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"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones said, trying to suppress his quiet misgivings. Yes, he'd fired the grav lance in combat; but that hardly made him an expert on the damn thing. He just hoped Hemphill wasn't expecting more from him than he could deliver. "When will the orders be cut?"
"Already done," Hemphill said. "Captain Sandler has your copy; Captain Harrington's will be given to her after her conference with Admiral Trent. Your replacement will be ready to join Fearless at that same time."
Cardones felt his stomach tighten. "Replacement?"
"A temporary replacement only," Sandler assured him. "You're still officially assigned to Fearless."
"On the other hand, who knows?" Hemphill said. "If you do well on this mission, ONI could decide they'd like you on staff full-time."
"I see," Cardones said. She meant it as a compliment, of course. Offhand, though, he could think of nothing he would like less than to be sitting in an Intelligence office somewhere trying to sift gold nuggets out of the effluvia of Peep propaganda 'faxes.
"Jack will fly you back to Fearless to pick up your kit," Sandler said. "We'll leave as soon as you get back. You can chew over the latest data and information once we're underway."
There must have been something in his face, because she smiled faintly. "No, we aren't taking Basilisk with us. We have our own ship, the Shadow. I think you'll like her."
"Captain Sandler will answer any other questions," Hemphill said, getting to her feet. "Needless to say, everything you've heard and seen here comes under the Official Secrets Act."
Her eyes locked like a pair of grasers on Cardones's face. "We're counting on you, Lieutenant," she said quietly. "Don't let us down."
Honor ran through to the end of the report and looked up at Admiral Trent, seated at the head of the bridge briefing room table. "I hope, Sir," she said carefully, "that this is some kind of serious misreading of either the data or the situation."
"So do I, Honor," Trent agreed heavily. "But even granting the extreme range the readings were taken at, and the low quality of the merchie sensors that took them, I don't see where there's much margin for error."
"And frankly, Captain, I don't see where there's any margin," the man seated across the table from Honor said, his voice a bit testy. "I know we all tend to think of the People's Republic as the only threat out there. But they're not, and it's high time we started remembering to look in other directions."
Honor focused on him. Lieutenant Commander Stockton Wallace was probably a few years older than she was, with dark hair and eyes and a deep cleft in the center of his chin. He was also intense, verbally blunt, and, to her mind, a little quick to jump to conclusions.
But then, perhaps those were qualities Naval Intelligence appreciated in one of their officers.
"That's a little unfair, Commander," she said. "No one's forgotten the Andermani Empire, or their long-standing interest in swallowing up Silesia."
"Good," Wallace said. "Then I presume we also haven't forgotten that Manticore is all that stands in the way of that ambition?"
"No, we haven't," Honor said evenly. "But at the same time, starting a war of conquest by sneak-attacking Manticoran merchantmen seems a very non-Andy way of going about it."
She tapped the memo pad. "For that matter, we have no proof that this ship had anything to do with either of the attacks."
"Are you suggesting it just happened upon two dead merchantmen?" Wallace asked, his voice somehow managing to convey contempt without crossing the line into insubordination. Probably another talent ONI selected for. "And didn't bother to report it; and then turned and ran the minute he was spotted?"
Honor fought back a retort. Unfortunately, he had a point. In both instances the merchantmen who'd spotted the mysterious ship had hailed it, only to see it flee without making any response.
And when investigating ships had gone to the scenes, they'd found attacked and looted Manticoran merchantmen floating dead in space.
"Fine," she said instead. "Then let's talk about the identification itself. Even if this secondary emission spectrum is consistent with that of an Andy ship, there must be other possibilities."
Wallace pursed his lips. "With all due respect, Captain Harrington, you've had all of fifteen minutes to peruse the data," he reminded her. "My colleagues, on the other hand, have put quite a few hours into this analysis."
He jabbed a finger at the memo pad. "I assure you, this isn't just consistent with an Andermani emission spectrum. It is an Andermani emission spectrum."
And emission spectra can't be faked? With an effort, Honor swallowed the retort. Of course emission spectra could be faked. That was in essence what a warship's electronic warfare system did every time it made a superdreadnought look like a harmless little battleship.
But that kind of sleight of hand required a highly sophisticated selection of equipment. And especially when you considered the rest of the analysis . . .
"I'm simply concerned that perhaps we're being too clever," she said instead. "Or else perhaps not being clever enough."
"Meaning?" Wallace asked, an edge of challenge in his voice.
"It's the number of layers here that concern me," she explained. "We have the Silesian transponder on top—"
"Which is clearly a fake," Wallace cut in.
"Clearly," Honor agreed. Transponder signals, at least, were trivial to gimmick. Half the pirates and three-quarters of the privateers roaming Silesian space were probably ru
"And your point is . . . ?"
"My point is who's to say that what we've got is two layers of camouflage and one real McCoy?" Honor said. "As opposed to, say, three layers of camouflage with something we still haven't spotted underneath everything else?"
Wallace took a careful breath. "I understand that you're not an expert in these technical matters, Captain," he said. "But my people are; and I can assure you that that is highly unlikely."
"Perhaps not an 'expert' by your standards, Commander," she said just a bit coolly. "I have, however, spent the odd hour or two playing with our own EW from a tac officer's perspective. And as a tac officer, I know that what I'm suggesting isn't exactly impossible, now is it?"
Wallace's lips puckered. "Nothing is impossible, Ma'am," he conceded grudgingly. "Especially not for our EW. But not everyone's capabilities are as good as ours, and we think it extremely unlikely in this instance."
"Regardless, it's a question that won't be resolved until we get a closer look at the ship itself," Trent put in. "And obviously, we need this nailed down as quickly as possible. Which is why, Honor, if you spot this emission spectrum, your new orders are to give complete priority to getting us that closer look."
He leveled a hard look at her. "Complete priority," he repeated.
Honor felt her breath catch in her throat. "Are you saying, Sir, that I'm to abandon my convoy in order to give chase?"
"If necessary, yes," Trent said. "I don't like it any better than you do. But those are your orders."
He glanced at Wallace. "And to be perfectly honest, I agree with them," he added reluctantly. "If the Andies have decided to finally make their move on Silesia and are feeling us out by hitting our merchantmen, we need to know about it. Certainly before we allow relations between Manticore and Haven to deteriorate any further."