Most of the officers and men in the Thirteenth Fleet were lawless sorts, so they immediately sent Eleanor's "greetings" over a broad-spectrum open broadcast. Major General Makarov couldn't stop them.
You could imagine how mocking that broadcast sounded.
If the Imperial officers aboard had been even a little narrow-minded, they might already have been grinding their teeth and charging back. But Cruiser Luzhou 177 had escaped the Devil's Maze and the marauders' pursuit. Whatever else could be said about its crew, they'd clearly reached a whole new level of shamelessness.
Unless their communications equipment was completely down, they must have received their own side's "blessing." Yet the Imperial warship continued on as though nothing had happened. It didn't slow down in the slightest, and its escape trajectory didn't deviate by even a fraction. It was as if the Earth fleet in the system didn't exist at all.
Eleanor Bonaparte watched the battered Imperial warship flee with such steady determination. She wanted to express sympathy and admiration, but found she couldn't quite manage the sympathy.
In any case, what could it mean when an Imperial warship that had been out of contact for two months and presumed destroyed returned home, with two furious pursuers right behind it?
"The Maze has almost certainly been solved." Eleanor organized her thoughts and spoke with conviction. "That's why Luzhou 177 managed to escape. And it's also why the marauder ships wanted to take a close look at the situation. That's how the two sides ran into each other."
Eleanor's assessment had no real evidence behind it, of course, but it certainly sounded plausible.
What happened next seemed to confirm her judgment. The two marauder warships stared down the Earth fleet for nearly three minutes, then slowly retreated toward the gravity well behind them.
They didn't