"So what do we do?" Damana asked from the helm console beside Cardones.
"What else?" Sandler said. "We let him come for us."
Her hand, resting on the edge of Cardones's sensor board, tightened against the smooth metal. "And find out if this defense really works."
The Vanguard was on the move now, and the first Manty merchantman was within range. "Fire Crippler," Dominick ordered.
The bridge lights dimmed as the weapon did its magic with the Vanguard's impellers; and with a suddenness that still never failed to amaze him, the Jansci's wedge collapsed.
"Target disabled," Koln confirmed.
"Very good, Mr. Koln," Dominick said. First the Jansci, then the rest of the merchantmen. "Lock onto second target. Fire when ready."
"Skipper!" Venizelos snapped. "We've got—what the hell?"
"What?" Honor asked, her eyes darting to the display holding the image of their fleeing raider. There was no indication it was firing or changing course or anything else that should have startled her exec that way.
"The Cornucopia," Venizelos bit out savagely. "She just fired up a military-class wedge."
"New identification from CIC," Wallace put in. "They now make it a Peep battlecruiser."
Honor felt her throat muscles tighten. Exactly the same trick they'd used themselves on Iliescu back in Zoraster system. Only this time it was Fearless who'd been caught like an amateur.
"She's moving on the convoy," Venizelos continued. "The merchies are starting to scatter. A lot of good that's going to do them. Looks like the Peep's going to— Skipper!"
"I saw," Honor said, staring at the displays in disbelief. Suddenly, without warning, the Jansci's impellers had gone down. "Was she hit?"
"I didn't see any missiles," Venizelos said. "She is within energy range; but I didn't see any—"
He broke off, inhaling sharply. The Poor Richard's wedge had collapsed, too.
"Commander?" Honor demanded, swiveling toward Wallace.
But Wallace looked as bewildered as everyone else on the bridge. "No idea, Ma'am," he said grimly. "I've never heard of anything like this happening before."
"Well, it's happening now," Honor said, watching her displays. Behind them, the Sable Chestnut's wedge was the third to go.
And this time she spotted something else: an odd fluctuation in the battlecruiser's own wedge just before the merchie's had collapsed. Some new Peep version of a grav lance, maybe? Something powerful enough to take down an entire wedge, not just sidewalls?
Or had the fluctuation been for the same purpose as the flicker she'd ordered on Fearless's own impellers an hour earlier? There were two known players on the Peep side now; could there be a third lurking in the shadows?
Abruptly, she came to a decision. "Turn ship and decelerate," she ordered. "We're going back."
Wallace's head twisted around. "Captain?"
"We're going back, Mr. Wallace," she repeated. "The convoy needs us."
"But the raider—"
"The raider will keep," she cut him off, warning him with her eyes.
His mouth worked, but he turned back to his board without comment, shoulders hunched in silent protest. Thinking of their orders from Admiral Trent, no doubt.
Or else thinking about the fact that the enemy was a battlecruiser that outgunned Fearless by probably three to one.
"Peep's altered course toward the Dorado," Venizelos announced. "From the data, CIC speculates that whatever they're doing to the merchie's impellers operates at a range of about a million klicks."
Or in other words, ten times the range of a grav lance. Or at least, of a Manticoran grav lance.
Which meant that Honor's gut reaction a minute ago had been correct. If this was indeed a new Peep weapon, they needed to find out as much as they could about it. Admiral Trent might not be happy that she'd let the Andermani raider escape, but under the circumstances—
"Aspect change in the raider, Skipper," Venizelos announced. "She's also flipped and decelerating."
"Run the numbers, Stephen," Honor ordered. "Assume the battlecruiser waits for us. What's our intercept time?"
"For a zero-zero intercept, two hours thirteen minutes," DuMorne said. "We'll be in missile range twelve minutes before that."
"And the raider?"
"She'll be in missile range of us four minutes after that," DuMorne said.
