Still, Gensonne or not, it still had to be a commercial hull. It was headed for Piec, which meant it was headed towards System Patrol. Surely they wouldn’t take kindly to a warship falsely identifying itself as a freighter, and a warship couldn’t pretend to be anything else once it got into visual observation range. So whatever it was, at least it wasn’t a cruiser or a destroyer.
Unfortunately, one of Llyn’s intelligence sources had warned that Gensonne might have a couple of armed freighters. Out here, where naval patrols were few and far between, armed merchantmen were hardly uncommon, and Posnan System Patrol probably wouldn’t turn much of a hair over one as long as it behaved itself.
Especially if it claimed to be Andermani. Gustav Anderman was a tough-minded old buzzard, and he’d made it a point to ensure that everyone—especially including pirate gangs—knew his freighters were as well-armed as many a warship. He was also the sort of man the Posnan authorities wouldn’t care to annoy without very good reason.
More to the point, if Hamman had any weaponry at all, then it was automatically superior to Pacemaker, which didn’t mount even a single popgun.
The bottom line was if Gensonne managed to get into missile range with minimal difference between their vectors and demanded Pacemaker heave-to for a rendezvous, Pacemaker would have no choice but to obey. And since they’d still be seven million kilometers from Obrączka, Gensonne could then drop his mask, seize or destroy Llyn, and be gone before anyone in Posnan could do a damn thing about it.
Unless there was enough difference between their vectors that Pacemaker could somehow squeak into Obrączka orbit—or at least break past Hamman—before Gensonne overhauled her.
“Try this,” he said. “Assume he wants to intercept us seven million klicks short of Obrączka. We make turnover, all fat, dumb, and happy, and both of us maintain our current profiles until he makes turnover for the intercept. If we then stop decelerating and kick back up to maximum safe acceleration in-system, can he intercept us at his current acceleration rate?”
“No way,” Katura said, not even bothering to run the numbers.
“Assume his maximum acceleration is two hundred gravities and he cranks it that high.”
“In that case…” Katura paused, crunching the numbers. He eyed the results a moment, then shook his head.
“If we go back to two hundred sixteen gravities at the point he makes turnover, our starting velocity relative to Obrączka will be forty-eight hundred KPS higher than his,” he said. “If he flips back and goes to two hundred gravities at that point, we’ll pass over two million kilometers clear of him and our velocity advantage at that point would be about eleven KPS higher than it was when we both resumed acceleration.”
“So he couldn’t bring us back into missile range even at two hundred gravities?”
“No, Sir. He’d have to be able to pull at least two hundred and thirty-two to manage that, and our velocity advantage would still be over forty-two hundred KPS. So even at that acceleration he’d only be able to keep us in missile range for a bit under three minutes.”
“I like the sound of that,” Llyn said softly, still gazing at the display. If they pulled this off, he knew, Gensonne would be furious.
Sometimes, the universe gave out bonuses.
* * *
The two ships continued on their respective vectors for another hour. After forty minutes, Pacemaker made turnover, beginning her steady deceleration toward Obrączka orbit. Twenty minutes later, right on schedule—and still close enough to a routine zero-zero entry into Obrączka orbit to pass cursory inspection from System Patrol—Hamman flipped, as well.
Llyn watched the plot for a second or two, imagining Gensonne’s expression as the Volsung watched the rabbit hopping steadily and leisurely straight into the fox’s jaws. He looked at Katura and nodded.
“Let’s do it, Captain.”
“Yes, Sir.” Katura’s gestured to his helmsman. “Execute.”
“Yes, Sir,” the helmsman repeated. A moment later, Pacemaker had flipped over and once again begun accelerating.
Llyn watched Hamman’s icon. For a moment, nothing changed. Then the freighter’s wedge disappeared; and when it reappeared the ship was also again accelerating toward the hoped-for rendezvous.
“His acceleration’s increasing,” Katura reported.
