Honor Among Enemies hh-6

by David Weber

  "Four heavy cruisers make for pretty stiff odds, Captain," Caslet observed quietly.

  "I told you our teeth are sharp," she replied calmly. "I'm less worried by the numbers than I am by how slow we are. If they detach anyone, the detachee is going to get away from us."

  Caslet blinked. She was worried that a heavy cruiser might "get away" from a converted merchantman? He was willing to admit her ship mounted powerful energy weapons, but he'd had ample opportunity to realize Wayfarer truly was a civilian design, with all the vulnerabilities that implied, and there couldn't be many places to put missile tubes. Her long-range armament had to be weak, especially given the space those god-awful grasers must eat up, and she couldn't take much damage. All of which meant a properly handled CA would cut her slow, unarmored, ungainly hull to pieces in any sort of sustained engagement. Granted she did carry those LACs, but LACs were fragile and weakly armed themselves. No matter how Warner Caslet looked at it, he expected Wayfarer to be severely damaged before she could take out that many opponents.

  "Well, they seem to be sticking together for now," he said dryly. "So if that's your main concern, Captain, I'd say things are looking pretty good so far."

  "Message coming in from dirtside," Warnecke's com officer reported. She listened intently for a minute or two, then looked over her shoulder at Sherman. "Base says they're the Andermani freighter Sternenlicht. They've suffered a double node failure in their forward sail, and they took some nasty casualties when the nodes blew. They request engineering and medical assistance."

  "Truitt" Sherman asked.

  "Checking database now." The tac officer watched his display for a few seconds, then shrugged. "We don't have her listed, but our Andermani lists've never been very complete. The message header's definitely Andy merchant service, though, and the transponder matches."

  "I see." Sherman crossed her legs and considered, then looked back up at the com officer. "How did dirtside respond?"

  "I'll play it back," the com officer said, and a moment later, Andre Warnecke's strong, mellow voice came from the speakers.

  "Sternenlicht, this is Sidemore. Your message has been received, and we're making arrangements to render assistance. I'm afraid we lack the facilities to repair your nodes locally, but we've got a little good news to go with the bad. Two divisions of Silesian cruisers on antipiracy patrol out of Sachsen dropped by on a courtesy visit earlier this week, and they're still in-system. They probably can't help with your nodes, either, but they do have surgeons aboard, and they can at least let someone know you're here. I'm requesting their immediate assistance for you, but they've been conducting maneuvers in our outer asteroid belt, and it's going to take them a while to reach you. Maintain your present flight profile. I estimate they'll rendezvous with you in about five hours and escort you the rest of the way in. Sidemore, out."

  "Not bad," Sherman murmured. He sounds like he actually means it. I wonder how someone that crazy can sound so reasonable and helpful? She shook herself and checked her plot once more. The range had fallen to ten light-minutes as her squadron skirted around Sternenlicht to reach its ambush position, but that was still well beyond reach of a merchie's sensors.

  ". . . way in. Sidemore, out."

  Honor looked at Rafe Cardones with a raised eyebrow.

  "'Oh what a tangled web we weave,'" he said with a grim smile. "At least it confirms that we're in the right place. If those are Confed cruisers, I'll eat our main sensor array."

  "I agree, Milady," Jennifer Hughes put in. "Carol has their emissions dialed in across the board. They're a dead match for the profiles we pulled out of that tin can's computers, and they sure as hell aren't anywhere near any asteroid belts."

  "Good." Honor nodded in satisfaction. There'd never been much doubt, but it was nice to be certain they'd be killing the right people.

  She gazed into her plot, watching Wayfarer's bead move steadily towards the planet while the cruisers sidestepped the "oblivious freighter." They were maintaining a tight-interval formation, too. That was nice. It would put them all in range simultaneously when the time came.

  "Reply, Fred," she said. "Thank them for their assistance, and tell them we'll maintain profile. Be sure you include Dr. Ryder’s description of our crew casualties for their 'surgeons.'"

