Earth Song: Etude to War by Mark Wandrey Read Free Book Online

be easy prey for an attack. If the ship decided to attack the settlements, could Minu even bring herself to leave them alone to die? Save her own life and abandon the faithful Rasa allies? Luckily, she didn't have to answer that question.
    “The ship is changing course,” Lilith reported; “to head out of the system.”
    “Do you know where it's going?”
    “I will report when I return.”
    “Lilith! Don't follow that ship!”
    “I thought we'd had this discussion and resolved my status long ago.”
    “This is different; we don't know about the Tog and these ships! We don't know if they're even piloted by Tog, maybe some other species salvaged them.”
    “Unlikely considering their very suspicious presence in your star system.”
    “Regardless, you can't risk yourself.”
    “Myself, or my ship.”
    “Lilith, don't be that way.”
    “I will be back.” And with that, Lilith terminated the connection.
    “What happened?” Aaron asked.
    “She's going after the Tog ship.”
     
    The Kaatan came alive in a flash as soon as the Tog ship made the leap to supra-luminal travel. In seconds, full power was being channeled to propulsion. Lilith oriented the ship and shoved off the big moon's appreciable gravity well, leaping from standing still to thousands of kilometers per second in an instant.
    It was one of the tactical advantages the Kaatan possessed, their ability to neutralize thousands of gravities of force while performing unbelievable maneuvers. The move delivered megatons of force to the moon. Even diffused across half its surface, a series of quakes rocked the planet. These facts didn't concern Lilith; the moon’s gravity well was just a means to an end. She'd analyze the orbit when she returned, to be sure no real damage was done.
    She subscribed a half million kilometer arc, clearing the wider gravity well of Bellatrix and skirting the even more massive well of Vegas. All the while, Lilith recorded sensor data at a furious pace.
    As her training dictated, she was looking for any nasty surprises left behind. Detection webs, gravitic mines, high energy traces indicating the ship was perhaps damaged in some way were just a few of the things she was looking for. In the five minutes since she'd boosted away from Romulus, Lilith passed within a hundred thousand kilometers of where the Tog ship scanned Remus. A few final sensor readings completed, she jumped past the light speed barrier in hot pursuit of the other ship.
    There was no way to look at or scan a ship moving faster than the speed of light. You could, however, 'feel' its passage or sense the massive gravity shockwave before one arrived in your system.
    That latter fact was what made the tactical drive so dangerous. There was no shock wave, just a warship appearing next to your fleet, or your world. The Kaatan would rain death on its enemies, and then use the same drive to blink away, leaving its adversaries no way to pursue, or even know where its harasser had gone off to.
    Lilith quickly realized as the Kaatan sniffed out the path of the other ship and fell into course that this other ship was quite stealthy. She'd planned to follow closely to avoid losing her quarry, but the other ship accelerated to five thousand times the speed of light in less than a minute, something she wasn't capable of, and left an almost undetectable gravity trail.
    She scoured her records on the ancient P'ing ships and found the information she was looking for. It was a stealth reconnaissance frigate; not much of a combat vessel, but difficult to corner and force into a confrontation. The Kaatan was more than a match for it in battle, but not in speed and stealth.
    After a day at maximum speed, she was forced to admit it was hopeless. The trace of the other ship was almost undetectable, and if she considered, she risked having her much more noticeable gravity wave detected, which meant she must break off pursuit. Besides, now almost thirteen light-years from Bellatrix, she was