Weber David. Honor Among Enemies

   "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 favored 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 KPS². 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 standards.
   "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.
   "I don't have much choice, Warner." It was the first time she'd called him anything other than "Citizen Commander," but neither of them really noticed. "I have to assume he really does have the place mined, and I also have to assume he really will press the button. But if we, or the Andies, don't take him out, the Confeds certainly will. They have to, and frankly, I don't think I could stomach seeing him walk away, either. That means that unless someone convinces him to surrender, that button will get pushed and an awful lot of people will die."
   She looked up at him, and Caslet nodded soberly.
   "The man's an egomaniacal psychopath," she said flatly. "The only hope I see is to rub his nose in the fact that he's helpless and that the Confederacy will come in to get him, regardless of his threats. I've got to push him hard enough to break through his megalomania, then offer him a way out that lets him live. It's the only way to avoid enormous civilian casualties, but he's got to have that way out. If he figures he doesn't..." She shrugged, and Caslet nodded again.
   "I understand your logic," he said after a moment, "but do you really think it will work?"
   "With Warnecke?" Honor shook her head. "Possibly not. I have to try, but I can't count on anything where he's concerned. But he's not alone down there, either. He's got four thousand troops on the planet. They may be scum, but they may also be a bit closer to sane than he is. If I keep him talking long enough, sooner or later word of the options I've given him will get out. When that happens, somebody who doesn't want to die may just take Warnecke out for us."
   Caslet looked at her silently and tried to hide a mental shiver as she gazed back. Her expression was calm and composed, but her eyes... He saw the doubt in them, the anguish... the fear. She sounded so dispassionate, so reasonable, projecting the aura of certainty which was one of a naval officers essential weapons, yet deep inside she knew exactly what stakes she was playing for, and they terrified her.
   But she'd seen this coming from the outset, he realized. She'd considered the options she'd just offered Warnecke long since, for she'd known she was going to face this decision, require those options. That was why she'd discussed them with Commodore Blohm ahead of time. Yet even knowing, she'd decided to attack herself rather than pass the responsibility off to someone else. The Silesians or the Andermani would have moved if she hadn't; she had to know that as well as Caslet did, but she'd refused to evade the job. He'd come to know her during his time aboard Wayfarer, not well, but well enough to realize how the deaths on Sidemore would haunt her if Warnecke pressed the button. And, he thought, well enough to know she'd recognized that, too. That she'd considered it the same way she'd considered every other aspect of the operation. If it happened, everyone in the galaxy would be ready to second-guess her, to blame her for the disaster, to argue that she'd been clumsy, that there had to have been a way to have avoided so many deaths. And she would, too. She would always believe she could have avoided it if she'd been smarter, cleverer, faster, and she knew she would, and still she'd come here to place herself on the line for a planet full of people she'd never met.
   How did she do that? How did she make herself assume such a crushing responsibility when she could so easily have handed it off to someone else? Warner Caslet was also a naval officer, also accustomed to the burden of command, yet he didn't know the answer to that question. He knew only that she had... and that he could not have.
   She was his enemy, and he was hers. Her kingdom was fighting for its life against the Republic, and the men and women who ran the Republic were fighting for their lives against her kingdom. There could be no other outcome. Either the Star Kingdom must be conquered, or the Committee of Public Safety would be destroyed by the mob its promises had mobilized to support the war. Caslet had no love for the Committee or its members, but if it came down in its turn, God only knew where the resultant paroxysms of bloodshed would leave his star nation. And because they were both naval officers, because the consequences of defeat were too terrible for either of them to contemplate, they could be only enemies. Yet at this moment, he wished it could be otherwise. He felt the magnetism which made her crews worship her, made them willing to follow her straight into the fire, and he understood it at last.
   She cared. It was really that simple. She cared, and she could neither offer her people less than her very best nor settle for less than the complete discharge of whatever responsibilities duty required of her, however grim. He'd just seen the dreadful efficiency with which she'd annihilated four heavy cruisers, and he recognized the wolf in her. Yet she was a wolf who'd dedicated her life to facing other wolves to protect those who couldn't, and he understood that, for an echo of what she was lived within him, as well. He knew her now, recognized what she truly was and knew that what she was made her a terrible danger to the Republic, to his Navy, ultimately to Warner Caslet himself, yet for just this moment, it didn't matter.
   He gazed at her a moment longer, then startled both of them by laying a hand lightly on her arm.
   "I hope it works, Captain," he said quietly, and turned back to the plot before them.
