by David Weber
"If you don't mind, Your Grace, I'll let Commander Zahn describe what happened. She was on Tactical at the time."
"Fine." Honor nodded, and moved her gaze to Zahn. "Go ahead, Commander."
"Yes, Your Grace." Honor could taste the youthful Sidemorian's nervousness, but if she hadn't been able to sense the emotions of others directly, she would never have guessed that someone as outwardly calm and composed as Zahn felt at all uncomfortable.
"Thirteen days ago," Zahn began, "we were on station in the Brennan System. We'd been there for five days, and we were scheduled to depart in another three. It had been a thoroughly routine patrol up until that point, although we had picked up a few suspicious movements in-system."
"According to our sources," Reynolds put in for Honor's benefit, "Governor Heyerdahl may have a private arrangement with the Brennan System's domestic criminal element. So far as we can tell, it seems to be mainly fairly small-scale smuggling, not any sort of accommodation with hijackers or pirates . . . or slavers. LaFroye was tasked with tracking any 'black' shipping movements, mostly to confirm that smuggling is all Heyerdahl is up to."
"Understood." Honor nodded. If smuggling was all Heyerdahl was involved in, then he was a paragon of law-abiding virtue compared to most Silesian system governors. "Continue, Commander, please."
"Yes, Your Grace. As I say, we'd been on station for five days when our FTL recon platforms picked up the arrival of an Andermani battlecruiser. She wasn't squawking any transponder code, but we got a hard ID on her emissions signature from one of the platforms. Then we lost her completely."
"Lost her," Honor repeated.
"Yes, Your Grace. She just dropped right off the platforms' passives."
"What was the range to the closest platform?" Honor asked intently.
"Under eight light-minutes," Zahn replied, and Honor's eyes narrowed. She glanced expressionlessly at McKeon and Yu, and both of them returned her look with an equal absence of expression. Then all three of them returned their attention to Zahn.
"We were surprised to lose her at such a short range," the tac officer continued. "Our latest intelligence update had emphasized that their stealth systems had been substantially improved, but nothing in the briefing had suggested that much improvement. So as soon as we lost her, the Captain ordered me to find her again. Since the main recon platforms were fixed, I deployed a standard shell of Ghost Rider drones to blanket the volume around her last known locus with mobile platforms." The Sidemorian grimaced. "We didn't find her."
"How long did it take your drones to reach the locus, Commander?" Yu asked.
"Approximately sixty-two minutes, Sir," Zahn replied. "Given her observed velocity at the time we lost her and Intelligence's latest estimate on her probable maximum acceleration, she ought to have been within five-point-one light-minutes of her last observed position. She wasn't."
"Are you certain?" Honor asked. "She wasn't just coasting ballistic?"
"I think that's exactly what she was doing, Your Grace," Zahn replied. "But she wasn't doing it within five light-minutes of the last place we'd seen her. My drones covered that volume like a fine-toothed comb. If she'd been there, we would have found her."
"I see." Honor's voice was merely thoughtful, but inwardly she was impressed by the lieutenant commander's certitude. Young Zahn might be a bit nervous about finding herself face-to-face with so much seniority, but her confidence in her own competence was impressive. And, judging from the taste of Ackenheil's approving, almost paternal attitude towards her, that confidence was probably justified.
"So what do you think happened?" she asked after a moment.
"I think our estimates of their compensator efficiency are still low, Your Grace," Zahn told her. "And I think they may have a better feel for the capabilities of our standard surveillance systems than I'd like. I don't think they have an equally good feel for Ghost Rider's capabilities, but to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't like to make any bets even on that.
"If I'm right, then they were able to make a pretty decent estimate on exactly when and where they'd drop off of our orbital platforms' sensors using whatever improved stealth systems they were employing. I think that's exactly what they did, and that as soon as they were confident they'd pulled it off, they went to a higher acceleration than we thought they could pull on an evasion heading. And when they figured we might be getting drones into position to spot their emissions despite their stealth, they shut down and went ballistic, exactly as you just suggested they might have. But because they were able to pull a higher accel, they were outside the zone where even Ghost Rider's active systems could find them without an impeller signature."
