“Maybe you’re right,” she said softly, turning to look back out the port at the steadily accelerating superdreadnought. “Maybe you’re right.”

But as she watched Sovereign of Space dwindle in the distance, she knew she didn’t want him to be.

Chapter Forty-One

THE com attention signal chimed softly in the darkened cabin. It was a quiet sound, but decades of naval service had made Erica Ferrero a light sleeper. Her right hand shot out and hit the voice-only acceptance key before it could chime a second time, and her left hand raked sleep-tousled hair out of her eyes as she sat up in bed.

“Captain speaking.” Her voice struck her as sounding much more awake than she actually felt.

“Captain, this is Lieutenant McKee. The Exec asked me to inform you that ‘Sittich’ is breaking orbit.”

“Understood.” Ferrero came suddenly and fully awake at the announcement. She glanced at her bedside date/time display and grimaced. It was the middle of Jessica Epps’ shipboard night. McKee had the bridge watch, and by rights, Llewellyn should have been in bed and as sound asleep as Ferrero herself. But her exec had always had a tendency to prowl around the ship at odd times, and it had become even more pronounced since their arrival in the Zoraster System.

“What’s her accel, Mecia?” Ferrero asked the com officer.

“Just under two-point-five KPS squared,” McKee replied.

“And her heading?”

“Just about what you’d predicted, Skipper. She’s on a least-time heading from the planet to the hyper limit.”

“Good. In that case, I don’t see any reason to wake everybody else up this soon. I’ll be up in about fifteen minutes. You and the Exec hold the fort until I get there.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”

· · • · ·

The red icon representing the ship masquerading as the Andermani merchant ship Sittich crawled across Jessica Epps’ tactical display. She’d been accelerating steadily for over two hours now, and her velocity was up to just over 18,500 KPS. She’d traveled a hundred and thirty-nine million kilometers, taking her almost forty percent of the way to the G4 primary’s hyper limit. And while she was doing that, Jessica Epps had crept stealthily closer to her, bending their vectors steadily together.

The tension on the heavy cruiser’s bridge had climbed steadily. It wasn’t the same sort of tension her officers might have felt if they’d been tracking another warship. No, this was the tension of a hunter as a long, careful stalk crept towards its successful conclusion, mingled with the vengeful anticipation of closing in on the sort of vermin any self-respecting naval officer recognized as his natural enemy.

Erica Ferrero glanced at her repeater plot. The range to the target was down to barely three million kilometers, and it was painfully evident that the false Sittich didn’t have a clue Jessica Epps was even in the same star system with her. Ferrero supposed she shouldn’t feel too much contempt for the slaver’s crew. After all, they were deep in one of the better patrolled Silesian star systems, and as far as they knew, any armed vessels in that system were under the orders of the man whose illicit cargo they were carrying. Besides, Shawn Harris’ carefully deployed Ghost Rider recon drones had gotten an excellent read on “Sittich’s” emissions, and the tramp’s active sensors were exactly the sort of crap Ferrero would have anticipated from such a disreputable craft. They’d have been lucky to spot a medium-sized moon if they hadn’t already known exactly where to look for it.