“Any sign they’ve spotted us?” Captain Harmon asked quietly.

“Negative, Skipper,” Ensign Thomas, Gold One’s tactical officer said. “They’re sticking with their original flight profile. They’ll cross our course starboard to port at a range of two-eight-four thousand klicks in—” he tapped on his key pad “—nine minutes. The angle won’t be all that good, but our closing velocity at course intersection will be right on two hundred KPS.”

“And their decoys and jammers are still down?”

“That’s affirmative,” Thomas replied. Then he grinned tautly. “Makes sense, doesn’t it, Skipper? They’ve still got their share of maintenance problems, and they probably don’t want to put any more time on their decoys’ clocks than they have to. But we’re well inside our own missile envelope, so the fact that they figure they don’t have to bring their systems up yet has to indicate they don’t have a clue we’re here.”

“Good.” Harmon glanced across at her engineer. Lieutenant Gearman sat at his console, hands resting lightly on its edge. He looked almost calm, but a trickle of sweat down his right temple gave lie to that impression. “I’ll want full power on the wedge and the forward sidewall the instant I give the word, Mike,” she reminded him.

“Aye, Skipper. You’ll get it.”

“Good,” she repeated, then glanced further aft to the second engineer’s station and directed a ferocious mock glower at the hairy-armed first-class petty officer who manned it. “And as for you, PO,” she said tartly, “I don’t want any dropped spanners on my bridge!”

“No, Ma’am,” PO Maxwell replied quickly, and rolled his eyes at his own console. He’d always suspected his nickname had made it to the officers’ ears, but this was the first time the Skipper had ever used it. He had absolutely no doubt who’d passed her the word, and he resolved to do something to thank PO Smith properly for seeing to that little detail when he got back to the ship. Something humorous, he thought, with boiling oil or molten lead…

“I’m picking up something a little odd, Citizen Cap—” Diamato began, then interrupted himself. “Unknown ship astern of us!” he announced sharply. “She’s running under stealth, Citizen Captain!”

“What is she?” Citizen Captain Hall’s deliberate tone was pitched to remind him to calm himself, and he drew a deep breath.

“I can’t say for certain, Citizen Captain,” he told her in a more nearly normal voice. “She’s extremely hard to hold even now. I don’t think we’ve encountered ECM this good before. She’s about to cross our course about eight million klicks back, but it looks like she’s altering heading to follow us in. CIC’s calling her a dreadnought, but that’s tentative.”

“And she’s all alone back there?” Hall’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and Diamato nodded.

“She’s all we see, Citizen Captain.”

“Well, she’s too far back to engage us even if she wasn’t alone,” the Citizen Exec murmured from the com screen. Hall had it in split-screen mode, with Hamer on the left side and Citizen Rear Admiral Kellet on the right.