“She says eight hours at their previous acceleration. She’s just about to start decelerating to return to the fleet.”
“Tell her to maintain her course for the jump, but stay alert. Keep an eye out for fighting in the anchorage and record all message traffic. We may have an additional report for her.”
“Aye, aye, Commodore,” the computer said. A moment later, she added, “The Mercury is back to accelerating for the jump.”
The screen flickered and changed to show three admirals and Lieutenant Commander Taussig. Admiral Krätz was already talking. Maybe bellowing was more accurate.
“By what authority have you ordered my ships to battle stations?” he demanded.
“I ordered PatRon 10 to battle stations. I suggested you might want to follow our lead,” Kris said. “The Hornet is back, and Commander Taussig reports contact with the bug-eyed monsters.”
“You have found them,” Admiral Kōta said. “Did they follow you?”
“I think I gave them the slip,” Phil answered. “At least I didn’t see anything of my pursuers in the last two systems I crossed.”
“But whether or not you shook them depends on their tracking skills,” Admiral Channing pointed out.
“There is that problem,” the skipper of the Hornet admitted.
“You want to tell us about the bug-eyed monsters?” Kris said.
“Not really,” Phil answered with a sigh. “Truth be told, I didn’t spend any more time observing them than I had to.”
“Fill us in, Commander,” Kris ordered.
“We’d done our five jumps out and had nothing to show for it. We started back, following the new route the boffins said would bring us home. The second jump, three jumps out from here, we got a surprise.”
He took a deep breath before going on. “We came through the jump and headed for the next one. It was only three hours away. Thank God. Because our Sensor board started lighting up like it was Christmas. Reactors, thousands of them, all well down in the system, and headed for a different jump.”
“Thousands of reactors?” Kris said.
“I’ll pass along our data. Maybe your boffins can make sense of it. There must have been three or four thousand reactors humming away at full power. There were even more trickling at minimum power. We finally located the source and got a fairly decent picture of it.”
The screen opened a separate window. It filled with something that looked like an elongated egg. An egg with a very bumpy skin.
“How big is that mother?” Admiral Krätz asked.
“We estimate it at over four thousand kilometers along its longitudinal axis. Not quite two thousand klicks at its widest. It’s hard to tell because we don’t know what is the main body and what are the ships docked to it.”
“Those knobby things come off?” Kris asked.
“Three of them took off after us.”
The pictures shifted to show three elongated dots detaching themselves from the main egg and making a straight line for the Hornet.
“How long did it take them to react to you?” the colonel asked.
“About an hour. Less, if you make allowances for the speed-of-light delay for them to spot us.”
“Did they try to communicate with you?” Kris asked.
“There was a lot of activity on the radio frequencies, but none was aimed at us, and we didn’t identify anything as an effort to raise us. Once it was clear the ships were headed our way with a bone in their teeth, we did make an effort to open communications with them. If there was a reply, we couldn’t identify it in the clutter.”
“You said a bone in their teeth,” Kris said. “How hot was their pursuit?”
“Three gees. I jacked the Hornet up to 3.5 gees and got out of there just as fast as I could.”
“Did you see any evidence of them in your next system?” Kris asked.
“Kris, when I got into the next system, I was very tempted to point the Hornet at the closest jump and see where it led me.” He swallowed hard at the thought. Only time would tell if it would have been better for the Hornet to disappear like the lost Flying Dutchman rather than come home with her report.
That decision might yet have to be made.
“Instead, I kept the boat at 3.5 gees and headed for the second jump like I was supposed to. We jumped out of there before we spotted any activity at the last jump point.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if they didn’t pursue us or what. What I do know is that we didn’t see hide nor hair of them in any of the