"That bogey is closing up on us a little, Sir."
Lieutenant Commander Dumais, captain of the Trojan-class destroyer RHNS Hecate, cocked his head in an invitation for his tac officer to continue.
"I still can't tell you exactly what it is," Lieutenant Singleterry admitted. "Local h-space conditions are particularly bad just now. But it still looks like a merchie."
"A merchie," Dumais repeated, then shook his head. "I don't question your judgment, Stephanie, but just what in Hell do you think a merchie would be doing following us around this way? Using us for cover against pirates, sure. But following us out into the middle of nowhere?"
"If I could tell you that, Skipper, then I'd be wasting my time in the Navy compared to the fortune I could be making choosing winning lottery numbers." Singleterry shook her own head in turn. "All I can tell you for sure is that whoever this is, she's been following along behind us ever since we left Horus. Well, that and the fact that she's closed up by almost half a light-minute in the last six hours."
"Hmmm." Dumais frowned in thought. "You did say local sensor conditions are bad?"
"Yes, Sir. In fact, they pretty much suck, and they're getting worse. Particle count is way up, and that grav eddy at three o'clock is funneling them straight over us."
"In that case, I can think of two possible explanations for her behavior," Dumais said. "The one I like better is that she is riding our heels as cover against pirates and she wants to stay close enough to be sure we'll notice if anyone hits her."
"And the other one is that she's closing up to hold us on her own sensors?" Singleterry asked, then tugged at the lobe of her left ear as Dumais nodded. "I guess that might make sense. But that would suggest she really has been deliberately shadowing us."
"Yes, it would," Dumais agreed.
"Which brings me back to the question of why a merchant ship would be doing anything of the sort," Singleterry said.
"I suppose that one possibility is that she isn't a merchant ship, whatever she may look like," Dumais suggested.
"You think she might be a warship?"
"It's certainly possible. Play a few games with your nodes, and you can make a warship's impeller wedge or Warshawski sails look like a merchie's."
"A Manty?" Singleterry suggested unhappily.
"Possibly. On the other hand, it's more likely to be an Andie out here. For that matter, it could actually be a Silly. This is officially their territorial space, after all, even if everyone else seems inclined to forget that. One of them could have noticed us hanging around in Horus and gotten curious."
"I guess an Andie or a Silly would at least be better than a Manty," Singleterry said. "But either way, I don't think the Admiral is going to be very happy if there's anything to your suspicions."
"Tell me about it!" Dumais snorted. He gazed at his plot for several more seconds, frowning in thought.
Hecate would be transitioning from Warshawski sail to impeller wedge when she left the fringes of the grav wave in another three hours. At that point, she'd be within less than five and a half hours' flight time of her destination. And if that was a shadowing warship back there, then whoever she belonged to would have a very shrewd notion of where Dumais' ship was headed. Which meant that they'd have a very shrewd notion of where Second Fleet lay awaiting its orders from Nouveau Paris.
The lieutenant commander growled a silent mental curse. He'd worried about the decision to use his ship and her squadron mate Hector as Second Fleet's communications link with Ambassador Jackson in Horus from the moment he was assigned the duty. He understood the absolute necessity of making sure that link was secure, but it would have been a lot smarter to use a regular dispatch boat for the job. Unfortunately, whatever New Octagon genius had thought this one up had neglected to consider that possibility, and apparently no one there—or on Admiral Tourville's staff—had realized until Second Fleet reached Silesia that Ambassador Jackson didn't already have a dispatch vessel assigned to him.
Under the circumstances, the Admiral hadn't had any choice about making his own arrangements to cover the final leg of the communications link. And because he didn't have any dispatch boats of his own, he'd had to detach a couple of destroyers for the job.
