Winning Colors

Chapter Sixteen

Part of Heris’s strategy needed no explanation. Cecelia could see for herself the advantage in having the yacht able to switch beacon IDs, and the importance of timing was obvious as well. She cut short Faroe’s attempt to explain with a curt, “Yes, I can see that it’s best to change when we’re not in their scan. My question was, are they still clumped up behind their barrage screen?”

“It won’t really screen our change,” he said again.

Cecelia closed her eyes a moment and gave him a stare that had shriveled young men years before this one was born. He gulped and froze in place, as she intended. “I. Know. That.” She had picked it up from the conversations, but he didn’t have to know how new her understanding was. “What I’m interested in is whether we can tell where they are, and whether they’re still clumped. When the prey scatters—”

“But—they’re hunting us,” he said. Cecelia felt sorry for Heris. If this was the best she could find to send back to the yacht, she must be working with a real handicap on the cruiser. She should have let one of her own have it.

“So they think,” she said, and watched Faroe’s face wrap itself around that concept. “I don’t believe Commander Serrano looks at it that way.” She paused again, waiting for his wits to waken. When she saw a glimmer of intelligence, she went on. “You see, in my experience, Commander Serrano considers herself the hunter.”

“Oh.”

“And it is our responsibility, as I see it, to . . . er . . . herd the prey into . . .” Into what? she wondered in midphrase. You herded domestic animals, not hunting prey. She shook her hand, as if it were obvious, and rushed on. “—Or lure them, confuse them—you see my point.”

“But this is a defensive action,” he said. He didn’t sound convinced.

Cecelia gave him another, but less wounding, haughty look. Even aged civilian aunts knew better than that. “Come, Captain Faroe: what does the textbook say about defensive actions?”

He brightened. “Attack on defense . . .”

“Very well. Which makes us—” What could she use as an example. If Heris was the main pack, were they terriers? One terrier? Somehow the image of the yacht as a terrier digging into some vermin’s hole simply didn’t work. Then that ridiculous exhibit of Marcia’s came to her. “Cowhorses,” she said. He looked blank. Damn the boy, didn’t he have any ability to switch metaphors in midstream? “Riding . . .” What was the term now? “Drag,” she said. “Or flank, or something like that. We keep the stragglers from getting away.” She risked a glance around the bridge and intercepted some dubious expressions from the rest of the crew, expressions quickly wiped to blank respect. That would have to change. She grinned at them all, until she got answering smiles, however weak. “I’m a scatty old woman,” she said. “Don’t let my gorgeous red hair fool you—I’m a Rejuvenant, and it’s all fake. And sometimes I lose the words I want . . . the brain’s stuffed too full of too many damn disciplines.”

Cesar chuckled aloud. “It’s all right, sir. It’s just we never heard a spaceship compared to a cowhorse before . . . or the Benignity as cows.”

“I spent the last fifty-eight days at bloodstock farms,” Cecelia said. “Horses are my passion, and I’ve spent all that time with other horse fanciers. Came back up with my head full of bloodlines and genetic analyses, instead of technical data for ships.” As if her head had ever been full of technical data. But they didn’t have to know.

“And you really think Commander Serrano is planning to do more than just hold them off?” asked Cesar, with a quick glance around.

“Yes. And so do you.” That made Faroe straighten up.

“But Commander Garrivay said—”

“Commander Garrivay’s dead. Heris is commanding. It’s a new hunt.”

As the hours passed, Cecelia decided that only inexperience kept Faroe from being a reasonably good young officer. He kept tripping over his former captain’s negatives: “Captain Garrivay said no one could . . .” this and “Captain Garrivay said never . . .” that. She had the impression, from him and the others, that Garrivay had wanted no more initiative in his officers than it took to wipe themselves, and he’d have preferred to have them do that on command. But with Cecelia behind him, Faroe began to think of some things for himself. He would glance at her fearfully each time; she discovered that a smile and nod seemed to increase his intelligence by ten points. Success breeds confidence; she knew that from riding. She still wished Heris had sent Petris or Ginese to command, but she realized that it wouldn’t have worked. The real military—the military she had always avoided, and especially the military as molded by Garrivay’s command—had its own unbreakable rules, and Heris had bent them as far as they would go.

