War Of Honor

"I think there are two possibilities, Your Grace. We know from Captain Ferrero's report that the Andies clearly have an FTL com capability of their own. It's possible that they had stealthed platforms already in-system to observe us—or even a second stealthed starship doing the same thing—so that they knew when we deployed the drones. They're not particularly stealthy during the initial deployment phase," she pointed out.

"If they tracked the deployment, then they could have sent an FTL warning to the battlecruiser which would have given her at least a rough idea of when the drones might reach detection range of her. With that information, she would have had an equally rough idea of when she had to shut down her impellers to disappear from our passives."

"I don't much care for that scenario, Commander," Honor observed. "That, unfortunately, doesn't make it any less likely. But you said you saw two possibilities."

"Yes, Your Grace. Personally, I find the second one even more disturbing: they may have actually detected the Ghost Rider drones before the drones detected them."

"You're right," Honor said after a moment. "That is a more disturbing possibility." She glanced at Jaruwalski. "What do you think, Andrea?"

"At this point, Your Grace, I'm not prepared to rule anything out," Jaruwalski said frankly. "I realize it's always dangerous to overestimate a potential opponent's capabilities, but it's even more dangerous to under estimate them. Be that as it may, however, I'm strongly inclined to think that Commander Zahn's first hypothesis is the more likely. I know how hard it would be for us to detect an incoming Ghost Rider drone soon enough to shut down before it had us on passive, even if we were under stealth at the time. I don't see any way that anyone else could do it at all. Even making every possible allowance for improvements in their tech, I find it very difficult to believe that our local intelligence estimates could be far enough off for them to have developed the sort of capabilities which would let them manage a trick like that."

She had not, Honor noticed, said anything about the extent to which the Admiralty's intelligence estimates might be off.

"I'd have to concur with Captain Jaruwalski, Your Grace," Reynolds offered. "We could both be wrong, but I don't think we are. Not that far wrong."

"But the possibility that they had LaFroye under observation that close without her ever seeing them isn't all that much more palatable," Commander Orndorff pointed out.

"No, it isn't," Honor agreed with fairly massive understatement. She considered the implications for several silent seconds, then shook herself and returned her attention to Ackenheil and Zahn.

"I think we're going to have to accept, tentatively, at least, that one of your two hypotheses is correct, Commander. What happened after you failed to relocate her?"

"I ordered Commander Zahn to continue search operations," Ackenheil said before Zahn could reply. "I authorized the use of additional Ghost Rider drones, and I ordered a course change to take us towards the Andy's last known position."

"And?" Honor asked when he paused.

"And if the Andies had really pla

"In what way?"

"Well, Your Grace, it's obvious in retrospect that the Andy made a depressingly accurate estimate of what I was likely to do. He was waiting for us. Still in stealth, and well on our side of where I estimated he could have gotten to in the elapsed time. The first thing that I knew, was when he locked us up."

"Locked you up." Honor repeated, and Ackenheil nodded.

"Yes, Your Grace. He didn't just have us on active sensors; he had us locked up with his fire control radar and lidar, and he kept us that way for over thirty seconds."

"I see." Honor sat back in her chair and exchanged another glance with McKeon and Yu. Then she gave her head a little toss, as if to clear her brain, and turned back to Ackenheil.

"And afterward?"

"And afterward, he just shut down his targeting systems and completely ignored us," Ackenheil replied. His voice was level, but Honor tasted the remembered echoes of white-hot rage. "I hailed him five times, Your Grace. He never responded once, never even identified himself."

"What the hell are those idiots playing at?" Alistair McKeon demanded rhetorically.

Captain Ackenheil and Lieutenant Commander Zahn had left the flagship to return to LaFroye. Honor had assured them both of her confidence in them, and that assurance had been genuine. It might not have been if Ackenheil had tried to minimize how completely the Andy battlecruiser had surprised him, but Honor had been surprised enough times herself to realize how easily it could have happened. And one thing she could be sure of was that if it was humanly possible, Jason Ackenheil would never let it happen again.

Which didn't make the fact that it could have happened once any more reassuring.

"It sounds like more of the same thing, to me," Alice Truman put in from the com screen above the conference table. She'd been brought thoroughly up to date when Honor summoned her to the electronic conference, and now she shook her head on the screen.

"But this incident is more pointed, Dame Alice," Warner Caslet pointed out. All eyes turned to him, and the commander of First Battle Squadron, Protector's Own, shrugged. "It was a lot more pointed. And there's not much question as to how directly it was pointed at us, either. Well, at the Star Kingdom, I suppose."

"There hasn't been much question about where most of their damned provocations were pointed," McKeon replied, and Caslet grimaced.

"That wasn't exactly what I meant. Or, rather, I've been wondering about something else, and I wish we had a way to answer the question that's been bothering me."

"What question?" Honor asked.

"Whether or not they've been prodding the Sillies as hard as they have us . . . or even harder." Honor looked at him, and he shrugged. "We know they've been giving us demonstrations of their capabilities, but have they been focusing solely on us? Or have they been making the same point to the Sillies?"

"Now that, Your Grace," Andrea Jaruwalski observed after a moment, "is an intriguing thought. And it would make sense."

"You think they're not just trying to convince us that they can handle our tech advantages?" Truman asked. "That they're making the point to the Sillies that the Confed Navy can't match the IAN's?"

"Something like that," Caslet agreed. "And that would make sense of how widely their anti-piracy forces are operating throughout Silly space, as well. If they're hoping to inspire us into backing off, then they may also be hoping to convince the Sillies that trying to resist any territorial demands they may press would be futile. Scattering their forces around in a way that shows how numerically powerful they are—and showing off their new toys to demonstrate how capable they are—could be part of both those strategies."

"Yes, they certainly could," Truman agreed. "Still, whoever that battlecruiser's skipper was, she took a big chance upping the ante that way. If Ackenheil had been feeling a bit more proddy, he might have been at battle stations and popped off a broadside before he realized he was only being harassed. Which could have ended up with us in a shooting war with the Empire."

"Yes, it could have," Honor agreed. "Unfortunately, this looks like more of the straight line progression in provocation we've been seeing, whoever it is they intend to provoke. Or why. The question, of course, becomes where they intend to stop. If they intend to stop."