Weber David. Honor Among Enemies

   And that, of course, was the reason for Rafe's concern, If the bad guys had multiple ships working single systems, the opposition might be far tougher than the Admiralty had assumed.
   "I wish we knew just how the Andies tumbled to us," Truman murmured, and Honor nodded.
   "I do, too," she admitted, "but Rabenstrange didn't say and I can't really blame him. Just telling us they know could jeopardize their intelligence net. We'd be asking a bit much for them to simply tell our own counterintelligence types how they'd done it."
   "Agreed, Milady," Cardones said. He rubbed his nose, then shrugged. "I'd also like to know just why the pattern's shifted this way. According to Commander Hauser’s figures, we're the only ones losing merchies in groups."
   "That may be simple probability," Truman said. "We've got more ships out here than anyone else, despite our losses. If anyone's going to take multiple hits, the people with the most targets are the ones who'd get hit most often."
   "And when you add our drawdown in light units," Honor pointed out, "we actually turn into more tempting targets than someone like the Andies, who still have warships available to respond. If I were a raider, I'd pick on the people I knew weren't in a position to drop a squadron of destroyers into my cosy little web."
   "I know, but I just can't help feeling there's something more to it," Cardones said.
   "Maybe there is, but the only way to find out what it might be is to go see for ourselves." Honor tapped another command into her terminal, and bright green lines sprang into existence in the holo chart. They linked ten star systems, six in Breslau and four in Posnan, in an elongated, complex pattern thirty-two light-years across at its widest point, and she gazed at it moodily.
   "If we follow this pattern," she said after a moment, "we'll have one ship, and a different one, entering or departing one of these systems every week or so. If anyone is lying low and watching for us, they won't see the same ship hanging around for extended periods. That should keep us from looking like trolling warships, and it puts us in the center of the zone of heaviest losses and lets us patrol the widest area once we get there."
   "Yes, it does," Cardones admitted. "Assuming we don't run into anyone operating in squadron strength, I'd say it's clearly our best approach. But it does move us into Posnan, and it leaves all these stars in Breslau," he tapped at his own terminal, and nine more stars blinked, "uncovered. We're taking losses there, too, and Breslau is where we're tasked for operations."
   "I know," Honor sighed. "But if we extend the pattern, we also extend times between stars. We spend more time in hyper and less in n-space, where we're most likely to actually find and kill pirates. This seems to me to give us the best mix of deception and time in the zone, Rafe."
   "I agree," Cardones said in turn. "I just wish we could cover more area if we're going to split up anyway. However we go at it, you know we won't be there when someone gets hit, and the cartels are going to howl that we're, that you're, not doing our job if that happens."
   "The cartels are just going to have to accept the best we can do," Honor replied. "Our shipping will still be hit whatever pattern we follow, and without more Q-ships, there's not much we can do about it. I know they're going to complain if we aren't covering a system and they lose a ship there, but the fact is that the pirates have the initiative. They're the ones who decide where they'll raid; all we can do is follow them and hurt them badly enough the survivors decide to go somewhere else. If we clear one area, they'll move to another and we'll follow them, which should at least let us cramp the scale of their operations. And once we pick a few of them off, the Admiralty can point to the kill numbers as proof that we're actually doing some good."
   "You know what I wish?" Truman asked. Honor looked at her, and the other captain shrugged. "I wish we knew who was funding and supporting the bastards. You know as well as I do that the average piracy ring can afford to lose and replace vessels, and crews, all year long if as much as a third of them manage to take a decent prize on each cruise. Think about it. These eleven ships," she tapped her screen, where the names of the most recently missing vessels were displayed, "represent an aggregate value of almost twelve billion just for the hulls. You can buy a lot of ships heavy enough to kill merchies for that kind of money."
   "According to Commander Hauser, the Andies are working on that, just like ONI," Honor said. "If we can identify whoever's actually disposing of the ships and cargoes, we'll be in a position to demand their local authorities take action against them." Truman made a sound which might charitably have been called a laugh, and Honor shrugged. "I know a lot of the locals will be in bed with the pirates, but if they're too stupid, or dirty, to take at least pro forma action, I suspect Admiral Rabenstrange would be delighted to drop a squadron of the wall in on them to convince them to see reason. We, unfortunately, don't have that sort of firepower. All we can do is pour water on the fire and at least make them replace losses."
   "I know," Truman sighed, "but I can wish, can't I?"
   "I'll wish right along with you," Honor agreed. "In the meantime, this looks to me like the best way to proceed in light of the information and forces available to us."
