Mission of Honor

by Дэвид Вебер

  "I suppose anyone has to have at least some positive qualities, Sir."

  "You may have been disabused of that supposition by the time you're my age," Khumalo replied with a thin smile. "At any rate, assuming she maintains her current acceleration and heads for a zero/zero intercept with the planet, she probably expects to be joining us here in about four hours. Of course, she doesn't expect any of us to still be alive when she gets here."

  "Life is full of disappointments, Sir."

  "My own thought exactly." Khumalo's teeth showed briefly. Then he twitched his shoulders in a sort of abbreviated shrug. "Admiral Enderby is launching his birds now. As soon as they're all clear of the bays, he'll pull the carriers further back in-system to keep them out from underfoot, and Commander Badmachin is rolling pods. Unless Admiral Gold Peak decides differently, it looks like we'll be going with Agincourt."

  "Understood, Sir."

  "In that case, I'll leave you to it," Khumalo said with a nod. "Khumalo, clear."

  He disappeared from Terekhov's com screen, and Terekhov returned his attention to Quentin Saint-James ' master plot. In many ways, he supposed, Oversteegen's Nikes might have been a better choice than his own heavy cruisers, given that the Nike was equipped with Keyhole, and the Saganami-C wasn't. In fact, before the ammunition ships Aetna and Vesuvius had arrived with their massive loads of Apollo pods, the Nikes would have been in orbit around Flax while the Saganami-Cs played the part of the beaters coming along behind the quarry. The cruisers still had a lot of control links, however. Almost certainly enough of them, coupled with Apollo, to show Crandall the error of her ways.

  And if there isn't , he thought grimly, there's always Admiral Gold Peak, isn't there?

  * * *

  "Captain?"

  "Yes, Nicolette?" Captain Jacomina van Heutz looked across Joseph Buckley 's command deck at Commander Nicolette Sambroth.

  "Ma'am, I'm still picking up those grav pulses," Sambroth said, and van Heutz frowned.

  Sambroth was one of the better tac officers with whom she'd served, but the commander appeared to have been badly spooked by the implications of the Manties' apparent FTL com ability. Not that van Heutz really blamed her, assuming the report of the single dispatch boat to escape the New Tuscan debacle was accurate. Not only that, but she knew Vice Admiral Ou-yang shared Sambroth's concerns.

  And I'm not too damned happy over them myself. Especially when I think about what's going to happen two or three engagements down the road, when we run into a real Manty wall of battle. But for right now . . . .

  "You're passing your observations along to Admiral Ou-yang?" Her tone made the question a statement, and Sambroth nodded.

  "Of course, Ma'am."

  "Then we're just going to have to assume Admiral Crandall has that information as well," van Heutz pointed out rather gently.

  Sambroth looked up from her displays. Their eyes met for a moment. Then the tactical officer nodded again, with a rather different emphasis.

  Van Heutz nodded back, returned her own attention to her plot, and settled back in her command chair.

  Josef Byng always was a frigging idiot , she thought. I'm not even going to pretend I miss him, either. But this —

  She shook her head, eyes hardening on the plot, and wondered how many other members of the SLN officer corps secretly recognized that Byng's demise could only improve that officer corps' overall efficiency. Probably more than she was prepared to believe, actually. She certainly hoped so, at any rate, given what the ability to deny that reality implied. Yet as she contemplated what his removal was about to cost the Star Empire of Manticore—and ultimately cost the Solarian League Navy—the price tag seemed exorbitantly high.

  And it's only going to get worse. No matter how bad I think it's going to be, it's only going to get worse .

  * * *

  Captain Alice Levinsky, commanding officer of LAC Group 711, watched the Shrikes and Katanas of Carrier Division 7.1 forming up around Her Majesty's Light Attack CraftTyphoon . She was aware of a certain queasiness as she contemplated the juggernaut of superdreadnoughts rumbling steadily towards Flax. Against a Havenite wall of battle, even the Manticoran Alliance's newest-generation LACs no longer possessed anywhere near the survivability they'd boasted when the Shrike-A was first introduced all of nine T-years ago. And even if they had, superdreadnoughts—even Solly superdreadnoughts—were normally too heavily armored for even a Shrike 's enormous graser to damage significantly. Of course, the Shrike-B , like her own Typhoon , had significantly improved its graser's grav lensing when the newest generation of bow wall came in. The Bravos really could blast their way through SD armor, assuming they could get close enough.

