In the Black, стр. 12
“Yes’m.”
“You’re leaving our recon and combat drones behind?” Nesbit asked. “Doesn’t that strike you as particularly reckless when we’re going into, you know, combat?”
Susan laced her fingers and leaned forward in her command chair. “Mr. Nesbit. I understand the importance of good relations between the fleet and our sponsors. Indeed, I encourage them. But I will remind you that your role in my CIC is in an advisory capacity for the financial interests of the stakeholders we’re tasked with protecting, not to question my orders or undermine my reasoning in front of my crew. So, if you have specific advice to give, I’m open to hearing it.”
The rest of the bridge crew froze amidst the sudden drop in temperature. Nesbit fidgeted.
“I just…”
“Yes?”
“I just wonder if we aren’t rushing into this confrontation without first maximizing our chances of success.” He pointed at the red line on the main plot. “If I understand correctly, and please correct me if my limited tactical experience is failing me, but the mothership that sent the drone we just destroyed could be anywhere along that line from here to the Small Magellanic Cloud. It would seem to me that abandoning a significant portion of our sensor capacity while we go looking for this interloper puts us at a disadvantage.”
Susan let him finish. In truth, she didn’t have much choice. Corporate liaisons were almost universally despised by command crews throughout the fleet. It was rare to get a sympathetic one, and they were deliberately drawn from well outside naval ranks to maintain “professional dispassion.” Nesbit wasn’t the worst she’d seen, but he was the first she’d had to answer to as ship’s captain.
And you never forgot your first.
“I can see why that would concern you,” Susan said with a voice like soft butter. “However, there’s two things you’re overlooking. First, while you’re technically right that our quarry could be anywhere along the bearing we captured, or at least was expected to be at some point along the bearing at the time the drone’s light-speed transmission arrived, we can narrow that window down considerably. Indeed, I can narrow it down to a single point in space.”
“And where’s that?”
“Simple. If I’m commanding that mother, I won’t cross the treaty line. That puts me and my crew in jeopardy for little gain. But, I’m going to put the paint of my bow plates right on the line so I’m getting as close to realtime data from my HK drone as physically possible. She’s there, I’ll put a bag of real coffee on it.”
“All right,” Nesbit allowed. “But that doesn’t explain why you want to engage them before we recover our drones.”
“I was coming to that. The drone we just destroyed was in the middle of sending a light-speed transmission. In less than two hours, that transmission will cut off suddenly, probably right in the middle of screaming that there’s a missile coming at it. Our guest will know that we’ve destroyed their drone and probably relocate or leave the system entirely. But, as of right now, we can blow a bubble, jump ahead of the drone’s light cone, and catch them totally by surprise.”
“If your hunch about their location is correct.”
Susan held out her hands, palms up. “There is always a degree of uncertainty in any operation. But this is well worth the risk, in my opinion.”
“But…” Nesbit wrung his hands. “… won’t that reveal our new capability? I mean, if we pop our bubble right off their bow, they’re going to know we’ve developed a way to trace their laser coms. Do we really want to give them that intel?”
Miguel sucked air through his teeth. “He’s got a point, mum. All they’ll know in a couple hours is we jumped in to investigate our missing drone and stumbled onto theirs. But if we show up and ring their doorbell, they’ll know something’s up, even if they can’t figure out how we did it straightaway.”
“It won’t matter if we get the drop on them and capture or kill their ship,” Susan responded.
“That assumes they’re where you expect them to be, and assumes it’s a single raider we can defeat easily and not a task group that will hammer us into scrap,” Nesbit blurted out, anxiety singing in his voice like a too-taut violin string.
But, just because he was a coward didn’t mean he was wrong. Existential terror had a way of focusing the mind. Susan took in a deep, meditative breath, then let it out through her nostrils. He was here to advise, and only a fool turned away good advice on account of its source.
“That’s a fair point. Options?”
For a long moment, everyone went silent as they churned through the possibilities.
“C’mon kids, open forum,” Susan chided.
Ensign Mattu was the first to speak. Or at least ask permission to. She actually raised her hand.
“Just talk, Mattu. It’s the CIC, not primary school.”
She put her hand down. “Yes, mum. Sorry, mum. We could fake ignorance. The bogey’s bearing is twenty-three degrees off the shortest distance from the drone we just destroyed to the Red Line. We could wait until our platforms are back aboard, then jump out to that point.”
Susan bobbed her head. “Make it look like we’re taking a stab in the dark.”
“Exactly. Then we launch drones at full burn banging active sensors in both directions along the perimeter. Let them see us doing it.”
“It would be hard to miss,” Miguel contributed.
“Wait, this gets better.” Mattu’s excitement was infectious. “We wait to move, but we don’t wait for our drones to get inside sensor range of the bogey. Instead, we—”
“Jump the gun,” Susan interrupted. “We jump in, and if their mother is still there, and even if they manage to escape, they go back home believing our drones’ threat detection range is far wider than it actually is. They report back to Xre Central that the little humans have leapfrogged them in sensor