The Shadow of Saganami

Chapter Fifty-Six

"Any word on Commodore Horster's little invasion force?" Isidor Hegedusic asked.

"No, Sir." The communications officer half-turned in his comfortable chair on the spacious "flag bridge" of Alpha Prime, Eroica Station's main military component, to face the admiral. "Do you want me to try to raise him, Admiral?"

"No, no." Hegedusic shook his head, smiled, and turned away. He had plenty to do, and fretting over the way Janko Horster played with his new toys was unprofessional, to say the least.

Envy, he told himself with a mental snort. Pure, dyed-in-the-wool envy. I'd a hell of a lot rather be out there on a real flag bridge than playing senior officer here in this goldplated ration tin. Well, in another couple of weeks I'll have enough of them to justify taking Janko's toybox away from him and playing in it myself.

He chuckled and stepped through the hatch into his private office. The attention light blinked steadily on his personal com, and he dropped into his desk chair and pressed the acceptance key. Izrok Levakonic's personal wallpaper filled the display, and a courteous computer voice asked Hegedusic to hold briefly.

It couldn't have been more than fifteen seconds before the wallpaper vanished, and Levakonic smiled at him from the screen. Hegedusic smiled back. Although he'd been determined not to like the Technodyne executive-who, after all, was only one more corrupt, overachieving capitalist with a personal avarice on steroids-he'd ended up doing it anyway. He was scarcely blind to Levakonic's manifold character flaws. Most, however, were dismayingly common by the standards of those who surrounded President Roberto Tyler. Levakonic had simply had the advantage of falling into a larger feeding trough than most Monicans ever dreamed of. And, on a personal level, he had a ready sense of humor and a willingness to roll up his shirt sleeves and dig in when the task at hand required.

"Isidor," Levakonic said with a nod.

"Izrok," Hegedusic responded.

"Just thought I'd check and see how Horster's training maneuver is going so far," Levakonic said, and Hegedusic chuckled.

"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.

The first remote sensor arrays launched, spreading out in a vast, hollow sphere around the Squadron. At the same time, she saw the electronic warfare platforms spreading out around the individual ships and settling into a closer, tighter defensive formation than the arrays.

A corner of her mind couldn't help thinking the Skipper was being a little paranoid. The Monicans couldn't possibly have known they were coming, and even the best Solarian missiles had a maximum powered attack envelope of no more than 6.5 million kilometers from rest, even at half-power settings. Not to mention the fact that while Manticoran electronics were the best any navy had ever deployed, the Monicans' basic surveillance systems were obsolescent League crap at least forty T-years out of date. There was no way any threat this system could mount could get through her sensor shell to attack range without plenty of warning.

But only a corner of her mind thought that. The rest of it recognized yet another example of the Skipper's infinite attention to detail. He would dot every "i" and cross every "t" ahead of time, when he had the leisure to be sure it was done right. Who was it, back on Old Earth, who'd said to ask him for anything but time? She rather thought it had been Napoleon. Of course, despite all his strategic genius on land, Napoleon hadn't known how to pour piss out of a boot where navies were concerned, but that particular bit of advice translated quite well across the centuries for any officer.

" Warlock has her full pod load, Sir," Nagchaudhuri reported. "Commander Diamond is moving up with Vigilant ."

"Thank you, Amal," Terekhov said. His tone was courteous and a bit abstracted, but Helen knew better than that. It was a reflection of how intensely he was concentrating, not of absentmindedness.

She thought about Lieutenant Commander Diamond. How did he feel right now? From all she could discover, he'd been with Commander Hope for at least two T-years. Now she'd been hustled off aboard the dispatch boat, returned to Spindle ignominiously with the Captain's dispatches, like so much unwanted freight. If this operation turned into the disaster she'd evidently predicted, she'd probably emerge as the only CO of the Squadron with an intact reputation. But if it succeeded, she'd be known throughout the Navy as the commander of a Queen's ship who'd refused, for whatever reason, to face the enemy when ordered to do so. And whichever way it came out, Diamond would have to live with the fact that he'd elected to succeed her in command rather than follow her into exile.

