On Basilisk Station

Nimitz had hurtled from his perch at the first shrill of the alarm. He'd been through this same drill as often as she, and he scurried across the cabin to the boxlike affair she'd had clamped to the bulkhead below her sailplane plaque immediately after coming aboard. That box wasn't Fleet issue, and it had cost Honor a small fortune, for it was a custom-built life support module, sized to Nimitz's stature and fitted with the same search and rescue beacon as a Fleet vac suit. It was good for a hundred hours on its internal life support, and the door slammed automatically behind him as he fled into it. He couldn't open it from the inside, but unless something scored a direct hit on it, he could survive even if battle damage opened the cabin to space.

She paused to give the module door lock a single double-checking slap, and then she vanished through the cabin hatch and headed for the lift at a run.

The alarm stopped screaming while she was in the lift, and she made herself move briskly but confidently when the door opened onto the bridge. All stations were manned, and she heard the background mutter of voices reporting readiness states while the battle board moved from amber to the steady, scarlet glow of readiness with gratifying speed.

McKeon had beaten her there. He stood beside her command chair, hands clasped behind him, his face calm, but there were beads of sweat along his hairline. She nodded acknowledgment of his presence and slipped past him into her chair. Its displays and monitors began deploying about her as she sat, surrounding her with a flow of information that awaited her slightest glance, but she kept her eyes on McKeon.

'Status?'

'All stations manned, Captain,' the exec said crisply. 'Impeller wedge coming up—we should have movement capability in another ten minutes. Sirius has been underway for six-point-eight minutes ... at four hundred and ten gees.'

He paused, and Honor's jaw clenched. That was low for most warships, but impossibly fast for a freighter, and it confirmed Santos's deduction. Only military impellers could have produced that kind of acceleration for a ship Sirius's size ... and only a military grade inertial compensator could allow her crew to survive it.

'The courier boat?' Her voice was sharp, and McKeon frowned.

'She started powering her wedge just after we did, Ma'am.'

'Understood.' Honor looked over her shoulder. 'Do we have a link to the Resident Commissioner, Mr. Webster?'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Put it on my screen.' Honor looked back down just as a pale-faced Dame Estelle appeared. The commissioner opened her mouth, but Honor raised a hand and spoke first. 'Excuse me, Dame Estelle, but time is short. I think I know what's going on now. Have you heard anything more from your patrol?' Matsuko shook her head mutely, and Honor's face went more masklike still.

'Very well. I am dropping my Marines now.' She shot a sideways glance at McKeon, and he nodded and hit an intercom key to give the order. 'Aside from that, there's very little we can do for you, I'm afraid. And unless I miss my guess, we're going to have problems of our own soon enough.'

'I understand,' Dame Estelle broke in, 'but there's something you should know before you do anything else, Captain.' Honor cocked her head and gestured for the commissioner to continue. 'We picked up a transmission from the general area where our patrol went down just after we lost contact with Lieutenant Malcolm,' Matsuko said quickly. 'It was scrambled but not encrypted, and we just broke the scramble. The transmitter didn't identify himself, and he used a code name for his recipient, but we detected a transmission to the freighter from the Haven Consulate immediately afterward, so I think we know who it was intended for.'

'What did it say?' Honor demanded. Dame Estelle didn't answer in words; she simply played the message off, and Honor's eyes went cold and flat as a male voice gasped over her com.

'Odysseus! It's Odysseus now, damn it! The frigging Shaman's lost his goddamned mind! They're boiling up out of the caves, and I can't hold them! The hopped-up bastards are kicking off right fucking now!'

A surflike roar of Medusan voices and the whiplash cracks of countless rifles echoed behind the words, and then the sounds cut off as Dame Estelle stopped the playback.

'Thank you, Dame Estelle,' Honor said flatly. 'I understand what's happening now. Good luck.'

She killed the circuit and bent over her maneuvering display, ignoring McKeon as she punched in the parking orbit pattern and laid vectors across it. It was going to be close, but there was far less orbital traffic than there had been, and if she could pull it off ...

'How long for impeller now?' she asked without looking up.

'Four minutes, twenty seconds,' McKeon said tightly, and Honor nodded to herself. She could do it. Probably. She fed McKeon's readiness numbers into her display, and a time-to-execution readout began to blink its way steadily downward.

'Thank you. Are the Marines away?'

'Yes, Ma'am. And Commander Suchon. Lieutenant Montoya came aboard an hour ago.'

She did look up at that, and her stony face flared with a brief but real smile as she saw the amusement in McKeon's eyes. Then the smile faded, and she bent back to her maneuvering display.

'We'll be going in pursuit of Sirius, Mr. McKeon. It's imperative that we stop her from leaving the system. What's her current heading?'

'She's steadied down on two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true from the primary, Captain,' Lieutenant Brigham's crisp voice replied for the exec.

'What's out there, Mercedes?'

'At her current heading and acceleration she'll hit the hyper wall about one light-minute this side of the Tellerman wave, Captain,' Brigham said after a moment, and Honor swallowed a silent curse. She'd been afraid of something like that.

'Impellers in three minutes, Ma'am,' McKeon reported.

'Mr. Webster!'

'Yes, Ma'am?'

'Stand by to record a signal to Lieutenant Venizelos at Basilisk Control for immediate relay to Fleet HQ. Fleet scramble, no encryption. Priority One.'

Heads turned, and Webster's swallow was clearly audible.

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Standing by to record.'

'`Mr. Venizelos, you will commandeer the first available Junction carrier to relay the following message to Fleet HQ. Message begins: Authentication code Lima-Mike-Echo-Niner-Seven-One. Case Zulu. I say again, Zulu, Zulu, Zulu. Message ends.'' She heard McKeon suck air between his teeth at her shoulder. 'That is all, Mr. Webster,' she said softly. 'You may transmit at will.' Webster said absolutely nothing for an instant, but when he replied, his voice was unnaturally steady.

'Aye, aye, Captain. Transmitting Case Zulu.' There was another brief pause, then, 'Case Zulu transmitted, Ma'am.'

'Thank you.' Honor wanted to lean back and draw a deep breath, but there was no time. The message she'd just ordered Webster to send and Venizelos to relay to Manticore was never sent in drills, not even in the most intense or realistic Fleet maneuvers. Case Zulu had one meaning, and one only: 'Invasion Imminent.'

'Captain, are you sure—?' McKeon began, but her raised hand stopped him.

'Time to impellers, Exec?'

'Forty-three seconds.'

'Thank you.' She punched in the new estimate, a corner of her mind noting that Dominica Santos was shaving whole seconds off her original numbers. The time-to-execution display flickered to a new value, then resumed its steady downward march. 'Chief Killian?'

'Aye, Captain?' The coxswain's shoulders were tight, but his voice was calm.

'Come to three-five-seven by one-seven-one, Chief Killian. On my command, I want three hundred gravities acceleration on that heading for ten seconds. Then come directly to two-seven-four by zero-niner-three true and go to maximum military power.'

Stunned silence gripped the entire bridge, deeper even than that provoked by her Code Zulu, and then Chief Killian looked over his shoulder at her.