Honor Among Enemies

'Just so long as it's only spectacular. Let's not lose an alpha node for real.'

'No sweat, Ma'am.'

'Good. Your people are fully briefed, Jackie?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Commander Harmon said from Peter's command deck, and her dark eyes glittered.

'Good.' Honor turned in her chair and glanced at her irregular guests. Warner Caslet and Denis Jourdain lacked proper chairs with shock frames, but they wore their skinsuits as they stood beside the main plot. Wayfarers green bead tracked steadily across that plot, coming up on the Marsh Systems alpha wall, and she nodded to Caslet as the Peep glanced over his shoulder at her. Then she drew a deep breath. 'In that case, let's be about it,' she said calmly.

Admiral Rayna Sherman, who'd once been something approaching a real admiral in something which could almost be mistaken for a navy, braced against her ongoing despair as the lift stopped. By the time it opened and she stepped out onto her command deck, her face was utterly expressionless. The watch acknowledged her arrival respectfully but without the spit and polish of a regular navy crew, and she hid a familiar flash of sourness as she nodded back.

She crossed to the plot and glanced into it, but nothing had changed, of course, and she continued to her command chair while her flagship continued its slow, monotonous sweep. It was ridiculous. Her own President Warnecke (and wasn't that a modest name), Willis, Hendrickson, and Jarmon (named for the three systems of the Chalice, which anyone but an idiot knew they'd never see again) represented a full third of Andre Warnecke’s 'navy.' They were also its most powerful units, and keeping them here was a complete misuse of their potential. Sherman had long since realized just how stupid she'd been to sign on with Warnecke in the first place. But if she was stuck here, and she was; people Warnecke suspected of planning to desert died messily, and the Confederacy's government had already condemned her to death, which left her nowhere to run anyway, she would have preferred to at least operate effectively. The squadron had been designed to cruise as a squadron, and with the heavy cruisers' support to take out convoy escorts, the lighter units could have cut a swath through Silesian space. Especially now that the Manties had cut their local forces to the bone. And the whole point in coming to Marsh had been that no one else ever came here. Their base's primary defense was its isolation, and if anyone ever did figure out where they were and came calling, her four cruisers were unlikely to stop them.

Besides, if Sherman had been there to ride herd on him, 'Commodore' Arner and his pigs would have been denied their favorite form of entertainment. Most of Andre Warnecke's original female followers had bailed out once he showed his true colors, and Sherman understood exactly why she and the majority of his remaining female personnel had been transferred to the ships which never left Marsh.

She grimaced internally, careful to keep it from reaching her face. At least being stuck here is better than watching someone like Arner at work, she thought grimly. Arner's squadron should already have hit the convoy to Posnan, and knowing how he would have allowed his crews to amuse themselves sickened Sherman. How did it come to this? she wondered yet again. I actually believed in this once, thought it would actually make a change for the better in the Chalice. Now I just don't see any way out of it... and 'the Leader' is getting crazier every day. It was bad enough before they chased us out of the Chalice, but now, She shivered. He may actually believe he'll go back someday, but I doubt it. I think he's just pissed off with the universe. He wants to get even by hurting as many people as he can... and I'm stuck right in the middle of it.

She closed her eyes. You can't think about that, she told herself sternly. He may be crazy, but that only makes him more dangerous. If he even thinks you're going 'unreliable' on him...

She opened her eyes with another shudder and cocked her chair back. At least she wasn't forced to spend much time dirtside. That was something. 'The Leader' had managed to cram over four thousand of his 'Elite Guard' aboard the ships which had fled the Chalice, and every one of them was on Sidemore. God only knew what they did for amusement, and Sherman had no desire to find out. Her nightmares were bad enough already. Not that there was...

'Hyper footprint!'

Sherman snapped upright in astonishment. Warnecke's tac officer was already bending closer to his console, and Sherman closed her mouth firmly. He'd tell her what he knew as soon as he knew something, and she made herself wait, but Tracking spoke up again before he did.

'Jesus!' Lieutenant Changa gasped. 'We've got a Warshawski flare, Admiral, a big one! Looks like somebody lost an entire alpha node, maybe two, crossing the wall.'

'A flare?' Sherman stood and crossed to Changa, and the lieutenant tapped a waterfall display.

'See, Ma'am? Output jumped at least four thousand percent just as the last transit energy bled off. Whoever this is, he's damned lucky that sail held through translation.'

'Is it one of ours?' Sherman asked, swiveling her gaze to Tactical.

'No way,' Commander Truitt said. 'We don't have any scheduled returns for the next nine days local. Besides, this guy's a hell of a lot bigger than any of ours. I'd say it's a merchie.'

'Tracking concurs,' Changa reported. 'I've got his impellers now, and I make him at least six or seven m- tons. Could be a little more if he's lost more than one alpha node.'

'Range and bearing?'

'He made a sloppy translation,' Truitt replied. 'Not surprising if he was losing a sail, I suppose. He's thirty light-minutes out, just above the ecliptic at zero-eight-two true. Present velocity... call it nine hundred KPS. Acceleration looks like about eighty gees, I'd say he has lost a chunk of one of his impeller rooms, if that's the best he can turn out.'

'Heading?'

'Looks like he's headed for Sidemore,' her astrogator said. 'Unless he can get some more accel, though, its going to take him better than thirteen hours.'

Sherman nodded and walked slowly back to her chair. The stranger was over eleven light-minutes from her own ships. Even if he knew they where here, it would be a while before any com transmission from him reached them, but she wondered who the hell he was. This could be a prize sent in by one of the ships out on ops, but that was strictly against SOP. 'The Leader's' contacts in Silesia were an inconvenient distance from Marsh, seclusion had its drawbacks, and his captains normally sent prizes straight to one of the fences. It made getting prize crews back a pain, but that was why Warnecke had kept Silas. The captured liner-cum-freighter had a decent turn of speed and stayed busy on shuttle runs between Marsh and... elsewhere.

Yet if this wasn't a prize, what was it doing here? No one ever came to Marsh. That was why they'd chosen the system in the first place. And if anyone was going to come this way, it would certainly have been a smaller tramp freighter, not something this size.

The Warshawski flare. That has to be it. They knew their sail was about to fail, and we're not far off the least-time route between the Empire and Sachsen. They needed a system in a hurry, and we were the closest 'safe port' they could reach... poor bastards.

She sat back down and rubbed her temple. If they were in trouble, they'd start screaming for help as soon as they saw someone to scream to, and what did she do then? Losing a sail didn't make it impossible for a ship to get into hyper; it only meant that if it got there and then hit a grav wave, it would be destroyed. But it could still maneuver there, and it could still attain an apparent velocity a thousand times greater than light. So if these people jumped back into hyper, they could eventually get somewhere else, as long as they were careful to avoid all grav waves en route. Sailing that kind of course would be inconvenient as hell, but it could be done.

Which meant that if they picked up anything suspicious and ran for it, she'd have no choice but to chase them down in hyper. In theory, that shouldn't have been a problem, since both their acceleration and their top