Honor Among Enemies

Jurgens grunted, and his eyes narrowed. Holtz could be right. His theory fit the observed data, at any rate. And if he was right, they might be able to forget this long-range pussyfooting and get down to it. But if she was that badly hurt, then why...?

'Skipper!' It was Helen Pacelot, her voice sharpened by discovery and chagrin. 'That isn't Target One in front of her!'

'What?' Holtz whipped back around to her, and she shook her head savagely.

'I just got a good read on it. It's a drone, a goddamned drone!'

Jurgens heard Pacelot's report, and his eyes met People's Commissioner Aston's in sudden understanding. Oh, those bastards, he thought. Those poor, gutsy, damned bastards!

'It's a decoy,' he whispered. 'They deliberately sucked us away from the liner because they knew they couldn't stop us... and because we were the only ship with a chance to catch it!'

'Agreed,' Aston said flatly. 'But what do we do about it?'

Jurgens rubbed his chin, brain racing, then shrugged.

'I only see one option, Sir,' he said flatly. 'From their maneuvers and Tactical's observations, we can only assume Kerebin hurt them far worse than we'd estimated. That makes sense; if they can't fight us, all they could do was run to draw us off the liner. But every minute we spend chasing them is another minute we're not decelerating to go after Target One.'

He punched rapid commands into his own display, projecting the Q-ship's track, and Achmed's, across it. Another command produced a shaded cone that crossed Achmed's track port to starboard almost ten light-minutes back and stretched far out to its left, as well.

'The liner's got to be in that area. Our chance of finding it is slight if they're careful, but the sooner we start looking, the better the odds. Only we've got to finish the Q-ship, too; if she gets away, the covert side of the operation is blown just as wide as if we let the liner get away.'

'Agreed,' Aston said again.

'I think we have to assume the Manty is hurt worse than we believed. We have to go in, close with her, finish her off, and then come back after the liner.'

Aston gazed at the citizen commodore's plot for perhaps ten seconds, then nodded.

'Go get her, Citizen Commodore,' he said.

Ginger Lewis' soul cringed as the tidal wave of damage reports spilled across DCC's displays. Half- hysterical shouts from the remnants of the Cargo One work party had already told her what had happened to three-quarters of Engineerings officers. Only Lieutenant Hansen, in Fusion One, and two ensigns were left. That dropped total responsibility for DCC squarely onto Ginger's shoulders, and she swallowed hard.

'All right, people,' she said flatly to her shocked personnel. 'Wilson, get on the link to Impeller Two. I need casualties and damage. Do what you can to assist through your telemetry.' Wilson nodded curtly, and she turned to another petty officer. 'Durkey, you're on SAR. Tie into sickbay and try to steer their rescue and medical parties around the worst wreckage. Hammond, you've got Radar Six. It looks like it's the array, but it may just be the data feed. Find out which it is, soonest. If it's the array, see if you can reconfigure Radar Four to cover some of the gap. Eisley, check Mag Four. I'm reading pressure loss in the compartment; that hit on Missile One-Six may have damaged the feed queue to Missile One-Four, too. If it has, reroute through...'

She went on snapping commands, reacting with the trained instinct for which Harold Tschu had picked her for this post, and her orders came with an unerring precision which would have filled the dead chief engineer with pride.

'He's coming in, Skipper!' Jennifer Hughes cried in astonishment. 'He's gone back to max accel, and he's boring in like a bandit!'

Honor shook herself, still shuddering with the echoes of Tschu's death, and looked at the plot. Jennifer was right. The Peep couldn't know he'd just gutted Wayfarers most potent weapon system, yet he'd obviously decided she was badly hurt, and he was coming in to finish her off. But from his profile, he was coming in to kill her with energy weapons.

It didn't make sense. He'd hammered her for almost forty minutes without drawing a single missile in reply. He had to know he could hang on her stern and keep on battering without any realistic risk to his own command, so why...?

The drone! He'd IDed the drone, and he wanted to finish Wayfarer before Artemis slipped totally away from him. It was the only thing which made sense, and it would have made sense to Honor in his place. But just as she would have been wrong, he was wrong.

'All right,' she said, and her soprano voice was a cold wind, smothering the sparks of panic that single devastating hit had ignited. 'He's coming in, and we're going to get hurt, but he doesn't begin to guess what kind of energy armament we've got. Jenny, it looks like we're going to have a chance for Fire Plan Hawkwing after all.'

'Aye, Skipper,' Jennifer Hughes said, and her own fear had vanished in a hungry snarl of anticipation. She knew Wayfarer wasn't going to 'get hurt'; the Q-ship would never survive a pointblank energy engagement with a Sultan-class battlecruiser. The Peep had sixteen energy mounts, eighteen, counting the flank chasers, and twenty missile tubes in each broadside, while Wayfarer had only eight grasers and nine tubes left in her stronger broadside. But the converted freighter mounted super- dreadnought weapons, and the Peep didn't know it.

'He's coming in to cross our stern if we maintain heading,' Honor went on, speaking now as much to Cardones and Senior Chief O'Halley as to Hughes. 'Rafe, tie the helm into your station; I want you on backup if we lose primary control. We will maintain heading until he's committed, then I want a hard skew-turn to starboard. As hard as you can make it, Chief. I want our starboard broadside on him as he passes below us, and then I want to cut down across his stern and stick it right up his kilt. Clear?'

Cardones and O'Halley nodded, and Honor looked back at Hughes.

'Lock it in, Jenny,' she said quietly. 'We only get one pass.'

'She's maintaining profile,' Pacelot said, and Holtz nodded. It was another sign of the Q-ship’s desperate straits; if she'd had anything left in either broadside, she would have rolled to present that broadside to the bow of Achmed's wedge as Holtz came in on her. No doubt her captain was hoping to continue up and over in a loop, holding the roof of his wedge towards Achmed as the battlecruiser passed below him, and he might even manage to pull it off. It was unlikely, given the mass differential, but even if the Q-ship managed to evade the first pass, the sort of twisting, dodging dogfight which would follow could only favor the more maneuverable battlecruiser. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, Achmed would find the single opening she needed to reduce a merchant hull to scrap.

'We'll go in as planned, Helen,' he said grimly, and his eyes burned with the need to avenge Kerebin.

'Here they come,' Honor said in a soft, almost soothing voice. She watched the range speed downward, watched the battlecruiser begin the roll to bring her own starboard broadside to bear. Then she looked up at Chief O'Halley and Rafe Cardones, and she knew the final maneuver of her career was going to be perfect... even if there would be no one left to remember it.

On either side.

'All right,' she crooned. 'Steady... Steeeady... Now!'

Achmed came roaring in just as Kendrick O'Halley hauled back on his joystick and