"Calmly, Little One. We will find them and perform our appointed task." She heard Tisiphone's tension, but it was a different sort of strain. The Fury never doubted they would find those they sought; eagerness sharpened her tone, not uncertainty.
"Yeah, sure," Alicia said, and twitched in surprise at the saw-toothed anticipation quivering in her own voice.
She felt Tisiphone's answering start of surprise-and something like concern behind it-and looked down with a frown. Her clasped hands were actually trembling! Confusion flickered through her for just a moment, a vague sense of something wrong, but she brushed it aside and reached for a thought to distract her from it.
"Think they'll bite, Megarea?"
"Sure they will. I admit this is a bit more complicated than being Star Runner, but I can handle it"
Alicia nodded, though "a bit more complicated" grossly understated the task her cybernetic sister faced. Pretending to be a freighter was complex yet straightforward for an alpha synth's electronic warfare capabilities, but this time the deception was multi-layered and far more difficult. This time Megarea was pretending to be a battle-cruiser pretending to be a destroyer- and failing. The "pirates" were supposed to see through the first level of deceit, but not the second … and if they pierced the first too soon, Monkoto's entire plan would come crashing down about their ears.
"Definitely a destroyer drive," Commander Rendlemann announced several hours later, and Howell allowed himself an ironic smile. Of course it was a destroyer. Arriving at this godforsaken star on that heading it could only be Harpy. No one but Alexsov and Control knew where to find them, and any dispatch boat from Control would have come in on a completely dif-
"Still," Rendlemann murmured to himself, "there's something odd about it."
"What?" Howell twisted around in his chair, eyes sharpening.
"I said there's some-"
"I heard that part! What d'you mean, 'odd'?"
"Nothing I can really put a finger on, sir," Rendlemann frowned as he concentrated on his link to Procyon's AI, "but they're decelerating a bit slowly. There's a slight frequency shift in the forward nodes, too." He rubbed his chin. "Wonder if they've had drive problems? That could explain the delay, and if they had to make shipboard repairs it might explain the frequency anomaly.
Howell reached for his own headset. Unlike Rendlemann, he couldn't link directly with the dreadnought's cyber synth, but a frown gathered between his brows as he studied Tracking's data. Rendlemann was right. Harpy was coming in faster than she should have-in fact, her current deceleration would carry her past her rendezvous with Procyon at more than seven thousand KPS.
His frown deepened. Harpy was well inside his perimeter destroyers, little more than ninety minutes from Procyon at her present deceleration, and she hadn't said a word. She was still 17.6 light-minutes out, so transmission lag would be a pain, but why hadn't Alexsov sent even a greeting? He had to know how Howell must have worried, and …
"Com, hail Captain Alexsov and ask him where he's been."
The message fled towards Megarea at the speed of light, and she raced to meet it. Eight hundred seconds after it was born, Megarea's receptors scooped it out of space, and Alicia swore.
"I wanted to be closer than this, damn it!" Her own displays glowed behind her eyes, and thirteen light-minutes lay between her and Procyon. She was already in the dreadnought's SLAM range … but Megarea mounted no SLAMs. She had to close another sixty-five million kilometers, fifteen more minutes at this deceleration, before her missiles could range upon her enemy- and seventy-two million before she could "break and run" on the vector to Monkoto's rendezvous.
"Can we steal enough delay, Megarea?" she demanded.
"I don't think so," the AI replied unhappily. "No reply will be the same as answering, unless this Howell's a lot dumber than we think, and battle-cruiser three's in position to cut us off short of course change."
"Better to answer, Little One. We are more like to gain time by tangling him in confusion, however briefly, than by silence."
A corner of Alicia's mind glanced at the clock. Eighty seconds since the signal came in, and Megarea was right; if she delayed much longer, her very delay would become a response… .
Something hot and primitive boiled in the recesses of her mind, something red that smoked with the hot, sweet incense of blood, and her lips thinned over her teeth.
"Oh, the hell with it! Talk to the man, Megarea."
"Transmitting," the AI said simply.
James Howell's fingers drummed on the arm of his command chair, and he frowned in growing, formless uneasiness. That had to be Harpy, but Gregor was taking his own sweet time about replying.
He glanced at the chronometer and bared his teeth at his own thoughts. Barely twenty-seven minutes had passed since he sent his own signal; a reply could scarcely have arrived this soon even if Gregor had responded instantly. He knew that, but …
He bit the thought off and made himself wait. Twenty-eight minutes. The range was down to eleven light-minutes. Twenty-nine. Thirty.
"Sir," his com officer looked up with a puzzled expression, "we have a response, but it's not from Captain Alexsov."
"What?!" Howell rounded fiercely on the unfortunate officer.
"They say they have battle damage, sir," that worthy said defensively. "We don't have visual, and their signal is very weak. I think- Here, let me route it to your station."
Howell leaned back, glaring at Harpy's blue star. Battle damage? How? From whom? What the hell was go-
His thought died as a faint voice sounded in his ear bug.
… nal is very faint. Say again your transmission. Repeat, this is Medusa. Your signal is very weak. Say again your trans-"
Medusa?! Howell jerked upright in his chair with an oath.
"Battle stations!"
His shocked bridge crew stared at him for an instant, and then alarms began to howl throughout Procyon's eight million-tonne hull.
Howell snapped his chair around to face Commander. Rendlemann across his own battle board. The ops officer's eyes were almost focused, despite his concentration on his cyber synth link, and questions burned in their depths.
"It's not Gregor," Howell snapped.
"But-how, sir?"
"I don't know how!" Yet even as he spoke, Howell's mind raced. "Something must have given Gregor away to a regular Fleet unit." He slammed a fist against his console. "They took him out and reset their transponder to bluff their way in, but they can't have taken Harpy intact. If they had, they'd know the Medusa transponder codes were bogus."
"But if they didn't take her intact, how did they know to come here?"
"How the hell do I know? Unless-" Howell closed his eyes, thinking furiously, then spat another curse. "They must've picked him up leaving Wyvern, before he worm-holed out of the system. Damn the luck! They got a read on his vector and extrapolated his destination.
"Extrapolated well enough to hit us dead center?"
"How the hell many other stars are there within twenty light-years?" Howell snarled. "But they can't've known what they were heading into. If they knew, they wouldn't have sent a single tin can to check it out." He glared at the blue dot again, yet a grudging respect had crept into his angry eyes. "Those gutsy bastards are decelerating straight toward us, and they're already inside sensor range. They can't see us on gravitics with our drives down, so they're hanging on as long as they can to get a full count for their SLAM drones, and if they do-"