Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel (7 page)

Goldberg, hand still across his eyes, inhales deeply. Slowly he drops his hand and exhales with a tired sound. “Well. . .,” he admits finally, “it could have been better.”

“Oh,” says Rogers.

Silently, the redhead rolls his eyes upwards in despair. How did a wobblehead like this ever get through training? He spins around in the chair to look at Korie. He shrugs helplessly at the first officer;
I did the best I could, sir.

Korie nods slightly, an acknowledgment.

Shaking his freckled head, he starts to pry himself out of the couch—

“Hey—,” says Rogers. He stoops to the deck, comes up with a stylus. “Wolfe left his pencil here. . . .”

Goldberg pauses. “So?”

“Well, I mean, what should I do with it?”

“You really want me to tell you?” But the meaning is lost on the other; Rogers looks at him blankly. “I don’t care. Give it back to him.” He steps past the man and down into the pit.

As he crosses to the back of it, Korie nods to him, “Thanks, Ben.”

“Don’t mention it, sir . . . ever.” Still shaking his head, he returns to his own post.

Korie leans back in his couch. It is on the right side and to the rear of the Command and Control Seat and can function as an auxiliary control in time of battle. Now, however, almost all of its functions are inactive. Idly, Korie begins punching a logistics problem into the ship’s computer.

On the screen ahead, the four space-suited figures continue to reweld the metal plates back to the hull of the ship.

In the seat, Brandt notes this, swivels right to face his astrogator. “Say, Mr. Barak, where’s that interception course you promised me?”

The heavy-boned man spins in his chair to face the captain. “It’s ready any time you are, sir.”

“All right. Put it on the big screen; convince me that we can catch him.”

Barak nods, gestures to Jonesy. The maintenance operation disappears from the forward wall and is replaced by a glowing grid. In the upper left-hand corner appears a small circular patch of haze with a larger white circle around it.

Barak moves up to stand by the side of Brandt’s chair. “Now, that’s our bogie—that haze is the locus of all possible points where he could be by the time we get there. It grows every second to allow for drift, his maximum probable inherent velocity.”

“How big is that area?” Brandt asks.

Barak frowns thoughtfully. “Pretty big. . . .”

“How big is
pretty big
. . . ?”

“Um. . . .” He coughs into his fist, scratches abstractedly at his neck. “About sixteen and a half light hours.”

“What’s the white circle around it?”

“That’s his sphere of influence. It’s about forty-eight light hours in diameter. Actually, his sphere is only thirty-two, but we have to allow that extra sixteen because we’re not sure of his position. He might be
anywhere
in that hazy area by the time we got there.

“Figure he can scan any ship within that circle before it can get to him—outside of it, he can only pick up the stress-field disturbance if the ship’s speed is above a certain factor in relation to its distance to him. The dividing line occurs where our velocity quotient, a variable, sinks below our mass quotient, a constant.”

Brandt gestures impatiently. “Right, right. Go on.”

Barak gestures to Jonesy. A point of white appears in the opposite corner of the screen, on the lower right. “That’s us,” says Barak. “Now almost fifty-six light days away.”

Jonesy touches another button; a long slow curve arches out diagonally from the lower point of light and rises toward the haze in the upper left corner. It passes close to the
bogie’s sphere of influence—almost touching that circle—then hooks sharply back into it. “And that’s the course you asked for,” adds Barak.

Brandt notes the wording of the astrogator’s last sentence. Apparently, Barak is still unhappy with the idea of sneaking up on the bogie.

“Now, what you want to do,” Barak continues, “is to approach him at the maximum possible speed while still remaining below the minimum speed at which he can detect us.”

Nodding slowly, “Right, right.”

“Now, we’re pretty sure that this fellow is in the destroyer class, so he can’t have any more power for his stress-field antennae than we do. I figure a detection factor of four over six should be safe—meaning that for every for light days distance between us, we can have six lights maximum speed. That should keep him from picking up our warp and as we come in closer we’ll lower our speed proportionally. Initial velocity will be 82.5 lights and we’ll cut that by one and a half lights for each light day we travel.”

“All right. Now, what happens when we get to his sphere of influence?”

