by David Weber
Commodore Stephen Van Slyke emerged from the crowd to engage Sarnow in a low-voiced conversation. Honor didn't know Van Slyke, but what she'd seen of him looked good. He was built like a wrestler—bullnecked, black-haired, and brown-eyed, with eyebrows even heavier than Sarnow's—but his movements were quick, and if his comments during the COs' meeting hadn't been marked by brilliance, they'd been both pragmatic and to the point.
The same gorgeously-tailored commander who'd looked her way at the conference table followed in Van Slyke's wake and paused with an almost pained expression as the two flag officers stepped aside without him. He looked about for just a moment, and then his hazel eyes settled on Honor and narrowed.
She returned his gaze levelly, wondering what his problem was. He was a slender, wasplike man who moved with the languid, studied grace a certain segment of the aristocracy affected—and which Honor had always disliked. She'd served with officers who were even more languid and drawling, and some of them had been among the sharpest people she'd ever met. She had no idea why they chose to hide their competence behind such irritating, foppish facades, and she wished they wouldn't.
The commander continued to look at her—not quite staring, but more fixedly than was courteous—then crossed the deck to her.
"Captain Harrington." His voice was cultured, with a polished veneer that reminded her instantly of someone, though she couldn't think who.
"Commander." She nodded. "I'm afraid we haven't been introduced," she continued, "and with so many new officers to meet, I didn't catch your name."
"Houseman," the commander said flatly. "Arthur Houseman, chief of staff to Commodore Van Slyke. I believe you've met my cousin."
Honor felt her smile stiffen, and Nimitz stopped chewing his celery. No wonder he'd seemed so familiar. He was shorter than Reginald Houseman, and his complexion was fairer, but the family resemblance was pronounced.
"Yes, I have, Commander." Her cool soprano struck his rank with just an edge of emphasis, and he flushed faintly at the reminder of her seniority.
"I thought you had . . . Ma'am." The pause was deliberate, and her lips tightened. Icicles formed in her eyes, and she stepped closer to him, pitching her voice too low for anyone else to hear.
"Understand something now, Commander. I don't like your cousin, and he doesn't like me, but that doesn't concern you. Unless, of course, you want it to, and I really don't think you do." Her smile showed her teeth, and something like alarm flickered in his eyes. "But regardless of your personal feelings, Commander Houseman, you will observe proper military courtesy, not simply to me but to anyone on my ship." Houseman's gaze avoided hers, flitting to Sarnow and Van Slyke, and Honor's smile turned even colder. "Don't worry, Commander. I won't involve Admiral Sarnow—or Commodore Van Slyke. But, then, I don't think it will be necessary, will it?"
His eyes darted angrily back to her, and she held them coldly. Then he swallowed, and the moment of confrontation passed.
"Was there anything else, Commander?" she asked softly.
"No, Ma'am"
"Then I'm certain you have somewhere else you need to be," she said. His face tightened again for just an instant, but then he nodded curtly and turned away. Nimitz quivered with anger on Honor's shoulder, and she reached up to stroke him reassuringly while she watched Houseman vanish into the crowd.
She could have handled that better, she told herself, though the man's sheer arrogance appalled her. A commander, whatever his family influence—and the Houseman clan, she admitted, had plenty of that—who picked a quarrel with a captain of the list deserved whatever grief it bought him, yet she knew her own response had confirmed his enmity, and she regretted that. There probably hadn't been much chance of avoiding it, but she was Sarnow's flag captain. It was part of her job description to defuse matters that might hamper the squadron's smooth operation, and she hadn't even tried. Worse, it hadn't even occurred to her that she ought to have tried until it was all over.
She sighed silently and listened to Nimitz crunch his celery. One of these days she was going to have to learn to control her own temper.
"Penny for your thoughts, Dame Honor," a tenor voice murmured. She looked up quickly, and Admiral Sarnow smiled at her. "I was wondering when you and Commander Houseman would meet. I see he survived the experience."
Honor's cheeks heated at his ironic tone, and his smile turned wry.
