The prospect almost made the tense waiting worthwhile.
Because of the need for a more precise trajectory when jumping towards a planet than for an interstellar jump, Dymasio spent a good fifty minutes re-aligning its course with considerable accuracy. Once its new orbital vector intersected Kirchol, the starship reconfigured itself for a jump.
Weapons status check, please,syrinx demanded when the light from Dymasio ’s dive flame began to fade.
Combat wasps and proximity defence systems on-line,chi replied.
OK, everybody, alert status one. We don’t know how many hostiles there are going to be around Kirchol, so we’ll proceed with extreme caution. The admiral wants this ship interdicted, not destroyed, but if we’re outnumbered we let loose the combat wasps and retreat. Let’s just hope this is the nest.
She caught an indistinct mental grumble: It can’t possibly be another decoy jump. Please.from the tiredness of the tone she guessed it was Oxley, who was actually older than Ruben, a hundred and fifty. Sinon had recommended him when she was assembling her first crew. He had stayed on mostly out of loyalty to her when she signed on with the navy. More cause for guilt.
Dymasio jumped.
Kirchol was a muddy brown globe three hundred and seventy thousand kilometres below Oenone ’s hull, attendant moons glimmering dimly in the exhausted sunlight. The gas giant had nothing like the majesty of Saturn, it was too drab, too listless. Even the stormbands lacked ferocity.
Dymasio and the two voidhawks had emerged above the south pole; insignificant on such a scale, one dull speck, and two coal-black motes, falling with imperceptible slowness as the gravity field tugged at them.
Syrinx opened her mind to Chi, combining Oenone ’s perceptual awareness with the weapons officer’s knowledge of their combat wasps’ performance capabilities. Her nerves stretching over a huge volume of space, making a far-off body tremble in reaction.
The Dymasio started to transmit a simple radio code, beaming it down towards the gas giant. Given their position, there would be no overspill falling on the populated inner system, Syrinx realized, no chance of being detected even in a few hours when the radio waves finally bridged the gulf.
An answering pulse flashed out from something in orbit around Kirchol, well outside Oenone ’s mass-detection range. The source point began to move, vaulting out of its orbit at five gees. Oenone couldn’t detect any infrared trace, and there was no reaction-drive exhaust. The radio signal cut out.
A blackhawk.the thought leapt between the edenists on both voidhawks, a shared frisson of glee.
It’s mine,syrinx told thetis on singular-engagement mode. She hadn’t forgotten how the last blackhawk had given them the slip. It rankled still.
Oh, come on,he protested.
Mine,she repeated coolly. You get all the glory nabbing that actual antimatter. What more do you want?
The next blackhawk we come across is mine.
Of course,she cooed.
Thetis retreated, his subconscious grousing away. But he knew better than try and argue with his sister when she was in that mood.
We’re going after it?Oenone demanded.
We certainly are,she reassured it.
Good, I didn’t like losing that last one. I could have matched its swallow.
No, you couldn’t. That was nineteen light-years. You’d damage your patterning cells trying to emulate that. Fifteen light-years is our limit.
Oenone didn’t answer, but she could sense the resentment in its mind. She had almost been tempted to try the larger than usual swallow, but fear of injuring the voidhawk held her back. That and the prospect of stranding the rest of the crew in deep space.
I would never harm you or the crew,Oenone said gently.
I know. But it was annoying, wasn’t it?
Very!
The blackhawk rose up out of the ecliptic plane in a long, graceful curve. Even when it slowed to rendezvous with the Dymasio the two waiting voidhawks couldn’t discern its shape or size. They were thirty thousand kilometres away, too far for optical resolution, and the slightest use of the distortion effect to probe it would have given them away.
Both target craft used their radios when they were five thousand kilometres apart, a steady stream of encrypted data. It made tracking absurdly easy, Oenone ’s passive electronic sensor array triangulating them to half a metre. Syrinx waited until they were only two thousand kilometres apart, then issued the order to interdict.
HOLD YOUR LOCATION,Oenone bellowed across the affinity band. It detected a mental flinch from the blackhawk. CANCEL YOUR ACCELERATION, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INITIATE A SWALLOW. STAND BY FOR RENDEVOUS AND BOARDING.
Gravity surged back into the crew toroid, building with uncomfortable speed. Oenone and Graeae streaked in towards their prey at eight gees. Oenone was capable of generating a counter-acceleration force of three gees around the crew toroid, which still left Syrinx subject to a harsh five gees. Her toughened internal membranes could just about take the strain, but she worried that the blackhawk would try to run. Their crews nearly always used nanonic supplements, enabling them to withstand much higher acceleration. If it developed into a straight chase, Oenone ’s crew were going to suffer, especially Ruben and Oxley.
She needn’t have worried. After Oenone ’s affinity shout, the blackhawk folded in its distortion field. But she was keenly aware of the sullen anger colouring its thoughts, presumably echoing those of its captain. There was a name, too, or rather an insistence of identity: Vermuden .
Graeae was broadcasting a radio message at the Dymasio , the same demand to maintain position. In the Adamist starship’s case, enforcement was a more practical option. The voidhawk reached out with its distortion field, disrupting the quantum state of space around the Dymasio ’s hull; if it tried to jump away now, the interference would produce instabilities in its patterning nodes, with spectacularly lethal results as the desynchronized energy loci imploded.
Oenone and Graeae drew apart as they closed on their respective targets. The Vermuden was a sharp profile in Syrinx’s mind now, a flattish onion shape one hundred and five metres in diameter, its central spire tapering to a needle-sharp point sixty metres above the hull rim. There was no crew toroid, instead three silvery mechanical capsules were fixed equidistantly around the upper hull; one was a life-support cabin large enough for about five or six people, another was a hangar for a small spaceplane, the third was its cargo hold. Energy currents simmered below its hull, spectral iridescent whirls that suggested extreme agitation.
“Captain Kouritz, you and your squad to the airlock, please,” Syrinx said when they began to slow for rendezvous. “Be advised, the blackhawk’s cabin space is approximately four hundred cubic metres.”
Vermuden hung in space three hundred kilometres away, a dusky crescent, slightly ginger in colour. She could feel Chi locking the proximity defence lasers onto the blackhawk, a mix of electronic and bitek senses providing the focus.
“I’ll go with them,” Eileen Carouch said. She tapped her restraint-strap release catch.
“Make sure the Vermuden ’s captain is brought straight back here,” Syrinx said. “I’ll send one of my people with you to fly Vermuden back to Fleet headquarters.” Without its captain, the blackhawk would have to obey an Edenist.
