LITMIR.BIZ

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would determine whether Gray would keep his new billet—and perhaps receive an early promotion to lieutenant commander to go with it.

      The trouble was that Gray had no desire for either the promotion or the responsibility. He and his wife had been Prims—primitives—squatters in the unorganized and half-drowned ruins of coastal cities around the peripheries of the old United States. As such, they’d not been full citizens, and when Angela had had a stroke, he’d been forced to join the military as a trade-off to get her medical treatment.

      Gray’s plan had been to put in the mandatory minimum—ten years—and get out. His time would be up in another six years. Damn it, he was not going to hang around one second longer than he had to.

      Other Starhawk pilots began dropping into formation with him as they continued to exit the carrier. Jamis Natham and Calli Loman, both formerly of America’s food services department. Miguel Zapeta, admin. Rissa Schiff, avionics. Will Rostenkowski, personnel. Tammi Mallory, medical department. There were nine newbies in all, not counting Shay, who had been through the fight at Alphekka.

      “Stay tight,” Gray told the formation. “Close perimeter defense.”

      “Who the hell’s going to attack us out here?” Carlos Esteban—until recently an AI systems analyst—asked. “This star system is supposed to be empty!”

      “Just do it, Lieutenant,” Gray said. “You can analyze the tacsit later.”

      “Scuttlebutt had it we might be fighting the Europeans,” Mallory said. “Giraurd wants Koenig to go back to Earth.”

      “Quiet, Dragonfires,” Gray snapped. “No scuttlebutt, no talking. Line of duty only.”

      “Uh … permission to ask a question?” That was Schiff.

      “Granted.”

      “Is that true, Skipper? We might be facing off against Confederation forces?”

      “They haven’t told me, Lieutenant,” Gray told her. “When they do, I’ll pass it along. For right now … follow orders, stay in tight formation, and maintain radio silence.”

      But Gray had heard the same scuttlebutt. Everyone in the fleet must have heard it by now. Fleet Admiral Giraurd outranked a mere rear admiral, and the word was that Koenig had been ordered home—presumably with the rest of the battlegroup. For the past two months there’d been intensive speculation on the topic in the squadron ready rooms and lounges. Koenig had figuratively thumbed his nose at the Pan-Europeans and departed from Alphekka, destination … unknown. Had Giraurd followed them?

      His tactical display had been partially blocked by America’s Combat Information Center. He could see America and those of America’s fighters that were already deployed, but not the rest of the battlegroup. Unless something had gone horribly wrong, there should be at least another twenty-five warships out there, the rest of the original CBG-18. And there were the forty-one Confederation vessels that had arrived as reinforcements at Alphekka; some of them should have come over to Koenig as well. If they’d emerged too far from America, the light from their collapsing Alcubierre fields might not yet have reached them, but it had been almost half an hour since America had emerged. They all ought to be out there by now. …

      “Blue Dragon One, CIC, command channel.”

      “CIC, Blue One. Go ahead.”

      “This is the CAG. I, ah, heard the chatter just now.”

      “Yes, sir.” He wondered if Wizewski was about to chew him a new one for his people’s poor communications security.

      “We’re getting the same from every squadron out there. Don’t sweat it. They have a right to know.”

      Gray relaxed slightly. “I agree, sir.”

      “But not just yet. We’re releasing the tacsit data to squadron leaders, but not to the general fleet. I want you to see this.”

      A separate window opened in his mind as new data streamed into his implant. It showed America near the center of a scattering of ships, each tagged with name and hull number.

      “It looks like they all did follow us,” Gray said.

      “They did. We’re still missing eight ships. They’re probably still outside of our light-speed horizon, and we’ll see them in a few more minutes. Green are ships we know we can trust. Red are probably hostile. Amber are unknowns.”

      The twenty-six ships of the original battlegroup were green, Gray noted. So too were twelve more ships—Abraham Lincoln’s battlegroup—which meant they were North American.

      Twelve were red … the Pan-European contingent, minus eight stragglers. The remaining nine—the Chinese—were unknowns.

      “Sir,” Gray said, “we’re not going to fight them, are we?”

      “I don’t know, son. Possibly they don’t know either. They’re probably going to try to bluff us, and the old man is going to call them on it.”

      It seemed like utter lunacy. The North Americans comfortably outnumbered the European warships, but an exchange of fire would cause a lot of damage on both sides, something the human fleet simply couldn’t afford this far from home. Damn it, the Sh’daar and the Turusch and the H’rulka were the enemies … not the damned Europeans!

      “We expect the French carrier Jeanne d’Arc to attempt to close alongside of the America,” Wizewski continued. “The fighters are going to block her, because we can’t afford to let a ship with her firepower get close enough to fire a broadside. One hundred thousand kilometers. That’s the minimum stand-off distance. Understand?”

      “I think so, sir. Are … are we authorized to fire?”

      “Only on my command, or on the command of Admiral Koenig himself.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “We’re going to try our damnedest to talk our way out of this. If we can’t …”

      He left the thought unfinished.

      “I understand, sir.”

      On the tactical display, the Jeanne d’Arc and her consorts were still almost a full astronomical unit away, but they were on a convergent course, closing with the America. The American ships were positioning themselves in a tight globe around the carrier, with the heavy cruisers Valley Forge and Ma’at Mons, along with a number of frigates and destroyers squarely between the approaching French flotilla and the USNA carriers. The Ma’at Mons, particularly, was a heavy bombardment ship … but she’d expended a lot of her warload against the A1-01 orbital factory. Gray wondered if she had enough munitions on board to keep the Europeans at a healthy distance.

       Civil war.

      Gray had little use for the Terran Confederation. Hell, as a Prim living out on the USNA Periphery, in the ruins of Old Manhattan, he’d had little use for the United States of North America, either. So far as he could tell, the argument between them involved a difference of strategy. The Confederation wanted to talk with the Sh’daar, and perhaps accept terms, while Koenig wanted to draw the enemy off into deep space, away from Earth and her colonies. Gray didn’t understand how the two could be mutually exclusive, or how Koenig could get away with setting Confederation military policy.

      If forced to choose between the two, though, Gray would go with Koenig, if only because he was doing what he thought was right, and to hell with the politicians and rear-echelon second-guessers in Geneva or in Columbus.

      Koenig was a fighter, and that was enough for Trevor Gray.

       CIC

      TC/USNA CVS America

       Kuiper Belt, HD 157950

       98 light years from Earth

      

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