   "Agreed," Truman said, and Cardones nodded, though he still seemed a bit unhappy at the prospect. Honor knew most of his unhappiness was for her sake, since she was the one who was going to catch any criticism that came the squadron's way, and she wondered if he'd worked through the same logic Admiral White Haven had explained to her on Grayson. It seemed likely; Rafe was sharp, and the level of his unease indicated more than a mere sense of tactical exposure.
   "All right," she said more briskly, shaking off her own awareness of those same points. "In that case, Alice, we'll go with the pattern you and I discussed. You'll take Parnassus to Telmach and Samuel will take Scheherazade to Posnan to start your legs. I'll take Wayfarer to Libau for the first leg through Walther, and Allen and Gudrid will take the first Hume-Gosset leg."
   Truman nodded. The patrol pattern Honor had outlined would put her own Parnassus and Wayfarer in the systems of maximum threat for the first portion of the pattern, while MacGuire's Gudrid would have the closest thing to a milk run for her first system.
   "All right." Honor said again. She sat up straighter and looked both her subordinates in the eye in turn as Nimitz flowed up over her shoulder to sit on the back of her chair. "There are two more things we should consider. The first is what we do with anyone we capture. Rafe was out here in Fearless with me, so he already knows my policy, Alice, but you weren't. Have you had a chance to review my memo on it?"
   "I have," Truman replied with a sober nod.
   "Do you have any problems with it?" Honor asked quietly.
   "No, Ma'am." Truman shook her head. "If anything, you're being too lenient."
   "Perhaps so," Honor acknowledged, "but we have to at least pretend the Confederacy has a functional government, until they prove otherwise, at any rate. In the meantime, I'll draft formal orders for you, Allen, and Samuel to cover the situation. Remember that we need any information we can get on operational patterns, though. If anybody wants to deal by turning informer, feel free to use your initiative and judgment as to terms."
   Truman nodded, and Honor rubbed her eyes wearily. "And that brings me to my last point, which is the possibility that these new patterns indicate we aren't looking just at normal raiders, or even privateers. The 'liberation governments' in Psyche and Lutrell are the most likely culprits if someone is operating in squadron strength, but there's one other possibility."
   "Peeps," Truman said flatly, and Honor nodded.
   "Exactly. Neither ONI nor the Andies have picked up any signs of it, but the Peeps have their own connections out here. For that matter, their embassies are still open, since they aren't at war with Silesia or the Andies. It wouldn't be too hard for them to make a quiet deal with one of the smaller system's governors for clandestine resupply, and their embassies' intelligence on shipping patterns is probably at least as good as ours. If they have managed to slip a raiding squadron in on us, they'd go after our shipping, not anyone else's, and they wouldn't want the crews of the ships they hit getting loose to tell us they're here."
   "Unless their purpose is to force the Admiralty to cut loose heavier forces to chase them," Truman pointed out. "That's exactly what they tried to do before they hit you in Yeltsin, Honor, and they succeeded. Why not deliberately let our people 'get away'? Wouldn't it make sense to be obvious if their object is to prove to the Admiralty how seriously our shipping here is threatened?"
   "A possibility," Honor agreed, "but I don't think they would. Their operations before Fourth Yeltsin were part of a coordinated plan designed to impose a temporary change in our deployments to suck forces away from a specific objective for a single offensive strike. They could be trying to draw us into false deployments again, but this far from home there's no way they could coordinate the front. I suspect that means they'd go for a longer, general diversion, not a specific, short-term one." She frowned at the holo, rubbing the tip of her nose, then shrugged.
   "On top of that, anything they sent out here would find itself in a world of hurt if we went after it in a big way. Without regular fleet bases of their own, which they don't have, they'd be at a severe disadvantage if we did transfer the forces to go after them. And don't forget the edge our shorter passage times through the Junction give us in information flow and deployment speeds. We'd have an excellent chance of making the transfer, hitting them hard, and getting our light forces back home before the rest of the Peeps even knew we'd made the move. By the same token, I doubt they want to do anything to irritate the Empire. They have to be delighted that the Emperor's sitting things out so far, and open, large-scale fleet operations in the Andies backyard might just cause him to change his mind. Besides, they don't have to operate openly to achieve the same objective. Bottom line, it doesn't matter who's raiding us, just that someone is."
   "True enough." Truman nodded.
   "But the point I'm making is this," Honor went on. "If it is the Peeps, they're going to be using real warships, not the lightly armed vessels your typical raider cobbles up. I think it's unlikely we're looking at Peep operations, and it's possible I'm jumping at shadows, but we can't afford to assume anything. So its important that we all keep our guards up, and for the record, I am instructing all captains to remain covert and avoid action against any Peep warship larger than a heavy cruiser. If we run into a battlecruiser or one of their battleships, which I hope to God we don't, try to avoid action. The loss of a real warship would hurt them more than losing a Q-ship will hurt the Star Kingdom, but it's much more important that we know what we're up against."
