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speed.
    “Communication coming in from the Uriel , Captain,” cy-Tomlin said.
    “Let’s hear it, please.”
    “… attack by Orthodoxate ships. We are heavily outgunned, and planetside defense batteries on Kaden have opened fire, causing severe damage. Indeterminacy , please acknowledge.” There was a long pause. At this range, there could be no true conversation due to the speed of light time lag. The message would begin playing again in just a…
    “ Indeterminacy , this is Uriel , Lieutenant Lasely in command. The in-system squadron has been trapped and is under attack. We were lured in close to Kaden by a request for real-time communications from the Kaden Military Council. It was a trap. Six Orthodoxate ships jumped in-system and attacked, just after we were taken under heavy fire from the planetary defense batteries.”
    As the message played itself through, Hazzard checked range, vector, and time lag.
    Uriel was eight light-minutes away, and sixteen had passed since their emergence from highspace. The sloop must have begun broadcasting as soon as they’d become aware of the Indy’s arrival.
    Uriel was clearly making for the line ships two light-days out but was still moving at only about half the speed of light. With the damage she’d suffered to her rigging, though, it would be another hour, at least, before she would be able to engage her trans-c drive and make the jump to the blockade point.
    Mentally, Hazzard engaged a side communications band, one linking him not with other men and women strung together in the shipnet, but to an ordinary radio in his physical quarters, deep in the bowels of the ship. “Cadlud? This is the captain. Are you there?”
    “I am here, zur.”
    “Ever hear of something called the Kaden Military Council?”
    “No, zur. It zounds… most un-Irdikad.”
    “It does to me, too. It also sounds like they’re making decisions for your world’s government.”
    “Kaden does not have a world government,” Cadlud reminded him. “Guidelines, zur, not rules.”
    “Thank you, Cadlud.” He broke the link.
    A cyberenhanced starlord, he thought, might have been able to tap directly into local communications and informational channels, might have accessed ocean-deep volumes of material on the current political situation on Kaden. He trusted, however, his own intuition, and the observations of his steward.
    Hazzard studied the tactical display spreading out before him against the visual field of his mind. The other four Union ships were closely engaged with the P’aaseni squadron half a million kilometers past the crescent of Kaden. An hour before Uriel could summon help from Tri-mirage and her consorts… a little less, possibly, if Indeterminacy began accelerating to c and made the jump to the blockade point herself. The Union in-system squadron was in serious trouble, though. Pounded by the P’aaseni heavies and by Anarchate planetary defense batteries, Fire Angel was a mass of fiercely radiating wreckage drifting down the walls of Kaden’s gravity well, and Decider appeared to be crippled. Ferocious and Swift were both still firing, but their life span could only be measured now in minutes, unless they were able to win clear.
    At the moment, Indeterminacy was moving at just under .9 c , and still slowing; at that velocity, twenty-five seconds of shipboard time translated as almost a minute in the outside universe, and so the battle appeared to be evolving at breakneck speed as the Union frigate plowed through the photons revealing the conflict ahead. Add to that the fact that thanks to c-lag, he was still seeing things as they had been, fourteen… no, make it thirteen minutes ago. He had to decide quickly …
    He shifted his attention to a global display of Kaden, with the locations of known planetary defense batteries plotted as gleaming yellow sparks scattered along the equator. As on most technic worlds throughout this sector of the galaxy, the locals had been beefing up