Yes, he thought coldly. Let’s see how your damned morale holds up after this, you bastards.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

MICHEL Reynaud heaved a sigh of relief as the last protesting merchant skipper moved aside before the implacable approach of Cynthia Carluchi’s pinnaces. A good quarter of the waiting merchantmen had already taken themselves off into hyper, where they were undoubtedly putting as many light-seconds as possible between themselves and Basilisk. The others—less than twenty ships all told, now—remained, hovering just beyond the half light-second volume of the terminus in hopes that normalcy would be restored and they would still be able to make transit to Manticore.

Personally, Reynaud didn’t think there was a chance in hell “normalcy” would be restored to Basilisk any time soon.

He grunted at the thought and checked his plot once more. Almost exactly one hour had passed since the Peeps first turned up, and they were considerably less than nine light-minutes out from Medusa. Admiral Markham’s horribly outnumbered task group was headed to intercept them, and Reynaud’s stomach churned every time he thought of what would happen when they met.

Admiral Hanaby had been underway for forty-four minutes now, which put her over sixteen million klicks from the terminus, with her velocity up to 12,424 KPS. Which sounded impressive as hell, he thought bitterly, until he reflected that it meant she’d covered almost exactly one-and-a-half percent of the distance between the terminus and Basilisk. But at least the first of White Haven’s destroyers should be arriving within another thirteen minutes, and—

An alarm shrilled. Michel Reynaud jerked bolt upright in his chair, and his face went paper white as the blood-bright icons of unidentified hyper footprints blossomed suddenly on his plot.

Citizen Rear Admiral Gregor Darlington swore with silent savagery as the plot stabilized. He felt his astrogator cringing behind him, and he wanted to turn around and rip the unfortunate citizen commander a brand-new rectum. It would have done the citizen admiral an enormous amount of good to vent his fury, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t really Citizen Commander Huff’s fault, and even if it had been, Darlington would never have raked him down in front of a people’s commissioner. The People’s Navy had given up enough martyrs as scapegoats.

“I see we seem to have misplaced a decimal point, Gorg,” he said instead, unable to keep an edge of harshness out of his voice, however hard he tried. Then he cleared his throat. “How bad is it?”

“We… overshot by one-point-three light-minutes, Citizen Admiral,” Citizen Commander Huff replied. “Call it twenty-three-point-seven million klicks.”

“I see.” Darlington folded his hands behind him and rocked on his toes, digesting the information. Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as “overshot” might be taken to imply, he thought grimly. Task Group 12.4.2 had been supposed to emerge from hyper four million klicks from the Basilisk terminus, headed directly towards it with a velocity of five thousand kilometers per second. That would have put them in missile range and firing by the time the defenders could realize they were coming. And with any luck at all, the picket force normally stationed on the terminus would have been headed in-system at max for a full hour, which would have put those ships safely out of the way and left only the two operational forts to deal with. Thirty-two million tons of fort would still have been a handful, but he had eight dreadnoughts, twelve battleships, and four battlecruisers—a better than three-to-one edge in tonnage—and he should have had the invaluable advantage of complete and total surprise, as well.