  Despite that, two-thirds of her LACs were Katana -class space-superiority fighters with magazines packed with Viper dual-purpose missiles, because Manticoran LAC doctrine had changed—especially after the hideous losses of the Battle of Manticore—to emphasize the missile defense role rather than the strike role. LACs were smaller and much more elusive targets than any hyper-capable ship and, especially with Mark 33 counter-missiles (or the Vipers based on the same missile body and drive), one of them could provide very nearly as much screening capacity as an all up destroyer. Which meant a LAC group had become the most effective (and least costly) means of bolstering a wall of battle's missile defenses, which also freed up the perpetually insufficient number of lighter starships for deployment elsewhere.

  But, Levinsky reminded herself coldly, these weren't Havenite superdreadnoughts. They were Sollies , and that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Like the rest of Tenth Fleet's officers, Levinsky had studied the technical data from the captured Solarian battlecruisers attentively, and unless that data was grossly inaccurate, the Sollies' anti-LAC capabilities were even more primitive—a lot more primitive—than the Havenites' had been during Operation Buttercup.

  Which suggested all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to one Alice Levinsky.

  * * *

  "Commodore Terekhov confirms Agincourt, Sir," Lieutenant Stilson MacDonald said.

  "Thank you," Scotty Tremaine acknowledged. There was no need for his communications officer to know just how much calmer his voice was than he was.

  Had Captain Levinsky only known, a part of Tremaine—a rather large part, as a matter of fact—would have preferred to be sitting where she was rather than in his palatial command chair on the flag deck of a brand spanking new heavy cruiser. It wasn't so much that he doubted his competence in his present role as that he'd become so comfortable in his previous role.

  How did a nice boy who only wanted to be a shuttle pilot end up sitting here, of all places? he thought wryly.

  He'd really assumed that when he finally got starship command it would be of a carrier, not a cruiser. But he'd also long since concluded that BuPers worked in mysterious and inscrutable ways. True, this one seemed a bit more inscrutable than most, but when the Navy offered you a command slot like this one, you took it. He couldn't imagine anyone who wouldn't, and if anyone had turned it down, the idiot in question would have signed the death warrant for any hope of future promotion. The Navy wasn't in the habit of entrusting its starships to people whose own actions demonstrated they lacked the confidence for that sort of responsibility.

  And if they really insist on prying me out of the LACs, this is one hell of a lot better than a kick in the head , he admitted. Not only that, but at least they let me have the EWO I wanted .

  He glanced at the battered and bedamned-looking chief warrant officer sitting at the electronic warfare officer's station. Aboard any other starship he could think of, that position would have been held by a commissioned officer. Aboard a unit as powerful as a Saganami-C , especially on a division flagship's staff, the officer in question would have been at least a senior-grade lieutenant, and more probably a lieutenant commander. But CWO Sir Horace Harkness was pretty much a law unto himself within the RMN.

  "Of course you can have Harkness!" Captai
n Shaw, Admiral Cortez' chief of staff, had snorted when he'd made the unusual request. "There's a note somewhere in your personnel jacket that says we're not supposed to break up Beauty and the Beast." The captain's lips had twitched at Tremaine's expression. "Oh, you hadn't heard that particular nickname, Captain Tremaine? I hadn't realized it had escaped your attention."

  Then Shaw had sobered, tipping back in his chair and regarding Tremaine with thoughtful eyes.

  "I don't say it's the sort of habit we really want to get into, Captain, but one thing Admiral Cortez has always recognized is that there are exceptions to every rule. Mind you, if it were just a case of favoritism, he wouldn't sign off on it for a minute. Fortunately, however, the two of you have demonstrated a remarkable and consistently high level of performance—not to mention the fact that between you, you and his wife seem to have permanently reformed him. So unless we have to, no one's interested in breaking up that particular team. Besides"—he'd snorted in sudden amusement—"even if we were, I'm quite sure Sir Horace would be more than willing to massage the computers in your favor."