   "Entering orbit, Ma'am," John Kanehama said. Nimitz lay on his back in Honor’s lap, true-hands and hand-feet wrestling with her, but she looked up at the astrogator's announcement and nodded. She gave Nimitz a last caress, savoring the surge of love and assurance he sent back to her, then rose, set him on the back of her chair, and folded her hands behind her.
   "Hail Warnecke, Fred."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am." Cousins punched a command into his panel, then nodded to her, and she faced the pickup, her eyes cold, as Warnecke's face appeared on the main screen. He looked almost as calm as before, but not quite, and she wished they were close enough for Nimitz to give her a read on his emotions. Not that she was certain it would have helped. She was convinced the man was insane, and a madman's emotions might have been the most dangerous guide of all upon which to rely.
   "I said we'd speak again, Mr. Warnecke," she said.
   "So you did," he replied, and the com lag now was barely noticeable. "You seem to have an uncommonly capable 'freighter' up there, Captain. My compliments." Honor bobbed her head in cold acknowledgment, and he smiled thinly. "Nonetheless, I'm still down here with my button, and I assure you I will push it if you force me to. In which case, of course, the deaths of all these innocent civilians will be entirely your fault."
   "I don't think we'll play that game," Honor replied. "You have an alternative. If you detonate your charges, you'll do it because you chose to do that rather than accept the unreasonably generous offer I've already made you."
   "My, my! And I thought I was the villain of the piece!" Warnecke raised his hand, bringing a small, hand-held transmitter into the pickup's field, and bared his teeth. "Are you really so blase about the possibility of my pressing this button? I have very little to lose, you know. I've heard about Andermani prisons. I'm not at all sure I'd prefer life in one of them to, well..."
   He flipped his wrist to emphasize the transmitter he held, and his eyes burned with a dangerous light. Honor felt an icy breeze blow down her spine, but no trace of it touched her face.
   "Perhaps not, Mr. Warnecke, but death is so permanent, don't you think?"
   "Where there's life, there's hope, you mean?" The man on her com screen laughed and leaned back in his chair. "You intrigue me, Captain Harrington. Truly you do. Are you really so sanctimonious that you'd prefer to see hundreds of thousands of people killed rather than allow a single pirate and his henchmen to just sail away in their unarmed repair ship?"
   "Oh?" Honor cocked an eyebrow. "You intend to put four thousand extra people into your repair ship's life support?" She shook her head. "I'm afraid you'd find the air getting rather thick before you made another planet."
   "Well, sacrifices must be made, of course," Warnecke acknowledged, "and I suppose it would only be courteous of me to leave you some prisoners as a trophy. Actually, I was thinking in terms of myself and perhaps a hundred close associates." He leaned towards the pickup. "Think about it, Captain. I'm sure my privateers must have taken at least a few Manticoran ships, there are so many of them, after all, but the Confederacy isn't your kingdom. What do you care about its rebels and revolutionaries? You can have Sidemore, rescue Marsh, send the ragtag 'pirate' leaders packing in a single ship, and collect thousands of prisoners, all without risking a single town or city. Quite an accomplishment, don't you think?"
   "Your loyalty to your people overwhelms me," Honor observed, and he laughed again.
   "Loyalty, Captain? To these fools? They've already failed me twice, they and their incompetent shipboard counterparts. They cost me my own nation, my place in history. Why ever should I feel 'loyalty' to them?" He shook his head. "A pox upon all of them, Captain Harrington. You can have them with my compliments."
   "While you scurry off to try it all over again? I think not, Mr. Warnecke."
   "Come now, Captain! You know it's the best deal you're going to get. Death or glory, victory or magnificent destruction, those are a naval officer's choices, aren't they? What makes you think mine are any different?"
   Honor gazed at him for a long, silent moment while her mind ticked away. His mellow voice was so cultured, so powerful, made anything he said seem so rational and reasoned. It must have been a potent weapon when he first began his career in the Chalice. Even now, he exuded a twisted charm, like the seduction of an incubus. It was the emptiness within him, she thought. The void where a normal person kept his soul. The blood on his hands meant nothing, less than nothing, to him, and that was his armor. Since he felt no guilt, he projected none.
   "Do you really think," she said finally, "that I can let you go? That it's as simple as that?"
   "Why not? Who was it back on Old Earth who said, 'Kill one man and you're a murderer; kill a million and you're a statesman'? I may not have that quite correct, but I'm sure the paraphrase is close. And navies and armies and even monarchs negotiate with 'statesmen' all the time, Captain. Come, now! Negotiate with me... or I may just press the button anyway, to show you how seriously you should take me. For example..."
   His other hand came up into the pickup's field, and his index finger pressed a button on the transmitter number pad.
