'All right. If that's what we have to do, then that's what we have to do. But it's going to take time to organize all this.'
'It is that, Sir,' Therret agreed grimly, then smiled crookedly. 'On the other hand, we should have some time in hand. Hades isn't going anywhere!'
'No, but if they get their hands on a ship or two, the prisoners might,' Chernock pointed out.
'Not very many of them,' Therret countered respectfully. 'It would have taken thousands of unarmed people to overrun the garrison. I'll grant they might grab off the odd ship arriving solo, but they'd need more life support than they could possibly have captured that way to get any significant percentage of the prison population off-world.'
'And if they sent a courier to the Manties to request a relief convoy?'
'They may have done that, Sir,' Therret conceded after a moment. 'I don't know if the Manties are in a position to respond to a request like that after the hammering the Navy's finally given them, but it's certainly possible. In that case, though, I doubt very much that we have enough firepower in-sector to meet them in a stand-up fight. So either they'll have come and gone before we get there, or they'll be there and we'll have to avoid action, or they haven't come yet and we'll get in in front of them, or else they're not coming at all. That's a fifty-fifty chance of accomplishing something even if the prisoners did manage to get their hands on some sort of courier, and if we send dispatches to GHQ, we can certainly get a relief force to Cerberus a hell of a lot quicker than the Manties could.'
'Yes, and then we might as well post the system's coordinates on a Navy info site,' Chernock sighed.
'We can't have it both ways, Sir,' Therret said almost gently. 'Either there's a serious problem, and we need Navy help to deal with it, or there isn't.'
'I know. I know.' Chernock frowned into the distance, then shrugged. 'All right, Brig. Before we do anything else, check our force availability. We've certainly got the manpower to restore control of Camp Charon. I don't know if we've got enough intervention battalions ready to go, but I'm sure we can draft enough Marines from the Fleet base to do the job, especially with orbital fire support available as needed. What I'm not sure about is the availability of transport and/or naval escort shipping. I want a complete report on my desk within three hours. Can you do it that quickly?'
'Almost certainly, but this is coming at everyone cold, Sir. I'd estimate that it will take at least a standard week—probably a little longer—to get a troop movement organized on the scale we're projecting. And I have no idea at all how quickly the Navy can respond.'
'Then I guess we're about to find out,' Chernock said grimly.
Chapter Forty-Six
'Welcome to Flag Bridge, Citizen General,' Citizen Commander Yang said pleasantly.
'Thank you, Citizen Commodore,' Citizen Major General Thornegrave responded, as politely as if they both meant a word of it, and they smiled at one another.
'As I explained when I screened you, we're just coming up on our alpha translation, Sir,' Yang went on. 'We'll reenter n-space in—' she glanced at the date/time display '—eleven and a half minutes.'
'Excellent, Citizen Commodore. And from there to Hades orbit?'
'We're making a fairly gentle translation, Sir.' Yang smiled again, this time with genuine humor. 'There's no need for what a crash translation does to people's nerves and stomachs, after all. That means we'll hit normal- space with a velocity of only about a thousand KPS, and we'll be about fourteen and a half light-minutes from Hades on a direct intercept course. Unfortunately from the prospect of a fast passage, however, the Longstops can only manage about two hundred and twenty gravities. That gives us a total flight time of almost exactly six hours, but the decel leg will be eight minutes—and about a hundred and fifteen thousand klicks—longer than the accel because of the velocity we'll take across the alpha wall with us.'
'I see.' Thornegrave nodded gravely, and despite his antipathy for regular officers in general and his awareness of the need to put this regular officer in particular in her place and keep her there, he was grateful for her apparent tact. No doubt a Navy officer, or even a Marine, would have realized what bringing an initial velocity across from hyper-space would have meant for their passage time to Hades. Thornegrave hadn't, but Yang had found a way to give him the information without drawing any attention to the fact that he'd needed it. That might not matter in the long run, but her explanation might also keep him from saying something which would sound at best ill-informed and at worst stupid in front of some junior officer.
Yang saw the flicker of awareness in his eyes, but she had no intention of indicating that she had, for she'd long since decided Thornegrave needed regular stroking to keep him off her back. It wasn't even really because he was StateSec, either. She'd had regular Navy superiors who were just as compulsive about controlling everything and everyone around them, and she sometimes wondered if that sort of personality was what had propelled them to senior rank in the first place.
Of course, she didn't dare forget his SS connections for a moment, either, and he'd seen to it that she hadn't. The one good thing about her current assignment was that there was no people's commissioner attached to her staff. The downside of that was that the reason for it was that she was, in effect, simply attached to Thornegrave's staff, which left him filling the role of watchdog himself. Worse, the Longstops couldn't climb above the delta bands (which was why no Navy officer would have even considered using them to deliver so many troops so close to the front line of a serious war), so the piddling little 33.75 light-year-voyage from Shilo to Cerberus had required over two hundred and ninety-five hours, base-time. Relativity had reduced that to just under ten days subjective at the transports' best speed, but that had still given him entirely too much time to make himself totally unbearable. Of course, she thought moodily, a man with his immense native talent could have done that in just a few hours. Nine days had simply given him the time he needed to achieve complete artistry.
But they were coming up on Cerberus at last, thank God. She could at least hope that the chance to boss around more of his red-coated SS minions would distract him from badgering her for the next couple of days. On the other hand, we're scheduled to ship everyone on board and be out of here within seventy-two hours, and it's going to take us over five and a third T-weeks subjective to reach Seabring. She shuddered at the very thought, but shuddering wouldn't change anything.
'The actual translation from hyper to n-space is quite visually spectacular, Sir,' she went on in her most pleasant voice. 'Have you ever had the opportunity to observe it?'
'No. No, I haven't,' Thornegrave replied after a moment.
'If you'd like a ringside seat for it, Sir, you can watch the main plot here on Flag Bridge. CIC will be keeping an eye out for Tactical, and I'm sure Citizen Captain Ferris will be watching his maneuvering plot carefully. But I rather enjoy watching the translation bleed myself, so I normally have the main plot configured to take a visual feed from the forward optical heads. Or you can also watch it directly with the naked eye from the observatory blister.'
Thornegrave regarded her thoughtfully. He more than half suspected she was looking for any excuse to tempt him off 'her' flag bridge, but if she was she'd certainly found a bait that piqued his interest. And she had covered his ass for him with that smoothly slipped in little explanation, so he supposed he could argue that he owed her some small triumph in return. He weighed silent pros and cons for several seconds, then shrugged mentally. He had no intention of spending the next six hours standing around on Flag Bridge. Yang was going to, but it was her job to play chauffeur. In his own case, however, he could use the observation blister as an excuse to leave now, then come back several hours later to fulfill his role as the expeditionary CO without losing face.
'I believe I will watch it from the observation blister, Citizen Commodore,' he said graciously. 'Thank you for the suggestion.'
'You're quite welcome, Sir,' Yang told him, and her eyes glinted with satisfaction as she watched him head for the lift.
Citizen Lieutenant Rodham was waiting to play guide again. Thornegrave's initial opinion of the citizen lieutenant had been amply confirmed in the course of the trip from Shilo, and he was amazed and baffled by how someone as unprepossessing as young Guillermo could convince so many different women to sleep with him. The
