Hegemony (48 page)

"Sensors," Freya sent, "get me a read on Delta-Four. What is it?"

Freya waited for a second as the
Ice Knife's
sensors aligned and scanned. 

"Captain," Sensors replied, "I'm getting a drive signature now," but Freya could see what her Sensors Officer saw.

The newly arrived ship had just lit her drive. From the output of the drive and the vector change in the target, Freya could see that the contact was another swift-ship.

"Sensors," she said, "is there any sign of an FTL initiation from Delta-Two or Delta-Three?"

That was a trick Freya had pulled herself, using a high precision FTL transit to maneuver against an enemy ship. The risk of such a high stress FTL transit was substantial, but if it worked the payoff was substantial too.

"Negative, Captain," said the Sensors Officer. "Both SDF swift-ships are still accelerating 'behind' us."

"Delta-Four is a new one, then," Freya said.

"Could be an SDF ship from somewhere else in the system," Muir said. "There's been enough time for outer system patrol ships to have gotten a communication about us. If he chanced an in-system FTL transit and got lucky..."

"Damn," Freya said. "That's unexpectedly good work for the locals."

"Never safe to underestimate them," Muir said. "We've got a serious problem now, don't we?"

"Yes," Freya said.

The new contact had positioned himself perfectly. He had managed his FTL emergence right at the edge of the safe threshold, and now, accelerating inbound, he would intercept the two fleeting swift-ships before they reached the threshold of safe FTL initiation.

Freya could risk an early FTL initiation, but the risk of failure was greater than she liked. The gravity of the local star was too strong for an ideal FTL initiation here, and the risk of trouble was non-linear. A few more million kilometers would not reduce the gravitational pull of the star by much, but it would fall below the safe threshold, reducing the odds of a FTL initiation failure by several orders of magnitude. Conversely, the local star's gravity was just above that threshold now, enormously increasing the odds of an FTL initiation failure.

And if the
Ice Knife
suffered an FTL failure, it would be at least a hundred hours before she could stabilize her singularity and try again. Unless it was a severe failure... That might cause a shutdown of the reactor and leave the ship helpless.

Freya could simply accept the engagement. One on one, she thought her elite
Ice Knife
had a good chance of beating a single SDF swift-ship. Of course, five minutes ago she would have never believed an SDF ship could have managed such a precise and complex FTL maneuver. The truth of it was, there was no way she could be certain of coming through an engagement without taking enough damage to compromise her mission.

The other thing Freya could do was convince the
Whisperknife
to split up. The new contact could only intercept one of them... the other would be free to escape. But that meant bringing the pirates in as... allies. She'd have to fully brief Captain Killick, telling him deeply classified information. And worse, she'd have to depend on him.

"Communications," she said, unable to keep her annoyance out of her vocalization, "get me an immediate secure laser comm link with the
Whisperknife.
Muir, set up a basic VR for us. I'm going to need to explain this 'in person,' if you take my meaning. Let's move fast. We don't have much time."

"So now what, Captain Tralk?" asked Killick.

"Now it looks like you get your wish after all," Freya said. "We're close to being ready to initiate an FTL transit... but not that close. We can't evade the intercept.

"But, only the new contact is in position to force an intercept and it can only intercept
one
of us. If it's
Ice-Knife,
I'm pretty sure of winning the engagement. But I can't be certain of coming through unscathed."

"You want me to split off and lure him away?" Killick said.

"No. Your ship would be outgunned badly against an SDF swift-ship. I'm going to burn to intercept
him
. I want you to vector away and avoid the intercept."

"That's real nice of you," Killick said, "but I don't get it. Why are you doing that? I somehow doubt you're
that
grateful to me."

"True enough, Captain Killick," Freya said. "Like I said, I think I can win an engagement with one SDF swift-ship. But I can't take that chance.

"So." Freya paused for a second, then went on. "You wanted in, Captain Killick? You're in.

"I'm going to have to trust you, Captain Killick. A lot. Some things involved in this mission are classified well beyond 'top secret,' and if you shop this to some Brotherhood info market, I swear before God that I, and if needs be, the whole goddamn Hegemonic Fleet, will hunt you down and kill you, no matter how long or how far you run."

"Save your threats for someone who gives a shit, Captain," Nas said. "If you play it straight with me and mine, I will play it straight with you. If this secret info is what it takes for me to get even with those Coaly fuckers and you give it to me... and you don't try to backstab me and mine... then me and mine will
not
backstab you and yours. Not that anything I can say is going to convince you, but it's still fact. People who work with my ship and my crew get what they pay for."

"Like you said," Freya replied, "nothing you say is going to be convincing. But I don't seem to have much choice. So you're going to have to show me you're telling the truth.

"Now, I'd rather do this 'in person,' as much as that's possible... and we have a few minutes we can spare before things get too busy. I'd like you patch yourself, and Interceptor Pilot Neel, into a VR. There's a lot you're going to need to know."

The VR meeting wasn't set at an impressive resolution;
Ice Knife
had nothing like the computing capacity of an assault-ship, and Freya did not see any need to devote more processing power than minimally necessary. The virtual avatars of the meeting's participants were seated around a narrow and featureless table. Muir "sat" at Freya's side, and Killick "sat" across from them. Zandy had chosen to "sit" at the end of the narrow table, side-on to all of them. Still, Freya was pleased that Captain Killick had agreed to join her in this VR.

