War Of Honor

"No doubt that's true," Brigham replied with a dry chuckle. "On the other hand, Your Grace, my sympathy for what they may be worrying about is decidedly limited just now."

"Yours and mine both," Honor assured her. "But getting back to Walther. What did Ellis do when he got the visual?"

"Well, it took him a few minutes to recognize what he was looking at," Brigham told her. "When he did, he realized his two battlecruisers would be on the extremely short end of the stick if missiles started flying. By the same token, he was determined not to be driven out of the system. So he deployed close-in drones, and the mid-range EW platforms, and accelerated to meet one of the two Andie forces."

"He took on four cruisers armed like this one—" Honor tapped the deactivated memo board "—with just two Reliants?"

"Well, according to his report, he figured he'd probably gotten a better look at them than they could have gotten at him," Brigham said. "So in addition to the decoys he'd put out to duplicate his ships' emissions signatures for the bad guys' fire control, he also deployed an additional two dozen decoys behind each battlecruiser."

She paused, and Honor looked at her suspiciously.

"What sort of decoys?" she asked.

"He had them set to look like missile pods, Your Grace," Brigham told her, and chuckled at Honor's expression. "And he was careful to hold his accel down to something he could have managed with that many pods on tow, too."

"He was ru

"Precisely, Your Grace. And it looks like he pulled it off, too. Apparently, however aggressive the Andies might be feeling, they didn't want to take on a pair of battlecruisers, each of whom were prepared to put two hundred and fifty missiles into space in a single broadside."

"I wouldn't have wanted to either," Honor agreed. Then she frowned. "Still, if your estimate of their own broadsides is accurate, then theoretically four of them could have put out three times the weight of fire they figured both of Ellis's ships together could have laid down."

"That's why I said this incident wasn't as bad as the last one, Your Grace. No shots were fired, and the Andies backed off. They didn't maintain the full twenty million-klick separation Ellis had demanded, but they were careful to stay well outside anything approaching standard missile range. And eventually, they cleared Walther and went on about their business. Ellis had a couple of fairly anxious days first, but we got out of this one without any shooting. Which, given the disparity in the weight of fire, might indicate that they had orders not to pick a fight."

"Um." Honor rubbed her nose in more, then shook her head unhappily. "Actually, I think, Mercedes, we just lucked out this time. I think we had an Andermani squadron commander who wasn't particularly eager to die for her Emperor and figured that at least some of her ships were going to catch it right along with Ellis' battlecruisers if it came down to it. And if these people had orders not to pick a fight, what about those idiots at Schiller?"

It was Brigham's turn to look unhappy, and she nodded slowly. The confrontation in the Schiller System had ended far less happily than the one at Walther. The Andermani senior officer in that case had seen fit to ignore the senior Manticoran officer's warning to maintain separation when he caught the Manticoran patrol separated. Instead, the understrength three-ship Andermani division of light cruisers had continued to bore in on the single Manticoran heavy cruiser which had been operating in a detached role.

Fortunately, in that instance the Andies obviously hadn't had any of their handy-dandy strap-on missile pods. The three light cruisers had continued to close, and the Manticoran cruiser Ephraim Tudor had opened fire when they approached to within fifteen million kilometers.

The brief engagement which followed had not gone well for the Andermani. Apparently, the best powered attack range for missiles carried by their medium combatants was no more than twelve million kilometers, for they'd closed to that range before launching their first birds. It also seemed obvious that Ephraim Tudor's electronic warfare capabilities had been better than theirs. They'd scored three hits on the Manticoran cruiser, inflicting damage that was surprisingly light . . . and killing nine of her crew. Another seven members of her company had been wounded, but in return for that damage, one of the Andermani light cruisers had been battered into an air-leaking, powerless wreck. One of the others had also suffered serious damage to her impeller ring, judging by the drop in her wedge strength and acceleration, and whoever was in command on the other side had decided it was time to exercise discretion. Both of the light cruisers still capable of combat had rolled up on their sides, interposing the roofs of their wedges against additional incoming fire from Ephraim Tudor, and maneuvered to cover their crippled sister in their impeller shadows.

In compliance with Honor's orders to minimize tensions as much as possible, Ephraim Tudor had broken off the engagement when it became obvious the Andies were maneuvering to avoid further action. Honor had no reports on exactly how bad Andermani casualties had been, but she knew they had to have been much heavier than her own. Not that the thought was going to offer much comfort to the families of her dead.

"Maybe the Andie SO in Walther had heard about what happened in Schiller," Brigham suggested. "It's obvious that they haven't been able to match the defensive side of Ghost Rider—or, at least, to find a way around that side. Maybe what Ephraim Tudor managed to do to them is making them more cautious."

"It's possible," Honor conceded. "But given the time interval, any courier from Schiller would have had to cut it pretty tight to pass that word to the second force before it headed out for Walther. And whatever was going through their heads when Ellis decided to run his bluff, it certainly looks like they'd been pla

"Well," Brigham said, "at least we've gotten all of our units warned by now. And unless someone's managed to ambush one of our people even after we'd warned them, we shouldn't lose any more ships without making the Andies pay the ferryman."

"I know." Honor smiled again, more crookedly than before. "I know, Mercedes. The only problem is that I'd just as soon not kill anyone. Vengeance won't bring back anyone we lose, and the more shooting incidents we have, even if we 'win' all of them, the tenser things are going to get out here. If there's any chance of containing this thing, we've got to get a handle on it before it spins entirely out of control."

"You're right, of course," Brigham agreed. "But Sternhafen's response to your message doesn't strike me as a good sign. If he's so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he's officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn't sound like he's very interested in containing the situation, does it?"

"No," Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.

"No, it doesn't sound like it," she admitted.

"Perhaps, Herr Graf, you would be so kind as to explain this to me?" Chien-lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange, requested in tones of icy courtesy as he tapped the message chip. It was in the color-keyed folio which identified an official naval press release, and it lay on the corner of the desk which belonged—so far, at least—to Admiral Xiaohu Pausch, Graf von Sternhafen.