“In that case, let’s move them out.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.” Talmadge turned his command chair to face Senior Chief Cindy Powell. “Helm, take us in.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
Otter ghosted forward at a bare twenty gravities, moving into the invisible flaw of the Agueda Terminus. Under normal circumstances, she would have been aligned for transit and cleared by Agueda Astro Control, which would have monitored her approach vector, double and triple checking her entry into the terminus. Under the circumstances which currently obtained, she and the rest of the Thirty First Cruiser Squadron were on their own, dependent on their own charts of the terminus and its tidal stresses. The good news was that they’d been provided with the very latest charts for the terminus before they ever set out; the bad news was that none of the squadron’s ships had ever transited this particular terminus before. And the potentially really bad news was that they had absolutely no idea what they’d be sailing into on the far side.
Oh, stop that! Magellan told himself irritably. You do know what’s on the far side…more or less, anyway. And it’s not like you’re about to poke your nose into the Junction Forts, now is it?
No, it wasn’t. On the other hand, if Lacoon Two was going according to plan and no one else had managed to jump the gun, he was about to become the first naval commander in history to seize a Solarian wormhole terminus by force.
And isn’t that going to make the Sollies happy? he thought dryly.
Magellan’s slightly understrength squadron of Saganami-C-class cruisers was a long way from home: four hundred and forty-five light-years from the Manticore Binary System through hyperspace, and three hundred and twenty-seven from Beowulf. Of course, he hadn’t had to make the trip the long way. Instead, he’d moved transited from the Manticoran Junction to Beowulf, then crossed sixty-three light-years from Beowulf to the Roulette System, then transited the Roulette-Limbo hyper bridge and crossed another forty- nine light-years of hyperspace from Limbo to Agueda.
Spreading sunshine and light the entire way, he reflected. Amazing how unpopular we are.
Amazing, perhaps, but scarcely surprising. Roulette, Limbo, and Agueda were all independent (or at least nominally so) star systems. Actually, Limbo was an OFS client state, with a particularly unpleasant fellow sitting in the system’s executive mansion. President for Life Ronald Stroheim had been most unhappy to see a Royal Manticoran Navy task group suddenly appear through the wormhole terminus which he regarded as his personal cash cow. As a good, loyal OFS henchman, he got to keep somewhere around three percent of the terminus’ total revenues for himself, which made him an incredibly wealthy man. Apparently he hadn’t heard that the Star Empire had decided to start collecting termini, however, and CruRon 31’s unannounced arrival had come as a distinct shock. He seemed to feel very ill used that his neighbors in Roulette hadn’t warned him his guests were en route.
In fairness, the Roulette System’s government hadn’t been enthralled by the Manticorans’ arrival in its system, either. Although Roulette normally enjoyed cordial relations with both Beowulf and the Star Empire, it had been deliberately distancing itself from Manticore ever since news of the New Tuscany Incident hit the Solarian ’faxes. Given that Roulette was little more than a hundred light-years from the Sol System itself, it was difficult to blame President Matsuo or the rest of his government for not wanting to irritate the League. Unfortunately for them however, the Roulette Terminus was on Lacoon Two’s list, and Magellan had swooped in across the alpha wall and secured control of the terminus before anyone could make transit through it to alert Limbo of what was coming.
He’d detached one of his escorting destroyer squadrons and the CLAC Ozymandias to sit on the Roulette Terminus, then headed through to Limbo, where his ships’ emergence from the terminus associated with that star system had taken the locals completely by surprise. Unlike the Manticoran Junction, the Limbo Terminus was unfortified, and the “Limbo Space Navy” consisted of two elderly destroyers — only one of which seemed to be actively in commission at the moment — and eight LACs which had to be at least fifty T-years old. Despite their no doubt undying loyalty to President for Life Stroheim, the commanding officers of those antiquated deathtraps had declined to match broadsides with seven Saganami-C- class heavy cruisers.
Magellan couldn’t imagine why.
He’d detached his second destroyer squadron and the CLAC Midas to cover the Limbo Terminus, and then moved briskly on to Agueda.
Agueda had been just as surprised as Limbo, and not much happier to see him, although he suspected that quite a bit of President Loretta Twain’s fiery denunciation of Manticore’s “high-handed and flagrant disregard for the rights and sovereignty of independent star nations” had been more for the official record than from the heart. Unlike Roulette, Agueda was almost three hundred and fifty light years from Sol, and the citizens of Agueda didn’t much care for the repressive government of Limbo and its…affiliation with the Office of Frontier Security. Still, there were appearances to be observed, and Magellan had rigorously respected the Agueda System’s twelve- light-minute territorial limit and restricted his activities to the terminus itself. He’d been scrupulously polite, as well, and assured Captain Forstchen and President Twain that he had no intention of forcibly seizing control of Agueda Astro Control’s platforms.
Of course, he also had absolutely no intention of allowing a single Solarian-registry ship to pass through the Agueda Terminus, either, but that was quite another matter.
One nice thing about moving along the hyper bridges, he thought. Unless you call ahead, no one knows you’re coming until you arrive. He smiled thinly. Pity about that.
“Stand by to reconfigure to Warshawski sail on my command, Rung-wan,” Talmadge said.
“Aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo Rung-wan, Otter’s engineering officer replied. “Standing by to reconfigure.”
Talmadge nodded, watching the maneuvering plot as Senior Chief Powell gently, gently aligned Otter for transit. The ship’s icon flashed green as Powell put her flawlessly into position.
“Rig foresail for transit,” he said.
“Aye, aye, Sir. Rigging foresail — now.”
Otter’s wedge fell abruptly to half-strength as her foreword alpha nodes reconfigured to produce the circular disk of a Warshawski sail instead of contributing to her n-space drive. The sail was over six hundred kilometers in diameter, and completely useless in normal-space, but the forward end of HMS Otter was edging steadily out of n-space.
“Stand by to rig aftersail,” Talmadge said as his ship continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone. A readout flickered to life in the corner of the maneuvering plot, and he watched its numerals climb steadily upward as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the terminus. Compared to the Manticoran Wormhole Junction, the Agueda Terminus was little more than a ripple in space, but that was still orders of magnitude more powerful than anything a ship’s impeller nodes could have produced. If their charts were as accurate as everyone thought they were, he had almost twenty seconds either way as a safety margin, but if they weren’t, and if Otter strayed out of the safe window before she got her aftersail rigged, they’d never even realize they were dead.
The soaring numbers crossed the threshold. The foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the tortured grav waves twisting through the terminus to provide movement, and Talmadge nodded sharply.
“Rig aftersail now,” he said crisply.
“Rigging aftersail, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Hwo replied, and Otter twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail sprang to life at the far end of her hull.
The transition from the impeller to sail was one of the trickier moments any coxswain had to deal with, even with the full support of a terminus’ traffic control staff. If Senior Chief Powell felt any particular anxiety, however,
