but it was still remotely possible that they hadn't been detected, and—
'Radar pulse!' Tactical snapped through the yowl of the alarm. 'They've got us, Ma'am!' He paused, then, 'Second drive source detected! Two destroyers at eighteen million klicks!'
Trent bit back another curse. At that range and on that bearing, there was only one reason for a Manty to suddenly light off his drive. Damn the luck! What the hell had they been doing lying doggo in just the right place for her com beam to hit them?!
'Vector change,' Tactical announced in a taut voice. 'They're coming to an intercept course, Ma'am. Acceleration five-two-oh gravities.'
'Bring the wedge up.' Trent turned to her astrogator. 'Plot your translation, Jackie, and execute a random vector change the minute we cross the wall. I want us out of here the instant the generators spin up.'
'Aye, Ma'am. Feeding the plot now.'
'Impellers nominal, Captain!'
'Helm, turn us away from them. Come to one-two-five level and roll port.'
'Aye, Ma'am. Coming to one-two-five level and rolling port.'
Trent turned back to her display, glaring at the brilliant dots of the Manticoran destroyers. Barely a light- minute, right in her goddamned lap. They were too far out to engage her—even assuming they were confident enough of their ID to class her as definitely hostile—but the damage was done.
She made herself lean back, mouth tight, and drummed on the chair arms. There was going to be hell to pay for this, and whatever else came of it, all the shit in the galaxy was about to come down squarely on her head.
'She's gone active,' Tribeca's tac officer reported, her voice almost dreamy with intensity. 'Looks like a Conqueror-class light cruiser, Sir. She's altering vector away from us.'
'Any chance of engaging her?' There was more hope than expectation in Tribeca's voice, and she shook her head.
'Sorry, Sir, no joy. She's way outside our missile envelope, and she's rolling to bring up her belly bands.'
'Damn,' the commander murmured. He watched his own display, ignoring the confused questions rattling over the com from
The impeller source vanished in the sparkle of a hyper footprint, and he grunted. So much for catching her.
'Cut the accel, Helm.' He shoved himself more firmly into his cushioned chair while his brain raced. 'Hal, get off a contact report to Captain Edwards with all of Becky's data. Repeat it to Admiral Parks.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
The bridge lift hissed open to admit his vacsuited exec. The execs skin suit looked out of place on the bridge, for there'd been no time for the duty watch to suit up, and Tribeca grinned scurry as he saw his own suit over the exec's arm.
'Thanks, Fred, but I think it's all over.'
'What's all over?' the exec demanded in exasperation. 'I hope you realize we just blew off the whole exercise, Skipper!'
'I know, I know.' Tribeca stood and crossed back over to the tac station to watch the entire bizarre incident replay itself. 'What do you think that was all about, Becky?'
'Well,' the tac officer leaned back and scratched her nose, 'the one thing I can tell you for sure. Sir, is that she was way too far out to pick up anything from the inner system on shipboard sensors. Add that to the fact that she was hitting something with a com laser, and—' She shrugged.
'But how in hell could they have—?' Tribeca shook his head. He couldn't quite believe the Peeps had some sort of stealth system RMN sensors couldn't penetrate, but as Becky said, that cruiser had been lasing something. And since his own sensors still didn't show anything for that something to have been, the empirical evidence said they did have a stealth capability far better than ONI had ever guessed.
'Helm,' he said, still staring down at the tactical display, 'put us back where we were when we picked up the first trickle, then come to zero-eight-eight. Take it slow, I don't want to overrun anything.'
'Aye, aye, Sir. Reversing course now.'
'Good.' He put his hand lightly on the tac officer's shoulder. 'If there really is something out here, it's going to be harder than hell to spot, Becky. Don't make any assumptions about Peep systems capabilities. Pretend it's something of ours that doesn't want to be found, then find it.'
'Aye, aye, Skipper. If it's there, I'll find it,' she promised, and he squeezed her shoulder.
'Skipper, will you please tell me what's going on?' his exec pleaded, and Tribeca grinned, despite his tension, as the voice of
'Come on into the briefing room, Fred.' He sighed. 'I might as well explain it to you and Commander Fargo at the same time.'
'My God.' Admiral Parks shook his head, staring at the message on his screen. 'I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. How in hell did Peeps pull this off, Vincent?'
'I don't know, Sir.' Capra pushed to his feet and prowled restlessly around the briefing room. 'Oh, I can think of enough different ways to get the platforms into position; I just can't imagine how they came up with the stealth systems to hide them from us after they did it.'
'I'd say Commander Tribeca's probably on the right track, Admiral,' Zero O'Malley said. The intelligence officer scrolled back up to the pertinent portion of Tribeca's message and tapped it with a stylus. 'We can't be sure till he gets back here with the relay and we tear it apart, but his preliminary description of it certainly suggests the fusion of more than one outfit's tech, and God knows there's enough Havenite trade with the Solarian League.'
'But the League's embargoed military technology to both of us,' Parks pointed out, and O'Malley nodded. Getting that embargo in place had been one of the Star Kingdom's more effective diplomatic moves, for it certainly favored Manticore's generally superior tech base over Haven's. It had also been hard to achieve, and only Manticore's control of the League's traffic through the Sigma Draconis terminus of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction had given the Foreign Office the clout to bring it off.
'Agreed, Sir, but I'm not suggesting this was an authorized technology transfer. The League's organized on an awful loose, consensual basis, and some of its member planets resent how hard we pushed for the embargo. It's possible one of them, or even a rogue defense contractor or a bribable League Navy officer, would be willing to violate it.'
'Zero may be right, Sir,' Captain Hurston put in, 'but I don't think how they did it is as important just now as they fact that they have done it.' The ops officer ran a hand through his hair, and his voice was worried. 'And, of course, there's the question of where else they've done it. Yorik isn't anywhere near as critical as other Alliance systems, which suggests that it wouldn't have had overriding priority. Which, in turn, suggests—'
'That they've done it all along the frontier,' Parks finished grimly, and Hurston nodded.
The admiral tipped his chair back and scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, wishing he could believe Hurston was wrong. But he couldn't. If the Peeps had bugged Yorik with their damned invisible sensor platforms, then they'd done it elsewhere, as well.
He clenched his jaw and swore silently. Manticore had gotten too confident of its technical edge, refused to contemplate the possibility that the Peeps, equally aware of the differential, might take steps to redress it. And he himself had been as blind as anyone else.
'This changes everything,' he said finally. 'Our—my— belief that Admiral Rollins couldn't know we'd pulled out of Hancock no longer applies. Which,' he forced himself to make the admission in a level voice, 'means Admiral Sarnow was right all along.'
He drew a breath and shook himself, then popped his chair upright, lowered his hands, and spoke crisply.
'All right, people. I screwed up, and it's time to try to fix it. Mark,' he looked at Hurston, 'I want you to tear every one of our contingency plans apart. Crank in the assumption that the Peeps have been watching our