  Tremaine had opened his mouth, but Shaw had waved his hand before he could speak.

  "I'm perfectly well aware that he's promised not to do that sort of thing anymore, Captain Tremaine. Even the best-intentioned can backslide, however, and we'd prefer not to expose him to too much temptation."

  Tremaine's own lips twitched in remembered amusement, and he was astonished how much better the memory made him feel.

  "All right, Adam," he said, turning to Lieutenant Commander Adam Golbatsi, his operations officer. "You heard Stilson."

  "Yes, Sir. I'm on it," Golbatsi acknowledged.

  "Good." Tremaine looked at Harkness. "Any change in their EW, Chief?"

  "No, Sir. Not so's you'd notice." Harkness shrugged. "I know we didn't get complete stats on their wallers at New Tuscany, Skipper, but so far, these guys don't look to have anything better than Byng had. Or, if they do, they haven't bothered to bring it to the party yet."

  "I have t' agree with Chief Harkness, Sir," Commander Francine Klusener, Tremaine's chief of staff said, looking up from her own console.

  If there'd been anyone on his staff who might have had his or her nose put out of joint by finding a mere warrant officer in the staff electronic warfare officer's slot, Tremaine would have bet on Klusener. Not because the fair-haired, gray-eyed commander was anything but highly intelligent and competent in her own right. She was, however, by far the most nobly born of any of his staffers, with an accent that was almost as languid and drawling as Michael Oversteegen's. Fortunately, that was the only thing about her anyone could have accused of languor, and she and Harkness had actually hit it off very well from the beginning.

  "I've been lookin' at th' take from th' platforms," she continued now. "Assumin' these people have th' brains God gave a gnat—not that th' evidence so far available would suggest they do , you understand—they ought t' be pullin' out all th' stops after what happened t' Byng. Better safe than sorry, after all." She shrugged. "If they are, then I don't think th' attack birds are going t' have much problem lockin' up th' real targets."

  "Compared to Peep EW?" Harkness shook his head with an evil smile. "Not hardly, Ma'am! These people're toast , if that's the best they've got."

  "Let's not get carried away with our own enthusiasm, Chief," Tremaine said mildly.

  "No, Sir," Harkness agreed dutifully.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  "Coming up on turnover in two minutes, Ma'am."

  Sandra Crandall looked up from a conversation with Pйpй Bautista as her astrogator, Captain Barend Haarhuis, made the announcement, one hundred and fourteen minutes after her task force had started in-system. Its velocity relative to the planet Flax had increased to just over twenty-three thousand kilometers per second, and the range was down to a bit over eighty-one million kilometers, and Crandall nodded in satisfaction. Then she looked at Ou-yang Zhing-wei.

  "Any more movement out of them?".

  "No, Ma'am," Ou-yang replied. "We're picking up more of those grav pulses, though. And I'm still a bit concerned about this volume here."

  She indicated a large-scale display of the space immediately about Flax. A zone directly on the far side of the planet was highlighted in amber, and Crandall glanced at the indicated area, then grimaced.

  "The pulses have to be from that damned FTL com of theirs," she said with an impatient shrug. Her tone was irritated, perhaps even a bit petulant, as if she still didn't much care for admitting the Manties really had developed a practical faster-than-light means of communication. Unfortunately, even she had been forced to admit that what had happened at New Tuscany demonstrated that they had.

  "At the moment, though," she continued, "all it really means is that they may be getting recon information on us a little quicker than we're getting it on them. It's not going to change the odds any. And unless they've magically teleported in reinforcements directly from Manticore, I'm not especially worried about what they may be hiding in that uncertainty volume of yours, either, Zhing-wei. There wasn't anything particularly scary in there before we started in, after all."

  "No, Ma'am," Ou-yang concurred. An outside observer might have detected a smidgeon less than total agreement in her tone, however, Hago Shavarshyan thought. "On the other hand," she continued a bit diffidently, "we never did get a resolution on those sensor ghosts. And we've got these other impeller sources over here."