And Faroe’s judgment, when he actually got up his nerve to make decisions, was sound. He accepted Sirkin’s expertise, and they made their FTL hop on her mark. The first switch of beacon IDs went without a hitch, and then they were tucked in behind Oreson’s rings, Sirkin having managed to drop the extra velocity of the FTL jump in some clever way that let them crawl into cover with, as Faroe put it, just enough skirt trailing.

“Which satellite has the mining colony?” Cecelia asked.

“That one.” Faroe pointed it out. “But they’ve got nothing useful.”

“For now.” The image of terriers still danced in her head. “Who knows . . . if we asked them, they might be able to help.”

“I’m not sure I have the authority to talk to civilians at a time like this,” Faroe said, looking worried again.

“I do,” Cecelia said. What that authority was, she wasn’t sure, but her instinct said it was time to form a pack.

Admiral Straosi glared at his subordinate. “What do you mean, Zamfir is out of action? There has been no action.”

It could be the Chairman. It could be the Chairman’s way of punishing him for that foolish jest in the Boardroom, to make sure a problem ship came along. Easy enough to do. Not easy to handle. He could hardly go back and complain. And he wondered if the Chairman had any other surprises for him.

“A drive problem,” the younger man said. He looked nervous, as well he might. “A failure of synchronization in the FTL generator, with resultant surge damage on downshift.”

A real problem, although it usually resulted from poor maintenance. In safe situations, the best solution was complete shutdown of both drives, with a cold start of the sublight drive, once the residual magnetics had diminished to a safe level, but that left the ship passive, unable to maneuver at all. Straosi had his doubts, though. He could not verify the problem from here, and he didn’t trust the Chairman’s great-nephew.

Admiral Straosi was glad to have a target for his temper. “You are telling me that you did not adequately inspect your ship before starting off on this mission?”

A pause. “Sir, the admiral knows we were assigned to this mission only fourteen hours before launch—”

“The admiral also knows the entire fleet has been on alert—all ships to be ready to depart at one hour’s notice. Had you slacked off, Captain?” Of course they had; everyone did, on extended high alert. But now, with the results of that slack endangering his mission, and his own life, he was not about to be lenient.

“Er . . . no, Admiral. It wasn’t that, it was just—”

“Just that you somehow failed to notice a problem that any first-year fresh out of school could see . . . Captain. Let me put it this way—” That was ritual introduction of a mortal challenge. “Either you get your ship back into formation, or we leave you. I am not risking this mission for someone too stupid and lazy to do the job for which he was overpaid.”

“The Benignity commands.” That was the only possible answer. The admiral grunted, and watched the scans. Zamfir continued to lag . . . the lag widened. By the estimate of the senior engineer aboard the Paganini, the other cruiser’s insystem drive had lost thirty percent of its power.

“If the R.S.S. ship was right, their cruiser might be able to take Zamfir,” an aide murmured.

“If they want to waste their time attacking our stragglers, they have my blessing,” the admiral said. “Let them trade salvos with Zamfir; Paulo might actually blow them away and regain my respect, and at least they’d be out of our way. Our objective is the Xavier system, to prepare it for the use of the entire fleet. We don’t care what happens to Zamfir.”

“And Cusp?” The admiral considered. The little killer-ship now flanking Zamfir had been intended as rear guard and as messenger both. Had the damaged cruiser been where it should, Cusp would have been the tail of the formation.

“Bring Cusp to its normal position,” he said. He was almost glad to leave Zamfir out there unprotected. Paulo’s carelessness was going to cause trouble no matter what happened; he was the Chairman’s great-nephew. He was supposed to come out of this a hero. Instead, he had already caused trouble. He stared at the scans, waiting for Cusp to close up. Nothing happened; the two ships dropped still farther behind.