"Oh, don't worry about it, Captain. Arthur Houseman is a liberal bigot with an ego problem. If you stepped on him, he undoubtedly needed it, and if I'd thought you'd step too hard, I would have warned you about him." Honor's blush faded, and he nodded. "Exactly. As I told you, Dame Honor, you're my flag captain, and I expect you to act the part. Which includes not taking any crap from a junior officer who's also a stuck-up prig and resents your having proved his cousin is a coward. Unfortunately, he really is good at his job. That, I imagine, is the reason Commodore Van Slyke tolerates him, but it's no reason you have to."
"Thank you, Sir," she said quietly.
"Don't thank me, Captain." He touched her elbow lightly, his eyes twinkling with curiously mingled amusement and warning. "When you're right, you're right. When you're not, I'll cut you off at the knees."
He smiled again, and she felt herself smile back.
CHAPTER NINE
Captain Mark Brentworth surveyed his spacious bridge with intense satisfaction. The heavy cruiser Jason Alvarez, the most powerful ship ever built in the Yeltsin System—at least until the battlecruisers Courvosier and Yanakov were commissioned next month—was the pride of the Fleet. She was also all his, and she'd already won her spurs. The pirates who'd once infested the region were rapidly becoming a thing of the past as local Manticoran units and the rapidly expanding Grayson Navy hunted them down. Alvarez—and Brentworth—had two independent kills and four assists to their credit, but prey had gotten progressively scarcer over the last few months, and, in a way, the captain was almost grateful for the boredom of his present assignment. Picket duty just beyond Yeltsin's Star's hyper limit was unglamorous, but his people needed the rest after the wearing concentration of pirate-hunting. Not that he wanted them to feel too relaxed, he thought with an inner smile.
The latest convoy from Manticore was due within six hours, and it ought to arrive inside Alvarez's sensor envelope, but he and his exec hadn't mentioned that to the rest of his crew. It would be interesting to see how quickly his people detected the convoy's arrival . . . and how quickly they got to battle stations until it was positively IDed.
In the meantime, however, there were—
"Unidentified hyper footprint at three-point-five light-minutes, Sir!"
"Plot it!" Brentworth snapped, and looked at his exec. "Battle stations, Mr. Hardesty!"
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
Alarms began to whoop even as the exec replied, and Brentworth looked down at the displays deploying about his chair with a frown. If this was the convoy, it was much earlier than it ought to be. On the other hand, it seemed improbable anything else would come in this close to its scheduled ETA.
The captain rubbed the tip of his nose, then turned to his tac officer. Lieutenant Bordeaux's eyes were intent as he studied the data. It would be a while yet before his light-speed sensors picked up anything at this range, but CIC's analysis of the FTL gravitic readings coalesced before him while Brentworth watched.
"It's a singleton, Sir," Bordeaux reported, never looking away from his display. "Looks like a freighter. Range six-three-point-one-six million kilometers. Course zero-zero-three by one-five-niner. Acceleration two-point-four KPS squared. Present velocity point-zero-four-eight Cee."
Brentworth started to nod, then snapped upright. The course was right for a least-time vector to Grayson, but that velocity was all wrong. The freighter must have been burning along at a full sixty percent of light-speed to carry that much vee across the alpha wall. That was well outside the safe hyper velocity envelope for a ship with commercial grade anti-rad and particle shielding, and the phy
siological stress of a crash translation at that speed was brutal. For that matter, she must be riding the ragged edge of compensator burnout to maintain her present acceleration with a freighter's drive!
No merchant skipper would maneuver like that—not if he had a choice—and the captain's stomach tightened. There were supposed to be three freighters, escorted by a pair of destroyers, but Alvarez saw only one impeller source. Coupled with the freighter's crash translation and accel. . . .
"Astrogation, plot me an intercept course! Communications, get off an immediate contact report to Command Central!"
He hardly noticed the taut responses as he waved Hardesty in close beside his chair. The exec's face was as worried as his own, and Brentworth forced his voice to remain very level.
"Who else is out here, Jack? Anyone closer to them than us?"
