Rogue Powers (26 page)

"Sir. Awaiting data from
Mountbatten.
No significant changes in target. Range decreasing, and we'll have enough data for a Doppler check soon. Not yet."

"Sir," The comm officer called. "Secure laser signal from
Mountbatten.
They are executing maneuver, and report it a minor correction. They were almost in correct position already."

Sir George allowed himself a brief smile at that. He had done some good guessing to place the main fleet there. He punched up the flag commander's strategic display in the holo tank. Very roughly, they were all strung out in a line:
Mountbatten
and the rest of the fleet about a million miles towards the sun from Britannica's orbit, then Britannica herself, then starward a bit from the planet, the
Imp
and her escorts, and then, far off" starward at some unknown distance, a radar return, presumably the Guardian fleet. That's where he would have come in, straight from starward, the shortest distance from an arrival point to the planet. And that's where they had come in. Good.

"Sir,' McCrae called. "Request that the high-power radar units around Britannica sending radar pulses shift
from spherical search mode to a narrow beam centered on unidentified return."

"Denied. That would give us some detail we don't need yet, and tell them we've spotted 'em. Spherical search to continue. Work with what you've got a while longer, lad."

"Aye, sir. Sir, we have received parallax data from
Mountbatten.
Approximate range, awaiting refinement, thirty million miles. Velocity determination difficult because the target is moving straight for us."

"Well, thirty million miles is what they said it could do. It would appear that our radar is exactly up to spec." Sir George punched up the officer's mess on the intercom. "This is the captain. Send a steward with tea, coffee, and some sandwiches. We've got a bit of a wait yet, and there's no sense going hungry."

Reports started coming from all over the ship. There were, as expected, no survivors in Hangar One. There were one hundred fifty-seven dead there, and sick bay reported at least one hundred additional fatalities, possibly two hundred serious non-fetal casualties. Some forward compartments were still cut off from the ship's corridors by vacuum and there were certainly more dead and injured that had not been accounted for yet. Out of a normal snip's complement of one thousand one hundred, perhaps seven hundred fifty were fit, ready, and able to get to battle stations.

The damage control crews worked on. Work-arounds, backups, improvisations were plugged in, patched in, forced into place. Wreckage was cleared and either jettisoned or lashed down in Hangar Three for later salvage or use. Corridors were patched and repressurized. Main ship's weaponry was ready, too. The
Imp
could fly and fight. Sir George was satisfied with that. To his mind the rest of the Britannic fleet was now in graver danger than the
Imp
— and the greatest danger the fleet faced was the loss of its experienced commanding officers. That was a danger that a damage control team couldn't handle. It would take years, perhaps a generation, to wholly repair that catastrophe. Thank God the prime minister and the cabinet had turned down the invitation to the ball.

The poor old p.m., the whole government, in fact the whole planet, was sweating this one out. The fleet was ordered to radio silence when attacked. The Guards seemed to have a hell of an Intelligence service, and it had to be assumed that anything transmitted to the planet's surface would get back to the enemy, either through electronic taps or through plain old-fashioned agents-in-place. A civilian government, still largely geared to peacetime, and in a gossipy capital, was easy pickings for spies. The fleet didn't dare send news of how the battle was going.

They were probably more scared back home than the fleet was up here. At least the fleet had some idea what in blazes was going on.

Thirty million miles. It was a meaningless figure. Huge beyond imagining in everyday terms, but in the scale of interstellar travel, it was nothing, a distance traveled in less time than it took to say the words. Thirty million miles.

Even the measure was obscure. Only Earth's British Commonwealth and the world Britannica used "miles" anymore. Even the Americans had given up long ago and shifted to metric measure. These days, few non-British even knew that a mile was, by some vague amount, longer than a kilometer.

The Britannic fleet was learning just how real thirty million miles was.

Detection nailed down the Guard fleet's velocity: two hundred eighty-two miles a second, or just over a million miles an hour. A pretty hellish clip, but still it would take thirty hours for them to reach Britannica, even if they didn't deaccelerate at all.

The watch had changed while Flight Albert had been on Patrol. Albert Leader's approach and recovery was a lot less exciting than her departure, which suited Joslyn just
fine. She willed the hangar crew to hurry up, get all the ships in, seal the hangar doors and pressurize
fast
. She wanted food, and rest, and sleep, and she wanted to get started on them quickly, before another alert came and put her back in her SuperWombat.

For a wonder, there weren't any foul-ups, and the hangar was buttoned up and under pressure in record time. Joslyn had the hatch undogged and was already out of the ship and on her way along the handholds when she noticed the stunned silence around her. Only then she remembered what she looked like. Her long honey-colored hair streaming every which way in zero gravity; barefoot; dressed in the ruins of the evening gown she had ripped apart so she could get into her fighter; her careful makeup job undoubtedly sweat-streaked, blurred, and muddled into a fright show; more out of than in her dress. She blushed mightily, then laughed at herself and went on her way. "Let me tell you fellows, it was rough out there," she told the hangar crew. She hurried on to the pilot's mess. Time for food and then some sleep!

She had at least gotten a sandwich and a cup or six of tea when the radar contact was made. The word was passed along ship's intercom immediately. Joslyn swore to herself, headed back to her cabin and got into flight overalls. She knew what came next, and it did.

"Commander Larson," the intercom called cheerfully. "Captain's compliments, and would you please come to auxiliary control?"

"Duty," she said to the empty air as she braided her hair back into a bun, "thy name is lack of sleep." She decided she had time to wash off the remains of her makeup first, but not time for a full shower, and headed down the corridor to the head.