“What is his problem?” the admiral asked. Then he remembered. The captain of Cusp was Paulo’s brother-in-law. They had always been close. Well, fine. Let them both hang back, and maybe the Familias commander would think it was some new tactic, and engage them. Together they should be an easy match for an R.S.S. cruiser. Perhaps this would work out after all. Of course it was bad for discipline . . . but he could rescind the order. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Order Cusp to hold position, and engage the enemy at will. We have sufficient margin of superiority; we can afford to test new tactics.”

Heris tried to think herself into the enemy’s mind. Assuming that Hearne had told the truth as she saw it, the Benignity commander believed there were three hyper-capable ships near Xavier, and an obsolete defense escort with no FTL drive. A cruiser: the most dangerous, commanded by a Serrano, a name they should know. A patrol craft, whose new captain was far enough down the table of officers that he might not even be listed in the CH database—certainly there was no combat command listing for him. And an armed yacht, whose real capabilities Heris had screened from Garrivay’s personnel. She had told Hearne that she expected a Benignity attack “in a few days, certainly within ten local days.” In other words, the Benignity commander would expect them to be looking for trouble, but not necessarily on full alert yet, particularly not after a hostile takeover of the ships. Hearne would have transmitted her assessment of the situation, but her main concern had been to escape. She certainly hadn’t stayed around to answer questions.

On the bridge, four clocks were running countdowns: Koutsoudas’s estimate of when the CH ships could get reliable scan on them, Koutsoudas’s estimate of when standard Fleet scans would have shown the CH jump point exit, the scan-delay display, and the realtime clock which her own crew would use for its timing of maneuvers and firing.

“She’s jumped,” Koutsoudas said, pointing at the yacht’s icon. “You know, I thought Livadhi would pass out when you jumped her that close to Naverrn. What did you do to that hull?”

“Ask me no questions,” Heris said. At some level below current processing, she was distantly aware of other gears ticking into alignment. Amazing how all those unauthorized and illegal changes to Sweet Delight now made sense, in light of her pretense to have been on undercover assignment. She was going to be really angry if it turned out her aunt admiral had diddled with her memory and she only thought she’d been forced to resign.

“I always knew Oblo was a genius,” Koutsoudas went on. “Him and Ginese . . . and Kinvinnard . . .”

“And you. Don’t be greedy. I envied Livadhi for years.”

“It was mutual. Ah—she’s back. Her . . . er . . . third incarnation, it is. The one from the Guernesi.”

“Speaking of geniuses. I think Oblo would emigrate in a flash if they didn’t have such stringent rules on personal weaponry.” Heris watched the screen. The old Grogon now occupied the approximate volume of space where the yacht had been, and its beacon reported that it was the yacht. Although of different shapes, they had similar mass. Light-hours away, the yacht curved around the largest chunk of rock in this section of the “rockring”—the remains of a small planetoid that had come apart eons before. It still showed on Vigilance’s scans, but from the angle of the CH flotilla, it should have appeared briefly, as if it had darted out to get a clean scan or tightbeam message, and then gone back into hiding.

Vigilance itself bored out at half the maximum insystem drive acceleration, as if in cautious pursuit of Despite.

“We would be cautious, because we would worry if Despite had an ally out there, something Garrivay didn’t chart. He didn’t even drop temporary mines, did he?”

“No, sir.” That was her new Weapons First. “He said there was no need to cause a problem for incoming commercial traffic. It would cost too much to clear later.”

“And no beacon leeches, either,” said Communications. “That’s standard, but we just thought he was in a snit to be sent out here away from Third Ward HQ, when all the excitement was going on.”

“He didn’t want any clever amateurs on Xavier to pick up a warning,” Heris said, wondering what excitement that had been. Something else she didn’t have time to pursue.

“They might have us,” Koutsoudas said, meaning the enemy. “Another hour, and we have to assume they do.” The Benignity flotilla, knowing exactly what to look for and where, would see them as soon as the limits of their technology made it possible. The FR vessels could be presumed to divide their attention in more directions. They might not notice the distant flotilla at first if they were looking elsewhere.

“How’s our angle?”