Nas Killick was silent, for now. He had heard the story briefly outlined, had confirmed his own role in it rather briefly: the destruction of the empty freight-liner. Considering the property damage that the destruction of the 'liner had caused, and the possibility that there had been one or more deaths, Freya was on edge. She should be hunting ships like the
Whisperknife
, not cooperating with them.

On the other hand, she thought, this was very much a case of "an enemy of my enemy." Compared to a Coalition traitor on Yuro IV, and the deadly new Coalition lance-ships that had destroyed the
Conquering Sun
, allying with a self-confessed pirate was small stakes.

"So that's the goal of all this," Freya concluded. "We need a good sensors log of the experimental Coalition lance-ship."

"Yeah," said Killick. "I can see how you would." His voice was calm, but impressed. Even a void-runner pirate captain should be able to figure out the consequences of a Coalition whose lance-ships could destroy Hegemonic assault-ships.

"Now," Freya said, "we had records aboard this ship, but I suspect that is no longer the case; our enemy had too much opportunity to access that data..."

"I'm afraid it's more or less what we suspected, Captain," Muir interjected. "We ran a deep scan of the entire system and there's no trace of the data in storage. No trace of any data about the engagement at all. The log data has been replaced with random static, encrypted and formatted so that on a cursory scan the logs show up as being intact. But there's no actual data there."

"Shit," Freya said, with no surprise in her voice.

"We do still have the data in my portable data unit," Muir added.

"Which isn't going to be enough," Freya said. "What we have is a compressed download; no authentication, low fidelity. Even if there was no traitor at all, no other faction injecting an opposing view, Command might still not want to believe it. There's going to be plenty of people who wouldn't mind burying us anyway... just to cover the loss of the
'Sun
. As it is, we have to assume the traitor has assets that can... oh, let's say, '
present an opposing view point
,' when we deliver this data."

"Well, isn't that just keen, then," said Killick. "You mean to tell me that you can't actually
do
anything about these fuckers." He let out a contemptuous huff. "So now what? You and your crew want to join the Brotherhoods, maybe?"

"Not ever..." said Muir, cold voiced.

"No, Captain Killick," said Freya. "No, what we do now is, we get authenticated data."

"How?" asked Nas, echoed a fraction of a second later by Muir and Zandy.

"We get back to the Sigma-Charybdis Waypoint II system.
Ice Knife
made a close approach to the hostile ship to get this data in the first place. But we weren't the
only
ship to do so."

"The interceptors..." said Zandy.

"
Exactly
correct," said Freya with a sudden, hard smile. "And there were lots of sensor drones that I deployed when
Ice Knife
made the close pass. I'm willing to bet that not all of them were destroyed. And even if they were, some data might have survived in the hulls of the dead interceptors."

"I don't know about that," the interceptor pilot said quietly. "I know we discussed it, after you got me out on Yuro, but I'm not sure it'll work... My 'ceptor was blind, dead in space..."

"That doesn't mean the data wasn't
there
," Freya said. "It might have been, but with the damage you couldn't access it. Also, there might have been other partly intact interceptors out there, full of data... If their pilots linked back to the
'Sun
right before..."

"Oh, God," said Zandy. A pause, and she went on, "it might have happened. They might have made it through the attack, and data-linked back aboard. Right before the
'Sun
was destroyed." The tall woman's voice was suddenly husky with unshed tears.

"I'm sorry," Freya said. "But that means there are two possible data sources in the waypoint system. And with Captain Killick's cooperation, we'll have two ships to get at them with."

"At the speeds of that engagement, would they even be
in
the system anymore?" Zandy asked, still brittle voiced.

"Yes, though just barely," answered Freya. "It's been something like three hundred hours since the battle. It was a very fast intercept, but a lot of that vector was generated by the enemy ships.
Our
vector was high magnitude, relative to the system, but not
that
high. So the... packages that might have the data will be in the outer system by now, maybe even out in the system's Kuiper belt, and we'll have to cover a lot of volume to find it, even with the best tracking estimates... But it can be done.

"Interceptor Pilot Neel... Zandy, I need you to stay with the
Whisperknife
. We're going to split up so the inbound SDF ship can't engage us both. I think
Ice Knife
will come through the engagement well enough, at which point we'll have two ships to search with. But if we don't make it, or are damaged too badly, then it will be up to the
Whisperknife
and you... And you, Captain Killick.

"I will authorize a bounty... call it payment for assistance rendered to a Hegemonic Fleet vessel in distress. I'm not sure how easy a time you'll have collecting it, but if I'm still around I'll do what I can to help. Captain Killick, if my ship doesn't make it to the waypoint system, you have to find that data, and then get it and Interceptor Pilot Neel to a representative of the Central Throne Fleet. Or else the Coalies --the people who set you up-- will win this one. And maybe a lot more than just this one."

"What are we going to do?" Muir asked, as Freya went over the vector projections again. The VR meeting over, the
Whisperknife
was now accelerating at 90 degrees to their base course, forcing the inbound SDF swift-ship to commit to intercepting one ship or the other. Captain Killick had listened to the plan, and agreed. Now it only remained to see if he would do his part.

If there had been more time, if the inbound ship had emerged from its FTL transit further away,
Ice Knife
could have escaped. Over the long run, no human-crewed ship could match the sustained acceleration of a ship crewed by daemons who were
inside
the ship's command 'nets, indifferent to high acceleration. But a human crewed ship could endure maximum acceleration for long enough to manage an intercept in the time they had left.