"No, Sir," Hardesty said quietly, and Brentworth's mouth tightened, for Alvarez was currently at rest relative to Yeltsin's Star. His ship's acceleration was twice that of the unknown freighter, but the freighter was headed almost directly away from her at over 14,000 KPS, and she was far beyond missile range . . . as anyone following her would also be.
"Where's that course, Astrogation?" he snapped.
"Sir, we can't intercept short of Grayson orbit if she maintains her current acceleration," the astrogator replied. "At max accel, we'll take over eighty-eight minutes just to match velocity with her."
Brentworth's hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and his nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. He'd been afraid of that. The only real hope for an interception now was that someone closer to Grayson had a convergent vector. But the freighter wouldn't be running this hard unless something was chasing her, and it was remotely possible he could get into range of that something.
"Put us on her track anyway," he said coldly.
"Aye, aye, Sir. Helm, come zero-one-three degrees to port."
"Aye, aye, Sir. Coming zero-one-three to port."
"Sir, I have a transmission from the freighter!"
"Put it on the main screen."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
A face appeared on the main view screen. It was a woman's face, damp with sweat and lined with strain, and her voice was harsh and tight.
"—ayday! Mayday! This is the Manticoran merchant ship Queensland! I am under attack by unknown warships! My escort and two other freighters have already been destroyed! Repeat, I am under attack by unknown war—"
"Captain! I've got another footprint!" The tactical officer's report slashed across the unknown woman's frantic message, and Brentworth's eyes snapped back to his repeater. A new impeller source burned within it, hard upon the freighter's heels. No, there were two—three!—of them, and the captain swallowed an agonized groan. These were no merchantmen—not with those power curves—and they were streaking in pursuit of the freighter at over five KPS2.
"—any ship," the Manticoran captain's voice spilled from the com. It had taken over three minutes for her words to reach Alvarez. They'd been transmitted before she could have seen her executioners transit behind her; now they echoed in the back of Brentworth's mind like some curse from the dead as he watched the gray signatures of impeller drive missiles spit towards her ship. "Any ship who can hear us! This is Captain Uborevich of the Queensland! I am under attack! Repeat, I am under attack and require assistance! Any ship who can hear me, please respond!"
Alvarez's com officer stared at his captain almost pleadingly, but Brentworth said nothing. There was no point in responding, and every man on the bridge knew it.
The missile specks drove after the freighter, accelerating at almost 90,000 gravities, and Brentworth watched sickly as they overtook their target. They merged with the freighter's larger impeller signature . . . and Queensland vanished from the face of the universe.
"—respond!" Uborevich's voice still called from the com. "Any ship, please respond! I require assi—"
"Turn it off," Brentworth grated, and the dead woman's voice died in mid-word. He stared at his display, watching Queensland's killers arc away, knowing they would recross the hyper limit and vanish long before he could bring them into range, and frustration—and hate—burned in his eyes.
"Readings, Henri?" he asked in a deathly quiet voice, and his tac officer swallowed.
"Nothing positive, Sir. They're regular warships—they have to be to pull that accel and fire that many missiles. I'd guess a light cruiser and a pair of tin-cans, but that's about all I can tell you."
"Make sure everything you can get goes on the chip. Maybe Intelligence or the Manties can get more from an analysis than we can."
"Yes, Sir."
Brentworth sat silently, glaring at his display until the trio of murderers swept back out across the limit and disappeared, then leaned back with a weary, defeated sigh.
"Keep us on our intercept, Astro," he said tiredly. "Maybe she at least got her lifeboats away before they killed her."
* * *
Lieutenant Commander Mudhafer Ben-Fazal yawned and sipped more coffee. The G4 primary of the Zanzibar System was a brilliant pinprick far behind his light attack craft as it swept slowly along the edge of the outermost asteroid belt, and he treasured the coffee's warmth as an anodyne against the cold loneliness beyond its hull. He would have preferred to be elsewhere—almost anywhere elsewhere—but he hadn't been consulted when his orders were cut.