   "There!" he said with a brilliant smile, and Honor heard someone suck in air behind her. She turned her head and saw Jennifer Hughes staring at her display in horror. The tac officer's head whipped up, and Honor’s left hand made a quick, chopping motion outside her own pickup's field of view. Cousins was watching her intently, and he cut the sound in the instant before Hughes opened her mouth.
   "My God, Ma'am!" the tac officer gasped. "We've got a nuclear detonation on the planet! Tracking makes it about five hundred k-tons... right in the middle of a town!"
   Honor felt a fist punch her in the belly, and her face paled. She couldn't control that, but her expression didn't even flicker while the horror of it rolled through her. "Casualty estimate?" she asked flatly. "I-I can't be certain, Ma'am." The tough-as-nails tac officer was visibly shaken. "From the size of the town, maybe ten or fifteen thousand."
   "I see." Honor inhaled deeply, then turned back to the com and flicked her hand at Cousins. The sound came back up, and Warnecke's smile had vanished.
   "Did I fail to mention that I can detonate any one of the charges separately?" he purred. "Dear me, how careless of me! And there you were, thinking it was an all or nothing proposition. Of course, you don't know how many charges there are, do you now? I wonder how many more towns I can wipe off the face of the planet, just as a bargaining ploy, you understand, before I set off the big one?"
   "Very impressive," Honor heard herself say. "And just what sort of negotiations did you have in mind?"
   "I thought it was quite simple, Captain. My friends and I get aboard our repair ship and leave. Your ships stay in orbit around Sidemore until my ship reaches the hyper limit, and then you come down and clean up the riffraff I'll be leaving behind."
   "And how can I be certain you won't send the detonation command from your ship anyway?"
   "Why in the world should I want to do that?" Warnecke asked with a lazy smile. "Still, it is a thought, isn't it? I suppose I might consider it a proper way to, ah, chastise you for crippling my operations here... but that would be vindictive of me, wouldn't it?"
   "I don't think we'll take that chance," Honor said flatly. "If, and I say if, Mr. Warnecke, I were to agree to allow you to leave, I'd need proof that it would be impossible for you to detonate your charges."
   "And as soon as you knew it was impossible, you'd blow me out of space. Come, Captain! I expected better from you! Obviously I have to retain my Sword of Damocles until I'm safely out of your reach!"
   "Wait." Honor rubbed an eyebrow for a moment, then let her shoulders sag ever so slightly. "You've made your point," she said in a quieter voice, "but I've made mine, as well. You can kill the people of Sidemore, and I can kill you. The very thought of letting you go turns my stomach, but..." She drew a deep breath. "There's no need to do anything irreversible at this point. You can't leave the system without my permission, and I can't land Marines without your seeing it and pressing your button. Let me consider this for a little while. Perhaps I can come up with a solution we can both accept."
   "Caving in so soon, Captain?" Warnecke studied her suspiciously. "Somehow that doesn't ring quite true. You wouldn't be thinking of trying anything clever, would you?"
   "Such as?" Honor asked bleakly. "I haven't said I would let you go. All I said is that there's no point in either of us acting hastily. At the moment we're both in position to trump the other's cards, Mr. Warnecke. Let's leave it at that while I consider my options, shall we?"
   "Why, of course, Captain. I always like to oblige a lady. I'll be here when you decide to com again. Good day."
   The image died, and Honor Harrington felt her mouth twist in a snarl of hate as the ready light above the pickup went dead.

Chapter THIRTY-ONE

   The atmosphere in the briefing room could have been chipped with a knife. Honor's senior officers, and Warner Caslet and Denis Jourdain, sat around the long table, and more than one face was ashen.
   "My God, Ma'am," Jennifer Hughes said. "He just went ahead and did it, killed all those people, and smiled about it!"
   "I know, Jenny." Honor closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, and inside she shivered. She no longer doubted it; Warnecke was insane. Not in the legal sense of being unable to recognize right or wrong, but in a far deeper, more fundamental sense. He simply didn't care about right or wrong, and his casual mass murder only reconfirmed her earlier decision. Whatever happened, he could not be permitted to escape to do this again. Because that was the real crux of it. He would do it again, or something just as terrible. Again and again... because he enjoyed it.
   "We can't... I can't let him go," she said. "He has to be stopped, right here, right now."
   "But if he's ready to kill everyone on the planet..." Harold Tschu began slowly, and Honor shook her head sharply.
   "He's not. Not yet, anyway. He's still playing with us, and he still thinks he can win. Think about his record, what he tried in the Chalice and what he's done since. Whatever else he may be, this man is convinced he can beat the entire universe because he's hungrier and more ruthless than anyone else in it. He's counting on that. He expects us to be the good guys and back away rather than accept the blame for the cost of stopping him."
