Honors cheeks heated at his ironic tone, and his smile turned wry.
"Oh, don't worry about it, Captain. Arthur Houseman is a liberal bigot with an ego problem. If you stepped on him, he undoubtedly needed it, and if I'd thought you'd step too hard, I would have warned you about him." Honor's blush faded, and he nodded. "Exactly. As I told you, Dame Honor, you're my flag captain, and I expect you to act the part. Which includes not taking any crap from a junior officer who's also a stuck-up prig and resents your having proved his cousin is a coward. Unfortunately, he really is good at his job. That, I imagine, is the reason Commodore Van Slyke tolerates him, but it's no reason you have to."
"Thank you, Sir," she said quietly.
"Don't thank me, Captain." He touched her elbow lightly, his eyes twinkling with curiously mingled amusement and warning. "When you're right, you're right. When you're not, I'll cut you off at the knees."
He smiled again, and she felt herself smile back.
CHAPTER NINE
Captain Mark Brentworth surveyed his spacious bridge with intense satisfaction. The heavy cruiser Jason Alvarez, the most powerful ship ever built in the Yeltsin System—at least until the battlecruisers Courvosier and Yanakov were commissioned next month—was the pride of the Fleet. She was also all his, and she'd already won her spurs. The pirates who'd once infested the region were rapidly becoming a thing of the past as local Manticoran units and the rapidly expanding Grayson Navy hunted them down. Alvarez —and Brentworth—had two independent kills and four assists to their credit, but prey had gotten progressively scarcer over the last few months, and, in a way, the captain was almost grateful for the boredom of his present assignment. Picket duty just beyond Yeltsin's Star's hyper limit was unglamorous, but his people needed the rest after the wearing concentration of pirate-hunting. Not that he wanted them to feel too relaxed, he thought with an inner smile.
The latest convoy from Manticore was due within six hours, and it ought to arrive inside Alvarez's sensor envelope, but he and his exec hadn't mentioned that to the rest of his crew. It would be interesting to see how quickly his people detected the convoy's arrival... and how quickly they got to battle stations until it was positively ID'ed.
In the meantime, however, there were—
"Unidentified hyper footprint at three-point-five light-minutes, Sir!"
"Plot it!" Brentworth snapped, and looked at his exec. "Battle stations, Mr. Hardesty!"
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
Alarms began to whoop even as the exec replied, and Brentworth looked down at the displays deploying about his chair with a frown. If this was the convoy, it was much earlier than it ought to be. On the other hand, it seemed improbable anything else would come in this close to its scheduled ETA.
The captain rubbed the tip of his nose, then turned to his tac officer. Lieutenant Bordeaux's eyes were intent as he studied the data. It would be a while yet before his light-speed sensors picked up anything at this range, but CIC's analysis of the FTL gravitic readings coalesced before him while Brentworth watched.
"It's a singleton, Sir," Bordeaux reported, never looking away from his display. "Looks like a freighter. Range six-three-point-one-six million kilometers. Course zero-zero-three by one-five-niner. Acceleration two-point-four KPS squared. Present velocity point-zero-four-eight Gee."
Brentworth started to nod, then snapped upright. The course was right for a least-time vector to Grayson, but that velocity was all wrong. The freighter must have been burning along at a full sixty percent of light-speed to carry that much vee across the alpha wall. That was well outside the safe hyper velocity envelope for a ship with commercial grade anti-rad and particle shielding, and the physiological stress of a crash translation at that speed was brutal. For that matter, she must be riding the ragged edge of compensator burnout to maintain her present acceleration with a freighter's drive!
No merchant skipper would maneuver like that—not if he had a choice—and the captain's stomach tightened. There were supposed to be three freighters, escorted by a pair of destroyers, but Alvarez saw only one impeller source. Coupled with the freighter's crash translation and accel...
"Astrogation, plot me an intercept course! Communications, get off an immediate contact report to Command Central!"
He hardly noticed the taut responses as he waved Hardesty in close beside his chair. The exec's face was as worried as his own, and Brentworth forced his voice to remain very level.
"Who else is out here, Jack? Anyone closer to them than us?"
"No, Sir," Hardesty said quietly, and Brentworth's mouth tightened, for Alvarez was currently at rest relative to Yeltsin's Star. His ship's acceleration was twice that of the unknown freighter, but the freighter was headed almost directly away from her at over 14,000 KPS, and she was far beyond missile range... as anyone following her would also be.
"Where's that course, Astrogation?" he snapped.
"Sir, we can't intercept short of Grayson orbit if she maintains her current acceleration," the astrogator replied. "At max accel, we'll take over eighty-eight minutes just to match velocity with her."
Brentworth's hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. He'd been afraid of that. The only, real hope for an interception now was that someone closer to Grayson had a convergent vector. But the freighter wouldn't be running this hard unless something was chasing her, and it was remotely possible he could get into range of that something.
"Put us on her track anyway," he said coldly.
"Aye, aye, Sir. Helm, come zero-one-three degrees to port."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Coming zero-one-three to port."
"Sir, I have a transmission from the freighter!"
"Put it on the main screen."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
A face appeared on the main view screen. It was a woman's face, damp with sweat and lined with strain, and her voice was harsh and tight.
"—ayday! Mayday! This is the Manticoran merchant ship Queensland! I am under attack by unknown warships! My escort and two other freighters have already been destroyed! Repeat, I am under attack by unknown war—"
"Captain! I've got another footprint!" The tactical officers report slashed across the unknown woman's frantic message, and Brentworth's eyes snapped back to his repeater. A new impeller source burned within it, hard upon the freighters heels. No, there were two—three!— of them, and the captain swallowed an agonized groan. These were no merchantmen—not with those power curves—and they were streaking in pursuit of the freighter at over five KPS?.
"—any ship," the Manticoran captain's voice spilled from the com. It had taken over three minutes for her words to reach Alvarez. They'd been transmitted before she could have seen her executioners transit behind her; now they echoed in the back of Brentworth's mind like some curse from the dead as he watched the grav signatures of impeller drive missiles spit towards her ship. "Any ship who can hear us! This is Captain Uborevich of the Queensland. I am under attack! Repeat, I am under attack and require assistance! Any ship who can hear me, please respond!"
Alvarez's com officer stared at his captain almost pleadingly, but Brentworth said nothing. There was no point in responding, and every man on the bridge knew it.
The missile specks drove after the freighter, accelerating at almost 90,000 gravities, and Brentworth watched sickly as they overtook their target. They merged with the freighter's larger impeller signature... and Queensland vanished from the face of the universe.