Honor Among Enemies

yesterday, and she's already catching a lot of flak over this. You know her better than I do, but I got the impression she's under extreme pressure.'

White Haven nodded thoughtfully. He did know Francine Maurier, Baroness Morncreek and First Lord of the Admiralty, better than Caparelli. And as the Crown minister with overall responsibility for the Navy, Morncreek was undoubtedly under just as much pressure as Caparelli suggested. Indeed, if she was letting it show, it was probably even worse than Caparelli thought.

'Add the fact that Hauptman's in bed with the Liberals and the Conservative Association, not to mention the Progressives, and we've really got a problem,' the First Space Lord continued grimly. 'If the Opposition decides to make a fight over the Navy's 'disinterest' in his problems, things could get messy. And that doesn't even consider the direct losses in import duties and transfer fees ... or lives.'

'There's another point,' White Haven said unwillingly, and Caparelli raised an eyebrow. 'It's only a matter of time until someone like McQueen sees the possibilities,' the earl explained. 'If a bunch of pirates can hurt us this badly, think what would happen if the Peeps sent in a few squadrons of battlecruisers to help out. So far, we've kept them too far off balance to try anything like that, but frankly, they're better able to cut light forces loose, given all those battleships they still have in reserve. And Silesia isn't the only place they could hurt us if they decided to get into commerce warfare in a big way.'

White Haven, Caparelli thought sourly, did have a way of thinking up unpleasant scenarios.

'But if we can't free up the escorts we need,' the First Space Lord began, 'then how...'

He paused suddenly, eyes narrowing. White Haven cocked his head, but Caparelli ignored him and tapped a query into his terminal. He studied the data on his display for several seconds, then tugged at an earlobe.

'Q-ships,' he said, almost to himself. 'By God, maybe that's the answer.'

'Q-ships?' White Haven repeated. Caparelli didn't seem to hear for a moment, then he shook himself.

'What if we were to send some of the Trojans to Silesia?' he asked, and it was White Havens turn to frown in thought.

Project Trojan Horse had been Sonja Hemphill's idea, and that, the earl admitted, tended to prejudice him against it. He and Hemphill were old and bitter philosophical foes, and he distrusted her material-based strategic doctrine. But Trojan Horse hadn't involved any major diversion from the fighting, and it had offered enough possible benefits even if it failed in its main purpose to win his grudging support.

In essence, Hemphill proposed turning some of the RMN's standard Caravan-class freighters into armed merchant cruisers. The Caravans were big ships, over seven million tons, but they were slow and unarmored, with civilian-grade drives. Under normal circumstances, they'd be helpless against any proper warship, but Hemphill wanted to outfit them with the heaviest possible firepower and seed them into the Fleet Train convoys laboring to keep Sixth Fleet supplied. The idea was for them to look just like any other freighter until some unwary raider got close, at which point they were supposed to blow him out of space.

Personally, White Haven doubted the concept was workable in the long term. The Peeps had used Q-ships of their own to some effect against previous enemies, but the fundamental weakness of the tactic was that it was unlikely to work against a proper navy more than once or twice. Once an enemy figured out you were using them, he'd simply start blowing away anything that might be a Q-ship from the maximum possible range. Besides, the Peep Q-ships had been purpose built from the keel out. They'd been fitted with military-grade drives which had made them as fast as any warship their size, and their designs had incorporated internal armor, compartmentalization, and systems redundancy the Caravans completely lacked.

Now, however, Caparelli might have a point, because the raiders who plagued Silesian space didn't have proper warships... and they were no part of any proper navy. Most were independents, disposing of their plunder to 'merchants', fences, really, who bankrolled their operations and asked no embarrassing questions. Their ships tended to be lightly armed, and they normally operated in singletons, certainly not in groups of more than two or three. The normal unrest of the Confederacy, where star systems routinely attempted to secede from the central government, complicated things a bit, since the 'liberation governments' were fond of issuing letters of marque and authorizing 'privateers' to hit other people's commerce in the name of independence. Some of the privateers were heavily armed for their displacement, and a few were commanded by genuine patriots, willing to work together in small squadrons for their home system's cause. Even they, however, would tend to run from a properly handled Q-ship, and unlike operations against the Peeps, the strategy might become more effective, not less, once word of it got out. Pirates, after all, were in it for the money, and they were unlikely to risk losing the ships which represented their capital or settle for destroying potential prizes from stand-off ranges. Where a Peep commerce raider might be willing to accept the risk of encountering a Q-ship in order to simply destroy Manticoran shipping, a pirate would be looking to capture his victims and would be unlikely to hazard his ship against a merchant cruiser unless he anticipated a particularly luscious prize.

'It might help,' the earl said after considering the notion carefully. 'Unless we have an awful lot of them, they won't be able to destroy many raiders, of course. I'd have to say the effect would be more cosmetic than real in those terms, but the psychological impact could be worthwhile, both in Silesia and Parliament. But do we have any of them ready to commit? I thought we were still at least several months short of the target date.'

'We are,' Caparelli agreed. 'According to this,' he tapped his terminal, 'the first four ships could be ready sometime next month, but most of them are still a minimum of five months from completion. We haven't assigned any crews yet, either, and frankly, our manpower's stretched tight enough to make that a problem, too. But we could at least make a start. And as you say, My Lord, a lot of the benefit will stem from purely psychological factors. The situation's worst in the Breslau Sector. If we put the first four in there and let the word get out that we had, we might be able to put a damper on losses in that area until the others are ready for deployment.'

'We might.' White Haven rubbed his chin, then shrugged. 'It won't be more than a sop, not until the other ships are ready. And whoever you give it to will have a hell of a job on his hands with only four ships. But, as you say, at least we'll be able to tell Hauptman and his cronies we're doing something.' And, he thought, doing it without diverting the ships I need in the process.

'True.' Caparelli drummed on his desktop for two or three seconds. 'It's only a thought at the moment. I'll run it by Pat this afternoon and see what BuPlan has to say about it.' He considered a moment longer, then tossed his head. 'In the meantime, let's look a bit closer at the nuts and bolts of this plan of yours. You say you'll need another two battle squadrons at Nightingale?' White Haven nodded. 'Well, suppose we draw them from...'

Chapter TWO

Soft classical music made a fitting background to the elegantly attired men and women in the huge room. A sumptuous meal lay in ruins behind them, and they clustered in small groups, glasses in hand, while the seaside murmur of their voices competed with the music. It was a scene of relaxed wealth and power, but there was little relaxation in Klaus Hauptman's voice.

The trillionaire stood with a woman who was only marginally his inferior in terms of wealth and power and a man who wasn't even in the running. Not that the Houseman clan was poor, but its wealth was 'old money,' and most of its members disdained anything so crass as actual commerce. Of course, one had to have managers, hired hands to see to the maintenance of one's family fortune, but it was hardly the sort of thing gentlemen did. In his own way, Reginald Houseman shared that prejudice against the nouveau riche, and by Houseman standards, even the Hauptman fortune was very nouveau indeed, but he was widely acknowledged as one of the half-dozen top economists of the Star Kingdom.

He was not, however, so recognized by Klaus Hauptman, who regarded him with virtually unmitigated contempt. Despite Houseman's innumerable academic credentials, Hauptman considered him a dilettante who personified the ancient cliche that 'Those who can, do; those who can't, teach,' and Houseman's sublime self- importance was immensely irritating to a man who'd proven his own competence in the one way no one could