by David Weber
"Hi, Honor. Sorry to disturb you, but I thought you'd better know." Her eyebrows knitted in a frown as his grim expression registered. "We just got an arrival signal from a heavy cruiser," his recorded voice continued, then paused. "It's Warlock, Honor," he said, and she went rigid in her chair.
Paul looked out of the screen as if he could see her reaction, and there was compassion in his eyes—and warning—as his image nodded.
"Young's still in command," he said softly, "and he's still senior to you. Watch yourself, okay?"
* * *
PNS Napoleon drifted through blackness, far from the dim beacon of the system's red dwarf primary. The light cruiser's drive was down, her active sensors dead, and her captain sat tensely on her bridge as she coasted along her silent course, well inside the orbit of Hancock's frozen outermost planet. He could see two different Manty destroyers' impeller signatures in his display, but the nearest was over twelve light-minutes from Napoleon, and he had absolutely no intention of attracting its attention.
Commander Ogilve hadn't thought much of Operation Argus when he was first briefed for it. The whole idea had struck him as an excellent way to start a war and get his ship fried in the process, yet it had worked out far better than he'd expected. It was horribly time-consuming, and the fact that none of the ships involved had been caught yet didn't mean none of them ever would be, but it only had to go on working for a little longer. Just long enough for Admiral Rollins to receive the data he needed . . . and for PNS Napoleon to get the hell out of Hancock in one piece.
"Coming up on the first relay, Sir." His com officer sounded as unhappy as Ogilve felt, and the commander took pains to exude calm as he withdrew his gaze from the display and nodded in response. Wouldn't do to let the troops know their captain was as scared as they were, he thought dryly.
"Prepare to initiate data dump," he said.
"Yes, Sir."
The bridge was silent as the com officer brought his communication lasers up from standby. Any sort of emission was extremely dangerous under the circumstances, but the relay's position had been plotted with painstaking care. The people who'd planned Operation Argus had known the perimeters of all Manticoran star systems were guarded by sensor platforms whose reach and sensitivity the People's Republic couldn't match, but no surveillance net could cover everything. Their deployment patterns and plans had taken that into consideration, and—so far, at least—they'd been right on the money.
Ogilve snorted at his own choice of cliché, for Argus had cost billions. The heavily stealthed sensor platforms had been inserted from over two light-months out, coasting in out of the silence of interstellar space with all power locked down to absolute minimum. They'd slid through the Manties' sensors like any other bits of space debris, and the tiny trickle of power which had braked them and aligned them in their final, carefully chosen positions had been so small as to be utterly indetectable at anything over a few thousand kilometers.
In point of fact, getting the platforms in had been the easy part. Laymen tended to forget just how huge—and empty—any given star system was. Even the largest starship was less than a mote on such a scale; as long as it radiated no betraying energy signature to attract attention it might as well be invisible, and the sensor arrays were tinier still and equipped with the best stealth systems Haven could produce. Or, Ogilve amended, in this case buy clandestinely from the Solarian League. The biggest risk came from the low-powered, hair-thin lasers that tied them to the central storage relays, but even there the risk had been reduced to absolute minimum. The platforms communicated only via ultra high-speed burst transmissions. Even if someone strayed into their path, it would require an enormous stroke of bad luck for him to realize he'd heard something, and the platforms' programming restricted them from sending if their sensors picked up anything in a position to intercept their messages.
No, there was very little chance of the Manties tumbling to the tiny robotic spies—it was the mailmen who collected their data who had to sweat. Because small as it might be, a starship was larger than any sensor array, and harvesting that information meant a ship had to radiate, however stealthily.
"Tight beam standing by, Sir. Coming up on transmission point in . . . nineteen seconds."
"Initiate when we reach the bearing."
"Aye, Sir. Standing by." The seconds ticked past, and then the com officer licked his lips. "Initiating now, Sir."
