War Of Honor

"I think it's possible," she said. "Think about it. If they're still hoping to convince us to pull out without a fight, letting us know that they're going to be tougher opponents than we might have assumed would make sense. And they could kill two birds with one stone, in a way, if they deliberately failed to respond to our drones. First, they let us 'steal' the data they wanted us to have anyway. And second, by 'not noticing us' when we did, they lead us to assume that they can't crack our electronic warfare capabilities. Which could come as a very nasty surprise down the road if we didn't take the hint and withdraw from Silesia completely."

"You know, Your Grace, I'd just hate double— and triple-think situations like this."

"And you think I don't?" Honor smiled crookedly, then gave her head a little toss. "But at least we know a bit more than we did, whether the Andies wanted us to know it or not. And they know a bit more about what's going on than they did before we went to call on them. I'm sure that someone back at Admiralty House is going to be upset with me for 'consorting with the enemy,' but I can't help thinking that this is the first positive contact between us and the Andermani since the entire escalation in tensions began."

"I'd have to agree with that," Brigham said. "But even so, that just brings me back to my original question, I'm afraid. Do you think it did any good?"

Chapter Fifty Three

"Starlight, you are Alpha-One for transit at the i

"Astro Control, Starlight copies Alpha-One for transit. Begi

"Starlight, Astro Control shows you on nominal approach. Enjoy your trip. Astro Control, clear."

"Thank you, Astro Control. Starlight, clear."

Lieutenant Commander Sybil Dalipagic watched the data code of the Silesian Confederacy diplomatic courier blink out of existence as it disappeared into the Junction's central terminus on its way to Basilisk. As she'd informed Starlight's astrogator, the dispatch boat's flight path had been nominal, but that hadn't kept her from sweating the transit, anyway. Diplomatic couriers were the one type of vessel with which Astro Control could not establish direct telemetry links. Dalipagic shuddered to think what would have happened if she'd even suggested to Starlight that she could have handled the entire transit much more safely and efficiently from her own console. The very idea would have violated at least half a dozen solemn interstellar accords, although in Dalipagic's professional opinion, those solemn accords were pretty damned stupid. It wasn't as if establishing an interface and an override with the ship's maneuvering computers would have in any way compromised the sacred integrity of its diplomatic files. Or, not at least if the people the dispatch boat belonged to had an IQ recorded in double digits.

She snorted in familiar amusement at the thought. Her brother-in-law had served for almost forty T-years aboard the ships of the Royal Manticoran Mail Service. The RMMS was never used for secure diplomatic dispatches, but there were plenty of other people who wanted to be sure their mail was transmitted in complete security. Which was why the mail ships' secure data banks were completely separated—physically, not just by electronic firewalls—from any other computer they carried. Somehow, Dalipagic thought, it was . . . unlikely that a diplomatic courier wouldn't have built in security measures at least that good. Which would just happen to have obviated any possibility that she could have hacked into Starlight's dispatches simply by interfacing with the dispatch boat's astrogation systems. Hell, not even a hacker as celebrated as the Navy's Sir Horace Harkness could have managed that!

Not that any properly paranoid diplomat was likely to let her do any interfacing anytime soon. For that matter, even Manticoran couriers were often picky as hell about the degree of remote access they granted Astro Control. Of course—The comfortable, well worn rhythm of Dalipagic's thoughts faltered abruptly as the master plot suddenly altered. She stared at the thick rash of icons which had dropped una

There was a brief, breathless pause—a break in the quiet background chatter of controllers in contact with transiting merchantmen—as the crimson-banded light codes of potentially hostile superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers headed directly for the terminus. The icons of the standby forts, far less numerous than they once had been, changed color, flashing almost instantly from amber to the blood-red of combat readiness, and the two battle squadrons assigned to support them changed color almost as rapidly.

It couldn't be an attack, Dalipagic's brain insisted. No one would be stupid enough to try something like this! But even as a part of her mind insisted on that, another part reminded her that there were no military transits at all scheduled for today.

The transitory instant of silence vanished as suddenly as it had come. Urgent, priority directions went flashing out over the communications and telemetry links as Astro Control reacted to the sudden, unanticipated threat. Merchantmen already on final held their courses, but anyone more than fifteen or twenty minutes back in the transit queue was already being diverted. Not without massive confusion and protests, of course. The last thing any merchant skipper wanted was to find herself stuck in the middle of a shooting confrontation between a fleet that size and the Junction's active forts. And the way that every one of them wanted to avoid that possibility was by making her own transit through the Junction. They could always take refuge from whatever might be about to happen in the Junction's vicinity by retreating into hyper-space, but if they didn't make their transits now, they might be delayed for weeks, or even months, with catastrophic consequences for shipping schedules.

Their protests at being diverted were vocal, imaginative, and frequently profane. Intellectually, Dalipagic understood and even sympathized with them. Emotionally, all she wanted was for them to get the hell out of the way.

She was explaining that, in a tone of complete, courteous professionalism, to a particularly irate and vituperative Solly, when the master plot changed yet again. The crimson bands disappeared from around the incoming warships, replaced by the friendly green of allied units.

Well, Dalipagic thought as she recognized the data codes of units of the Grayson Space Navy, this should be interesting.

"I don't care about that!" Admiral Stokes snapped into his com. "You can't just come barging through my Junction and screw my traffic profiles all to hell!"

"I'm afraid we can," Admiral Niall MacDo

"Not without clearing it ahead of time, you won't!" Stokes shot back. The Astro Control CO glared at the image on his com screen.

"On the contrary," MacDo