At All Costs

"You think they're up to something sneaky? Or is this just a panic reaction?"

"I don't see what kind of 'sneakiness' they could have in mind," Honor said after a second. "Estwicke's arrays got visual-range imagery off of both of the SDs, so we know they aren't pod-layers. That means they don't have any MDM capability, without towing pods, which they clearly aren't doing. Oh," she waved a hand, "they may have a few dozen tractored inside their wedges, but nowhere near enough to take us on in a missile duel, especially with the Katanas to thicken our point defense.

"On the other hand, this is a bit late in the game for a panic reaction. We've been in the system for over forty-five minutes. For them to be underway at all at this point, they must have been at at least standby readiness when we turned up-which makes sense, since they obviously realized Estwicke was scouting for a raid. But from standby readiness they could have been underway a good fifteen minutes sooner than this-a half-hour sooner, if they were sitting there with hot nodes. So why wait until now to 'panic'?"

"So what do you think they're doing?" Brigham asked.

"I don't know," Honor admitted, rubbing the tip of her nose once more. "It looks like they're reacting in confusion, and I suppose that could be what's happening. But that just doesn't feel right, somehow."

She contemplated the plot for a few more moments, then climbed out of her command chair, scooped a skinsuited Nimitz up in her arms, and crossed to Jaruwalski's station.

"How's their evacuation coming, Andrea?"

"It's still going full bore, Your Grace." Jaruwalski indicated a secondary display driven by transmissions from the stealthed arrays hovering near Arthur. "I wouldn't go so far as to call it panic stricken," she continued, "but they're obviously hauling everybody dirt-side as quick as they can."

"Still no word from the system authorities, Harper?" Honor asked, turning her head towards Communications.

"No, Your Grace," Harper Brantley replied, and Honor grimaced.

"But you're still picking up those grav-pulses?" she asked.

"Yes, Your Grace." The com officer nodded his head at Jaruwalski. "Commander Jaruwalski's arrays are actually picking up most of them, but we've been looking at them over here, as well. So far, it all looks like our own early-generation traffic, probably from fixed recon arrays scattered around the system. Their pulse repetition frequency rate's still on the low side, so the information they're passing is probably limited, but there are at least a couple of stations out there with a higher PRF."

"Can you localize the more capable transmitters?"

"We've nailed down two of them, Your Grace," Jaruwalski reported. "One of them seems to be aboard this space station."

A red sighting ring popped into existence around the system's main space station as she spoke. It was a big thing, though no more than twenty percent the size of Hephaestus, back home.

"And the other?" Honor asked, eyes narrowing intently.

"The other one is out here, Your Grace."

Jaruwalski dropped another icon into the display. This one appeared to be in orbit around Merlin, which put it over forty light-minutes outside the system hyper limit on the far side of the primary.

"Are they talking to each other, Harper?"

"I'd say, yes, Your Grace. I can't be positive, of course, but pattern analysis strongly suggests that they are."

"Thank you."

Honor nodded and walked slowly back across to her command chair, right hand gently caressing the plushy fur between Nimitz's ears.

"Your Grace, I know that expression," Brigham said quietly as Honor and Nimitz rejoined her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said I know that expression. May I ask what's provoking it this time?"

"I don't know, really." Honor shrugged. "There's just... something wrong. It's like they're going off in all directions at once-panicky evacuation of their orbital platforms, ships heading out to meet us without even bringing along heavy pod loads, no effort to communicate with us at all, and now this FTL message traffic."

"Maybe they really are going off in all directions at once, Your Grace," Brigham suggested. "It's one thing to know the other side is scouting your system; it's another to see a force this powerful coming down on you."

"I know, I know." Honor snorted. "Maybe I'm simply being paranoid! But I just can't shake the feeling that there's something out of kilter."

"Well, Ma'am, even if Arthur is talking to someone out at Merlin, it's not like either of them were close enough to pose any sort of threat to us. For that matter, Merlin's on the entirely wrong side of Solon!"

"Exactly. So why-"

Honor broke off abruptly, her eyes suddenly widening.

"Your Grace?" Brigham asked sharply.

"Sidemore," Honor said. "They're taking a page from Sidemore!"

Brigham looked blank for a moment, then inhaled deeply.

"They'd have to have accurately predicted our objectives," she said.

"No reason they couldn't have," Honor replied almost absently, eyes intent as she stared into the depths of her tactical plot. "Not in a general sense, at least. Deciding what sorts of targets we'd be likely to hit wouldn't be that hard. Picking the exact, specific targets would probably come down to a guessing game, but it looks like someone guessed right."

She looked into the plot for a few more seconds, then turned away.

"Harper, get me a priority link to Admiral Mikl¢s!"

"Too bad they didn't go for the cheese, Sir," Captain Marius Gozzi said as he and Javier Giscard watched the master plot aboard RHNS Sovereign of Space.

"I never figured there was more than one chance in three they would," Giscard replied. "Still, it was worth a try."

He stood back from the plot and folded his hands behind him while he thought. From the reports of his own sensor platforms, it was very likely that one of those Manty superdreadnoughts was Eighth Fleet's flagship. In which case, he was about to sit down across the table from the best the Manties had.

But this time I get to use my own cards, he reminded himself. And they're marked.

The one thing he wished he had was real-time intelligence on exactly what the Manties were up to, but that simply wasn't possible. The Tarantula net could get tactical information to him, but only by sending it aboard dispatch boats, and he didn't have an unlimited supply of them. Nor could he send any of the boats back after they'd reported to him, since the Manties would have been much too likely to detect their hyper footprints when they translated back into normal-space.

At least, so far, the raiders appeared to be doing what he wanted them to do. He would have preferred for them to take the "cheese," as Gozzi had called it. If they'd decided the missile pods planted around Merlin indicated there was something out there worth attacking, they might have divided their forces. Of course, the real reason for the pods had been to provide background clutter to hide the Tarantula platforms, because Sha

He checked the time display. Four minutes until the next dispatch boat was due.

"Selma, pass the preparatory signal for Ambush Three," he said.

"Aye, Sir," Commander Selma Thackeray, his operations officer responded.