   "If they are operating out here, it's probably with light stuff," Truman said.
   "Of course it is, and if we run into any of their light units, we kill them," Honor said. "But I didn't expect to see battleships in Yeltsin last year, either. They've shown they're willing to operate their light battle squadrons aggressively, however inexperienced most of their officer corps was at the start of the war, and if there are any big boys out here, I want to know it. I'm serious, people. No heroics. If you're forced into action, go all out and don't worry about hiding any of your capabilities, but reporting the presence of heavy Peep units is more important than trying to destroy them. Understood?"
   Cardones and Truman both nodded, and Honor stood, scooping Nimitz from her chair back and setting him on her shoulder.
   "In that case, let's be about it. I want to be headed for our initial stations by zero-three-hundred."

Chapter FIFTEEN

   Klaus Hauptman nodded curtly to his driver as she opened the air limo door for him. His expression was thunderous as he climbed out of the palatial vehicle, and the limo's internal atmosphere had been anything but restful during the flight, but Ludmilla Adams took neither the curtness of his nod nor his anger personally. When Klaus Hauptman was upset with an individual, he let that individual know in no uncertain terms. Since he hadn't ripped her head off, he must be ticked off with someone else, and she'd learned long ago to view his occasional bursts of anger with much the same equanimity as someone who lived on the slope of an active volcano might view its eruptions. If they happened, they happened, and she was prepared to ride them out. Besides, arrogant and self-centered though he was, he normally did his best to make amends when he realized he'd lashed out at one of his employees for something someone else had done.
   Of course, it didn't always work that way, and he could be an incredibly vindictive old bastard, but Adams had been with him for over twenty years. She was not only his chauffeur but also his security chief and personal bodyguard, and she had the one quality Klaus Hauptman valued above all others: competence. He respected her, and they'd developed a comfortable relationship over the last two decades. It was a master-employee relationship, of course, not one between equals, but it provided her with a certain insulation against his tiffs.
   Now he stepped past her onto the manicured lawn of the Hauptman estate. The low-growing, sprawled-out mansion appeared to be only two stories tall, but appearances were deceiving. Although the Hauptmans themselves and their small army of servants lived on the upper floors everyone could see, ninety percent of it was buried in the nine basement and subbasement levels which housed its vehicle garages, maintenance areas, data management sections, and the hundreds of other business functions required to manage the Hauptman Cartel.
   The architects had created something which resembled a cross between a Roman villa from Old Earth and a rustic hunting lodge. The fusion of styles should have looked ridiculous, yet they merged somehow into a single, coherent whole that was oddly suited to the dense forest surrounding the estate. Of course, the whole thing was an ostentatious affectation in a counter-grav civilization. Towers were far cheaper and more space efficient, it was always easier to build upward than to excavate downward, and servants didn't have to walk half a kilometer from the kitchen to the dining room in a properly designed tower, but Klaus Hauptman’s grandfather had decided he wanted a country seat, and a country seat was what he'd built.
   "Will we be needing the car again this afternoon, Sir?" Adams asked calmly.
   "No," Hauptman snapped, then made himself pause. "Sorry, 'Milla. Didn't mean to bite your head off."
   "One of the things I'm here for, Sir," she replied wryly, and he barked a crack of laughter.
   "I still shouldn't do it," he admitted, "but..." He shrugged, and she nodded. "At any rate," he continued, "I won't be needing the car again today. In fact, I may be going off-planet soon."
   "Off-planet?" Adams repeated. "Should I alert our people to make preparations?"
   "No," Hauptman shook his head. "If I go at all, it won't be that sort of trip." Adams' eyebrow rose, and he smiled crookedly. "I don't mean to be cryptic, 'Milla. Believe me, I'll let you know in plenty of time before we go haring off anywhere."
   "Good," Adams said, and pressed a button on the remote on her left wrist. The limo rose behind them and whispered off to the parking entrance, and she followed him into the imposing edifice he modestly called home.
   A human butler opened the old-fashioned, unpowered door, and Hauptman nodded to him. The butler took one look at his employer's face and stood aside. He didn't say anything, but he quirked an eyebrow at Adams and shook his head wryly as Hauptman stalked past him. Adams smiled back and trailed the magnate down a long, airy hall embellished with a fortune in art.
   "Is Stacey here?" Hauptman grunted, and Adams consulted her wrist remote.
   "Yes, Sir. She's out by the pool."
   "Good." Hauptman paused and tugged at an ear lobe for a moment, then sighed. "You might as well go on, 'Milla. I'm sure you've got things of your own to take care of, but we'll be staying home tonight. If you're free, I'd appreciate your joining us for supper."
