Three seconds later, Ulpreln engaged the thrusters once again; the counteracceleration crushed Nezdeh back into her couch.
* * *
Jorge Velho released his white-knuckle grasp on the arms of his command couch. “They’ve destroyed both arrays?”
“Yes, sir.” Ayana Tagawa’s reply was eerily calm.
“Probably because they realized that we meant to try signaling with them. As you feared.”
She half turned, so that their eyes could meet. “Sir, I meant no disrespect or criticism with that warning. Despite the risks, it was the only reasonable course left to you. Many civilian commanders would not have conceived of it.”
Velho noticed the slight emphasis she put on the word civilian. Why would she even phrase her comment with that adjective, unless her dossier was somehow incomplete—?
But there was no time to pursue that thought; the attackers were not wasting time. “The intruder has tumbled and is counterboosting.” Ayana paused, checking her data. “At four gees.”
Piet glanced up at the navplot, assessing. “They’re going to shoot past us.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Jorge, who had piloting credentials but nothing like his helmsman’s experienced, instinctive surety.
“Because unless they mean to maintain that counterboost right up until they kiss our hull, they won’t have killed all their forward momentum, relative to making an intercept.”
Ayana stared at the plot. “But that is exactly what they mean to do. Look at their telemetry: at their current rate of relative deceleration, they are going to match our vector and achieve an approach velocity of zero at exactly twenty-one meters from Arbitrage. And they are making for a logical boarding point: the EVA hatches in the lading and remote engineering sections, just forward of the tanker cradles and cargo racks.”
Piet shook his head. “That’s madness. No one can take four gees of sustained deceleration and then be ready to un-ass their couches and conduct an assault. One or the other maybe, but not both.”
“And yet,” Ayana pointed out calmly, “there is no other explanation for the intruder’s course of action. They mean to board us.”
Velho accepted that the impossible was becoming the inevitable and sought for a way to reverse that trend. “Piet, give me full portside roll from the emergency attitude control system.”
Ayana looked around with a smile. “Excellent, sir. They will not be able to dock with a rolling ship, not until they have rematched relative vectors. That will delay them considerably. And using the compressed gas of the emergency ACS will not give them a ready thermal target, as would the plasma thrusters.”
Jorge smiled, but feared the expression was as crooked as he felt. “That’s the idea. Now, let’s see if it works. In the meantime, get me an updated damage report, and get Kozakowski back on the bridge.”
* * *
“Srina Pere — Perekmeres,” Sehtrek grunted out past the lung compression of the sustained four-gee counterthrust.
Impressive; not many low-bred, even Intendants, have that much willpower. “No need to speak,” Nezdeh said with considerably less effort. “I see it. A faint roll in the target. Tegrese, thrust signatures?”
“No new thermal signature,” she replied.
So. The Aboriginals are not using their heavy plasma thrusters, then. Which logically meant compressed gas thrusters. “Sehtrek, give me a particulate density scan of the space immediately proximal to Arbitrage.”
“Plumes of p-parti-ticles on the port side—”
“Track those plumes back to the hull of Arbitrage. Relay those coordinates to Tegrese. As soon as you have them, Tegrese, fire one UV laser blister at each.”
Sehtrek gasped out, “Relaying.”
Tegrese nodded. “Firing.”
“Report,” Nezdeh demanded as, at three points along its port side, the Aboriginal craft spat out showers of violently spinning debris.
Sehtrek coughed. “Plumes dissipating. No new particulate emissions from compressed gas thrusters.”
“Roll rate of target?”
“One tenth of an RPM.”
“Ulpreln?”
“Commencing correction.” Lurker bucked slightly as a new, inward-spiraling vector was added to her course.
“Time to intercept?”
“Revised ETA is five minutes.”
Nezdeh toggled her beltcom. “Brenlor?”
“Here.”
“Stand by for boarding. In five minutes, the rehabilitation of our House begins in earnest.”
Chapter Eleven. FAR ORBIT SIGMA DRACONIS TWO
By the time Caine and Downing reached the secure conference room on board the Commonwealth shift-carrier Lincoln, the rest of their delegation workgroup was present: Sukhinin, Gray Rinehart, and biological expert Ben Hwang. The Marine guards started to close the door—
Flashing a clearance card at the guards and breezing past them into the compartment, Etienne Gaspard continued toward the head of the table. Once there, he took the chair that the other five had left unoccupied, so as to avoid the appearance of taking charge. “Good,” Gaspard said, “we are gathered.”
Caine and Downing exchanged looks. “Why, yes,” Downing murmured, “we are gathered.”
Caine resisted the impulse to close his eyes. Really? I’m going to have to babysit this jackass across God knows how many light-years?
Sukhinin had the rank, both military and political, to bring Gaspard to heel. Or at least, to try: “Gospodin Gaspard, while it is good of you to come, it is also a mystery. You were not summoned, to my knowledge.”
“An understandable oversight. Fortunately, upon debarking from Doppelganger, I requested an update on all top clearance communiqués. When I saw the topic of this meeting, I realized that I would have to be involved. It is only logical that we are sending a consul to the Slaasriithi, is it not?”
“Yes,” Sukhinin said slowly, “it is.”
“Then let me be the first to congratulate you on this extraordinary assignment, Admiral Sukhinin. I’m sure you will be—”
“I’m not going,” Vassily said with all the animation of a slab of granite. “You are.”
Gaspard smiled, then looked at Vassily and the other people in the room. The smile fell away from his face. “Gentlemen, this jest is in very poor taste.”
“It is not a jest, gospodin Gaspard. Consul Visser must return to Earth. I must remain here, due to relationships already forged with the Arat Kur. You are the only available consul.”
“But — but I have prepared for this assignment to Homenest assiduously, constantly, for many months! It is an outrage that I should be asked to—”
“Gospodin Gaspard, you are not being asked. You are being told. Am I clear?”
Gaspard finished sputtering, remembered the poise he had lost about two sentences earlier. “What is not clear to me, Admiral Sukhinin, is whether you have the authority to make this decision.”
Sukhinin smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “Computer,” he spoke at the ceiling, “secure communication protocol Borodino Five. Raise UCS Trafalgar.”
Within two seconds, a new voice boomed out of the speakers: Admiral Lord Thomas Halifax, C-in-C of the Republic Expeditionary Fleet. “Vassily, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Thomas, I am sorry to disturb you, but I require a confirmation of one of today’s earlier decisions. You are comfortable designating Consul Gaspard as Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Slaasriithi, yes?”