Ogilve tensed, and his eyes returned to his display with unseemly haste. He watched the Manty destroyers with painful intensity, but they continued along their blissfully unobservant way, and then—
"Dump completed, Sir!" The com officer didn't quite wipe his brow as he killed the laser, and Ogilve smiled despite his own tension.
"Well done, Jamie." He rubbed his hands and grinned at his tac officer. "Well, Ms. Austell, shall we see what we've caught?"
"An excellent idea, Sir." The tac officer returned his grin, then began querying the data dump. Several minutes passed in silence, for the last Argus collection had been a month and a half earlier. That left a great deal of information to sort through, but then she stiffened and looked up sharply.
"I've got something very interesting here, Sir."
The suppressed excitement in her voice drew Ogilve out of his chair without conscious thought. He crossed the bridge in a few, quick strides and leaned over her shoulder as she tapped keys. Her display flickered for a moment, then settled, and a date and time readout glowed in one corner.
Ogilve sucked in sharply as the data before him registered. A score of heavy capital ships—no, more than that. By God, there were over thirty of the bastards! Jesus, it was the Mantles' entire wall of battle!
He stared at the display, holding his breath, unable to believe what he was seeing as the massive fleet movement played itself out. The time scale was enormously compressed, and the incredible mass of impeller signatures slid across the star system at breakneck speed.
It had to be some sort of maneuver. That was the only thing it could be. Ogilve told himself that over and over, like some sort of mental incantation against the disappointment that had to come.
But it didn't come. The stupendous dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts went right on moving, sweeping out from Hancock until they hit the hyper limit.
And then they vanished. Every goddamned one of them simply vanished, and Ogilve straightened with slow, almost painful caution.
"Did they come back, Midge?" he half-whispered, and the tac officer shook her head, eyes huge. "Would this sector's platforms necessarily have spotted them if they had come back?" the commander pressed.
"Not automatically, Sir. The Mantles could have come back on a course outside their search envelope. But unless they knew about the sensors and deliberately set this up to fake us out, they would've come back in from any maneuvers on roughly reciprocal headings. If they'd done that, the platforms would have seen them . . . and they've been gone for over a week, Sir."
Ogilve nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was incredible. The idea that the Manties would conduct some sort of exercise that took them away from Hancock at a time of such tension was ridiculous on the face of it. But impossible as it seemed, they'd done something even stupider. They'd pulled out entirely. Hancock Station was wide open!
He drew another deep breath and looked at his astrogator.
"How soon can we get the hell out of here?"
"Without our hyper footprint being detected?"
"Of course without being detected!"
"Um." The astrogator's fingers flew as he worked through the problem. "On this vector, niner-four-point-eight hours to clear known Manty sensor arrays, Sir."
"Damn," Ogilve whispered. He rubbed his hands up and down the seams of his trousers and forced his impatience back under control. This was too important to risk blowing. He was going to have to wait. To make himself sit on it for another four days before he could head home with the unbelievable news. But once they reached Seaford—
"All right," he said crisply. "I want a complete shutdown. Nothing goes out from this ship. Jamie, abort the remainder of the data dumps. Midge, I want you to damned well live up here with your passive sensors. If anything even looks like it could be coming our way I want to know it. This data just paid the entire cost of this operation from day one, and we're getting it home if we have to hyper out of here right under some Manty's nose!"
"But what about operational security, Sir?" his exec protested.
"I'm not going to call any attention to us," Ogilve said tightly. "But this is too important to risk losing, so if it looks like they may be going to spot us, we're out of here, and the hell with the rest of Operation Argus. This is exactly what Admiral Rollins has been waiting for, and we, by God, are going to tell him about it!"
CHAPTER TWENTY
Honor nodded to her Marine sentry and stepped through her cabin hatch without a word. Her face showed no emotion at all, but Nimitz was tense on her shoulder, and MacGuiness' welcoming smile congealed into nonexpression the moment he saw her.
"Good evening, Ma'am," he said.
She turned her head at the sound of his voice, and her eyes flickered, as if only now noting his presence. He watched her lips tighten for just an instant, but then she drew a deep breath and smiled at him. To someone who didn't know her, that smile might have looked almost natural.