“Not surprising,” Llyn replied calmly. At least it wasn’t surprising for Gensonne. Most captains would have realized at this point that Pacemaker had already escaped, but Gensonne wasn’t going to give up on the possibility. He would resume his pursuit until his astrogator finished crunching the new numbers and hesitantly explained that—
“Sir,” Katura said, an edge of disbelief in his voice. “The freighter—”
“I see it,” Llyn murmured, watching the vector projections change yet again. Hamman hadn’t accelerated to the two hundred gravities he’d told Katura to assume. Instead, it had increased its pace to two hundred and forty gravities.
Which meant…
“How long can he keep us in missile range if we both maintain present accelerations?” he asked.
Katura was already running the numbers. “He’s bought himself another twenty-four seconds,” he said, clearly still not believing it. Even assuming a military grade impeller, the freighter must have reduced her safety margin almost to zero to produce that kind of acceleration. No captain wanted to take his command that close to the edge of destruction without a damned compelling reason.
“He must want us even worse than I expected,” Llyn said, keeping his own voice calm. In point of fact, if Gensonne wanted them that badly he was likely to go ahead and fire off a few missiles no matter what Posnan might think about it.
And in that case, the less time he had in which to do the firing, the better.
He took a deep breath. “Redline our compensator,” he ordered.
Katura turned to face him, his mouth slightly open. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Llyn said. “Let’s see how badly he really wants to dance.”
Katura looked at him another moment, his face unreadable, then nodded to the helmsman.
“Zero compensator margin,” he said. “Take us to two hundred and seventy gravities.”
The helmsman swallowed visibly. “Yes, Sir,” he replied.
Llyn made sure his own expression remained no more than calmly attentive as the courier boat’s acceleration sprang upward by over fifty gravities. He wasn’t any happier about doing this than Katura or the helmsman.
But now, given their new acceleration rates, Pacemaker would never enter Hamman’s missile envelope at all. In fact, she would pass beyond Hamman’s maximum missile range just over two minutes before the freighter arrived. Gensonne couldn’t possibly overtake him, not even if he was prepared to stay at a zero safety margin. And assuming Gensonne retained a single gram of common sense—
“Hamman is decreasing acceleration, Sir,” Katura announced suddenly. He stared at the display another moment, then turned back at Llyn. “She’s back down to a hundred gravities.”
Llyn watched the projected vectors, now diverging more and more broadly, feeling the tension draining out of him. Gensonne had gotten the message, and apparently even the Volsung was unwilling to hold his ship on the edge of disaster when he couldn’t catch his quarry anyway. Which meant that Llyn didn’t have to keep Pacemaker at that edge, either.
“There’s a game people have played for centuries, Captain,” he said to Katura. “Back on Old Terra, they called it chicken. Apparently, even Admiral Gensonne can recognize when it’s time to quit playing.”
“As you say, Sir,” Katura replied.
“Run us down to two hundred thirty gravities,” Llyn continued. “Keep us just enough above the standard safety margin that he’ll remember we can run away faster than he can chase us.”
“Yes, Sir. Two-thirty gravities it is. And if I may again suggest…?”
Llyn chewed the inside of his cheek. The fact that Gensonne had been headed
in-system probably meant he’d just arrived and that none of the rest of his ships were already in Posnan. It was always possible that that wasn’t the case, but it seemed most likely.
Still, if there were other Volsung ships in-system and Pacemaker continued to Obrączka, those other Volsungs would know precisely where to find her.
They must also know that a quiet hijacking would be a lot less noticeable than a mid-space interception. A few boarders aboard the courier boat, a quiet change of command without all the hubbub of missile exchanges, and it was likely no one would even notice.
Best not to tempt fate, he decided.
“All right, Captain,” he said out loud. “Plot us a course to the hyper-limit that bypasses Obrączka. I think we’ve already overstayed our welcome.”
* * *
Thirteen hours later, without further incident, Pacemaker was back in hyper.