   "Of course, Sir." The security chief nodded, then watched Hauptman walk on down the hall without her, and a small smile played about her lips. He was an odd duck, her employer. Curt, self-centered, capable of atrocious rudeness, arrogant, hot-tempered, and totally unaware of the sublime sense of superiority his wealth gave him, yet capable of consideration, kindness, even generosity, as long as he could be those things on his own terms, and imbued with an iron sense of obligation to those in his employ. If he hadn't been the wealthiest man in the Star Kingdom, the only word that would have applied was "spoiled," she thought. As it was, one could only call him "eccentric" and let it go at that.
   Klaus Hauptman stalked on down the corridor, unaware of his bodyguard's thoughts. He had other things on his mind, and he wasn't looking forward to them as he stepped out into the estate's central courtyard.
   The formal garden's carefully tended Old Earth rose; and Manticoran crown blossom formed lanes that splashed the court with color and led the eye to the huge swimming pool at its heart. That pool was half the size of a soccer field, and its center was dominated by an ornate fountain. Vast bronze fish from half a dozen planets spouted water into the pool from their open mouths while mermaids and mermen lounged among them and the constant, splashing murmur of water was subliminally soothing.
   At the moment, however, Hauptman’s attention was on the young woman in the pool. Her hair was as dark as his own, but she had her mothers brown eyes. She also had her mother's high cheekbones and oval face to go with those eyes, and her features had their own strength. She wasn't beautiful, but, in its own way, that was a statement of power, for she could have the finest biosculpt in the galaxy and had herself turned into a goddess. Stacey Hauptman had chosen not to and her willingness to settle for the face genetics had given her when she didn't have to said that this was a woman who was comfortable with who and what she was-and who had no need to prove anything to anyone.
   She turned at the end of a lap and paused, treading water as she caught sight of her father. He waved, and she waved back.
   "Hi, Daddy! I didn't expect you home this afternoon."
   "Something came up," he replied. "Do you have a minute? We need to talk."
   "Of course." She stroked strongly to a ladder, climbed out of the pool, and reached for a towel. She was trim and lithe but richly curved, and Hauptman felt a spurt of irritation at the skimpiness of her suit. He suppressed it with an equally familiar sense of wry self amusement. His daughter was twenty-nine T-years and she'd amply demonstrated her ability to look out for herself. What she did and who she did it with were her affair, but he supposed every father felt the same way. After all, fathers remembered what they'd been like as young men, didn't they? He chuckled at the thought and walked over to pick up her robe. He held it for her to slip into against the dropping evening temperature, the waved her to the chairs around one of the poolside tables. She belted the robe, sat, leaned back, crossed her legs, and looked at him curiously, and his amusement faded as his mind returned to the day's news.
   "We've lost another ship," he said abruptly.
   Stacey's eyes darkened in understanding, and not just on a personal level. Her father had said "we," and the term was accurate, for Hauptman had learned from his own father's mistakes. Eric Hauptman had belonged to the last pre-prolong generation, and he'd insisted on maintaining direct, personal control of his empire till the day of his death. Klaus had been given some authority, but he'd been only one of many managers, and his father's death had left him woefully unprepared for his responsibilities. Worse, he'd thought he was prepared for them, and his first few years in the CEO's suite had been a roller coaster ride for the cartel. Klaus Hauptman wasn't prepared to repeat that error, especially since, unlike his father, he could anticipate at least another two T-centuries of vigorous activity. He'd married quite late, but he'd be around for a long, long time, and he'd had no intention of letting Stacey turn into an unproductive drone, on the one hand, or of leaving her to feel excluded and shut out, and untrained, on the other. She was already the cartel's operations director for Manticore-B, including the enormous asteroid-mining activity there, and she'd gotten that position because she'd earned it, not just because she was the boss's daughter. She was also, since her mother's death, the one person in the universe Klaus Hauptman totally and unequivocally loved.
   "Which ship was it?" she asked now, and he closed his eyes for a moment.
   "Bonaventure," he sighed, and heard her draw a breath of pain.
   "The crew? Captain Harry?" she asked quickly, and he shook his head.
   "He got most of his people out, but he stayed behind, he said quietly. "So did his exec."
   "Oh, Daddy," Stacey whispered, and he clenched fist in his lap. Harold Sukowski had been captain of the Hauptman family space yacht when Stacey was a girl. She'd had a terrible crush on him, and it was he who'd taught her basic astrogation and coached her through her extra-atmospheric pilots license. He and his family had become very important to Stacey especially after her mother died. Much as he loved her Hauptman knew he didn't always manage to show it and her wealth and position had produced a lonely childhood. She'd learned early to be wary of people who wanted to be her "friends," and most of those she'd actually come into contact with had been employees of her father. Sukowski had, too, of course, but he'd also been a rated starship captain, with the glamour that attached to that, and a man who'd treated her not like a princess, not as the heir to the Kingdoms greatest fortune, not even as his future boss, but as a lonely little girl.
