I spend the next hour on one of the consoles in the ops center. The console is linked to the computer in my battle armor, which is tapping into the data feed from the Indianapolis’s CIC. Sergeant Fallon knows tactical diagrams, but she’s not familiar with translating them four-dimensionally to make sense of things scattered across light-hours of space, so I explain them to her as we look at the feed from Indy’s sensor suite.
“If he’s sending a distress code, and he doesn’t care if we see him coming, maybe he has a legit emergency,” Sergeant Fallon suggests. “Stranger things have happened, right?”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” I say, and point out some markers on the plot. “Indy is marking his position every time he broadcasts his signal. See here? That’s Mark One. There’s Two. Three, Four, and Five. You extend the line through these marks, and he’s headed right for us. But if you follow it back and kind of eyeball the way he came…” I finish the arc with my index finger. “That’s the moon with the only SRA colony in the system. Even now, he’s a lot closer to it than he is to us. If it’s just a shipboard emergency, why wouldn’t he go to his own base instead of the enemy base on the other side of the system?”
“I don’t like that line of thought,” Sergeant Fallon says.
“Neither do I. The only thing that makes sense to me is that someone got the jump on the Russian base, and this cruiser got away. If that’s the case, then whatever flushed him our way will follow right behind sooner or later. And with the Alcubierre network offline, our backs are against the wall.”
“Alert the grunts?”
“Not yet. That SRA cruiser is still a long way out. And if he has a Lanky seed ship on his ass, it won’t make a bit of a difference. Might as well die well rested.”
“It’s the Arkhangelsk,” Colonel Campbell says over the encrypted downlink an hour later. “Fleet intel said she was in the system when we transitioned in, and the ELINT signature of the bogey matches. She’s one of their old Kirov-class cans. A little behind on tech these days, but tough ships. Lots of firepower. If he’s playing a trick and cruising for trouble, he’s a pretty even match for the task force.”
“I’d almost wish he’s doing just that,” I say.
“Something else—he’s not moving like he’s running from anything. He’s pulling a quarter-g acceleration. That’s less than what their slowest supply tin cans can make.”
“How long until he gets here?”
“At his current acceleration, it’ll take him eight days just to get to turnaround. Make it three weeks, give or take.”
“Has the task force picked him up yet?”
“Doesn’t look like it. Won’t be long, though,” Colonel Campbell says.
“What are they going to do when they spot him?” Sergeant Fallon asks. She has been following our tactical shoptalk quietly, clearly uncomfortable to be out of her area of expertise.
“Hard to say, with that desk pilot for a task force commander,” Colonel Campbell says. “But seeing how he handled the little mutiny, I’d put some money on him storming off to meet the threat.”
“It’s not like we’re going anywhere,” I say.
“I’m not in charge of your grunts, and I don’t want to be. It would be a little silly to pull rank at this point. But I suggest you get the shop down there prepared for action. SRA ruse or Lankies on that bogey’s tail, chances are someone’s about to disturb the peace pretty soon.”
“Right.” Sergeant Fallon sighs and looks at me. “Keep us posted on the bogey, Colonel. We’ll see what we can come up with down here. In the meantime, let’s hope that the Russian cruiser just had a fusion bottle fail or something. I’m not sure I’m prepared for the other scenarios yet.”
“Will do. Indianapolis Actual out.” The speaker in the comms console chirps the descending two-tone trill of a dropped tight-beam connection.
“Let’s pretend there’s a Lanky ship behind that cruiser coming our way,” Sergeant Fallon says. “With all that combat experience against them, what would you do?”
“Tuck tail and run,” I say. “Except there’s no place to run in this system, and the transition point out of here is closed.” I shrug. “Arm everyone to the teeth, issue every last rocket launcher and tactical nuke in the magazines. Hit ’em when they land and make them pay for the place. But if they want it, it’s theirs already.”
“Such defeatism. They teach you that in the fleet?”
She raps me on the back of my armor with her fist.
“Let’s go see the science crew. I want to see if those smart people have any ideas for making the event memorable. If I’m going to die, I want to at least make it into one of those ‘Epic Last Stands in History’ books.”
CHAPTER 23
“Run that by me again,” Dr. Stewart says. “You want me to do what now?”
“We need you to help us figure out how to blow a Lanky seed ship out of space,” Sergeant Fallon says. “It kind of goes without saying that you have a pretty good motivator to find a solution.”