"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.'"
Chapter Fifty-Seven
"Commodore, I just can't guarantee the hard numbers you're asking for," the Solarian technical representative said nervously on the bridge of MNS Cyclone . The man was sweating hard, and much as he wanted to, Janko Horster couldn't find it in himself to despise the fellow for it. He was a civilian, after all. He hadn't signed on for a combat mission against a technologically superior opponent.
"I'm not asking you to guarantee it," the commodore said. "I'm just asking for your best estimate."
The civilian fidgeted, pulling at his lower lip and blinking rapidly while he thought.
Horster wanted to shake the answer out of him, but hurrying the man wasn't the way to get a reliable response. So the commodore contented himself with a tight smile, folded his hands behind himself, and took a quick turn around his commodious flag deck.
Under the training mission scenario, the three ships of the First Division— Cyclone and her sisters Typhoon and Hurricane -had been tasked to penetrate Eroica Station's sensor perimeter and get to attack range before they were detected. Given the sensor upgrades the Station had received from the Technodyne people, Horster hadn't been ragingly optimistic about his chances, but he'd been determined to give it the best try he could. Which was why he'd arranged to embark a dozen tech reps aboard each ship for any "emergency adjustments" which might be required. After all, it was less than three weeks since the ships had completed their full-powered engine trials. There was no telling what sort of small things might go wrong. And if the tech reps who just happened to be aboard to deal with them also just happened to be qualified EW instructors who could just happen to actually take over the systems-purely in order to demonstrate their proper operation to his own people, of course-well, so much the better.
He'd used the marvelously effective stealth systems of his wonderful new toys to cover his relatively low-powered impeller signatures while he accelerated to a velocity of 37,800 KPS. Then he'd shut down to the absolute minimum impeller strength. He would have liked to shut down completely, but even with hot nodes at standby he would have been looking at a significant delay in bringing the wedge back up. So instead he'd held it at the barest possible maintenance level, which would let him bring it back to full power in less than eighty seconds if he needed to.
For the last two hours he'd been barreling through space on a ballistic course. Now he was 48.6 million kilometers short of the Station, which put him just under 58.7 million kilometers from the Manties... headed straight for them.
"Commodore," the civilian said finally, "I'm sorry. We just don't know enough about their sensor capabilities. Another Indefatigable couldn't see us until we got much closer, probably down to under five million kilometers, given how little emissions signature we're showing. Against Manties, who knows? I hate to say it, but if they've deployed remote arrays, they might be able to see us right this minute."
"No," Horster said. "If they could see us, they'd've already reacted."
"How, Sir?" the civilian asked, and Horster snorted.
"They're still decelerating, and they haven't fired on the Station or, apparently, demanded we break off. Given our closing velocity, they can't avoid us unless we break off. So if they're maintaining profile without even mentioning us to the Station, they don't know we're here."
The Solarian nodded slowly, and Horster shrugged.