The Short Victorious War

No merchant skipper would maneuver like that—not if he had a choice—and the captain's stomach tightened. There were supposed to be three freighters, escorted by a pair of destroyers, but Alvarez saw only one impeller source. Coupled with the freighter's crash translation and accel...

'Astrogation, plot me an intercept course! Communications, get off an immediate contact report to Command Central!'

He hardly noticed the taut responses as he waved Hardesty in close beside his chair. The exec's face was as worried as his own, and Brentworth forced his voice to remain very level.

'Who else is out here, Jack? Anyone closer to them than us?'

'No, Sir,' Hardesty said quietly, and Brentworth's mouth tightened, for Alvarez was currently at rest relative to Yeltsin's Star. His ship's acceleration was twice that of the unknown freighter, but the freighter was headed almost directly away from her at over 14,000 KPS, and she was far beyond missile range... as anyone following her would also be.

'Where's that course, Astrogation?' he snapped.

'Sir, we can't intercept short of Grayson orbit if she maintains her current acceleration,' the astrogator replied. 'At max accel, we'll take over eighty-eight minutes just to match velocity with her.'

Brentworth's hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. He'd been afraid of that. The only, real hope for an interception now was that someone closer to Grayson had a convergent vector. But the freighter wouldn't be running this hard unless something was chasing her, and it was remotely possible he could get into range of that something.

'Put us on her track anyway,' he said coldly.

'Aye, aye, Sir. Helm, come zero-one-three degrees to port.'

'Aye, aye, Sir. Coming zero-one-three to port.'

'Sir, I have a transmission from the freighter!'

'Put it on the main screen.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

A face appeared on the main view screen. It was a woman's face, damp with sweat and lined with strain, and her voice was harsh and tight.

'—ayday! Mayday! This is the Manticoran merchant ship Queensland! I am under attack by unknown warships! My escort and two other freighters have already been destroyed! Repeat, I am under attack by unknown war—'

'Captain! I've got another footprint!' The tactical officers report slashed across the unknown woman's frantic message, and Brentworth's eyes snapped back to his repeater. A new impeller source burned within it, hard upon the freighters heels. No, there were two—three!— of them, and the captain swallowed an agonized groan. These were no merchantmen—not with those power curves—and they were streaking in pursuit of the freighter at over five KPS?.

'—any ship,' the Manticoran captain's voice spilled from the com. It had taken over three minutes for her words to reach Alvarez. They'd been transmitted before she could have seen her executioners transit behind her; now they echoed in the back of Brentworth's mind like some curse from the dead as he watched the grav signatures of impeller drive missiles spit towards her ship. 'Any ship who can hear us! This is Captain Uborevich of the Queensland. I am under attack! Repeat, I am under attack and require assistance! Any ship who can hear me, please respond!'

Alvarez's com officer stared at his captain almost pleadingly, but Brentworth said nothing. There was no point in responding, and every man on the bridge knew it.

The missile specks drove after the freighter, accelerating at almost 90,000 gravities, and Brentworth watched sickly as they overtook their target. They merged with the freighter's larger impeller signature... and Queensland vanished from the face of the universe.

'—respond!' Uborevich's voice still called from the com. 'Any ship, please respond! I require assi—'

'Turn it off,' Brentworth grated, and the dead woman's voice died in mid-word. He stared at his display, watching Queensland's killers arc away, knowing they would recross the hyper limit and vanish long before he could bring them into range, and frustration— and hate—burned in his eyes.

'Readings, Henri?' he asked in a deathly quiet voice, and his tac officer swallowed.

'Nothing positive, Sir. They're regular warships—they have to be to pull that accel and fire that many missiles. I'd guess a light cruiser and a pair of tin-cans, but that's about all I can tell you.'

'Make sure everything you can get goes on the chip. Maybe Intelligence or the Manties can get more from an analysis than we can.'

'Yes, Sir.'

Brentworth sat silently, glaring at his display until the trio of murderers swept back out across the limit and disappeared, then leaned back with a weary, defeated sigh.

'Keep us on our intercept, Astro,' he said tiredly. 'Maybe she at least got her lifeboats away before they killed her.'

Lieutenant Commander Mudhafer Ben-Fazal yawned and sipped more coffee. The G4 primary of the Zanzibar System was a brilliant pinprick far behind his light attack craft as it swept slowly along the edge of the outermost asteroid belt, and he treasured the coffee's warmth as an anodyne against the cold loneliness beyond its hull. He would have preferred to be elsewhere—almost anywhere elsewhere—but he hadn't been consulted when his orders were cut.

The leaders of the ZLF had been driven from the soil of their homeworld, yet they still got infrequent weapon shipments into their adherents' hands somehow. They were coming from out-system, and though whoever supplied them was very careful to remove all identifying marks before turning them over, the Peoples Republic of Haven was the only interstellar power which had recognized the ZLF. Intelligence was virtually certain the PRH was doing more than merely providing sanctuary in ports like Mendoza and Chelsea for the terrorists' decrepit 'navy.'

But whoever was funding and arming the ZLF, they still had to get the guns and bombs to Zanzibar, and Intelligence's best guess was they were using miners for their conduit. The Zanzibar system was rich in asteroids, and no one could stop and search every battered work boat. Nor could they hope to patrol the belts themselves in any meaningful way, Ben-Fazal thought tiredly. The area was simply too huge for the Navy's limited strength to search, but there was always the chance that someone might happen across something, which explained why Al-Nassir was out here, depriving one Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal of his hard earned leave time.

He chuckled and tipped his chair back as he took another sip of coffee. Al-Nassir was a child's toy compared to real warships like the division of Manticoran battlecruisers orbiting Zanzibar, but her weapons would more than suffice for any of the ZLF 'Navy's' rag-tailed ships. And, his chuckle faded, it would be sweet to catch some of the animals whose bombs and 'liberation offensives' had killed and maimed so many civilians.

'Excuse me, Captain, but I'm getting something on my passive arrays.'

Ben-Fazal cocked an eyebrow at his tactical officer, and the lieutenant shrugged.

'It's not much, Sir—just a little radio leakage. Could be a regular prospectors beacon, but if it is, it's pretty badly garbled.'

'Where's it coming from?'

'That cluster at two-seven-three, I think. As I say, it's very faint.'

'Well, let's take a look,' Ben-Fazal decided. 'Bring us to two-seven-three, Helm.'

'Yes, Sir.'

The tiny warship altered course, heading for the elusive signal source, and the tac officer frowned.

'It really is garbled, Sir,' he reported after a moment. 'If it's a beacon, its identifier code's been completely scrambled. I've never heard anything quite like it. It's almost like—'

Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal never learned what it was almost like. The lean, lethal shape of a light cruiser swam into sight, drifting from the clustered asteroids like a shark from a bed of kelp, and he had one fleeting