Greenies

Sugi was maybe getting a reading on a communications or a research satellite in high orbit. The passive sensors that he was using were very receptive to that sort of thing after all.

'There are some white lines showing up at bearing 133 mark 42. Didn't you tell me that white lines could be a stealth ship exhaust?'

'Yes,' Brett said thoughtfully, becoming a little more interested now. True, it was probably nothing, but that was the spectrum that an Owl or a Henry's plasma exhaust would be in. And it had been agreed that there was a better than even chance that one or both of those entities would try to put a stealth ship into orbit around Mars. 'Let me take a look.' He called up a duplicate of the display and saw immediately what Sugi was talking about.

'What do you think?' Sugi asked. 'Am I just seeing things?'

'Oh, you're seeing things all right,' Brett said, standing up. Moving carefully he walked across the bridge until he was standing next to him. 'Try to clean up that image a little,' he told him. 'Fine tune it with the contrast dial and then turn the array directly onto it.'

'Right,' Sugi said, putting his hands to the screen. He fumbled with the touch sensitive screen controls for a moment and the image suddenly sharpened, showing a lot more white and even some blue. 'Wow,' he said. 'Is that what I think it is?'

'Damn right,' Brett told him. 'Designate that contact and get it on the display.' He walked back to his chair and pushed the general quarters alarm. He then turned on the intercom. 'General quarters everyone,' he told the ship. 'This is not a drill, which is a good thing because we haven't drilled in that yet. Everyone get your emergency suits on and report to the area of the ship where you were told to go when we went GQ. Do it as quickly and as safely as possible and report in to your officer as soon as you get there. In the meantime, I'll tell you what we've got going on up here.' He took a deep breath, wondering how his cherry crew was going to take this. 'People, we've detected a stealth ship in an orbit just higher than ours. We don't have a positive identification yet, but my instinct tells me that it's another Owl. Whoever is driving it is running dumb, flaring his engines much hotter than he really should this close to another target. I'm going to maneuver us to get a better lock on him.'

'Target is designated, Brett,' Sugi said, pointing to the holographic screen before him.

'Good. Keep a lock on it, just like I showed you.'

'Right,' he said, nodding nervously.

'Helm,' Brett said, 'cut engines to point one G.'

'Cutting engines,' Mandall told him, her fingers going to her controls. A second later the gravity on the bridge suddenly reduced to near nothing.

'Bring us to new heading, 100 mark 20.'

'One zero zero mark two-zero,' she repeated, making more manipulations. Everyone felt the shudder of centrifugal force as they turned on their axis.

'The picture is tightening up,' Sugi announced excitedly. 'I getting some readings in the low spectrum now as well.'

'Run an ID check on the signature,' Brett told him. 'Let's see if we can figure out who we're dealing with here.'

'I don't remember how to do that,' Sugi told him. 'Sorry, Brett, but I...'

'It's okay,' Brett assured him, getting out of his chair again and moving gingerly across the floor. He nearly fell once since they were still in the midst of a turn. Finally he reached the terminal. 'Right there,' he told Sugi. 'The window on the bottom will open up a new screen for you. Just highlight the contact and drag it over there.'

'Right.' He did as he was told and the computer instantly gave a reading.

'The Marlin,' Brett said, shaking his head in amusement. 'I should've known. That moron Warren got command of it because his family has connections with the builder. He would be stupid enough to come chasing after us with his engines firing like that. Let's see if we can get a few more bearing readings and pin down a location.'

'Right,' Sugi said.

'Sir,' said Pebley, 'the Mermaid is maneuvering! Engine thrust has been reduced and I'm getting some thruster activities. Bearing is slowly changing left to right.'

'What the hell are they doing now?' Warren asked, looking at the display on his own screen. 'It almost looks like they're maneuvering to prosecute us.'

'If they have a detection watch operating,' said Lovington, 'they probably picked us up. We're awfully close to them and we're burning our engines pretty hard.'

'Do you really think that a captured crew would have reported sighting us?' Warren asked. 'That would be traitorous.'

'Didn't Mermaid have a greenie detection operator?' Lovington said. 'I seem to remember Hoffman going on and on about him once at a party.'

'Yes, you're right,' Warren said, shaking his head. 'He said he was pretty competent for a greenie. I bet that fuck is on board that ship right now, looking at us.' He sighed. 'Goddamn it. We spend a million dollars training that ungrateful greenie and look how he repays us.'

'What do we do now?'

Warren though it over for a few moments. 'Cut engine power to a tenth of G,' he finally ordered. 'That should bring our signature out of detection range.'

'Cutting power to point one,' the helmsman answered.

'I lost the signal, Brett,' Sugi said. 'It just died!'

'That's okay,' Brett said. 'I was kind of expecting that. He figured out that we were tracking him and cut his engines.'

'What do we do now?'

'We have a rough course plotted don't we?'

'Yes, but we don't have a range.'

'Fire up the active sensors but keep them on standby for now,' Brett ordered. 'We'll find him again when we need to.' He looked at the communications terminal. 'Frank, get me naval operations on the screen. Use radio signals but encrypt them.'

'Right,' Frank replied.

'And how many stations have reported in manned and ready for GQ? It's been nearly five minutes now.'

'Only engineering,' Frank answered.

'Damn it, not fast enough,' Brett said. He turned on the intercom again. 'Listen up, crew. I really hate to rush you guys and I know we haven't done this before, but I really need you to move your asses getting to your GQ stations. We need to get the airtight doors shut and the weapons manned. We've identified the contact as the Marlin, which is a WestHem Owl. We might be shooting it out with them in a minute.' He flipped the intercom back off and reached down for his cigarettes. 'Why does this shit have to happen in the first hour out?' he asked the air.

Admiral Belting himself answered the emergency hail. His face appeared on Brett's screen looking worried. 'Is there a problem, Brett?' he asked anxiously.

'Nothing with the ship, Admiral,' Brett told him quickly. 'But it seems we have some company out here. We detected the Marlin in a high orbit just as we were accelerating to break our own orbit. It appeared that she was tracking us and maneuvering to stay with us. I ordered a maneuver to prosecute them and they cut their engines down. We lost her at that point but I think she's close enough for us to pick up with an active search.'

'Did you get a course and range?' Belting asked.

'Approximate course. Not enough readings for a range though and my people are still trying to get to GQ positions so I didn't want to go active until that was done. To tell you the truth, I don't think we're really up for a fight with them just now.'

'Understood,' Belting told him. 'Stand by on your active search for now. I'll get some A-12s out to you.'

'Copy that,' he said. 'Standing by.'

'Keep me updated if there are any changes.'

The A-12 was a saucer shaped craft, highly maneuverable, capable of accelerating at nearly 4Gs, and was