its liquid water zone. It also boasted a large asteroid belt at twenty-one light-minutes, with all the industrial advantages that offered, yet there were no artificial emissions, and the Bugs would surely have developed such prime real estate . . . had they known of it. No one, least of all Maariaah'sheerino, was going to assume anything—not with the bleeding wound of Kliean so fresh—yet he felt an undeniable easing of the tension about him as his officers worked their way to the same conclusion.
"All units' ECM is up, Small Claw," Shaairal reported, and Maariaah flicked his ears in approval.
"Well executed, Son of the Khan. Transmit my thanks to all units—discreetly, of course."
"Certainly, Sir."
"And while you are about it, set up our initial spiral," Maariaah added. "We will proceed cautiously, but the sooner we begin, the sooner we can move on to still more emptiness."
* * *
Survey Flotilla 80 prowled stealthily about Component A. The warp points of a binary system were invariably associated with the more massive star, moving in their own, fixed relationship with it. The math which described the phenomenon always made Maariaah's head ache, but he was grateful for the way it reduced his survey area. By his most conservative estimate, however, the task would still consume at least two months, and more probably three, and he bent his attention on ways to keep his personnel alert as they settled in for the duration. What had happened to Kliean made that easier, but nothing could fully offset the sheer, mind-numbing tedium of their task. No one who had never participated in a first survey could truly appreciate the sheer immensity of any star system, and warp points were elusive prey.
Days passed, then weeks, and the cloaked ships continued their methodical activity, winnowing space for the tiny gravitational eddies which might indicate yet another warp point.
* * *
Maariaah was sound asleep when the alarm wrenched him from dreams of his wife and cubs. He lurched upright on his sleeping mat, stabbing for the com button even before his eyes opened, and light flared in his darkened cabin as his terminal came on-line.
"Bridge," a taut voice said, then changed as the officer of the watch recognized the small claw. "Chaarkhan has just reported detection of what may be an unknown starship, Sir!"
"May?" Maariaah repeated sharply.
"Yes, Small Claw. If it is, it, too, is cloaked."
An icy fist squeezed Maariaah's stomach, and he made himself pause. It would do neither his image nor the crew's nerve any service to appear flustered, and so he kept his voice level.
"Location?"
"Thirty-one light-minutes from Harkhan at zero-six-three, two-five-one, Sir."
"Do we have a vector?"
"No, Small Claw. It appears to be stationary."
Either that, or the dairshnakhu saw Chaarkhan and went dead, Maariaah thought grimly. If he truly exists at all, he is pretending to be a hole in space and waiting for us to make a move.
"Is Son of the Khan Shaairal there?"
"I have just arrived, Small Claw," Shaairal's voice said, and Harkhan's captain's face replaced that of the duty officer. "The flotilla has implemented standing orders, Sir."
"Good. I am on my way. Do nothing but observe until I arrive."
Maariaah's mind raced as he killed the com, scrambled from his mat, and reached for his harness. Chaarkhan might have detected only a sensor ghost, but he dared not assume anything of the sort. Yet how should he proceed? His standing orders had brought the entire flotilla to a halt, which reduced its drive signatures to a bare minimum and made its cloaking systems far more effective, but ships which did not move could not close to obtain better data.
The one thing he absolutely could not do was send word back to Rehfrak. Courier drones could not cloak, and a drone's vector would give the Bugs—if there were any Bugs!—a bearing on the flotilla's entry warp point. No, he must somehow determine whether or not the enemy was present, first. Then, if he had the firepower, he must destroy any pickets before their drones reported his presence. If he could not destroy them, he must somehow break contact with at least one of his ships and send it back to Rehfrak with word of the danger.
Whatever he did, the next few days would not be pleasant.
* * *
"There it is again, Sir," Observer First Cheraahlk said.
Maariaah raised a hand, stopping the flotilla's senior engineer in mid-report, and watched Cheraahlk lean forward. The observer babied his passive sensors and computers as he worked the elusive contact, and then his ears flattened in disgust.
"Shiaaahk!" He looked up, expression apologizing for the oath, but Maariaah waved it off. The last six days had been even less pleasant than anticipated. The unknowns—and there was no longer any doubt someone else was in the system—were fiendishly elusive, and Cheraahlk was his best sensor officer . . . and more than entitled to an occasional curse.
"Did you get any more on him?"
"Not much, Small Claw," Cheraahlk said apologetically.
"Anything at all will be welcome," Maariaah assured him.
"Observe your plot, please, Sir," Cheraahlk requested, and a crimson icon appeared on the small claws repeater display. The observer replayed his entire brief track on it, and Maariaah watched it slide across the very edge of the sensor envelope and then vanish once more. "His instrumentation must be at least as good as our own," Cheraahlk said. "He knew we were here—not our precise location, but our general position—and came in for a closer look, then broke back out before we got a good lock. I think it was Unknown Three this time, Sir, but it could have been one we have not seen before."
