CHAPTER 2
DUNSTAN
“Someone’s in a big hurry,” Lieutenant Bosworth said. “Look at this, sir. He’s practically leaving contrails in space.”
Lieutenant Commander Dunstan Park, master of RNS Minotaur, swiveled around in his seat to look at the plot table, where his second-in-command was slowly turning the projection with his hands to isolate a slice of the stellar map. Minotaur was loitering in space off the current shipping lane from Rhodia to Pallas, gathering and collating data from the Mnemosyne and her own sensors to keep track of everything around her, sitting like a spider in the center of an electronic web.
“Let’s see that,” Dunstan said. “Anything off about him?”
“Negative, sir. It’s an Oceanian courier. Flight plan checks out. They’re just going fast enough to travel back in time.”
Bosworth isolated a segment of the plot and magnified it. It showed a portion of the main traffic lane as a dotted line. Half a dozen different ships were strung along the line like pearls on a bracelet, each with their ID tag and vital data next to their color-coded icon. The one Bosworth had pointed out was going down the lane so fast that it looked like an antiship missile homing in on a target.
“They are really moving. What’s the acceleration?”
Bosworth checked the number and let out a low whistle.
“Fifteen g, sir.”
“Good gods. Must be an express delivery. Check the type and registry. I didn’t think there was a merchant out there that could pull that sort of acceleration.”
On the other side of the plot table, Lieutenant Mayler opened a data window above his console and consulted the database. When he found the information, he flicked the relevant pages over to Bosworth’s plot display, where they attached themselves to the fast-moving icon.
“OMV-2022 Zephyr,” Mayler said. “Database says she’s a speed yacht. Tanaka Spaceworks model two thirty-nine.”
“Want me to ping them for a status check?” Bosworth asked.
“No, let them do their thing,” Dunstan replied. “They’re not breaking any regulations. But do save that drive profile for future reference. I’m not sure we have anything in the fleet that can chase something this fast.”
“They can outrun us, but they can’t outrun a Mnemosyne signal. Speed is fine, but system-wide arrest powers are final.”
“Quite right, Bosworth. But still.” Dunstan looked at the speed readout of OMV Zephyr again with some envy. Minotaur could do ten g, and maybe break eleven with all the systems running at 100 percent. An extra four g on top of that would make her almost invulnerable against anything launched at her from more than a hundred kilometers away. The ship’s defensive AI gained a few million calculations with each second they could put between themselves and an incoming threat, and an extra g or two could make the difference between life or death in a close fight.
“Look at that power output, on a five-hundred-ton hull. That’s a ridiculously large drive for a hull that size,” Mayler contributed. “Speed yacht, she’s made of composites, most likely. No armor, no weapons.”
“Speed is a kind of armor, too, Lieutenant. You don’t need titanium plating if you’re not around to take the hit,” Dunstan replied. “All right, sports time is over. Let’s get the big picture again. We’re the only RN ship in the area today. It won’t do if we miss a pirate because we’re busy watching a speed run.”
Lieutenant Bosworth closed the data readouts and restored the plot display to its default magnification state, which showed most of the space between Rhodia and Pallas and all the active traffic going back and forth on the transit route. Even though the two planets were almost in opposition this month, and the lowest-energy transfer path between them was at its shortest in four decades, it was still a lot of space to patrol for the handful of light cruisers and frigates the navy had assigned to police duties. Information traveled between ships and planets in an instant, but ships did not. Even for a fast warship like Minotaur, it took hours or days to reach a merchant who was shouting for assistance, and the pirates that were plaguing the transit lanes didn’t give the courtesy of advance notice before attacking. Most of the time, the navy ships arrived too late to do anything but write reports or pluck escape pods out of space.
Dunstan leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee. He looked around in the Action Information Center and watched the command crew return to their tasks. Bosworth and Mayler were the most senior members of his command staff, and they were both ten years his junior. Most of the fresh AIC crew, like Midshipman Boyer, were younger than the ship. Minotaur had been a bit long in the tooth even before the big war had started, and while the networked systems and the weapons had been upgraded to keep with the times over the years, the hull was showing its age more and more with every deployment. But with the resurgence in piracy since last year, the Rhodian Navy was chronically short on deep-space patrol units now, and fleet command had postponed the planned decommissioning of Minotaur in favor of one more refit and overhaul.
“Prepare to end silent running,” Dunstan ordered. “All hands, get ready for gravity. Helm, spin us around and do a wake check. And then bring the drive up and float us over to the transit lane.”
“Wake check, aye,” Midshipman Boyer said from the helm station. “Commencing turn.”
The plot spun slowly as Boyer turned the ship with the maneuvering thrusters until the nose
