"—respond!" Uborevich's voice still called from the com. "Any ship, please respond! I require assi—"
"Turn it off," Brentworth grated, and the dead woman's voice died in mid-word. He stared at his display, watching Queensland's killers arc away, knowing they would recross the hyper limit and vanish long before he could bring them into range, and frustration— and hate—burned in his eyes.
"Readings, Henri?" he asked in a deathly quiet voice, and his tac officer swallowed.
"Nothing positive, Sir. They're regular warships—they have to be to pull that accel and fire that many missiles. I'd guess a light cruiser and a pair of tin-cans, but that's about all I can tell you."
"Make sure everything you can get goes on the chip. Maybe Intelligence or the Manties can get more from an analysis than we can."
"Yes, Sir."
Brentworth sat silently, glaring at his display until the trio of murderers swept back out across the limit and disappeared, then leaned back with a weary, defeated sigh.
"Keep us on our intercept, Astro," he said tiredly. "Maybe she at least got her lifeboats away before they killed her."
Lieutenant Commander Mudhafer Ben-Fazal yawned and sipped more coffee. The G4 primary of the Zanzibar System was a brilliant pinprick far behind his light attack craft as it swept slowly along the edge of the outermost asteroid belt, and he treasured the coffee's warmth as an anodyne against the cold loneliness beyond its hull. He would have preferred to be elsewhere—almost anywhere elsewhere—but he hadn't been consulted when his orders were cut.
The leaders of the ZLF had been driven from the soil of their homeworld, yet they still got infrequent weapon shipments into their adherents' hands somehow. They were coming from out-system, and though whoever supplied them was very careful to remove all identifying marks before turning them over, the Peoples Republic of Haven was the only interstellar power which had recognized the ZLF. Intelligence was virtually certain the PRH was doing more than merely providing sanctuary in ports like Mendoza and Chelsea for the terrorists' decrepit "navy."
But whoever was funding and arming the ZLF, they still had to get the guns and bombs to Zanzibar, and Intelligence's best guess was they were using miners for their conduit. The Zanzibar system was rich in asteroids, and no one could stop and search every battered work boat. Nor could they hope to patrol the belts themselves in any meaningful way, Ben-Fazal thought tiredly. The area was simply too huge for the Navy's limited strength to search, but there was always the chance that someone might happen across something, which explained why Al-Nassir was out here, depriving one Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal of his hard earned leave time.
He chuckled and tipped his chair back as he took another sip of coffee. Al-Nassir was a child's toy compared to real warships like the division of Manticoran battlecruisers orbiting Zanzibar, but her weapons would more than suffice for any of the ZLF "Navy's" rag-tailed ships. And, his chuckle faded, it would be sweet to catch some of the animals whose bombs and "liberation offensives" had killed and maimed so many civilians.
"Excuse me, Captain, but I'm getting something on my passive arrays."
Ben-Fazal cocked an eyebrow at his tactical officer, and the lieutenant shrugged.
"It's not much, Sir—just a little radio leakage. Could be a regular prospectors beacon, but if it is, it's pretty badly garbled."
"Where's it coming from?"
"That cluster at two-seven-three, I think. As I say, it's very faint."
"Well, let's take a look," Ben-Fazal decided. "Bring us to two-seven-three, Helm."
"Yes, Sir."
The tiny warship altered course, heading for the elusive signal source, and the tac officer frowned.
"It really is garbled, Sir," he reported after a moment. "If it's a beacon, its identifier code's been completely scrambled. I've never heard anything quite like it. It's almost like—"
Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal never learned what it was almost like. The lean, lethal shape of a light cruiser swam into sight, drifting from the clustered asteroids like a shark from a bed of kelp, and he had one fleeting instant to realize the signal had been a lure to suck him in and to recognize the cruiser's Havenite emissions signature before it blew his ship apart.
"They're definitely crossing the line, Commodore."
Commodore Sarah Longtree nodded acknowledgment of her ops officers report and hoped she looked calmer than she felt. Her heavy cruiser squadron was a powerful formation, but not as powerful as the Peep force coming at her.
"Time to missile range?"
"A good twelve hours yet, Ma'am," the ops officer replied. He scratched his nose and frowned at his display. "What I don't understand is why they're making an n-space approach. They've taken out a dozen sensor platforms, but even with light-speed limits, they have to know we got full downloads before they did—and they're ignoring a dozen others that have them in range right now! That makes taking the others out completely pointless, and if they really want to hit us, the logical move was to get at least to the hyper limit before they translated down. Why let us see them coming from so far out?"
"I don't know," Longtree admitted, "but, frankly, that's the least of my concerns just now. Have we got class IDs on them yet?"
"Perimeter Tracking's still refining the data from our intact platforms, Ma'am, but the ones they've already hit got pretty good reads on their lead element, and there are at least two battlecruisers out there."
"Wonderful." Longtree pushed herself deeper into the cushions of her command chair and made her mind step back a bit.
The ops officer was right about the strangeness of their approach. The Zuckerman System's outer surveillance platforms had picked them up well short of the twelve-light-hour territorial limit, and letting that happen was an outstandingly dumb move on someone's part. If they'd just stayed in h-space to the hyper limit, they'd have been on top' of Zuckerman—and Longtree—before she even knew they were coming. As it was, she'd had plenty of time to get a courier away to Fleet HQ; even if they wiped out her entire squadron, Manticore would know who'd done it. As acts of war went, that made this one of the most pointless and stupid on record.
Which wasn't particularly comforting to the people who were going to get killed in the course of it.
"Update from Perimeter Tracking, Ma'am," her com officer announced suddenly. "Enemy strength now estimated at six battlecruisers, eight heavy cruisers, and screening elements."
"Acknowledged." Longtree bit her lip at the new information and watched them close. Her own ships would have stood a better than even chance without the battlecruisers, but they made the odds impossible.
"Still no reports of any other incursions?"
"No, Ma'am," her ops officer replied. "We're receiving continuous updates from all other sectors, and this is the only one."
"Thank you." She leaned back again and chewed delicately on a knuckle. What in Hell's name were these people up to? Both sides had been so careful to avoid overt violations of the other's territory for years—now the Peeps were sailing boldly in, in front of God and everyone to attack a Fleet base that wasn't even very important anymore? It made no sense at all!
"Status change!" The commodore's head snapped around, and her ops officer looked up at her with an utterly incredulous expression. "They're reversing course, Commodore!"
"They're what?!" Longtree couldn't keep the surprise out of her own voice, and the ops officer shrugged.
"It doesn't make any more sense than anything else they've done, but they're doing it, Ma'am. Perimeter Tracking reports they've altered course by one-eight-zero degrees and gone to four-zero-zero gees acceleration. They're heading right back where they came from!"