“It gets tricky there. First of all, our speed will be down to about one light—and the warp fields get hard to handle at speeds that low; the control is fuzzy. We’ll have to generate a subwarp just to maintain.

“When we hit the point of closest approach—where our course grazes the circle—that’s where we’ll hook back into it. We’ll boost our speed to maximum and come in hard on the center.”

“Assuming he’s in the center of that hazy area,” rumbles Brandt, “how long will it take to close with him?”

“Um. . . .” Barak’s broad face creases into a frown. He pulls a hand-terminal from his tunic pocket and punches quickly at its buttons. “Eight minutes, twenty seconds—more or less. That’s an approximate answer; it could be a few seconds either way.”

Brandt waves it off. “And what if he’s
not
in the center of that area? What if he’s moved off to one side or out of it altogether—how long will it take to locate him?”

“Uh—we’ll have him right away—we’ll probably get a fix on him on the way in, and we can come to an intercept course almost immediately.”

“I’m talking about a search pattern,” says Brandt. “How long will that take?”

Barak shakes his head. “I don’t understand. We should still have him right away. Our scanning range is as good as his, and he’ll be in that hazy area. I can’t see why we shouldn’t—”

“Mr. Barak,” Brandt cuts him off. “
Why
does he have to be in that hazy area. . . ?”

“Uh—he won’t have time to go anywhere else.”

“Mr. Barak,
how long
will it take us to get there?”

Now the astrogator is confused. “To get where—you mean into his sphere of influence?”

“I mean to get
there
from
here
.”

“Thirty-four hours.”

“Uh huh,” says Brandt. “Thirty-four hours. A lot can happen in thirty-four hours, Al. Probably, he’ll still be within that sixteen-and-a-half-hour radius you drew, but there’s also the chance he might not be. By then he might be somewhere else entirely.”

“It’s not possible for him to be outside that radius, even allowing for error. We figured the speed of his drift and—”

“I’m not talking about inherent velocity! I’m talking about the fact that he’ll probably try to
sneak away
—and if he does try that, I want to know how much longer it will take to find him.”

“Oh,” says Barak. He looks down, pretends to fumble with his hand-terminal. “Well . . . we’ll be scanning for him all the way in, so we can distort the standard search pattern to allow for that . . .”

Korie speaks up. “The primary search pattern will take forty-three minutes. The secondary search pattern will be one hundred eleven minutes, and the tertiary, six hours and twenty-seven minutes.”

Both men turn to look at him, Brandt swiveling nearly 180 degrees in his chair. Barak scowls. Korie has been standing behind the Command and Control Seat, casually leaning against the high-banked autolog console. Now, in response to their questioning looks, he says, “I asked the computer. I wanted to know myself how long it would take to make the kill.”

Brandt starts to relax—perhaps one of his officers is on the ball after all. He lets his big frame sink back into the padded chair. How big an area does that last pattern cover, Mr. Korie?”

“Five light days, maximum. I doubt that he’ll be farther out than that.”

“Why?”

“Uh, well—if he tries to hide himself any farther out, he’ll have to go faster to get there—we’ll see his warp—”

Brandt shakes his head, cuts him off with a sharp gesture. “You disappoint me, Mr. Korie. For a moment there, I thought you had it, but you’re only making the same mistake Mr. Barak made: you’re both assuming that he’s going to sit out there waiting for us to sneak up on him. Well, he’s not. He’s going to get the hell out of there as soon as he can.”

The captain rises out of his chair, stabbing at the air with a thick hand. “As soon as he gets his blown system repaired, he’s going to
move
.”

“If he does, we’ll see his warp—”

“That’s only if his speed is high enough and we’re within range. Aren’t I getting through to either of you?
That ship out there is trying to get away from us.
That’s what he was doing when we dropped out of warp and that’s what he’s going to continue doing when he gets his engines fixed.”

He pauses to swallow, continues in a slightly calmer tone, “Right now, we’re fifty light days away. We don’t know where he is—we don’t know that he’s still out there even now—maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s already fixed his warp and moved off. If he kept his speed below eighty lights, we’d never know it. And remember, the distance is
his
advantage. The farther away he gets, the faster he can go without our seeing him.” He pauses, looks at the two of them, almost as if daring them to
speak. “Maybe he hasn’t sneaked off yet, but he probably will do so in the next day and a half.”

