Honor Among Enemies

ships lost their after impeller rings almost instantly, and Falchion's emissions signature flickered madly as the power surges bled through her systems.

But Scheherazade didn't linger to gloat. Even as Hernando fired, her helm was hard over, completing her hundred-and-eighty-degree turn to port. In the same flashing seconds, she rolled up on her side. The mauled cruisers roared past her, surviving broadside weapons firing frantically in local control over the deep-space equivalent of open sights, but they had no target: only the impenetrable roof and floor of her wedge.

'Baker Two!' Hernando snapped, and the helmsman threw his helm over yet again. The Q-ship circled still further to port, coming perpendicular to the Peeps' vectors, and rolled back upright, firing as she came. Her broadside flashed once more, spewing missiles as well as grasers this time. Her fire ripped straight down the front of her enemies' wedges, and even as her port weapons fired, her starboard sidewall dropped and six LACs exploded from their bays to accelerate after the heavy cruisers at six hundred gravities.

The Peeps did their best, but that first, devastating rake had wreaked havoc on their electronics. Central fire control was a shambles, fighting to sort itself out and reestablish a grasp on the situation as secondary systems came on-line. Their surviving weapons were all in emergency local control, dependent on their own on-mount sensors and tracking computers. Most of them didn't even know where Scheherazade was, and frantic queries hammered CIC. But CIC needed time to recover from that terrible blow... and the cruisers didn't have time. They had only fifteen seconds, and only a single laser smashed into Scheherazade in reply to her second, devastating broadside.

Webster's ship shuddered as that solitary hit ripped into her unarmored hull, and damage alarms wailed. Missile Three vanished, and the same hit smashed clear to Boat Bay One and tore two cutters and a pinnace, none, fortunately, manned, to splinters. Seventeen men and women were killed, and eleven more wounded, but for all that, Scheherazade got off incredibly lightly.

The Peeps didn't. Hernando's second broadside wasn't as accurate as his first; there were too many variables, changing too rapidly, for him to achieve the same precision. But it was accurate enough against wide open targets, and PNS Falchion vanished in a boil of light as one of Scheherazade's grasers found her forward fusion room. There were no life pods, and Webster's eyes whipped to the second cruiser just as her bow blew open like a shredded stick. Her forward impellers died instantly, stripping away her wedge and her sidewalls, leaving her only reaction thrusters for maneuver, and Webster bared his teeth.

'Launch the second LAC squadron,' he said, and then flicked his hand at his com officer. 'Put me on, Gina.'

'Hot mike, Skipper,' Gina Alveretti replied, and Samuel Houston Webster spoke in cold, precise tones.

'Peep cruiser, this is Her Majesty's Armed Merchant Cruiser Scheherazade. Stand by to be boarded. And, as you yourself said...' he smiled ferociously at his pickup '...any resistance to our boarders will be met with deadly force.'

'I'm beginning to feel a bit like a father whose children stay out after curfew,' Citizen Admiral Javier Giscard observed as he poured fresh wine into Peoples Commissioner Eloise Pritchart’s glass. It was as well for the Committee of Public Safety's peace of mind that neither it nor its minions in StateSec suspected how well Giscard and Pritchart got along. Had they known, they would have been quite shocked, for Giscard and his watchdog were in bed together, literally.

'How so?' Pritchart asked now, sipping her wine. She knew as well as Giscard what would happen if StateSec ever realized the true nature of their relationship. But she also had no intention of letting Giscard get away from her. He was not only a brilliant and insightful officer, he was an outstanding man. He'd been trained by one of the People's Navy's finest prewar captains, Alfredo Yu, and, like his mentor, he'd been far better than the old regime had deserved. Pritchart often wondered what would have happened if Yu hadn't been hounded into defecting by his own superiors after that fiasco in Yeltsin. He and Javier together would have made a magnificent combination, but now they were on opposite sides. She hoped the two of them never found themselves directly facing one another, for she knew how deeply Javier respected his old teacher. But Javier had also hated the Legislaturalists with a passion. He might not care for the new regime, for which Pritchart couldn't blame him as much as she wished she could, but he was loyal. Or would be unless StateSec did something to drive him into being disloyal.

But Eloise Pritchart intended to make very certain nothing like that happened. Javier was too valuable an officer... and she loved him too much.

'Hm?' he asked now, nibbling her ear while his hand stroked her hip under the sheet.

'I asked why you feel like a harassed parent?'

'Oh. Well, it's just that some of the children are staying out late to play. I'm not too concerned over Vaubon, Caslet's a good officer, and if he's exercised his discretion and gone someplace else, he had a good reason. But I am a little concerned over Waters. I should never have given him the option of cruising as far as Tyler's Star before he returned to the rendezvous.'

'You don't like Waters, do you?' Pritchart asked, and he shrugged.

'I'm not picking on him for any excess of revolutionary zeal, Citizen Commissioner,' he said wryly, tacitly acknowledging the powerful patrons Waters' ideological fervor had bought him. 'It's his judgment that worries me. The man hates the Manties too much.'

'How can someone hate the enemy 'too much'?' From any other commissioner, that question would have carried ominous overtones, but Pritchart was genuinely curious.

'Determination is a good thing,' Giscard explained very seriously, 'and sometimes hate can help generate that. I don't like it, because whatever our differences with the Manties, they're still human beings. If we expect them to act professionally and humanely where our people are concerned, we have to act the same way where their people are concerned.' He paused, and Pritchart nodded before he went on. 'The problem with someone like Waters, though, is that hate begins to substitute for good sense. He's a well-trained, competent officer, but he's also young for his rank, and he could have used more experience before he made captain. I don't suppose he's all that different from most of our captains, or admirals,' he admitted with a wry grin, '...in that respect, given what happened to the old officer corps. But he's too eager, too fired up. I'm a little worried by how it may affect his judgment, and I wish I'd kept him on a shorter leash.'

'I see.' Pritchart leaned back, platinum hair spilling over her lover's shoulder, and nodded slowly. 'Do you really think he's gotten himself into some sort of trouble?'

'No, not really. I am a bit concerned over the reports that the Manties've sent Q-ships out here. If they cruise in company, two or three of them could be a nasty handful for someone who dives right in on them, and Waters had headed out before we got the dispatch alerting us to their presence. But he's under orders to hit only singletons, and I don't see one Q-ship beating up on a pair of Sword—class CAs unless the cruisers screw up by the numbers. No, its more of a feeling that I ought to be looking over his shoulder more closely than anything else, Ellie.'

'From what I've seen so far, I'd listen to that 'feeling,' Javier,' Pritchart said seriously. 'I respect your instincts.'

'Among other things, I hope?' he said with a boyish smile as his hand explored under the sheets, and she smacked his bare chest lightly.

'Stop that, you corrupter of civic virtue!'

'I think not, Citizen Commissioner,' he replied, and she twitched in pleasure. But then his hand paused. She pushed up on an elbow to demand its return, then stopped with a resigned smile. She did love the man, but Lord, he could be exasperating! Inspiration struck him at the damnedest times, and he always had to chase the new idea down before he could set it aside.

'What is it?'

'I was just thinking about the Manty Q-ships,' Giscard mused. 'I wish we could have confirmed whether or not Harrington is in command of them.'

'I thought you just said a Q-ship was no match for a heavy cruiser,' Pritchart pointed out. He nodded, and she shrugged. 'Well, you've got twelve heavy cruisers, and eight battlecruisers. That seems like a reassuring amount of overkill to me.'