The leaders of the ZLF had been driven from the soil of their homeworld, yet they still got infrequent weapon shipments into their adherents' hands somehow. They were coming from out-system, and though whoever supplied them was very careful to remove all identifying marks before turning them over, the People's Republic of Haven was the only interstellar power which had recognized the ZLF. Intelligence was virtually certain the PRH was doing more than merely providing sanctuary in ports like Mendoza and Chelsea for the terrorists' decrepit "navy."
But whoever was funding and arming the ZLF, they still had to get the guns and bombs to Zanzibar, and Intelligence's best guess was they were using miners for their conduit. The Zanzibar system was rich in asteroids, and no one could stop and search every battered work boat. Nor could they hope to patrol the belts themselves in any meaningful way, Ben-Fazal thought tiredly. The area was simply too huge for the Navy's limited strength to search, but there was always the chance that someone might happen across something, which explained why al-Nassir was out here, depriving one Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal of his hard earned leave time.
He chuckled and tipped his chair back as he took another sip of coffee. Al-Nassir was a child's toy compared to real warships like the division of Manticoran battlecruisers orbiting Zanzibar, but her weapons would more than suffice for any of the ZLF "Navy's" rag-tailed ships. And, his chuckle faded, it would be sweet to catch some of the animals whose bombs and "liberation offensives" had killed and maimed so many civilians.
"Excuse me, Captain, but I'm getting something on my passive arrays."
Ben-Fazal cocked an eyebrow at his tactical officer, and the lieutenant shrugged.
"It's not much, Sir—just a little radio leakage. Could be a regular prospector's beacon, but if it is, it's pretty badly garbled."
"Where's it coming from?"
"That cluster at two-seven-three, I think. As I say, it's very faint."
"Well, let's take a look," Ben-Fazal decided. "Bring us to two-seven-three, Helm."
"Yes, Sir."
The tiny warship altered course, heading for the elusive signal source, and the tac officer frowned.
"It really is garbled, Sir," he reported after a moment. "If it's a beacon, its identifier code's been completely scrambled. I've never heard anything quite like it. It's almost like—"
Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal never learned what it was almost like. The lean, lethal shape of a light cruiser swam into sight, drifting from the clustered asteroids like a shark from a bed of kelp, and he had one fleeting instant to realize the signal had been a lure to suck him in and to recognize th
e cruiser's Havenite emissions signature before it blew his ship apart.
* * *
"They're definitely crossing the line, Commodore."
Commodore Sarah Longtree nodded acknowledgment of her ops officer's report and hoped she looked calmer than she felt. Her heavy cruiser squadron was a powerful formation, but not as powerful as the Peep force coming at her.
"Time to missile range?"
"A good twelve hours yet, Ma'am," the ops officer replied. He scratched his nose and frowned at his display. "What I don't understand is why they're making an n-space approach. They've taken out a dozen sensor platforms, but even with light-speed limits, they have to know we got full downloads before they did—and they're ignoring a dozen others that have them in range right now! That makes taking the others out completely pointless, and if they really want to hit us, the logical move was to get at least to the hyper limit before they translated down. Why let us see them coming from so far out?"
"I don't know," Longtree admitted, "but, frankly, that's the least of my concerns just now. Have we got class IDs on them yet?"
"Perimeter Tracking's still refining the data from our intact platforms, Ma'am, but the ones they've already hit got pretty good reads on their lead element, and there are at least two battlecruisers out there."
"Wonderful." Longtree pushed herself deeper into the cushions of her command chair and made her mind step back a bit.
The ops officer was right about the strangeness of their approach. The Zuckerman System's outer surveillance platforms had picked them up well short of the twelve-light-hour territorial limit, and letting that happen was an outstandingly dumb move on someone's part. If they'd just stayed in h-space to the hyper limit, they'd have been on top of Zuckerman—and Longtree—before she even knew they were coming. As it was, she'd had plenty of time to get a courier away to Fleet HQ; even if they wiped out her entire squadron, Manticore would know who'd done it. As acts of war went, that made this one of the most pointless and stupid on record.
