Mission of Honor

way away from his terminal, tipped back in his chair, heels propped on the seat of another chair which had been turned to face him, while he gazed calmly at the book reader in his lap. A book reader which was aligned—not, Shavarshyan suspected, just coincidentally—so that a sharp eyed observer could look over his shoulder and recognize a novel about the psychically gifted detective Garrett Randall by the highly popular Darcy Lord.

The man on the display went right on looking at his book reader, hit the page advance, then twitched as somebody outside the field of his own pickup hissed something in what had to be a carefully audible stage whisper. He glanced over his shoulder at his own display, then straightened, bookmarked his place, turned to face the com, pressed a button to terminate what had obviously been a purely automated repeating challenge, and smiled brightly.

'Well, there you are!' he said cheerfully.

For a moment, Shavarshyan cherished the hope apoplexy might carry Crandall off. Her demise would have to improve the situation. Although, he reminded himself conscientiously, that might be wishful thinking on his part. Admiral Dunichi Lazlo, BatRon 196's CO, her second-in-command, was no great prize . . . and no mental giant, either. Still, watching Crandall froth at the mouth and collapse in convulsions would have afforded the Frontier Fleet commander no end of personal satisfaction.

His hopes were disappointed, however.

'I am Admiral Sandra Crandall, Solarian League Navy,' she grated.

'I see.' The man on the display nodded politely, eighteen minutes later. 'And I'm Gregor O'Shaughnessy, of Governor Medusa's staff. What can I do for you this afternoon, Admiral?'

He asked the question cheerfully enough, but as soon as he had, he nodded equally cheerfully to the pickup, turned back to the other chair, put his feet back up in it, and switched his book reader back on. Which made a sort of sense, if not exactly polite sense, given the two-way lag. After all, he had to do something while he waited. Unfortunately, Crandall didn't seem to feel that way about it. For just a moment she resembled an Old Earth bulldog who couldn't understand why the house cat draped along the sunny window sill was completely unfazed by her own threatening presence on the other side of the crystoplast, and her blood pressure had to be attaining interesting levels as O'Shaughnessy did to her precisely what she'd intended to do to him . Then she gave herself an almost visible mental shake and leaned closer to her own terminal.

'I'm here in response to your Navy's unprovoked aggression against the Solarian League,' she told O'Shaughnessy icily.

'There must be some mistake, Admiral,' he replied in a calm reasonable tone, looking back up from his novel again after the inevitable delay. Which did not, Shavarshayn thought, add to Admiral Crandall's sunny cheerfulness. 'There hasn't been any unprovoked aggression against any Solarian citizens of which I'm aware.'

'I'm referring, as you know perfectly well, to the deliberate and unprovoked destruction of the battlecruiser Jean Bart , with all hands, in the New Tuscany System two and a half months ago,' she half-snapped, then slashed one finger at Chatfield. The com officer cut the visual from her end, and she turned her chair to face Bautista.

'This bastard's just asking for it, Pйpй!' she snarled, still watching the Manticoran perusing his novel.

'Which will only make it even more satisfying when he finally gets it,' the chief of staff replied. Crandall grunted and looked at Ou-yang.

'I don't think this brainstorm about 'negotiating' is going to work out very well, Zhing-wei.' It wasn't quite a snarl, this time, although it remained closer to that than to a mere growl.

'Probably not, Ma'am,' the operations officer acknowledged. 'On the other hand, it was never for their benefit, was it?'

'No, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable.'

'Well, Ma'am, at least it's giving us plenty of time to take a look at what they've got in orbit around the planet,' Ou-yang pointed out. 'That's worthwhile in its own right, I think.'

'I suppose so,' Crandall admitted irritably.

'What do they have, Zhing-wei?' Bautista inquired, and Shavarshyan wondered— briefly—if the chief of staff was deliberately trying to divert Crandall's ire from the Manticorans. But the question flitted through his brain and away again as quickly as it had come. If anyone aboard Joseph Buckley was even more pissed off at the Manties than Crandall, that person was Vice Admiral Pйpй Bautista.

'Unless we want to take the remotes in close enough the Manties may pick them up and nail them, we're not going to get really good resolution,' Ou-yang replied. 'We are picking up a superdreadnought and a squadron—well eight, anyway—of those big heavy cruisers or small battlecruisers or whatever of theirs, but I'm pretty sure that isn't everything they've got.'

'Why?' Crandall sounded at least a bit calmer as she focused on Ou-yang's report.

'We've got some fairly persistent 'sensor ghosts,'' the ops officer told her. 'They're just a bit too localized and just a shade too strong for me to believe the platforms are manufacturing them. The Manties' EW capabilities are supposed to be quite good, so I'm willing to bet at least some of those 'sensor ghosts' are actually stealthed units.'

'Makes sense, Ma'am,' Bautista offered. 'They probably want to keep us guessing about their actual strength.' He snorted harshly. 'Maybe they think they can pull off some sort of 'ambush!''

'On the other hand, they might just be trying to make us worry about where the rest of their ships are,' Ou- yang pointed out. The chief of staff frowned, and she shrugged. 'Until we actually turned up, they couldn't have been confident about what kind of strength we'd have. They may have expected a considerably smaller force and figured we'd be leery of pressing on when the rest of their fleet might turn up behind us at any moment.'

Shavarshyan started to open his mouth, then closed it, then drew a deep breath and opened it again.

'Is it possible,' he asked in a carefully neutral tone, 'that what they're really trying to do is to convince us they're even weaker than they actually are in order to make us overconfident?'

He knew, even before the question was out of his mouth, that the majority of his audience was going to find the very idea preposterous. For that matter, he didn't really expect it to be true himself. Unfortunately, suggesting possibly overlooked answers to questions was one of an intelligence officer's functions.

Crandall and Bautista, however, didn't seem to appreciate that minor fact. In fact, they both looked at him in obvious disbelief that even a Frontier Fleet officer could have offered such a ludicrous suggestion.

'We've got seventy-one ships-of-the-wall , Commander,' the chief of staff said after a moment in an elaborately patient tone. 'The last thing these people want to do is actually fight us! They know as well as we do that any 'battle' would be a very short, very unhappy experience for them. Under the circumstances, the last thing they'd want would be to make us even more confident than we already are. Don't you think they'd be more interested in encouraging us to feel cautious ?'

Shavarshyan's jaw tightened. It was hardly a surprise, however; he'd known how Bautista would react before he ever spoke. That, unfortunately, hadn't relieved him of his responsibility to do the speaking in question. But then, to his surprise, someone else spoke up.

'Actually, Pйpй,' Ou-yang Zhing-wei said, 'Commander Shavarshyan may have a point.' The chief of staff looked at her incredulously, and she shrugged. 'Not in the way you're thinking. As you say, they can't want to fight us, but they may have orders to do just that. And I suggest all of us bear in mind that this particular batch of neobarbs has been fighting a war for the better part of twenty T-years.'

'And that experience is somehow supposed to make battlecruisers and heavy cruisers capable of taking on superdreadnoughts?' Bautista demanded.

'I didn't say that,' Ou-yang replied coolly. 'What I'm suggesting is that whether they want to fight us or not, there probably aren't a whole lot of shy and retiring Manty flag officers these days. Hell, look at what this Gold Peak's already done! So if they've got orders to fight, I expect they'll follow them. And in that case, it's entirely possible they'd want us to underestimate their strength. It might not help them a lot , but when the odds are this bad, I'd play for any edge I could find, if I were in their place.'

'I see your point, Zhing-wei,' Crandall acknowledged, 'but—'

'Excuse me, Ma'am,' Captain Chatfield said. 'Two minutes to the Manties' response.'