He rechecked the chrono and nodded mentally. His ships were right on schedule, and for all their overinflated reputation, the Manticorans were as blind-drunk stupid as a Prole on BLS day. Pierre didn't know the details—he wasn't senior enough for that, he thought sourly—but he knew the People's Navy had sneaked powered-down scout ships into and through the Manties' outer systems on ballistic courses for over two years now, plotting their patrols' movements, and the idiots didn't even seem aware of the possibility. If they had been, their patrols wouldn't have followed clockwork schedules that left them wide open for the sort of pounce Pierre planned today. For both pounces, actually; Commodore Yuranovich and the other half of the squadron should be killing themselves a Manty cruiser about now.
Just as Pierre intended to do in the next—he checked the chronometer again—two and a half hours or so.
Commander Gregory, captain of the light cruiser HMS Athena, stood by his tactical officer's shoulder and shook his head at the image on the visual display. The dreadnought Bellerophon was coming up fast from astern, overtaking Gregory's cruiser as she eased along on another long, slow leg of her patrol.
Gregory had known Bellerophon was due to rotate home, but he hadn't known she was leaving today, and she certainly made an impressive sight to break up the monotony of patrol duty.
The six-and-a-half-megaton leviathan swam closer and closer, dwarfing the light cruiser into minnow insignificance as she rode up five thousand kilometers off Athena's port quarter. Even a ship her size was no more than a dot of reflected sunlight to the naked eye at that range, but the visual display brought her into needle-sharp focus, and Gregory shook his head again as he watched her sweep up on Athena's beam. She out-massed his ship by over sixty to one, and the difference between her broadside and Athena's was quite literally inconceivable. The commander wouldn't have traded his lithe, beautiful ship for a dozen clumsy dreadnoughts, yet it felt reassuring to see that much firepower and know it was on his side.
Bellerophon overtook Athena and forged past with a velocity advantage of twelve thousand KPS on her way to the hyper limit, and Gregory grinned as he nodded to his com officer to flash Athena's running lights in the close-range visual salute starships seldom got a chance to exchange in deep space. Bellerophon returned it; then she was gone, roaring ahead under a steady 350 g's acceleration, and the commander sighed.
"Well, that was exciting," he told his tac officer. "Too bad it's the only excitement we're going to get today."
"Hyper limit in thirty seconds, Admiral Pierre."
"Thank you." Pierre nodded to acknowledge the information, and the battlecruiser Selim's GQ alarm whooped once to warn her crew.
"Hyper transit! I'm reading an unidentified hyper footprint!" Athena's tac officer snapped. His surprise showed in his voice, but he was already bent over his panel, working the contact.
"Where?" Commander Gregory demanded sharply.
"Bearing zero-zero-five, zero-one-one. Range one-eight-zero million klicks. Christ, Skipper! It's right on top of Bellerophon!"
"Contact! Enemy vessel bearing oh-five-three, oh-oh-six, range five-seven-four thousand kilometers!"
Pierre jerked in his command chair and twisted toward his ops officer's sudden, unanticipated report. They should be eleven light-minutes from their target! What the hell was the woman talking about?!
"Contact confirmed!" Selim's tac officer called out, and then— "Oh, my God! It's a dreadnought!"
Disbelief froze the admirals mind. It couldn't be—not way the hell out here! But he was already turning back to his own display, and his heart lurched as it showed him CIC's confirming identification.
"Put us back into hyper!"
"We can't translate for another eight minutes, Sir," Selim's white-faced captain said. The generators are still cycling."
Pierre stared at the captain, and his mind whirled like a ground-looping air car. The man's words seemed to take forever to register, while his ships closed with the enemy at over forty thousand kilometers per second, and the admiral swallowed around an icy lump of panic. They were dead. They were all dead, unless, just possibly, that dreadnought's crew was as shocked as he was. He had a clear shot down the front of her wedge if he could get his ships around to clear their broadsides, and they couldn't possibly have been expecting him to appear in their face. If they took long enough reacting, long enough getting to battle stations—
"Hard a port!" he barked. "All batteries, fire as you bear!"
"Sweet Jesus, they're Peeps!" Bellerophon's junior tactical officer whispered. The Book didn't like enemy reports like that, but Lieutenant Commander Avshari felt no inclination to criticize. After all, The Book didn't envision this lunatic sort of situation, either.
The lieutenant commander watched his status boards' green lights turn amber and red and wished to hell the Captain would get here. Or the Exec. Or anybody senior to him, because he didn't have a clue and he knew it. This was supposed to be a milk run, a good opportunity for junior watch keepers to get a little bridge time on their logs, but he was a communications officer, for God's sake—and one whose Academy tactical scores had been a disaster, to boot! What the hell was he supposed to do next?
"Sidewalls active! Starboard energy batteries closed up on computer override, Sir!" the youthful lieutenant at Tactical said, and Avshari nodded in relief. That decided which way to turn, anyway.
"Bring us hard to port, Helm."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Coming hard to port."
The dreadnought began her turn, and fresh alarms whooped even as she swung.
"Incoming fire!" the tac officer snapped, and lasers and grasers ripped at Bellerophon's suddenly interposed sidewall. Most of them achieved absolutely nothing as the sidewall bent and degraded them, but red lights bloomed on Avshari's damage control display as half a dozen minor hits splattered her massive armor, and this time he knew exactly what to do.
"Ms. Wolversham, you are authorized to return fire!" Bellerophon's com officer barked the order straight from The Book, and Lieutenant Arlene Wolversham punched the button.
Admiral Pierre swallowed a groan as the dreadnought snapped around and her sidewall swatted his broadsides contemptuously aside. He'd never seen a ship that size maneuver so rapidly and confidently. She'd taken barely ten seconds to bring her sidewall up and get around—her captain must have the instincts and reactions of a cat!
He could see his intended prey's impeller signature in his display now, millions of kilometers astern of the dreadnought, and realized intuitively what had happened. His intelligence had been perfect, but he'd blundered into an unscheduled departure. A stupid, routine transit there'd been no way to predict. And now there was no way to evade the consequences.
"All units, roll ship!" he barked, but even as he snapped out the order, he knew it was futile this deep into the enemy's missile envelope. Even if his ships rolled up behind their wedges in time to evade the dreadnought's beams, it would only delay the inevitable, require her to kill them with laser heads, instead....
And then he realized they weren't going to manage even that much.
HMS Bellerophon's broadside opened fire, and enough energy to shatter a small moon flashed through the "gunports" in her starboard sidewall.