“Well . . . it’s close, sir. If they believe that we believe Despite is leading us straight to them, then we could miss a signal . . . for a while . . . but the normal cone would pick it up as a primary signal.

“And their insertion barrage?”

“There’s nothing between us to cause detonations before we run into it, and the drives should be off by now, realtime.”

Time passed. Heris had walked most of the ship by now, letting the crew see her . . . dangerous but necessary. If they were going to fight well, they had to know who commanded them, one of the textbook rules that actually seemed to work in the real world. They were busy; she had told her officers to use whatever training drills they could to get the crew up to peak efficiency. That included rest and food; she herself had left the bridge for a hot meal and a short nap in the captain’s quarters, with Ginese keeping watch outside. Now she was back on the bridge, restless as always in the last minutes before action.

“We should be noticing them now,” Koutsoudas said. Heris glanced over, and his screen flared as something blew. The enemy icons rippled, their confidence-limit markers spreading out.

“Damn!” Koutsoudas hunched lower. “They blew some of their own barrage screen—they really want us to see them.”

“The Benignity hates uncertainty,” Heris said. “It must have been driving their commander crazy when we didn’t seem to notice them.”

The Vigilance’s screens flicked on at full power, as Heris had planned, and Weapons brought all boards hot. Heris said nothing; she had given the orders hours ago, and so far all was going as planned. They were far enough from Xavier now to jump safely; the cruiser popped in and out, a standard maneuver, slipping back out with a lower relative velocity—not a standard maneuver. The low-vee exit on a very short jump meant minimal blurring of scans on exit.

“Got ’em again.” Now the scan lag, with Koutsoudas’s special black boxes, was less than ten minutes. “Captain, they’ve brought the heavies with ’em.”

“So we expected,” said Heris. “Let me see the data.” The CH ships had their beacons live; they were not pretending to be anything but what they were, an invading force, and they were in more danger from each other if they went blank. Heris recognized the classes, but not the individual ships, whose names meant little to her. She knew the composer class was usually named for composers—and she knew Paganini—but who was Dylan? Or Zamfir? Not that it mattered. The Benignity cruiser was a third again the mass of Vigilance, and thus could mount more weapons. Three cruisers meant impossible odds. Assault carriers held atmospheric shuttles, assault troops for groundside action if needed, and the components for an orbital station that would serve a larger fleet later. Two of these were more than adequate for assault on a planet with Xavier’s population and defenses. And the final two ships, much smaller killer-escorts, had the maneuverability the others lacked, along with the firepower of an R.S.S. patrol ship. Which meant Heris’s meagre force would have been outgunned even if Despite had stayed. Which meant staying was suicidal. The best she could hope to do was delay the invasion long enough for the R.S.S. to defend the jump points exiting this system. So much for “complete confidence” in her decisions.

She could still run. Legally, logically . . . but not as Heris Serrano.

“Those two we thought were lagging are farther behind,” Koutsoudas said suddenly. “Not their usual formation.”

“A new trick?” Someone across the bridge laughed. The Benignity weren’t known for minor innovations like trailing a ship or so from a standard formation. When they changed, they changed radically, usually because new technology provided new opportunities.

“A precaution,” Heris murmured. “What class?”

“One cruiser, one killer-escort. The cruiser’s really dropping back. It must’ve come out of FTL with low relative velocity.”

“Got to be a feint,” Svatek said. “I wish we could eavesdrop.”

“Admiral Straosi, the drive continues unstable. If the admiral wishes, it can be confirmed—” Straosi didn’t want to hear this.

“What do you want to do about it?”

“We’re still losing power. If it drops much more we can’t support the weapons—” In other words, they would be slow, unarmed, helpless. Fat sheep in the path of wolves. Admiral Straosi allowed himself a moment of gloating: he hadn’t wanted Paulo along, and this whole mess was, ultimately, the fault of the Chairman. But experience suggested that the Chairman would not be the one whose neck felt the noose, whose liver danced on the tip of a blade. At the least, he must conceal his gloating.

“Captain, I apologize for my earlier remarks.” That would go on the records. “I am sure you would not have missed such a major problem in your drive. Have you considered sabotage?”