   She'd adored him. In fact, Hauptman had experienced a deep, unexpected jealousy when he realized how his daughter saw Sukowski. To his credit, he'd exercised self-restraint in the captains case, and looking back he was glad he had. He hadn't been the easiest father a motherless daughter could have had, and the Sukowski’s family had helped fill the void his wife's death had in Stacey’s life. She'd missed Sukowski dreadfully when he turned the yacht over to someone else, but she'd also been delighted when his seniority with the Hauptman Line gave him Bonaventure straight from the builders. She'd dragged her father to the commission party and presented Sukowski with an antique sextant as a commissioning gift, and he'd responded by naming her as a supernumerary crew member to make her a keel plate owner of his new ship.
   "I know." Hauptman opened his eyes and looked out over the pool, and his jaw clenched. Damn the Admiralty! If they hadn't screwed around, this wouldn't have happened! Hauptman hated to lose any of his people, but he would have cut off his own hand to spare Stacey this. And, he admitted, he felt the loss himself, deeply and personally. There weren't many people he'd ever felt really close to, and he'd never shown Sukowski any favoritism because he made it a policy not to do that, but the captain's loss hurt.
   "Have we heard anything?" Stacey asked after a moment.
   "Not yet. Our Telmach factor sent off a letter as soon as Bonaventure's people reported her loss, but there hasn't been time for anything else to come in yet. Of course, Sukowski had the documentation of our ransom offer in his safe."
   "Do you really expect that made any difference?" Stacey asked harshly. Her voice was angry now, not at her father, but at their helplessness. Hauptman knew that, yet hearing her anger only fanned his own, and he clamped his jaw even tighter.
   "I don't know," he said finally. "It's all we've got."
   "Where was the Navy?" Stacey demanded. "Why didn't they do something?"
   "You know the answer to that," Hauptman returned. "They're 'stretched too thin meeting other commitments.' Hell, it was all I could do pry four Q-ships out of them!"
   "Excuses! Those are just excuses, Daddy!"
   "Maybe." Hauptman looked down at his hands again, then sighed once more. "No, let's be honest, Stace. It probably was the best they could do."
   "Oh? Then why did they put Harrington in command? If they wanted to stop things like this, why didn't they send a competent officer to Silesia?"
   Hauptman winced internally. Stacey had never met Honor Harrington. All she knew of her was what she'd read in the 'faxes and seen on HD ... or what her father had told her. And Hauptman was uncomfortably aware that he hadn't exactly gone out of his way to give his daughter an unbiased account of what had happened in Basilisk. In point of fact, he knew his sense of humiliation had painted Harrington's actions during their confrontation with even darker hues when he described them to Stacey later. He wasn't particularly proud of that, but neither was he about to go back and try to correct the record at this late date. Especially, he told himself fiercely, since Harrington really was a loose warhead!
   Yet that also meant he couldn't tell her he was the one who'd pushed for Harrington’s assignment. Not without making explanations he didn't care to make, at any rate.
   "She may be a lunatic," he said instead, "but she's a first-rate combat commander. I don't like the woman, you know that, but she is good in a fight. I imagine that's why they chose her. And whatever they've done or not done, or their reasons for it," he went on more strongly, "the fact remains that we've lost Bonaventure."
   "How much will it hurt us?" Stacey asked, reaching for a less personally painful topic.
   "In and of itself, not that badly. She was insured, and I'm confident we'll recover from the insurers. But our rates will be going up, again, and unless Harrington actually does some good, we really may have to look closely at suspending operations in the Confederacy."
   "If we pull out, everyone else will," Stacey warned.
   "I know." Hauptman rose and jammed his hands into his pockets while he stared out over the pool. "I don't want to do it, Stace, and not just because I don't want to lose our revenues. I don't like what a general pull out from Silesia will do to the balance of trade. The Kingdom needs that shipping revenue and those markets, especially now. And that doesn't even consider what it might mean for public opinion. If raggedy-assed pirates chase us clear out of the Confederacy, people may see it as a sign that we're not holding our own against the Peeps any longer."
   Stacey nodded behind him. Her father's long and stormy history with the Royal Navy stemmed in large part from his role as one of the Star Kingdom's major shipbuilders, which put him in constant conflict with the RMN's accountants, but she knew another part stemmed from the Navy's refusal to bend to his will. In addition, like her father, she was a shrewd political analyst, and she understood how that same rocky relationship, coupled with his wealth, made him so attractive to the Opposition. As one of the Opposition parties' major economic sponsors, he was careful to limit his public support for the war effort to "proper" statements in order to retain their support for his own ends, yet he was fully aware of the implications of the fight against the Peoples Republic... and of what he stood to lose if the Star Kingdom was defeated.