"And how do you think they were able to make that close a time estimate?" Honor asked. In the wrong tone, her question might have suggested that she thought Zahn was inclined to believe in the improvement in the Andermani's capabilities she had just postulated as a way to excuse a less than stellar effort to find the elusive battlecruiser. The way it came out, it was clearly an honest information request, and she felt Zahn relax a bit more.
"I think there are two possibilities, Your Grace. We know from Captain Ferrero's report that the Andies clearly have an FTL com capability of their own. It's possible that they had stealthed platforms already in-system to observe us—or even a second stealthed starship doing the same thing—so that they knew when we deployed the drones. They're not particularly stealthy during the initial deployment phase," she pointed out.
"If they tracked the deployment, then they could have sent an FTL warning to the battlecruiser which would have given her at least a rough idea of when the drones might reach detection range of her. With that information, she would have had an equally rough idea of when she had to shut down her impellers to disappear from our passives."
"I don't much care for that scenario, Commander," Honor observed. "That, unfortunately, doesn't make it any less likely. But you said you saw two possibilities."
"Yes, Your Grace. Personally, I find the second one even more disturbing: they may have actually detected the Ghost Rider drones before the drones detected them."
"You're right," Honor said after a moment. "That is a more disturbing possibility." She glanced at Jaruwalski. "What do you think, Andrea?"
"At this point, Your Grace, I'm not prepared to rule anything out," Jaruwalski said frankly. "I realize it's always dangerous to overestimate a potential opponent's capabilities, but it's even more dangerous to underestimate them. Be that as it may, however, I'm strongly inclined to think that Commander Zahn's first hypothesis is the more likely. I know how hard it would be for us to detect an incoming Ghost Rider drone soon enough to shut down before it had us on passive, even if we were under stealth at the time. I don't see any way that anyone else could do it at all. Even making every possible allowance for improvements in their tech, I find it very difficult to believe that our local intelligence estimates could be far enough off for them to have developed the sort of capabilities which would let them manage a trick like that."
She had not, Honor noticed, said anything about the extent to which the Admiralty's intelligence estimates might be off.
"I'd have to concur with Captain Jaruwalski, Your Grace," Reynolds offered. "We could both be wrong, but I don't think we are. Not that far wrong."
"But the possibility that they had LaFroye under observation that close without her ever seeing them isn't all that much more palatable," Commander Orndorff pointed out.
"No, it isn't," Honor agreed with fairly massive understatement. She considered the implications for several silent seconds, then shook herself and returned her attention to Ackenheil and Zahn.
"I think we're going to have to accept, tentatively, at least, that one of your two hypotheses is correct, Commander. What happened after you failed to relocate her?"
"I ordered Commander Zahn to continue search operations," Ackenheil said before Zahn could reply. "I authorized the use of additional Ghost Rider drones, and I ordered a course ch
ange to take us towards the Andy's last known position."
"And?" Honor asked when he paused.
"And if the Andies had really planned on starting anything, Your Grace," Ackenheil said with unflinching honesty, "they probably would have blown my ship right out of space. And it would have been my fault, not Commander Zahn's."
"In what way?"
"Well, Your Grace, it's obvious in retrospect that the Andy made a depressingly accurate estimate of what I was likely to do. He was waiting for us. Still in stealth, and well on our side of where I estimated he could have gotten to in the elapsed time. The first thing that I knew, was when he locked us up."
"Locked you up." Honor repeated, and Ackenheil nodded.
"Yes, Your Grace. He didn't just have us on active sensors; he had us locked up with his fire control radar and lidar, and he kept us that way for over thirty seconds."
"I see." Honor sat back in her chair and exchanged another glance with McKeon and Yu. Then she gave her head a little toss, as if to clear her brain, and turned back to Ackenheil.
