Honor Among Enemies

'Is there anything more we can do?' Her voice was very quiet, not pushing but dark with the sense of responsibility she'd inherited from her father, and he shrugged.

'I don't know.' He stared out over the pool for another moment, then turned back to face her. 'I don't know,' he repeated, 'but I'm thinking about going out there in person.'

'Why?' she asked quickly, her tone sharp with sudden alarm. 'What can you do from there that you can't do from here?'

'For one thing, I can cut something like three months off the communications lag,' he said dryly. 'For another, you know as well as I do that nothing can substitute for direct, firsthand observation of a problem.'

'But if you poke around out mere, you could get captured, or killed!' she protested.

'Oh, I doubt that. If I went at all, I'd go in Artemis or Athena,' he assured her, and she paused thoughtfully. Artemis and Athena were two of the Hauptman Lines' Atlas-class passenger liners. The Atlases had minimal cargo capacity, but they were equipped with military-grade compensators and impellers, and they were excellent at getting people from place to place quickly. Because Artemis and Athena had been expressly built for the Silesian run, they'd also been fitted with light missile armaments, and their high speed and ability to defend themselves against run-of-the-mill pirates made them extremely popular with travelers to the Confederacy.

'All right,' Stacey said after a moment. 'I guess you'd be safe enough. But if you go, then I'm going with you.'

'What?' Hauptman blinked at her, then shook his head adamantly. 'No way, Stace! One of us has to stay home to mind the store, and I don't want you traipsing around Silesia.'

'First,' she shot back, not giving a centimeter, 'we've got highly paid, highly competent people for the express purpose of 'minding the store,' Daddy. Second, if it's safe enough for you, it's safe enough for me. And, third, we're talking about Captain Harry.'

'Look,' her father said persuasively, 'I know how you feel about Captain Sukowski, but you can't do anything that I can't. Stay home, Stace. Please. Let me handle this.'

'Daddy,' steely brown eyes met blue, and Klaus Hauptman felt a sinking sensation, 'I'm going. We can argue about this all you like, but in the end, I'm going.'

Chapter SIXTEEN

Honor looked up from her book reader as her com chimed. MacGuiness poked his head into her day cabin and started towards the terminal, but then it chimed again, this time with the two-toned note of an urgent signal, and she thrust her reader aside.

'I'll take it, Mac,' she said, standing quickly. Nimitz raised his head from his own position on his perch, and she felt his quick surge of interest, but she had little time to consider it as she punched the acceptance key. She opened her mouth, but Rafe Cardones started speaking with most unusual abruptness almost before his image stabilized.

'I think we've got our first customer, Ma'am. We've got a bogey tracking up from low and astern with an overtake of nine hundred KPS, and he's accelerating hard. Tactical calls it three hundred gees, and he's one-point- seven million klicks back. Assuming constant accelerations, John figures he'll intercept at zero range in about nineteen minutes.'

'You just picked him up?'

'Yes, Ma'am.' Cardones smiled like a shark. 'We don't see any sign of ECM, either. Looks like he was lying doggo and just lit off his drive.'

'I see.' Honor's smile matched her exec's. 'Mass?' she asked.

'From his impeller signature, Jenny figures it at about fifty-five k-tons.'

'Well, well.' Honor rubbed the tip of her nose for a moment, then nodded sharply. 'All right, Rafe. Sound General Quarters. Have Susan and Scotty assemble their boarding teams, and detail LAC One for launch on my signal. I'll be on the bridge in five minutes.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

The GQ alarm began to wail even as Honor cut the circuit, and Nimitz landed on her desk with a thump. She stood and turned to find that MacGuiness had already gotten out her skinsuit, and she flashed him a smile of thanks as she grabbed it and headed for her sleeping cabin. The steward was dragging out the 'cat's skinsuit as the hatch closed behind her, and she began tearing off her uniform. She left it strewn on the carpet, Mac would forgive her this time, and climbed into her suit with painful haste. By the time she was back through the hatch, MacGuiness had Nimitz suited, and she snatched the 'cat up and headed for the private captain’s lift at a run.

She punched the destination code and then made herself stand still and consider what she knew. The acuity of merchant-grade sensors varied widely. Any skipper with more than half a brain wanted the best ones he could get if he was going to wander around the Confederacy, but no sensors were any better than the people who manned them, and some merchant spacers tended to be a bit lackadaisical about such things.

Bearing that in mind, whoever was behind Wayfarer probably wouldn't be too surprised if she didn't react immediately to his presence, but he was going to be suspicious if she kept on not reacting for very long. Which meant...

The lift door opened, and she strode into the orderly bustle of her bridge. Her weapons crews were still closing up, they still had more rough edges than she liked, but Jennifer Hughes' tac crew was on-line and monitoring the bogey's approach. She glanced at the chrono and allowed herself a small smile. Wayfarer's designers had placed her captains quarters only one deck down from and directly below her bridge, and the private lift was a marvelous luxury. Honor had promised Rafe she'd be here in five minutes, and she'd made it in just over three.

Cardones vacated the chair at the center of the bridge, and she nodded to him as she lowered herself into it. Nimitz swarmed up onto its back while she racked her helmet on the chair arm, and she punched the button that deployed her displays about her.

Wayfarer was twenty-one light-minutes from the G2 primary of the Walther System, just under fifteen light-years from Libau, stooging along at a mere 11,175 KPS with an accel of only seventy-five gravities. That was on the low side, even for a merchie, but not unheard of for a skipper with worn drive nodes, and Honor had chosen it with malice aforethought. She hadn't wanted anyone to miss her, and such a low velocity was the equivalent of blood in the water. And it seemed to have worked. The bogey had closed another two hundred thousand kilometers, and his speed was still building. He already had a velocity advantage of nine hundred and ten KPS, and it was rising steadily, but that was going to change. He wouldn't want too much overtake when he actually overhauled, but he clearly expected Wayfarer to bolt when she finally saw him. He wanted a little extra speed in hand if she did, and it would be a pity to disappoint him.

'All right, Rafe. Take us to max accel.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Chief O'Halley, bring us to one-point-five KPS squared.'

'Coming to one-point-five KPS squared, aye, Sir,' the coxswain acknowledged, and Wayfarer suddenly bolted ahead at her maximum normal safe acceleration. It was only half that of the ship coming up from astern, but it would be enough to convince him he'd been seen.

'New time to overtake?'

'Make it two-four-point-nine-four minutes, Milady,' John Kanehama replied almost instantly, and she nodded.

'Challenge him, Fred. Inform him we're a Manticoran vessel and order him to stand off.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.' Lieutenant Cousins spoke briefly into his pickup, and Honor watched her display narrowly. They were well within the powered envelope for impeller-drive missiles. A pirate wouldn't want to damage his prize, but...

'Missile separation!' Jennifer Hughes sang out. 'One bird closing at eight-zero thousand gees!' She