Flag In Exile

for the com, for the attention signal was the piercing wail of an emergency message. Water runneled off her to soak the decksole as she dashed into her sleeping cabin, but her curse of irritation died unspoken as the sudden, atonal howl of HMS Hector's GQ alarm drowned even the com's wail.

She punched the audio-only acceptance key. Its activation automatically shut down the GQ alert in her quarters, and the silence was a vast relief, but she knew it was going to be an illusory one as her chief of staff appeared on the screen. Commander Montague's expression was strained, and Meiner deliberately made her voice calm and level.

'Yes, Adam?'

'We've just detected multiple hyper footprints, Ma'am.' Montague cleared his throat, and his own voice was a shade calmer when he continued. 'So far we make it fifty point sources, Ma'am. Looks like maybe fourteen or fifteen ships of the wall with about the same number of battlecruisers. The rest are small fry, light cruisers and tin cans.'

'Locus?' Meiner asked more sharply.

'Thirty light-minutes out, Ma'am, two-zero-point-five from the task force, bearing zero-five-niner zero- zero-eight relative from the primary. We're working their vector now. Looks like they made a nice, gentle transit, but they're heading in at four hundred gees. Assuming they make straight for the planet with turnover at about one-eight-four million klicks, they'll come to rest relative to Candor at effective range zero in five-point-three-niner hours.'

'Understood.' Meiner ran a hand over her soaking hair and her mind raced. Her task force consisted of only twelve battlecruisers and their screen, which the Admiralty regarded as adequate protection for a system as far behind the line as Candor. Unfortunately, the Admiralty appeared to have been wrong.

Damn it to hell, what did the Peeps think they were doing? She had no idea how they'd pried a force this big loose from the fighting around Nightingale and sent it this far to the rear. For that matter, why had they done it? Candor was a hundred and fifty light-years behind the front, so they had to know there was no way they could hold onto it.

None of which meant they couldn't take it away from her.

She gave herself a shake. She had five and a half hours before the enemy could come into range of her own command, and it was time to start using some of those hours.

'Alert the planetary authorities,' she told Montague. 'Pass along your force appreciation and tell President Janakowski I'll do what I can, but that we probably can't stop them. Then pass the word to prep for Omega- One.'

Omega-One was the emergency evacuation plan none of her staff had ever really expected to need, and Montague’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.

'Next, send out dispatch boats to Casca, Minette, Yeltsin, Clearaway, Zuckerman, and Doreas. I'm sure they'll all relay, but be sure the Zuckerman courier carries specific orders to inform Grendelsbane.'

'Ma'am, we only have three dispatch boats,' Montague reminded her.

'I know. Use them for Minette, Yeltsin, and Zuckerman, that's where we need the shortest transit times. Detach destroyers for the others.' She saw the look in Montague’s eyes and snorted. 'We're not going to need them, Adam! The best we can do is picket the outer system and keep an eye on these people; we sure as hell can't fight them!'

'Yes, Ma'am.' Montague’s nod was unhappy, but he knew she was right.

'While you're doing that, have Communications set up an all-ships' captain's conference link. I'll be on Flag Bridge to handle it in ten minutes.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

She cut the circuit just as Chief Steward Lewis stepped into her cabin. Lewis already wore her own skinsuit, and Meiner's was draped over her shoulder while the admiral's helmet hung from her left hand. Her face was grim, and Meiner made herself smile as she reached for her suit.

It wasn't easy.

'Task Force Twenty should be hitting Minette just about now, Citizen Commissioner,' Citizen Vice Admiral McQueen observed.

'Really?' Fontein let a perplexed look cross his face as he studied the chrono on the flag deck bulkhead, then nodded. It wouldn't do to seem too incompetent, and it wasn't all that hard to allow for the dilation effect of their own velocity. 'And us, Citizen Admiral?'

'Another fifteen minutes,' McQueen replied, and looked around the flag deck. Her staff bent intently over their consoles, completing last-minute checks, and a frosty smile lit her green eyes. The Manties remained better than her people, she didn't like admitting that, but there was no point lying to herself, yet that was beginning to change. Their technological superiority might be insurmountable, for now at least, but they weren't five meters tall, and a lot of what had happened to the People's Navy had resulted from more mundane factors. Put simply, the Manticorans not only had better equipment, but they were better trained and much more confident, as well.

Well, they also had a five-T-century tradition of winning every war. And though it would never do to say so where someone like Fontein could hear, their better education system explained why their R&D establishment was so much better than Haven's. But the PN was learning, and McQueen's officers were about to receive another lesson in the only school that really mattered. Assuming Intelligence was right, they had enough firepower to annihilate the Manty picket in Minette whatever the enemy tried, and every battle the PN fought gave it that much more insight into Manty doctrine and capabilities. And more experience and confidence in itself.

'Do you expect much resistance, Citizen Admiral?' Fontein asked.

'That depends on how stupid their CO is, Citizen Commissioner.' McQueen was damned if she would call this man 'Sir.' 'He'll have the initial advantage, thanks to his sensor net. I understand Intelligence thinks it's figured out how they can real-time tactical data on us, but until we manage to produce matching systems, we can't do the same thing to them.'

Fontein frowned, but McQueen wasn't worried. What she'd said was self-evident and not quite a criticism of her own superiors, but if Fontein reported it, it might just goad some of those same superiors into finding a way to match the Manties' technology. Their new com system was technically elegant, if Intelligence was right about how they were doing it, and McQueen had her own ideas about how to deal with the Republic's own R&D types' inability to duplicate it. The Solarian League had embargoed technology and war materials to both sides in this war, but the human race had sought an FTL means of communication for almost two thousand T-years. If the Republic could give the League a hint about how the Manties were doing it, then some greedy bastard in one of the League's member navies would be delighted to work a deal that guaranteed the PN an equal share in the hardware its raw information allowed the Leaguers to produce.

After all, she thought cynically, the embargo had been around a long time, and it wouldn't be the first time the Republic had found someone willing to violate it for the right price.

'For the moment, however,' she went on, 'it shouldn't matter much. I'm not planning on anything fancy, Citizen Commissioner, and they shouldn't have the firepower to do anything fancy to us, either. If they want to stand and fight, we'll smash them to wreckage; if they choose to withdraw, we'll just gather in the system and laugh at them.'

A soft almost-growl rose from her staff, and she bared her teeth at Fontein. She had plans of her own, but she wasn't immune to the Navy's collective desire for revenge. The Manties had made them look bad too often; it was about time the Peoples Navy got a little of its own back... and they didn't need any damned 'citizen commissioners' to make them want that.

'It's confirmed, Sir. Sixteen SDs, seven BCs, and thirty-two lighter units.' Vice Admiral Stanton grimaced as his ops officer cataloged the enemy's strength. It was very quiet on Majestic's flag deck, and the red light codes advancing on Everest seemed to pulse with menace in the plot. They'd translated into n- space right on the 20.7 light-minute hyper limit of a G3, and they were boring straight in to catch the planet between them and the primary.

And, he thought, there was nothing he could do to stop them.

'Tracking’s latest estimate, Sir.'