   "How many of our people have we lost so far?" she asked.
   "Counting Sukowski and his exec, we've got almost three hundred unaccounted for," Hauptman said bitterly, and she winced. Her own sphere of authority didn't bring her into direct contact with their shipping interests very often, and she hadn't realized the number was so high.
   "Is there anything more we can do?" Her voice was very quiet, not pushing but dark with the sense of responsibility she'd inherited from her father, and he shrugged.
   "I don't know." He stared out over the pool for another moment, then turned back to face her. "I don't know," he repeated, "but I'm thinking about going out there in person."
   "Why?" she asked quickly, her tone sharp with sudden alarm. "What can you do from there that you can't do from here?"
   "For one thing, I can cut something like three months off the communications lag," he said dryly. "For another, you know as well as I do that nothing can substitute for direct, firsthand observation of a problem."
   "But if you poke around out mere, you could get captured, or killed!" she protested.
   "Oh, I doubt that. If I went at all, I'd go in Artemis or Athena," he assured her, and she paused thoughtfully. Artemis and Athena were two of the Hauptman Lines' Atlas-class passenger liners. The Atlases had minimal cargo capacity, but they were equipped with military-grade compensators and impellers, and they were excellent at getting people from place to place quickly. Because Artemis and Athena had been expressly built for the Silesian run, they'd also been fitted with light missile armaments, and their high speed and ability to defend themselves against run-of-the-mill pirates made them extremely popular with travelers to the Confederacy.
   "All right," Stacey said after a moment. "I guess you'd be safe enough. But if you go, then I'm going with you."
   "What?" Hauptman blinked at her, then shook his head adamantly. "No way, Stace! One of us has to stay home to mind the store, and I don't want you traipsing around Silesia."
   "First," she shot back, not giving a centimeter, "we've got highly paid, highly competent people for the express purpose of 'minding the store,' Daddy. Second, if it's safe enough for you, it's safe enough for me. And, third, we're talking about Captain Harry."
   "Look," her father said persuasively, "I know how you feel about Captain Sukowski, but you can't do anything that I can't. Stay home, Stace. Please. Let me handle this."
   "Daddy," steely brown eyes met blue, and Klaus Hauptman felt a sinking sensation, "I'm going. We can argue about this all you like, but in the end, I'm going."

Chapter SIXTEEN

   Honor looked up from her book reader as her com chimed. MacGuiness poked his head into her day cabin and started towards the terminal, but then it chimed again, this time with the two-toned note of an urgent signal, and she thrust her reader aside.
   "I'll take it, Mac," she said, standing quickly. Nimitz raised his head from his own position on his perch, and she felt his quick surge of interest, but she had little time to consider it as she punched the acceptance key. She opened her mouth, but Rafe Cardones started speaking with most unusual abruptness almost before his image stabilized.
   "I think we've got our first customer, Ma'am. We've got a bogey tracking up from low and astern with an overtake of nine hundred KPS, and he's accelerating hard. Tactical calls it three hundred gees, and he's one-point-seven million klicks back. Assuming constant accelerations, John figures he'll intercept at zero range in about nineteen minutes."
   "You just picked him up?"
   "Yes, Ma'am." Cardones smiled like a shark. "We don't see any sign of ECM, either. Looks like he was lying doggo and just lit off his drive."
   "I see." Honor's smile matched her exec's. "Mass?" she asked.
   "From his impeller signature, Jenny figures it at about fifty-five k-tons."
   "Well, well." Honor rubbed the tip of her nose for a moment, then nodded sharply. "All right, Rafe. Sound General Quarters. Have Susan and Scotty assemble their boarding teams, and detail LAC One for launch on my signal. I'll be on the bridge in five minutes."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am."
   The GQ alarm began to wail even as Honor cut the circuit, and Nimitz landed on her desk with a thump. She stood and turned to find that MacGuiness had already gotten out her skinsuit, and she flashed him a smile of thanks as she grabbed it and headed for her sleeping cabin. The steward was dragging out the 'cat's skinsuit as the hatch closed behind her, and she began tearing off her uniform. She left it strewn on the carpet, Mac would forgive her this time, and climbed into her suit with painful haste. By the time she was back through the hatch, MacGuiness had Nimitz suited, and she snatched the 'cat up and headed for the private captain’s lift at a run.
