All he could do was hope.
Chapter 46
Van returned to the Elsin on the late afternoon shuttle up from Keshmar.
Desoll met him just inside the lock. “I’m glad you’re back early. The minister must have pushed. They finished loading in the systems less than an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s been a while since I’ve brought on anyone, and I just forgot that we need to link you into the local IIS net. That way, you can check in periodically.”
That made perfect sense, but Van wouldn’t have thought of it, either.
“How do you feel?”
“I’m not tired.”
“You can take a nap for the out-system travel.”
Van had an idea that wasn’t exactly a suggestion. “I’ll try it.”
To his own surprise, he actually slept, to be awakened by a shipnet pulse. Commander Albert…Commander Desoll would appreciate you in the cockpit in a few minutes.
Eri?
Who else?
Van laughed to himself. I’ll be there.
Because he was groggier than he’d realized, he took a quick shower.
Eri handed him a mug of café as he passed the galley door. “You can take a moment to have it. I asked.”
Van took the cup gratefully, wondering why he’d been so tired. Was it that he was having a harder time than he’d realized readjusting to shipboard life? When he finished the café—more quickly than he would have liked, but he hadn’t wanted to keep Desoll waiting—he washed the cup and racked it, then hurried forward and into the second seat.
“We’re fifteen minutes out from the jump point,” Desoll said. “And you’re about to get another lesson in IIS ships.”
“Which lesson is this?” Van bantered back.
“The drive lesson. Our drives are tuned to Coalition military standard. That’s no patriotism, but efficiency. But we’ll sacrifice a percent or two for camouflage. We can retune automatically to any standard in the Arm. The farther we go from our baseline, of course, the greater the power loss, but the retuning is fairly quick. It takes only about three minutes. Coming into Behai, we’ll tune to Coalition commercial.”
“I assume that’s because—commercial standard—is the same as the Keshmaran standards. And the lower baseline tuning is easier on the accumulators and drives?”
“Right. Keshmaran ships tune to Coalition commercial. Even their military does. If anyone’s watching, they’ll think we’re Keshmaran, because the Coalition doesn’t send commercial traffic here, and we won’t match a military profile.”
“Because the oversize shields keep our EDI emissions to a lower profile?”
Desoll nodded. Now…follow me on the control net.
Van did, noting the protocol, and also noting that it was hidden under the “housekeeping” functions, and innocuously labeled as DT MONITOR. Well hidden.
There’s always the possibility that we might need outside maintenance or repairs. No sense in making things obvious.
Within two minutes, Van could see the change in the Elsin’s EDI signature. Had he seen the new signature, he certainly would have considered the ship—at least, initially—as a commercial vessel.
You have the conn. See if you can sense the difference in responsiveness.
I have the conn. Van tried upping the acceleration slightly. Desoll was right. There was a difference, subtle but measurable.
Then he concentrated just on being the ship, sensing all of the systems, in a way that hadn’t been possible with his “old” implant.
I’ll take the conn and jump, Commander, Desoll said.
Van hadn’t realized how much time had passed. You have the conn. He had already assumed that Desoll would take over either before the jump to Behai—or immediately after.
Eri, Commander, strap in tightly. We’re going to null gee, and we might have some high-gee maneuvers. I hope not. But we could.
Van frowned to himself as ship gravity dropped to nil. With artificial gravs and shields? High gee meant more than a little stress on both vessel and crew.
Stand by for jump.
Standing by.
Everything went black, inverted into white, and time stretched and compressed—and then they were on the outskirts of a system with a G-5 star, and a planetary system more compact than most inhabited systems, angling down toward the fourth planet.
EDI track at our zero two zero, plus fifteen, one thousand emkay.
The EDI was Revenant—Van caught that immediately—and about the size of a large corvette—what the Revs termed a frigate, big enough to take everyone else’s corvettes, but without quite the shields and power of a true light cruiser.
Coming for us. Not a question in the world.
Van noted that Desoll had left the shields on standard, and had not increased acceleration, but instead had the photon nets at full extension, sucking in mass and diverting power to the oversize accumulators. They were still too far away for standard comm. As the time passed, Van checked the closure rates. The Rev was continuing to accelerate outbound.
Eight minutes to closure. Desoll retuned the drives, and within minutes, Van could feel the additional power. He won’t even notice, think it’s a desperate trick by a Keshmaran courier.
True to Desoll’s prediction, the Rev frigate continued to accelerate toward the Elsin.
Four minutes to closure.
Two minutes.
Abruptly, a pair of torps flared from the Rev frigate, orange-dashed lines on the netplot, arrowing toward the Elsin, and then the Rev began a steep full-power turn, accelerating enough that Van could see the overtone freqs that indicated the Rev was on the edge.
Didn’t like what he saw. Desoll poured full accel into the Elsin, turning it to chase the Rev, even as the Rev torps screamed toward the Elsin.
At the last moment, Desoll diverted all power, everywhere, into the shields.
Van’s mouth opened. That degree of power cross-connection and flexibility was unheard of in any ship he knew.
Both torps flared into energy, and the shield indicators never left the center of the green. Desoll returned the forward shields to normal, cut the trailing shields to minimum. The acceleration jammed Van back into his couch as the Elsin seemed to leap across