  Sherman stifled a sense of guilt as she watched the hapless freighter sail straight into her trap. Replacing that vessel's alpha nodes would be a gargantuan task for their repair ship, they'd have to build the damned things from scratch, since none of their ships used nodes that powerful, but it could be done. And Andre would be delighted to add her to his list of prizes. Better yet, there was a whole crew of trained spacers over there, people who could be "convinced" to provide some of the additional technical support they needed.

  It'd be more merciful just to blow them apart, she thought grimly, but I can't. Andre would take his time killing me if I blew away a prize. She watched the light dot of the freighter, less than ten minutes from rendezvous now, and her eyes were haunted. I'm sorry, she told the blip, and turned her chair to face her tac officer once more.

  "Nine-and-a-half minutes to intercept, Ma'am," Jennifer Hughes said. "They're folding in from starboard, rate of closure just under two thousand KPS, decelerating at two hundred gees. Present range to Bogey One just over three-one-one-thousand klicks; range to Bogey Four is four-zero-niner thousand. We're picking up fire control emissions from Bogey Two, but the others aren't even pulsing us. We've got 'em where we want 'em, Milady."

  Honor nodded. The "Confederacy cruisers" had made com contact hours ago, and the woman who'd introduced herself as "Admiral Sherman" was actually in Silesian uniform. Or her com image was, anyway. Honor's own image had gone out in Andermani merchant uniform, courtesy of a little computer alteration. But unlike "Admiral Sherman," Honor knew the face on her screen was lying, for Tactical had tracked Warnecke’s cruisers' entire maneuver, and it bore no resemblance at all to the one "Sherman" had described.

  "All right, people." She glanced up at Caslet, and the Peep nodded back. "Begin your attack, Commander Hughes," she said formally.

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am. Carol, roll the pods."

  "That's funny."

  Sherman turned to look at Commander Truitt, and the tac officer shrugged.

  "I just picked up something separating from the target," he said. "Not sure what it is. It looks like debris of some sort, but it must be pretty small, the radar return's mighty weak. It's falling astern of her now, and..." He frowned. "There goes another batch of it."

  "What sort of debris?"

  "I don't know," Truitt admitted. "Looks like they could be jettisoning cargo or, There goes another batch." He grinned suddenly. "You don't suppose they were running contraband into the Confederacy, do you?"

  "Maybe," Sherman said, but her tone was doubtful. If Sternenlicht was, in fact, carrying contraband, and most captains did in Silesia, she'd want to get rid of it before a Confed squadron sent people aboard her. But if she was going to dump cargo, why wait this long? Surely she had to know Sherman's ships were close enough to see it on radar. Of course, from their medical reports, they had some pretty seriously hurt personnel over there. What with a major engineering failure and casualties, it might just have slipped her captain’s mind until now.

  A fourth wave of debris had kicked out the rear of the freighter's wedge while Sherman pondered. Now a fifth followed... and then the freighter suddenly rolled ship, turning the belly of her wedge towards the cruisers, and Rayna Sherman discovered what that "jettisoned cargo" truly was.

  In light of any missile pod's complete vulnerability to any weapon, BuWeaps was still trying to come up with a design made out of sufficiently low-signature materials to defeat enemy fire control. They hadn't quite managed that yet, but they had come up with one whose radar return was far weaker than something its size ought to have been, and their new optical coating was much more effective against both visual detection and the laser pulses of the lidar most navies favor
ed for short-range fire control, as well. Which meant they didn't look big enough to be any particular threat... a fact upon which Honor had counted when she, Cardones, and Hughes planned their initial tactics.

  Five complete salvos spilled astern, ejecting cleanly from the outsized cargo doors, and the pods' onboard fire control was programmed for delayed activation. The first salvo waited forty-eight seconds, the second thirty-six, the third twenty-four, and the fourth twelve...

  The last fired on launch, and three hundred capital missiles streaked straight into the privateers' teeth.

  The range was under a half-million kilometers, and the RMN's latest capital missiles accelerated at 92,000 KPS?. Flight time to the closest enemy ship was twenty-four seconds; time to the most distant was only four seconds longer, and Hendrickson, Jarmon, and Willis never had a chance.