She watched her own plot as the highly stealthed pods clustered about Vigilant's icon. The latest wrinkle BuWeaps had come up with was to incorporate a small tractor beam into each individual pod. Although their design was maximized for deployment from the new hollow-core SD(P)s and even newer BC(P)s, there were still plenty of old-style ships or smaller vessels-like the ones of Captain Terekhov's small squadron-which could only deploy pods on tow. One limiting factor for those ships had always been the way the number of tractor beams they mounted restricted the numbers of pods they could deploy. By mounting tractors on the pods themselves, that particular problem was overcome, and Captain Terekhov was using that advantage to the maximum. By the time he got done his ships would do well to manage 350 g , but they'd have a devastating long-range punch. Even the destroyers would have ten pods tagging along. Each of the three light cruisers would have fifteen, Warlock and Vigilant would have twenty-three each, and Hexapuma would have no less than forty. Altogether, it added up to a hundred and seventy-one pods for a total of 1,710 missiles. Capital missiles of the Royal Manticoran Navy-the longest ranged, most deadly missiles in space.

Somehow, she rather doubted anything Monica had was going to be able to stand up to that !

No, not Janko, Isidor Hegedusic thought. And whoever they are, I don't care for the way they're coming in. They sure as hell aren't merchies, they're completely ignoring our challenges, and approaching from this bearing, the shipyards are their only possible target.

His expression was grim. There was only one navy he could think of who'd have both an interest in depriving Monica of the Indefatigables and the sheer big brass balls to launch some sort of preemptive strike to accomplish that deprivation. And if the reports and rumors Levakonic had shared with him were accurate, those people had the range to turn his entire complex-and the irreplaceable battlecruisers lying helpless in its midst-into drifting debris from beyond the effective range of any weapon he possessed.

The "flag deck" hatch opened, and he glanced over his shoulder as Levakonic came hurrying in, skinsuited like the admiral himself. Technically, the civilian had no business here, but Hegedusic wasn't about to choke on any rules that required him to order a possible source of advice and information off of his command deck.

"No communication from them yet?" Levakonic asked tautly.

"No," Hegedusic replied, "and we've been hailing them for almost ten minutes now. I wonder if they're just going to close to attack range and blow us away without even identifying themselves." Levakonic looked sideways at him, and the admiral shrugged. "Think about it. If they blow the entire Station to bits and then just haul ass out of here without ever claiming responsibility, it'd be our word against theirs if we tried to convince anyone else of what happened."

"They might do that," Levakonic said, setting his helmet down on the seat of an unoccupied bridge chair. His skinsuit was a civilian model, but it was also much better and more capable than Hegedusic's.

"They might," the Solly repeated, "but if they were going to do that, they wouldn't have to come in on us at all. If our reports about how they're pulling off their range increases are correct, they've actually built multiple drive systems into a single missile body."

"What?" Hegedusic looked at him in astonishment, and Levakonic chuckled harshly.

"I know. They have to've developed an entire new generation of superdense fusion bottles, or something of the sort, to pull that off. We know they're fiendishly good at engineering components down, but there are practical limits. Their initial long-range missiles were apparently a lot bigger than their current-generation birds, so they probably went with improved capacitors on those. Hell, you've seen our latest-generation birds, and you know how big they are. Well, they still have single-drive systems that just happen to last a little longer before burnout; all the rest of the volume's for the juice they need to take advantage of their drive endurance.

"If our reports from Haven are right, the Peeps are still using stored energy for their birds. It's hurting them in areas like magazine capacity, compared to the Manties, and apparently they only managed that much because they were able to reverse engineer the Manties' late-generation capacitors.

