Chapter Twenty Three

"You know," Erica Ferrero remarked to her bridge crew, "I'm getting really tired of these jokers."

No one replied to her observation. In part that was because her tone suggested that anyone unwise enough to draw her ire at this particular moment might live to regret it. But that was only a relatively minor consideration, compared to the fact that every one of Jessica Epps' bridge officers agreed with her.

"Do we have any particular idea just what they think they're doing this time around, Shawn?" the captain continued.

"Actually, Skipper," Lieutenant Commander Harris replied in a slightly hesitant voice, "I think I know exactly what they're doing."

Ferrero turned her command chair to face the tactical section and tilted her head in a "tell me more" gesture, and Harris shrugged.

"Unless I'm badly mistaken, Captain," he said more formally, "they're conducting a tracking exercise . . . on us."

"Oh, they are, are they?" Ferrero's conversational tone set alarm bells ringing inside most of her officers.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And you think this because—?" the captain invited.

"Because they're altering course and acceleration every time we make a helm change, Skipper," Harris told her. "Whenever our vector changes, so does theirs. They're running a constantly updated mirror course on us."

"I don't suppose they happened to inform us of their intentions and you simply neglected to tell me about it, Mecia?" Ferrero said dryly with a glance at her com officer.

"No, Ma'am," Lieutenant McKee assured her.

"Somehow, I didn't think so," the captain replied.

It wasn't uncommon for a warship to run sensor and tracking drills on merchantmen and even the warships of other navies. But common courtesy—and common sense, as well—mandated that one inform another warship when one intended to track and shadow her. Unless, of course, one's intentions were less than friendly . . . which was the reason that practical-sense caution suggested that one request permission ahead of time. It was the only way to be certain of avoiding misunderstandings which could lead to unpleasant consequences, particularly at times when interstellar tensions were already running high.

"Any sign of active sensors?" she asked the tac officer after a moment.

"No, Ma'am." It wasn't as foolish a question as it might have sounded. Ferrero knew as well as Harris that they couldn't possibly have been taking hits from any shipboard sensors at this range, but that wasn't what she was asking about. "I'm not picking up any sign of remote platforms," Harris continued, answering the question she'd really asked.

"I see," Ferrero said sourly. Given the current range between the two ships, Harris was only able to keep tabs on the other by using the remote scansats Jessica Epps had set up to cover the system periphery when Ferrero moved her anti-pirate operations into the Harston System. The remote platforms' grav-pulse transmitters allowed him to effectively real-time sensor data from most of the outer system without using all-up Ghost Rider recon drones. Those drones were not only expensive, but also something which the Royal Manticoran Navy didn't go out of its way to flaunt, on the theory that what other navies didn't see, they couldn't acquire sensor data on.

The scansats also had much greater endurance than the more costly drones, since they simply sat in place rather than being compelled to maintain impeller wedges. Because of all those factors, the fact that patrolling RMN cruisers now routinely seeded the outer volumes of their star systems of responsibility with FTL scansats was well understood, however, and their stealth systems were fairly rudimentary. That meant people knew to look for them and that they were relatively easy for shipboard sensors to spot, so there wasn't too much question that the other cruiser had known for some time that Jessica Epps was aware of her presence, in general terms, at least. But it was equally obvious that at this distance extended-range remote drones were the only way the other ship could be tracking Jessica Epps in return, and Ferrero didn't like the fact that they were clearly so stealthy that even Manticoran shipboard sensors couldn't find them. But Harris wasn't quite finished with his report.

"Uh, excuse me, Ma'am, but I'm not certain you do see. Not entirely, that is," he amended hastily as she shot him a sharp glance.

"Then suppose you enlighten me, Mr. Harris," she suggested coolly.

"Ma'am, they're almost seventeen light-minutes away from us," he reminded her respectfully. "But they're making their course corrections on average within three minutes of each of our helm changes."

Ferrero stiffened, and the tac officer nodded and tapped his display.

"I've been running a passive track on their impeller wedge for the last eighty minutes, Ma'am. The longest interval so far has been six-point-seven minutes. The shortest was less than two. The data's on the chip if you want to review it."

"I'm not questioning your observation, Shawn," the captain told him in a deceptively mild voice. "I'm just not very happy to hear what you're telling me."

"I'm not very happy to be telling it to you, Skipper," Harris admitted, smiling ever so faintly as her warmer tone suggested that he wasn't about to be blasted to cinders after all.

Ferrero allowed herself a small smile in return, but her brain was busy as she gazed at the bland light icon representing Hellbarde. The Andermani cruiser had become something of a constant companion of Jessica Epps' over the past few weeks, and she didn't like it. This Captain Gortz—and she still didn't know even whether Gortz was a man or a woman—couldn't possibly be getting in Jessica Epps' way so often and so thoroughly by accident. She (or he) was deliberately following Ferrero's ship from system to system for the express purpose of harassing her. That was the only possible explanation, and the other ship's increasingly offensive behavior was not only doing bad things to Ferrero's blood pressure but also suggested her captain was working to an orchestrated plan. The question, of course, was whether the plan was the personal property of Captain Gortz or if it had been handed to her (or him) by higher authority.

But what Harris was telling Ferrero now added yet another dimension to whatever it was the other ship thought she was accomplishing.