"Ah, Commander. Welcome to our Bridge-away-from-Bridge," Sir George said. "We're a bit cramped, but managing. I want you to take a look at the tactical situation and tell me what you think your friends plan to do."

"Captain. Well, let's see." She took a long hard look at the hologram tank and frowned. "I assume that we found them on active radar pulsed from Britannica's orbit. That wouldn't give our position away. The Guards haven't kicked out any radar pulses looking for us, have they?"

"That's right."

"Then they won't have spotted
us
yet. Not at that range. But they have picked up the pulses sent out from Britannica's orbital stations. Presumably Britannica's radar has been hitting them for a while, but the signals have only just gotten strong enough for us to detect them on return. They know we will spot them soon, but they can't be
sure
we've nailed them yet. Lordy, this sort of they-know-that-we-know-that-they-know makes my head spin. But they'll assume that we'll have maneuvered since the rock throwing, they know well be hiding, and that they'll have to find us. Detection officer. If you had the best possible equipment—optical, infrared, and so on—and didn't use active radar, how far off would you detect the
Imp
if she was rigged for quiet running?"

Joslyn took her first real look at the ensign sitting in as detection officer as he swung around in his chair and grinned at her. Presumably, the real detect officer was dead, wounded, or trapped in a compartment. The kid on duty was a fresh-scrubbed, cheery-looking lad with apple-red cheeks, black hair and brown eyes and snaggly teeth, far too young to really understand the stakes of the game he was in. "Well, ma'am, I assume you mean in the present geometry of the situation. The
Impervious
has her bow pointed through their location, and so shows them a small cross section, and that helps a great deal. And we're pretty much in the sun's glare—lots of background noise. And the blips I'm getting seem to be a large number of smaller ships—they probably don't have very large or powerful detection gear aboard. I would say perhaps ten million miles. But why
wouldn't
they use active radar— they would have detected the radar pulse that picked
them up for us—they'd know we know where they are and—"

"Spare me the details. That's what I just said: They've been hit by radar pulses for quite a while. It's just that we haven't be able to pick up the returns from that radar because the returns nave been too weak until now. They can't be
sure
we've spotted them yet. Maybe we can fool them. You've got enough data to plot their projected course and watch it optically, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. I wouldn't actually see their ships until they started maneuvering, but
not seeing
fusion lights would tell us they hadn't changed course. Just as good as seeing them."

Joslyn thought for a moment. "There are still rocks coming in toward Britannica, aren't there? Suppose we order all our radar to a narrow sweep of the piece of sky that the rocks are coming from. We have a ship in that area, the corvette that's supposed to track down the linear accelerator. It seems very unlikely to me that the Guards were able to track the frigate's launch. Here we go again with the we-know-they-don't-knows, but they wouldn't realize we are aware of the frigate's identity. The Guards will see us bouncing a radar reflection off that ship, and then focus our search in that area. We can act as if we had spotted that frigate, didn't know what it was, and were tracking it intensively. They'll think we're expecting them to come down under cover of the rocks."

"Which will make them think
we
haven't spotted
them,
and so well get
them
to not use
their
radar, so
they
won't find
us"
the ensign said with a laugh. It appealed to his sense of humor. "And once they start braking—and they
have
to—I'll be able to spot the plumes instantly. It'd work."

Sir George smiled. "Send the order to the radars around Britannica. And don't explain it, either. Just the bare instruction to redirect the radar. If someone is listening in, that might add to their confusion."

"I'm bloody confused enough for everyone," the comm
officer muttered under his breath as he set up the transmission.

The hours crawled by, the situation largely unchanged. The Guard fleet moved closer and closer—or at least the computer's projection of its course said the enemy was still headed for them. Ensign McCrae got increasingly nervous. He
knew
the Guards had to be where the computer said they were, that his equipment would spot the lights of their fusion plumes the moment they maneuvered, but he didn't really believe it. McCrae decided he was going to go back to studying Zen when this was over. The philosophy seemed custom-made for detection specialists.

Joslyn remained on the bridge, laying plans with Sir George, watching the tactical display. According to the computer, the Guards were still hurtling closer. Twenty million miles. Eighteen. Fifteen. Ten. The numbers changed meaninglessly. McCrae felt bored and tired and nervous and fidgety and eager and scared all at once. He wished the devil the sodding Guards'd get on with it, They had to start braking soon or they'd never stop in time. Maybe they had malfunctioned, miscalculated—

It took a full ten seconds for him to realize what the screens were showing him. "Sir! Fusion lights! They have commenced braking."

"There we go! You won't need active radar now, Ensign. Details as you have them."

"Yes sir. I count at least fifty fusion lights. Fifty ships. A variation of sizes. We'll need readings for a few minutes before I can give you masses and accelerations. Range at engine-light: approximately six point seven million miles."

Joslyn pulled herself over to the detection station and looked over McCrae's shoulder. There they were, right in the middle of the crosshairs. The computer had kept a damn good track all this time. And the Guards had never used their radar. The gag with the frigate had worked. "Captain," she said. "At the power levels they're using, their own engine exhaust plumes will jam all their detection equipment. There's a good chance we can stay hidden for quite a while yet."

"I was hoping for as much. Ensign McCrae. Tell me, your own opinion, formed out of your own vast experience: Can they see through the plasma their exhaust plumes are putting out?"

"Sir. As long as they are decelerating, they will not be able to detect us at any distance at all," McCrae said. "Their fusion plumes will jam all their radar and visual, right through to infrared."