Conquerors' Pride by Zahn Timothy

Author:Zahn, Timothy [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9780553568929
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 1994-01-15T07:00:00+00:00

15

The tachyon wake-trails showed up on the pickup display at precisely one o'clock the next afternoon; and it was a tense ten minutes before the sensor chief was finally able to identify them.

"You sure, Gasperi?" Holloway asked, frowning at the display. "That doesn't look like any fighter baseline I've ever seen."

"It's fighters, all right, Colonel," Gasperi assured him. He touched a key, and six images appeared across the ident screen. "What threw me was that they're flying in a nonstandard formation," he said, fiddling with the controls. "Very close, with a partial overlap and interference cancellation in the baseline signatures. Watch as I bring them together."

The images on the screen moved inward; and the corresponding baseline schematic rippled and convulsed into a copy of the one showing on the tachyon pickup. "Like that."

"Makes for a much smaller footprint than a standard formation," Takara observed. "Harder for any snooping Conqueror scouts to pick up. Pretty fancy flying, though."

"Fancy or stupid," Holloway agreed. "Any idea yet who they are?"

"With that kind of formation?" Gasperi shrugged. "Have to be Copperheads. Corvines, probably."

Takara looked at Holloway. "The rest of Commander Quinn's contingent?"

"Probably," Holloway said. "What are we looking at, about an hour to mesh and another to groundfall?"

"About that," Gasperi nodded.

Holloway looked at his watch. Almost exactly the same time the skitter was due back from Edo, assuming the desk pilots there had been halfway efficient at pulling up Quinn's orders. Or the lack of them.

Takara was obviously following the same line of thought. "Going to be close," he murmured. "You suppose he planned the timing deliberately?"

"Probably depends on whether or not he's legitimate." And if he wasn't, Holloway very much wanted to read the interrogation record of someone who'd managed to beg, borrow, or steal a half squadron of Copperhead fighters. A man like that would have to be smart, devious, and extremely brazen.

The sort of man who wouldn't leave anything to chance.

He stepped over to a terminal and keyed for entry. "Something?" Takara asked.

"A hunch," Holloway said, punching up a listing of the traffic into Dorcas since Melinda Cavanagh had come in with that private supply depot of hers. If they were pulling some con here, they almost certainly would have been smart enough to include a quiet backstop in their plans....

And there he was, nestled in among the legitimate supply and logistics flights of the past few days. A small, private courier ship, with a single person aboard, logged in barely four hours behind Quinn and Aric Cavanagh. "What do we know about this one?" he asked Takara, indicating the entry.

"Don't think there's anything special about him," Takara said, squinting at the screen. "He logged in just before I went off duty yesterday. Name's McPhee—forward man for a shipload of nonperishables that should be coming in sometime in the next couple of days. His ID and documents seemed legit enough."

"He's with the Peacekeepers?"

"No, he's a civilian," Takara shook his head. "Working directly out of—" He looked sharply at Holloway. "Out of the NorCoord Parliament.

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