Impeller signatures were the only normal-space phenomenon which propagated at what was effectively faster than light speed. That wasn't exactly what really happened, of course. What really happened was that the intense gravity distortion associated with an impeller wedge created a "ripple" along the interface between the lowest alpha band of hyper-space and normal-space. It was that ripple, which was actually little more than a resonance from a hyper-space signature, which a starship's Warshawskis picked up.

But the mechanics of what happened weren't really important at the moment. What was important was the fact that impeller signatures could be detected and tracked in real-time across the effective range of shipboard sensors. Which was all well and good, except that as Harris had just reminded her, they were well beyond shipboard detection range from the Andy cruiser. Which meant that it didn't matter that gravitic sensors were effectively FTL. For Hellbarde to be reacting that quickly to Jessica Epps's heading changes, the communications links between her and her remote sensor platforms had to be FTL, as well.

Which meant the Andermani Navy had not only managed to produce its own grav-pulse communicator, but also engineered it down to a size it could fit into something as small as a recon drone.

And a drone which is so stealthy, and has such a good shield against backscatter from its transmitter, that Shawn can't find it even when he knows it has to be out there, she thought unhappily.

And Gortz is showing us that, too.

"You've been looking for drones only on passives, right?" she asked after a moment.

"Yes, Ma'am. Until I realized what was happening, I didn't see any reason to go active. Do you want me to do it now?"

"No. Let's not advertise the fact that we didn't even realize she had drones on us. But I want to know where they are. So if we're not spotting them with our shipboard passives, let's put a few more drones of our own out there to hunt for them."

"When they spot the drone launches they'll have a pretty good idea of what we're up to, Skipper," Harris pointed out.

"Understood. But I think it's time to put Ghost Rider to work."

Harris looked up sharply, as if he were about to ask her if she was certain about that decision. But he wasn't quite foolhardy enough to do that, despite his surprise, and she hid a lopsided mental grin at his expression.

"Don't worry, Shawn," she reassured him. "I haven't lost my mind. But Ghost Rider's mere existence isn't on the Official Secrets List anymore. Everybody knows at least a little about its capabilities, and I'm sure Andy intelligence knows more than 'a little.' I don't intend to flash the system's full capabilities, but I want to know where those remotes are, and I want to find them without letting the Andies know how long it took us to realize they were out there."

"Understood, Skipper," he acknowledged, although she rather doubted that he did understand fully what she had in mind. On the other hand, he obviously understood enough of it, as his next remark made clear.

"I'll 'swim' them out of the tubes and program them for a strength-one wedge after, say, ten minutes. If we could cut our accel to a couple of hundred gravities about four or five minutes after launch and leave it there for a while, that should be enough to let them make up on us gradually without generating a signature powerful enough to burn through their stealth systems."

"That's excellent thinking, Shawn," she approved warmly, and looked at her astrogator. "You heard, James?"

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," the Sidemore lieutenant acknowledged. "Five minutes after Mr. Harris confirms launch, I'll cut our acceleration to two hundred gravities. Should I maintain the same heading?"

"No," Ferrero said thoughtfully. "I don't want him wondering why we should suddenly reduce power if we're just going to go right on bumbling along on the same course." She drummed on her chair arm for a moment, then smiled. "Page the Exec for me, Mecia," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Lieutenant McKee said, and a moment later the slightly sweaty face of Commander Robert Llewellyn, Jessica Epps' sandy-haired executive officer, appeared on Ferrero's small com screen.

"You rang, Skipper?" he inquired.

"Yes, I did. Where are you?"

"I'm up in Number Four Magazine with a work party," Llewellyn replied, and gestured at something beyond the limited range of the bulkhead com pickup. "Chief Malinski and I think we've finally isolated the fault in the feed tube auxiliary cable harness, and we've been pulling up deck plates to get at it."

"I'm glad to hear you've found it, but something else has come up, Bob. I'm afraid you're going to have to leave the Chief to deal with the feed tube, because I need you in the boat bay."

"The boat bay?" Llewellyn repeated.

"Yes. I need to keep an overly inquisitive Andie heavy cruiser from figuring out the real reason I'm about to reduce accel. So I've decided that what we need to do is to set up a series of exercises against one or two of our own small craft, and I want you to coordinate them. I know it's short notice, but I figure you can start by running a simulated Dutchman search. By the time we complete that, you can probably have at least another couple of problems worked out for the pinnace crews. And while you're at it, come up with some sort of interception exercise that will give us an excuse to deploy a couple of tractor-tether EW drones. Think you can manage that?"

"I don't see why not," the exec agreed, although he clearly felt more than a bit mystified by whatever she was up to. Well, there'd be plenty of time to bring him up to speed.

"Good. Com me again when you get to the boat bay. I'll have Mecia warn them you're on your way."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Llewellyn's face disappeared from her screen as the exec cut the circuit, and Ferrero gestured to McKee to send word of his impending arrival to the boat bay personnel. Then she looked at Harris and McClelland.

"All right. When the Exec tells us he's ready, I want the acceleration reduction we discussed, and a thirty or forty degree change of heading for the 'pinnace exercises.' And I want the drones dropped five minutes before that. Understood?"

Both of her subordinates nodded their understanding, and she leaned back in her command chair to smile at Hellbarde's dot of light on her plot.