The Shadow of Saganami

that as long as they appear to be making a good-faith effort to evacuate the Station, I'll hold my fire. But warn them that restraint on our part is dependent on their continued compliance with our instructions.'

* * *

'How obliging of him,' Hegedusic said, and looked back at the tactical officer on his screen. 'They're holding profile, correct?'

'Yes, Sir. They're about eighteen minutes from zeroing their velocity relative to the Station. And,' the tac officer smiled thinly, 'they're just over ten-point-one million kilometers out.'

'Patience, patience, Commander,' Hegedusic said. 'If they're willing to come closer, I'm certainly willing to let them.'

* * *

'Ms. Zilwicki?'

'Yes, Traynor?' Helen said, turning to the senior sensor rating assisting her with the remote arrays.

'The Alpha-Seven array's picking something up,' Traynor said.

'What?' Helen asked. It was scarcely a proper contact report, she reflected. Assuming, of course, that it was an actual contact at all.

'It may be nothing at all, Ma'am. Maybe just a ghost. Look here, Ma'am.'

He flicked keys, transferring the data he'd been examining to Helen's secondary plot. She gazed at it herself for several seconds before her eyes narrowed. She input a command sequence, playing with the data, trying to refine it, and frowned.

She considered briefly, then shrugged and sent a request to CIC for the master computers to take a close second look at the suspect datum. Seven seconds later, a scarlet icon flicked into existence on the master plot, strobing with the rapid flicker of an unconfirmed contact.

'Captain,' Helen announced, astonished that her own voice sounded so calm, 'we have a possible impeller signature, very weak, inbound at three-point-two light-minutes. Apparent closing velocity four-one-five-seven-two kilometers per second.'

* * *

'Range now ten-point-zero-seven million kilometers,' Hegedusic's tac officer said. 'Velocity now three- seven-seven-three KPS.'

* * *

'Range to enemy now five-seven-point-six million kilometers,' Commodore Horster's tac officer reported. 'Closing velocity four-one-five-seven-two KPS.'

* * *

'CIC, I need confirmation, one way or the other.' Terekhov kept his tone as level as possible.

'Yes, Sir. We know. We're doing our best to-'

'Captain, Alpha-Seven has a second possible contact in close company with Bogey-One,' Helen announced. She hesitated a moment, then cleared her throat. 'Sir, the array's at less than eleven light-seconds from whatever this is.'

'Your point, Ms. Zilwicki?'

'Sir, these arrays don't pick up ghosts at that short a range. If they're seeing something that close to them, it's really there. And if they can't see it clearly, it's because whatever it is is doing its damnedest to imitate a hole in space.'

'She's right, Skipper,' Naomi Kaplan said from AuxCon. She'd been studying the frustratingly inconclusive data herself. 'And if that's what we've got here, Sir,' she continued grimly, 'whoever it is has got much better EW than any Monican unit ever had.'

'Guthrie?' Terekhov looked at his EWO. Bagwell didn't even hesitate.

'Concur, Sir. My guess is that we're looking at a maintenance level impeller wedge covered by some damned good stealth technology. Probably almost as good as our own.'

'Understood.'

Terekhov leaned back in his command chair, thinking furiously. All eleven of the Solarian battlecruisers Copenhagen had discovered were still at Eroica Station.

Which means these people weren't at the Station when the drone made its pass. Battlecruisers they'd already refitted? Possible. Probable, really. They could've been running trials or training missions out-system, where Copenhagen couldn't see them. Or these may be Solly units that never were intended to be refitted. Either way, I've got a pair of bogeys coming at me that I have to assume are at least battlecruisers... and there's no way Hegedusic didn't know about it when he sent me that 'We're evacuating as quickly as we can' message. But-

'Captain, we've got a third possible contact.'

He looked up as a third strobing icon appeared in formation with the other two. Helen, a corner of his brain noted, still sounded crisp and professional, but not quite as calm as she'd been with the first two.

And I can't blame her for that! That's three we know about; God only knows how many we haven't found yet . He studied projected vectors, and his mouth tightened. At their closing velocity, his squadron's vector intersected almost exactly head-on with the three bogeys' vector in less than twenty-four minutes. There's no way we can avoid them now, but there's still the units waiting to be refitted. So what do I do? I can hardly even see these probable Sollies. I certainly can't justify wasting missiles on them at this range, not with the miserable hit probabilities we'd have! But if I hold my fire until the range drops and then go for an engagement with them, I could lose everything I've got and leave eleven untouched battlecruisers behind me .

His jaw tightened.

'Ms. Hearns.'

'Yes, Sir.'

It was remarkable, he thought, how that soft Grayson accent actually got more musical as the stress mounted.

'We can't leave the battlecruisers in the yard behind us. I want to hold the pods-we may need them against these newcomers. Do you have a good firing solution on the Station?'

'Yes, Sir,' she said steadily.

'Very well,' he said. 'Execute Fire Plan Sierra, broadside launchers only.'

'Fire Plan Sierra, aye, aye, Sir,' she said, and entered a command sequence.

* * *

'Missile launch! I have multiple hostile launches! Estimate thirty-plus inbound!'

'God damn it!'

Isidor Hegedusic smashed his fist down on his own knee. Missile Defense was tracking the incoming missiles-or trying to, at least-and there didn't seem to be many of them. No more than thirty or forty. But the Station's anti-missile defenses hadn't been upgraded. There hadn't been time to do everything, and he and Levakonic had concentrated on giving Eroica Station sharper eyes and longer teeth. Nor had they counted on the fiendishly effective EW platforms scattered among the attack missiles to assist them in penetrating Hegedusic's defenses.

He hesitated, but only for a single heartbeat.

If they take out the battlecruisers, there's no tomorrow, anyway, he thought grimly, and looked at the tactical officer on his screen.

'Engage the enemy, Commander!'

The missile pods provided by Technodyne were very stealthy platforms. In fact, they had even smaller sensor signatures than the RMN's pods did. In virtually every other respect, however, they were inferior to Manticore's weapons. Their single-drive missiles had lower accelerations, less sensitive seekers, poorer EW, and much, much shorter powered attack ranges. But inferior as they might have been in all of those categories, they were far better than anything the SLN had ever had before. They were better than ONI's worst-case estimates. And they were already inside the attack range their improved drives made possible.

To reach their targets with enough time left on their drives for the necessary terminal attack maneuvers, the missiles would have to restrict themselves to half-power, 'only' 43,000 gravities and a terminal velocity of