Honor Among Enemies

star systems, six in Breslau and four in Posnan, in an elongated, complex pattern thirty-two light-years across at its widest point, and she gazed at it moodily.

'If we follow this pattern,' she said after a moment, 'we'll have one ship, and a different one, entering or departing one of these systems every week or so. If anyone is lying low and watching for us, they won't see the same ship hanging around for extended periods. That should keep us from looking like trolling warships, and it puts us in the center of the zone of heaviest losses and lets us patrol the widest area once we get there.'

'Yes, it does,' Cardones admitted. 'Assuming we don't run into anyone operating in squadron strength, I'd say it's clearly our best approach. But it does move us into Posnan, and it leaves all these stars in Breslau,' he tapped at his own terminal, and nine more stars blinked, 'uncovered. We're taking losses there, too, and Breslau is where we're tasked for operations.'

'I know,' Honor sighed. 'But if we extend the pattern, we also extend times between stars. We spend more time in hyper and less in n-space, where we're most likely to actually find and kill pirates. This seems to me to give us the best mix of deception and time in the zone, Rafe.'

'I agree,' Cardones said in turn. 'I just wish we could cover more area if we're going to split up anyway. However we go at it, you know we won't be there when someone gets hit, and the cartels are going to howl that we're, that you're, not doing our job if that happens.'

'The cartels are just going to have to accept the best we can do,' Honor replied. 'Our shipping will still be hit whatever pattern we follow, and without more Q-ships, there's not much we can do about it. I know they're going to complain if we aren't covering a system and they lose a ship there, but the fact is that the pirates have the initiative. They're the ones who decide where they'll raid; all we can do is follow them and hurt them badly enough the survivors decide to go somewhere else. If we clear one area, they'll move to another and we'll follow them, which should at least let us cramp the scale of their operations. And once we pick a few of them off, the Admiralty can point to the kill numbers as proof that we're actually doing some good.'

'You know what I wish?' Truman asked. Honor looked at her, and the other captain shrugged. 'I wish we knew who was funding and supporting the bastards. You know as well as I do that the average piracy ring can afford to lose and replace vessels, and crews, all year long if as much as a third of them manage to take a decent prize on each cruise. Think about it. These eleven ships,' she tapped her screen, where the names of the most recently missing vessels were displayed, 'represent an aggregate value of almost twelve billion just for the hulls. You can buy a lot of ships heavy enough to kill merchies for that kind of money.'

'According to Commander Hauser, the Andies are working on that, just like ONI,' Honor said. 'If we can identify whoever's actually disposing of the ships and cargoes, we'll be in a position to demand their local authorities take action against them.' Truman made a sound which might charitably have been called a laugh, and Honor shrugged. 'I know a lot of the locals will be in bed with the pirates, but if they're too stupid, or dirty, to take at least pro forma action, I suspect Admiral Rabenstrange would be delighted to drop a squadron of the wall in on them to convince them to see reason. We, unfortunately, don't have that sort of firepower. All we can do is pour water on the fire and at least make them replace losses.'

'I know,' Truman sighed, 'but I can wish, can't I?'

'I'll wish right along with you,' Honor agreed. 'In the meantime, this looks to me like the best way to proceed in light of the information and forces available to us.'

'Agreed,' Truman said, and Cardones nodded, though he still seemed a bit unhappy at the prospect. Honor knew most of his unhappiness was for her sake, since she was the one who was going to catch any criticism that came the squadron's way, and she wondered if he'd worked through the same logic Admiral White Haven had explained to her on Grayson. It seemed likely; Rafe was sharp, and the level of his unease indicated more than a mere sense of tactical exposure.

'All right,' she said more briskly, shaking off her own awareness of those same points. 'In that case, Alice, we'll go with the pattern you and I discussed. You'll take Parnassus to Telmach and Samuel will take Scheherazade to Posnan to start your legs. I'll take Wayfarer to Libau for the first leg through Walther, and Allen and Gudrid will take the first Hume-Gosset leg.'

Truman nodded. The patrol pattern Honor had outlined would put her own Parnassus and Wayfarer in the systems of maximum threat for the first portion of the pattern, while MacGuire's Gudrid would have the closest thing to a milk run for her first system.

'All right.' Honor said again. She sat up straighter and looked both her subordinates in the eye in turn as Nimitz flowed up over her shoulder to sit on the back of her chair. 'There are two more things we should consider. The first is what we do with anyone we capture. Rafe was out here in Fearless with me, so he already knows my policy, Alice, but you weren't. Have you had a chance to review my memo on it?'

'I have,' Truman replied with a sober nod.

'Do you have any problems with it?' Honor asked quietly.

'No, Ma'am.' Truman shook her head. 'If anything, you're being too lenient.'

'Perhaps so,' Honor acknowledged, 'but we have to at least pretend the Confederacy has a functional government, until they prove otherwise, at any rate. In the meantime, I'll draft formal orders for you, Allen, and Samuel to cover the situation. Remember that we need any information we can get on operational patterns, though. If anybody wants to deal by turning informer, feel free to use your initiative and judgment as to terms.'

Truman nodded, and Honor rubbed her eyes wearily. 'And that brings me to my last point, which is the possibility that these new patterns indicate we aren't looking just at normal raiders, or even privateers. The 'liberation governments' in Psyche and Lutrell are the most likely culprits if someone is operating in squadron strength, but there's one other possibility.'

'Peeps,' Truman said flatly, and Honor nodded.

'Exactly. Neither ONI nor the Andies have picked up any signs of it, but the Peeps have their own connections out here. For that matter, their embassies are still open, since they aren't at war with Silesia or the Andies. It wouldn't be too hard for them to make a quiet deal with one of the smaller system's governors for clandestine resupply, and their embassies' intelligence on shipping patterns is probably at least as good as ours. If they have managed to slip a raiding squadron in on us, they'd go after our shipping, not anyone else's, and they wouldn't want the crews of the ships they hit getting loose to tell us they're here.'

'Unless their purpose is to force the Admiralty to cut loose heavier forces to chase them,' Truman pointed out. 'That's exactly what they tried to do before they hit you in Yeltsin, Honor, and they succeeded. Why not deliberately let our people 'get away'? Wouldn't it make sense to be obvious if their object is to prove to the Admiralty how seriously our shipping here is threatened?'

'A possibility,' Honor agreed, 'but I don't think they would. Their operations before Fourth Yeltsin were part of a coordinated plan designed to impose a temporary change in our deployments to suck forces away from a specific objective for a single offensive strike. They could be trying to draw us into false deployments again, but this far from home there's no way they could coordinate the front. I suspect that means they'd go for a longer, general diversion, not a specific, short-term one.' She frowned at the holo, rubbing the tip of her nose, then shrugged.

'On top of that, anything they sent out here would find itself in a world of hurt if we went after it in a big way. Without regular fleet bases of their own, which they don't have, they'd be at a severe disadvantage if we did transfer the forces to go after them. And don't forget the edge our shorter passage times through the Junction give us in information flow and deployment speeds. We'd have an excellent chance of making the transfer, hitting them hard, and getting our light forces back home before the rest of the Peeps even knew we'd made the move. By the same token, I doubt they want to do anything to irritate the Empire. They have to be delighted that the Emperor's sitting things out so far, and open, large-scale fleet operations in the Andies backyard might just cause him to change his mind. Besides, they don't have to operate openly to achieve the same objective. Bottom line, it doesn't matter who's raiding us, just that someone is.'

'True enough.' Truman nodded.