"Of course," his smile was vinegar-tart, " all we have since Pierre and Saint-Just got bumped off are rumors and third-party reports. Their new management doesn't seem to like us very much. Which is partly our fault, of course." He grimaced. "They didn't have many samples of the Manties' current hardware after the cease-fire, and we weren't particularly interested in helping them out with their own development programs once the reports on Manty hardware started drying up. They, ah, seem to have long memories out there, and once Erewhon went over to their side with actual working examples of Manty technology, their R and D people pretty much told us to take a hike. So our latest first-hand reports are five T-years out of date, and it's possible all of this is inaccurate as hell.

"But if it isn't, then the Manties are building much smaller long-range missiles than they were. That means they have to've found a better solution than simply using bigger and better superconductor rings. If they're going to cram two-or even three, according to some rumors-complete drive packages into missiles the size of the ones they're supposed to be deploying, they can't have the internal volume to use straight superconductor storage to power the damned things."

"I imagine not," Hegedusic agreed. "But could anybody really build a fusion plant that small?"

"It's theoretically possible. With a powerful enough grav field to do the pinching, it could be done. But the initial power would have to come from a source external to the missile, which would probably mean some tricky modification of the launchers, as well. Anyway," he shook his head, brushing away the speculation, "the point I was going to make is that they have an effectively unlimited powered attack range. They could fire the damned things from five or six light-hours out, accelerate the bastards up to speed, and then program the second stage drive not to kick in until the birds entered attack range of their targets. If they didn't punch the max velocity too high, they wouldn't suffer significant -particle-erosion degradation of their onboard sensor systems during even a very long ballistic flight component."

"Jesus Christ," Hegedusic whispered, and Levakonic snorted.

"No, just damned good engineers," he said sardonically. "And before you get your knickers in as big a twist as I did the first time I heard about them, remember this. A missile's only as good as its fire control, and not even Manties can generate good targeting solutions and handle mid-course corrections from half a solar system away. At the moment, they've got a lot more effective range than they can use, and even if they've been able to squeeze their birds down the way some of our sources report they have, they're paying for it with missles which are significantly larger than ours are. That means lower total numbers of birds in the same magazine space, so it's unlikely they'd fire off the thousands of the things it would require to score a significant number of hits at that sort of range in a fleet action.

"But your shipyard here's another kettle of fish. It can't dodge, and it doesn't have sidewalls. So if all they wanted to do was wreck Eroica Station, they could just fire off a saturation salvo of old-fashioned contact nukes to come whipping in here at seventy-five or eighty percent of light-speed. There's no way you could stop enough of them, especially if they seeded the attack wave with their new penetration aids, and they wouldn't really even have to cross the hyper limit to do it."

"But we don't know they are crossing the limit," Hegedusic pointed out.

"I think they are," Levakonic said grimly. The Monican looked a question at him, and he shrugged. "I think that big bastard is a freighter, Isidor-probably an ammunition ship. They won't want to bring her in where anything nasty could happen to her, so they're decelerating to stay with her while they load up with towed pods. Once they have, she'll stay out beyond the limit, and they'll come on in."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I'm not sure . But they could fire the pods from out there, if they wanted to, and if that is an ammo ship, who the hell cares about onboard magazine space? They've got missiles to burn. They could accept poor targeting solutions if they wanted to this time, so if they're planning on coming on in to a point where they can get better ones, that suggests to me that they want to be sure they hit what they're aiming at rather than simply smashing the entire Station. Which also suggests they'll at least want to talk to you before they kill you, even if they haven't done it yet. And also lends a little extra point to the minor question of just where Commodore Horster is right now."

"All ships report acquisition of all pods, Sir," Nagchaudhuri said.

"Very well. My compliments to Commander Badmachin for a well executed evolution. Remind her to keep an eye on her sensor platforms. If anyone comes at her, we'll meet her at the primary rendezvous."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Commander Wright."

"Yes, Sir."

"Resume acceleration and put us on profile for Eroica Station."

"You're right, Izrok; they're coming on in," Hegedusic said. "Which means you've also got a point about Horster." He turned to the communications section again. "Lieutenant!"

"Yes, Sir?"

