Even at half a kilometer per second squared, crossing the distance across star systems took time. With the exception of Sunshine, the La-Tar ships were faster. The escorts and fighters were able to maneuver at one KPS2, though the carrier was limited to the same half KPS2 as Raven—and didn’t have the engine power and acceleration tanks to push past that like the battlecruiser.
One of the escorts stayed with the carrier as the fighters spilled farther and farther out, their scanner data presumably feeding back to Sunshine to provide a detailed view of the star system.
Another escort, one of the ones already positioned in the system, was sticking close to Glorious. The destroyer was almost twice the escort’s size but technically more lightly armed. She had three lasers to the escort’s four—though hers were estimated at around twice the power level—and twelve missile launchers to the escort’s twenty. Of course, the escort lacked even Kenmiri energy shields, where Glorious, one of the UPSF’s new Significance-class destroyers, had a full gravity shield.
Another escort was accompanying Raven as she headed for the Kozun skip route, and the last escort was heading for the remaining skip line.
“Sunshine is feeding us the data from the VLA,” Moon reported. “Not seeing much. So far, all that this mission is doing is proving the system is empty.”
Henry nodded, pulling some of the data directly to his own screens. The La-Tar fighters had the worst sensors of any of the ships in the system, but with over a hundred of them synchronized, they had the best overall resolution.
The data he was seeing from the VLA was old by the time it reached him. Lightspeed delays meant that the minimum age was almost ten minutes, and it got older as he looked farther away from the fighters.
“We’re counter-analyzing the VLA data,” Iyotake told him. “We’re not finding anything either. Zast is moving the array slowly and sweeping the system.”
“Ihejirika, flag the zones that we’ve marked as clear on the display,” Henry ordered.
A pale green haze lit up a large chunk of the system on his screens. It was slowly arcing across the inner system’s asteroids and meteors as Henry watched, the different angles making even the largest chunks of debris useless as hiding spots.
“Looking like our friends were jumping at ghosts so far,” Ihejirika said. “Except I’ve met too many of Ran and Zast’s people to buy that.”
“Agreed,” Henry said. He studied the orange line they were drawing closer to. It wasn’t in the green haze yet, but a good chunk of the space he’d actually expected to find trouble in was. There were no dense clusters of debris near the skip line, but there were asteroids and meteors, and he’d presumed their ghost would be hiding behind one of them.
“Moon, send Orosz a warning,” he said calmly. “If we’re not picking up anyone in the debris fields, then the most likely hiding spot left is that gas giant.”
“Do we divert back, ser?” Bazzoli asked.
Henry hesitated. He was still certain that the Kozun would have something close to the skip route back to the Hierarchy’s capital, but they weren’t seeing anything.
“Do we have a telemetry link for Bushel of Hope?” he asked, looking at the escort keeping pace with his cruiser. “We might be able to see what’s closest to us if we sync our sensors.”
He didn’t overly like sharing telemetry at that level of detail, otherwise he’d have asked for it already. He was fine getting their data, but the VLA data had been freely offered and he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask for data without offering his in return.
“Upright-Hope wants a direct line, ser,” Moon told him after a moment, the translated Enteni name sounding awkward to her.
“Put them through,” Henry ordered.
The image that appeared in front of him looked like nothing so much as a mobile, smooth-exteriored Venus flytrap. The massive black-skinned mouth was facing the camera and wide open to allow Upright-Hope’s eyes—mounted on stalks inside the mouth as a protective measure—to look Henry in the face.
“We is-are seeing nothing here,” the Enteni officer told him. Even their Kem was an artificial translation; few Ashall had the hearing and visual acuity to register Enteni communication. “We feel this fate-time is-were clear of threats.”
“If the Kozun are here, then there is a good chance of a relay station close to the skip line,” Henry replied, speaking in Kem himself instead of relying on translators. “If there is nothing else, that will be concealed here and could give us clues. I suggest we synchronize our scanners and increase the distance between our vessels to see what we can find.”
Upright-Hope hesitated, then fluttered a tendril in agreement.
“This will-can cost little,” they conceded. “And the Kozun skip line is-will-be the greatest potential threat.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
The channel dropped and Bushel of Hope’s acceleration shifted as she moved away from Raven. Her acceleration shifted up to almost half again Raven’s, and Henry swallowed a moment of jealousy.
Someday soon, the UPSF would crack the interference problems and install Kenmiri-grade compensators in their ships. On that day, Henry would be rid of the last lingering sense of inferiority versus his allies and old enemies.
“Ser, CIC has picked out four objects large enough to conceal a small automated relay despite the VLA,” Iyotake told him. “I’m flagging them on the display. If Bushel takes the right course, we should be able to clear all four within a few minutes.”
“Moon? Pass on the details CIC is providing to our La-Tar friends,” Henry ordered as the new icons appeared on the display. His understanding was that only about ten percent of Bushel’s crew was Enteni, with the rest being members of the several Ashall species living in the La-Tar Cluster.
Given that the Kenmiri had actively avoided letting an agriworld or industrial world have a population of one race, some of the warship’s crew would even be Kozun.
More of the star system was being marked in green. Their ghost, whoever it was, was doing a disturbingly good job of hiding itself. As Henry looked over the displays, he received a notification that Glorious was deploying sensor drones above the gas giant.
There didn’t appear to be anything in orbit, which was the last place he’d really expected to see anything.
“Contact!” Ihejirika suddenly snapped. “Spectrography on target four is wrong. She has ice facing Bushel, but we just pinged metal. That’s not a meteor, ser!”
“Well done,” Henry murmured. “Range, Commander?”
“Two hundred thousand kilometers,” the tactical officer reported grimly. “They’re in weapons range, ser. It’s not a relay station. That’s a ship.”
“Charge the grav-driver and fire a warning shot from the lasers, Commander,” Henry ordered. “Moon, summon them to surrender.”
Icons across his displays lit up as Raven’s weapons activated. His two heavy lasers were probably the most powerful lasers in the star system, but he only had two of them. The spinal gravity driver that ran the full length of the battlecruiser took more power to fire, but her capacitors flashed green as the first laser flashed in the darkness.