"And afterward?"
"And afterward, he just shut down his targeting systems and completely ignored us," Ackenheil replied. His voice was level, but Honor tasted the remembered echoes of white-hot rage. "I hailed him five times, Your Grace. He never responded once, never even identified himself."
* * *
"What the hell are those idiots playing at?" Alistair McKeon demanded rhetorically.
Captain Ackenheil and Lieutenant Commander Zahn had left the flagship to return to LaFroye. Honor had assured them both of her confidence in them, and that assurance had been genuine. It might not have been if Ackenheil had tried to minimize how completely the Andy battlecruiser had surprised him, but Honor had been surprised enough times herself to realize how easily it could have happened. And one thing she could be sure of was that if it was humanly possible, Jason Ackenheil would never let it happen again.
Which didn't make the fact that it could have happened once any more reassuring.
"It sounds like more of the same thing, to me," Alice Truman put in from the com screen above the conference table. She'd been brought thoroughly up to date when Honor summoned her to the electronic conference, and now she shook her head on the screen.
"But this incident is more pointed, Dame Alice," Warner Caslet pointed out. All eyes turned to him, and the commander of First Battle Squadron, Protector's Own, shrugged. "It was a lot more pointed. And there's not much question as to how directly it was pointed at us, either. Well, at the Star Kingdom, I suppose."
"There hasn't been much question about where most of their damned provocations were pointed," McKeon replied, and Caslet grimaced.
"That wasn't exactly what I meant. Or, rather, I've been wondering about something else, and I wish we had a way to answer the question that's been bothering me."
"What question?" Honor asked.
"Whether or not they've been prodding the Sillies as hard as they have us . . . or even harder." Honor looked at him, and he shrugged. "We know they've been giving us demonstrations of their capabilities, but have they been focusing solely on us? Or have they been making the same point to the Sillies?"
"Now that, Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski observed after a moment, "is an intriguing thought. And it would make sense."
"You think they're not just trying to convince us that they can handle our tech advantages?" Truman asked. "That they're making the point to the Sillies that the Confed Navy can't match the IAN's?"
"Something like that," Caslet agreed. "And that would make sense of how widely their anti-piracy forces are operating throughout Silly space, as well. If they're hoping to inspire us into backing off, then they may also be hoping to convince the Sillies that trying to resist any territorial demands they may press would be futile. Scattering their forces around in a way that shows how numerically powerful they are—and showing off their new toys to demonstrate how capable they are—could be part of both those strategies."
"Yes, they certainly could," Truman agreed. "Still, whoever that battlecruiser's skipper was, she took a big chance upping the ante that way. If Ackenheil had been feeling a bit more proddy, he might have been at battle stations and popped off a broadside before he realized he was only being harassed. Which could have ended up with us in a shooting war with the Empire."
"Yes, it could have," Honor agreed. "Unfortunately, this looks like more of the straight line progression in provocation we've been seeing, whoever it is they intend to provoke. Or why. The question, of course, becomes where they intend to stop. If they intend to stop."
"Whatever they 'intend,' it seems to me that they're running a serious chance of pushing things over the edge," McKeon said. "Goddamned idiots! If they actually intend to make territorial demands on Silesia, why the hell don't they just go ahead and tell us so?"
"I don't know." Honor sighed. "If I were calling the shots from the other side, I certainly would have at least started laying the groundwork for some sort of negotiated settlement. I can't believe they really want a shooting war with us over something like this!"
"Under normal circumstances, I'd agree with you, My Lady," Caslet said. "But their new choice for their Silesian commander makes me wonder."
"Um." Honor gazed at him, eyes troubled, then nodded unhappily and looked at the rest of her officers. "In some ways, I agree with Warner," she admitted. "Alice met Chien-lu von Rabenstrange the last time all three of us were out here, too, but the rest of you may not realize just how significant the Emperor's announcement that he's going to be appointed to the Silesian command really is. Von Rabenstrange isn't just any old flag officer. Not only is he a Gross Admiral, he's the Emperor's own first cousin, and fifth in the succession to the throne to boot. And he also has a reputation as one of the best combat commanders they have.