"I want a directional broadcast away from these people. Get hold of Captain Simons in CIC. Ask him to define the volumes where Commodore Horster's units are most likely to be and then sweep all of them you can without giving these people anything to pick up. Got it?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"Good. Address it to CO First Division and prepare to record."

"Yes, Sir. Ready to record, Sir."

"Very good. Message begins. 'Janko, unknown but presumably hostile units are approaching Eroica Station. My assumption is that they're here to destroy or take possession of the new units, and I don't expect them to rely solely on sweet reason. I know you're out there somewhere. If you're placed to intervene, this would probably be a good time for a live-fire training exercise. I'll stall as long as I can, but if they're who I think they are, there may not be a lot I can do. Remember the Manties' range advantage. If this is a Manticoran squadron, the trick'll be to get into range of them without getting yourself destroyed in the process. If you receive this message and can confirm without revealing your presence to the enemy, do so. If you can't intervene, notify me, regardless of whether or not they can detect your signal. Otherwise, maintain com silence and maneuver at your discretion. Good luck. I think we'll both need it. Isidor, clear and out.'"

He watched the communications officer play the recording back through his earbug. Then the lieutenant nodded.

"Clean recording, Sir."

"Very good. Check with CIC and be sure we append all available tactical information."

"Yes, Sir."

"Skipper, we're coming up on your specified mark," Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri said.

Terekhov glanced at Van Dort, who looked back expressionlessly. There wasn't anything to be said, really, and both of them knew it. This was the entire reason they'd come.

"Very well, Amal. Live mike."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"- Terekhov, Royal Manticoran Navy. I require you to immediately cease all work on all starships currently undergoing refit, and to evacuate all personnel from the military components of Eroica Station. I have no desire to fire on you or your personnel. My sole concern at this time is to ensure that none of those units enter the service of the Republic of Monica until such time as my government receives satisfactory assurances about the purposes for which you intend to employ them. If, however, my instructions to stand down and evacuate are not obeyed, I will fire upon you and destroy those ships. I hereby formally advise you that I am capable of carrying out that bombardment from beyond the effective range of any of Eroica Station's own weapons. You cannot prevent me from destroying those vessels at my convenience, and so I urge you most earnestly to begin evacuation immediately. You have one hour to comply. Terekhov, clear."

Isidor Hegedusic glared at the implacable face of the tall, bearded, fair-haired, blue-eyed man in the white beret and space-black-and-gold uniform. The message lag was only a very little over ninety seconds, and he stamped on his anger hard. At this close a range, he had time to be sure he had a grip on his temper before he responded to the Manticoran's arrogant demand.

"Record for transmission," he said to the pale-faced communications officer after perhaps ten seconds.

"Yes, Sir. Recording… now."

"Captain Terekhov," Hegedusic said in a hard, flat voice, "I am Admiral Isidor Hegedusic, Republic of Monica System Navy. What conceivable interpretation of interstellar law gives you the right to sail into my star system and threaten to destroy units of the Monican Navy? Hegedusic, clear."

"Got it, Sir," the lieutenant confirmed.

"Then send it."

The lieutenant obeyed. One hundred and eighty-three seconds later, Terekhov's response came in.

"Admiral Hegedusic, I regret the circumstances which compel me to make such demands, but the 'law' which justifies them is the acknowledged right of any star nation to act in self-defense. We have compelling evidence that the ships being refitted in this system for your Navy are intended for employment against the Star Kingdom and our allies in the Talbott Cluster. I will not permit that. If our information proves to be in error, we will withdraw, and I have no doubt my Star Kingdom will apologize and make suitable restitution. In the meantime, however, I must again insist you obey my instructions. I assure you, however deeply I may regret the inevitable collateral loss of life, I won't hesitate to destroy those vessels if you don't stand down and evacuate within the time limit I've specified. Terekhov, clear."

"Live mike, Lieutenant!" Hegedusic snapped.

"Yes, Sir. Your microphone is live," the lieutenant said, and Hegedusic faced the pickup once again.