"Good evening, Mac." She crossed to her desk and dropped her beret on it, then ran her hands through her hair, looking away from him for a moment, before she moved Nimitz from her shoulder to his padded perch, sat in her chair, and swiveled back to face the steward.
"I've got to finish my report on the maneuvers," she said. "Screen my calls while I deal with it, will you? Put anything from Commander Henke, Admiral Sarnow or his staff, or any of the other skippers through, but ask anyone else if the Exec can handle it."
"Of course, Ma'am." MacGuiness hid his concern at the unusual order, and she smiled again, gratefully, at his neutral tone.
"Thank you." She booted her terminal, and he cleared his throat.
"Would you like a cup of cocoa, Ma'am?"
"No, thank you," she said without raising her eyes from the screen. MacGuiness looked at the crown of her head, then exchanged silent glances with Nimitz. The 'cat's body language radiated his own tension, but he flicked his ears and turned his head, pointing his muzzle at the hatch to the captain's pantry, and the steward relaxed slightly. He nodded back and withdrew like a puff of breeze.
Honor continued to stare at the characters on her screen until she heard the hatch close behind him, then shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. She hadn't missed the silent exchange between MacGuiness and Nimitz. A part of her hunkered petulantly down deep inside, resenting it, but most of her was intensely grateful.
She lowered her hands and tipped her chair back with a sigh. Nimitz crooned to her from his perch, and she looked up at him with a weary, bittersweet smile.
"I know," she said quietly.
He hopped down onto her desk and sat upright, holding her dark eyes with his grass-green gaze, and she reached out to caress his soft cream and gray fur. Her fingers were light, barely brushing him, but he didn't push her for more energetic petting, and she felt his concern reaching out to her.
For as long as Nimitz had been with her, Honor had always known he did something to help her through spasms of anger or depression, yet she'd never been able to figure out what it was. As far as she knew, no one who'd been adopted by a 'cat had ever been able to do so, but the strange intensification of their link since Grayson was at work now. She felt his touch, like a loving mental hand reaching deep inside her to soothe the raw edges of her emotions. He wasn't taking them away. Perhaps that was beyond his ability—or perhaps he knew how she would have resented it. Perhaps it was even simpler than that, something which would have been against his own principles. She didn't know, but she closed her eyes once more, hands gentle on his fur while his equally gentle caress comforted her inner hurt.
It was bitterly unfair. She'd been so happy, despite the tension of the Havenite crisis, and now this. It was as if Young had known how well things were going and deliberately gotten himself sent here just to ruin them. She wanted to scream and break things, to storm and rage at a universe that let things like this happen.
But the universe wasn't really unfair, she thought, and her mouth quirked. It just didn't give much of a damn one way or the other.
A strong, delicate true-hand touched her right cheek like a feather, and her eyes reopened. Nimitz crooned to her again, and her smile turned real. She drew him into her arms, hugging him to her breasts, feeling his relief as her inner pain ebbed.
"Thanks," she said softly, burying her face in his furry warmth. He bleeked gently to her, and she gave him another, tighter hug, then lifted him back to his perch. "Okay, Stinker. I'm on top of it, now." He flipped his tail in agreement, and her smile became a grin. "And the truth is, I do have to finish that report before I can run off to supper. So you just sit up there and keep an eye on me, right?"
He nodded and arranged himself comfortably, watching over her while she began scrolling through the paragraphs she'd already written.
Minutes passed, then a half hour, and there was no sound except the hum of Honor's terminal and the soft brush of fingers on a keyboard. She was so deep into her work she hardly noticed the soft com chime.
It sounded again, and she made a face and opened a window to accept the call at her workstation. The lines of her report vanished, and MacGuiness' face replaced them.
"Sorry to disturb you, Ma'am," he said formally, "but the Admiral is screening."
"Thank you, Mac." Honor straightened and brushed her fingers through her hair once more. It might be a good idea to let it grow long enough to braid, she thought absently, and keyed an "ACCEPT" code.