“I—yes, sir, I have.”

“There are those who opposed this mission, Captain. I will make sure that no blame accrues to you for your ship’s failure to participate in this action . . . and I’m sorry, Captain, but I cannot jeopardize the invasion for your ship alone.”

“Of course not, sir.” As he’d expected, Paulo didn’t want to appear cowardly. Perhaps he wasn’t.

“As one man of honor to another, may I suggest that you could do us great service by conserving power for your weaponry, even though that places your ship in greater danger. . . .” It was not a question, and not quite an order. They both would understand. Zamfir was doomed, but it might kill a Familias ship with its death.

“It would be my honor, Admiral Straosi. If the Admiral has specific suggestions—”

“I trust your judgment, Captain.” And that was that. Let the boy figure it out for himself, and if he killed that pesky Serrano, Straosi wouldn’t mind a bit recommending him for a posthumous medal.

“We’ll drop a few buckets of nails on their road,” Heris said. She and the weapons crews had already discussed the fusing and arming options. They hadn’t nearly the number of mines she really needed, but the more of the enemy, the greater the chance of a hit. She presumed the enemy would see them drop the clusters, and that would provoke some kind of maneuver. “And immediate course change, getting us the vector for jumps two, three, and five.”

The trailing pair of enemy ships, cruiser and killer-escort, worried her. Why were they hanging back? If the rest of the Benignity formation reacted normally, flaring away from the mines, how would that final pair react? Too much to hope they were back there because they were scan blind or something, and would just sweep on majestically into the mine cluster.

That thought, however unlikely, brought a grin to her face. She had not anticipated how happy she would be, back on the bridge of an R.S.S. cruiser. It was ridiculous, under the circumstances: she had come back only to find herself in a worse tactical mess than any she’d experienced. She had less chance of surviving—let alone winning—this engagement than she had had with the Board of Inquiry. But that didn’t sober her. This was where she belonged, and she felt fully alive, fully awake, for the first time since she’d left. Not that she regretted the experience of the past years, but—but this was home.

And Vigilance answered her joy with its own. Every hour she could sense the lift in crew morale; they believed in her, they accepted her. From their reactions alone, she learned things about Garrivay that erased the last doubts she’d had. A man might be a traitor to the Familias, and a good leader for his own people, but Garrivay had been a user, someone who abused power.

If they’d had time to prepare, even ten or fifteen days, she’d have had a reasonable chance, she was sure. Now—she didn’t even bother to calculate it. Either luck—and whatever training Garrivay had done—would be with them, or it wouldn’t. She intended to give luck all the help she could. While she wouldn’t mind dying in action, it wasn’t fair to the people of Xavier.

Space combat had a leisurely, surreal phase in which nothing seemed to happen . . . weapons had been launched, to find targets or not minutes to hours hence, and the enemy’s weapons were on their way, with scan trying desperately to find and track them before maneuvering. No one used LOS, line-of-sight weapons, at this distance, despite their lightspeed advantage; what the best scans “saw” was far behind the enemy’s location.

“They’re starring,” Koutsoudas said. “Avoiding our mines.” That was the usual Benignity move; she’d expected it.

“Jump two,” Heris said. She had laid out a series of microjumps, options ready to take depending on the enemy’s reaction to the mines. This had been the most likely, the starburst dispersal . . . if she had kept on course, she’d have gone down the throat of the bell they made: easy meat. Instead, the course change and microjump popped them out—

“Targeting—” said Weapons First. “On target.”

“Engage.”—Popped them out in position to fire their forward LOS weapons at the flank of the massive assault carrier they’d chosen, as it clawed its way into a shallow curve away from its former course. Four light-seconds away, an easy solution for the computers. A roar punctuated with crashes burst from the speakers.

“Turn that down!” Heris had never quite believed the theory that said humans needed to hear the fights they got into. Ground combat had been so noisy it drove men insane—so why had psychologists insisted on programming fake noises for combat in space? “Keep it below ten,” she said. It couldn’t be turned off completely, but it didn’t have to rupture eardrums.

