"If we set them to come up for, say, thirty seconds every half-hour, they should detect any incoming vessel under power in normal-space at least twenty light-minutes out. That should give us sufficient time to respond, and at the same time increase their endurance by a factor of sixty."
"An excellent suggestion, Exec." Honor smiled at him, grateful that he'd finally come out of his shell, and his facial muscles twitched as if to return it. But then they stiffened again, as if he regretted his momentary lapse, and she smothered a frown of her own.
"Lieutenant Venizelos." The tactical officer looked positively harried as she turned back to him, and her smothered frown turned into a smothered smile at his expression.
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"Lieutenant Cardones will be taking over your responsibilities in your absence. In addition to your other duties before departure, I want you to get with him and work out the optimum drone deployment based on the availability figures I feel certain Commander Santos and Commander McKeon will have for you within the hour."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Very well. Now, once we've detached the pinnaces and deployed our drones, I intend to place Fearless in Medusa orbit. It will be necessary for me to meet and confer with the Resident Commissioner as soon as possible, which will, of course, require a visit to the planet. In addition, however, the detachment of our pinnaces will force us to rely on our cutters for all inspections of space-to-surface and orbit-to-orbit trade. Since they do not have impellers, we may be required to use Fearless herself to move them from orbit to orbit in order to cover all targets. Moreover, the planet lies within three light-minutes of the inner edge of our drone deployment, and our onboard sensors have far more reach than the drones will. By remaining in Medusa orbit, we will be so positioned as to allow our sensors to cover the most critical spatial volume of our responsibilities and also free drones to thicken other portions of the net. I'll want at least one drone reserved to cover the planet if we leave orbit, as I intend to run periodic sweeps of the inner system, if possible, but I'm afraid we'll find ourselves too busy to make many of them. Is all this understood?"
She sat back and swept them with her eyes. Most of them nodded; none shook their heads.
"Excellent. In that case—"
"Ah, Captain?"
"Yes, Lieutenant Venizelos?"
"Something just occurred to me, Ma'am. Commander McKeon's right about the probe endurance, and even without that consideration, getting the kind of coverage you're talking about would be a real problem with the numbers we have aboard. We could get a lot better density if we asked Warlock to drop off any she can spare. I mean, it's not like she's going to be needing them in Manticore."
"I appreciate the suggestion," Honor said in an absolutely toneless voice, "but I'm afraid it's impractical. We'll just have to do the best we can from our own resources."
"But, Captain—"
"I said it's impractical, Lieutenant." Her voice was even flatter than before, its very lack of expression a warning, and Venizelos closed his mouth with a snap. He shot a helpless, sidelong glance at McKeon, but the exec didn't even blink. He'd already noted that Harrington planned to detach her pinnaces after the heavy cruiser—and Young—had departed. Now her response to Venizelos confirmed his reading of the situation. Whatever the source of the bad blood between her and Young, it was nasty enough for him to deliberately set her up for disaster . . . and for her to see it coming. And to take steps against it only after he was no longer in a position to frustrate them.
All of which sounded ominously as though HMS Fearless—and her officers—might just find themselves caught in the crossfire.
Honor watched her executive officer's masklike expression and guessed was going on behind it. He was right, of course—and so was Venizelos. She deeply regretted having stepped on the tactical officer so hard, especially when he'd only offered the sort of suggestion she'd practically prayed for her officers to make, but she couldn't explain the enmity between her and Young. Even if it hadn't been unthinkable for any CO to reveal such things to her subordinates, it would have sounded entirely too much like petulant whining.
"Are there any other comments or suggestions?" she asked after a moment. There were none, and she nodded.
"I will announce our new orders and responsibilities to the ship's company at fourteen hundred. Lieutenant Venizelos, I'll want a list of the personnel you want for your party by thirteen hundred. Commander McKeon will vet them before you submit them to me, but I want final approval made before I address the crew."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"Very well, ladies and gentlemen. You have your instructions. Let's be about them."
