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Nike had turned in the best gu
Commodore Banton had commanded the squadrons second and third divisions and their screen while Sarnow commanded the first and fourth, but that was only for the record. In fact, Sarnow had informed Honor five minutes into the exercise that both he and Captain Rubenstein, Division 54s senior officer, had just become casualties and that she was in command.
That was all the warning she'd gotten, but it was obvious she'd been thinking ahead, for her own orders had come without any hesitation at all. She'd used the FTL sensor platforms to locate Bantons ships, split her own force into two two-ship divisions, accelerated to intercept velocity, then killed her drives and gone to the electronic and gravitic equivalent of "silent ru
The commodore had taken the bait—partly, perhaps, because she didn't expect anyone to use up EW drones (at eight million dollars a pop) in an exercise—and altered course to intercept them. By the time she realized what was really going on, Honor had brought both her own divisions slashing in on purely ballistic courses, wedges and sidewall down to the very last instant and still operating separately in blatant disregard of conventional tactical wisdom. She'd hit Banton's surprised formation from widely divergent bearings, and her unorthodox approach had used Banton's more traditional formation against her, pounding her lead ships with fire from two directions, confusing her point defense, and using her own lead division to block the return fire of her rearmost ships for almost two full minutes. And, just to make it even better, she'd had Commander Chandler reprogram their screens antimissile decoys so that the heavy cruisers suddenly looked like battlecruisers.
The decoys had come on-line at the worst possible moment for Banton's tac officer. With no ru
Admiral Sarnow hadn't said a word, but his grin when he ambled onto Nike's bridge for the closing phase of the "battle" had been eloquent. Besides, Commodore Banton was a fair-minded woman. She knew she and her people had been had, and she'd commed her personal congratulations to Honor even before the computers finished calculating the final damage estimates.
A most satisfactory two days, taken all together, Henke decided. A whole week had passed without incident since Admiral Parks disappeared over the hyper limit, which had produced a deep sense of relief but hadn't lessened the squadron's determination to disprove any reservations Parks might entertain about their admiral and his flag captain... and the last couple of days' successes looked like an excellent first step.
Of course, she thought smugly, it had been an even better step for some than for others. Eve Chandler was already licking her chops in anticipation of her next conversation with Invincible's tac officer. Queen's Cup for gu
Besides, Commodore Banton had already promised that her ships' companies were buying the beer.
Honor noted the gleam in Henke's eyes and smiled fondly as her exec turned back to her own panel. Mike had a right to be pleased. It was her training programs which had kept Nike in such top-notch fighting trim, after all.
But there was more to it than training alone. Exercises and simulations could do many things, but they couldn't provide that indefinable something more that separated a crack crew from one that was simply good. Nike had that something more. Perhaps it came from the mysterious esprit de corps which always seemed to infuse the ships of her name, the sense that they had a special tradition to maintain. Or perhaps it came from somewhere else entirely. Honor didn't know, but she'd felt it crackling about her like latent lightning, begging her to use it, and she had. She hadn't even thought about her maneuvers—not on a conscious level; they'd simply come to her with a smooth, flawless precision. Her people had executed them the same way, and they had every right to feel pleased with themselves.
It helped that Commodore Banton was a good sort, of course. Honor could think of several flag officers who would have reacted far less cheerfully to the drubbing Banton had just taken, especially when they discovered they'd been beaten not by their admiral but by his flag captain. But she suspected Banton shared her own suspicions about the Admiral's motive for declaring himself a casualty. Honor might be his flag captain, yet she was also junior to six of the seven other battlecruiser captains under his command, and it was the first chance she'd had to show her stuff anywhere but in the simulators. Sarnow had deliberately stepped aside to let her win her spurs in the squadron's eyes, and she wanted to preen like Nimitz at how well it had gone.
In fact, she thought, leaning back to steeple her fingers under her pointed chin, "preen" was exactly what she intended to be doing very shortly... among other things. It was Wednesday, and the squadron was going to rendezvous with the repair base well before supper. She intended to arrive in Paul's quarters with a bottle of her father's precious Delacourt and find out just what his laughing hints about hot oil rubdowns were all about.
The corners of her mouth quirked at the thought, her right cheek dimpled, and she felt her face heating up, and she didn't care at all.
"Captain, I'm picking up a hyper footprint at two-zero-six," Commander Chandler a
Honor looked at the tac officer in faint surprise, but Chandler didn't notice as she queried her computers and worked the contact. Several seconds passed, and then she straightened with a satisfied nod.
"Definitely a Manticoran drive pattern, Ma'am. Looks like a heavy cruiser. I won't know for sure till the light-speed sensors have her."