The Honor of the Qween

'Thanks, Ma'am. I just feel sort of useless with nothing to do, I guess.' He nodded at her plot. 'In fact, the whole Fleet probably feels that way right now.'

'Well, we certainly can't have that, Commander!' a cheerful voice said, and Honor's good eye twinkled, as Venizelos appeared on the other side of her chair. 'Tell you what,' the exec went on, 'leave us the Peeps, and we'll let you have all the Masadans. How's that?'

'It sounds fair to me, Commander.' Brentworth grinned.

'Good enough.' Venizelos looked down at his captain. 'Steve makes it another hour and fifty-eight minutes, Skipper. Think they know we're here?'

* * *

'They're down to two-six-oh-five-four KPS, Sir,' Theisman's plotting officer reported as Principality's captain stepped onto his bridge. 'Range niner-two-point-two million klicks. They should come to rest right on top of us in another one-one-eight minutes.'

Theisman crossed to the main tactical display and glowered at it. A tight-packed triangle of impeller signatures came towards him across it, decelerating at the maximum three hundred seventy-five gravities of a Grayson LAC. Three brighter, more powerful signatures glowed at its corners, but they weren't Harrington. Principality had good mass readings on them, and they had to be what was left of the Graysons.

'Anybody in position to see around that wall?'

'No, Sir. Aside from Virtue, everybody's right here.'

'Um.' Theisman rubbed an eyebrow and cursed himself for not convincing Franks to send one of the Masadan destroyers to Endicott as soon as Harrington returned. The admiral had refused on the grounds that Thunder of God was already two hours overdue and so must be back momentarily, and the most Theisman had been able to get him to do was send Virtue out to Thunder's planned translation point to warn the Captain the instant he did return.

He thrust that thought aside and concentrated on the plot. It certainly looked as if Grayson had launched this little expedition without Harrington, but that would have required an awful lot of guts—not to say stupidity—if they knew what they were getting into.

But did they? Obviously they knew something, or they wouldn't be here at all. Theisman didn't know how they'd tumbled to the Masadan presence on Blackbird, yet it seemed unlikely Harrington had recovered any usable data from Danville's LACs. No other Masadan ships had been in range to assist Danville (luckily for them), but the destroyer Power had been close enough for long-range grav readings, and Harrington hadn't even slowed down. That suggested there hadn't been any wreckage large enough to search, which was precisely what Theisman would have expected.

But if Harrington hadn't learned about Blackbird, then something must've slipped on the Grayson end. The original base predated Haven's involvement, and the Masadans had always been mighty cagey about how they'd put it in. Yet they almost had to have recruited local assistance to build it, so whoever their assistant had been might have spilled the beans.

And if that were the case, the Graysons still might not realize who was waiting for them here. Or, he amended sourly, who ought to be waiting for them if the Captain weren't so long overdue. Damn, damn, damn! He could feel the wheels coming off, and there was no way to find out what the Captain would want him to do about it!

He drew a deep breath. Assume a worst-case scenario. The Graysons had discovered Blackbird, learned about Principality and Thunder of God, and told Harrington all about it. What would he do if he were she?

Well, he damned straight wouldn't come after them—not if he knew about Thunder! What he'd probably do was send his destroyer for help, hold his cruisers in the inner system to cover Grayson, and hope like hell the cavalry arrived in time.

On the other hand, Harrington was good. The People's Navy had studied her carefully since Basilisk, and she might just figure she could take Thunder if the Graysons kept the Masadans off her ass while she did it. Theisman couldn't imagine how she'd do it, but he wasn't prepared to say categorically that she couldn't. Only, in that case, where was she?

He looked at the Grayson formation again. If she was out there at all, she was behind that triangle, following it closely enough for its massed impellers to screen her from any gravity sensors in front of it.

The only thing was, her record said she was sneaky enough to send in the Graysons like this to make him think just that while she was someplace else entirely ... like waiting for any Haven-built ships to abandon their Masadan allies and make a run for it.

His eyes switched to a direct vision display filled with Uriel's bloated sphere. The planet was so enormous it created a hyper limit of almost five light-minutes—half as deep as an M9's. That meant Principality would have to accelerate at max for ninety-seven minutes before she could translate the hell out of here, and Harrington might have her cruisers smoking in on a ballistic course to pick off anyone who tried to run. With her drives down, he'd never see her coming till she hit radar range, but she'd see him the instant he lit off his impellers. That would give her time to adjust her own vector. Probably not by enough for a classic broadside duel, but certainly by enough for two cruisers to reduce a destroyer to glowing gas.

Assuming, of course, that she didn't know about Thunder —and that she expected him to run.

He swore to himself again and rechecked the Grayson ETA. A hundred seven minutes. If he was going to run, he'd better start doing it soon ... and if he had his druthers, running was exactly what he'd do. Thomas Theisman was no coward, but he knew what was going to happen if Harrington hit this force with Thunder absent. And, in the longer run, if she'd sent for help, it was going to arrive long before anything got here from Haven. Besides, the idea had been to pull this thing off without a war with Manticore! Everyone knew that was coming, but this wasn't the time or place for it to begin.

Then again, wars often started somewhere other than when and where 'the plan' called for. He squared his shoulders and turned from the display.

'Get me a link to Admiral Franks, Al.'

* * *

'Don't be ridiculous, Commander!' Admiral Ernst Franks snorted.

'Admiral, I'm telling you Harrington and her ships are right behind those people.'

'Even if you're correct—and I'm not at all certain you are—our weapons on Blackbird will more than even the odds. We'll annihilate her allies, then close in and finish her off, as well.'

'Admiral,' Theisman clung to his temper with both hands, 'they wouldn't be here if they didn't have some idea what they were heading into. That means—'

'That means nothing, Commander.' Franks' eyes narrowed. He'd heard rumors about this infidel's opinion of his battle with Madrigal. 'Your own people supplied our missiles. You know their effective powered range—and that nothing the Apostate have could possibly stop them.'

'Sir, you won't be engaging Grayson defenses,' Theisman said almost desperately, 'and if you think Madrigal's point defense was bad, you don't even want to think about what a Star Knight —class cruiser's will do to us!'

'I don't believe she's back there!' Franks snapped. 'Unlike you, I know precisely what data could have fallen into Apostate hands, and I'm not running from ghosts! This is a probe to examine little more than wild tales someone heard from someone who heard it from someone else, and they wouldn't dare pull the infidel bitch's ships off Grayson to chase down rumors when they can't know Thunder won't pounce on the planet in her absence.'

'And if you're wrong, Sir?' Theisman asked in a tight voice.

'I'm not. But even if I were, she'd be coming to us on our own terms. We'll shoot the Apostate out of our way, then overwhelm her with close-range fire, just as we did Madrigal.'

Theisman locked his teeth on a curse. If Harrington was out there, this was suicide. Franks had gotten his