"Good," Honor said, forcing her voice to remain calm. So the enemy wasn't going to be content with just looting the convoy, or even with suckering Fearless into going up against a ship three times her size. Instead, they were going to guarantee victory by making Fearless fight both ships at the same time.
"Good?" Wallace echoed. "What's good about it?"
"They'll have us surrounded," Honor said evenly, remembering an old, old quote. "This time they won't get away."
She turned back to her displays, ignoring Wallace's look of disbelief. In the distance, the battlecruiser's wedge fluctuated again—
—and with a distant thundercrack and a jolt that could be felt straight through the deck plates, Dorado's wedge collapsed.
"Hot diggedy damn," Captain McLeod's strained voice said into the sudden silence. "Is that what was supposed to happen?"
"Part of it," Sandler assured him, crossing to the engineering status board. "Georgio?"
"Don't know yet," Pampas said, his fingers playing almost tentatively with the keys. "The breakers are still popped, but they might just be too hot to reset."
Cardones looked back at his displays. The Peep was still moving among the scattering convoy, methodically popping merchie wedges as it went.
But something new had now been added to the picture. On the distant marker indicating the Fearless, the green number indicating acceleration away had been replaced by a red one.
Which meant Fearless had given up on the chase. She was decelerating hard, killing her forward velocity and preparing to come to the convoy's rescue.
Where she would face a Peep battlecruiser.
"Captain Sandler?" he called. "You'd better come see this."
"What is it?" Sandler asked, making no move to leave Pampas's side.
"Fearless is decelerating," Cardones told her. "I think she's going to come back."
"Understood," Sandler said, and turned back to Pampas's board.
Cardones blinked. "Captain?"
Reluctantly, he thought, she turned back. "What?"
"Aren't we going to do something?" he asked. "I mean, she's coming back."
"What exactly would you like me to do, Commander?" Sandler countered. "Warn the Peep off? Or shall we just charge to the attack ourselves? Don't worry, Captain Harrington can handle him."
"But—"
"I said don't worry," Sandler said, cutting his protest off with a stern look. "Kilo for kilo, Fearless has far better weapons than any Peep warship. You know that."
"Besides, this particular Peep has almost certainly had a lot of its armament gutted to make room for their wedge-killer," Damana added. "Fearless should be all right."
"Got it!" Pampas crowed suddenly. "There they go, Skipper. Breakers have closed, and the nodes are back up to standby."
He grinned up at Sandler. "We did it, Ma'am."
"We did indeed," she agreed, some of the lines smoothing out of her face as she clapped Pampas on the shoulder. "Well done, Georgio."
"So what are we waiting for?" McLeod asked. "They're moving away from us right now. We could bring up the wedge and make a run for the inner system, and they'd have to decelerate before they could even think about coming after us."
"No," Sandler said, an odd note to her voice. "No, leave the wedge down."
"But we might at least be able to distract them," Cardones put in. A number on his display caught his eye as it changed— "Uh-oh."
"What?" Damana asked.
"The raider's also flipped over and started decelerating," Cardones told him.
"ETA?"
Cardones was running the numbers. "Looks like they'll reach he
re pretty much together," he said. "They're trying to box Fearless between them."
"They're going to succeed, too," Damana agreed, eying his captain. "This changes things, Skipper. Even if Fearless can handle a gutted battlecruiser, adding a light cruiser's tubes to the mix stacks the odds the other way."
"Again, what do you want me to do about it?" Sandler asked.
"As Captain McLeod suggests, we could run for it," Damana said. "If we can draw the Peep far enough out of position, it would give Fearless a chance to take out the raider first instead of having to face both of them together."
"Unless the Peep decides we're not worth bothering with," Sandler pointed out. "She might just let us go, in which case we'll have done it for nothing."
"So?" Cardones said. "I mean, what have we got to lose by trying?"
"What have we got to lose?" Sandler demanded. "We have everything to lose."
She looked back and forth between Cardones and Damana. "Don't you see? Either of you? We now have the counter to their wedge-killer; but they don't know we have it. If they leave here without finding that out, who knows how much time and money Haven will waste building these things and putting them aboard their ships?"
