Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(55)

“Let’s see what we have here,” the colonel says. “Just keep an eye on those active sources. We come even close to detection, we break off and leave them be.”

It takes the computer and the electronic-intelligence suite of Indy another twenty minutes to sort out the radar transmissions in front of us. One by one, the contact icons on the tactical display change from “UNKNOWN PRESUMED FRIENDLY” to actual class designations. The wedges that mark the location of the transmitting ships shrink with every second we spend in pursuit of Murphy.

“It’s another picket,” the XO says. “A frigate, Treaty-class. Another frigate, unknown class. And a Hammerhead cruiser.”

“All new stuff,” Colonel Campbell says. “Why are they a million klicks from Earth instead of in orbit?”

“Pretty sure Murphy is talking to them. I’m getting burst transmission noise,” the electronic-warfare officer says from his console.

“They’re talking on tight-beam.”

“Not tight-beam, sir. It’s encrypted ship to ship, but it’s not a fleet key. At least none we have in the computer.”

“Private conversation. Interesting.” Colonel Campbell leans over the holotable and rests his palms on the glass surface. His fingertips poke through the holographic orb of the tactical display, which re-forms itself around his hand.

“Change course to negative zero-two-zero by zero-four-five. Hold that for ten minutes and then return to the old heading, go parallel to Murphy again. And deploy the passive arrays, too.”

Over the next hour, the plot slowly shifts as Murphy approaches the picket line of unknown Commonwealth ships and we trail behind and below. The picket ships are in a patrol pattern, sweeping the space in front of them with active radar. Indy has to make several course corrections to avoid the invisible searchlights of the radar transmitters, and each turn takes us a little more off course from wherever Murphy is going.

“That’s about as far as we’ll be able to sneak in without getting lit up, I think,” Colonel Campbell says after the radar-warning-threat meter pegs from green into yellow twice in the span of a minute. “Bring her about and coast ballistic. Make your new heading positive one-two-zero by two-one-zero.”

“Hang on,” the tactical officer chimes in. “Multiple contacts on passive, bearing positive twenty degrees. Five . . . seven . . . ten . . . Sir, I have at least a dozen distinct contacts popping up on optical.”

“Go for magnification and verify,” the colonel says. Everyone in the CIC looks over at the holotable, where a cluster of pale blue icons has popped into existence on the far upper edge of our situational-awareness bubble. The picket ships are keeping us at bay, but Murphy is passing through the picket and heading right for that new cluster of contacts.

“Any of them squawking ID?”

“I’m getting IFF from the picket ships. The Hammerhead is the Phalanx. The frigates are Lausanne and . . . Acheron?” He looks over at the colonel with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. “Sir, I’ve never heard of a frigate named Acheron in the fleet.”

“There is no Acheron,” Major Renner says.

On the holotable, the closest blue icons update with ship names and hull numbers: “CG-761 PHALANX,” “FF-481 LAUSANNE.” Putting lie to the XO’s statement, the letters on the third icon change from “UNKNOWN” to “FF-901 ACHERON.”

“What the hell is an Acheron?” our weapons officer says.

“A river,” I reply. “A river in the Greek underworld. Mythology.”

Colonel Campbell gives me a curt smile that looks slightly amused and a little approving. “Wonder if we’ll bump into Styx and Lethe out here, too,” he says.

The weapons officer’s look is blank, and the colonel sighs ever so slightly.

“Rivers,” he says. “More rivers in the Greek underworld.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s just hope that whoever named that thing just has a hard-on for the classics,” the colonel says. “That name’s a shitty omen otherwise.”

“Why is that, sir?” the weapons officer asks.

“Acheron’s the river the souls of the dead must cross to get to the underworld,” I supply.



The frigates and the cruiser are performing competent patrol patterns, with interlocking sensor coverage and tight execution. Indy maps out the area kilometer by kilometer, coasting on a parabolic trajectory just at the edge of the picket force’s detection range. Minute by minute, we close the distance a little, and our passive sensors yield more data bit by bit. One active sweep of Indy’s radar would map out our entire awareness bubble to the meter and centimeter and tell us the location of every scrap of metal bigger than a trash can in this part of space, but that would be like a thief in a dark building strapping a ten-thousand-watt flashlight to his head.

“There’s a lot of ships out here,” Major Renner says. The cluster of blue icons on the edge of our sensor range is growing bigger—every few minutes, the computer adds an icon or two to the group as we get closer and the passive arrays sniff out more radiation sources and visual contacts.

“Eight, then, twelve . . . fourteen. They have a big-ass task force assembling in the middle of nowhere.”

“Something else, too.” The tactical officer brings up a window on the holographic plot and increases the size and scan range. “Too big for a ship, too small for a station. And it’s right in the middle of all that traffic.”