Mission of Honor

'Thank you, Darryl.' Crandall nodded to him, then looked back at Bautista and Ou-yang. 'There may be something to this, Pйpй. At any rate, let's not automatically assume there isn't . I want you and Zhing-wei to give me an analysis based on the possibility that all of her sensor ghosts are those big-assed battlecruisers. And another based on the possibility that all of them are superdreadnoughts that managed to get here from Manticore faster than we got here from Meyers. Understood?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Bautista acknowledged, although it was evident to Shavarshyan that he continued to put very little credence in the suggestion.

Crandall turned back to face the com display and composed her features just as O'Shaughnessy nodded from it.

'Oh, I'm perfectly well aware of what happened in New Tuscany, of course, Admiral,' O'Shaughnessy said with an affable smile. Then his eyes narrowed, and his voice hardened ever so slightly. 'I'm just not aware of any unprovoked aggression on the Star Empire's part.'

He looked out of the display at her for another heartbeat, then deliberately cocked his chair back and returned his attention to his novel.

Crandall seemed to swell visibly, and Shavarshyan closed his eyes. He wasn't especially fond of Manties himself, but he had to admire the skill with which O'Shaughnessy had planted his picador's dart. On the other hand, he also had to wonder what the lunatic thought he was doing, baiting the CO of such a powerful force.

'Unless you wish me to move immediately upon your pathetic little planet, I advise you to stop splitting semantic hairs, Mr. O'Shaughnessy,' Crandall said, as if underlining Shavarshyan's last thought, and her expression was as ugly as her tone. 'You know damned well why I'm here!'

'I'm afraid that since I'm not a mind reader, and since you haven't bothered to respond to any of our earlier communication attempts, I really don't have a clue as to the reasons for this visit,' O'Shaughnessy told her coolly eighteen minutes later, looking up from his reader once more. 'Perhaps the Foreign Ministry protocolists back in Old Chicago will be able to figure it out for me when they play back the recording of your edifying conversation which will undoubtedly be attached to Her Majesty's next note to Prime Minister Gyulay.'

Crandall twitched as if he'd tossed a glass of ice water over her, and her face turned a full shade darker at his none too subtle reminder that whatever her ultimate intentions might be, this was at least theoretically an exchange between official representatives of two sovereign star nations.

'Very well, Mr. O'Shaughnessy,' she said with icy precision three or four fulminating seconds later. 'In order to avoid any misunderstandings—any additional misunderstandings, I should say—I would like to speak to . . . 'Governor Medusa' personally.'

She slashed her finger at Chatfield again, bringing up Joseph Buckley 's wallpaper in place of her own image. Then she went a step further, pressing the stud that cut off the Manticorans' video feed as well, and glared at the blank display.

No one offered any theories this time as the admiral sat stolidly and silently in her command chair. Bautista, Ou-yang, and Ou-yang's assistants were poring over the take from the remote reconnaissance platforms, and Shavarshyan suspected they were just as happy to have something else to do while their admiral fulminated. He wished he did. In fact, he punched up his own threat analysis files and sat earnestly—and obviously—studying the already thoroughly studied and over-studied data. The minutes dragged by until Chatfield cleared his throat.

'One minute to the Manties' response, Ma'am,' he said in an extraordinarily neutral tone.

'Turn it back on,' Crandall growled, and the display came back to life.

O'Shaughnessy had been reading his book again until Crandall's demand to speak to Medusa actually reached him nine minutes earlier. Now he looked up.

'I see.' He gazed at her for a moment, then nodded. 'I'll see if the Governor's available,' he said, and his image was replaced by the Star Empire of Manticore's coat of arms.