  Seventy-five immensely powerful laser heads screamed in on each of them, and they didn't even have their fire control on-line, far less their point defense. There was no need for it. They were the hunters, and their prey was only a huge, slow, totally defenseless freighter. They'd known that, or thought they had. Now captains shouted frantic helm orders, trying to roll ship and interpose their wedges, and Jarmon actually managed it... not that it did her any good. Jennifer Hughes' exquisitely timed missile storm slashed down on them, and her birds had plenty of time left on their drives for terminal attack maneuvers. Bomb-pumped lasers smashed through their targets' sidewalls as if they were tissue, detonating at ranges as short as a thousand kilometers, and no heavy cruiser ever built could survive that sort of fire.

  Warner Caslet stared at the plot in disbelief as the missile traces spawned like hideous serpents of light. He whirled to the visual display, and then staggered back a step as the laser heads detonated. The range was little more than a light-second and a half, and the savage white glare of nuclear fire stabbed at his eyes despite the optical filters.

  God, he thought numbly. Dear sweet God, this is only a Q-ship! What the hell happens if they fit a warship with... with whatever the hell that was?!

  Rayna Sherman went paper-white as the missiles tore down on President Warnecke. Her flagship had been about to demand the "freighters" surrender, and her fire control was on-line for the task. Warnecke's merely human crew was taken totally by surprise, but her point defense computers observed the sudden eruption of threat sources and engaged automatically, salvoing counter-missiles and snapping the laser clusters around to engage the leakers.

  Unfortunately, her defenses were too weak to stop that much fire even if they'd known in advance that it was coming. She was only a heavy cruiser, and not even a super-dreadnought could have thrown seventy-five missiles at her in a single broadside. She stopped a lot of them, but most got through, and Sherman clung to her command chair as lasers slashed into her ship. Plating shattered under the kinetic transfer, air belched out in huge, obscene bubbles, damage alarms screamed, and there was nothing, nothing at all, Sherman could do about it.

  Warnecke's wedge fluctuated madly as alpha and beta nodes were blasted away. Half her radar and all her gravitics were blown to bits, and a raging wall of blast and fragments crashed through her communications section. Both sidewalls flickered and died, then came back up at less than half strength, and two thirds of her armament was totally destroyed. She reeled sideways, alive but dying, and her half-crippled plot showed the unmistakable radar returns of LACs exploding from the flanks of the huge "freighter."

  "Com! Tell them we surrender!" Sherman shouted.

  "I can't!" the panicked com officer shouted back. "They're gone, they're all gone in Com One and Two!"

  Sherman felt her heart stop. The "freighter" was already rolling back down, presenting her broadside to Warnecke, and there could be only one reason for that. But without a com, she couldn't even tell them she surrendered! Unless...

  "Strike the wedge!"

  Warnecke’s astrogator stared at her for an instant before she understood. It was the universal, last-ditch signal of surrender, and her hands flashed for her panel.

  "Coming on target," Jennifer Hughes said coldly as Wayfarer completed her roll. Eight massive grasers came to bear on their target, and she punched the button.

  Grasers, like lasers, are light-speed weapons. Rayna Sherman didn't even have a chance to realize she'd found an escape from Andre Warnecke's madness at last, for the deadly streams of focused gamma radiation arrived before she knew they'd fired.

  "And that," Honor Harrington said quietly, staring into the visual display at the boil of light and expanding wreckage which had once been Bogey Two, "is that."

  Chapter THIRTY

  "Message coming in from Sidemore, Skipper." Honor held up a hand, halting her conversation with Rafe Cardones, and raised an eyebrow at Fred Cousins. "Same guy as before, but we're getting a visual to go with it this time," the com officer said.

  "Really?" Honor smiled thinly. "Put him through."

  Her small com screen blinked alive with the face of a man in the immaculate uniform of a commodore in the Silesian Navy. He was dark-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard, and without the uniform, he could easily have been mistaken for a college professor or a banker. But Honor recognized him from her intelligence file imagery despite the beard.

  "My God, woman!" he gasped, his face twisted with horror. "What in God's name d'you think you're doing? You just killed three thousand Silesian military personnel!"

  "No," Honor replied in a cold soprano. "I just exterminated three thousand vermin."