"What you're demanding is impossible, Captain," he said harshly. "Even if I were inclined to be dictated to, which I am not, I couldn't possibly contact my government and receive authorization in the time limit you've imposed. Minimum message turnaround between here and the system government is over eighty-three minutes. I assure you messages will be sent immediately, relaying your insulting and arrogant demand and requesting instructions, but I cannot hear back from my government in less than an hour and twenty minutes. Hegedusic, clear."

"I understand your communication problems, Admiral," Terekhov said after the inevitable delay. "Nonetheless, my time limit stands. It isn't negotiable. Terekhov, clear."

"I don't have the authority to give such orders, Captain! I would be… strongly disinclined to do so in any case, but as the situation stands, I couldn't even if I wanted to. Hegedusic, clear."

"Admiral, you're a naval officer. As such, you know there are times to observe the legal niceties, and times that isn't possible. This is one of the latter. You may not have the legal authority to evacuate your post, but you do have the de facto authority. And you also have the responsibility to preserve the lives of your personnel in a situation in which you literally cannot fight back. I urge you to consider whether your moral responsibility lies in slavish obedience to the law, or in ensuring your people don't die pointlessly. Terekhov, clear."

"If we're going to speak about moral responsibilities, Captain, what about your responsibility not to slaughter people who, by your own statement, can't even threaten your own command, simply because their oaths to their own government require them to remain at their posts until legally relieved by competent authority? Hegedusic, clear."

"You have a point, Admiral," Terekhov conceded. "However, my own duty leaves me no alternative. And honesty compels me to add that neither I nor any other Manticoran officer have conspired with genetic slavers, pirates, terrorists, and mass murderers to commit acts of war on the sovereign territories of at least two independent star nations. Your government has done precisely that. My responsibility to see to it that those unprovoked and murderous assaults end now overrides any responsibility I may have towards your personnel. And I would further add, Sir, that I'm already holding my fire when you're well within my effective range specifically in order to avoid any unnecessary loss of life. That is the only concession I am prepared or able to make. So, I repeat, I require your immediate stand-down and evacuation. You now have fifty-one minutes to comply. Terekhov, clear and out."

The com screen went blank, and when Hegedusic looked at Levakonic, he saw his own amazement in the Solarian's face. How? How could the Manties have figured out what was happening? And what the hell was he supposed to do about it?

"Approaching turnover in seven minutes, Sir," Tobias Wright said, and Terekhov nodded.

Some of the sensor remotes speeding out in front of the Squadron had peeled off to put Eroica Station under close-range observation. Hexapuma and her consorts had been accelerating in-system for over seventeen minutes. Their initial velocity had dropped to just over 2,175 KPS before they parted company from Volcano, but in another seven minutes, they would reach their peak velocity of 7,190 KPS and begin the thirty-four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of deceleration which would bring them to rest relative to Eroica Station at a range of eight million kilometers.

Admiral Hegedusic had forty-three minutes to begin -evacuating.

"Do you think he's going to give in, Skipper?" Ansten FitzGerald asked quietly from the small com screen beside Terekhov's knee.

"I don't know. I hope so."

"He didn't sound very happy about the notion, Sir," FitzGerald observed, and Terekhov surprised himself with a short, sharp laugh.

"You've been practicing understatement with Ms. Zilwicki again, haven't you, Ansten?" he said, then shrugged. "I expected a lot of what he said. Usually, you don't get to be an admiral if you make a habit of caving in easily. And those ships have to represent a dream come true for any admiral in any Verge navy. Not to mention the fact that the Monican government probably has a nasty habit of shooting people it considers guilty of cowardice. He's almost got to stall as long as he can."

"What if he comes back at the last minute with an offer to comply, Captain?" Van Dort asked, careful to observe the military proprieties under the current circumstances.

"If it's accompanied by an immediate start to the evacuation, I'll grant him an extension. If it isn't, I'll open fire."

Van Dort nodded slowly, and there was a different look in his eyes as he gazed at Terekhov and saw a side of him he hadn't previously met. He'd never made the mistake of imagining -Terekhov would flinch from any duty, however grim. But until this moment, he'd never truly realized just how dangerous a killer lurked inside his friend.