   "But if we don't back away and he presses his button, we will be to blame, Ma'am," Cardones said quietly. Honor's eyes flashed, and he waved a hand quickly. "I don't mean it that way, Skipper. You were right; the decision will be his. But by the same token, we'll always know we could have let him walk and avoided it."
   He'd said "we," Honor thought, but he'd meant "you." He was trying to make it a group decision, to give her an out, to protect her.
   "We're not going to consider that, Rafe," she replied softly. "Particularly not since we can't be sure he won't do it anyway." She rubbed her temple and shook her head. "However relaxed he may be trying to appear, he has to hate us for blowing away his fleet and his private little kingdom. He's already demonstrated how casually he's willing to kill an entire town, and he knows exactly how to punish us by using our own principles against us. The moral side of it wouldn't even occur to him, and what he's already done will earn him the death penalty from anyone who ever captures him. I offered him an option there, but he prefers to go for complete victory rather than accept prison as an alternative, so the threat of ultimate retribution won't deter him either. As he sees it, he's got nothing to lose, so why not do whatever he wants?"
   She sat back, hugging Nimitz to her breasts, and silence ruled the compartment as the others realized she was right.
   "If there were only some way to separate him from his transmitter," she murmured. "Some way to get him away from it so we could deal with him once and for all. Some..."
   She paused, and her eyes narrowed. Cardones straightened in his own chair, gazing at her anxiously as he felt her mind begin to race, then looked around the other faces. Her other officers looked as anxious as he felt, but Warner Caslet’s expression was almost as intent as hers.
   "Separate him from the transmitter," the Peep murmured. Honor’s eyes swiveled to him, and he nodded slowly. "We can't do that, can we? But what if we separated him and his transmitter from the planet?"
   "Exactly," Honor said. "Get him out of range of the charges, then deal with him."
   "He could still leave a timer," Caslet mused, and it was as if he and Honor were alone. The others could hear their words, but the two of them were communicating on a far deeper level than anyone else could follow.
   "Timers we can deal with," Honor replied. "We know where he's transmitting from, and he wouldn't trust his detonator where anyone else could get to it. That means it has to be in his HQ, and we can take that out from orbit if we have to."
   "It's in a town," Caslet objected.
   "Granted, but if he did use a timer, he'd set it to hold the detonation until he was too far away from Sidemore for us to overtake him short of hyper, and his repair ship's probably even slower than Wayfarer. Even if he could pull two hundred gees, which he can't, he'd still need over four hours to reach the hyper limit, and our LACs can pull almost six hundred. That gives us three hours in which they could overhaul him from a standing start."
   "Three hours to find a timer that could be anywhere in his HQ?" Caslet objected.
   "We don't have to," Honor said, her voice cold as space. "That's a fairly big town down there, but his HQ's close to one edge. If we have to, we can probably evacuate that end of town, then take out the HQ with a kinetic strike. Blast and thermal bloom would still tear up the local real estate, but the explosion would be clean, and we wouldn't have to kill anyone. For that matter, he'll be leaving a lot of people behind. Suppose we tell them the charges are down there? Then we offer them life in prison if they find his timer, deactivate it, and turn it over to us ... and tell them that if it goes off, we'll execute anyone who survives the explosions. With their 'fearless leader' already having sold them out, I think we can count on them to find it for us."
   "Risky either way, but you're probably right," Caslet agreed. "But how do we work it so that he's willing to leave the planet in the first place? He may be crazy, but he's too smart to go for anything that doesn't at least look feasible."
   "The com systems," Honor said softly. "The repair ships com systems. That's the weak spot in the thread he's hung his 'Sword of Damocles' from."
   "Of course!" Caslet's eyes blazed. "His hand unit couldn't possibly have the range. Once he's more than a few light-seconds from the planet, he'd have to use the ship's com to transmit the detonation command!"
   "Exactly." Honor’s chocolate eyes burned as bright as Caslet's, and she smiled. "Not only that, but I think I may see a way to take the timer out of the equation, as well, or at least give us at least another hour to work on finding it."
   "You do?" Caslet rubbed his jaw.
   "I think so. Harry," she turned to her chief engineer, "I'm going to need you to whip up some specialized hardware fast to pull this off. First..."
 
   "All right, Mr. Warnecke," Honor told the face on her com screen some hours later. "I've considered my options, just as I said I would, and I have an offer for you."
   "Indeed?" Warnecke smiled like a benign uncle and raised his hands in eloquent invitation. "Talk to me, Captain Harrington. Amaze me with your wisdom."
