War Of Honor

If evasion failed and an armed vessel, however small, managed to bring its weapons into range of an un armed freighter, the merchant ship would find itself completely helpless. And the best way for an armed vessel to do that was to be moving at a relatively low velocity on the same approximate heading a merchie might be expected to arrive upon. Too much relative speed, and it would overrun its intended victim, unable to decelerate to rendezvous before the merchantman could reverse her own acceleration, break back across the hyper limit, and escape into hyper-space. Too little, and even a whalelike merchantman might be able to somehow twist aside and make it back into hyper before she could be overhauled.

That was obviously what the ship on Ferrero's plot had had in mind. The fact that it had gone to maximum acceleration directly away from her own command the moment she identified herself and instructed it to heave to for examination was ample confirmation in her own mind that it was a pirate. Unfortunately for it, the same tactical considerations which applied to merchantmen at low velocity evading pirates applied to pirates at low velocity evading heavy cruisers . . . with one notable exception. A pirate needed to rendezvous with its prize if it wanted to loot it; a heavy cruiser was under no obligation to rendezvous with a pirate, because said pirate could be blown out of space in passing just fine. And that was the situation which obtained in this instance.

Ferrero and her crew hadn't really pla

So it had to be obvious to the other ship's commander that Ferrero's only problem was when to begin reducing her own acceleration still further in order to give her sufficient time in passing to do a proper job of reducing her target to dispersing wreckage. Under the circumstances, his only real option was to heave to and allow her Marines to board him, and common prudence should have suggested that it would be wise of him to do that promptly, before Jessica Epps' obviously short-tempered captain decided it was too much bother to take prisoners and worry about trials.

It appeared, however, that prudence was in somewhat short supply aboard the fleeing vessel. Either that, or its crew was on the list of convicted pirates for whom no trials—beyond the necessary establishment of their identities—would be in order, anyway. This was Silesia, after all, and Silesian governors had a bad habit of "losing" condemned pirates whom the Star Kingdom had turned over to them rather than keeping said pirates safely locked up or executing them. That was the reason the RMN had authorized its skippers to summarily execute such "escapees" if they were captured by Manticoran ships a second time. Given that interstellar law mandated the death sentence for piracy, that authorization was completely legal, and Ferrero strongly suspected that the crew in front of her knew its names were on her list somewhere. In that case, being boarded and captured would leave them just as dead as being blown apart in combat, and there was always a possibility, however remote, that they might somehow manage to roll ship and squirm away from Jessica Epps.

They'll be ice skating in Hell before that happens, Mr. Pirate! she thought coldly. But at least my conscience will be clear, because you'll have had your warning . . . and your chance.

Which was just fine with Erica Ferrero, who liked pirates even less than most Manticoran officers.

"No response, Ma'am," Lieutenant McKee reported u

"Understood, Mecia," she said, and turned her attention towards the tactical section of the command deck. "I don't see any reason to muck around with this idiot, Shawn."

Lieutenant Commander Shawn Harris, Jessica Epps' tactical officer looked up from his own plot, and she smiled at him thinly.

"We'll give him a single warning shot," she said flatly. "Just like the rules of engagement require. After all, I suppose it's remotely possible that his com is down and no one in his entire crew knows how to fix it. But if he decides not to stop even after that hint, I want a full missile broadside right up the kilt of his wedge. No demonstration nukes, either; we'll go with laser heads."

"Yes, Ma'am," Harris acknowledged without surprise. At a hundred and ninety-one centimeters, the brown haired, mustachioed tac officer towered over his petite captain, but Erica Ferrero's record was ample proof that nasty things could come in small packages. She had a short way with pirates, did Captain Ferrero, and it had quickly become apparent to Harris that she regarded trials as an inefficient technique for dealing with them. She made it a point not to automatically assume guilt, and she was always scrupulous about giving any suspected pirate the chance to surrender—at least once. But if they declined the invitation to allow her to board and examine them in accordance with interstellar law, that was more than sufficient indication of a guilty conscience to satisfy her. In which case, she was perfectly prepared to pursue the options available to her under that same established interstellar law and give them a demonstration of peace through superior firepower.

Which, upon mature reflection, was perfectly all right with Lieutenant Commander Harris. It only took cleaning up the aftermath of one or two pirate attacks to make any naval officer . . . impatient with the entire breed.

He turned back to his own panel and began setting up his attack profile. It didn't look like it was going to be very difficult. The ship they were pursuing massed no more than fifty thousand tons, little more than twelve percent of an Edward Saganami —class cruiser like Jessica Epps, and no hyper-capable warship could mount very much offense or defense on that limited a displacement. Of course, she wouldn't have needed a lot of armament to deal with the completely unarmed and defenseless merchies upon which she preyed, and he felt a grim satisfaction at the way the tables had been turned in this instance.

He'd just locked his launch sequence into the loading queue for his broadside launchers when his earbug buzzed. He listened for a moment, eyebrows rising in surprise, and then turned towards his captain.

"CIC's just picked up another impeller signature, Ma'am," he reported.

"What?" Ferrero turned her chair to face him. "Where?"

"Approximately seventy million klicks at one-zero-seven by zero-two-niner," he replied. "She's headed straight for our bogey, too, Ma'am," he added, and the captain frowned.

"Why the hell didn't we see her sooner?" she asked. It was probably a rhetorical question, but it carried a lot of irritation, and Harris understood perfectly.

"I don't know for certain, Ma'am," he told her, "but from the accel she appears to be pulling, she's got to be military. Either that, or another pirate, and CIC estimates her to

"What is her accel?" Ferrero asked, eyes narrowing. Assuming that displacement figure was even remotely accurate, the heavy cruiser-sized newcomer was much too large for a typical pirate. It might be a privateer licensed by one of the Confederacy's i