Honor Among Enemies

.7 c, for an apparent velocity of well over twenty-five hundred times light-speed, completing the passage from New Berlin to Sachsen in three T-weeks, or fifteen days subjective. Lumbered by Hauptman's freighters, however, they were limited to the delta bands and a maximum speed of only .5 c... which meant the same trip would take almost forty-eight T-days and that dilation would shave only five days subjective off that wearisome total.

That three-fold extension of the passage was bad enough, but what absolutely infuriated Usher was knowing Hauptman had manipulated a Queen's ship, Usher's ship.

The old bastard must just love this, Usher thought moodily, watching his repeater plot. Hawkwing held station on the port quarter of the improvised convoy, where she would be best placed to intercept any threat, as it trekked steadily down its current grav wave. Artemis was the third ship in the column, with the freighter Markham following directly astern of her, and it all looked maddeningly complacent. He's feuded with the Admiralty over one thing or another for decades, the commander told himself, and he's lost more often than he's won. Now he's sitting in his stateroom gloating over the way he's 'forced' the Fleet to increase its escort efforts just this once. And the cast-iron bitch of it is, he's never even had to say a single word about it. He didn't ask, didn't plead, didn't bluster. He simply abused the discretionary clause of the standard ticket form, and I can't even protest, because I'm not officially escorting him at all!

He glowered at the repeater for a few more moments, and then his expression changed. His glower turned into a wicked grin, and he punched a code into his com.

'Exec,' Lieutenant Commander Alicia Marcos' voice responded almost instantly, and Usher tipped his chair back to turn his wicked smile up at the deckhead.

'Sorry to disturb you when you're off watch, Alicia, but I've just had a thought.'

'A thought, Skipper?' Marcos had served with him long enough to recognize that tone, and her own was suddenly wary.

'Yes, indeed,' Usher said, fairly beaming at the deck-head. 'Since we've got all this, ah, unanticipated time on our hands, don't you think we should put it to best use?'

'In what way, Captain?' Marcos inquired even more warily.

'I'm glad you asked that,' Usher said expansively. 'Why don't you and Ed come on up to my briefing room so we can discuss it?'

'Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!' Margaret Fuchien’s head jerked up so suddenly her second cup of coffee sloshed over her second-best uniform trousers. The brown tide was scorching hot, but she hardly noticed as she vaulted out of her chair at the head of the breakfast table and ran for the lift.

'Captain to the bridge!' the urgent voice repeated, and she swore as she skidded into the lift, for her standing orders were crystal clear. Unless it was a true emergency, and a time-critical one, at that, the passengers were not to be panicked by broadcast messages, and there'd been plenty of stewards available to murmur discreetly in her ear.

She hit the emergency override to slam the lift doors shut and whirled to the intercom pad.

'Captain to th...'

'This is the Captain! Shut down that goddamned message!' she snarled, and the recorded voice died in midword. 'Better! Now what the hell is so damned urgent?'

'We're under attack, Ma'am!' her second officer replied with an edge of panic.

'Under at...?' Fuchien stared at the com panel, then shook herself. 'By who and how many?' she demanded.

'We don't know yet.' Lieutenant Donevski sounded marginally calmer, and she pictured him inhaling deeply and getting a grip on himself. 'All we know is Hawkwing broadcast an attack alert, ordered us onto a new heading, and then peeled off to starboard.'

'Damn.' Fuchien’s mind raced. It would have been nice of Usher to tell her what the problem was! Artemis did have the missile armament of a heavy cruiser, after all, and the trained personnel to use it. Those missiles would have been a hell of a lot more useful if Fuchien had some idea of the parameters of the threat.

But Usher was Navy, and the law was clear. In any case of attack, the decisions of the senior Navy officer present took absolute precedence.

'Come to the heading ordered. I'll be on the bridge in two minutes.'

'Aye, Ma'am!'

Fuchien released the 'send' button, stood back with a sour expression, and tried to tell herself she wasn't afraid.

The lift slid to a halt almost precisely two minutes later, and Fuchien stormed onto her bridge. The relief on Donevski's face was painfully obvious, and she waved him off as she strode briskly across to the plot.

Artemis' bridge was a peculiar hybrid. Civilian vessels required fewer watch officers, yet civilian bridges were usually larger than those aboard warships, where internal space was always at a premium. That normally made a merchant ships bridge seem almost ostentatiously spacious to a naval officer, but Artemis' command deck was more crowded than most. A naval-style tactical plot, manned by Lieutenant Annabelle Ward and her tactical crews, was placed right beside it.

Fuchien came to a halt at Ward's shoulder and glared at the plot. All she could see were the freighters and her own ship, all accelerating at their best speed, close to two thousand gravities, thanks to the grav wave, at right angles to their previous heading. Hawkwing was also visible, on an exactly reciprocal heading at over fifty-two hundred gravities. The range between them was opening at over fifty-one KPS?, and the destroyer was already 3.75 light-seconds, over a million kilometers, astern of the merchantmen.

'What the hell is she going after?' Fuchien wondered aloud.

'Damned if I know, Skipper,' Ward replied in a strong Sphinx accent. 'She just took the hell off like a wet treecat and ordered us to run for it. I can't see a damned thing on that bearing.'

Fuchien studied the blandly uninformative plot for another handful of seconds, then spared a single fulminating glance at the visual display. Particle densities were higher than normal, even for h-space, along this particular wave, and the glorious frozen lightning of hyper-space was more beautiful than usual. But that same beauty also cut her sensor range considerably, and Margaret Fuchien didn't like the thought of what might be headed her way from just over her sensor horizon. But, damn it to hell, what could be out there? Her sensors were as good as Hawkwing's, so how could anything she couldn't see have picked them up?

'Anything further from Hawkwing?' she demanded, turning to Donevski.

'No, Ma'am.'

'Play back the original message,' she directed. Donevski nodded to the com officer, and five seconds later, Commander Usher's voice crackled over the bridge speakers.

'All ships, this is Hawkwing! Condition Red! Come to two-seven-zero immediately, maximum convoy acceleration! Maintain heading until further notice! Hawkwing out!'

'That's all?' Fuchien demanded incredulously.

'Yes, Ma'am,' Donevski said. 'We copied his message, but before we could respond he took off like a bat out of hell, and Anna caught his sidewalls and fire control coming up.'

Fuchien turned to crook an eyebrow at Lieutenant Ward, who nodded.

'I don't know what Ushers picked up, Skipper, but he's not fooling around with it,' the tactical officer said. 'His combat systems came on-line in less than twelve seconds from the moment he started transmitting, and he was on his new heading before he finished talking.'

Fuchien nodded and turned her attention back to Ward's plot. The destroyer was a full thirty light-seconds astern now, with a relative velocity of over thirty thousand KPS, and she was already deploying missile decoys. That was an ominous sign, and Fuchien swallowed a sudden lump of fear. Why was Usher doing that? Missiles were