The Honor of the Qween

'Let me escort you to Admiral Garret, Captain.' There was a hint of amusement in his voice. 'I believe he's been awaiting you with some anticipation.'

* * *

Admiral Leon Garret was a craggy-faced man whose hooded eyes watched Honor with a sort of hypnotized fascination as she stepped into the conference room. It was a fascination which extended itself to Nimitz, as well, and she wondered which of them he found more outre —the six-limbed 'animal' who'd proved so unexpectedly deadly, or the woman who wore a captain's uniform?

He rose at her approach, but he didn't extend his hand. Had his inner confusion been less evident, she might have construed that as an insult. As it was, and despite the gravity of the situation, his expression almost betrayed her. A totally inappropriate giggle fluttered at the base of her throat, and she suppressed it only with difficulty as Commodore Brentworth introduced her small group to Garret and his officers.

The man at the admiral's right hand had already attracted her attention. He wore a commodore's uniform but an admiral's collar insignia, and she wasn't surprised when he was introduced as Admiral Wesley Matthews. She sized him up carefully, not rudely but without making any effort to hide her one-eyed evaluation, and he squared his shoulders and looked back frankly.

She liked what she saw. Matthews was short, even for a Grayson, stocky and solid, with an intelligent, mobile face, and there were no sex-based reservations in his hazel eyes. She remembered what Lord Mayhew had said and decided he'd been right. She wouldn't have any problems working with this man.

'Thank you for coming, uh, Captain Harrington.' Garret flushed as he stumbled over her rank, then pointed at the empty chairs on her side of the conference table and went on more naturally. 'Please, be seated.'

'Thank you, Admiral.' She sat, followed by her subordinates. She felt Nimitz's expressive tail twitch against her back, but he was aware of the need to mind his manners. She lifted him down to sit beside the blotter before her and noted the way the Grayson officers watched him move. Clearly they'd been impressed by the video of his bloody handiwork, and one or two of them looked a bit uneasy. Well, it was hard to blame them; few Manticorans realized how lethal a 'cat could be when he or his human was threatened.

'Yes, well.' Garret cleared his throat. 'As you know, Captain,' he got her title out without hesitation this time, 'Com—Admiral Matthews has been placed in command of our mobile units. It's my understanding that you believe it would be more advantageous to employ them with your vessels in a forward defense rather than from an orbital position.'

He hid the chagrin he must be feeling (given that the orbital idea had been his) quite well, Honor thought with unexpected sympathy.

'Yes, Sir, I do.' Her sympathy helped her keep any hint of satisfaction out of her voice. 'Our current estimate is that one heavy and one light Havenite cruiser are supporting Masada. If that's true, my squadron should be able to take them on without the assistance of your orbital defenses. At the same time, Masada used nuclear weapons against planetary targets thirty-five years ago and has repeatedly stated its willingness to do so again. Now that `Maccabeus' has failed, we must assume they'll do just that. Under the circumstances, I believe we must keep them as far from Grayson as possible.'

'But if you deploy yourself on the wrong bearing,' one of Garret's staff officers said quietly, 'they may slip past and get the attack in anyway. And with your ships out of position, our own defensive systems are unlikely to stop warheads with modern penetration aids, Captain.'

'I'm sure the Captain's thought of that, Commander Calgary,' Garret said uncomfortably. It was clear Protector Benjamin had had a long talk with him, but Honor simply nodded, for Commander Calgary's point was well taken.

'You're correct, Commander. But there are offsetting considerations.' She spoke firmly, minimizing the slurring of her words. 'They know where Grayson is. If their goal is simply to bombard, they can launch from extreme range at near-light velocity. Once their missile drives go dead, even our sensors will have trouble localizing them for point defense. My ships could intercept most of them, but we're talking about nukes. We have to catch them all, and our best chance for that is while they're still in boost phase.'

Calgary nodded his understanding, and she went on.

'Admittedly, moving away from Grayson will open the threat window. We have, however, certain technical advantages we believe are unknown to Haven.'

A stir went through the Graysons, and she felt Truman's residual unhappiness beside her. What she proposed to describe to the Graysons was still on the Official Secrets List, and Truman had opposed its revelation. On the other hand, even Alice had to admit they didn't have any choice but to use it, and that meant telling their allies about it.

'Advantages, Captain?' Garret asked.

'Yes, Sir. Commander McKeon is our expert on the system, so I'll let him explain. Commander?'

'Yes, Ma'am.' Alistair McKeon faced the Grayson officers. 'What Captain Harrington refers to, gentlemen, is a newly developed reconnaissance drone. RDs have always played a role in our defensive doctrine, but like every surveillance system, light-speed data transmission has always limited the range/response time envelope. In essence, the RD can tell us someone's coming, but if we're too far out of position, we can't respond in time.'

He paused, and several heads nodded.

'Our R&D people have been working on a new approach, however, and for the first time, we now have a limited FTL transmission capability.'

'An FTL capability?' Calgary blurted, and he was far from alone in his astonishment, for the human race had sought a way to send messages faster than light for almost two thousand years.

'Yes, Sir. Its range is too limited for anything other than tactical purposes—our best transmission radius is only about four light-hours at this time—but that's quite enough to give us a marked advantage.'

'Excuse me, Commander McKeon,' Admiral Matthews said, 'but how does it work? If, that is,' he looked at Honor, 'you can tell us without compromising your own security.'

'We'd rather not go into details, Admiral,' Honor replied. 'Less because of security, than because it's too technical for a quick explanation.'

'And,' Matthews grinned wryly, 'because it's probably too technical for our people to duplicate even if we understood the explanation.'

Honor was appalled by his remark, but then a rumble of chuckles came from the other side of the table. She'd been afraid of stepping on sensitive toes by flaunting her ships' technical superiority, but it seemed Matthews understood his people better than she did. And perhaps it was his way of telling her not to worry.

'I imagine that's true, Sir,' she said, smiling with the right side of her mouth, 'at least until we bring you up to speed on molycircs and super-dense fusion bottles. Of course,' her smile grew, 'once the treaty is signed, I expect your navy is going to get much nastier all around.'

The Grayson chuckles were even louder this time, tinged with more than an edge of relief. She hoped they didn't expect a God weapon to come out of her technological bag of tricks, but anything that bolstered their morale at this moment was well worthwhile, and she nodded for Alistair to continue.

'Basically, Admiral,' he said, 'it's a reversion to old-fashioned Morse code. Our new-generation RDs carry an extra gravity generator which they use to create extremely powerful directional pulses. Since gravitic sensors are FTL, we have effective real-time receipt across their maximum range.'

'That's brilliant,' a captain with Office of Shipbuilding insignia murmured. Then he frowned. 'And difficult, I'd imagine.'

'It certainly is,' McKeon said feelingly. 'The power requirement is enormous—our people had to develop an entire new generation of fusion plants to pull it off—and that's only the first problem. Designing a pulse grav generator and packing it into the drone body came next. As you can probably imagine, it uses up a lot more mass than a drive unit, and it was a monster to engineer. And there are certain fundamental limitations on the system. Most importantly, it takes time for the generator to produce each pulse without burning itself out, which places an insurmountable limit on the data transmission speed. At present, we can only manage a pulse repetition rate of about nine-point-five seconds. Obviously, it's going to take us a while to transmit any complex messages at that rate.'

'That's true,' Honor put in, 'but what we propose to do is program the onboard computers to respond to