Cardones stared at her in disbelief. "You mean you'd let Fearless die for that?"
"People die all the time in war, Mr. Cardones," Sandler said tartly. "If it makes you feel any better, they won't have died for nothing."
"Yes, they will," Cardones shot back. "The Peeps aren't going to just recall all their ships to base and load these things aboard them. They'll keep on testing; and sooner or later, they're bound to run into a merchie with the breakers installed."
A sudden cold wave washed over him. "Or weren't you going to tell anyone outside ONI about this?" he breathed. "Were you just going to let merchies continue to get slaughtered?"
"I'm not going to debate it with you, Lieutenant," Sandler said icily. "You have your orders. The wedge stays down." Deliberately, she turned her back on him. "Georgio, let's see the self-diagnostics on those junction points."
Cardones turned back to his displays, his stomach churning with anger, an odd sense of loss digging an empty spot into his soul. He'd been wrong. Elayne Sandler was nothing at all like Honor Harrington. Captain Harrington would never, ever sacrifice people for nothing this way. When she put people at risk it was for duty or defense, not for some stupid psychological game played by dark-minded men and women in dark-minded rooms. That was what she had done at Basilisk . . . and it was what she was about to do right now.
And Fearless, and all aboard her, would die.
There was no doubt about that. None at all. Sandler and Damana might be right about the limited combat capabilities of the battlecruiser, and Fearless could certainly take the light cruiser now coming in from behind her.
But she couldn't take on both at the same time. Not and survive.
He had to do something. Fearless was his ship, and Honor Harrington his captain. He had to do something.
He stared at the display . . . and like a row of dominoes toppling in sequence, the answer came.
Maybe. It would mean disobeying Sandler's direct order, of course, and that would mean the end of his career.
But what was a career for, anyway?
Seated at the helm beside him, Damana was staring straight forward, his own expression a mask. Taking a deep breath, Cardones reached over to his board—
And before Damana could stop him, he activated the wedge.
"What in the world?" Koln said, his forehead wrinkling in surprise.
"What?" Dominick demanded, swiveling his command chair to face him.
"One of the merchies, Sir," Koln said, glancing at Charles before returning his frown to the displays. "The Dorado. Her wedge has come up again."
"What?" Dominick growled, and shifted his own frown to Charles. "What's going on?"
"What do you mean, what's going on?" Charles countered, filling his voice and expression with casual unconcern even as his heart sank a few centimeters within him. "Your crew missed, that's what's going on."
"Impossible," Koln insisted. "The wedge was down."
"Because you caught a corner of it," Charles explained patiently. "You caused enough of a surge to confuse the software, but not enough to actually fry the junction points. I've mentioned this possibility to you before."
He held his breath as Dominick frowned slightly, clearly trying to remember. Charles had mentioned no such thing, of course, because he'd just now made it up. But he'd thrown so much technobabble at the commodore over the past few months that the other hopefully wouldn't remember this one way or the other.
Apparently, he didn't. "Fine," Dominick grunted. "So what do we do about it?"
"Obviously, you hit her again," Charles said. "Try to make it a clean shot this time."
Dominick grunted again and shifted his attention back to the helmsman. "What's she doing?"
"Heading away at full acceleration," the helmsman said. "Looks like she's making for the inner system."
"Mr. Koln?" Dominick invited.
"There are four other ships we haven't hit yet," Koln reminded him. "Given our current position and vector, it would make more sense to cripple them first, then go back for the Dorado."
Dominick stroked his chin. "Will that give us enough time to get back into position before Fearless arrives?"
"No problem," Koln assured him. "The Dorado is hardly going to outpace us."
"Good," Dominick rumbled. "I wouldn't want Captain Vaccares to have to face Fearless alone. We deserve some of the satisfaction of pounding Harrington to dust."