   "You want to leave the system, and I want to be certain you don't blow up the planet as you depart, correct?" Honor spoke calmly, trying to ignore the furnace of Andrew LaFollet's emotions. They beat at her through her link to Nimitz, for her chief armsman was aghast at what she proposed to do, but she couldn't let herself worry about that just now. Her personal participation was the one bait which might lure a man who saw the universe only as an extension of himself, and would expect others to do the same, into her trap, and she concentrated all her attention on her enemy.
   "That seems to sum up our positions quite nicely," Warnecke agreed.
   "Very well. I propose to allow you and your people aboard your repair ship, but only after I've sent a boarding party aboard to disable all of her communication systems." Warnecke cocked his head, expression arrested, and she smiled. "Without a shipboard system to transmit your detonation order, you can't double-cross me at the last minute, now can you?"
   "You must be joking, Captain!" This time Warnecke's tone was testy, and he frowned. "If you take away my ability to transmit, you also take the gun out of my hand. I don't think I'm very interested in going aboard ship only to be blown out of space once I get there!"
   "Patience, Mr. Warnecke. Patience!" Honor smiled. "After my people have disabled your vessel's coms, you'll send your designated 'henchmen' aboard her. You yourself, however, and no more than three others of your choice, will be aboard a single unarmed shuttle docked to the exterior of your ship, where I and three of my officers will join you. Your shuttle transmitter will, of course, be able to send the detonation command at any time during this process. My people will then disable all transmitters aboard all small craft docked in your boat bays. Once they report to me that all your long-range com systems, except the one aboard your shuttle, are inoperable, I'll allow it to depart orbit. You will also have aboard your shuttle a short-range radio, no more than five hundred klicks' maximum range, as determined by my people, not yours, with which to maintain communication with your shipboard personnel. Once you've satisfied yourself that all my boarders have left your vessel, you, myself, and my three officers will remain aboard the shuttle while you head for the hyper limit. Assuming nothing, ah, untoward happens before reaching the limit, you'll then go aboard your ship, and my officers and I will undock the shuttle and return to my ship, taking with us the only means by which you could detonate the charges. Since the shuttle will be unarmed, we will, of course, be unable to hamper your departure in any way."
   She raised one hand, palm uppermost, and arched both eyebrows, and Warnecke stared at her for several seconds. "An interesting proposal, Captain," he murmured finally, "but while it would never do to accuse a gentlewoman and an officer of duplicity, what's to prevent your boarding party from planting an explosive device of your own while destroying my transmitters? I would really be most unhappy to translate into hyper only to have my ship blow up."
   "Your own people will be free to oversee their operations. My boarders will be armed, of course, and any attempt actually to interfere with them will be met with deadly force. But your people don't really have to interfere, do they? All they have to do is tell you such a device has been placed, and you press the button."
   "True." Warnecke scratched his beard gently. "But then there'd be the situation aboard the shuttle, Captain. I appreciate your willingness to offer yourself as a hostage for the honesty of your intentions, but you wish to bring three of your officers with you, as well. Now, if you put four armed military people, including yourself, in a situation like that, they might just decide to do something heroic, and I wouldn't like that, either."
   "Perhaps not, but I have to have some means of making certain you don't send the order over the shuttle com."
   "True," Warnecke said again, then smiled lazily. "However, Captain, I think I'm going to have to insist that your personnel be unarmed."
   "Impossible," Honor snapped, and prayed he wouldn't guess she'd already considered this very point. "I have no intention of providing you with additional hostages, Mr. Warnecke."
   "I'm afraid you don't have a choice," he said. "Come, Captain! Where’s that warrior's courage, that willingness to die for your beliefs?"
   "Dying for my beliefs isn't the issue," Honor shot back. "Dying and allowing you to blow up the planet is."
   "Then I think we have an impasse. A pity. It seemed like such a nice idea."
   "Wait." Honor folded her hands behind her and began to pace back and forth, frowning in obvious thought. Warnecke sat back, toying with his hand-held transmitter, and whistled a cheerful tune while the seconds oozed past. Then she stopped and faced the pickup once more.
   "All right, you can check us for arms when we come aboard," she said, carefully hiding the fact that she'd intended to make that offer from the outset, "but my people will still be aboard your ship when you do so, so I advise you to be very careful about how you go about it. We'll board your shuttle before the transmitters on your other small craft are disabled, and one of my engineers will place a demolition charge on the exterior of your shuttle, one sufficiently powerful to destroy your entire ship."
   "A demolition charge?" Warnecke blinked, and she hid a smile at the evidence that she'd finally managed to startle him.