The Shadow of Saganami

'You, too? I was just out pestering the com staff for any reports. So far, nothing.'

'Good! I told you you'd like the EW capabilities.'

'And I never doubted it. What I doubted, and still do doubt, for that matter, is whether or not our people will be able to get the same performance out of them that Solarians could.'

'Solarian Navy crews aren't ten meters tall, and they don't take shortcuts by hiking across large bodies of water,' Levakonic said dryly. 'Basic education counts, sure. It counts for a lot. But not as much as hands-on training with good instructors. And you've got m y people to do the training. I guarantee you that the people who built the systems in the first place know more about what they can do than the uniformed types who actually use them in the field.'

'I believe you. In fact, I'm inclined to think Janko's probably cheating a little right now. I'll bet he's got those same 'instructors' actually operating the systems for him. Otherwise, somebody would've spotted him by now. And, just between you and me, I hope to hell somebody does spot him pretty soon.'

'Why?' Levakonic furrowed his brow. 'Don't get me wrong, Isidor, but if he screws up and lets your people pick him up, that's a pretty bad sign. The Manties' sensors are a lot better than anything you've got-quite a bit better than anything we've got, for that matter, despite the opinions of several of our own senior R and D people that ours are the best in the universe, if our field reps' reports are accurate. We haven't been able to get any of those idiots in the SLN's R and D departments to pay any attention to us, of course. They're all locked into the 'Not Invented Here' automatic rejection reflex. Well,' he added with a charming little-boy grin, 'that and an equally automatic suspicion that we're only telling them all those tall tales about Manty capabilities to scare them into funneling more money into our R and D programs. Which there might be just a teeny-tiny bit of truth to.

'But my point is, that if you people can pick him up, then it's for damned sure the Manties could.'

'Don't doubt you,' Hegedusic said with a grin. 'But this is still very early days. Hell, he's only had eighteen days to practice, and one thing about Janko, he's always had a pretty steep learning curve. I'm sure he'll manage to sneak tracelessly up on us soon enough, but there's an expensive dinner and an even more expensive bottle of wine riding on how well he does today. So, if it's all the same to you, I'll settle for his surprising hell out of us tomorrow as long as I don't have to feed his greedy face tonight.'

'Ah! I hadn't realized the military stakes in today's exercises were quite that weighty. Now, of course, I fully understand.'

'Good. And don't worry, I'll let you know as soon as-'

'Excuse me, Admiral.'

Hegedusic turned his head at the interruption. A youthful-looking lieutenant stood in the open office hatch.

'Yes, what is it?' the admiral asked, with a trace of irritation at having someone break in on him in a private conversation.

'Admiral, I'm very sorry to disturb you. But we've just picked up a sizable hyper footprint.'

'Hyper footprint? Where?'

For just a moment, Hegedusic wondered if it could be Horster. He was supposed to be 'sneaking up' on Eroica Station, but Janko believed The Book had been written solely for him to personally ignore. That was why Hegedusic had chosen him as his first divisional commander. And it was possible he'd decided to try an open approach, pretending to be someone else and using his new EW to disguise his impeller signatures as merchants or something equally silly.

'Celestial azimuth zero-six-three, almost dead on the plane of the ecliptic, and about three-point-eight million klicks outside the hyper limit, Sir,' the lieutenant replied.

Then it can't be Janko, was Hegedusic's first thought. His flight path originated at Monica; there's no way he could have gotten out across the hyper limit, circled around, and come in from the other side like this. Not this soon.

That was his first thought. His second was, But if it isn't Janko, who the hell is it?

* * *

'Sorry, Sir,' Lieutenant Commander Wright said. 'I undershot a bit.'

'Stop fishing for compliments, Toby,' Terekhov said, never looking away from the astrogation plot. 'Five hundred k-klicks off on a thirty-eight light-year jump? Sounds like a bull's-eye to me.'

He looked up in time to see Wright's grin. The astrogator remained probably the most private person aboard Hexapuma , and he continued to ration words as if someone were levying a surcharge on them. But he did have his own dry sense of humor, and that grin told Terekhov he'd caught the lieutenant commander exercising it.

'I suppose it's fairly close, Skipper,' Ansten FitzGerald observed over the communications link to Auxiliary Control.

Terekhov had rethought things just a bit, and FitzGerald had Naomi Kaplan with him on the backup command deck. Terekhov had kept Guthrie Bagwell on the bridge, to run Hexapuma's electronic warfare systems for him, but he'd flipped Abigail Hearns and Kaplan. He planned on making his own tactical decisions, anyway, and if something happened to him, Ansten would have the best, most experienced tac officer in the ship to help him deal with it. Paulo d'Arezzo would run the EW console for her, and Aikawa Kagiyama would serve as her junior tac officer. Helen Zilwicki, who Terekhov privately believed was the best tactical specialist among the midshipmen, held the JTO's slot with Abigail, here on the bridge.

'Why, thank you, Sir,' Wright said, and Bernardus Van Dort shook his head. The skinsuited Rembrandter- who, when it came right down to it, had no business at all on Hexapuma's bridge-sat to one side of Wright, in one of the jump seats the ship's midshipmen usually used when observing the astrogator. From his expression he was pretty sure there was still a shoe waiting to drop... and he was right.

'What I was going to say is five hundred thousand's fairly close... for someone who has trouble counting to eleven with his boots on,' the XO said, and Terekhov chuckled.

It was a somewhat absent chuckle, and his attention was back on the plot, checking alignments. The Squadron had made its alpha transition in close formation and relatively gradually from a base velocity in hyper of 62,500 KPS. With the inevitable velocity bleed-off, that gave them an n-space velocity of almost exactly 5,000 KPS... headed directly for Eroica Station. At the moment, they were decelerating at 350 gravities in order to stay with the ammo ship, which was braking as hard as she could to stay clear of the hyper limit, and their formation looked close to perfect.

'Commander Badmachin reports Volcano is rolling pods, Sir,' Amal Nagchaudhuri announced.

'I have them on lidar, Sir,' Abigail Hearns confirmed from Tactical. ' Warlock's picking up her allotment now.'

'Very good,' Terekhov acknowledged.

'Sir, we're being challenged by the Monicans,' Nagchaudhuri said, and Terekhov snorted.

'That was fast,' he said dryly. Of course the fact that Eroica Station was so close to the hyper limit meant the transmission lag was only a little over ninety seconds. 'No response yet,' he continued to the com officer. 'We'll let them sweat a little longer.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Lieutenant Bagwell,' Terekhov said, still never looking away from the plot, 'let's get the EW platforms deployed.'

'Aye, aye, Sir. Deploying now.'

'Very good. Ms. Zilwicki.'

'Sir?'

'Deploy the recon shell.'

'Deploy the recon shell, aye, aye, Sir,' Helen acknowledged, and began tapping commands into her console.

Her pulse, she knew, was quicker than usual, yet in almost too many ways, this felt like just another training sim. Which, she supposed, was the point of spending so much time in simulators in the first place.