Torch of Freedom

He looked up and beckoned for Citizen Commander Hartman to join him. She stepped up on his left side, gazing at the plot with him, and he waved one hand at its icons.

'They're still almost eleven million kilometers short of the hyper limit,' he observed, 'so I suppose it's remotely possible they really don't have MDMs over there and they're trying to run a bluff on us. They could still be hoping our nerve will crack and we'll break off . . . and planning on hypering back out instead of coming across the limit after us and getting into standard missile range, if we don't. Just between you and me,' his tone was dry enough to evaporate the Frontenac Estuary back home in Nouveau Paris, 'I'd really like to think that's what's happening here. Unfortunately, what I think is really happening is exactly what you and Stravinsky suggested from the outset. Those are Erewhonese ships, whoever's aboard them, and those two big bastards are mil-spec freighters loaded with missile pods. The question I've been turning over in my mind for the last five or six minutes is how close they're going to want to get before they start rolling pods at us. May I assume you've been devoting some thought to the same problem?'

'Yes, Citizen Commodore.' Hartman gave him a smile of her own, although hers showed a bit more of the tips of her teeth. 'As a matter of fact, Pierre and I have been kicking that around, and we've consulted with Citizen Captain Vergnier and Citizen Commander Laurent, as well.'

'And have the four of you reached a consensus?'

'We're all agreed on what they're going to try to do,' Hartman replied. 'We're still a little divided over the exact range they're looking for, though. Obviously, they're planning to close to a range lower than twelve million kilometers, or they would have fired before the range began to open. That being the case, they're clearly trying to get their fire control close enough to give them a reasonable hit percentage, exactly as Pierre suggested, which makes a lot of sense, if those six cruisers are the only fire control platforms they plan on using. Personally, I think they want to come as close as they can while staying out of our range, so I'm figuring eight million klicks. That would put them a half million kilometers outside standard missile range, and they've obviously got the acceleration advantage to hold the range at that point if they choose to.

'Pierre agrees with me, but he thinks they'll shoot for nine million klicks in order to give themselves a little more wiggle room after our birds go ballistic. Citizen Captain Vergnier and Citizen Commander Laurent argue that with two freighters full of missile pods, they'll probably be willing to start wasting ammunition sooner than that, so they're both thinking in terms of something more like ten million klicks.'

Luff nodded thoughtfully.

'I think I'm inclined to agree with Stravinsky,' he said. 'If it weren't for the fact that they have got those two ammo ships back there, I'd agree with you and shave it a little closer, because that extra five hundred thousand kilometers is going to cost them a little accuracy. But Olivier and Citizen Commander Laurent have a point about how much ammunition they've got to burn. And the fact that it looks like they're bringing the ammo ships in with them suggests to me that they probably would like at least a little more time and distance for evasive maneuvers after our birds' drives go down.'

'You and Pierre may well be right, Citizen Commodore.' Hartman shrugged. 'The important thing, though, is that they are bringing the ammo ships in. They've still got time to drop them off well back from the firing line, but I think if they were going to do that, they already would have. At their current velocity, they're committed to crossing the hyper limit now—assuming they want to stay in n-space where they can roll pods after us, at any rate—and with the observed range of even early generation MDMs, they wouldn't have to've gotten even this close to bring us under fire. The fire control ships, yes, but not the ammo carriers.'

'Agreed.' The citizen commodore grimaced. 'I suppose it's something of a judgment call. Leave them well back, but essentially unprotected if it should happen we've got somebody still waiting in hyper to pounce, or bring them along with you, where your fire control ships and destroyers can keep an eye on them but they still don't have to come quite into our missiles' envelope.'

'I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're thinking, Citizen Commodore. And, in their position, I'd have done the same thing. Less because I'd be afraid the other side actually had left somebody in hyper 'to pounce,' as you put it than because, with that kind of range advantage over the known threat, there wouldn't be any reason not to protect myself against the possibility of an unknown one sneaking in on me, however remote that might be.'