“I had Thom and Seikor do a complete check of everything,” Katura said as he accepted a cup of tea from his boss. Normally, Llyn didn’t mix much with his officers and crew, but the captain had earned a little extra socialization. “The nodes came through without any damage. The compensator took some stress, but nothing seems damaged. I’ve ordered a recheck anyway, just to be on the safe side.”
“Considering the reason we’re out here, I don’t think a safe side really exists,” Llyn pointed out. “But, yes, go ahead.”
“I will, Sir.” Katura hesitated. “You really think that was Gensonne?”
“Gensonne or his people,” Llyn said, pouring a second cup for himself. “Why? Don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” Katura said, gazing thoughtfully into his cup. “I never met the man. But from the way you’ve talked about him, he seems more of a hit-it-with-a-hammer type. The freighter’s commander seemed…more subtle, somehow. Certainly more clever.”
“You don’t get to Gensonne’s level without a certain animal cunning,” Llyn reminded him. Still, the captain had a point. “But if it wasn’t Gensonne or one of his men, who else could it have been?”
“Maybe someone with a beef against the Grand Duke?” Katura suggested. “We were still running that Barcan ID.”
“There’s that,” Llyn conceded. “Though we’re a pretty long haul from Barca.”
“If the Grand Duke was in the market for anything questionable, Silesia is a place he might go shopping without awkward questions being asked,” Katura pointed out.
“There are closer places to Barca for that sort of thing,” Llyn said. “And if it really was an Andermani freighter, we run into the question of why they’d be interested in Barcan ships in the first place.”
“True,” Katura acknowledged. “Could it have been the Manticorans?”
“Running Andermani IDs?” Llyn shook his head. “Not a chance. The Andermani would skin them alive if they caught them at it. Besides, our people looked into Manticore’s intelligence apparatus, and it’s a complete joke. They wouldn’t have the faintest idea even where to start looking.”
“They might get better,” Katura warned. “They’re pretty motivated right now.”
“Motivation doesn’t equal competence,” Llyn said. “Trust me: the people running their Office of Naval Intelligence are moss-bound political appointees. Gensonne’s got a better chance of dying from old age than from Manticore tracking him down.”
“Maybe.” Katura eyed him thoughtfully. “I trust that by the time we track him down you’ll have a plan for confronting him?”
“Oh, I have a plan, all right,” Llyn assured him. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got four of them.”
“Depending on what we find at Telmach?”
“On what we find, and maybe who we find,” Llyn said, nodding. “And as always, what will ultimately get us what Axelrod wants.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Back in high school, Travis mused, if someone had told him he would someday be a teacher he would have laughed in the other person’s face. More probably, given what Travis was like in high school, he would have silently disagreed and walked away. Teaching was something that had never occurred to him as a possible future profession.
To be sure, he’d had a taste of the job over the past two years simply owing to the fact that he was a Navy officer. There was always someone under his command who needed instruction on how a procedure had to be implemented, or how some bit of equipment had to be properly repaired or pounded into submission.
But until the aftermath of the Battle of Manticore, when Casey was in for repairs and Travis was summarily tossed into the new MPARS section of the Academy, he’d never been on the teacher’s side of an actual classroom.
Rather to his shock, he’d discovered he liked it.
There was the mental challenge of having to boil down lesson material into a lecture that was as simple, focused, and informative as possible. There was the quiet personal confirmation of his own knowledge when he was able to answer a question that he’d never consciously thought about before. And there was the deep satisfaction of seeing a student’s eyes light up as a new concept or technique suddenly clicked.
On top of that, teaching meant order. There was organization and structure. Even better, it was Travis himself who got to define how that structure was established and implemented. That alone was worth its weight in spare parts.
Best of all, Lisa was two floors up in a classroom of her own.
