“Understood, Skipper,” he acknowledged, although she rather doubted that he did understand fully what she had in mind. On the other hand, he obviously understood enough of it, as his next remark made clear.

“I’ll ‘swim’ them out of the tubes and program them for a strength-one wedge after, say, ten minutes. If we could cut our accel to a couple of hundred gravities about four or five minutes after launch and leave it there for a while, that should be enough to let them make up on us gradually without generating a signature powerful enough to burn through their stealth systems.”

“That’s excellent thinking, Shawn,” she approved warmly, and looked at her astrogator. “You heard, James?”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” the Sidemore lieutenant acknowledged. “Five minutes after Mr. Harris confirms launch, I’ll cut our acceleration to two hundred gravities. Should I maintain the same heading?”

“No,” Ferrero said thoughtfully. “I don’t want him wondering why we should suddenly reduce power if we’re just going to go right on bumbling along on the same course.” She drummed on her chair arm for a moment, then smiled. “Page the Exec for me, Mecia,” she said.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am,” Lieutenant McKee said, and a moment later the slightly sweaty face of Commander Robert Llewellyn, Jessica Epps’ sandy-haired executive officer, appeared on Ferrero’s small com screen.

“You rang, Skipper?” he inquired.

“Yes, I did. Where are you?”

“I’m up in Number Four Magazine with a work party,” Llewellyn replied, and gestured at something beyond the limited range of the bulkhead com pickup. “Chief Malinski and I think we’ve finally isolated the fault in the feed tube auxiliary cable harness, and we’ve been pulling up deck plates to get at it.”

“I’m glad to hear you’ve found it, but something else has come up, Bob. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the Chief to deal with the feed tube, because I need you in the boat bay.”

“The boat bay?” Llewellyn repeated.

“Yes. I need to keep an overly inquisitive Andie heavy cruiser from figuring out the real reason I’m about to reduce accel. So I’ve decided that what we need to do is to set up a series of exercises against one or two of our own small craft, and I want you to coordinate them. I know it’s short notice, but I figure you can start by running a simulated Dutchman search. By the time we complete that, you can probably have at least another couple of problems worked out for the pinnace crews. And while you’re at it, come up with some sort of interception exercise that will give us an excuse to deploy a couple of tractor-tether EW drones. Think you can manage that?”

“I don’t see why not,” the exec agreed, although he clearly felt more than a bit mystified by whatever she was up to. Well, there’d be plenty of time to bring him up to speed.

“Good. Com me again when you get to the boat bay. I’ll have Mecia warn them you’re on your way.”