'Exactly. Of course,' Luff bared his teeth, 'it'd be a pity if it turned out they were protecting themselves against the wrong 'known threat.' '

'Yes, Citizen Commodore.' Hartman returned his predatory smile. 'That would be a pity, wouldn't it?'

* * *

'About another ten minutes, Sir,' Edie Habib observed quietly, and Rozsak nodded.

They'd been in pursuit of the StateSec renegades for over half an hour, and they'd cut the range back to just barely more than the twelve million kilometers at which they'd begun the chase. Their overtake velocity was over fifteen hundred kilometers per second, and there was no way the enemy could escape them now.

'We'll reduce acceleration to three-point-seven-five KPS-squared at eleven million kilometers,' he decided. 'No point closing any faster than we have to.'

'Yes, Sir,' Habib replied, but her tone was a bit odd, and when he glanced at her, he realized she'd been gazing at his own profile with a slightly quizzical look.

'What?' he asked.

'I was just wondering what it is you didn't go ahead and say just now.'

' 'Didn't go ahead and say'?' It was his turn to give her a quizzical look. 'What makes you think there's anything I didn't go ahead and say?'

'Boss, I've known you a long time,' she said, and he chuckled.

'Yes, you have,' he agreed. Then he shrugged. 'Mostly, I was just thinking about Snorrason.'

'Wondering if I was right all along, were you?' she asked with an arched eyebrow, and he grinned.

He'd waffled back and forth, with uncharacteristic ambivalence, over the question of where he should deploy Hjálmar Snorrason's four destroyers. After the Marksmans, the big Warrior-class destroyers were the most capable antimissile ships he had, in the area- defense role, at least. The Royal Torch Navy'sfrigates had turned out to be remarkably capable (for such small units) of looking after themselves in a missile-heavy environment, but they simply weren't big enough and didn't have enough counter-missile magazine capacity to be effective in the sustained area-defense role. He'd been tempted to tack Snorrason's ships onto Hammer Force, as Habib had suggested, just in case they'd found themselves forced into the enemy's missile envelope after all. But he'd decided in the end that protecting Torch was more important. It was extraordinarily unlikely that any of the ex-Peep attackers were going to get close enough to hit the planet with anything short of dead, easily picked off missiles which had long since gone ballistic. The consequences if it turned out that airy assumption was in error might well prove catastrophic, however, and providing against that eventuality took precedence over the equally remote possibility of Hammer Force straying into the enemy's missile envelope.

'No.' Rozsak shook his head. 'I never thought you were wrong about it, Edie.' He turned away from the plot and smiled wryly at Habib. 'In fact, the reason I was so ambivalent about it was because it really is a coin-toss kind of decision.' He shrugged. 'In the end, it's all about defending the planet, though, and I'm not going to second-guess my decision about Snorrason at this point. It's just . . .' He grimaced. 'It's just that I've got this itch I can't quite seem to scratch.'

'What sort of 'itch,' Boss?' Habib's expression was much more intent than it had been.

Luiz Rozsak was an intensely logical man, she thought. Despite the easy-going attitude which had been known to deceive friends, as well as adversaries, he was anything but casual or impulsive. His brain weighed factors and possibilities with an assayer's precision, and he was usually at least two or three moves ahead of anyone else in the game. Yet there were times when a sort of instinct-level process seemed to kick in. When he did make decisions on what might seem to others like mere impulses or whims. Personally, Habib had come to the conclusion long ago that his 'whims' were actually their own version of logic, but logic that went on below the conscious level, so deep even he stood outside it as it operated on facts or observations his conscious mind didn't realize he possessed.

'If I knew what sort of itch it was, then I'd know how to scratch it,' he pointed out now.

'If I can help you figure out what's itching, I'll be glad to lend a hand,' she said. He looked at her, and she