Her presence at the MPARS Academy was a nice plus for him. Not so much for her. Like Travis, she’d been assigned teaching duty while Damocles was undergoing repairs. Unlike Travis, she hated the job.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t good at. Travis had taken advantage of a canceled class of his own to sit in on one of hers, and in his opinion she was better than fifty percent of the instructors he’d had at Casey-Rosewood, and with more patience than any of them.
The problem was that while he enjoyed the structure and discipline, all she could see was that she was stuck in a building on the ground instead of traveling in a ship out in space.
But there was nothing for it. Damocles had taken far more internal damage from the loss of her missile launcher than anyone had realized at the time, and the Navy’s lack of proper service, construction, and maintenance infrastructure had exacerbated that problem. Adding in the fact that Dapplelake and Breakwater were once again locking horns, this time for the money and access to repair facilities for the Navy and MPARS ships, meant Lisa was likely to be teaching for at least a few more months.
It was an almost-amusing irony, one which Travis carefully kept to himself, that he was actually adapting to a new situation faster and better than she was.
But aside from her frustration—or perhaps in some ways because of it—she and Travis had become closer over the past few months. Closer than Travis had ever expected. Closer, sometimes, than he was entirely comfortable with.
But it was good. It was very good. And it mostly seemed right.
If the deaths of King Edward and Princess Sophie had shown anything, it was that life was incredibly precious and heartbreakingly uncertain. It was both foolish and dangerous to let time slide away.
Travis didn’t know exactly where the relationship was going. But for now, he was content to work alongside her, spending lunches and weekends together, and let the future take its own course.
Which was why the fresh orders were a kick to the gut.
“I don’t understand, Sir,” he said looking up from his tablet at MPARS Academy Commandant Allen Innes.
“Seems pretty self-explanatory to me,” Innes countered tartly. “You’re to hand off your notes to your replacement and report immediately to your new assignment.”
Travis looked back at his orders. Unlike all the rest of the orders he’d been issued, this one was maddingly vague.
Admiralty Building. Suite 2021. Smack in the center of floors eighteen through twenty-two.
BuPers territory.
The Navy had taken him from his ship and put him in a classroom. Now, just as h
e’d learned that he was a damn good teacher, they were kicking him even farther downstairs to desk duty.
And not just any desk duty, but the most boring desk duty imaginable.
“Has my work been unsatisfactory?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that, Lieutenant.” The commandant gestured toward Travis’s tablet. “All I know is the order says immediately, and in my experience Admiral Dembinski hasn’t issued any extra patience to her people. You have your notes?”
Silently, Travis pulled the data chip from his tablet and handed it over.
“Very good, Lieutenant.” Innes hesitated. “For whatever it’s worth, Long, your students seem to learn a lot in your classes. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Travis said, suppressing a sigh. Innes was sorry to see him leave, but apparently not sorry enough to fight to keep him. He’d hoped, with the aftermath of the king’s death winding down, that his tennis-ball journey from assignment to assignment might be over.
Unfortunately, it looked like it might be. After all, conventional wisdom was that BuPers was where careers went to die.
Still, the Admiralty Building was currently also host to the MPARS offices and classrooms, which meant Lisa was still just a lift ride away. Granted, it would be a longer lift ride, and they were likely to be on different schedules, but he was sure they could work it out. Maybe careers weren’t as important when a person had friends.
On the other hand, now that he was in BuPers, maybe she would see him in a different and less flattering light. In fact, maybe she would break off the relationship completely.
He was already junior to her in rank. Now that he was in a dead-end job, maybe she would rethink everything.
What a hell of a way to start a Monday.
The lift doors opened, breaking his downward spiral of thought. Taking a deep breath, he stepped out onto the twentieth floor. He glanced at the directory, confirmed that 2021 was to the right, and turned in that direction.
“Well, hello, Sir,” a familiar voice came from behind him. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Travis turned around, his stomach knotting. Chomps Townsend. Of course. After all, the best way for the universe to make a bad day even worse was to throw a man who hated him into his path.