Honor Among Enemies

"Caving in so soon, Captain?" Warnecke studied her suspiciously. "Somehow that doesn't ring quite true. You wouldn't be thinking of trying anything clever, would you?"

"Such as?" Honor asked bleakly. "I haven't said I would let you go. All I said is that there's no point in either of us acting hastily. At the moment we're both in position to trump the other's cards, Mr. Warnecke. Let's leave it at that while I consider my options, shall we?"

"Why, of course, Captain. I always like to oblige a lady. I'll be here when you decide to com again. Good day."

The image died, and Honor Harrington felt her mouth twist in a snarl of hate as the ready light above the pickup went dead.

Chapter THIRTY-ONE

The atmosphere in the briefing room could have been chipped with a knife. Honor's senior officers, and Warner Caslet and Denis Jourdain, sat around the long table, and more than one face was ashen.

"My God, Ma'am," Je

"I know, Je

"We can't... I can't let him go," she said. "He has to be stopped, right here, right now."

"But if he's ready to kill everyone on the planet..." Harold Tschu began slowly, and Honor shook her head sharply.

"He's not. Not yet, anyway. He's still playing with us, and he still thinks he can win. Think about his record, what he tried in the Chalice and what he's done since. Whatever else he may be, this man is convinced he can beat the entire universe because he's hungrier and more ruthless than anyone else in it. He's counting on that. He expects us to be the good guys and back away rather than accept the blame for the cost of stopping him."

"But if we don't back away and he presses his button, we will be to blame, Ma'am," Cardones said quietly. Honor's eyes flashed, and he waved a hand quickly. "I don't mean it that way, Skipper. You were right; the decision will be his. But by the same token, we'll always know we could have let him walk and avoided it."

He'd said "we," Honor thought, but he'd meant "you." He was trying to make it a group decision, to give her an out, to protect her.

"We're not going to consider that, Rafe," she replied softly. "Particularly not since we can't be sure he won't do it anyway." She rubbed her temple and shook her head. "However relaxed he may be trying to appear, he has to hate us for blowing away his fleet and his private little kingdom. He's already demonstrated how casually he's willing to kill an entire town, and he knows exactly how to punish us by using our own principles against us. The moral side of it wouldn't even occur to him, and what he's already done will earn him the death penalty from anyone who ever captures him. I offered him an option there, but he prefers to go for complete victory rather than accept prison as an alternative, so the threat of ultimate retribution won't deter him either. As he sees it, he's got nothing to lose, so why not do whatever he wants?"

She sat back, hugging Nimitz to her breasts, and silence ruled the compartment as the others realized she was right.

"If there were only some way to separate him from his transmitter," she murmured. "Some way to get him away from it so we could deal with him once and for all. Some..."

She paused, and her eyes narrowed. Cardones straightened in his own chair, gazing at her anxiously as he felt her mind begin to race, then looked around the other faces. Her other officers looked as anxious as he felt, but Warner Caslet’s expression was almost as intent as hers.

"Separate him from the transmitter," the Peep murmured. Honor’s eyes swiveled to him, and he nodded slowly. "We can't do that, can we? But what if we separated him and his transmitter from the planet?"

"Exactly," Honor said. "Get him out of range of the charges, then deal with him."

"He could still leave a timer," Caslet mused, and it was as if he and Honor were alone. The others could hear their words, but the two of them were communicating on a far deeper level than anyone else could follow.

"Timers we can deal with," Honor replied. "We know where he's transmitting from, and he wouldn't trust his detonator where anyone else could get to it. That means it has to be in his HQ, and we can take that out from orbit if we have to."

"It's in a town," Caslet objected.

"Granted, but if he did use a timer, he'd set it to hold the detonation until he was too far away from Sidemore for us to overtake him short of hyper, and his repair ship's probably even slower than Wayfarer. Even if he could pull two hundred gees, which he can't, he'd still need over four hours to reach the hyper limit, and our LACs can pull almost six hundred. That gives us three hours in which they could overhaul him from a standing start."

"Three hours to find a timer that could be anywhere in his HQ?" Caslet objected.

"We don't have to," Honor said, her voice cold as space. "That's a fairly big town down there, but his HQ's close to one edge. If we have to, we can probably evacuate that end of town, then take out the HQ with a kinetic strike. Blast and thermal bloom would still tear up the local real estate, but the explosion would be clean, and we wouldn't have to kill anyone. For that matter, he'll be leaving a lot of people behind. Suppose we tell them the charges are down there? Then we offer them life in prison if they find his timer, deactivate it, and turn it over to us ... and tell them that if it goes off, we'll execute anyone who survives the explosions. With their 'fearless leader' already having sold them out, I think we can count on them to find it for us."

"Risky either way, but you're probably right," Caslet agreed. "But how do we work it so that he's willing to leave the planet in the first place? He may be crazy, but he's too smart to go for anything that doesn't at least look feasible."

"The com systems," Honor said softly. "The repair ships com systems. That's the weak spot in the thread he's hung his 'Sword of Damocles' from."

"Of course!" Caslet's eyes blazed. "His hand unit couldn't possibly have the range. Once he's more than a few light-seconds from the planet, he'd have to use the ship's com to transmit the detonation command!"

"Exactly." Honor’s chocolate eyes burned as bright as Caslet's, and she smiled. "Not only that, but I think I may see a way to take the timer out of the equation, as well, or at least give us at least another hour to work on finding it."

"You do?" Caslet rubbed his jaw.

"I think so. Harry," she turned to her chief engineer, "I'm going to need you to whip up some specialized hardware fast to pull this off. First..."

"All right, Mr. Warnecke," Honor told the face on her com screen some hours later. "I've considered my options, just as I said I would, and I have an offer for you."

"Indeed?" Warnecke smiled like a benign uncle and raised his hands in eloquent invitation. "Talk to me, Captain Harrington. Amaze me with your wisdom."

"You want to leave the system, and I want to be certain you don't blow up the planet as you depart, correct?" Honor spoke calmly, trying to ignore the furnace of Andrew LaFollet's emotions. They beat at her through her link to Nimitz, for her chief armsman was aghast at what she proposed to do, but she couldn't let herself worry about that just now. Her personal participation was the one bait which might lure a man who saw the universe only as an extension of himself, and would expect others to do the same, into her trap, and she concentrated all her attention on her enemy.