She nodded, and they rose and hurried from the compartment. They didn't look very happy, but at least they were actively engaged with their duties for the first time in far too long. Perhaps it was a good sign.
The hatch closed behind the last of them, and she put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her palms, massaging her temples with her fingertips. God, she hoped it was a good sign! She'd done her best to radiate confidence, but a terrifying number of things could go wrong. Merchant skippers could be prickly about their right of passage, and Venizelos might well provoke an interstellar incident if he pressed the wrong captain too hard. Even with McKeon's suggestion, the endurance of their cobbled-up sensor platforms would be frighteningly limited. They might last the three months until Warlock returned—with luck—if Young didn't find some excuse to extend his "refit" even further. And, worst of all, all of her plans counted on nothing going seriously wrong anywhere. If something did break, she had an excellent chance of knowing about it, but she had an even better chance of being in entirely the wrong place to do anything to stop it.
She sighed and straightened, then lowered her hands to the table and stared long and hard at their backs.
In the final analysis, everything depended on her crew, and she hated to think about the strain she was about to impose upon them. Marines would be of limited utility to Venizelos, so the tactical officer would almost certainly ask solely for naval ratings. That meant he would be taking almost ten percent of Fearless's ship's company with him, and she would have a very hard time denying him the best ten percent, with the most small-craft experience. Her own customs parties for orbital traffic would have to come from what was left, and she'd already noted an appalling number of merchantmen in Medusa orbit. What they could be finding to trade with the aborigines was beyond her imagination, but they were clearly trading a lot of something, and it would be her duty to check every one of those ships.
It would be tempting, she knew, to settle for a simple examination of their manifests, but that wasn't what the Fleet expected of her. Manifest checks would do for through traffic entering the system only to transit the Junction; in the case of vessels trading with Manticoran territory, however, or those transshipping cargo here, she was supposed to inspect the cargo shuttles and ships themselves for contraband. That meant long, grueling hours for her people, and each inspection party would require an officer or senior petty officer to command it.
Even if she had to make no other detachments, that was going to leave her chronically shorthanded, and she could almost see the domino effect rippling towards her. Too few people meant longer watches, less free time, and more resentment from a crew that was already hostile at a time when she needed absolute top effort from everyone on board.
She sighed again and stood, looking around the empty compartment. So be it. Her own nature and all of her training cried out for her to lead, but if leadership failed she would cajole, kick, bully, or terrorize. One way or the other, whatever it took, she would get it done.
They could hate her guts all they liked as long as they did their duty.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Captain Michel Reynaud, Manticore Astro-Control Service, stood at Commander Arless's shoulder and watched his display with mixed emotions as HMS Fearless held position near Basilisk Control and the heavy cruiser Warlock
slid into the heart of the terminus. The heavier ship's Warshawski sails glowed brilliantly for just a moment, and then she vanished, and Reynaud was scarcely sorry to see her go. Of all the half-assed, over-bred, arrogant cretins the Royal Manticoran Navy had ever assigned to watch over Reynaud's domain, Lord Pavel Young had to have been the worst. He'd never bothered to veil his contempt for the ACS in the slightest, and Reynaud and his people had reciprocated with feeling.
But for all that, Young had been a known evil, one they'd grown accustomed to working around. Now they had a new one to worry about.
The Astro-Control Service was a civil service organization, despite its uniform and naval ranks, and Reynaud was profoundly grateful for it as he gazed at the remaining cruiser's light code. He was responsible for the smooth running of the terminus' traffic, period. The rest of the Basilisk System was the Navy's concern, and the thought of what now faced that single ship's commanding officer was enough to make Reynaud shiver. Not, he thought sourly, that the stupid bastard was likely to deserve his pity. If he was, he wouldn't have been dumped here. That was a given of Basilisk Station, and the personnel of Basilisk Control regarded the dregs with which they had to contend with all the disdain they merited.
