War Of Honor

"Actually, there've always been more more or less honest private armed vessels in Silesia than most people realize. I'm sure you've encountered quite a few of them yourself, during your deployments here?" He raised his eyebrows at her, and she nodded. "The problem, of course, has always been telling the good guys from the bad guys," he went on, "and for whatever reason, the Confed Navy had decided I was one of the good guys. It may have had something to do with the first couple of pirate vessels which suffered a mischief when Ambuscade was in the area."

"I hope you won't take this wrongly, Sir, but why did you stay out here in Silesia at all?" He looked at her, and she waved one hand in the air above her desk. "I mean, you've done well, but surely you had more and better contacts in the Star Kingdom then you did out here, and the Confederacy was scarcely the most law-abiding environment available."

"I suppose shame might have been a part of it," he admitted after a moment. "The language in which the court of inquiry couched its verdict was actually pretty moderate, but the subtext was clear enough, and there was a part of me which wanted sympathy about as little as it wanted condemnation. So there was certainly an element of starting over somewhere where I'd have a clean page.

"Then again, I was one of the Navy's old 'Silesian hands.' Like you, I'd been deployed out here several times in the course of my career, and there were people who knew me, either personally or by reputation. They don't get to see too many Manticoran officers of my seniority or experience in private service out here, so in some ways it was easier for me to write my own ticket in the Confederacy than it would have been in the Star Kingdom."

He paused for several seconds, and she tasted his emotions as he considered whether or not to leave it at that. Then he gave his head a little toss—a ma

"And if the truth be known, I think it was also a case of looking for the grand gesture. A way of proving to the galaxy at large that whatever the court of inquiry might have decided, I was—well, a force to be reckoned with, I suppose. I needed to go out and demonstrate that I could succeed out here and simultaneously cut a swathe through any pirates who got in my way."

"And perhaps just a bit of knight errantry?" Honor asked gently. He looked at her expressionlessly, and she tipped her chair back and smiled. "I don't doubt anything you just said, Sir. But I think there's also at least a trace of 'once a Queen's officer, always a Queen's officer.' "

"If by that you mean I thought the universe would be a better place with fewer pirates in it, you may have a point," Bachfisch conceded. "But don't make the mistake of assigning me too much purity of motive."

"I didn't say anything about purity of motive," Honor replied. "I just couldn't quite picture you quietly fading away under any circumstances. Finding you out here in command of what amounts to privately flagged Q-ships simply suggests to me that you're still in the business of suppressing piracy. And given that you just let drop the name of the previous Second Space Lord, my naturally suspicious mind suggests that there might be a more direct co

"There's something to that," he admitted. "Not that I started out with any such co

"And whether I'm right about that or not, Admiral Givens—or her minions, at least—were in fairly regular contact with me right up to the truce with the Peeps. I suppose that technically I was one of those 'HumInt' sources ONI keeps referring to when they brief officers for Silesia."

"You said ONI was in regular contact with you?" Honor asked, looking at him very thoughtfully, and he nodded.

"That's exactly what I said," he agreed. "And I meant precisely what you think I meant. Since Jurgensen took over from Givens, Intelligence seems to've cut back drastically on its use of human resources here in Silesia. I can't say what the situation might be elsewhere, but here in the Confederacy, no one seems to be paying much attention to old sources or networks. And, frankly, Honor, I think that's an enormous mistake."

"I wish I could say I disagreed with you, Sir," Honor said slowly. "Unfortunately, if you're right, it only confirms fears I already had. The closer I look at the intelligence packets they sent out here with me, the less in touch with reality the analysts who wrote them up seem to be."

"I was afraid of that," he sighed. "Obviously, there was no way for me to know what ONI was or wasn't telling the officers the Navy was sending out, but the fact that no one was asking me any questions anymore suggested that the information contained in their briefings was probably . . . incomplete. And unless I'm very mistaken about the Andies' intentions, that could be a very, very serious oversight on someone's part."

"Do you think he's right, Your Grace?" Mercedes Brigham asked quietly as she, Honor, Nimitz, Lieutenant Meares, and LaFollet rode the lift towards the flag briefing room and an already scheduled meeting with Honor's entire staff.

"I'm afraid I do," Honor replied equally quietly.

"I know you and he go way back, Your Grace," Brigham said after a moment, and Honor chuckled humorlessly.

"Yes, and he was my very first captain. And, yes, again, Mercedes, that gives him a certain aura of authority in my eyes. But I'm not blind to the ways people can change in thirty or forty T-years. Nor am I overlooking the possibility that however good his intentions, his information—or his interpretation of it—could still be badly flawed." She shook her head. "I'm considering what he's said as impartially and skeptically as I can. Unfortunately, too much of it fits entirely too well with all the other straws in the wind we've been identifying."

"I didn't mean to suggest that he might be trying to dump disinformation on you, Your Grace. And to be honest, I have to agree that his analysis of what the Andies probably have in mind jibes altogether too damned well for comfort with what we were already afraid they were thinking. I guess my greatest concern is that he's so much more emphatic about the Andies' new hardware than anything we had from ONI suggests. For that matter, he's more emphatic than anything we got from the Graysons would suggest."

"Agreed. But by the same token, he's had a much closer look at the Andies than either ONI or Benjamin's people. In ONI's case, that's purely because Jurgensen and his people have chosen not to avail themselves of the resource that was available to them. Unless I'm mistaken, the Captain wasn't the only human source Jurgensen decided he could dispense with, either. In the Graysons' case, it's simply a matter of time and distance. Well, that and the fact that they never even knew the Captain was here, so they can hardly be blamed for not getting his input.

"Even conceding all of that, though, what he's been able to piece together about the new Andermani systems tallies much too closely for comfort with what Greg Paxton did manage to put together. Not to mention what Captain Ferrero's had to say in her reports. Or that Sidemorian analyst, what's-his-name?" She frowned, then nodded. "Zahn."