"Just be sure you don't kill everyone aboard," Charles warned. As if that was actually going to happen now. "Remember that part of the plan is to leave survivors who will testify they saw the People's Republic and a disguised Andermani warship working together."
"Don't worry, we'll leave a few," Dominick said, settling back comfortably into his chair. "Carry on, Mr. Koln."
"Yes, Sir." Koln returned to his skeet shooting.
Charles heaved a silent sigh of regret. So the Manties had figured it out already. Too bad—he'd hoped he could get his hands on some of Jansci's really high-tech cargo before the house of cards came tumbling down. Some genuine, useful hardware would have made his next run that much more believable and profitable.
Still, such was the way of the game. And he was hardly going to leave this one empty-handed.
No one was paying any particular attention to him as the Vanguard swung around to target the next merchie. Casually, Charles got up from his chair and began to circle around the bridge in the casual urgency of a man making for the head. Just beyond the head was the bridge's exit.
Standing in the hatchway, he looked back one final time. Sic transit gloria mundi, he thought, and ducked quietly through the opening.
Nobody saw him go.
"I will have your head, Mister," Sandler ground out in a voice with broken-glass edges, glaring at Cardones as if trying to set him on fire through willpower alone. "You hear me, Cardones? You are dead."
"That'll be up to a court-martial to decide," Cardones said, rather surprised at how calm he had suddenly become. The die had been cast, and there was nothing to do now but ride it through. "But for right now, may I have your permission to help the Fearless?"
Sandler's glare only got hotter. "We might as well, Skipper," Damana murmured from her side. "The disinformation thing is out the window now anyway."
"No, it's not," she countered, shifting her glare to him as if astonished that he would dare come to Cardones's support against her. "They'll simply assume they missed."
"Until they get aboard and examine the junction points," Damana said, holding her gaze without flinching.
"Which they wouldn't even have thought to do if he hadn't reactivated the wedge," Sandler snarled.
Damana just stood there silently . . . and slowly the fire died from Sandler's eyes. "They won't let us get away, you know," she said, turnin
g back to Cardones. "They'll come after us and disable us; and then they'll go back and blow Fearless into dust anyway. Then they'll come back as Jack said and find out how we spiked their toy and ruined all their fun. We had a plan; and now you've wrecked it. And for nothing."
"I don't think so," Cardones said, trying to match her gaze the way Damana had. "That is, it wasn't for nothing. Because you're right, they don't realize yet what we've done. And that gives us a weapon we can use against them."
He looked at Damana. "But we don't have much time."
"What do you need?" Damana asked evenly.
"Some equipment from Shadow," Cardones told him. "And I need Ensign Pampas and Captain McLeod to stay behind with me for a few minutes."
Damana threw a sideways look at Sandler's stiff profile. "I take it that means the rest of us are abandoning ship?"
"I'll be damned if I'll leave my ship," McLeod spoke up indignantly.
"You'll do what you're told," Sandler said coldly. For a long moment her eyes searched Cardones's face. Then, reluctantly, she gave a sort of half nod. "Jack, collect the team and get aboard Shadow," she said. "Captain McLeod, order your people to go with them."
McLeod started to sputter, took a closer look at her face, and choked back the objection. "Yes, Ma'am," he gritted instead, and turned to the intercom.
"So what's the plan?" Sandler asked, her eyes still on Cardones.
Cardones gestured toward the displays. "From the way we saw them operate at Tyler's Star, I'm guessing they'll move in close and launch boarding boats after they take out our wedge again."
"Probably," Sandler said. "So?"
"So," Cardones told her grimly, "we're going to prepare a little reception for them."
"That's odd," Wallace murmured. "Captain, CIC just reported one of the merchies has brought her wedge back up."
"I thought you said they'd all been knocked out," Honor said, looking over at her displays. He was right: the Dorado was up and running again, lumbering toward the inner system.
"They were," Wallace agreed. "McLeod must have gotten his nodes working again."
"Any idea how?"
Wallace snorted under his breath. "I don't even know how the Peeps knocked them out."