The Short Victorious War

Parks' mouth twitched, and he turned his back on the sphere, folding his hands behind him.

'If anyone needs me, I'll be in my quarters, Vincent,' he said quietly, and walked slowly from the flag bridge.

PNS Alexander coasted silently through the outer reaches of the Yorik system on another Argus run. It should have been routine, given the light forces the Manties normally maintained here, but Alexander's tactical display was a blaze of crimson impeller sources, and her captain stood peering down at it in consternation.

'What the hell is all this, Leo?' Commander Trent asked her tac officer.

'I don't have the least idea, Ma'am,' the tac officer replied frankly. 'It looks like a task force picket shell, but what it's doing here beats me. Its more like something I'd expect to see at Hancock.'

'Me, too.' Trent's tone was sour, and she looked across at Lieutenant Commander Raven. Her exec was officer of the watch, seated in the command chair at the center of the bridge, but his attention was on his captain rather than his displays.

'What do you think, Yasir?' she asked, and he twitched his shoulders at the question.

'I think I'd like to abort the pickup, Ma'am,' he replied in the careful tone of someone who knew what could happen to both their careers if they did. 'There's too much traffic out here, and they're operating mighty aggressively. All it takes is one of them in the wrong place, and—'

He grimaced, and Trent nodded. Raven had a point. But the presence of so many Manty ships argued that something unusual was happening in Yorik, which made the Argus data even more important. That, she knew, would be the verdict of any court of inquiry, anyway.

She propped one shoulder against the tac display's. hood and closed her eyes in thought. The risk to Alexander herself was minimal; they were still outside the hyper limit, and they could bring their wedge on-line in barely two minutes. The hyper generators would take a little longer—the trace signature from a standby translation field was simply too powerful to damp out—but Alexander could still be out of here long before anything got close enough to hurt her. No, the risk was to the Argus net itself. If they were picked up, the Manties were bound to wonder why a PN light cruiser would be skulking around way out here. And if something started them actively looking, not even the sensor arrays' Solarian-built stealth systems could hide them forever.

'We'll continue the operation,' she said finally. 'We can't bring the wedge up without risking detection, anyway, so we're committed to the run in. But I want our sensor people on their toes. If there's even a hint of anyone in the area when we reach the transmission point, we'll pass up the data dump.'

Commander Tribeca lounged comfortably in his command chair and chortled mentally while he watched the displays and thumbed his nose at Captain Sir Roland T Edwards.

HMS Arrowhead and the two other destroyers from her division were cast in the role of aggressors for this particular exercise, and, at the moment, Arrowhead and Attack were busy pretending to be holes in space and watching the rest of the flotilla look for them. Every system was powered down to a bare trickle while his passive sensors tracked the other nine destroyers and the light cruiser bumbling along astern of them in the role of a 'merchantman.' Another couple of hours should bring the whole 'convoy' within missile range, and, at the moment, every one of those destroyers was looking in exactly the wrong direction. There were going to be some red faces at the exercise debrief, he thought complacently.

Of course, it was always possible one of the other cans would double back and look in his direction, but even if they did, they were unlikely to spot him. If he was picked up, he was going to have to go for a high-accel run in and hope he got lucky, yet that was a worst-case scenario, and it didn't look like happening. Captain Edwards had obviously decided Tribeca was outside him—not without a little help from Tribeca. Ambush, the third destroyer of Tribeca's division, was somewhere out there, where she'd deliberately leaked a carefully designed scrap of divisional com chatter, and Edwards thought he had a fix on the division's general location.

Tribeca gave a silent snicker at the thought. Edwards was such a pompous ass. It would never occur to him that anyone could out-sneak him, and—

'Excuse me, Skipper, but I just picked up something odd. It— There it is again.'

'What?' Tribeca spun his chair toward his tactical officer and frowned. 'There what is, Becky?'

'I don't know, Sir. It's like...' Her voice trailed off and she shook her head, then looked at the com officer. 'Hal, sweep zero-eight-zero to one-two-zero. I think it's a com laser.'

'On it,' the com officer replied, and Tribeca's frown deepened.

'A com laser? From who?'

'That's just it, Skip.' The tac officers fingers redirected her own passive sensors as she replied. 'I don't see anything. If it's a com laser, it's awful low power, and I'm just catching a trickle now and then.'

'It's intermittent?' Tribeca's brow furrowed, and the tac officer nodded

'I've got it, too, Sir,' the com officer said. 'Zero-eight-eight.' He frowned and adjusted a rheostat carefully. 'It's a com laser, all right. We're just catching the fringe of it. If I had to guess, I'd say there's a glitch in the sender's tracking systems. Not much of one—the beam's only kicking a little—but enough to swing it intermittently our way. It's scrambled, too... and I don't recognize the scramble code.'

'What?' Tribeca shoved himself out of his chair and moved quickly to the tac station. 'You don't see anything out there, Becky?'

'No, Sir. Whatever it is, it's running silent and too far out to find on passives. Should I go active?'

'Wait.' Tribeca rubbed an eyebrow furiously, the exercise forgotten. Arrowhead was over ten light-minutes from the nearest senior officer. If he passed the buck, he'd give whoever was on the other end of that laser at least twenty minutes to coast out of active sensor range while he awaited orders, and he had no idea what the bogey's vector might be. But he did know the bogey wasn't Manticoran—not if Hal couldn't ID its scramble code.

He dropped back into his command chair and depressed a stud.

'Engineering, Lieutenant Riceman,' a voice said.

'Rice, this is the Captain. We're about to go to battle stations.' He heard someone inhale sharply on the bridge and ignored it. 'Forget the exercise. How quick can you bring the wedge up for real?'

'Eighty seconds and you're hot, Skipper,' Riceman said flatly, and Tribeca nodded.

'Get ready, then,' he said, and looked back at the tac officer. 'I want you to take us to battle stations on my command, Becky, but leave fire control and sensors on standby. Whatever this is, it's in range for a com laser. It could also be in energy weapon range, so I don't want any active emissions until the wedge and sidewall come up. Got it?'

'Yes, Sir. What about Attack, Sir? She'll be a sitting duck without her wedge if someone takes a shot at her.'

'Agreed, but if whoever's out there knew we were here, they wouldn't have been transmitting in the first place, so I don't think they've got us on passive, either. If I'm right, they'll be too busy looking at our big, noisy emissions signature to notice Attack before she figures out something's going on and gets her own wedge up. Just the same, Hal,' he looked at the com officer, 'lay a laser on her and order her to action stations as soon as our wedge goes up.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

'All right, then, Becky. Battle stations!'

'Contact!' Alexander's tac officer shouted. 'I have an impeller wedge, bearing one-three-six by oh-niner-two!' He slapped keys on his console. 'Manty destroyer at eighteen million klicks, Captain!'

'Shit!' Commander Trent slammed a fist into the arm of her command chair. 'Battle stations, but do not go active! Confirm!'

'Do not go active, aye.' The tac officer confirmed the order even as Yasir Raven's thumb jammed down on the battle stations alarm. Staying in passive meant the cruiser couldn't bring up her impeller wedge or sidewalls,