deceleration of the closing source to right on three thousand gravities, and his squadron's acceleration translated it into a relative deceleration of more than forty-seven KPS per second. He had barely four minutes before it went sub-light, and if he didn't begin his own deceleration at least thirty seconds before it did, he'd lose it forever.
Fasset drive generators were virtually soundless, their quiet hum as unobtrusive as a human Heartbeat. But not now. Alicia clung to the arms of her command chair, teeth locked in a white, strained face, and the drive screamed at her like a tortured giant, shaking Megarea's iron bones like a hurricane until her vision blurred with the vibration.
The decoy, one of only two SLAM decoys Megarea carried, streaked away on their old course, and shipboard power levels exploded far past critical. Meters blew like molycirc popcorn, rebuilt control runs crackled and sizzled, patched-up generator nodes shrieked, and it went on and on and on and on… .
'Turnover!' Lois Heyter barked. 'We have turnover!' Her eyes opened wide, and her voice dropped to a whisper. 'Dear God, look at that deceleration rate! How in hell is she holding it together?'
The cybernetic brain of the battleship Audacious noted the changing gravity signatures and adjusted its own drive. Vectors would converge with less than ten percent variance, it calculated with mild, electronic satisfaction.
Time was running out. Howell found himself pounding on the arm of his chair. If Tracking couldn't differentiate in the next ten seconds, he was going to have to go to emergency deceleration just to play safe. Losing distance on the alpha synth if he'd guessed wrong would be better than losing it entirely, he told himself, and it did his frustration no good at all.
The leading source flickered suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. There! It flickered again, power fading, and he knew. The range was down to four and a half million miles when Howell's entire squadron flipped end-for-end and began to decelerate madly.
'Fifty seconds to sublight.' Blood streaked Alicia's chin, her hands were cramped claws on her chair arms, and her battered brain felt only a dull wonder that they were still alive, but Megarea's mental voice was unshadowed by the hellish vibration. Forty. Thirty-fi- They've flipped, Alley!'
'Here they come, boys and girls,' Simon Monkoto murmured over his command circuit. He sat relaxed in his command chair, but his eyes were bright and hard, filled with a vengeful hunger few of his officers had ever seen in them. His gaze flicked over his display, and his mouth sketched a mirthless grin. The second group of gravity sources would drop sublight in nine minutes- out of range to hit the 'pirates' but on an almost convergent vector.
'Cut your drives!' he snapped as Alicia DeVries broke sublight, and every one of his ships killed her Fasset drive.
'There's Simon-right on the money!' Megarea announced as the mercenaries appeared on her display and then vanished in the equivalent of a deep-space ambush. Without active drives, they were invisible to FTL scanners; the 'pirates' wouldn't be able to see them until their light-speed sensors picked them up.
Alicia nodded in understanding, then gasped in relief as Megarea cut the drive's power levels far back. The dreadful vibration eased, yet there was a grim undertone to her relief as she felt the AI prepping her own weapons. If the SLAM drone had lasted just a little longer, Megarea might have broken back past Howell's ships to join Monkoto. She hadn't, and Monkoto or no Monkoto, she was still in the 'pirates'' range, with no choice but to decelerate towards them or lose the shield of her Fasset drive. But if she decelerated too rapidly-or if they began to accelerate once more and overran her- the range would be less than two light-seconds when she penetrated their formation.
A jolt of sullen fire went through Alicia at the thought. She clenched her teeth as her madness lunged against its restraining net, hungry for destruction, and felt Tisiphone at her side as she fought it down. It subsided with an angry grumble, and sweat beaded her forehead. She'd won- this time-but what would happen once the shooting started?
'Alley! Check the gravitics at two-eight-oh!'
The dreadnought Procyon erupted from wormhole space with her entire brood, and the alpha synth was still there, decelerating into their teeth.
James Howell bared his own teeth. DeVries was a drop commando, not a Fleet officer, or she would've known better. If she'd simply cut her drive, he might not even have been able to find her; as it was, she was bidding to break back through his formation in another suicide attack.
That was the only explanation for her maneuver, but this time her ship was hurt and he knew what he was up against.
Orders crackled out, and his formation opened to receive its foe.
'Commodore!' It was Commander Rahman, his face taut. 'We're picking up another grav source! It's still supralight, but decelerating quickly. Estimate breakout in … six-point-one
minutes at thirty-one light-minutes, bearing two-eight-six, one-one-seven. At least thirty sources.'
Howell stiffened, and his stomach tightened as Rahman's data appeared on his plot.
Those other sources were decelerating, if far less madly than DeVries had, and their vector converged with his own. Not perfectly, by a long chalk, but close enough they could match it if he tried to accelerate back up to supralight. Jesus! Could DeVries have known they'd be here?!
It didn't seem possible. If an ambush had been intended the ambushers would have arrived ahead of time to lie doggo without revealing drive signatures. But what else could it be?
Numbers tumbled across the bottom of his display as Tracking calculated frantically, and he swore. Yes, they could go sublight on a converging vector or accelerate back supralight with him even if he went back to max acceleration, but they'd never be able to engage him as long as he continued to decelerate. They'd have to kill their own velocity, then go in pursuit, and his people were already killing speed. He'd have too much of a head start to be caught short of wormhole space on a reversed course … which was the coldest of comforts.
Jaw muscles lumped as he turned his hating gaze back to DeVries. They might not be able to engage, but they'd still get good scanner readings, and that meant his entire pursuit had been for nothing.
He glared at the alpha synth's dot. All for nothing. Everything they'd done, all the people they'd killed, and it was all for nothing! Once his ships were fingerprinted, Treadwell's dream of building a new empire on the 'pirate threat' would be dead. It might take months for Intelligence to put it together, but the true nature of the 'pirate' squadron would be a glaring arrow pointed in the right direction.
Yet there was one last thing he could do. DeVries wasn't racing to meet the newcomers. She was still decelerating towards him. The shoot on sight order still held; she dared not confront the Fleet any more than he did, and she was accepting the threat she knew in a desperate effort to evade the new one.