He started to turn away, but Arless's voice stopped him.
"Just a sec, Mike. We've got a couple of inbounds from that cruiser."
"What?" Reynaud swung back to the display and frowned. Two drive sources were moving towards Control's sprawling habitat. They were far too small for full-sized ships, but the fact that they were impeller signatures indicated they were larger than most small craft. And that, in turn, suggested they must be pinnaces, but why would pinnaces be heading for his command station?
"What d'you suppose they're up to?" he asked.
"Damfino." Arless shrugged. He leaned back and cracked the knuckles of his long fingers.
"You mean they didn't file a flight plan?"
"You got it. They—hold on." The controller leaned forward and flipped a switch, shunting his com channels to Reynaud's earbug.
"—ontrol, this is Navy flight Foxtrot-Able-One. Request final approach instructions."
Arless started to reply, but Reynaud stopped him with a raised finger and keyed his own pickup.
"Navy Foxtrot-Able-One, this is Basilisk Control. Please state your intentions."
"Basilisk Control, we are a naval liaison mission. I have on board my recorded orders and an explanatory dispatch for your station commander."
Reynaud and Arless stared at one another, eyebrows raised. It was certainly unorthodox. Liaison mission? What kind of "liaison"? And why all the mystery? Why hadn't they pre-filed a flight plan? The captain shrugged.
"Very well, Navy Foxtrot-Able-One. Make your approach to—" he craned his neck to check Arless's display "—beacon Niner-Four. You'll be met by a guide. Basilisk Control clear."
He killed the circuit and gave Arless an eloquent glance.
"Now just what the hell do you think that was all about, Stu?"
"Beats me, boss," the controller replied, "but look at that."
He gestured at his display, and Reynaud frowned. Even as her pinnaces separated, the light cruiser had swung away from Basilisk Control to go slashing off on a vector for the system primary, and not at the eighty percent power RMN ships normally used. She was ripping along at a full five hundred gravities, and she was already fifty thousand kilometers away at a velocity of over seven hundred KPS.
The station commander scratched his bristly gray hair and sighed. Just when he'd gotten the last uniformed jackass to at least keep his ham-fisted fingers out of Control's pie, this happened. It had taken months to convince Young that his condescending attempts to rearrange Control's well-tried traffic lanes into more "efficient" routes—so poorly designed they could only increase the workloads of Reynaud's already over-worked controllers while decreasing safety margins—were neither required nor desired. Managing wormhole junction traffic was a job for well-trained, highly experienced professionals, not twits who'd been exiled for how poorly they did their own jobs. There were lots of things the Navy could have done to facilitate ACS's routine operations if the over-bred fart had been interested in doing anything that would have required any effort on his part. He hadn't been, but the tin-god aspect of his personality had been pronounced. As far as Reynaud had been able to tell, Young was simply incapable of watching someone else get on with his job in an orderly fashion as long as he could interfere without exerting himself. He'd rubbed Reynaud wrong from the beginning, and the chief controller had found himself going out of his way to rub right back—with a predictable loss of efficiency he couldn't quite regret, however hard he tried.
But it appeared Young's replacement was cut from different cloth. The problem was that Reynaud didn't know what sort of cloth. Judging by the speed with which he moved, the newcomer certainly seemed to have more energy than his predecessor, but that could be good or bad. If he actually intended to assist Control, it was probably good, yet long and bitter experience made it difficult for Reynaud to visualize a senior naval officer who did more good than harm.
He shrugged. Whatever Fearless's CO had in mind, the cruiser's rapid departure made it clear he intended to dump this "liaison mission" on Reynaud for the long haul, and his total lack of warning as to his intentions was peculiar, to say the very least.
He frowned again, but there was a speculative light in his eyes as he watched the light cruiser lope away. Whatever else that captain was, he clearly wasn't another Lord Pavel Young.
"Do you have our sweep pattern plotted, Astrogation?"
