Tester only knew how many things could have gone wrong if they'd had to do that, and Abigail would be just as happy if He never told her. As it was, they could probably disable the freighter's generator without tearing the ship apart outright. The problem would be that they couldn't be positive how much damage they'd done. It was possible they might do enough purely cosmetic damage to the ship's hull for it to look to their sensors as if they'd blown the generator completely apart, when they'd actually done only minor damage, or even-unlikely, but possible-missed it completely. In which case, as soon as the pinnaces and LACs had passed far enough by to lose the energy range, the pirates could simply bring the generator up and disappear into hyper.
By the same token, they might actually damage the generator, but not beyond the possibility of quick, jury-rigged repairs. In that case, the pirates might still be able to put the generator back on-line before anyone could decelerate and return to intercept them. So, ideally, Captain Einarsson's little force wanted to fire the instant they were certain of scoring the proper hit without blowing the ship apart, then decelerate at their maximum possible rate, so as to cut the pirates' available response time to a minimum. Since they were going to have to rely on the pinnaces for the shot, that meant closing to under a hundred thousand kilometers before even beginning to decelerate. Which meant, in turn, that even the pinnaces would be fifty minutes flight time and almost twenty-six and a half million kilometers down range from the freighter before they could decelerate to rest relative to its current position. And even then, it would take them another seventy minutes to actually return to it.
Two hours was a long time for the pirates to make repairs. Abigail was convinced the odds would be in their favor, not the pirates', but even if everything went perfectly from a timing perspective, Captain Terekhov was still running a grave risk. Even a pinnace's laser could fatally disembowel a merchantship if it hit just wrong. Even if it hit only the precisely desired target, there was still an excellent chance at least some of the freighter's original crew-assuming any were still alive aboard her-would be working in her impeller and hyper generator rooms under duress. In a worst-case scenario, they might do damage enough to kill a dozen innocent civilian spacers and still not enough to let them retake the ship before she vanished over the hyper wall.
Even in a best-case scenario, there was going to be bitter criticism of the Captain's plan from some quarters, because it didn't include any attempt to demand Bogey Three's surrender. Under the strict letter of interstellar law, a warship was always obligated to demand compliance with its instructions before firing into a merchantship, and a naval officer ignored that obligation at her peril. In this instance, however, there was no point making the effort. No doubt Bogey Three would happily have promised to stay exactly where it was if Abigal demanded that it do so. And it would have obeyed faithfully... just long enough for Abigail's velocity to take her safely out of weapons range.
No. In this case, the only real options were to cripple the -target without warning, so that it couldn't hyper out whenever it wanted to, or else not even to attempt to retake it. The Captain had accepted that unflinchingly, and the fact that Abigail agreed with him a hundred percent didn't make her any happier about knowing that even under the best possible outcome, she was about to kill people.
But worse, in many ways, was the possibility that she might never have the chance to kill them. The Captain had made it clear that, badly as he wanted Bogey Three taken, and despite the grave risks he was prepared to run to accomplish that, taking out the armed vessels took precedence over retaking the freighter. So Abigail and Einarsson were specifically prohibited from firing on the Dromedary at all unless Terekhov was confident of engaging the armed vessels before any light-speed warning from the freighter could reach them.
The good news was that Hexapuma had the latest generation of FTL grav-pulse communicator. The pinnaces didn't have proper receivers, but the recon drone did. Its datalink channels to its mothership were perfectly capable of receiving messages and relaying them to Abigail's pinnace via com laser or-in this case-optical cable.
The bad news was that even people who couldn't read grav-pulses could detect them, and it was general knowledge by now that the RMN had that technology. So Captain Terekhov couldn't risk transmitting the release to attack until-or if-he'd sucked his own intended victims in close enough to be sure of engaging them.
All of which meant it was entirely possible the pinnaces and LACs wouldn't be allowed to fire on the freighter as they went speeding past. Unless, of course, the freighter spotted them and began maneuvering to avoid them. In that case, there was no point in not firing, since her prize crew would certainly go ahead and warn its comrades. On the other hand, at their current velocity, the pinnaces would cross their engagement range of the freighter less than twelve seconds after entering it, so it would probably be impossible to tell whether or not the freighter had detected them until it was too late to act.
Well, she thought, Father Church always says the Test can take many forms. I suppose I should be grateful that at least I don't have to make the decisions facing the Captain.