"Good evening, Honor." Admiral Sarnow's tenor was a bit deeper than usual, and she suppressed an ironic smile. She'd wondered if he'd heard the stories about her and Young.
"Good evening, Sir. What can I do for you?"
"I've been working my way through the dispatches Warlock delivered." He watched her face as he named Young's ship, but her eyes didn't even flicker, and he gave a sort of subliminal nod, more felt than seen, at the confirmation that she'd already known.
"There are several items we're going to have to cover in our squadron conference," he went on in a neutral tone, "but before that, I need to welcome Captain Young to the task group."
Honor nodded. The thought of inviting Young aboard her ship sickened her, but she'd known it was coming. Mark Sarnow would never pull a Sir Yancey Parks and freeze any captain out. Not until that captain had given him some specific reason to do so.
"I understand, Sir," she said after a moment. "Has Warlock rendezvoused with the base yet?"
"Yes, she has."
"Then I'll see to the invitation, Sir," she said flatly.
Sarnow started to open his mouth, then closed it. She saw the temptation to send the request through his own communication channels in his eyes and willed him not to make the offer.
"Thank you, Honor. I appreciate it," he said after a moment.
"No problem, Sir," she lied, and the words of her report returned as she cut the link.
She gazed at the report sightlessly for some seconds, then sighed. She'd finished it anyway, she told herself, and saved it to memory. She spent a few minutes routing copies to Sarnow and Ernestine Corell, knowing as she did that she was simply delaying the inevitable, then keyed a com combination. An instant later, the screen lit with Mike Henke's face.
"Bridge, Exec speaking," the commander began, then smiled. "Hello, Skipper. What can I do for you?"
"Please have George contact the repair base, Mike. Ask them to relay a message to the heavy cruiser Warlock." Honor saw Henke's eyes widen and continued in the same, flat voice. "She's just arrived as part of our reinforcements. Please extend my and Admiral Sarnow's compliments to her c
aptain—" the courteous formula was bitter on her tongue "—and invite him to repair on board immediately to confer with the Admiral."
"Yes, Ma'am," Henke said quietly.
"After George passes the message, inform the Bosun we're going to need a side party. And as soon as you hear back from Warlock, let me know when we can expect him aboard."
"Yes, Ma'am. Would you like me to greet him, Ma'am?"
"That won't be necessary, Mike. Just let me know when he's getting here."
"Of course, Ma'am. I'll get right on it."
"Thank you," Honor said, and cut the circuit.
* * *
Captain Lord Pavel Young stood stiff and silent in the repair base personnel capsule, watching the position display flicker as the capsule hurtled through the tube. He wore his best mess dress uniform, complete with the ornate golden sash and anachronistic dress sword, and his reflection looked back at him from the polished capsule wall.
He studied himself silently, eyes bitter despite his gorgeous appearance. Skillful (and expensive) tailoring deemphasized the steady thickening of his middle without quite becoming nonregulation, just as his neatly trimmed beard disguised his double chin. His appearance was satisfyingly perfect, but it took every gram of over-stressed self-control not to snarl at his reflected image.
The gall of the bitch. The sheer gall of her! Her "compliments," indeed! Yes, and oh-so-incidentally linked with Admiral Sarnow's!
This time he did snarl, but he rammed his self-control back into place and banished the expression even while his nerves tingled and spasmed with hatred. Honor Harrington. Lady Harrington. The commonborn slut who'd ruined his career—and now the task group flag captain.
His teeth ground together as he remembered. He hadn't thought much of her the first time he saw her at Saganami Island. She'd been a full form behind him, which should have put her beneath his notice even if she'd been more than some dirt-grubber from Sphinx. And she'd been plain-faced and unsophisticated with her almost shaven hair and beak of a nose, as well. Hardly worth a second look, and certainly not up to his usual standards. But there'd been something about the way she moved, something in the grace of her carriage, which had piqued his interest.