Mission of Honor

until—and unless—we're needed.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

Michelle nodded to the captain, then turned back to the plot, tipping back her chair and crossing her legs as she considered the imagery.

At this scale, even Crandall's task force seemed to crawl across the display, and her own ships' motion was barely perceptible as they began building on the vector they'd carried across the alpha wall with them. Given the steady, consistent improvements in compensator design over the last ten or fifteen T-years, Manticoran captains— and admirals, she thought wryly—no longer fretted anywhere near as much as the officers of other navies over compensator safety margins. The fact that they'd been operating on a wartime basis for twenty T-years or so, rather than the peacetime basis of the rest of the galaxy had something to do with that, as well. The RMN had discovered that even with old-style compensators, 'Book' safety margins had been excessively cautious, and Michelle's current acceleration rate was 6.5 KPS2 . She'd thought about restricting her accel, but there wasn't really much point. Even if the acceleration she'd displayed at New Tuscany hadn't been reported to Crandall, it must have already been reported to the SLN back on Old Earth in Sigbee's official report. And if Crandall hadn't already been aware of it, perhaps seeing it now might rattle the Solly.

Not that Michelle really expected it to have any impact on what was about to happen, and her mouth tightened as she recognized an all-too-familiar awareness deep down inside herself. She'd seen too many tactical plots like this one not to know what was coming, not to sense the inevitability. It was like watching two ground cars slide towards one another, knowing it was too late, that nothing anyone did could possibly prevent the oncoming collision.

She remembered the first time she'd seen a plot like this and known it wasn't a simulation. She'd trained for that moment her entire professional life, and yet, deep inside, she hadn't quite believed it was real. Or that it couldn't somehow be averted at the very last moment, at least. She'd done her best to prepare herself, and she'd thought, in her inexperience, that she'd succeeded.

She'd been wrong. Despite the most realistic exercises the Royal Manticoran Navy had been able to provide, she hadn't been ready—not truly—for mortality. Still hadn't come face-to-face with the reality that she could die as easily as anyone else. That the universe could survive her personal extinction and go right on. And, even worse perhaps, she hadn't really recognized that all the weapons and targeting systems would do precisely—and inevitably—what they'd been designed to do. That once those missiles were fired in earnest, other people were going to die in shocking, horrifying numbers, whether she did or not.

And now it was the turn of Sandra Crandall and all of the officers and enlisted personnel aboard her starships to face that recognition. She wondered how many would survive the experience?

* * *

Gervais Archer watched his admiral and wondered what was going through her mind. As a rule, he felt generally confident of his ability to read her moods. She wasn't the most inscrutable person he'd ever met, after all. She could be as tactically sneaky and subtle as anyone he'd ever seen, but her personality was open and direct, not to mention stubborn, with a distinct tendency to come at things head on.

Yet at this moment, he couldn't read her body language. Not clearly. There was no sign of hesitance or uncertainty, no indication of second guessing herself, no sign any concern over future consequences would be permitted to erode present determination. But there was something. Something he wasn't accustomed to seeing from her, and he wondered why the word he kept thinking of was 'sorrow.'

* * *

Michelle Henke drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders, unaware of her flag lieutenant's thoughts as she ordered her own to attend to the business at hand.

Whatever's going to happen, it's going to happen. Too late to change that, and the decision wasn't really yours to begin with, girl. So instead of thinking about what Crandall's too damned stupid to see coming, think about what she is doing right this moment .

Actually, she rather suspected Crandall was doing exactly the same thing she was—staring at icons in a plot. Of course, her own data was far better than anything Crandall could have. Michelle had seeded the entire star system with FTL sensor platforms, and she'd paid special attention to the volume inside the hyper limit, particularly along the plane of the ecliptic. At the moment, her plot was being driven by a highly stealthy platform less than one light-second from Crandall's flagship, and the directional transmissions from the platform were less than five seconds old by the time she saw them on the display. Aside from the actual impeller signatures of Tenth Fleet's ships, any data Crandall had was almost five minutes old. At the moment, that meant little, but when the missiles started to fly, it was going to mean a great deal, indeed.

Thank you, Michael and Sir Aivars , she thought sardonically. And thank you, Admiral Hemphill .

She glanced at the time display. Five minutes had passed since her battlecruiser squadrons reentered normal-space. Crandall clearly had no idea she was already in Michelle's powered range, assuming Michelle was prepared to accept a two-and-a-half-minute ballistic phase between her second and third missile drives. Powered range wasn't necessarily the same thing as accurate range, though, and she wasn't about to waste birds from this far out unless she had to.

The range from Crandall to Khumalo and Terekhov was shrinking steadily, however. And when it fell to three light-minutes . . . .

About another seventeen minutes, Admiral Crandall , Vice Admiral Gloria Michelle Samantha Evelyn Henke thought grimly. Another seventeen minutes .

* * *

'I make it another seventeen minutes, Sir,' Commander Pope said quietly, and Aivars Terekhov nodded, then looked at Commander Stillwell Lewis.

'Let's go ahead and spot the alpha launch, Stilt.'

'Yes, Sir.'

Commander Lewis began inputting commands, and as those commands reached the shoals of pods the withdrawing ammunition ships had left behind, onboard tractors began reaching out from clusters of them. They locked onto the ships designated to control them, moving out of the planetary shadow, settling into launch position. And as if that had been a signal—which it had—the LACs which had been left behind by the CLACs began jockeying into position. If everything went as planned, those LACs wouldn't be needed, except to sweep up the pieces. Neither would Gold Peak's battlecruisers, for that matter. In fact, if everything went as planned, those battlecruisers would represent no more than an insurance policy which hadn't been needed after all. And, possibly, an additional threat to shape the thinking of the Solly CO.

Of course, everything seldom went 'as planned,' Terekhov thought, remembering his battle plans at Monica and a star called Hyacinth.

He watched Lewis, then glanced over his shoulder at Ensign Zilwicki and his somber mood lightened suddenly. In fact, he found it difficult not to smile, despite the approaching Solarian juggernaut. His extraordinarily youthful flag lieutenant's eyes were bright with concentration, watching everything on Quentin Saint- James ' flag deck. If she'd been a cat, the lashing of her tail would have presented a serious safety hazard.

'Calmly, Helen,' he said softly, barely loud enough for her to hear, and she looked at him quickly. Their eyes met, and then she grinned crookedly.

'That obvious, was I, Sir?'

'Let's just say it's reasonably apparent that what you'd really like to be doing just now is Commander Lewis' job.'

'Sorry, Sir.' She grimaced. 'It's just—'

'Just that the last time, you and Abigail were sitting in the hot seats,' he acknowledged. 'And you will be again, someday. Promise.'

'Yes, Sir.'