Ruler of Naught by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge Page B

loss of flow when the crew shifted
attention from their tasks to him. “Belay that. Carry on.” He leaned back in
his pod, gaze taking in the bridge, then he relaxed as he comprehended everyone
settling back into smooth action. Good! Least action, best action. You’re
learning.
    The fiveskip burped twice more.
    “On screen.” Ensign Ammant at Communications tapped at his
console. A small targeting cross blinked at the center of the screen, and the
faint whisper of datacode once again squealed onto the bridge from the doomed
beacon.
    Nothing happened for nearly a minute. Then a tiny flare of
reddish light bloomed near the cross.
    “Emergence,” Wychyrski said. “Signature indicates
Alpha-class destroyer.”
    Ng stroked the keypads at her station. “Signature ID’d.
Eichelly’s Talon of God .”
    The short chain-of-pearls wake of a skipmissile briefly
connected the destroyer with the beacon, which vanished in an ardent burst of
light. Then the destroyer vanished, leaving behind a reddish pulse.
    The Tenno rippled furiously as the destroyer’s orientation
on skip and other betraying aspects of its signature propagated through the
bridge systems. “SigInt, find his emergence,” Rom-Sanchez ordered. “Navigation,
drop us in five light-minutes out from his emergence, long-range, and then take
us in to ten light-seconds on my mark. Fire Control, prepare ruptors for
barrage at skip-smash level. We want him intact.”
    The seconds stretched into minutes. Finally Wychyrski spoke,
disbelief betrayed in her voice. “No emergence, sir. He’s gone.”
    Ng leaned forward in her pod, glaring at the screen as if
she could compel the Rifter to emerge. But there was no arguing with what the
sensors showed. At normal skip speeds, the Talon of God would already be
light-days away—and they were watching from a vantage point over an hour in the
past. She shook her head, looking from Krajno to Rom-Sanchez, whose expressions
mirrored her own feelings of confusion and anger—with perhaps a tiny bit of
relief in the lieutenant’s.
    She spoke to Rom-Sanchez. “Very well done, Lieutenant. I
have the con.”
    He swiped at his console, his face flushed with pleasure at
her compliment, but the tremble in his fingers betrayed his relief. “AyKay,
sir. You have the con.”
    She raised her voice. “Stand down to threat-level one.”
    “He bashed the beacon and skipped out of the system?”
Krajno’s bass rumble was hesitant. “What the hell for?”
    Ng bit her lip. “There’s been some suspicion about the
disappearance of Writ-holders like Eichelly. That maybe it was to distract us
from something else by pulling patrols out-octant. This stinks of concerted
action across systems, so perhaps that ‘something else’ is coming down—and we
need to get to the bottom of it.”
    She pitched her voice to bridge cadence again. “Navigation,
SigInt, get me a precise vector on his skip.”
    She stood up, motioning to Krajno and Rom-Sanchez. “Genz,
will you join me in the plot room?”
    “Captain?” Ensign Wychyrski’s voice was uncharacteristically
hesitant. “There was something odd about that explosion. Spectrum’s wrong for a
skipmissile impact.”
    “Very well, Ensign. Log it for analysis and give me a
report. Lieutenant Mzinga,” she continued, “you have the con. Give us the
vector soonest and stand by. Communications, squirt a message to the Wolakota Node
informing them it’s safe to replace the beacon. Set the Fleet tacponder to
monitor status and ready a report for it, full record of this action. We’ll add
our report in a few minutes.”
    o0o
    Rom-Sanchez watched the captain lean back and tap her
fingers on the edge of the compad in front of her.
    “So, Lieutenant, he obviously expects us to follow him.
Where did he go?” she asked, her light hazel eyes quirked with humor.
    Rom-Sanchez knew his surprise must have shown, for Commander
Krajno chuckled. “She took the con, but you’re not off the hook.”
    “His