  It took over four minutes for her light-speed transmission to reach the planet, and then Warnecke's eyes narrowed. His furious expression went absolutely blank as he gazed into his own pickup for several seconds, and when he spoke again, his voice was completely calm.

  "Who are you?" he asked flatly.

  "Captain Honor Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy, at your service. I've already destroyed four of your vessels in Sharon's Star and Schiller," she felt guilty at taking credit for Caslet’s lolls, but this was no time to introduce distracting elements, "and now I've taken out all four of your heavy cruisers. You're running out of ships, Mr. Warnecke, but that doesn't really matter, does it?" She smiled, her almond eyes colder than liquid helium. "After all, you've just run out of time, as well."

  She sat back, waiting out the inevitable com lag, but Warnecke didn't even flinch when her transmission reached him. He only leaned back in his own chair and bared his teeth at her.

  "Perhaps I am, Captain Harrington," he said. "On the other hand, I may have more time than you think. After all, I've got a garrison and an entire planetary population down here. Digging my people out could get... messy, don't you think? And, of course, I've also taken the precaution of planting a few nuclear charges here and there in various towns and cities. We wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to those charges, now would we?"

  Honor’s nostrils flared. It wasn't unexpected, but that didn't make it any better. Assuming the threat was real. Unfortunately, it probably was. As far as Andrew Warnecke was concerned, the universe ended when he died, and he knew exactly what the Confederacy government would do if it ever got its hands on him. If he had to die anyway, he wouldn't hesitate to take hundreds of thousands of others with him. In fact, he'd probably enjoy it.

  "Let me explain something to you, Mr. Warnecke," she said quietly. "I now control this star system. Nothing will move in or out of it without my permission; anything which attempts to do so will be destroyed. I'm sure you have sufficient sensor capability to confirm my ability to make good on those promises.

  "I also have a full battalion of Manticoran Marines, with battle armor and heavy weapons, and I will shortly control your planets high orbitals. I can drop precision kinetic strikes anywhere I want to support my personnel. You, on the other hand, have four thousand men who aren't worth the pulser darts to blow them to hell as combat soldiers, and I will personally guarantee that your combat equipment is obsolescent, second-line garbage by Manticoran standa
rds.

  "Moreover, I've notified Commodore Blohm of the Andermani Navy of your location, and heavy units of the IAN and Imperial Army will be arriving soon. In short, Mr. Warnecke, we can, and will, take that planet away from you any time we want. And, as I'm certain you're quite aware, if we don't, the Confederacy will." She paused to let that register, then continued. "It's quite possible you have, in fact, emplaced the nuclear charges you've just threatened to detonate. If you do detonate them, you die. If we send in the troops, you also die, either in the fighting, or on the end of a Silesian rope; it doesn't matter to me. But, Mr. Warnecke, if you surrender yourself, your men, and the planet, I will personally guarantee that you will be turned over to the Andermani, and not the Silesians. At the moment, none of you have been charged with any capital crime by the Empire, and Commodore Blohm has empowered me to promise you that the Empire will not execute you all as you so manifestly deserve. Prison, yes; executions, no. I regret that, but I'm willing to offer you your lives in return for a peaceful surrender of the planet."

  She smiled again, colder even than before, and crossed her legs.

  "The choice is yours, Mr. Warnecke. We'll speak again when my ships are in orbit around Sidemore. Harrington, out."

  Warnecke's face disappeared from her screen, and Honor looked at Cousins.

  "Ignore any additional hails until I tell you otherwise, Fred."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "You pushed him pretty hard there, Captain," Caslet said quietly, and she turned her chair to face him. The Peep had recovered from the shock of what Wayfarer had done to Warnecke 's cruisers, and his hazel eyes were intent.

  "I know." She stood, cradling Nimitz in her arms, and crossed to the main plot. Commander Harmon’s LACs moved across it, three of them speeding ahead to planetary orbit while the other nine collected Wayfarer's missile pods and towed them in for reuse, and she watched Sidemore drawing closer. She stood brooding down at the planet for long, silent seconds, with Caslet by her side, then shrugged.