Shadow of Freedom

It had taken the Manties roughly three hours and twenty minutes to reach Meyers, and Trondheim had surrendered the planet to them as soon as they did. No doubt they’d been “discussing” his options with him throughout their approach. Of course, it had taken another twenty-five minutes for Trondheim’s lightspeed message to overtake Thurgood’s fleeing command. Which meant he’d been up to a base velocity of almost 79,000 KPS, and only 89.6 million kilometers from the hyper limit—and safety—when Edgehill received the confirming transmission.

Trondheim’s career would be going down the toilet, too, he reflected. For that matter, plenty of other careers were going to get turned into mush right along with his before this rat fuck of a war was over. But at least his people were going to live to fight another—

His thoughts cut off abruptly as an alarm shrilled.

“Hyper footprint!” Captain Macpherson snapped. “Multiple hyper footprints at zero-zero-zero by zero-zero-two! Range eight-niner-point-seven million kilometers!”

Thurgood’s breathing seemed to stop as the blood-red icons appeared on the master plot directly ahead of his battlecruisers. How—?

The range was still the next best thing to five light-minutes. It was going to be a while before they had any lightspeed sensor results, but gravitics were FTL, and he watched silently as a pale-faced Macpherson leaned over a sensor rating’s shoulder, staring at the detailed information from CIC. The ops officer’s eyes darted from side to side, absorbing the data, and then she straightened slowly.

“From the impeller signatures, CIC makes it at least six of those big battlecruisers of theirs, Sir. Looks like they’ve got four heavy cruisers and at least four light cruisers—or maybe those outsized destroyers—to back them.”

“I see.”

Thurgood looked back at her for a moment, then clasped his hands behind him and walked slowly over to the communications section. He paused behind Lieutenant Commander Lister, waiting for what he knew had to come.

No wonder they didn’t chase us, his mind reflected in the still calm that followed utter disaster. They didn’t have to. All they had to do was send somebody back up into hyper to tell the people they’d left there where they had to go to intercept us. And all I managed to do was to build up enough velocity I can’t possibly avoid running right into that fucking long-ranged missile basket of theirs!

He felt his jaw muscles ache with the pressure of his clenched teeth and forced himself to relax them. No doubt those fleeing freighters were going to find themselves picked off, too, he thought. Which meant Verrocchio and Hongbo weren’t going to manage to run out on their mess after all. That was something, at least.

“We have a message request, Commodore,” Lister said quietly. “It’s from a Rear Admiral Oversteegen.”

“I’ve been expecting it, Olaf,” Thurgood replied with a thin smile. “I suppose you’d better go ahead and put him through.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Michelle Henke rose behind her desk as her day cabin’s door opened. The man who stepped through it was of average height, with the dark hair and eyes which seemed to be the norm here on the planet of Meyers. He was well dressed, although the cut of his clothing was a T-year or two out of date by the latest Core World fashions, and he extended a well manicured hand as he approached her.

“Prime Minister Montview,” she said, reaching out her own hand. His grip was surprisingly firm, not the perfunctory squeeze too many politicians had perfected from too many T-years of shaking voters’ hands, and his dark eyes met hers.

“Admiral Gold Peak,” he responded.

“Please, have a seat,” she invited, reclaiming her hand and indicating the pair of armchairs arranged on either side of the coffee table.

“Thank you.”

Montview accepted the invitation, and Chris Billingsley appeared as if by magic. Michelle’s steward was resplendent in perfectly turned out mess dress uniform, with a white towel over his left forearm which ought to have seemed out of keeping with his battered prizefighter’s face but somehow didn’t. He carried a tray of finger sandwiches, which he placed on the coffee table. Then he gathered up the silver coffee pot embossed with HMS Artemis’ crossed-arrow coat of arms and poured two cups.

“Will there be anything else, Milady?” he inquired.

“Just make sure Alfredo has fresh celery, please, Chris,” Michelle replied.

“Of course, Milady.”