Honor Among Enemies

'I understand your logic,' he said after a moment, 'but do you really think it will work?'

'With Warnecke?' Honor shook her head. 'Possibly not. I have to try, but I can't count on anything where he's concerned. But he's not alone down there, either. He's got four thousand troops on the planet. They may be scum, but they may also be a bit closer to sane than he is. If I keep him talking long enough, sooner or later word of the options I've given him will get out. When that happens, somebody who doesn't want to die may just take Warnecke out for us.'

Caslet looked at her silently and tried to hide a mental shiver as she gazed back. Her expression was calm and composed, but her eyes... He saw the doubt in them, the anguish... the fear. She sounded so dispassionate, so reasonable, projecting the aura of certainty which was one of a naval officers essential weapons, yet deep inside she knew exactly what stakes she was playing for, and they terrified her.

But she'd seen this coming from the outset, he realized. She'd considered the options she'd just offered Warnecke long since, for she'd known she was going to face this decision, require those options. That was why she'd discussed them with Commodore Blohm ahead of time. Yet even knowing, she'd decided to attack herself rather than pass the responsibility off to someone else. The Silesians or the Andermani would have moved if she hadn't; she had to know that as well as Caslet did, but she'd refused to evade the job. He'd come to know her during his time aboard Wayfarer, not well, but well enough to realize how the deaths on Sidemore would haunt her if Warnecke pressed the button. And, he thought, well enough to know she'd recognized that, too. That she'd considered it the same way she'd considered every other aspect of the operation. If it happened, everyone in the galaxy would be ready to second- guess her, to blame her for the disaster, to argue that she'd been clumsy, that there had to have been a way to have avoided so many deaths. And she would, too. She would always believe she could have avoided it if she'd been smarter, cleverer, faster, and she knew she would, and still she'd come here to place herself on the line for a planet full of people she'd never met.

How did she do that? How did she make herself assume such a crushing responsibility when she could so easily have handed it off to someone else? Warner Caslet was also a naval officer, also accustomed to the burden of command, yet he didn't know the answer to that question. He knew only that she had... and that he could not have.

She was his enemy, and he was hers. Her kingdom was fighting for its life against the Republic, and the men and women who ran the Republic were fighting for their lives against her kingdom. There could be no other outcome. Either the Star Kingdom must be conquered, or the Committee of Public Safety would be destroyed by the mob its promises had mobilized to support the war. Caslet had no love for the Committee or its members, but if it came down in its turn, God only knew where the resultant paroxysms of bloodshed would leave his star nation. And because they were both naval officers, because the consequences of defeat were too terrible for either of them to contemplate, they could be only enemies. Yet at this moment, he wished it could be otherwise. He felt the magnetism which made her crews worship her, made them willing to follow her straight into the fire, and he understood it at last.

She cared. It was really that simple. She cared, and she could neither offer her people less than her very best nor settle for less than the complete discharge of whatever responsibilities duty required of her, however grim. He'd just seen the dreadful efficiency with which she'd annihilated four heavy cruisers, and he recognized the wolf in her. Yet she was a wolf who'd dedicated her life to facing other wolves to protect those who couldn't, and he understood that, for an echo of what she was lived within him, as well. He knew her now, recognized what she truly was and knew that what she was made her a terrible danger to the Republic, to his Navy, ultimately to Warner Caslet himself, yet for just this moment, it didn't matter.

He gazed at her a moment longer, then startled both of them by laying a hand lightly on her arm.

'I hope it works, Captain,' he said quietly, and turned back to the plot before them.

'Entering orbit, Ma'am,' John Kanehama said. Nimitz lay on his back in Honor’s lap, true-hands and hand- feet wrestling with her, but she looked up at the astrogator's announcement and nodded. She gave Nimitz a last caress, savoring the surge of love and assurance he sent back to her, then rose, set him on the back of her chair, and folded her hands behind her.

'Hail Warnecke, Fred.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.' Cousins punched a command into his panel, then nodded to her, and she faced the pickup, her eyes cold, as Warnecke's face appeared on the main screen. He looked almost as calm as before, but not quite, and she wished they were close enough for Nimitz to give her a read on his emotions. Not that she was certain it would have helped. She was convinced the man was insane, and a madman's emotions might have been the most dangerous guide of all upon which to rely.

'I said we'd speak again, Mr. Warnecke,' she said.

'So you did,' he replied, and the com lag now was barely noticeable. 'You seem to have an uncommonly capable 'freighter' up there, Captain. My compliments.' Honor bobbed her head in cold acknowledgment, and he smiled thinly. 'Nonetheless, I'm still down here with my button, and I assure you I will push it if you force me to. In which case, of course, the deaths of all these innocent civilians will be entirely your fault.'

'I don't think we'll play that game,' Honor replied. 'You have an alternative. If you detonate your charges, you'll do it because you chose to do that rather than accept the unreasonably generous offer I've already made you.'

'My, my! And I thought I was the villain of the piece!' Warnecke raised his hand, bringing a small, hand- held transmitter into the pickup's field, and bared his teeth. 'Are you really so blase about the possibility of my pressing this button? I have very little to lose, you know. I've heard about Andermani prisons. I'm not at all sure I'd prefer life in one of them to, well...'

He flipped his wrist to emphasize the transmitter he held, and his eyes burned with a dangerous light. Honor felt an icy breeze blow down her spine, but no trace of it touched her face.

'Perhaps not, Mr. Warnecke, but death is so permanent, don't you think?'

'Where there's life, there's hope, you mean?' The man on her com screen laughed and leaned back in his chair. 'You intrigue me, Captain Harrington. Truly you do. Are you really so sanctimonious that you'd prefer to see hundreds of thousands of people killed rather than allow a single pirate and his henchmen to just sail away in their unarmed repair ship?'

'Oh?' Honor cocked an eyebrow. 'You intend to put four thousand extra people into your repair ship's life support?' She shook her head. 'I'm afraid you'd find the air getting rather thick before you made another planet.'

'Well, sacrifices must be made, of course,' Warnecke acknowledged, 'and I suppose it would only be courteous of me to leave you some prisoners as a trophy. Actually, I was thinking in terms of myself and perhaps a hundred close associates.' He leaned towards the pickup. 'Think about it, Captain. I'm sure my privateers must have taken at least a few Manticoran ships, there are so many of them, after all, but the Confederacy isn't your kingdom. What do you care about its rebels and revolutionaries? You can have Sidemore, rescue Marsh, send the ragtag 'pirate' leaders packing in a single ship, and collect thousands of prisoners, all without risking a single town or city. Quite an accomplishment, don't you think?'

'Your loyalty to your people overwhelms me,' Honor observed, and he laughed again.

'Loyalty, Captain? To these fools? They've already failed me twice, they and their incompetent shipboard counterparts. They cost me my own nation, my place in history. Why ever should I feel 'loyalty' to them?' He shook his head. 'A pox upon all of them, Captain Harrington. You can have them with my compliments.'

'While you scurry off to try it all over again? I think not, Mr. Warnecke.'

'Come now, Captain! You know it's the best deal you're going to get. Death or glory, victory or magnificent destruction, those are a naval officer's choices, aren't they? What makes you think mine are any different?'

Honor gazed at him for a long, silent moment while her mind ticked away. His mellow voice was so cultured, so powerful, made anything he said seem so rational and reasoned. It must have been a potent weapon when he first began his career in the Chalice. Even now, he exuded a twisted charm, like the seduction of an