Honor Among Enemies

it to someone else if you're not willing to kill his merchantmen? Besides, merchant tonnage is just as important to the Manties as warships, probably even more so, right?

He shook off the thought and nodded towards the lifts. MacMurtree fell in beside him, and he punched the bridge code into the panel. 'How'd it go?' he asked.

'Not too badly,' she said with a small shrug. 'Their customs patrols really aren't worth a damn. No one even closed to make an eyeball on us.'

'Good,' Caslet grunted. He'd been unhappy about the 'asteroid mining boat' cover his orders specified, since a pinnace didn't look the least bit like a civilian craft. But what had once been NavInt insisted that what passed for a customs patrol out here would settle for a transponder read, and damned if they hadn't been right. Well, that makes a nice change, he thought dryly.

'Anyway, we handled it all by tight beam from orbit,' MacMurtree went on. 'Haines didn't like sending her dispatch boat off, but she accepted her orders. Our dispatches should reach Admiral Giscard,' there were no people's commissioners here to overhear her use of the prerevolutionary rank, 'within three weeks.' She grimaced. 'We could've cut a good ten days off that by sending her straight to the rendezvous, Skipper.'

'Security, Allison,' Caslet replied, and she snorted with a grumpiness he understood perfectly. To keep StateSec happy, they had to send their dispatches to the Saginaw System, from which another dispatch boat (this one under the orders of an ambassador the Committee of Public Safety trusted) would carry them to Giscard. Even at the high FTL velocities dispatch boats routinely turned out, that was going to take time.

'At any rate,' he went on, 'we can be sure he'll know everything we do, and what we're up to. Which means we can go trolling again with a clear conscience.' 'True,' MacMurtree agreed. 'Anything turn up while I was away?'

'Not really. Of course, we're sort of out of the way here. I figure we'll clear the planetary hyper limit, pop into h-space and move a couple of light-weeks out, then come back in the same way we did for Sharon's Star.'

'What if we run into somebody else?'

'You mean a 'regular' pirate instead of Warnecke's happy campers?' MacMurtree nodded, and Caslet shrugged. 'We've pulled enough out of their computers to recognize their emissions. We should be able to ID the ones we want if we see them.'

He paused, rubbing an eyebrow, and MacMurtree nodded again. Painstaking analysis had proved that Citizen Sergeant Simonson had gotten more out of the computers of the pirate they'd already knocked out than they'd expected. Which was fortunate, since they'd gotten even less than hoped for out of their prisoners. But that, in its own way, had been highly satisfactory. With no need to make deals, all of the raiders had been given a fair trial before they went out the lock. The People’s Navy didn't get its sick kicks the way the prisoners had, however, so Branscombe's Marines had executed each of them before he or she hit vacuum.

But among the bits and pieces Simonson had retrieved there was more than enough to confirm Captain Sukowski's claims about Andre Warnecke, and some sobering stats on other units of the 'privateer squadron.' Most were at least as powerful as the one Vaubon had destroyed, and they had four ships which looked to be more heavily armed than most of the Republic's heavy cruisers. The good news was that an examination of their capture's weapons systems had shown some glaring deficiencies. The Chalice's 'revolutionary government' had built its ships to kill merchantmen, which couldn't shoot back, or engage Silesian Navy units, which were hardly up to the standards of major navies, and it showed. They seemed to have insisted in cramming in as heavy an offensive punch as possible, which wasn't an uncommon mistake in the navies of weaker powers. Heavy throw weights were impressive as hell, but it was just as important to keep the bad guys from scoring on your ship, and they were underequipped for that. Which wasn't to say they wouldn't be dangerous if they were handled properly, but there were no indications of anything that could go toe-to-toe with Giscard's battle-cruisers. Still, if Warnecke’s people managed to mass two or three of their ships against one of his, things could get iffy. And if that was true for battlecruisers, it was far more true for light cruisers.

