"What sort of problem?" Gajelis demanded testily. On their current flight profile, they were less than twenty-five minutes from the limit.
"Seven phase drive signatures just lit off ahead of us, Sir," Talbert said flatly. "Range two-point-five light-minutes."
"Damn it!" Adoula snarled. "Who?"
"Unknown at this time, Sir," Talbert said. "They're not squawking IFF, but phase signature strengths indicate that they're carriers."
"Seven," Gajelis said anxiously. "And fresh, presumably." He looked at the prince and grimaced. "We're... not in good shape."
"Avoid them!" Adoula said. "Just get to the nearest TD point and jump."
"It's not that easy, Your Highness," Talbert said with a sigh. "We can jump out from anywhere on the TD sphere, but they're sitting almost bang center of where we were going to jump, and they were obviously prepositioned. They just fired up their drives—the best em-con in the galaxy couldn't have hidden carrier phase drives from us at this range if they'd been on-line. It's like they read our minds, or something."
"Helmut," Gajelis snarled. "The son of a bitch must've dropped them off at least four or five light-days out, outside our sensor shell. Then he sent them in sublight on a profile that brought them in under such low power the perimeter platforms never saw them coming! But how in hell did he know where to deploy them, damn it?!"
"I don't know, Sir," Talbert said. "But however he did it, they're inside any vector change we can manage. We've got velocity directly towards their position—forty-six thousand KPS of it. We can jink round a little bit, try to feint them off, but we're already nine million kilometers inside their missile range. The geometry gives even their cruisers over thirty million kilometers' range against our closing velocity, and we're only forty-five million out. By now they've already launched cruisers—probably their fighters, too—and they're only holding their missile fire till they can generate better firing solutions and get their cruiser missiles into range. And at our velocity, we're going to end up in energy range of them in another sixteen minutes."
"Launch decoy drones," Gajelis said. "Launch fighters for cover, and launch the cruisers, those that are spaceworthy. You, too, Minerou," he added to the admiral on his com display.
"Agreed," Mahmut said. "On my way to CIC. I'll check back in when I get there."
The display blanked, and Gajelis looked back up at Talbert.
"Go," he said sharply. "I'll join you in CIC in a minute."
"Yes, Sir." Talbert nodded and left quickly.
"You're going to fight?" Adoula asked incredulously.
"We'll have to," Gajelis replied. "You heard Talbert, Your Highness. We'll have to engage them."
"No, as a matter of fact, you won't," the Prince replied. "Have the rest of your forces engage, but getting me to Kellerman is the priority. This ship will avoid action and get out of the system. Have the others cover you."
"That's a bit—" Gajelis began angrily.
"Those are your orders, Admiral," Adoula replied. "Follow them!"
"This is going to be interesting," Admiral Niedermayer remarked. "Observe Trujillo," he continued. "Breaking off as predicted."
"Sometimes the Admiral scares me, Sir," Senior Captain Erhardt replied. "How did he know Gajelis was going to head here?"
"Magic, Marge. Magic," Niedermayer told the commander of his flagship. "Unfortunately, it would appear he was also correct about Adoula."
Niedermayer's flagship had been tapped back into the system recon net ever since Captain Kjerulf had reconfigured his lockout to allow Sixth Fleet access. He'd used that advantage to adjust his ships' position slightly, but it really hadn't been necessary. As Erhardt's last remark indicated, Admiral Helmut had called Adoula's and Gajelis' response almost perfectly. Only the timing had changed... and Helmut had gotten them here early enough for the timing not to be a problem.
"I can't believe the rest of them are just going to come right on in to cover him." Erhardt shook her head, staring at the plot where six of the seven enemy carriers had altered heading to accelerate directly towards them even as the seventh accelerated directly away from them. "The bastard is running out on them, and they're still going to fight for him?"
"Jackson Adoula is a physical coward, Marge," Niedermayer said. "Oh, I'm sure he's found some other way to justify it, even to himself. After all, he's the 'indispensable man,' isn't he? Without his stronghold in the Sagittarius Sector, it'd all the over but the shouting once the Prince retakes the Palace. So, much as I may despise him, there really is a certain logic in getting him away."
"Logic, Sir?!" Erhardt looked at him in something very like disbelief, and it was his turn to shake his head.
Marjorie Erhardt was very good at her job. She was also fairly young for her rank, and she had a falcon's fierce directness, coupled with an even fiercer loyalty to the Empress and the Empire. All of that made her an extremely dangerous weapon, but it also gave her a certain degree of tunnel vision. Henry Niedermayer remembered another young, fiery captain who'd suffered from the same sort of narrowness of focus. Then-Vice Admiral Angus Helmut had taken that young captain in hand and expanded his perspective without ever compromising his integrity, which left Niedermayer with an obligation to repay the debt by doing the same thing for Erhardt. And he still had a few minutes to do it in.
"The fact that they're fighting for a bad cause doesn't make them cowards, Marge," he said, just a trifle coldly. She looked at him, and he grimaced.
"One of the worst things any military commander can do is to allow contempt for his adversaries to lead him into underestimating them or their determination," he told her. "And Adoula didn't seduce them all by dangling money in front of them. At least some of them signed on because they agreed with him that the Empire was in trouble and didn't understand what the Empress was doing about it.
"And however they got into his camp in the first place, they all recognize the stakes they agreed to play for. They're guilty of High Treason, Marge. The penalty for that is death. They may realize perfectly well that their so-called 'leader' is about to bug out on them, but that doesn't change their options. And even without Trujillo they've got only one less carrier than we do. You think they are just going to surrender and face the firing squads when at least some of them may be able to fight their way past us?"
"Put that way, no, Sir," Erhardt replied after a moment. "But they're not going to get past us, are they?"
"No, Captain Erhardt, they're not," Niedermayer agreed. "And it's time to show them why they're not."
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," Admiral Minerou Mahmut breathed as his tactical plot abruptly updated. The icons of the seven carriers waiting for him were suddenly joined by an incredible rash of smaller crimson icons.
"Bogeys," his flagship's Tactical Officer announced in the flat, hard voice of a professional rigidly suppressing panic through training and raw discipline. "Multiple cruiser-range phase drive signatures. BattleComp makes it three hundred-plus." More light codes blinked to sudden baleful life. "Update! Fighter-range phase drive detection. Minimum seven-fifty."
Mahmut swallowed hard. Helmut. That incredible bastard couldn't have more than a single cruiser flotilla with the force which would be settling into Old Earth orbit within the next twenty-five minutes. He'd dropped the others—all the others—off with the carrier squadrons he'd detached for his damned ambush!