"Yes, Ma'am." Lieutenant Stromboli looked up at Honor's question. His fleshy face was drawn with weariness, for Santos and McKeon had kept revising their drone availability numbers on him. Every time they'd changed their figures, he'd had to recalculate almost from scratch, but tired or no, he never—ever—again meant to tell Captain Harrington he didn't have the course she needed. "We have a vector change in—" he double-checked his panel "—twenty-three minutes. We should deploy the first drone eight hours and forty-two minutes after that."
"Good. Pass the course change to Maneuvering." Nimitz "bleeked" softly in her ear, and she reached up to stroke his head. The treecat always seemed to know when it was time for him to be seen and not heard, even on the bridge, but he'd started sounding far more cheerful from the moment HMS Warlock disappeared. Honor knew why that was, and she allowed herself a small smile before she punched up Engineering.
She got one of Santos's assistants and waited patiently while the chief engineer was summoned to the com. Santos looked awful when she finally appeared. Her dark hair was gathered in a tight braid, her face was tired, and there was a smudge of grease down her right cheek.
"We'll be beginning drone deployment in approximately nine hours, Commander. What's our status?"
"The first pattern is almost ready to deploy now, Ma'am," Santos replied wearily, "and I think we'll have the second one by the time you need it, but I'm not sure about number three."
"Problems, Commander?" Honor asked mildly, and saw Santos's eyes flash with anger. Good. If her officers got mad enough, they might start thinking for a change instead of simply feeling sorry for themselves. But the lieutenant commander bit back what she wanted to say and exhaled sharply.
"I'm concerned about fatigue, Captain." Her voice was flat. "We're already running out of beacon kits, and the kits were never intended to deploy sensor heads of this size and sensitivity. Adapting them to fit requires modifications far outside the normal repair and maintenance parameters, and that limits the utility of our servomechs. We're doing a lot of hand-wiring and grunt work down here, we only have so many sets of hands, and it's going to get worse as the kits run out."
"Understood, Commander, but timing is critical to an orderly deployment. I advise you to expedite."
Honor cut the circuit and leaned back in her command chair with a tiny smile, and Nimitz rubbed his head against the side of her neck w
hile he purred.
* * *
"You're what?" Captain Reynaud demanded, and Lieutenant Andreas Venizelos wrinkled his brow in puzzlement.
"I said I'm your customs and security officer, Captain. I'm sure Captain Harrington's dispatch will explain everything."
Reynaud accepted the message chip almost numbly, and Venizelos's puzzlement deepened. He couldn't understand why the ACS man looked so confused. It wasn't as if Venizelos were using any big words.
"Let me get this straight," Reynaud said after a moment. "Your Captain Harrington actually expects you and your people to be quartered here at Control? He means to leave you here to support our operations?"
"Yes, Sir, she does." The darkly handsome lieutenant stressed the pronoun's gender, and Reynaud nodded, but he still looked so dumbfounded Venizelos was moved to continue. "Why do you seem so surprised, Sir?"
"Surprised?" Reynaud shook himself, then smiled oddly. "Yes, I suppose 'surprised' is a pretty good word, Lieutenant. Let me just put it this way. I've been chief controller in Basilisk for almost twenty months. Before that, I was senior assistant controller for damn near two years, and in all that time, you're the first—what did you call it? security and customs officer?—anyone's bothered to assign me. In fact, you may be the first one any station commander's ever bothered to assign to Control."
"I'm what?" Venizelos blurted, then flushed as he realized how exactly his tone matched Reynaud's original emphasis. The two of them stared at one another, and then the ACS captain began to grin.
"Now that I think about it," he said, "I believe I did read something in my original orders about the Navy being responsible for inspections and station security. Of course, it's been so long I can't be certain." He glanced at the habitat services tech standing at his shoulder. "Jayne, do me a favor and find the Lieutenant's people some quarters and get them checked out on the basic emergency procedures, would you? I've got some station regs to plow through to find out what the hell we're supposed to do with them."