That was a sobering thought, but the computers had also coughed up the fact that all of Warnecke’s ships had been built in the same yard and fitted with the same derivative of the standard Silesian Navy sensor and EW systems. As far as Foraker had been able to determine, their radar was a unique installation, so all they needed was a good read on it, and they'd know they had the murderous bastards they wanted.

'I guess if we run into somebody else we'll just have to warn them off and send them on their way,' he sighed finally. He hated the very thought. Pirates were the natural enemy of any man of war, but he knew he really had no choice. Jourdain was a good sort, but he'd balk at killing off regular pirates who might be expected to help put more pressure on the Manties.

'It's not going to feel right,' MacMurtree murmured, and he laughed without humor.

'Just between you and me, Allison, I've felt that way quite a few times in the last three years,' he said. She looked at him for a moment, eyes momentarily wide, then smiled and thumped him on the shoulder. Very few officers in the People's Navy would have dared to speak that frankly to anyone, however long they'd served together, and she started to reply, then closed her mouth with another smile as the lift reached its destination. The doors whispered open, and Caslet led the way out onto Vaubon's bridge.

'All well, Citizen Exec?' Jourdain asked MacMurtree, and she nodded.

'Yes, Sir,' she said crisply. 'Citizen Haines has already sent her dispatch boat off.'

'Excellent!' Jourdain actually rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. 'In that case, Citizen Commander, I think it's time we went looking for these people, don't you?'

'I do, indeed, Sir,' Caslet said, and smiled. When Jourdain had first come aboard, Caslet would have wagered five years' pay that he would never be more than a pain in the ass. Now Caslet was only too well aware how fortunate he'd been, and his smile turned genuinely warm for a moment. Then he shook himself and looked at his astrogator.

'All right, Simon. Let's do it.'

Harold Sukowski dropped into the chair beside Chris Hurlman's bed and smiled at her. It was easier than it had been, for she no longer looked like a trapped animal. Dr. Jankowski had kept a close eye on Chris, but the surgeon had decided to leave counseling for later and restricted herself to cleaning her up and treating her physical injuries. The fact that Jankowski was a woman had helped, no doubt, but Sukowski suspected it was the sense of safety which had made the real difference. For the first time since Bonaventure's capture, Chris felt genuinely safe, among people who not only didn't threaten her or her skipper but actually wished them well.

The first day or two had been little more than waiting. He'd sat beside her bed virtually every waking hour, and Chris had only lain there, staring at the deckhead. The hysterics hadn't started until the third day, and they'd been mercifully brief. Now she had her good days and her bad ones, but this seemed to be one of the former, and she managed an answering smile as he sat down beside her. It was only a shadow of her previous, infectious grin, and his heart ached at the courage it must take to project even that lopsided effort, but he only patted her hand gently.

'Looks like they do pretty good work here,' he observed in a deliberately light tone. Her smile wavered but didn't disappear, and she cleared her throat.

'Yeah,' she husked. Her voice sounded rusty and broken, but his aching heart leapt as she spoke, for she hadn't said a single word during their nightmare stay aboard the 'privateer.'

'Maybe I should've obeyed orders,' she rasped, and a single tear trickled down her cheek.

'You should've,' he agreed, reaching out to wipe the tear with a gentle finger, 'but if you had, I'd be dead. Under the circumstances, I've decided not to write you up for mutiny.'

'Gee, thanks,' she managed, and her shoulders shook with a chuckle that was next door to a sob. She closed both eyes, then licked her lips. 'They going to dump us in a POW camp?'

'Nope. They say they'll send us home as soon as they can.' Chris turned her head on the pillow, both eyes popping open in disbelief, and Sukowski shrugged. 'Nobody's said so, but they've got to be out here to raid our commerce. That's going to give them a heap of merchant spacer POWs. Sooner or later, they'll have to admit they've got them, and the civilian prisoner exchange conventions are pretty straightforward.'

'As long as they bother to take prisoners,' Chris muttered, and Sukowski shook