The worst part of it was that Second Fleet had to be positive its communications were functioning properly. If the order to attack was sent from home, it had to get through. So Admiral Tourville had left not one, but two destroyers behind to ensure the maintenance of his communications with Ambassador Jackson. Two destroyers weren't going to be all that much more noticeable than one, and at least this way, the ambassador could use one ship to shuttle back and forth between Horus and Second Fleet, maintaining constant contact while keeping the other on station in Osiris orbit in case the actual attack order should come in.
Dumais wasn't at all sure what was in the sealed dispatches Jackson had instructed him to deliver to Admiral Tourville this time. Nothing the ambassador had said had given him any impression that they were truly vital, and he would really have preferred not to be sent off to play postman with some routine message. On the other hand, he supposed it did make sense to use his ship rather than risk hiring a commercially available dispatch boat and giving it the coordinates for Second Fleet's hiding place.
Which was how he found himself out here with that incredibly irritating sensor ghost dogging his heels.
"We don't have any idea of what his sensor capabilities might be, do we?" he asked Singleterry after a moment.
"Assuming he's hanging back at the very edge of his ability to hold us on his scanners," the tac officer replied, "I'd say that they aren't quite as good as ours are."
"Which would seem to suggest that there's a better chance it's a Silly than an Andy," Dumais mused aloud.
"Or," Singleterry countered, "that it's a merchie with a really good commercial-grade sensor suite. Given how risky a neighborhood this can be, a lot of the merchant ships that spend time out here have much better sensor packages than anything we'd see closer to home."
"Definitely a point to bear in mind," Dumais acknowledged. He thought for a few more moments, then grimaced.
"I don't think we can risk making any assumptions where this bird is concerned, Stephanie. I suppose it still possible that it's pure coincidence that he's back there, but it strikes me as unlikely. And the one thing we can't do is lead anybody straight to the Fleet. Unfortunately, we're already close enough to the Fleet rendezvous that anyone with half a brain should be able to narrow the volume down without much difficulty. So we'd better go see who it is."
"What do we do if it turns out it is a warship?" Singleterry asked.
"If it's a warship, then it's a warship." Dumais sighed. "There's provision in the ops order for the Admiral to shift to another star system if he has to. We don't want to do it, because it's always possible that the jump off order could reach Horus before we got Ambassador Jackson and Hector informed as to the new rendezvous point. Unfortunately, if this is a warship, we won't have much choice, unless I want to risk creating a fresh interstellar incident by opening fire."
"Even if it's a Manty?" Singleterry asked in a deliberately expressionless voice, and Dumais grinned crookedly.
"Especially if it's a Manty," he replied. "Not that the Admiral would thank us if we shot up an Andie or a Silly, either. And," he added conscientiously, "let's not forget that we don't know what size this fellow is. If he's a heavy cruiser, or a battlecruiser, then it might just be a bit . . . foolhardy of us to cross swords with him, don't you think?"
"Oh, yes," Singleterry said fervently. "Foolhardy is exactly the word I'd choose, Sir, and I can't begin to tell you how happy I am to hear you using it under the circumstances!"
"I thought you might approve," Dumais said dryly.
"And if it turns out this really is a merchie?" Singleterry asked.
"In that case, our options are a little broader," Dumais pointed out. "First of all, a merchie isn't going to argue with a warship if it tells
him to heave to and be boarded. Secondly, we could put a prize crew aboard her and hand her over to Admiral Tourville. He could hold her at the fleet rendezvous indefinitely, if he had to, and the assumption when she didn't turn up at her destination as scheduled would simply be that one of the pirates operating out here had picked her off. If we're ordered to carry out the attack, he can release her after the fact with an apology and probably a fairly stiff reparations payment from the Government."
"And if we're never ordered to attack?" Singleterry asked very quietly, and Dumais grimaced again. He knew what she was really asking, because their orders had made it crystal clear that if no attack was ever launched, then Second Fleet had never been here. Exactly what the Republican Navy might be expected to do with a merchant ship full of people who knew Second Fleet had been here wasn't something he really wanted to consider. Even so, he knew it would be far better for that to be a merchantman rather than a warship.
