Falcone Strike (9 page)

Despite herself, Kat couldn’t help feeling a flicker of excitement as she strode onto the bridge and sat down in her command chair. Getting the squadron anywhere near ready to depart had been a hassle, but now they were finally ready to get on their way. She glanced at the near-space display, showing the fifteen older starships and three freighters assigned to Operation Knife, then keyed a switch on her console, opening a link to engineering.

“This is the captain,” she said. “Are we ready to depart?
”

“
Yes, Captain,” Zack Lynn said. Her chief engineer sounded confident, at least; she’d taken the time to go over the repairs with him, and he’d assured her that the ships were practically as good as new. “All systems are operating within acceptable parameters.”

Kat nodded, then glanced at her helmsman. “Set a course for the nearest suitable jump point,” she ordered. “And then copy it to the squadron.
”

“
Course laid in, Captain,” Lieutenant Samuel Weiberg said. “Copying it to the squadron now.”

Kat smiled. She’d been surprised when he’d returned to the ship, along with several other experienced officers, but he
had
spent the last few months at Piker’s Peak, sharing what he’d learned with the new recruits. Maybe someone in the personnel department had had an unaccustomed fit of common sense and realized it would be better for him to go back to
Lightning
rather than a new ship. Or maybe it had just been a stroke of luck.

“Communications,” she said. “Contact Shipyard Command and request permission to depart.”

“Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Linda Ross said. There was a pause as she worked her console. “We are cleared to depart, Captain. Shipyard Command wishes us luck.”

“Send a copy of our final status report to the Admiralty,” Kat ordered. She felt another flicker of excitement, which she ruthlessly suppressed. “Helm, take us to the jump point.”

She sat back in her command chair as she felt a dull thrumming running through the ship, slowly increasing in power as
Lightning
moved out of position. The rest of the squadron fell in behind her, keeping their formation spread out to minimize any chance of an accident. Kat had never heard of one starship ramming another by mistake, but their early exercises had made it clear that the older ships were far from reliable. It was better, she reasoned, to avoid taking chances while her crews were still getting used to them. Even with the latest weapons and drives crammed into their hulls, some of them still maneuvered like wallowing pigs.

“All systems check out, Captain,” Lynn said.

“The squadron seems to be operating at acceptable levels,” the XO added from his console. “They should have no trouble navigating hyperspace.”

Until we try to slip through the border
, Kat thought. She’d seen the star charts the XO had bought from his brother. The route into enemy space might not be
quite
as bad as flying through the Seven Sisters, but it was going to be bad enough.
We might lose a ship or two there.

She sucked in her breath. It wasn’t going to be easy, not with ships that hadn’t been designed to brush up against energy storms. The men who’d started to chart hyperspace, back in 2109, had been
brave
. They’d gone out willingly, knowing the odds of a safe return were poor. She couldn’t help admiring them, even as she appreciated the advancements in modern technology. As long as
Lightning
didn’t try to fly right
through
a storm, she was safe in hyperspace.

“Good,” she said, glancing at the display. “Transmit details of the first waypoint to them.”

“Yes, Captain,” Linda Ross said.

“Captain,” Weiberg said. “We have reached the first jump point.”

Kat nodded. Trying to open a gateway so close to Hyperion would be asking for trouble, if not outright disaster. No one had managed to
completely
account for the relationship between hyperspace and realspace, but everyone agreed that trying to jump out close to a planet was akin to diving right into an energy storm. She might have risked it, if she’d been desperate, yet the price would have been high. There was no need to take the risk now, not in a secure star system.

“Open the gateway,” she ordered. “Take us into hyperspace.”

The gateway opened, revealing the shimmering lights of hyperspace. Kat’s stomach clenched as the ship dived into the vortex, a reflex she’d never been able to suppress even though she knew it was purely psychometric. Others, natural-born groundhogs, weren’t able to cope, seeing the vortex as a gaping maw or a mouth filled with sharp teeth and hyperspace itself as a profoundly unnatural realm. She felt a dull shiver run through the ship, a sensation that it was no longer flying through empty space; she pushed it aside, irritated. It wasn’t as if it was her first time in hyperspace.

“Mr. XO,” she said, formally. “Squadron status?
”

“
All eighteen ships made it through the gateway, Captain,” the XO reported. “They’re reporting no problems; I say again, no problems.”

“Inform their commanding officers that they are invited to join me for dinner at 1700,” Kat said, glancing at her chronometer. It was 1400, plenty of time for any problems to crop up before the officers left their ships. “I expect their responses shortly.”

She leaned back in her command chair and studied the readouts. Everything seemed to be fine, save for odd fluctuations in the drive nodes. The engineers were already on it, checking and rechecking something that
looked
like a case of faulty tuning. Kat hoped they were right. Losing one drive node would be irritating, losing three would cripple
Lightning
if she had to take the ship into battle. It was probable that the tuning hadn’t been quite perfect—it was hard to tune a node without actually running it—but if it was something worse . . .

We might have to halt long enough to actually cut the node out and replace it
, she thought sourly. Doing such an operation in deep space would be an absolute nightmare, but it would have to be endured.
We don’t dare drop into a fleet base as it would betray our true vector
.

She looked at the near-space display and frowned. Tyre was the busiest system in the Commonwealth, with thousands of ships coming and going every day, and it was quite likely that
some
of those ships were actually spies.
Kat
would have established spying bases, if she’d been planning a war; it wouldn’t have been hard for the Theocracy to set up spy rings as well as insert commandos into enemy territory. Hell, she
knew
they’d inserted commandos; they’d caused a great deal of disruption during the opening hours of the war.