Maariaah flicked his ears and keyed a replay command. The icon slid across the display once more, and there was something damnably familiar about it. Its maneuver was not one a ship of the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee would have employed, yet he had the maddening sense that he had seen it—or one like it—before.
He replayed it again and muttered a mental curse of his own. That sharp yet graceful turn was familiar . . . and Cheraahlk was right. The unknown's scanners must be at least as good as Harkhan's. Probably better, for she had not picked it up until it was well into its sensor run.
Any cloaking field leaked a little energy, and the emission patterns which oozed through it were distinctive, and so far, Survey Flotilla Eighty had made tentative IDs on at least five unknowns. Their antics demonstrated that they knew Maariaah's command was present, yet they had launched no attacks, and every battle report Maariaah had seen suggested that the Bugs should have attacked by now, if only to draw his fire. Such a maneuver would almost certainly result in the destruction of the attacking unit, yet it would absolutely confirm the presence of his own units and give hard locations on the ships which fired. Given the enemy's willingness to sacrifice starships, Maariaah had anticipated just su
ch an attempt for days now.
Yet it had not happened . . . and there was that nagging sense he had seen such a maneuver before. But where? Try as he might, he could not recall, and it was driving him mad.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his belly, tapping his claws together while he thought. There was a limit to how long he could let this game of hunt the marhang continue. Whether the Bugs knew it or not, he knew they posed a deadly threat to Rehfrak, and his overriding responsibility was to alert the sector capital.
He thought a moment longer, then beckoned Shaairal to his side and spoke quietly.
"Cheraahlk is correct, Shaairal. Whoever this is, his instrumentation is excellent. We are unlikely to pin him down without assistance, and we must warn Rehfrak. We dare not use a courier drone, so we must use one of our ships."
"Risky, Small Claw," Shaairal murmured. It was not a protest, simply a consideration of the difficulties, and Maariaah flicked his ears in agreement.
"Truth, Son of the Khan, yet I see no option. We will detach Fraikhal, Mhote, and Shergha. Shergha will be our courier, and the other two will accompany her to the warp point and screen her. She will hold position just clear of the warp point while they run a sweep around it, and she will make transit only when they report all clear."
"With your permission, Sir, I will add Jhusahk and Timkhar," Shaairal replied. "Daughter of the Khan Deaara has the next best observer after Cheraahlk himself, and I trust her judgment."
"An excellent thought," Maariaah agreed, "and—"
"Communication laser!"
Both officers whirled to the com officer in shock. The young cub of the Khan raised a hand, cupping his ear bug as if to somehow hear better, then looked up in total disbelief.
"Someone is lasing us, Small Claw! It—Sir, it appears to be a standard Alliance com protocol!"
An Alliance protocol? Maariaah looked at Shaairal, and the son of the khan gave an ear flick of helplessness. Was it possible the Bugs had somehow cracked a captured Allied database when the Alliance had persistently failed to crack theirs?
"Put it on intercom," he ordered, and a voice rattled the speakers. Maariaah read Standard English, but his understanding of the spoken language was poor, and he looked at Shaairal for a translation.
"He says 'Unknown vessel, this is the Terraaan vessel Maaashhaaanaaa. Identify yourself or be fired upon.' "
"Maaashhaaanaaa?" Maariaah repeated. "What sort of ship name is that?"
"Sir, I have her on our shipping list," Shaairal's tactical officer reported. "According to the file, she is one of their Hun-class survey cruisers."
"Hun-class, is it?" Maariaah wished—not for the first time—that all TFN ships could have such easily pronounced names rather than the clumsy sounds Humans kept inflicting on the poor things. But the thought was only a flicker on the surface of his mind, for the Huns were survey ships, like his own Harkhan. Was it truly possible—?
"Sir, the challenge is repeating," the com officer said nervously, and the assistant tactical officer spoke almost in the same breath.
"Captain, I am picking up fire control emissions from at least five sources!"
"Very well," Maariaah said far more calmly than he felt. "Com, reply 'This is the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee cruiser Harkhan,' " the cub of the khan acknowledged and Maariaah looked at the tac officer. "If this is a ruse, he will fire the instant he receives our reply. Be ready."
"Aye, Small Claw."
A moment of intolerable tension hovered, and then the voice came from the speakers again. It spoke much more slowly this time, slowly enough even Maariaah could follow it.
"Harkhan, this is Captain Josepha Vargas, TFN, commanding Survey Flotilla Two-Five-One. You've had us worried," it said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hell's Gate
Small Claw Maariaah watched his plot's icons and tried—unsuccessfully—not to feel envious. His Lahstyn-class cruisers represented the best compromise the Khanate could afford: well equipped to avoid detection, yet extremely austere, without even command datalink. The KON simply could not divert sufficient funding to build the numbers of survey ships it required if it opted for any more sophisticated design, but the Terran Federation could . . . and had.
