In Enemy Hands

record was going to look very good. Yet in fairness to him, he was more impressed with the citizen rear admiral's ability to motivate people to fight than he was by his own career prospects.

'How much longer, Citizen Commander Foraker?' he asked quietly. Foraker tapped numbers into a keypad, then studied the results for a moment.

'Assuming I've estimated their sensor platform availability correctly and that they really put the ones they had where I'm predicting, Sir, and assuming NavInt's estimate of their passive sensor capability is close to accurate, they should be in a position to begin picking us up within the next seven and a half hours,' she said. 'Of course, we're not emitting a thing, which will make their job a lot harder. As far as active sensors are concerned, the only ones I'm picking up at the moment are a long, long way outside detection ranges, and they look like standard navigation radars, civilian radars, from local intrasystem traffic.'

'No active military sensors at all?' Honeker couldn't quite keep the skepticism out of his voice, and Foraker shrugged.

'Sir, any star system's a mighty big fishpond, and our approach course was designed to stay well clear of the ecliptic to avoid blundering into any of the local traffic’s sensor envelopes. Unless a starship already has a pretty good idea about where another ship is hiding, its active sensor reach is simply too short for any realistically useful sweeps. That's one of the things that makes the Manties' remotes such pains. Their sensor arrays, signal amplification, and dedicated software are better than any of our shipboard systems can come close to matching, and just to be on the safe side, they like to seed the things so densely and generate so much overlap that active sensors can pick up anyone who tries to sneak through. Which doesn't even mention the fact that an intact sensor net lets them shut down their mobile systems completely and rely on relayed data without revealing their own positions. But everything we've seen so far supports the theory that they're short on platforms, and we'll pick up any active sensor emissions long before they can get a useful return off of us.'

Honeker's grunt was as much an apology for doubting her as an acceptance of her explanation, for she'd been very careful not to add, 'I already told you that, dummy!' And the fact was that she had explained the entire plan in detail after she, Bogdanovich, and Lowe had worked out the final points.

Tourville’s squadron was doing something which was virtually unheard of: moving deeper and deeper into an enemy-held system without a single scout deployed to probe its line of advance. Instead, all four battlecruisers and all of their attached units were gathered into the tightest possible formation and coasting ballistically towards an interception with Samovar... and so far, it seemed clear that no one had seen them at all.

It was always possible Bogdanovich and Foraker were wrong about that, Honeker mused. Manty stealth systems were better than those of the People’s Navy, and it was at least possible that the entire Allied picket force was headed straight for Count Tilly and her consorts at this very moment. It seemed unlikely, however, for as Foraker had just pointed out, so far the squadron had yet to take a single active sensor hit, and only active sensors stood any realistic chance of picking them up.

'What the...?' Lieutenant Holden Singer frowned at his display, then made a tiny adjustment. His frown deepened, and he scratched his nose with a perplexed finger.

'What is it?' Commander Dillinger, HMS Enchanters executive officer, crossed the bridge to peer over Singers shoulder.

'Not sure, Sir.' Singer stopped scratching his nose and reached to one side, never taking his eyes from the display as he ran his fingers down a bank of touchpad controls with the precision of a blind concert pianist. The display shifted as the heavy cruisers com lasers queried the other units tied into her tactical net for additional sensor data, and Singer made a disgusted sound. A single data code hung in the displays holo projection, but it wasn't the crisp, clear icon of a known starship. Instead, it was the weak, flickering amber of a possible, completely unidentified contact.

'Well?' Dillinger prompted, and Singer shook his head.

'Probably just a sensor ghost, Sir,' he said, but he sounded unsure of his own conclusion.

'What kind of ghost?' Dillinger demanded.

'Sir, if I knew what it was, it wouldn't be a ghost,' Singer pointed out, and Dillinger inhaled deeply and reminded himself that all tac officers were smartass hotdogs. He should know; he'd come up the tac officer career track himself.

'Then tell me what you do know,' he said after a moment, speaking with such elaborate patience that Singer had the grace to blush.

'All I know for certain, Sir, is that something twanged the passives aboard one of my remotes about...' he checked the time '...eleven minutes ago. I don't know what it was, I didn't pick it up from here, and no one else in the net saw it at all. Battle Comp's calling it 'an anomalous electromagnetic spike,' which is the computers' way of saying they don't know what it was, either. What it looked like was a scrap of an encrypted burst transmission, but there doesn't seem to be anything out there to produce it.'

'Is it inside our active envelope, assuming it's really there at all?' Dillinger asked.

'Can't say, Sir. All I've got is a bearing to where something might have been. I couldn't even begin to estimate the range. Assuming something really is out there, it's beyond our proximity warning radar, which means it's still at least a quarter million klicks out, but from the bearing on the 'anomalous spike,' it has to have originated in-system from our drone shell. That's all I can tell you for sure.'

'I see.' Dillinger rubbed his jaw for a moment. Given that none of Enchanters enormously sensitive passive arrays had picked up anything, it seemed most likely that Singer's 'ghost' was just that: an electronic glitch with no existence in real space. For it to be anything else would have required a starship to be coasting in-system under total EmCon, and that sort of maneuver took more balls than any Peep CO was likely to boast. Especially after the way Manticoran perimeter sensor platforms had repeatedly spotted incoming hostiles far short of the inner system. Still...

'Go active,' he said.

Singer glanced up over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. Commodore Yeargin had specifically instructed her orbiting units to maintain a passive sensor watch only. Active sensors were too short ranged to do much good, anyway, and their only practical function would have been to turn the emitting ships into brilliant electronic beacons for anyone who'd managed to make it past the limited number of platforms her understrength 'task group' had been able to deploy. But her orders had included a proviso authorizing officers of the watch to make targeted, short-duration active sweeps if they felt they were required, and Dillinger nodded to Singer to get on with it.

'Aye, aye, Sir,' the ops officer said, and reached for his console once more.

'Radar pulse!'

Shannon Foraker’s harsh announcement cut through Count Tilly's flag bridge like a saw. Despite their confidence in their tac witch, Tourville and his staff (including Peoples Commissioner Honeker) had felt the tension ratcheting to almost unbearable heights as they swept closer and closer to Samovar. It seemed impossible that they could have gotten so close to a Manty force without being detected... unless the enemy's supply of sensor platforms was even smaller than Foraker had estimated.

'Strength?' Tourville snapped.

'Well above detection values,' Foraker replied, never taking her eyes from her display as she worked her passive sensors. 'They've got us... but I've got them, too!' She looked up at last and bared her teeth at her commanding officer. 'I make it right on two-point-four million klicks, Sir, and I've got a good fix on whoever just pulsed us!'

'Set it up!' Tourville looked at Citizen Lieutenant Fraiser. 'Pass the word,' he told the com officer. 'We launch in thirty seconds!'

'My God!'

Holden Singer snapped upright in his chair, eyes wide. It took eight seconds for his radar pulse to reach Count Tilly and her consorts, and another eight seconds for it to return. During that time, the Peeps' approach speed had cut the range by over a million kilometers... and brought them well into missile range. It took the lieutenant another two seconds to realize what he was seeing and shout a warning, and it took