"But by the same token, he's an honorable man. And unlike Admiral von Sternhafen, he's no anti-Manticoran chauvinist. I don't think he'd feel comfortable about accepting responsibility for executing a policy he expected to lead to war, and he wouldn't be the sort to enjoy picking a fight with us the way Sternhafen might. I'm not saying he wouldn't accept the slot and carry out his orders to do just that anyway if he were ordered to, because he takes his duties as an officer seriously. But unless I'm very mistaken, he'd do all he could to talk the Emperor out of deliberately starting something. And he and Gustav have always been close, ever since they were at the Andie naval academy together, so I'm sure he'd have spoken his mind about it. So maybe the fact that they're sending him out to relieve Sternhafen is an indication that they really don't plan on starting something."
"Maybe," McKeon agreed sourly. "But whatever they may be planning, the way they're actually behaving is going to push us into an exchange of fire whether or not either side wants one! If they'd just make their demands and let us respond, one way or the other, both sides would know what the options were. At least that way we wouldn't start killing each other because of some sheer, stupid accident!"
"They probably aren't making formal demands because they don't realize what gutless wonders are running the Star Kingdom," Honor said with a flash of sudden rage. "They think there may actually be someone in the High Ridge Government with a spine—someone who'd actually stand up to them! Someone—"
She chopped herself off abruptly as she realized just how much frustration she was revealing. And, for that matter, startled to realize how angry she actually was . . . and how clearly she was allowing it to show, despite the way she'd admonished McKeon, Orndorff, and Brigham in the lift car.
No one else said anything else for at least thirty seconds, but then McKeon cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I take it," he said in a wry tone, "that your last comment indicates you haven't received any secret new orders from the Admiralty which we're not aware of?"
"No," Honor replied, then snorted. "Of course, if they were secret orders, I'd tell you I hadn't gotten any anyway, wouldn't I?"
/> "Sure," McKeon agreed. "But you're not a very good liar."
Honor chuckled, almost despite herself, and shook her head at him. But he'd succeeded in breaking her mood, exactly as he'd intended, and she gave him a smile of thanks, as well. Then she shook herself and turned resolutely back to the matter at hand.
"As a matter of fact," she said, "I wish I had received some sort of new instructions, secret or not. Even bad ones would be better than none . . . which is exactly what we've actually been sent. The Admiralty's acknowledged receipt of my last dispatches, including George's report on the pattern of increasing provocation and on the Empire's decision to send Rabenstrange out, but that's all. It's as if no one at the other end is even bothering to read our mail."
"So all you can do is continue under your existing orders," Alfredo Yu mused.
"Exactly. And they're even more out of date—and, to be blunt about it, irrelevant—than they were when they first sent us out here," Honor said, with a frankness she would have shown in front of very few non-Manticorans. "Worse, I'm beginning to think no one at Admiralty House or the Foreign Office is even thinking very much about Silesia or the Andermani right now."
"You think they're being distracted by the Peeps? I mean, by the Republic, of course," McKeon said.
Neither Yu nor Caslet so much as blinked, but Honor felt both of them wince internally. Not in anger, and certainly not because either of them suffered from mixed loyalties at this late date. It was more of a sense of loss, a bittersweet regret for the changes in Haven which they would never be a part of.
And a smoldering anger, worse even than that of most Graysons, over the policies of the High Ridge Government which seemed to be fanning the tensions between Haven and the Star Kingdom once again.
"I think that's exactly what's happening," she confirmed after a moment. In fact, she'd been afraid something like that was coming from the moment word that Benjamin Mayhew's concerns about the mysterious "Operation Bolthole" had been amply justified had finally reached Marsh.