And now,
she thought
, are unfriendly eyes tracking our departure
? There was no way to be sure, she knew. Sensors were unreliable in hyperspace; an enemy ship could be right on top of them before she saw it coming, or watching her from a safe distance, effectively invisible. It was no consolation to know that the Theocracy would have similar problems, that their sensors couldn’t be
that
much better than anything possessed by the Commonwealth. All she could do was fly an evasive course and hope that hyperspace allowed them to avoid their opponents before it was too late.

“The commanding officers have responded, Captain,” the XO said. “They
will
be attending your dinner.”

Kat smiled. As if there had been any doubt . . .

There might have been, she had to admit. Her subordinates were commanding ships that hadn’t seen real service for decades, if they were lucky. Something
might
have cropped up that would have forced a CO to remain with his ship, even if he had been invited—ordered—to attend a dinner. She wouldn’t have penalized a CO for that either. It wouldn’t have been a deliberate snub, but a reasonable response to a serious problem.

Not that Candy would have understood,
she thought as she rose to her feet.
If she invites someone to her parties, that person had better go. And if they’re on their deathbed, they should bring their deathbed with them.

“You have the bridge,” she said, addressing the XO. “I’ll be in my office.”

She stepped through the door, ordered coffee from her steward, and sat down with the latest set of intelligence reports. There was actually a considerable amount of data, but she lacked any context . . . and the intelligence officers, suffering from the same problem, had spent hours crafting complex reports that managed to hide their basic ignorance under a mountain of bullshit. She rubbed her forehead; it was useful to know that the CIS had identified fifty-seven separate enemy superdreadnoughts, but there was no way to know just how many superdreadnoughts the enemy actually
had
. Had they sent all of their mobile firepower forward or had they kept half of it in reserve? Her steward appeared from the side door, carrying a large mug of coffee. Kat took it, nodded her thanks, and looked back at her datapads. It took her a moment to realize that Emily Hawking, instead of withdrawing as silently as she’d arrived, was waiting patiently to be acknowledged. Kat sighed inwardly, then looked up.

“Captain,” Emily said, “the observer has requested permission to attend the dinner.”

Kat frowned. Her first inclination was to refuse, but it would be undiplomatic. Rose MacDonald presumably had no way to know that they
weren’t
heading away from the war, yet it wouldn’t be long before she found out the truth. It would probably be better, all things considered, for her to attend the dinner. If nothing else, half of the officers Kat had recruited to command the older ships were newcomers to the Navy. Some of them had more relevant experience than anyone from Tyre.

“Tell her she would be welcome,” Kat said. It was a half-truth, at best. “Have the cooks include her in their calculations.”

“Aye, Captain,” Emily said.

She saluted, then withdrew. Kat looked back at her paperwork and then opened the report from the XO’s brother. Unlike the intelligence analysts, it was clear and remarkably concise, although there were very definite gaps in what the smugglers knew about the Theocracy. It seemed they rarely went anywhere near the core worlds, fearing certain death if they were caught. Given how badly the Theocracy treated innocent spacers who had been
invited
into their space, Kat wasn’t remotely surprised. At least the smugglers didn’t bother to play games; they either knew something or admitted it when they
didn’t
.

Her terminal bleeped, alerting her to the time. Kat sighed, then stood and hurried down the corridor to her cabin, where she showered and changed her uniform. There was no point in getting into her dress uniform, she decided; it wasn’t as if she was hosting an admiral. She glanced at herself in the mirror, tied her hair back into a bun, and then walked down to the officers’ mess. The other commanding officers had already assembled, looking torn between eagerness and fear. Very few of them had any
real
command experience before they’d been offered the chance to command a set of expendable vessels.

“At ease,” Kat ordered as she stepped into the officers’ mess. “Take your seats”—she smiled as she realized the cooks had put a chair out for the observer—“and relax. We have a great deal to discuss.”

She took her seat at the head of the table, then nodded to the XO as he sat at the far end, facing her. It was an odd arrangement, she had to admit, but he was effectively second in command of the entire squadron as well as her XO. She was surprised he’d turned down one of the ships himself, yet she was grateful. It wouldn’t have been so easy to get the squadron organized without him.

“We will eat first, I think,” she added. “This may be the last decent meal we have for some time.”

The stewards brought in the first course, then withdrew. Kat watched as her officers drank their soup, all seemingly unwilling to start a conversation. She didn’t really blame them; they
were
very junior officers and it was unlikely that any of them had taken part in a formal dinner before, at least outside Piker’s Peak. And it wouldn’t be the same, not really. There, someone would correct their mistakes; here, a mistake could blight their careers. Kat recalled just why she detested formal parties, even though she was the daughter of a duke. A single mistake could have High Society sneering at someone for years.

She waited until they’d finished the dinner and the stewards had poured coffee, then leaned forward, tapping her fork against her glass. “As some of you may have realized,” she said without preamble, “we are
not
heading to a peaceful border. In fact, our mission is to strike deep into the Theocracy and raid their supply lines.”

There was a long pause. Several of the officers looked excited or resigned rather than shocked; they’d seen her insistence on stocking up on everything from missiles to spare parts and deduced she expected to see action sooner rather than later. And the Admiralty had raised no objection either. With missiles in such short supply, they would have raised a fuss if she’d tried to take several thousand missiles away from the front. The signs had been there for anyone who cared to look.