“Sir.”

She had had a captain once who had reprogrammed the sounds to be musical . . . he had had other, stranger, hobbies, which eventually led to early retirement, but she had never quite forgotten the ascending major and minor scales he had chosen for outbound LOS weapons. If they hit their targets, the system then chimed the appropriate chord. It had enabled everyone, even the doubting Jig she had been then, to tell whether it was the port (major) or starboard (minor) weapons firing, and from which end of the ship. Forward batteries sounded like flutes, and the aft ones like bassoons, with the intermediate woodwinds ranged down the sides. She’d never attempted anything like it on her own ship.

“Jump six, then eight.” On their new vector, a microjump that put them safely away from the probable response of the Benignity’s cruisers. If she guessed right. Another immediate microjump following, that brought them out at an angle to another part of the starburst. Another quick targeting solution, another burst with LOS, then back into jumpspace, this time long enough to open a twenty-minute gap, while Koutsoudas and the other scan techs reran the scans of the targeting runs.

The first run confirmed the starburst, and the mass classes of the vessels involved. Seven of them, three heavy cruisers carrying half-again Vigilance’s weaponry, two assault carriers massing three times the cruisers, and two killer-escorts. One cruiser and one killer-escort lagging well behind. The second run scans confirmed a hit on the assault carrier, partly buffered by its screens.

“They do have good screen technology,” Heris said, scowling at the scan data. They had hit with both of the cruiser’s forward LOS, but one ablated against the screens. The second had penetrated, but hadn’t breached the ship . . . the screens appeared to be weakened, perhaps down, and the infrared showed substantial heat, but no atmosphere.

The enemy’s starburst had modified after the attack, with one side of the starburst rolling over—but slowly, with those massive ships—to regroup along the axis of the original attack. Also quite visible on the second scan was the trace of weapons that had narrowly missed Vigilance when she jumped after the attack.

“Damn good shooting,” Ginese commented. “From one of the cruisers—their command cruiser probably. We weren’t onscan a total of eight seconds, and they nearly got us. It would have been glancing, and the shields would have held, but . . . whoever it is over there is sharp.”

“How long did it take us to get our shots off?”

“Six seconds.” Long. On her old ship, they had drilled until they could pop out of a microjump and fire within four. No wonder they were almost fried.

“We’ll do better,” she said, with a confidence she didn’t feel. She couldn’t move her old crew into every critical position—she hadn’t enough of them, and besides, she needed to get this crew working. In a long fight—and she had to hope this would be a long fight—shift after shift would have to fight with peak efficiency.

From twenty light-minutes away, she could not follow the Paradox’s attack in realtime, even though Koutsoudas bought her a little advantage with his boosted scans. Tinsi, having the advantage of the postscans of her own attack, had chosen to have another run at the possibly wounded assault carrier. But he took ten seconds to come out of jumpspace, locate his target, and shoot. The assault cruiser’s shields failed, but he himself was under attack, and he scorched the Benignity ship without breaching it. He jumped just in time, and Heris wondered if he would follow up his attack or simply microjump his way to a safe jump point.

She had not been sure he would attack at all; he had reported having two serious fights aboard after taking command. Although he had seemed slow, even stupid, when she first talked to him, clearly he had plenty of command ability. His ship not only obeyed orders, but had survived a live engagement.

In any case, it was time for Vigilance to re-enter the fray. Another pair of microjumps brought them in behind the laggards. This time Heris chose ballistic weapons, half of them heat-targeting, and the other half fitted with the “kill me, target you” guidance systems that converted scrambling countermeasures into secondary guidance. They might hit the trailing pair; even if they missed, their overrun might bring them up on the other CH ships. Vigilance launched all its weapons within six seconds, and was safely back into microjump without being touched.

“There’s Paradox,” said Koutsoudas, as soon as they’d jumped back again; he was replaying the scan of their attack. The patrol ship had come across the bottom of the CH formation, this time firing within three seconds of their jump exit. CH response didn’t come close.