But Ansten FitzGerald wasn't surprised. He remembered the Nuncio System.

"Sir! Sir, the Manties have just made turnover!"

Hegedusic's head came up, and he strode quickly over to the officer who had spoken. He leaned over the lieutenant's shoulder, studying his plot.

"Where's his zero-velocity point at current deceleration?"

"Approximately eight million kilometers out, Admiral."

"Oh, is it now?" Hegedusic murmured in a soft, hungry tone, and turned to look at Levakonic. The Technodyne executive looked tense and unhappy, but as he met Hegedusic's eyes, they both smiled slowly.

Abigail Hearns rested her forearms lightly on the arms of her command chair. She could feel Helen's tension beside her, ratcheting steadily higher as the Squadron decelerated towards its attack position. She remembered the question Ragnhild had asked after their firing pass on Bogey Three at Nuncio, the question about how many people they'd just killed, and knew the same thoughts were passing through her surviving midshipwoman's mind at this moment.

If there was a single gram of cowardice in Helen Zilwicki, Abigail Hearns had never seen it. But this was even more cold-blooded and methodical than Captain Terekhov's ambush of the rogue Peeps in Nuncio. At least the Peeps had gotten into a range where they could theoretically have fired back. Eroica Station wouldn't have that option. If this Admiral Hegedusic failed to yield, hundreds, possibly thousands, of his personnel were going to be killed by weapons to which they couldn't even respond. It was a horrifying thought, and she wondered if she should say something to Helen about it.

But what could she say? She wasn't positive how she felt about it, so how could she know what to say to someone else?

There were times, as Brother Albert, her old childhood confessor, had warned her there would be, when the teachings of Father Church and the brutal requirements of the profession of arms clashed. When the desire of a loving God for all of His children to live and grow under His gentle Testing collided in a universe of imperfect humans with the unyielding fact that for some of His children to live, others of them must die. That, Brother Albert had told her gently when she first admitted that she hungered for a naval career, would become part of her Test if her wish were granted. And, he'd warned her, it was a fortunate warrior indeed-or else a madman-who was never forced to confront the ambiguity of violence. The suspicion that it was expediency, and his own desire to live, and not morality or justice or even the defense of his own nation and family, which truly drove him to kill. The selfish desire to survive, not the noble willingness to risk death for what he believed in.

Brother Albert had been right. And as Abigail had studied her trade, mastered the professional requirements of a tactical officer, she'd come to realize that the highest duty of an officer wasn't to engage in honorable, face-to-face combat. It was to take her opponent by surprise. To ambush him. To shoot him in the back, without warning, without the ability to return her fire. Because if he had that opportunity, some of her people would die. And if she gave him that opportunity when she didn't have to, then the responsibility for those deaths would be hers.

It was a bitter lesson, one she'd accepted intellectually while still at Saganami Island, and one which had been turned into polished steel and hammered home on the surface of a planet called Refuge.

Yet this was different. The disparity in weapon technology meant there could be no possibility of return fire. But wasn't that the essence of successful tactics? Captain Terekhov was doing what every captain wanted to do, using any advantage he had or could create to engage the enemy without risking the lives of his own people. She knew that. And she knew Brother Albert would have told her Father Church and, far more importantly, God Himself would understand. Would forgive her for the blood on her hands, if indeed forgiveness was required.

But God could forgive anything to the truly humble and contrite heart. The question in Abigail Hearns' mind was whether or not she could forgive herself.

"Admiral!"

Hegedusic looked up from the com screen connecting him to Alpha Prime's weapons officer. It was the communications lieutenant again.

"Sir, we just picked up a transmission. I… think it's from Commodore Horster."

"You think ?" Hegedusic frowned, and the lieutenant gave him a helpless look.

"Sir, there's no header and no ID code. Just one word transmitted in clear."

"Well?" Hegedusic demanded when the young man paused.

"Sir, it just says 'Coming.'"