Honor Among Enemies

watched her display for a moment, then nodded. 'Not a hot bird, Ma'am. It'll pass to starboard at over sixty thousand klicks.'

'How kind of him,' Honor murmured, watching the missile trace tear after her ship. It streaked up on her starboard side and detonated, out not only was it well clear of Wayfarer, it was also a standard nuke, not a laser head. Its meaning was clear, however. She considered continuing to run, although the raider had demonstrated he had the range to fire into her ship, he was unlikely to when she couldn't get away anyhow, but there was no guarantee the person behind that missile tube was feeling reasonable.

'Anything on the com?'

'Not yet, Ma'am.'

'I see. Very well, Rafe. Bring us hard to port and kill our accel, but keep the wedge up.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

Wayfarer stopped accelerating, and Honor punched up LAC Squadron One's flagship. Commander Jacquelyn Harmon, Wayfarer's senior LAC CO, was a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman with a pre-space fighter pilot's ego and a sardonic sense of humor, both of which probably stood the commander of such a frail craft in good stead. It was she who'd insisted on naming the twelve LACs under her command for the twelve apostles, and she rode the cramped command deck of HMLAC Peter as her image appeared on Honor’s small screen.

'Ready, Jackie?' Honor asked.

'Yes, Ma'am!' Harmon gave her a hungry smile, and Honor shook her head.

'Remember we want them alive if we can get them.'

'We'll remember, Ma'am.'

'Very well. Launch at your discretion when we drop the sidewall, but stay close.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

Honor killed the circuit and looked at Hughes. 'Drop the starboard sidewall.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. Dropping starboard sidewall now.'

Wayfarers starboard sidewall vanished. Seconds later, six small warships spat out of the 'cargo bays' on her starboard flank on conventional thrusters. They raced clear of their mother ship's wedge before they brought up their own drives, then hovered there, screened from radar and gravitic detection by her massive shadow, and Honor looked back at her plot.

The bogey was decelerating hard now. Given his current overtake, he'd overfly Wayfarer by over a hundred and forty thousand kilometers before coming to rest relative to her, but his velocity would be sufficiently low to make boarding simple. Of course, he might be just a bit surprised to discover who was about to be boarded by whom, she thought coldly.

'I've got good passive readouts for Fire Plan Able, Ma'am,' Hughes reported. 'Solution input and running, and visual tracking has him now. Coming up on your repeater.'

Honor glanced down. The decelerating raider was stern-on to the pickup, giving her a good look up the open rear of his wedge. He was smaller than most destroyers, and he couldn't be very heavily armed if he'd shoehorned a hyper drive and Warshawski sails into that hull. He had a conventional warship's hammerhead ends, however, which suggested at least some chase armament, and whatever he mounted was aimed straight at Wayfarer. She checked Kanehama's intercept solution and nodded mentally. There was no point letting that ship get close enough to shoot through her sidewall, not when she had a perfect up the kilt shot at him.

'On my mark, Jenny,' she said quietly, raising her left hand, then keyed her own com with her right hand. 'Unknown vessel,' she said crisply, 'this is Her Majesty's Armed Merchant Cruiser Wayfarer. Cut your drive immediately, or be destroyed!'

She slashed her hand downward as she spoke, and every weapon in Wayfarers broadside fired as one. Eight massive grasers flashed out, the closest missing the bogey by less than thirty kilometers, and ten equally massive missiles followed. As the single shot the bogey had fired, they were standard nukes, not laser heads, but unlike the bogeys, they detonated at a stand-off range of barely a thousand kilometers, completely bracketing him in their pattern.

The message was abundantly clear, and just to give it added point, six LACs suddenly swooped up over their mother ship, locked their own batteries on the bogey, and lashed him with targeting radar and lidar powerful enough to boil his hull paint to be sure he knew they had.

'Acknowledged, Wayfarer! Acknowledged!' a voice screamed over the com, and the bogeys drive died instantly. 'Don't fire! God, please don't fire! We surrender!'

'Prepare to be boarded,' Honor said coldly. 'Any resistance will result in the instant destruction of your vessel. Is that understood?'

'Yes! Yes!'

'Good,' she said in that same, icy tone, then cut the circuit and leaned back in her chair to smile at Cardones. 'Well,' she said far more mildly, 'that was exciting, wasn't it?'

'More so for some than for others, Ma'am,' Cardones replied with a broad grin.

'I suppose so,' Honor agreed, and glanced at Hughes. 'Nicely done, Guns, and that goes for all of you,' she told the bridge at large. Pleased smiles answered, and she turned back to Cardones. 'Tell Scotty and Susan they can launch, then match velocities. The LACs can keep an eye on our friend while we maneuver.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

Honor stood and stretched, then gathered Nimitz back up once more. 'I imagine you can finish up here, Mr. Exec,' she said for the benefit of the rest of her bridge crew, 'and you pulled me away from a perfectly good book. I'll be in my quarters. Ask Major Hibson to escort the commander of that object to my cabin after she parks the rest of its people in the brig, please.'

'Yes, Ma'am. We can do that,' Cardones agreed, still grinning.

'Thank you,' Honor said, and headed for the lift while the watch chuckled behind her.

The raider's commander was a squat, chunky man who'd once been muscular but long since gone to fat, and his flabby face was gray with shock as Major Hibson thrust him into Honor's cabin. He wasn't handcuffed, and he outmassed the petite Marine by at least two-to-one, but only a complete fool would have taken liberties with Susan Hibson. Not that the pirate appeared to have anything left inside with which liberties might have been taken.

Nonetheless, Andrew LaFollet stood alertly at Honor’s right shoulder, gray eyes cold, and rested one hand on the butt of his pulser as the raider shambled to a halt and tried to square his shoulders. Honor leaned back in her chair, stroking Nimitz's prick ears with one hand, and regarded him with eyes that were just as icy as her armsman's, and his effort to stand erect sagged back into hopelessness. He looked both beaten antipathetic, but she reminded herself of his loathsome trade and let the silence drag out endlessly before she smiled thinly.

'Surprise, surprise.' Her voice was cold, and the prisoner flinched. She felt his shock-numbed terror through Nimitz, and the 'cat bared needle fangs contemptuously at him.

'You and your crew were captured in the act of piracy by the Royal Manticoran Navy,' she went on after a moment. 'As this vessels captain, I have full authority under interstellar law to execute every one of you. I advise you to spare me any blustering which might irritate me.'

The prisoner flinched again, and Honor felt a trickle of cold, amused approval of her hard case persona leaking from Susan Hibson. She held the pirate with glacial brown eyes until the man nodded jerkily, then let her chair swing back upright.

'Good. The Major here,' she nodded to Hibson, 'is going to have a few questions for you and your crew. I suggest you remember that we took your entire database intact, and we'll be analyzing it as well. If I happen to detect any discrepancies between what it says and what you say, I won't like it.'

The prisoner nodded again, and Honor sniffed disdainfully.

'Take this out of my sight, Major,' she said flatly, and Hibson glared at the pirate and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. The prisoner swallowed and shuffled back out of the cabin, and the hatch closed behind them. Silence lingered for a moment, and then LaFollet cleared his throat.