"We'll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it," he told his tac officer after a moment. "For right now, we have to concentrate on the matter at hand. If this turns out to be a merchie, we'll put enough of our people aboard to make sure everything stays under control and leave her right where she is while we take Hecate on to the rendezvous and report in to the Admiral. If he wants her brought the rest of the way in to him, we'll come back and get her. If he decides to shift the rendezvous, we'll come back, take our people off, apologize politely, and decamp." He shrugged. "It's not perfect, but it's the most flexible option we have, and the Admiral would expect us to show some initiative."
"It sounds to me like it should work, Skipper," Singleterry said thoughtfully.
"I hope so," Dumais said cheerfully. "Because if it doesn't, we're going to have a hell of a time explaining to the Admiral why we couldn't handle a single merchie!"
Chapter Forty-Six
Honor stepped back and allowed Commander Denby to climb to his feet. The commanding officer of Werewolf's third LAC squadron was a little slower than he might have been under other conditions, and he shook his head like a man listening to a ringing sound no one else could hear.
He dropped back into a ready position, but Honor shook her own head and removed her mouth protector.
"Sorry about that, Commander," she said contritely. "Are you all right?"
Denby removed his own mouth protector and then rotated his right shoulder cautiously and gave her a lopsided grin.
"I think so, Your Grace," he replied. "I'll tell you for sure when that damned bird stops singing in my ear!"
Honor chuckled. She and the commander both wore traditional gis. Although Denby's belt showed only five rank knots, he was really very good . . . and like quite a few officers who followed the coup—perhaps somewhat disproportionately represented among the LAC portion of Werewolf's complement—he was always available for a sparring match with the station commander.
Unfortunately, he'd forgotten about Honor's artificial arm. The move he'd just attempted had depended upon its victim's reaction to leverage against her elbow joint. Which hadn't worked out quite the way his reflexes had assumed it would in this particular case. Honor's counter had caught him out of position and completely by surprise, and he'd hit the mat hard. In fact, he'd hit it rather harder than she'd intended, because her reflexes hadn't assumed that he'd be left quite as open as he had by her left arm's failure to flex properly.
"Well," she said now, "we've got enough time for you to finish listening. Take your time."
"Thank you, Your Grace, but I think he's coming to the end of his selection."
Denby gave her another grin and reinserted his mouth protector, and she smiled back before she did the same thing. The two of them stepped back towards the center of the mat and dropped back into the ready position. Honor watched him warily. They'd sparred enough over the course of this deployment for her to have a very good feel for his personality. Even without her ability to sense his emotions, she would have known that his recent misadventure had inspired him to dump her on her very senior posterior. On the other hand, inspiration and success weren't necessarily the same thing, and—"Excuse me, My Lady."
Andrew LaFollet's voice interrupted, and she stepped back from Denby and turned towards her senior armsman.
"I'm sorry to interrupt, My Lady," LaFollet said from where he'd stood watching her back, even here in Werewolf's gym, and she removed the mouth protector once again.
"What is it, Andrew?" she asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "Lieutenant Meares just commed. He says you're needed on Flag Bridge."
"On Flag Bridge?" Honor repeated. "He didn't say why?"
"No, My Lady." LaFollet half-raised his wrist-mounted com. "I can com him back and ask, if you'd like?"
"Please do. And ask him how urgent it is." She waved one gloved hand at her gi. "Unless it's earth shattering, I'd like to at least shower and change before I report for duty!"
"Yes, My Lady," LaFollet acknowledged with a small smile, and spoke into the wrist com. Then he looked up with the slightly absent expression of a man listening to a reply from her flag lieutenant over his unobtrusive earbug.
It was an expression which changed abruptly, and Honor's head snapped up as she tasted the surprise and apprehension in his emotions.
"What?" she asked sharply.
"Tim says Pirate's Bane just passed the perimeter patrols, My Lady," the armsman replied, using the flag lieutenant's first name instead of the more formal rank titles he was usually careful to employ out of deference to a young man's dignity. Now he met his Steadholder's eyes, and his expression was taut. "He says she's damaged—badly."