  She dropped a cursor onto the master display, indicating the sextet of impeller wedges their remotes had picked up thirty-six minutes earlier. They hadn't been able to get a solid read on whatever was generating those impeller signatures, but from the wedge strength, whatever they were, they were well up into the multimillion-ton range . . . despite the ridiculously high acceleration numbers they were putting out.

  "Freighters," Bautista said dismissively. Ou-yang looked at the chief of staff, and he shrugged. "That's all they can be, Zhing-wei. Oh, I'll grant you they're fast. They must be fleet auxiliaries to pull that accel—probably supply ships; maybe repair ships—but they sure as hell aren't war ships! With their assumed masses, they'd have to be superdreadnoughts, and with us bearing down on them this way, why run with six of them and leave number seven behind with nothing but cruisers to support it?"

  "What I'm worried about is why they waited this long to run in the first place," Ou-yang said rather more sharply than she normally spoke to Bautista.

  "Waiting until they figured out we really weren't bluffing, probably," he replied with another, slightly more impatient shrug. "Or maybe just waiting until they were sure all our units were headed in-system, without leaving any light units outside the limit to micro jump around the hyper sphere and pounce when they come out the other side."

  "Or maybe until they'd finished offloading their cargo," Ou-yang said pointedly. Bautista arched an eyebrow, and the ops officer inhaled deeply.

  "We've all agreed the missiles they used on Jean Bart had to come from pods , Pйpй," she pointed out. "To get that kind of range, they have to be bigger than their battlecruisers' tubes can manage, right?" Bautista nodded, and it was her turn to shrug. "Well, I don't know about you, but I have to wonder how many pods six 'freighters' that size can transport. And I also have to wonder why it is that all of a sudden any recon drone we steer into a position to take a look at the planet's shadow is getting blown right out of space."

  "You think they've stockpiled pods in that volume?" Crandall asked, intervening before Bautista could respond to Ou-yang's "God-give-me-strength" tone.

  "I think there's some reason they don't want us seeing in there, Ma'am." The ops officer shook her head. "And I agree with Pйpй that they wouldn't be sending away six ships-of-the-wall when we'll be into missile range of the planet in another hour and a half—not unless they were going to pull all of their ships out, at least. On the other hand, whatever these things are, their stealth and EW are good enough we couldn't get firm resolution on them—not
even confirmation they were really there—until they lit off their impellers. So I think we have to look very carefully at the possibility that our departing bogies hung around, using EW to play hide and seek with our platforms until we actually started in-system, then pulled out after unloading some cargo that didn't have the same kind of stealth capability. Something we might've picked up if they'd just dumped it into orbit earlier. And if they've left something on the far side of the planet that they don't want us getting a good look at, missile pods are certainly the first possibility that leaps to my mind when I start thinking about that."

  Bautista had flushed in obvious irritation, but Crandall nodded thoughtfully.

  "Makes sense," she acknowledged. "Or as much sense as anything someone stupid enough not to surrender is likely to be doing, anyway. And you're right, six freighters that size could dump a hell of a lot of pods."

  Bautista's expression smoothed quickly as Crandall took Ou-yang's suggestion seriously. It wasn't the first time something like that had happened, and Shavarshyan wished he could believe Crandall had deliberately chosen Ou-yang for her staff in hopes the ops officer's ability (for a Battle Fleet officer, at least) to think outside the box might offset Bautista's inclination towards sycophancy and his habit of automatically dismissing any opinion that didn't agree with his own. Much as the Frontier Fleet officer might have wanted to believe Crandall had done it on purpose, he wouldn't have wagered anything on the probability. Still, now that Crandall had endorsed at least the possibility that Ou-yang had a point, Bautista's expression, after a moment of blankness, had become intently—one might almost have said theatrically—thoughtful.

  He may not do subtle very well , Shavarshyan officer thought dryly, but he does have an awesome ability to spot the glaringly obvious, especially when someone rubs his nose in it. No, siree! No one's going to hide any flare-lit Old Earth elephants from Pйpй Bautista in any dark rooms, no matter how hard they try!