The silence on Joseph Buckley 's flag bridge was intense as this time the Manties turned on their wallpaper. As the single Frontier Fleet outsider present, what Shavarshyan felt was mainly dark, bitter amusement as he sensed the conflicting tides within Crandall's staffers. They were only too well aware of her fury, and most of them obviously wanted to express their own anger to show how deeply they agreed with her. But at the same time, a countervailing survival instinct left them hesitant to launch into a flood of vituperation at O'Shaughnessy's arrogance for fear of drawing Crandall's ire down upon themselves when her frustration lashed out at the nearest target of opportunity. It was an interesting dilemma, he reflected, since their silence might also be construed as an effort to avoid any suggestion that O'Shaughnessy had just humiliated Crandall by putting her in her place.

He was just making a mental bet with himself that Bautista would be driven to speak before Ou-yang when the Manticoran wallpaper disappeared and a smallish woman with dark, alert, almond-shaped eyes appeared on the master display in its place. He recognized Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, from his file imagery, and she looked remarkably composed. But there was something about the glitter in those dark eyes . . . .

Not a woman to take lightly, Shavarshyan decided. Particularly not after the exchanges between O'Shaugnessy and Crandall. In fact, her obvious self-control only made her more dangerous. And if anger sparkled in the depth of those eyes, there was no more sign of fear than there'd been in O'Shaughnessy's, as far as he could see. Indeed, she looked much too much like the matador, advancing into the ring only after her picadores had well and truly galled the bull. Which, given that she was clearly not an idiot and had to be aware of the minor fact that she had nine obviously hostile squadrons of ships-of-the-wall deliberately violating her star system's territoriality, made Hago Shavarshyan extremely nervous.

'Good afternoon, Admiral Crandall,' she said frostily. 'What can I do for the Solarian League Navy?'

'You can begin by surrendering the person of the flag officer who murdered Admiral Josef Byng and three thousand other Solarian military personnel,' Crandall said flatly. 'After that, we can discuss the surrender of every warship involved in that incident, and the matter of reparations to both the Solarian League and to the survivors of our murdered spacers.'

This time, neither party was prepared to retreat behind its wallpaper. Personally, Shavarshyan thought that was fairly foolish, given that they couldn't reduce the awkward intervals between exchanges even if they'd wanted to. Yet if it was arguably foolish for Medusa, it was much more obviously foolish for Crandall. She was an admiral in the Solarian League Navy—a Battle Fleet admiral—on what she'd intended from the beginning to be a punitive expedition, and there she sat, locking eyes—uselessly—with a com image which was nine minutes old by the time she even saw it. The image of the official representative of the star nation of neo-barbarians she'd set out to chastise.

'I see,' Medusa said finally. 'And you think I'm going to submit to your demands because—?'

She cocked her head slightly and raised polite eyebrows.

'Unless you're considerably more foolish than I believe,' Crandall's tone made it obvious no one could be more foolish than she believed Medusa was, 'the nine squadrons of ships-of-the-wall just outside your hyper limit should suggest at least one reason.'

Yet another endless interval dragged past; then Medusa nodded calmly.

'Which means I should assume this enumeration of warships is intended to communicate the threat that you're prepared to commit yet more acts of deliberate aggression against the Star Empire of Manticore?'

'Which means I am prepared to embrace whatever means are necessary to safeguard the sovereignty of the Solarian League, as every Solarian flag officer's standing orders require,' Crandall retorted.

It was remarkable, Shavarshyan thought, still studiously pondering the facts and figures on his own display, how an eighteen-minute wait between exchanges undeniably robbed threats of immediacy and power while simultaneously distilling the pure essence of anger behind them.

'First of all, Admiral Crandall,' Medusa said calmly after the inevitable delay, 'no one's transgressed against the sovereignty of the Solarian League. We've simply taken exception to the massacre of our ships and our personnel and insisted that the man responsible for that massacre answer to the applicable provisions of interstellar law. Interstellar law, I might add, which has been formally recognized and codified by the Solarian League in several solemn treaties.

'Admiral Gold Peak gave Admiral Byng every opportunity to avoid any additional violence, and when he refused to take any of them, she fired on only one of his ships—the one he happened to be aboard at the moment,