Honor stared at him for perhaps two breaths, her thoughts completely frozen. Then they jerked back into motion with an almost physical shock.
"How badly damaged?" The question came out crisply, but even as she asked it she was aware of how much a lie that calmness was. "And what about Captain Bachfisch?"
"Tim doesn't know exactly how bad it is, My Lady. But from what he said, it doesn't sound good." The armsman inhaled. "And it was her executive officer who answered the patrol's challenge. He says Captain Bachfisch has been wounded."
* * *
Honor held herself in her seat in the pinnace by sheer force of will. Nimitz was curled in her lap, and she felt the physical tension in his muscles as the pinnace cut its drive and Pirate's Bane's boat bay tractors reached out for it.
She looked out through the armorplast viewport, and her jaw muscles clenched as she saw the ugly holes blown in the Bane's skin. "Badly," she supposed was one way to describe what had happened to the armed merchantman. Personally, she considered it to be grossly inadequate.
The pinnace rolled on its internal gyros, aligning itself so the tractors could deposit it gently in the docking buffers. At least the bay gallery was still vacuum tight, she thought grimly as she watched the personnel tube run out to the pinnace's airlock. Bleak anger and anxiety roiled within her, and then she looked down as a hand-foot patted her on the knee.
Nimitz's true-hands signed.
"No," she replied. "They told me that he said he'll be all right. There's a difference."
"Stinker," Honor sighed, "sometimes I think 'cats still have a lot to learn about humans. There may not be any point in empaths or telepaths trying to lie to each other, but we two-foots always think we get away with it. And when we don't want someone to worry . . ."
even through the 'cat's own anxiety, she tasted a sudden flicker of amusement,
Honor looked down at him, and then, to her own amazement, she actually chuckled.
"You may have a point," she conceded. "On the other hand," she sobered again, "the fact that it was his exec who reported in doesn't sound good."
Nimitz signed back.
Honor flicked her eyes to the telltale above the airlock. Nimitz was right, and she scooped the 'cat into her arms and rose as the pinnace's flight engineer reached for the hatch button.
Others pushed up out of their seats behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder. LaFollet and Spencer Hawke sat in the row directly behind her, but there were enough others to make the pinnace's spacious passenger compartment seem almost crowded. Mercedes Brigham, George Reynolds, Andrea Jaruwalski, and Timothy Meares were all present . . . and so were Surgeon Captain Fritz Montoya and a full twenty-person medical team.
A second pinnace, this one loaded with two platoons of Werewolf's Marines, settled into the docking buffers beside Honor's pinnace, and her expression tightened once more. Then she moved forward as the inner hatch of the airlock opened.
* * *
It wasn't the first time Honor had seen Thomas Bachfisch wounded. But this time was worse. Much worse. She felt the physical pain radiating from him as she stood beside his bed in Pirate's Bane's spartan sick bay, and it took every ounce of self discipline she possessed to keep her own nonphysical pain out of her expression.
"Your Grace," Jinchu Gruber said, "will you please convince him to let Doctor Montoya get him out of here?"
Pirate's Bane's executive officer stood on the other side of Bachfisch's bed. Gruber wasn't exactly in pristine condition himself, Honor noted. His left arm was in a sling, he walked with a noticeable limp, and the left side of his face was badly bruised.
"Stop fussing, Jinchu." Bachfisch's voice was hoarse with pain, but he managed a tight smile. There was a different sort of pain in that smile, and something inside Honor winced as she tasted his emotions. "I'm better off than a lot of people."
"Yes, you are, Skipper." Gruber's voice was harsh, hard-edged with exasperation. "Now stop feeling guilty about it, damn it!"
"My fault," Bachfisch replied, shaking his head doggedly on the pillow.
"I didn't see you holding a pulser on anyone to make us sign on," the exec shot back.
"No, but—"