Chapter Fifty-Six

"Hyper translation!" Citizen Commander Pierre Stravinsky announced suddenly, his voice sharp.

Citizen Commodore Luff's head snapped around, eyes narrowing, but Stravinsky didn't even notice. The ops officer was leaning forward, staring intently at his display. A handful of seconds ticked by, then Stravinsky looked up, meeting Luff's gaze.

"They're directly astern of us, Citizen Commodore," he said. "Range right on twelve million kilometers—sixteen point sources. All we've got so far are the impeller signatures, but they're accelerating after us at four-point-seven-five KPS-squared."

Luff frowned, then looked at Citizen Commander Hartman and raised his eyebrows.

"Hard to say, Citizen Commodore," she said in response to the unspoken question. "It could be anybody. But whoever it is, they're obviously responding to us. They must have had a picket out beyond the limit, monitoring their sensor platforms." She shrugged. "Now whoever it was has come back with friends."

"But what sort of friends?" Luff murmured, half to himself, and glanced at Captain Maddock.

The Mesan only shrugged in turn—which, Luff had to admit, was about all anyone could have done at this point. At twelve million kilometers, it was going to take the better part of forty seconds for any light-speed emissions from the suddenly appearing bogeys to reach them. On the other hand, Hartman clearly had a point about how those bogeys happened to be there, and that suggested several very unhappy possibilities to the citizen commodore. First, it suggested that someone had known, or at least strongly suspected, that an attack like this one was coming. People didn't "just happen" to set up this sort of elaborate response unless they thought they might need one, and responses didn't come in this quickly unless the people behind them were poised and ready. Second, if these bogies had been summoned by a system picket which had detected and identified them before going for help, then, unlike Luff, they ought to have a very good notion of what was on the other side. Which suggested that they thought they had the firepower to do something about it. . . .

Don't leap to any conclusions, Adrian, he reminded himself. At that acceleration rate, there can't be anything back there bigger than a battlecruiser—not unless it's got a Manty compensator, and the Manties are too busy closer to home to be worrying about us at a time like this.But if they've got an accurate count on us, then they know they're outnumbered by three-to-one. So if they don't have anything heavier than a battlecruiser, they have to be lunatics.

Or desperate.

The citizen commodore grimaced unhappily at that thought. Given that these bogeys clearly had been waiting in hyper, then somehow word of the attack must have leaked after all. And if some warning of the attack had leaked, then the defenders might know—or have guessed—Operation Ferret's true objective. In which case, the people accelerating after them might well be desperate enough to pursue the PNE no matter how outnumbered they were.

If that were my planet, if that were my family down there on it, I'd be going after anybody who planned on doing what we plan on doing whether I really thought I could stop them or not, he thought grimly.

On the other hand, he might just be wrong about whether or not the Manties could have shaken a task group loose for something like this, especially if they'd had enough warning to know it was coming.

"Time for us to get back across the limit, Astro?"

"Just a moment, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Lieutenant Commander Philippine Christiansen replied. She punched numbers quickly, then looked back at him. "Approximately thirty-nine minutes assuming current acceleration, Citizen Commodore. Twenty-one minutes if we go to maximum military power."

"And how long for these bogeys to reach missile range of the hyper limit, Citizen Commander Stravinsky?" Luff asked.

"Assuming they maintain their acceleration profile and that their missiles have a powered range of seven-point-five million kilometers from rest, approximately . . . seventeen minutes, Citizen Commodore."

Luff grunted. He strongly suspected that whoever that was back there had undershot his planned translation point. Unless he had multidrive missiles, he was a good four million-plus kilometers outside his own missile range at the moment, and that had to represent an astrogation error. Luff rather doubted that he'd wanted to arrive at a range where he couldn't immediately engage the people attacking Torch, after all. But if he'd undershot, he hadn't undershot by a large enough margin for Luff to change his mind, reverse acceleration, kill his current velocity, and then get back across the hyper limit and disappear into the alpha bands before he could be engaged.

Of course, any engaging would take place at very long-range, he reflected. They probably couldn't score a whole lot of hits before we hypered out, no matter what they've got back there.

He glanced once more at Maddock, this time unobtrusively, out of the corner of one eye. The Mesan captain had to know why Luff had asked Christiansen those two questions, but if he was concerned about the citizen commodore's possible decision, no sign of it showed in his expression. Which could mean confidence on his part, or simply that he knew Luff knew what would happen to any hope of further support from Manpower if he blew this mission off. Or, for that matter, it could even mean Maddock would be simply delighted if the PNE scampered off to safety, taking his own personal skin along with it.

Part of Luff wanted to do exactly that. There was always the distinct possibility that the people chasing him truly were confident of their ability to deal with him if they caught him. And if they were, they might be right.

Of course, they might be wrong, too, he told himself. Especially if they don't know about the Cataphracts. But be honest with yourself, Adrian. What you're really thinking is that this could offer you an excuse not to do something you don't want to do, anyway.

"Citizen Commodore, we're getting some tonnage estimates from CIC," Stravinsky said.

"What kind of estimates?"

"According to CIC, it looks like eight units in the hundred and twenty-five-ton range, six in the two hundred and eighty-five hundred-ton range, and two at around two million tons, Citizen Commodore."

"And they're all pulling four-point-seven-five KPS-squared?" Hartman asked just a bit sharply.

"Yes, Citizen Commander," Stravinsky replied, and Hartman grimaced.

"It seems the Erewhonese are here after all, Citizen Commodore," she said, turning back to Luff. "Nothing that size could pull that much accel without an improved compensator."

"Excuse me, Citizen Commodore," Citizen Lieutenant Yvonne Kamerling, Luff's staff communications officer, said. Luff frowned reflexively at the interruption, but he smoothed the expression quickly. He knew Kamerling wouldn't have broken in on him and Hartman at a moment like this if she hadn't believed it was important.

"What is it, Yvonne?"

"Sir, we're beginning to pick up grav pulses. Whoever that is behind us is using an FTL com to talk to someone further in-system."

"Manties?" Luff asked rather more sharply than he'd intended to as visions of great big, nasty multidrive missiles flickered through his brain.

"I don't think so, Citizen Commodore," Kamerling replied. "The pulse rate and the modulation are both wrong. It's a bit more sophisticated than we were seeing out of the Manties during the final phases of the last war, but based on our current intel, it's a lot less sophisticated than anything we'd expect to see out of them now."