   She punched the destination code and then made herself stand still and consider what she knew. The acuity of merchant-grade sensors varied widely. Any skipper with more than half a brain wanted the best ones he could get if he was going to wander around the Confederacy, but no sensors were any better than the people who manned them, and some merchant spacers tended to be a bit lackadaisical about such things.
   Bearing that in mind, whoever was behind Wayfarer probably wouldn't be too surprised if she didn't react immediately to his presence, but he was going to be suspicious if she kept on not reacting for very long. Which meant...
   The lift door opened, and she strode into the orderly bustle of her bridge. Her weapons crews were still closing up, they still had more rough edges than she liked, but Jennifer Hughes' tac crew was on-line and monitoring the bogey's approach. She glanced at the chrono and allowed herself a small smile. Wayfarer's designers had placed her captains quarters only one deck down from and directly below her bridge, and the private lift was a marvelous luxury. Honor had promised Rafe she'd be here in five minutes, and she'd made it in just over three.
   Cardones vacated the chair at the center of the bridge, and she nodded to him as she lowered herself into it. Nimitz swarmed up onto its back while she racked her helmet on the chair arm, and she punched the button that deployed her displays about her.
   Wayfarer was twenty-one light-minutes from the G2 primary of the Walther System, just under fifteen light-years from Libau, stooging along at a mere 11,175 KPS with an accel of only seventy-five gravities. That was on the low side, even for a merchie, but not unheard of for a skipper with worn drive nodes, and Honor had chosen it with malice aforethought. She hadn't wanted anyone to miss her, and such a low velocity was the equivalent of blood in the water. And it seemed to have worked. The bogey had closed another two hundred thousand kilometers, and his speed was still building. He already had a velocity advantage of nine hundred and ten KPS, and it was rising steadily, but that was going to change. He wouldn't want too much overtake when he actually overhauled, but he clearly expected Wayfarer to bolt when she finally saw him. He wanted a little extra speed in hand if she did, and it would be a pity to disappoint him.
   "All right, Rafe. Take us to max accel."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am. Chief O'Halley, bring us to one-point-five KPS squared."
   "Coming to one-point-five KPS squared, aye, Sir," the coxswain acknowledged, and Wayfarer suddenly bolted ahead at her maximum normal safe acceleration. It was only half that of the ship coming up from astern, but it would be enough to convince him he'd been seen.
   "New time to overtake?"
   "Make it two-four-point-nine-four minutes, Milady," John Kanehama replied almost instantly, and she nodded.
   "Challenge him, Fred. Inform him we're a Manticoran vessel and order him to stand off."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am." Lieutenant Cousins spoke briefly into his pickup, and Honor watched her display narrowly. They were well within the powered envelope for impeller-drive missiles. A pirate wouldn't want to damage his prize, but...
   "Missile separation!" Jennifer Hughes sang out. "One bird closing at eight-zero thousand gees!" She watched her display for a moment, then nodded. "Not a hot bird, Ma'am. It'll pass to starboard at over sixty thousand klicks."
   "How kind of him," Honor murmured, watching the missile trace tear after her ship. It streaked up on her starboard side and detonated, out not only was it well clear of Wayfarer, it was also a standard nuke, not a laser head. Its meaning was clear, however. She considered continuing to run, although the raider had demonstrated he had the range to fire into her ship, he was unlikely to when she couldn't get away anyhow, but there was no guarantee the person behind that missile tube was feeling reasonable.
   "Anything on the com?"
   "Not yet, Ma'am."
   "I see. Very well, Rafe. Bring us hard to port and kill our accel, but keep the wedge up."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am."
   Wayfarer stopped accelerating, and Honor punched up LAC Squadron One's flagship. Commander Jacquelyn Harmon, Wayfarer's senior LAC CO, was a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with a pre-space fighter pilot's ego and a sardonic sense of humor, both of which probably stood the commander of such a frail craft in good stead. It was she who'd insisted on naming the twelve LACs under her command for the twelve apostles, and she rode the cramped command deck of HMLAC Peter as her image appeared on Honor’s small screen.
   "Ready, Jackie?" Honor asked.
   "Yes, Ma'am!" Harmon gave her a hungry smile, and Honor shook her head.
   "Remember we want them alive if we can get them."
   "We'll remember, Ma'am."
   "Very well. Launch at your discretion when we drop the sidewall, but stay close."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am."
   Honor killed the circuit and looked at Hughes. "Drop the starboard sidewall."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am. Dropping starboard sidewall now."
   Wayfarers starboard sidewall vanished. Seconds later, six small warships spat out of the "cargo bays" on her starboard flank on conventional thrusters. They raced clear of their mother ship's wedge before they brought up their own drives, then hovered there, screened from radar and gravitic detection by her massive shadow, and Honor looked back at her plot.
