Mission of Honor

number of lighter starships for deployment elsewhere.

But, Levinsky reminded herself coldly, these weren't Havenite superdreadnoughts. They were Sollies , and that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Like the rest of Tenth Fleet's officers, Levinsky had studied the technical data from the captured Solarian battlecruisers attentively, and unless that data was grossly inaccurate, the Sollies' anti-LAC capabilities were even more primitive—a lot more primitive—than the Havenites' had been during Operation Buttercup.

Which suggested all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to one Alice Levinsky.

* * *

'Commodore Terekhov confirms Agincourt, Sir,' Lieutenant Stilson MacDonald said.

'Thank you,' Scotty Tremaine acknowledged. There was no need for his communications officer to know just how much calmer his voice was than he was.

Had Captain Levinsky only known, a part of Tremaine—a rather large part, as a matter of fact—would have preferred to be sitting where she was rather than in his palatial command chair on the flag deck of a brand spanking new heavy cruiser. It wasn't so much that he doubted his competence in his present role as that he'd become so comfortable in his previous role.

How did a nice boy who only wanted to be a shuttle pilot end up sitting here, of all places? he thought wryly.

He'd really assumed that when he finally got starship command it would be of a carrier, not a cruiser. But he'd also long since concluded that BuPers worked in mysterious and inscrutable ways. True, this one seemed a bit more inscrutable than most, but when the Navy offered you a command slot like this one, you took it. He couldn't imagine anyone who wouldn't, and if anyone had turned it down, the idiot in question would have signed the death warrant for any hope of future promotion. The Navy wasn't in the habit of entrusting its starships to people whose own actions demonstrated they lacked the confidence for that sort of responsibility.

And if they really insist on prying me out of the LACs, this is one hell of a lot better than a kick in the head , he admitted. Not only that, but at least they let me have the EWO I wanted .

He glanced at the battered and bedamned-looking chief warrant officer sitting at the electronic warfare officer's station. Aboard any other starship he could think of, that position would have been held by a commissioned officer. Aboard a unit as powerful as a Saganami-C , especially on a division flagship's staff, the officer in question would have been at least a senior-grade lieutenant, and more probably a lieutenant commander. But CWO Sir Horace Harkness was pretty much a law unto himself within the RMN.

'Of course you can have Harkness!' Captain Shaw, Admiral Cortez' chief of staff, had snorted when he'd made the unusual request. 'There's a note somewhere in your personnel jacket that says we're not supposed to break up Beauty and the Beast.' The captain's lips had twitched at Tremaine's expression. 'Oh, you hadn't heard that particular nickname, Captain Tremaine? I hadn't realized it had escaped your attention.'

Then Shaw had sobered, tipping back in his chair and regarding Tremaine with thoughtful eyes.

'I don't say it's the sort of habit we really want to get into, Captain, but one thing Admiral Cortez has always recognized is that there are exceptions to every rule. Mind you, if it were just a case of favoritism, he wouldn't sign off on it for a minute. Fortunately, however, the two of you have demonstrated a remarkable and consistently high level of performance—not to mention the fact that between you, you and his wife seem to have permanently reformed him. So unless we have to, no one's interested in breaking up that particular team. Besides'—he'd snorted in sudden amusement—'even if we were, I'm quite sure Sir Horace would be more than willing to massage the computers in your favor.'

Tremaine had opened his mouth, but Shaw had waved his hand before he could speak.

'I'm perfectly well aware that he's promised not to do that sort of thing anymore, Captain Tremaine. Even the best-intentioned can backslide, however, and we'd prefer not to expose him to too much temptation.'

Tremaine's own lips twitched in remembered amusement, and he was astonished how much better the memory made him feel.

'All right, Adam,' he said, turning to Lieutenant Commander Adam Golbatsi, his operations officer. 'You heard Stilson.'

'Yes, Sir. I'm on it,' Golbatsi acknowledged.

'Good.' Tremaine looked at Harkness. 'Any change in their EW, Chief?'

'No, Sir. Not so's you'd notice.' Harkness shrugged. 'I know we didn't get complete stats on their wallers at New Tuscany, Skipper, but so far, these guys don't look to have anything better than Byng had. Or, if they do, they haven't bothered to bring it to the party yet.'

'I have t' agree with Chief Harkness, Sir,' Commander Francine Klusener, Tremaine's chief of staff said, looking up from her own console.

If there'd been anyone on his staff who might have had his or her nose put out of joint by finding a mere warrant officer in the staff electronic warfare officer's slot, Tremaine would have bet on Klusener. Not because the fair-haired, gray-eyed commander was anything but highly intelligent and competent in her own right. She was, however, by far the most nobly born of any of his staffers, with an accent that was almost as languid and drawling as Michael Oversteegen's. Fortunately, that was the only thing about her anyone could have accused of languor, and she and Harkness had actually hit it off very well from the beginning.

'I've been lookin' at th' take from th' platforms,' she continued now. 'Assumin' these people have th' brains God gave a gnat—not that th' evidence so far available would suggest they do , you understand—they ought t' be pullin' out all th' stops after what happened t' Byng. Better safe than sorry, after all.' She shrugged. 'If they are, then I don't think th' attack birds are going t' have much problem lockin' up th' real targets.'

'Compared to Peep EW?' Harkness shook his head with an evil smile. 'Not hardly, Ma'am! These people're toast , if that's the best they've got.'

'Let's not get carried away with our own enthusiasm, Chief,' Tremaine said mildly.

'No, Sir,' Harkness agreed dutifully.

Chapter Twenty-One

'Coming up on turnover in two minutes, Ma'am.'

Sandra Crandall looked up from a conversation with Pйpй Bautista as her astrogator, Captain Barend Haarhuis, made the announcement, one hundred and fourteen minutes after her task force had started in-system. Its velocity relative to the planet Flax had increased to just over twenty-three thousand kilometers per second, and the range was down to a bit over eighty-one million kilometers, and Crandall nodded in satisfaction. Then she looked at Ou-yang Zhing-wei.

'Any more movement out of them?'.

'No, Ma'am,' Ou-yang replied. 'We're picking up more of those grav pulses, though. And I'm still a bit concerned about this volume here.'

She indicated a large-scale display of the space immediately about Flax. A zone directly on the far side of the planet was highlighted in amber, and Crandall glanced at the indicated area, then grimaced.

'The pulses have to be from that damned FTL com of theirs,' she said with an impatient shrug. Her tone was irritated, perhaps even a bit petulant, as if she still didn't much care for admitting the Manties really had developed a practical faster-than-light means of communication. Unfortunately, even she had been forced to admit that what had happened at New Tuscany demonstrated that they had.

'At the moment, though,' she continued, 'all it really means is that they may be getting recon information on us a little quicker than we're getting it on them. It's not going to change the odds any. And unless they've magically teleported in reinforcements directly from Manticore, I'm not especially worried about what they may be hiding in that uncertainty volume of yours, either, Zhing-wei. There wasn't anything particularly scary in there before we started in, after all.'