expression even Keita wouldn't have cared to cross.
All of which meant they'd been living in one another's pockets for almost a week now, since the eight-man craft had designed accommodations for only two passengers. They'd packed themselves in somehow-and, at the moment, it seemed everyone aboard was crowded onto the flight deck.
'How do I play the com angle, Sir Arthur?' the lieutenant commanding the dispatch boat asked. 'They won't expect anything from us for thirty minutes or so, but the way we're coming in has to've made them curious.'
'You've got urgent dispatches,' Keita rumbled. 'Don't say a word about who's onboard. If anyone asks, lie. I don't want anyone knowing we're here-or why-until I'm actually aboard that fortress.'
'Yes, sir. I-' The lieutenant paused and pressed his synth link headset to his temple, then gestured at a screen. Unarmed dispatch boats had neither the need nor the room for a warship's elaborate displays, but the view screen doubled as a plot when required. Now it flashed to life with a small-scale display of the Franconia System. The blue star of their Fasset drive moved only slowly on the display's scale, but a second star rushed to meet them at an incredible supralight velocity. Numbers scrolled across the bottom of the screen, then stopped and blinked with the computers' best guess.
If that other ship executed a crash turnover of its own, it would drop sublight in sixty-four minutes at a range of two-point-eight light-hours.
'Well, Bogey One's a dispatch boat, all right,' Lieutenant Anders announced as Perimeter Tracking's light- speed sensors finally confirmed the gravity signature analysis. The watch officer nodded and turned to pass the information in-system to Orbit One, and Anders swung his attention back to Bogey Two. He had no idea why that dispatch boat had arrived just now, yet he couldn't shake the conviction that it had to have something to do with Bogey Two-and he knew what Bogey Two had to be.
'Jesus!' he muttered to the woman at the next console as Bogey Two streaked towards Franconia's stellar Powell limit. 'If she doesn't flip in about fifteen seconds, she's gonna have fried Fasset drive for lunch.'
'Are we ready, Admiral?'
'As we can be, Governor.' Vice Admiral Horth sat in her command chair, already wearing her headset, and studied her plot. 'I wish I knew what she's up to this time around.'
'It doesn't really matter, does it, Becky?' Sir Amos Brinkman asked, and Horth shook her head with a sigh.
'No, Amos. I don't suppose it does,' she said softly.
'Coming up on turnover,' Megarea murmured hopelessly. 'Please, can't we-?'
'No!' Alicia DeVries' contralto was as harsh and gaunt as her face. Cords showed in her throat, and somewhere deep inside she wept for her cruelty to Megarea, but the tears were far away and lost. 'Just do it!' she snarled.
'It's got to be Alley. But how did she get here so soon?'
'I don't know, Tannis,' Keita replied. 'Coming in on that vector after the way she wormholed out… . It just doesn't seem possible. She must have had her drive red-lined all the way here.'
'Should we warn Orbit One?' Ben Belkassem asked quietly.
Keita stood silent for a moment, then shook his head. 'No. They already have her course plotted. Nothing we can tell them could change their defensive responses, and the truth would only disorganize their command structure at the critical moment.' He glanced at the lieutenant. 'Continue your deceleration, Captain, but have your com section ready. We'll just barely have the range to reach her when she breaks sublight.'
Ben Belkassem looked up sharply, then glanced at Tannis. The major hunched forward, staring at the plot, and the inspector moved even closer to Keita, pitching his voice too low for her to overhear.
'Do you really think you can talk her out of this, Sir Arthur?'
'Honestly?' Ben Belkassem nodded, and Keita sighed. 'Not really. She's got a damned low opinion of imperial justice-God knows she has a right to it-and from what you've told me about her mental state-' He exhaled sharply. 'No, I don't think I can talk her out of it, but that doesn't mean I don't have to try.'
'Here … she … comes,' Lieutenant Anders whispered. Then, 'Turnover! Christ! Look at that decel!'
Megarea whipsawed on the brink of self-destruction as her maltreated Fasset drive took the strain. Her velocity wound down insanely, dropping towards the perimeter of wormhole space, and fittings rattled and banged. Alicia felt the vibration, felt the starship's pain in her own flesh, and her fixed stare never wavered.
'Bogey Two dropping sublight … now,' Tracking reported to PriCon. 'Deceleration holding steady at twenty- three-point-five KPS squared.'
Horth nodded and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her chin. Odd. DeVries was piling on an awful lot of negative G for someone in such a big hurry to get here.
Megarea bucketed through space, just below drive overload, and her velocity dropped rapidly. A vector projected itself behind Alicia's eyes, one that stretched one and a third billion kilometers to a dot invisible with distance, and she smiled a death's-head smile.
Two starships raced toward one another, converging on the distant spark of Franconia, and a message reached out across the gap between them. Even light seemed to crawl at such a range, but Megarea sped to meet it even as she decelerated. The outer ring of orbital forts brought their fire control on line, searching for her, dueling with her ECM, and the AI noted the changes in their sensors. She was well outside range-for now-but she was committed to enter it, and the upgrades of the last few months would reduce her ECM's efficiency by at least forty percent.
She considered reporting to Alicia, but there was no point.
'Look! She's still decelerating!' Tannis Gateau exclaimed. 'Maybe we were wrong!
'Maybe we were,' Keita agreed, but he met Ben Belkassem's eyes behind her and shook his head minutely.
