“Let me know as soon as the supplies have been transferred,” she said. “And tell your men I said well done.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Dagestan said. He saluted, smartly. “I’ll let you know.”
He turned and strode out of the compartment. Kat took another sip of her coffee. Smashing a pirate base wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things, but it was a step forward. The pirates had clearly been trying to get a foothold in the sector. It would be a long time before anyone else started to set up their own base.
By then, we might even have local forces patrolling the spacelanes, she thought, allowing herself a genuine smile. The bastards might never have a chance to turn into a real menace.
Her smile grew wider. They’d won a victory. A small one, but a victory nonetheless. And that would play very well back home.
And maybe they’ll stop trying to take my ships, she told herself. I might even have a chance to finish the matter once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MAXWELL’S HAVEN
“We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in ten minutes, Captain,” Lieutenant Poitiers said as he turned to face her. “The convoy will follow us into realspace.”
“One would hope so,” Captain Jackie Fanning said, crossly. “Communications, I want contact made with the StarCom as soon as we exit hyperspace.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Jackie put a lid on her temper with an effort. Whoever had written her orders hadn’t been able to make up their minds. What should have been a relatively simple mission—escort a hundred freighters to Ahura Mazda—had turned into a nightmare. Their orders had been revised so many times that she sometimes fretted that they weren’t actually following the latest set. Commodore Kipling had made a joke of it, damn the man, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the old man was discharged. She wanted to stay in the navy.
Bloody RIF, she thought. She’d been offered a bonus if she accepted a discharge, quite a sizable bonus, but civilian life had never suited her. Her place was on HMS Invincible’s command deck. And damn the idiot who wrote the orders.
She pushed the thought aside as she checked her ship’s status. There was no reason to expect trouble anywhere near Maxwell’s Haven, but she knew better than to take chances. The bureaucrats were constantly looking for excuses to put officers on the shortlist for discharge, regardless of their war records. Jackie understood that the navy needed to slim down, now that the war had come to an end, but it was irritating. She wasn’t a short-termer. She’d devoted her life to the military.
And everyone is being switched around, she reminded herself. There were times when she felt that the Admiralty was playing a demented game of chess with its personnel. She’d heard of decent officers being sidelined into dead-end posts, while others—without sterling war records—had been promoted over their heads. The increasingly worrying rumors coming out of Tyre didn’t help. The politicians were deadlocked, and the bean counters were running amok. Who knows where it all will end?
“Captain,” Lieutenant Poitiers said, “we will be leaving hyperspace in one minute.”
“Very good,” Jackie said, concealing her irritation. No doubt they’d pick up a whole new set of orders when they made contact with Maxwell’s Haven. No one had managed to find a way to send signals to a starship in transit, although she was sure the techs were working on it. The bean counters would love to find a whole new way to micromanage their subordinates from a safe distance. “Take us out of hyperspace as planned.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Jackie leaned forward, despite herself, as the vortex blossomed to life in front of the starship, allowing them to slide back into realspace. The display flickered, then started to light up with green and blue icons. Maxwell’s Haven had been a major enemy fleet base during the war, until it had been bypassed during the final campaign; now, it was slowly turning itself into a major shipping hub. There were fewer starships in the area than the reports had suggested, Jackie noted as the remainder of the fleet followed them into realspace, but she wasn’t particularly surprised. The interstellar traders would be reluctant to send more ships into the sector while an enemy fleet was on the rampage. Even if they avoided encountering the enemy, they’d have no way to know if their destination would even be there when they arrived. It would be a long time before regular shipping routes were established into the sector . . .
Red icons blazed across the display. “Incoming missiles,” Lieutenant Sanders snapped, as alarms began to howl. “Incoming missiles!”
Jackie kept her voice calm. “Bring up the point defense, then link us into the datanet,” she ordered. Incoming missiles? Here? Maxwell’s Haven was supposed to be safe. “And repower the vortex generator.”
She gritted her teeth as her sensors picked out the enemy fleet, slowly emerging from cloak and closing the range with terrifying speed. Three superdreadnoughts and nearly forty support ships, firing wave after wave of missiles with a speed and efficiency that surprised and horrified her. The Theocracy had clearly been forced to improve its game. They didn’t look to have had any problems with their external racks, not this time. They’d put hundreds of missiles in space.
“Captain, they’re not targeting us,” Lieutenant Sanders said. “They’re aiming at the freighters!”
Jackie blinked in surprise, then cursed as the implications struck her. No one had ever used superdreadnoughts to ambush a convoy, but there was always a first time. The Theocrats weren’t here to capture the freighters, they were here to destroy them. They’d taken a calculated risk in not attacking the escorts—they’d left the warships free to defend the freighters and return fire—but it might well have paid off for them. No freighter ever produced could stand up to such a barrage.
“Orders from the flag, Captain,” Lieutenant
