Honor Among Enemies

Sherman nodded and walked slowly back to her chair. The stranger was over eleven light-minutes from her own ships. Even if he knew they where here, it would be a while before any com transmission from him reached them, but she wondered who the hell he was. This could be a prize sent in by one of the ships out on ops, but that was strictly against SOP. "The Leader's" contacts in Silesia were an inconvenient distance from Marsh, seclusion had its drawbacks, and his captains normally sent prizes straight to one of the fences. It made getting prize crews back a pain, but that was why Warnecke had kept Silas. The captured liner-cum-freighter had a decent turn of speed and stayed busy on shuttle runs between Marsh and... elsewhere.

Yet if this wasn't a prize, what was it doing here? No one ever came to Marsh. That was why they'd chosen the system in the first place. And if anyone was going to come this way, it would certainly have been a smaller tramp freighter, not something this size.

The Warshawski flare. That has to be it. They knew their sail was about to fail, and we're not far off the least-time route between the Empire and Sachsen. They needed a system in a hurry, and we were the closest "safe port" they could reach... poor bastards.

She sat back down and rubbed her temple. If they were in trouble, they'd start screaming for help as soon as they saw someone to scream to, and what did she do then? Losing a sail didn't make it impossible for a ship to get into hyper; it only meant that if it got there and then hit a grav wave, it would be destroyed. But it could still maneuver there, and it could still attain an apparent velocity a thousand times greater than light. So if these people jumped back into hyper, they could eventually get somewhere else, as long as they were careful to avoid all grav waves en route. Sailing that kind of course would be inconvenient as hell, but it could be done.

Which meant that if they picked up anything suspicious and ran for it, she'd have no choice but to chase them down in hyper. In theory, that shouldn't have been a problem, since both their acceleration and their top speed would be far lower than hers, but one reason Marsh was so seldom visited was that only a single grav wave, and that a fairly weak one, served the system. That had probably been a factor in the strangers decision to come here, since the weaker wave would have put less strain on a failing sail. But it also meant the freighter could run in almost any direction under impellers, and local h-space sensor conditions were lousy. If one of her people wasn't right on top of them when they made translation, they'd have an excellent chance to evade her. In which case the next people to call would be a Confed squadron.

No, she had to get close enough to be certain they couldn't evade. The best solution would be to intercept inside the Marsh hyper limit, where they couldn't get back into h-space at all, which meant less than nineteen light-minutes from the G6 primary. But it would take them a long time to get there, certainly long enough to change their minds and run if anything did make them suspicious, so the first order of business was to keep them from suspecting anything.

All right. If that was a merchant ship, it presumably had civilian-grade sensors, which were unlikely to see her ships at anything much above eight light-minutes, and it wouldn't send a message to her unless it could see her. So her first priority had to be to hold the range open until they were where she wanted them. It would also give her a chance to see if their sensors were better than she assumed, since they'd certainly send a message to her if they saw her. Ergo, no message meant they didn't know she was here. But if they didn't, they were bound to transmit straight to Sidemore, which meant....

She rubbed her temple harder, then nodded and turned her chair to face her astrogator.

"New squadron course, Sue. We've should have a good three light-minutes to play with before we enter their sensor range. I want a vector to take us out and around in a dogleg that will bring us up from astern of them after they've made turnover for Sidemore, but we'll maintain our heading for..." she checked the plot's time display "...another ten minutes."

"No sweat," the astrogator replied. "We've got six times their accel."

"Good." Sherman turned to her com officer. "Raise Sidemore. Tell them I'm going to maneuver to stay outside the target's sensor envelope until we get it inside the hyper limit, and send them our course once Sue works it out. If these people send them a message, I want dirtside to tell them there's a visiting Confed antipiracy patrol out-system of them, that their message is being relayed, and for them to maintain their present profile. Tell them the 'naval units' will make rendezvous with them at the point Sue's calculating. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the com officer said, and Sherman leaned back in her chair again.

"Sidemore should be receiving our message now, Ma'am," Fred Cousins said, and Honor nodded.

The privateers' maneuvers made it clear they had Wayfarer on gravitics, but very few "merchantmen" would be able to pick them up at this range, and they evidently figured Wayfarer hadn't. Their ships were swinging out to skirt Wayfarer's theoretical sensor envelope, then loop back in behind her in an obvious, and logical, attempt to head off any possibility of flight. All four of them were staying together, as well. That was nice. If she could suck them all in for the initial exchange, she wouldn't have to worry about any of them getting away.

She made herself sit back, radiating serene confidence while a skinsuited Nimitz curled in her lap. Tschu's "Warshawski flare" had been just as convincing as promised, and as he'd also promised, he'd managed it without actually damaging anything. Which was not to say he hadn't stressed the system right to the limit, and things like that always had some consequences. It had taken all eight forward alpha nodes to project a suitable power pulse, and Honor expected BuShips to speak to her firmly for taking a good thousand hours off their projected service life, but it had been worth it. Or, she corrected herself, it seemed to have been worth it so far.

Caslet had moved over to stand beside her, and their eyes met as she looked up. He and his senior officers had dined with her each night, and a sense of mutual respect and even wary liking had grown up between her and the Peep commander. She remembered Thomas Theisman, the Peep destroyer skipper, and now admiral, she'd captured at the Battle of Blackbird, and smiled slightly. Theisman and Caslet had a lot in common. For that matter, so did Allison MacMurtree, Sha

"Four heavy cruisers make for pretty stiff odds, Captain," Caslet observed quietly.

"I told you our teeth are sharp," she replied calmly. "I'm less worried by the numbers than I am by how slow we are. If they detach anyone, the detachee is going to get away from us."

Caslet blinked. She was worried that a heavy cruiser might "get away" from a converted merchantman? He was willing to admit her ship mounted powerful energy weapons, but he'd had ample opportunity to realize Wayfarer truly was a civilian design, with all the vulnerabilities that implied, and there couldn't be many places to put missile tubes. Her long-range armament had to be weak, especially given the space those god-awful grasers must eat up, and she couldn't take much damage. All of which meant a properly handled CA would cut her slow, unarmored, ungainly hull to pieces in any sort of sustained engagement. Granted she did carry those LACs, but LACs were fragile and weakly armed themselves. No matter how Warner Caslet looked at it, he expected Wayfarer to be severely damaged before she could take out that many opponents.