"I see." Dr. Soo rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "But if the probes are so good-or will be, once the bugs (you should pardon the expression) are out of them-wouldn't that also let us send out smaller survey forces?"
She gestured at the tactical display, whose three-dimensional sphere showed the glittering light codes of everything within thirty light-seconds, by way of illustration. Concorde herself showed gold, denoting her flag status. The other battlecruisers, the carriers, and the destroyers and freighters burned the color-codes of their types, all ringed in the green which identified them as friendly Battle Fleet ships. Only the Huns gleamed the blue-banded white of Survey Command.
"Surely that would let us use our strength more economically! And wouldn't smaller forces be less likely to be detected in the first place?"
"What? Leave the gunslingers behind?" Prescott's grin was just a trifle sour as he used Survey's derisive nickname. "Melly, you're a hell of a doctor, but you'd make a lousy fleet commander. Space is pretty big, you know, and an entire flotilla isn't measurably easier to spot than a single unit, assuming the flotilla in question exercises proper caution. So sending out a smaller force wouldn't appreciably lessen the risk of detection but would lessen the flotilla's ability to stand up to anything that did detect it. Hence the gunslingers. Only five of those ships really matter-Sarmatian and her bunch." He jabbed his pipe stem at the white dots. "The rest of us are just along to make sure their information gets home. That's why a mere light cruiser like Sarmatian has a full captain for a CO. And why Snyder is my second in command."
"Redundancy?"
"Partly. Any good com net has built-in redundancy, of course. We could lose every ship but one and still do the job, which is why all our databases copy all astro data. In fact, though, the rest of us are here to protect those cruisers. They've got better instrumentation and specialist crews, thus our Captain Snyder, who's so good at his job. If only one ship gets home, GHQ hopes she'll be one of those five, though they'd never be so tactless as to tell the rest of us so."
"They don't have to with you along," Dr. Soo told him.
"Upset to find out you're expendable?" he teased.
"At my age, you're always expendable. But is there any chance of transferring to Sarmatian? I'd feel better knowing you were protecting me along with the crown jewels over there."
"Shame on you, Melly!"
"Cowardice is a survival trait," Dr. Soo said tartly.
"Well, there is always the chance of running into-or over-a cloaked Bug picket," Prescott conceded. "They don't seem to survey on anywhere near the scale we do, but intelligence's estimate is that they probably station picket ships in permanent cloak in every system they know about. Which is another reason for the probes, of course. We send them through to sanitize the area within scanner range of any warp point before we send any manned units through, then go back into cloak ourselves immediately. But the chance of our actually running into one of those pickets-and being spotted-is pretty slim, so the odds are a thousand to one that you'll get home safe and sound. Even aboard the flotilla flagship."
"Oh? And if we do run into Bugs?" She was suddenly serious.
"If they're electronic, we sic Captain Snyder on them. And if they're eight-legged, warm-blooded pseudo-insects," he turned serious himself, "why, then, Melly, we gunslingers do our job."
Soo was about to reply when Prescott's console beeped the tone of an outside com connection. He raised an eyebrow and touched a stud, and the com screen lit with Captain Snyder's boyish face.
"Captain," the admiral said with the courtesy he and Snyder were always careful to show one another. "A welcome surprise."
"I've got a bigger one for you, Admiral," Snyder said, and his taut, barely suppressed excitement pulled Prescott up in his command chair. Snyder had spent over twelve years in Survey command. He wouldn't be this excited just because his probes had worked.
"Perhaps you'd better tell me about it, Captain," the admiral said quietly.
"The point's a type fourteen, Sir," Snyder said, and Prescott's intent gaze sharpened. A type fourteen was rare-a closed warp point, with extreme tidal stresses, which probably helped explain the high RD2 loss rate Chau and Leopold had reported.
"A type fourteen, eh? How close in is it?"
"About six light-hours, Sir," Snyder replied. "That's our best guess, anyway. The probe data are pretty badly scrambled, and we could be off by as much as ten or fifteen light-minutes. The tidal stress is more wicked than usual, even for a type fourteen, but we can use it all right."
"And you think we'll want to use it?" the admiral asked softly.
"I think we'll have to, Sir," Snyder said soberly, but still with that undertone of excitement.
"Why?"
"As I said, the data are badly scrambled, but I've got my best people working on it, and their consensus is that there's a high-tech presence in the system. A big one. And even if our astro data are less than perfect, we've been able to establish that this isn't any system we've ever seen before." His eyes blazed on the com screen, and he showed his teeth in a hungry grin. "Admiral, I may be wrong, but it looks to me like there's a damned good chance we just hit an El Dorado!"
". . . so all we can really say," Commander Leopold concluded in his most tactful tones, "is that this may be an El Dorado." He looked around the table in Prescott's flag briefing room and met Snyder's eyes squarely. "The data absolutely confirm a high-tech presence, but from this far out, and with such poor resolution, there's no way to positively identify it as belonging to the Bugs. And while the system clearly doesn't belong to any member of the Alliance, that's no proof that it belongs to the Bugs, either."
"With all due respect, Admiral," Snyder said through what the uncharitable might have described as clenched teeth, "in my professional judgment," he stressed the adjective ever so slightly, "and despite all qualifications, I say this is an El Dorado. Exactly the thing we were sent out here to find."
He held Leopold's gaze with his own without quite glaring, and Prescott hid a sigh behind a calm, thoughtful expression as the tension between Survey and gunslingers reared its head once more. He knew Snyder was working very hard at keeping that tension in check, but he also knew Leopold's cautionary remarks held a sting of personal criticism for Snyder. Not that they were intended to, as Prescott was positive Snyder also knew, but because they had the unmistakable sound of disagreement. The fact that everyone knew it was Leopold's job to be the voice of caution on his admiral's staff wasn't quite enough to defuse Snyder's resentment at being forced to submit to the critique of someone with less than a tenth of his own survey expertise. Especially since that someone was junior to him and on the staff of an admiral who had even less survey experience than that . . . and who nonetheless was in command.
It wasn't easy for a Survey Command professional to accept the complete reversal of the prewar authority between the exploration specialists and the gunslingers at the best of times. Being figuratively rapped on the knuckles in his own undeniable area of competence at a time like this could only make that worse.
"You may very well be right, George," the admiral said after a moment, deliberately using the captain's first name. Snyder turned to meet his eyes, and Prescott took his pipe from his mouth and waved it gently, trailing a thin strand of smoke from the mouthpiece. "In fact, I think you are. And I certainly want you to be, just as I'm sure Commander Leopold does. But he does have a point, you know. Whether you're right or not, we can't prove anything one way or the other with the limited data we currently possess, and we can't whistle up an assault fleet until we can prove something. Besides," he allowed himself a grin, "if these aren't Bugs but someone entirely new instead and we drop an entire fleet in on some poor, inoffensive third party, the diplomatic corps will have our guts for garters!"