Korie says nothing, his pale blue eyes are expressionless. But Barak shakes his dark head thoughtfully. “I see your point, Captain, but it just wouldn’t make sense for him to sneak away. He’s got too good a lead on us already—why bother with subterfuge?”

“Al, you’re a good astrogator, but you’ll never be much of a general. You’re still thinking in terms of right now—if he could affect immediate repairs, of course it wouldn’t make sense for him to sneak away. But if he’s stuck there for, say, ten or twelve hours, it’s his only alternative.”

Brandt turns to his first officer. “And you, Mr. Korie, I’m surprised at you—the scent of blood seems to have shortened your logic circuits. If the captain of that bogie is any kind of a captain at all, he’s playing our side of the game too. While we’re sitting here arguing about how to catch him, he’s sitting there trying to outguess us. It won’t take him long to figure out that our only chance is to try to sneak up on him. That’ll leave him two choices. Either he can sneak off, or he can try to sneak up on us . . .”

This time, Korie shakes his head. “Uh-uh. His warp is no bigger than ours—that means destroyer-class ship, like us. Our destroyers are better armed and he knows it.”

Brandt smiles. “Right. So, he’s left with only the first alternative. At least, that’s my guess. The captain of the ship has to be a fairly intelligent man. He’ll assess the situation, size up the chances, and decide that his best course of action is to move off without being seen. It seems very likely to me that he’ll be successful.”

“Sir?”

Brandt looks at Korie. “Well, look at it—he’s got a fifty-six light day lead on us. Whether we come in at top speed or whether we sneak in, he’s going to have plenty of time to outmaneuver us. It all hinges on how soon he gets his engines fixed.” He gestures at the diagram on the screen. “Like it or not, this thing is only a long shot. I doubt very much that it can be pulled off. It could turn out to be a very expensive waste of time and fuel.”

“But that’s a chance we have to take,” insists Korie.

“Is it?” Brandt looks at him.

“We’ve come too far with this thing to go home empty-handed.”

Brandt says nothing. Korie’s narrow features are grim. Barak speaks, gently reminding the captain, “You did suggest this course of action, sir. . . .”

Brandt nods slowly, silently. His brooding gray eyes seem to focus on a point beyond the walls of the bridge. His wide mouth works with unspoken thoughts. Finally, he rasps, “All right. We’ll go after him. Let’s see if he’s there or not.”

Korie and Barak exchange a quick triumphant glance. Barak starts to step down to his console—

“Wait a minute, Al. One more thing. If he is there, he’ll have to fight. That’s still too much warning. He could have cross hairs on us all the way in.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about that too much, sir. We’ll be scanning for him at the same time. As soon as I get a good fix, I’ll set up a ten-second scramble pattern for when we unwarp.”

“Good.”

The big screen clears to show the four space-suited men just dropping down into the bright open hatch of the airlock. The repair operation has been completed. “All right,” says Brandt. “Let’s go. Set it up on the boards.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Barak turns to his console, clears the monitor, and begins snapping out orders. The crew of the bridge slips easily into the familiar security of the pre-warp routine. Voices crackle across the intercom:

“Request inherent velocity vector.”

“Victor zero mark zero. Standard heading.”

“Right, thank you. Warp control, polarity of secondaries, zero degrees—ninety degrees—one hundred eight degrees.”

“Setting polarity; zero degrees—ninety degrees—one hundred eight degrees.”

“Initial warp factor, 82.5.”

“Initial warp factor, 82.5.”

“Warp control, reset polarities.”

“Stand by.”

“Standing.”

“Right. Ready to reset.”

“On these coordinates: thirty-six degrees—one hundred forty-four degrees—ninety degrees.”

“Christ! We’re going in sideways.”

“Confirm, please.”

“May I have a repeat?”

“Thirty-six degrees—one hundred forty-four degrees—ninety degrees.”

“Thank you. Confirmation; thirty-six degrees—one hundred forty-four degrees—ninety degrees.”

“Right.”

“Hey, what’s Black Al up to?”

“Setting up a scramble. He wants to bounce off at an angle at unwarp.”

“Gravity control, watch your power.”

“Uh, yes, sir. Right.”

“Prepare to warp in . . . what was that again?”