Caslet shared the military's view, though the diplomats had triumphed, in no small part, the citizen commander knew, because of the Committee of Public Safety's lingering distrust of its own navy. But the admirals had been tossed one small bone (which Caslet suspected they would have been just as happy not to have received), and the task force's orders specifically required it to assist Andermani merchantmen against local pirates. Doing so would, of course, make it impossible to remain covert, but the idea, apparently, was that the gesture would convince the Andies the Republic's motives were pure as the snow where they were concerned. Personally, Caslet thought only a severely retarded Andy could think anything of the sort, but the clause about protecting imperial shipping gave him a tiny opening.
"These people took out a Silesian ship here, Sir," he said quietly, "but it's for damned sure they wouldn't turn up their noses at an Andy. For all we know, they've already popped a dozen imperial freighters. Even if they haven't, they will if they get the chance. If we take them out and can prove we did, that gives us some extra ammunition for convincing the Andermani that we're not their enemies if they tumble to our presence."
"That's true, I suppose," Jourdain said slowly, but his gaze was shrewd as he looked into Caslet's eyes. "At the same time, Citizen Commander, I can't avoid the suspicion that the Empire isn't really paramount in your own thinking."
"It isn't." Caslet would never have admitted that to another people's commissioner. "What's 'paramount to my thinking,' Sir, is that these people are sadistic bastards, and unless someone takes them out, they're going to go right on doing things like this."
The citizen commander gestured at the scene from the gym, still frozen on his small display, and his face was hard.
"I know there's a war on, Sir, and I know we have to do a lot of things we don't like in a war. But this sort of butchery isn't part of it, or it shouldn't be. I'm a naval officer. It's my job to prevent things like this if I can, whoever the ship in question belongs to. With your permission, I'd like a chance to do something decent. Something we can feel proud of."
He held his breath as Jourdains shoulders tightened at his last six words. They could easily be construed as an oblique criticism of the entire war against Manticore, and that was dangerous. But Warner Caslet couldn't let people who did something like this escape unpunished to go on doing it, not if there was any way at all he could stop them.
"Even assuming I agreed with you," Jourdain said after a moment of pregnant silence, "what makes you think you can find them?"
"I'm not certain I can," Caslet admitted, "but I think we've got a fair chance if Citizen Captain Branscombes people really have gotten us Erewhon's sensor records. The pirates had to be well within her sensor envelope when they fired into her. I don't expect military-grade data from a freighters sensors, but I'm confident they got enough for us to be able to ID the emissions signature of whoever did it. That means we can recognize them if we ever see them."
"And how will you find them or even know where to look for them?"
"First, we know they're pirates," Caslet said, ticking off his points on his fingers as he made them. "That means we can be confident they're working another system somewhere. Second, we can be fairly certain none of the major outfits are funding them, since not even one of the Confederacy's system governors would be willing to look the other way for people who do this kind of thing. That means they're probably operating from a system no one else is interested in, one where they could move in and set up basing facilities of their own. Third, they seem to have come up dry here in Arendscheldt. We can't be certain they didn't pick someone else off the very next day, but shipping is sparse out here, and Citizen Surgeon Jankowski's best guess is that they hit Erewhon less than two weeks ago. To me, that suggests they probably didn't get anyone else, in which case they've no doubt moved on to find richer pickings. Fourth, if I were a pirate moving from here, I'd go either to Sharons Star or Magyar. Those are the next two closest inhabited systems, and of the two, Sharons Star is closer. If they did go there, they may still be there, given how recently we know they were here. What I propose to do is inform Arendscheldt of Erewhon's location and move immediately to Sharons Star. With luck, we may catch them there. If not, we can move on to Magyar, and since we'll be going straight through without hunting for prizes, we can probably beat them there."
"A star system is a big area, Citizen Commander," Jourdain pointed out. "What makes you think you'll spot them even if they're there?"
"We won't, Sir. We'll convince them to spot us."
"Excuse me?" Jourdain looked puzzled, and Caslet smiled thinly and waved for his tac officer to join them.
Citizen Lieutenant Commander Shannon Foraker was one of the very few officers who'd actually been promoted after the disaster of Fourth Yeltsin. It was she who'd spotted the trap into which Citizen Admiral Thurston's fleet had strayed, and it wasn't her fault she'd spotted it too late. Caslet knew Jourdain's report had had a great deal to do with Shannon's promotion, and the peoples commissioner had come to share the rest of Vaubon's crew's near idolatry of the tac officer. She was one of the very few Republican officers who refused to feel despair over her hardware's inferiority to the enemy's. Indeed, she took it as a personal challenge, and the results she sometimes obtained verged on outright sorcery. She was so good, in fact, that Jourdain had decided to overlook the frequent lapses in her revolutionary vocabulary. Or perhaps, Caslet thought wryly, he'd finally realized Shannon was so deeply involved with her computers and sensors that she had no time to waste on little things like social nuances.
"Are you up to speed, Shannon?" the citizen commander asked as Foraker stopped beside his chair. She nodded, and he tipped his own head at Jourdain. "Then tell the Peoples Commissioner why we can count on the bad guys finding us."
"No problem, Skip." Foraker gave Jourdain a bright smile, and Jourdain smiled back, almost against his will. "These bastards are on the hunt for merchantmen, Sir. What we do is tune in our EW, take about half our beta nodes out of the wedge to drop it to an energy signature a merchie might have, and come in where they expect to see a freighter. If they're out there, they'll have to come to within, oh, four or five light-minutes, minimum, to see through our EW and realize we're a warship. By the time they do, my 'puters and I'll have their emissions dialed in to a fare-mee-well. If they're the people who did this, we'll know it."
"You see, Sir?" Caslet said to Jourdain. "We'll give them a target they can't resist and try to suck them in. At the very least, we should be able to ID them, and with any luck at all, they'll be coming in to match velocities with us before they know what we really are. Without knowing their max accel or our exact vectors ahead of time, I can't promise to overhaul them, but I can damned sure give them a run for their money. In fact, I'd almost prefer not to catch them."
"Why not?" Jourdain asked in surprise.
"Because if we can get close enough to chase them into hyper without overhauling, they may just be stupid enough to lead us to their home system," Caslet said grimly. "Independents or not, they may have more than a single ship, Sir, and I want to know where they nest. I've got a feeling Citizen Admiral Giscard will want them just as badly as we do, and unlike Vaubon, he's got the firepower to smash any bunch of pirates who ever operated."