Maariaah was senior to Captain Vargas, the Human survey force commander, yet his ships, for all their numbers, made a poor showing beside her command. TFNS Belisarius, her flagship, was one of the new Guerriere-B command battle-cruisers, with the control systems to provide a datanet for her entire flotilla, and her actual survey ships were all Hun-Bs, refitted with military engines. It reduced their strategic speed but gave them the tactical fleetness to outrun any Bugs they happened across—just as Belisarius' datalink gave them an excellent chance of outfighting any picket cruisers which crossed their path. And what Maariaah envied most of all, perhaps, was TFNS Caravan, an armed freighter built on a converted Dunkerque-class battle-cruiser hull and equipped with cloaking ECM as well as a light missile battery. Caravan's cargo capacity was the final support element which allowed the TFN to mount long-ranged, sustained survey operations which the KON simply could not match.
And the crowning element in Maariaah's ignoble envy were the eighty brand-new second-generation recon drones in Caravan's capacious holds. The Humans had finally gotten warp-capable drones into production, and the all but invisible robots let Vargas probe warp points at greatly reduced risk of detection . . . and without exposing her own ships to hostile action.
It was, he thought, a lesson in the advantages of affluence, and not even the fact that the Humans were shipping thousands of the new RD2s to the Khanate completely eased its sting.
Yet for all that, Vargas had reached the system Maariaah had named Zaaia'pharaan, in honor of his maternal granddam, only after his own flotilla. Zaaia'pharaan lay at the extreme end of a frontier warp line Vargas had been engaged in extending, and so was of far less value to the Federation than to the Khanate. No doubt the Humans would have ceded it to their allies for that reason alone, but under the Treaty of Mattar, a system belonged to whoever reached it first, and Vargas had readily acknowledged the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee's prior claim on Zaaia'pharaan.
Still, they were allies, and they were here, and he and Vargas had decided to operate in concert. Once they had realized they were playing catch-as-catch-can with allies rather than enemies—or, rather, once Vaaargaaas, with her superior instrumentation, realized it, the small claw reminded himself sourly—they had not taken long to complete their sweep of the system. They had found no sign of enemy vessels, but they had detected two additional warp points, and they would soon make the first move to explore them.
In the meantime, Rehfrak had been brought up to date. Vargas' relief at having a powerful fleet in support distance had been unmistakable, but the Human least claw had also realized why Maariaah was so nervous. She had no more desire than he to show the Bugs the way to Rehfrak, and it was she who had suggested that the fleet element remain in the sector capital rather than advance to Zaaia'pharaan. Under the circumstances, it was more important to keep the Rehfrak connection secret than to protect the survey ships. In the event that the enemy was encountered and managed to track them, the Humans had agreed that their combined force would fall back on Human space, leading the Bugs away from Rehfrak. Given that no inhabited Human system lay within twelve transits, the Federation had far more depth to play with. As to who held title to any additional systems they jointly discovered, that would be up to the diplomats, although Maariaah suspected the Khanate's possession of Zaaia'pharaan would give it the inside track.
"Caaaptain Vaaargaaas reports that she is prepared to deploy the first drone flight, Sir," Shaairal reported, and Maariaah flicked an ear in acknowledgment.
"Instruct her to proceed," he said.
* * *
"All right, Mal," Josepha Vargas said. "We've got an audience of Tabbies just waiting to see how well our new toy works. Let's not embarrass ourselves."
"I
think that can be arranged, Sir," Commander Malcolm Klesko replied, "but please remember these things are still on the temperamental side."
"I'll be totally sympathetic," she assured him. "Right after I skin you out and salt down the hide."
"You're so understanding," Klesko sighed, but he grinned as he spoke. The RD2 was his baby, for he'd been assistant project officer on the team which finally got it into production. That was why Vargas had specifically requested him, and getting her request granted was a major coup for her. Yet they both knew he was right. The new drones were—or would be, once they got the kinks out of them—an enormous boon to Survey Command, but they were still a new system, and the conditions under which they had to operate were harsh.
Although larger than courier drones, they were smaller than anything else which had ever been capable of making even a single transit, and single transits were useless for survey missions. They had to get through the warp point, look around, and come back. So far, about one in three was getting home, but only one survivor in ten brought back any useful data; the internal systems of the other nine were hopelessly addled by the brutal stress of a first-transit through an uncharted warp point. R&D promised the failure rate would drop, but the most optimistic success rate projected, even for the fully matured technology, was no more than forty to fifty percent.
"Just do your best," Vargas said, and Klesko nodded before he keyed his boom mike.
"Final systems check," he said crisply.
"All green, Sir," Ensign Michaelson replied instantly.
"Very well. Activate the first flight."
"Activating now," Michaelson confirmed, and Klesko watched his display.
The RD2s were too large to launch from XO racks. Instead, they had to be deployed from a cargo hold, preflighted in space by vac-suited technicians, and then sent on their way. It was all very complicated, but Klesko felt a glow of satisfaction as the first ten drones brought their drives on-line, headed for the warp point in a chain of glittering icons, and one by one vanished.