   The bogey was decelerating hard now. Given his current overtake, he'd overfly Wayfarer by over a hundred and forty thousand kilometers before coming to rest relative to her, but his velocity would be sufficiently low to make boarding simple. Of course, he might be just a bit surprised to discover who was about to be boarded by whom, she thought coldly.
   "I've got good passive readouts for Fire Plan Able, Ma'am," Hughes reported. "Solution input and running, and visual tracking has him now. Coming up on your repeater."
   Honor glanced down. The decelerating raider was stern-on to the pickup, giving her a good look up the open rear of his wedge. He was smaller than most destroyers, and he couldn't be very heavily armed if he'd shoehorned a hyper drive and Warshawski sails into that hull. He had a conventional warship's hammerhead ends, however, which suggested at least some chase armament, and whatever he mounted was aimed straight at Wayfarer. She checked Kanehama's intercept solution and nodded mentally. There was no point letting that ship get close enough to shoot through her sidewall, not when she had a perfect up the kilt shot at him.
   "On my mark, Jenny," she said quietly, raising her left hand, then keyed her own com with her right hand. "Unknown vessel," she said crisply, "this is Her Majesty's Armed Merchant Cruiser Wayfarer. Cut your drive immediately, or be destroyed!"
   She slashed her hand downward as she spoke, and every weapon in Wayfarers broadside fired as one. Eight massive grasers flashed out, the closest missing the bogey by less than thirty kilometers, and ten equally massive missiles followed. As the single shot the bogey had fired, they were standard nukes, not laser heads, but unlike the bogeys, they detonated at a stand-off range of barely a thousand kilometers, completely bracketing him in their pattern.
   The message was abundantly clear, and just to give it added point, six LACs suddenly swooped up over their mother ship, locked their own batteries on the bogey, and lashed him with targeting radar and lidar powerful enough to boil his hull paint to be sure he knew they had.
   "Acknowledged, Wayfarer! Acknowledged!" a voice screamed over the com, and the bogeys drive died instantly. "Don't fire! God, please don't fire! We surrender!"
   "Prepare to be boarded," Honor said coldly. "Any resistance will result in the instant destruction of your vessel. Is that understood?"
   "Yes! Yes!"
   "Good," she said in that same, icy tone, then cut the circuit and leaned back in her chair to smile at Cardones. "Well," she said far more mildly, "that was exciting, wasn't it?"
   "More so for some than for others, Ma'am," Cardones replied with a broad grin.
   "I suppose so," Honor agreed, and glanced at Hughes. "Nicely done, Guns, and that goes for all of you," she told the bridge at large. Pleased smiles answered, and she turned back to Cardones. "Tell Scotty and Susan they can launch, then match velocities. The LACs can keep an eye on our friend while we maneuver."
   "Aye, aye, Ma'am."
   Honor stood and stretched, then gathered Nimitz back up once more. "I imagine you can finish up here, Mr. Exec," she said for the benefit of the rest of her bridge crew, "and you pulled me away from a perfectly good book. I'll be in my quarters. Ask Major Hibson to escort the commander of that object to my cabin after she parks the rest of its people in the brig, please."
   "Yes, Ma'am. We can do that," Cardones agreed, still grinning.
   "Thank you," Honor said, and headed for the lift while the watch chuckled behind her.
 
   The raider's commander was a squat, chunky man who'd once been muscular but long since gone to fat, and his flabby face was gray with shock as Major Hibson thrust him into Honor's cabin. He wasn't handcuffed, and he outmassed the petite Marine by at least two-to-one, but only a complete fool would have taken liberties with Susan Hibson. Not that the pirate appeared to have anything left inside with which liberties might have been taken.
   Nonetheless, Andrew LaFollet stood alertly at Honor’s right shoulder, gray eyes cold, and rested one hand on the butt of his pulser as the raider shambled to a halt and tried to square his shoulders. Honor leaned back in her chair, stroking Nimitz's prick ears with one hand, and regarded him with eyes that were just as icy as her armsman's, and his effort to stand erect sagged back into hopelessness. He looked both beaten antipathetic, but she reminded herself of his loathsome trade and let the silence drag out endlessly before she smiled thinly.
   "Surprise, surprise." Her voice was cold, and the prisoner flinched. She felt his shock-numbed terror through Nimitz, and the 'cat bared needle fangs contemptuously at him.
   "You and your crew were captured in the act of piracy by the Royal Manticoran Navy," she went on after a moment. "As this vessels captain, I have full authority under interstellar law to execute every one of you. I advise you to spare me any blustering which might irritate me."
   The prisoner flinched again, and Honor felt a trickle of cold, amused approval of her hard case persona leaking from Susan Hibson. She held the pirate with glacial brown eyes until the man nodded jerkily, then let her chair swing back upright.