Honor Among Enemies

been standing there. From the look on Lieutenant Commander Hughes' face, he wasn't the only one who wondered.

Everyone else rose as the Captain stepped into the compartment, but she shook her head.

'As you were, people. You've earned a chance to sit down.'

Smiles of pleasure greeted her compliment, and she walked across to Hughes' panel and tapped in a command. The moment at which the missile platforms had suddenly appeared on the plot replayed itself and froze, and she nodded.

'I thought Rafe had you with that hit on Grav One, Guns,' she observed.

'Yes, Ma'am. So did I,' Hughes agreed feelingly, and Lady Harrington chuckled.

'Well, if he couldn't get you, I guess the bad guys are going to have a few problems, too, aren't they?' she said, and her 'cat bleeked a soft laugh of agreement.

'He would've had us without Carol,' Hughes replied, but Wolcott shook her head.

'Not me, Skipper,' she told the Captain. 'It was Wanderman.' She nodded her chestnut-haired head at Aubrey and grinned. 'I don't know what he did, but it certainly worked!'

'So I noticed,' Lady Harrington murmured, and turned her own attention to Aubrey. The electronics tech felt his face go crimson, but he came to attention and met her gaze as steadily as he could. 'What did you do?' she asked curiously.

'I, uh, I rerouted the data, Ma'am, I mean, Milady,' Aubrey said, flushing darker than ever as he corrected himself, but she only shook her head gently.

''Ma'am' is fine. Where'd you reroute to?'

'Uh, well, the array itself was still up, Ma'am. It was only the coupling. But the data from all the arrays runs through Junction Three-Sixty-One. It's a preprocessing node, and the blown sector was downstream.' He swallowed. 'So I, uh, I overrode the main computers to reprogram the data buses and dumped it through Radar Six.'

'So that's what happened,' Lieutenant Jansen said. 'You know you cut half my starboard point defense radar out of the circuit when you did it?'

'I...' Aubrey looked at the missile defense officer, then swallowed again, harder. 'I didn't think about that, Sir. It was just, well, it was the only thing I could think of, and...'

'And there wasn't time to discuss it,' Lady Harrington finished for him. 'Well done, Wanderman. Very well done. That was quick thinking, and it showed initiative, too.' She studied Aubrey thoughtfully, and her 'cat turned his head to bend his own green eyes upon the electronics tech. 'I don't believe I ever saw that particular trick pulled before.'

'That's because it shouldn't work,' Hughes pointed out. She punched up something on her own terminal and studied it for a moment, then whistled. 'There is a cross-link at Three-Sixty-One, but I still don't see how he forced data compatibility. For that matter, he had to convince battle comp to bring three independent buses into it.'

She shook her head in disbelief, and all eyes turned to Aubrey, who wished he could sink through the deck-sole. But the Captain only smiled and cocked an eyebrow at him.

'Where'd you get the software for it?' she asked, and Aubrey shrugged uncomfortably.

'I, uh, sort of made it up as I went along... Ma'am,' he admitted, and she laughed.

'You made it up as you went along?' She looked back at Hughes with a twinkle. 'We still have a few problems on the weapons decks, but you seem to have quite a team here, Ms. Hughes. My compliments to all of you.'

Aubrey could actually feel the pleasure which filled the simulator, and the Captain lifted her 'cat to her right shoulder. She turned for the main hatch, then paused and looked back.

'I'll want to review the chips with you and the Exec this evening, Ms. Hughes. Can you and Ms. Wolcott join us for supper?'

'Of course, Milady.'

'Good. And be sure you bring along a copy of Wanderman’s improvisation. Let's see if we can't clean it up a bit and store it permanently just in case we need it again.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Made it up as you went along,' Lady Harrington repeated softly, smiling at Aubrey, then shook her head, chuckled, and walked out of the simulator.

Honor leaned back in her command chair as Wayfarer and the rest of the convoy decelerated at a steady four hundred gravities, riding grav wave MSY-002-91 toward the beta wall and a return to normal space. That kind of decel would have killed her entire crew under impeller drive, but even the weakest of hyper space's grav waves were enormously more powerful than anything man could generate, and their 'inertial sumps' were proportionately deeper. Not that it was strictly necessary to decelerate. A ship bled over ninety percent of its velocity as it broke each hyper-space wall in a downward translation, which could be a handy tactical maneuver. But crash translations were rough on personnel and systems, and merchant skippers preferred the gentler, safer stress of a low velocity translation. It not only allowed their crews to avoid the violent nausea crash translations induced but also reduced alpha node wear by a measurable percentage, and that made their employers' bookkeepers happy with them, too.

The convoy was coming up on the New Berlin System, capital of the Anderman Empire, roughly forty-nine light-years from Gregor. Left to themselves, Commander Elliot's escorting destroyers could have made the trip in seven days by the universe's clocks (or just over five by their own, given the time dilation effect), but they would have had to move well up into the eta bands to do it. Given the elderly nature of some of her charges, Elliot had held the convoy to the lower delta bands, where their maximum apparent velocity was only a little over 912 c, so the trip had taken almost twenty days objective, or seventeen days subjective. The commander had checked her decision with Honor who, whether anyone else knew it or not, was the convoys true senior officer, but Honor hadn't even considered overriding her. It might have looked suspicious if Elliot had piled on too much speed.

Besides, it had given Honor more time for simulations, like the one in which Jennifer Hughes had pinned Rafe’s ears back.

She smiled at the thought and glanced across the bridge at her exec as he examined a yeoman's message board and dashed a signature across the scan plate. Despite his own skill as a tac officer, Rafe had gotten just a bit too eager when he realized Wayfarer's gravitics were down and Gudrid had lost her missile doors. The rules of the sim had precluded him from acting on his knowledge of the Q-ships' armament until it was revealed to him, and he'd done his best to obey them, but he'd known something had to have happened to Hughes' fire control when she didn't kill his missile platforms. He'd crowded in on her then, going for the quick kill, and ET Wanderman's improvisation had cost him the engagement.

Some officers might have been ticked off with the electronics tech, but Cardones had been delighted. With Honor’s approval, he'd transferred the youngster from his original duty station and, despite his lack of seniority, assigned him as Carolyn Wolcott's permanent gravitics chief as an acting third-class petty officer. Wanderman seemed unable to believe his good fortune, and Honor hadn't needed Nimitz to know the young man had a serious case of hero worship where she herself was concerned. She felt a certain amusement over it, but Wanderman seemed to have it under control, so she hadn't spoken to him about it. After all, she told herself, he'll only be this young and on his first deployment once. There's no point embarrassing him, let him enjoy it.

She let her eyes drift from Cardones to Wolcott with a small smile. Carolyn Wolcott had come a long way from her own first deployment aboard the heavy cruiser Fearless. She'd always had poise; now, as a senior-grade lieutenant, she radiated an unmistakable aura of confidence. She wasn't all that much older than Wanderman, there were only nine T-years between them, which wasn't much in a society with prolong, but the acting petty officer was clearly in awe of her.

The convoy crossed the alpha wall, breaking back into normal space a conservative twenty-five light- minutes from New Berlin's G4 primary, and the swirling patterns of hyper space vanished from the visual display.