Honor Among Enemies

"Skipper, I can't stop a battlecruiser from blowing us apart eventually. We might last a while against just her chaser tubes, but we'll never stand more than a half-dozen full broadsides."

"I know. But their accel isn't that much higher than ours. They'll need the better part of an hour just to catch up, Hawkwing bought us that much, and as soon as Sid tells me it's safe, I'm going for a crash translation down to the beta bands. I'll risk a couple of chaser salvos first if it takes him that long to tell me go or no-go on the maneuver."

"All right, Skipper. I'll do what I can." Ward punched commands into her console, deploying missile decoys, and then kicked three EW drones over the side. The drones were each programmed to duplicate Artemis' current, wounded impeller signature, and she sent them racing off on widely divergent courses. Their power wouldn't last long, and they were unlikely to fool the Peeps even that long, but the delay while the enemy sorted out which were which might buy Engineering a few more precious minutes.

"Skipper, that merchie's still coming on," she reported. She picked up a faint transmission and put her computers on-line to enhance it, then shook her head. "It's an Andy, Ma'am."

"What is this, a wormhole junction?" Stellingetti growled, glaring at her repeater plot. Its reduced size made things appear closer together than they actually were, and she glared at the new bogey closing on her fleeing prey. The plot was further confused by the Manty's EW drones, but Kerebin had been close enough to see them launch and CIC had managed to keep track of them as they came on-line. Knowing which were false targets allowed her to ignore them to concentrate on the real one, and the battlecruiser plunged after it. Battle damage had reduced her own acceleration by five percent, but she was smaller than her prey, and she could still pull a higher accel than the Manty could.

"Who's that coming up behind us?"

"I think that's Durandel in front, Skipper," Edwards replied. "The bearing's about right, and their accel is cranked too high for a battlecruiser. That's probably Achmed astern of her."

"Is Durandel in com range?"

"Barely, under these conditions," Stellingetti's com officer said.

"Order her to slow down and recover our search and rescue pi

"Aye, Citizen Captain."

Stellingetti didn't expect her pi

"Who the hell is this newcomer, John?"

"From her impeller strength, she's another merchie," Edwards replied, "and I'm picking up an Andermani transponder."

"An Andy?" Stellingetti shook her head. "Wonderful. Just wonderful! Why would an Andy be maneuvering to match vectors with a Manticoran with a battlecruiser on its ass?"

"I don't know, Skip." The tactical officer punched a query into his system and shook his head. "It's a horse race. Whoever's driving that ship is good, and she's ru

"Damn!" The citizen captain gnawed on a thumbnail and, for the first time, wished Commissioner Reidel were aboard. It wasn't like Stellingetti to evade responsibility, but if the Committee of Public Safety was going to saddle her with its damned spy, the son-of-a-bitch could at least make himself useful by telling her how to clean this mess up! Her orders required her to "use any means necessary" to prevent any Manticoran-flag vessel from escaping with word of the task force's presence, but when Citizen Admiral Giscard and Peoples Commissioner Pritchart wrote that order, they'd never contemplated having a passenger liner on their hands. Stellingetti's conscience would never forgive her if she killed several thousand civilians, yet her orders left no option. If the liner wouldn't stop, she had to destroy it, and her soul shriveled at the thought. No doubt Public Information would claim the ship had been armed, which it was, and that its armament and refusal to stop had made it a legitimate target. Public Information was good at blaming victims for their fate. But Stellingetti would still have to look into her mirror every day.

And what was the damned Andermani up to? Her orders also required her to steer clear of Andies, and even to assist them against other raiders. But if that freighter insisted on poking its nose into this, it would be sitting right there, witness to the entire incident if she blew away the pirate. And what did she do then? Did she kill the Andy, too, just to finish off any witnesses who might dispute Public Information's version of what had happened out here?

"Com, warn the Andy off! Tell her to stand clear, or I can't be responsible for the consequences."

"Aye, Skipper."

"Forget about any crash translations, Skipper," Sid Cheney said flatly. "We've got two bad sectors in the primary data line, the main computer's fried, and the auxiliary took its own hit from that spike. You throw a crash translation at it, and the odds are at least seventy-thirty that either the backup computer or the control runs will blow half way through."

"How long to replace the bad control sectors?" Fuchien demanded.

"Even if I replace them, we've still got the computer damage to worry about."

"I know." Fuchien was grasping at straws, because straws were all she had left. "But if we can take at least part of the uncertainty out of the equation..."

"I've got crews on it now, but it's a twelve-hour job by the manual. I'm cutting every corner I can, and I think I can make it in six, but that's not go

"No, Sid," Margaret Fuchien said softly.

"Sorry, Maggie." The engineer's voice was even softer than hers. "I'll do my best."

"I know."

Fuchien forced her shoulders to straighten and drew a deep breath. Ward's EW drones hadn't fooled the pursuing Peep. They'd be into missile range in another eighteen minutes, and with an unreliable hyper generator, there was no way Artemis could translate down quickly enough to drop off the Peep's sensors.

She looked back at Ward's plot, and her brow furrowed. The Andermani was closing on her ship quickly, coming in at an angle that would match vectors in just under fifteen minutes. She wouldn't be able to pace the liner long, even with damaged beta nodes, Artemis could out accelerate any bulk carrier ever built, but at the moment their courses merged, they'd be moving at almost the same velocity. She had to admire the ship handling of whoever had pulled that off, but for the life of her, she still couldn't see any reason to do it in the first place.

"Anything from the Peeps yet?" she asked Com.

"No. Ma'am."

The reply sounded as tense as Fuchien felt, and she smiled raggedly and made herself take a turn around the command-deck. There really wasn't any choice, was there? When the Peep got into missile range, all she could do was heave-to and surrender. Anything else would be madness.

"Skipper!" It was her com officer. "We're being hailed by the Andy!"

"Well, they've made rendezvous," Edwards observed. "Now what?"

"I don't know. Did she respond to our warn-off at all?"

"No, Skipper," Com replied. "Not a word."

"What the hell is she playing at?" Stellingetti fumed. She shoved herself angrily back in her command chair and glared at her plot. Whatever the Andermani vessels ultimate intentions, she'd just screwed Kerebin's attack options all to hell. She was too close to the Manty. Edwards' missiles were as likely to home in on her as on the Manty at this range, and the Manty skipper knew it. He'd cut his own accel to match the Andy's, riding just ahead of her to use her for a shield, and Stellingetti gritted her teeth.