"Not very enthusiastic about this assignment, were they?" Marcum asked.

"They didn't appear to be, sir," Accari said. "I'll take this down to the com shop so they can integrate it into our system. We'll hopefully be underway soon enough. Do you have our destination yet?"

"Let me think about it a bit more, son," Marcum said. "The damn Alliance has us running ragged and looking for traitors behind every corner. I'm running out of top secret pre-war bases to run to."

"Feel free to use my office, sir," Accari said. "There's a version three Bluebird in there that's already been set up to accept your credentials."

"Very good, Captain," Marcum said, half-smiling. "I'll get something soon even if we have to take them on a longer flight than necessary to buy time."

"Let's hope they're fueled and ready like Admiral Wolfe said."

Accari had barely made it to his com shop before all hell broke loose.

"Captain Accari, report to the bridge…condition two. Captain Accari to the bridge, condition two."

"Damnit!" Accari fumed. He handed the module, the Bluebird box, and the manual to his com shop OIC. "Get these working ASAP!"

"Yes, sir!" the ensign said, grabbing the module and directing his techs towards the equipment racks before Accari had even left the room.

The Headhunter-class ships weren't especially large, but she was still six decks with a two-deck superstructure, and the com shop had been all the way up near the prow where all the sensitive antennas were housed. By the time he ran onto the bridge, he was sweating into his uniform and panting.

"Report!"

"Fourteen ships just appeared in the lower, outer system," his OPS officer said. "It was within minutes of the ship we rendezvoused with departing the system." Accari looked at him sharply but said nothing. It was an odd coincidence considering the fact they were in the middle of nowhere.

"Have we resolved them?" he asked.

"Drive profile is consistent with Alliance heavy cruisers, Red Wolf-class."

"The latest and greatest out of the Warsaw Alliance yards," Accari said. "Helm, let's get turned and moving in the other direction. Ahead one-third for now. Let's just build a little relative velocity along an escape vector. We can't get too far from the Mickey formation."

"Engines ahead one-third, aye!"

The Coyote smoothly came about, her speed and maneuverability keeping her turn radius minimal. The fast-attack cruiser was heading back the opposite way she'd been flying before an old thrust-type starship would have even decelerated enough to go into its turn. Accari sat at his station, the captain's seat on the Headhunter-class more resembling a tactical station, and began digging into the archive data they had on the Red Wolf-class ships.

Fourteen ships sent to capture or destroy almost five hundred Federation ships seemed absurd, unless they knew the Coyote had something aboard her that would make the process a whole lot easier. A cold chill went down his spine as he realized they sent so many ships to they could more easily box him in and capture his ship to get the command module intact, not to try and harm the Mickey fleet.