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accepted it—not that he would admit this desire to go into harm’s way to Hannah, or anyone else, for that matter.
    The feeds from the Path of Glory kept streaming in, and there was definitely something coming.  Just what it was was still quite difficult to determine.  But as it was fleeing the fight, chances were that it was SOG, and that made it a viable target.
    “Guns, I want a fire solution for just prior to perigee,” Captain Nuzzi ordered her weapons officer.  “Give me the D88, but prepare the belly boy, too.”
    Ryck’s mind raced as he identified the two weapons.  Not having his PA on the bridge made simple things like this far more difficult.  The D88 was an energy weapon using a meson beam, but with far more spurling that diminished its effectiveness at range.  The “belly boy” was a kinetic sub-light torpedo, something for which the Federation had no exact counterpart.
    “Lieutenant Kinkelly, I want that deca ready to launch on a moment’s notice.”
    “They are already locked into their carruca,” the lieutenant replied.
    “Carruca?” Bill whispered to Ryck.
    “A sled.  Like our reki and your Ferogis, but bigger.  Named for a Roman carriage of some kind,” Ryck whispered back.
    “Shit.  I should have guessed that,” Bill said.
    “I wonder if they know the word is a Roman loanword, from Gaulish,” Ryck said.
    “No shit?” Bill said with a chuckle, then as several of the Confed sailors glared at him, he quieted down and asked,  “How do you know all this stuff?”
    “History, my dear sir, history.  He who does not know history will be doomed to repeat it.”
    The two officers turned their attention back to the developing situation.  It would be interesting to see how Captain Nuzzi reacted.  Ryck wondered if having them onboard and the political advantages of that outweighed the Intel Ryck, and the rest of the delegation, would be collecting on Confed procedures.  He may not be able to record anything without a PA, but his still had a mind that could remember what he’d seen.
    “Ma’am, the target has made a slight course change, taking it farther away from us.  Perigee at, uh, at 18,050 km from our position,” one of the techs told the skipper.
    “Nav, increase speed to .12c and change bearing to minimize perigee,” she ordered.
    The navigator, Lieutenant Sampal, let the AI interpret the order and come up with a course correction.
    Ryck guessed that 12% the speed of light was probably the max the ship could do while cloaked.  The less-trusting part of him wondered if the tub could do better, but that even in a combat situation, Captain Nuzzi did not want to reveal to her three observers just what the ship could do.
    “Perigee now estimated at 4,740 km,” the navigator said as he read his readouts.
    Captain Nuzzi was really working on her nails, Ryck noted.  She had to have gnawed them down to the quick by now.  He could imagine what was running through her mind.  The target, whatever it was, had not been identified positively as an SOG vessel of some kind.  If she engaged before it was identified, her ass was on the line.  If there were hostages on board, that would not go over well, despite the fact that along with most governments, the Confederation considered hostages already dead as a matter of policy.  Then the poorly armed CT-83 had only two weapons that could be effective, but to use the more powerful D-88, she had to drop her cloaking.  If the target was a capital ship, that could open her up to a lopsided fight she couldn’t win.
    As Ryck was onboard the ship with her, he hoped she guessed right.  He’d fought too many battles for the Federation to buy it while a tourist on a Confed support scow.  He watched the display numbers count down as the ship and their target got closer.  Tension was rising on the bridge while no one said a word.
    Until the same technician almost shouted out, “Ma’am, the contact is speeding up.”
    “Is it changing