“Of course, they’ll start microjumping soon,” Heris said. “They’re going to be highly peeved with us.” She glanced at the clocks. “Take us over to Blueyes now.” Blueyes was the second-largest gas giant in the system, with its own set of rings and satellites to hide in. It was a considerable distance away, but if she could lure them into pursuing her over there, all the better for Xavier. The jump lasted just long enough for Koutsoudas to switch the beacon ID—the ship that went into jump at point A was not, apparently, the same one that emerged from jump at B.

Redlining the insystem drive to get a tight swing around the gas giant—and then out on a new vector, a longish run on insystem drive to let the enemy get a good look at them while their own scans scooped data.

The CH ships had regrouped, snugging in again and boosting toward Xavier itself. All but the laggards . . . which had vanished, leaving behind roiled traces that indicated either badly tuned microjumps or explosions.

“A lot of infrared,” Koutsoudas said. “Lots and lots of infrared, and interesting spectra—not quite what I’d expect if they blew, but definitely not normal jump insertion.”

The scans looked messier, cluttered with the probable courses of ballistic weapons that had not hit their targets and the extended lines of LOS weapons. As dangerous as enemy fire, in an extended battle, were the hundreds of armed missiles heading off in all directions. As the ships maneuvered, especially with microjumps, they could find themselves in the midst of these hazards, being blown away by their own or enemy weapons. Long microjumps even offered the possibility for inept commanders to shoot themselves down with their own LOS beams.

“If they’ve got a new way of foxing our scans, that might explain why they were hanging back,” Heris said.

“Dammit,” Ginese said, watching the main clump continue steadily toward Xavier, “you’d think they’d have the guts to chase us—”

“Too smart,” Heris said. “They know we’re outgunned. Well, no one said this would be easy. Is that another one lagging?” The icon indicated that it was the other killer-escort.

“They’ve slowed,” Koutsoudas said. “Gives them more maneuverability.”

“And more options for microjumps,” Heris said. “Wait—I see only four now.”

“Their killer-ship is missing . . . no . . . there it is, sneaking over to—oh, shit.”

Over to the yacht’s hiding place, and it would be coming in on their blind side. Its commander probably didn’t know the yacht was there, Heris thought. He hoped to conceal his ship in the rings, to catch them on the flank. But instead of ambushing a fox, he was going to scare a rabbit out of the brush.

It was already too late to help; their scan data’s lag meant that whatever was going to happen, had. Heris said nothing, waiting for the disaster she expected.

When the flare came, it wasn’t the yacht.

“They laid their own mines,” Ginese said, in a tone that matched her own surprise. “Faroe thought of that—”

“Kill,” Koutsoudas said, unnecessarily. That size flare had to be a kill, and the spectra matched the reference patterns. “Detonated their onboard stuff—I hope the yacht wasn’t too close.”

Heris felt a little jolt of satisfaction. She had picked the right junior officer to captain the yacht after all—and whatever effect Lady Cecelia had had on him, he’d managed to kill a bigger, more powerful ship. And the enemy’s advantage was eroding . . . from seven ships, any of them a match for hers, the Benignity commander was down to four, one with severely damaged shields.

Assuming the two that had vanished weren’t hiding cleverly somewhere. Instinct told her no, that they had either been destroyed, or had fled, damaged, into FTL. Not smart. Ships that entered FTL with major damage rarely emerged on the other end.

If only she’d been able to lay a proper array of mines around Xavier, she’d have a chance to win outright, with all her own ships intact. The sparse ring the shuttles had spread in equatorial orbit would only annoy the ships—might injure the assault carrier whose shields were down, but no more.

Still, they’d done better than she’d expected. In the long hours that remained of the inward traverse, they would have several more chances for the quick, darting attacks that gave her ships the best chance. Especially since the CH formation no longer had killer-ships to duel with them.

“We can’t let them alone long enough to repair their shields,” she said. “I want to change shifts now—” Two standard hours early. “We need the freshest reflexes we have.” She herself had been up and running too long. She didn’t even want to think how long it had been since she assembled the small group that had taken over the Vigilance. “I’m taking four hours, myself. You have your orders, Svatek.”