The Terran Privateer by Glynn Stewart Page B

pulse the IFF.”
    “Negative, pull back up to orbit,” Annette ordered. “We may need to run.”
    “It could be Of Course We’re Coming Back ,” Rolfson reminded her. “The portal itself is interfering with our scanners; we can’t resolve the newcomer.”
    He was right. The odds were that the arrival was one of their expected visitors—but they couldn’t be sure.
    “We’re Earth’s only hope,” she told him. “No chances. McPhail, you have thirty seconds to make orbit; we’re going to round the planet and pick you up. Rolfson, get the launchers up. Amandine, set a course to pick up the shuttle and have us ready to flee if we’re facing more metal than I want to tangle with.”
    A chorus of confirmations echoed back and Annette leaned back as her cruiser leapt into motion. With the interface drive, the trip back up to the ship was a matter of moments, McPhail rocketing the shuttle out of the airless volcano caldera at twenty percent of the speed of light.
    Amandine dove the cruiser down closer to the planet at an only slightly more sedate pace. The shuttle cut its interface drive a few kilometers short of the bigger ship, and the navigator nailed the pickup perfectly , matching velocities for a fraction of a second and scooping the shuttle into the landing bay.
    The dive took the hyper portal out of view behind AB2, and Annette examined what data they had as closely as she could. All she could tell for the moment was that a ship had exited hyperspace. The A!Tol presumably had some kind of better detector for this, one less blinded by the strange radiation that came out of the portal.
    “All launchers primed, all lasers charged,” Rolfson noted.
    “Coming around the planet, you’ll have a clear line of fire in…three, two, one…now!”
    “Gotcha!” the tactical officer announced. “We have a line of fire, lighting up the target with radar and lidar.”
    “If there’s a threat, return fire immediately,” Annette ordered, mirroring Rolfson’s consoles to her screen. Passive scanners weren’t giving them much—their current array of sensors could only tell her that the ship was probably smaller than Tornado and wasn’t using a reaction engine.
    They didn’t have a way of detecting the presence of a gravitational-hyperspatial interface. Like the ability to see into hyper-portal, she suspected the A!Tol had a solution for that—one of many pieces of technology they were going to need to steal.
    As it was, an interface drive could be identified only by speed and the way it maneuvered, and detailed identification was going to have to wait for the radar pulses to return from their ten-second-each-way journey.
    “Target is moving at point two cee,” Rolfson announced. “Definitely an interface drive. No confirmation on size yet…radar pulses returning…now.”
    “Ma’am, we’re receiving an IFF code!” Chan reported loudly a moment later. “It’s Of Course We’re Coming Back !”
    “Rolfson?” Annette asked. “IFF doesn’t guarantee truth,” she pointed out when her com officer looked at her questioningly. It was unlikely the A!Tol had already stolen and duplicated Terran Identify Friend or Foe transponders, but they had opened their communications through an encrypted, UESF-only channel.
    The tactical officer was running through something on his screen, but finally looked back up at her and nodded.
    “Active scanners confirm,” he said aloud. “I can’t read the name on her hull from here, but she’s definitely a Nova Industries survey ship.”
     

Chapter 11
     
    With Of Course We’re Coming Back in orbit to help guide the shuttle to exactly the right spot, James watched McPhail tuck the shuttle deeper into the empty mouth of the volcano. They’d managed to pick out a clear shot of artificial metal before being recalled, and Of Course ’s crew had confirmed they were in the right spot.
    Following the instructions, they pulsed the shuttle’s UESF IFF code and waited. Nothing