The Service of the Sword

everything you've heard and seen here comes under the Official Secrets Act.'

Her eyes locked like a pair of grasers on Cardones's face. 'We're counting on you, Lieutenant,' she said quietly. 'Don't let us down.'

Honor ran through to the end of the report and looked up at Admiral Trent, seated at the head of the bridge briefing room table. 'I hope, Sir,' she said carefully, 'that this is some kind of serious misreading of either the data or the situation.'

'So do I, Honor,' Trent agreed heavily. 'But even granting the extreme range the readings were taken at, and the low quality of the merchie sensors that took them, I don't see where there's much margin for error.'

'And frankly, Captain, I don't see where there's any margin,' the man seated across the table from Honor said, his voice a bit testy. 'I know we all tend to think of the People's Republic as the only threat out there. But they're not, and it's high time we started remembering to look in other directions.'

Honor focused on him. Lieutenant Commander Stockton Wallace was probably a few years older than she was, with dark hair and eyes and a deep cleft in the center of his chin. He was also intense, verbally blunt, and, to her mind, a little quick to jump to conclusions.

But then, perhaps those were qualities Naval Intelligence appreciated in one of their officers.

'That's a little unfair, Commander,' she said. 'No one's forgotten the Andermani Empire, or their long- standing interest in swallowing up Silesia.'

'Good,' Wallace said. 'Then I presume we also haven't forgotten that Manticore is all that stands in the way of that ambition?'

'No, we haven't,' Honor said evenly. 'But at the same time, starting a war of conquest by sneak-attacking Manticoran merchantmen seems a very non-Andy way of going about it.'

She tapped the memo pad. 'For that matter, we have no proof that this ship had anything to do with either of the attacks.'

'Are you suggesting it just happened upon two dead merchantmen?' Wallace asked, his voice somehow managing to convey contempt without crossing the line into insubordination. Probably another talent ONI selected for. 'And didn't bother to report it; and then turned and ran the minute he was spotted?'

Honor fought back a retort. Unfortunately, he had a point. In both instances the merchantmen who'd spotted the mysterious ship had hailed it, only to see it flee without making any response.

And when investigating ships had gone to the scenes, they'd found attacked and looted Manticoran merchantmen floating dead in space.

'Fine,' she said instead. 'Then let's talk about the identification itself. Even if this secondary emission spectrum is consistent with that of an Andy ship, there must be other possibilities.'

Wallace pursed his lips. 'With all due respect, Captain Harrington, you've had all of fifteen minutes to peruse the data,' he reminded her. 'My colleagues, on the other hand, have put quite a few hours into this analysis.'

He jabbed a finger at the memo pad. 'I assure you, this isn't just consistent with an Andermani emission spectrum. It is an Andermani emission spectrum.'

And emission spectra can't be faked? With an effort, Honor swallowed the retort. Of course emission spectra could be faked. That was in essence what a warship's electronic warfare system did every time it made a superdreadnought look like a harmless little battleship.

But that kind of sleight of hand required a highly sophisticated selection of equipment. And especially when you considered the rest of the analysis . . .

'I'm simply concerned that perhaps we're being too clever,' she said instead. 'Or else perhaps not being clever enough.'

'Meaning?' Wallace asked, an edge of challenge in his voice.

'It's the number of layers here that concern me,' she explained. 'We have the Silesian transponder on top—'

'Which is clearly a fake,' Wallace cut in.

'Clearly,' Honor agreed. Transponder signals, at least, were trivial to gimmick. Half the pirates and three- quarters of the privateers roaming Silesian space were probably running on faked transponder IDs. 'But then underneath that we have a layer of emission spectra that do seem to fit with their Silesian merchie ID. It's only when you dig below that that you get to these Andy emissions.'

'And your point is . . . ?'

'My point is who's to say that what we've got is two layers of camouflage and one real McCoy?' Honor said. 'As opposed to, say, three layers of camouflage with something we still haven't spotted underneath everything else?'

Wallace took a careful breath. 'I understand that you're not an expert in these technical matters, Captain,' he said. 'But my people are; and I can assure you that that is highly unlikely.'

'Perhaps not an 'expert' by your standards, Commander,' she said just a bit coolly. 'I have, however, spent the odd hour or two playing with our own EW from a tac officer's perspective. And as a tac officer, I know that what I'm suggesting isn't exactly impossible, now is it?'

Wallace's lips puckered. 'Nothing is impossible, Ma'am,' he conceded grudgingly. 'Especially not for our EW. But not everyone's capabilities are as good as ours, and we think it extremely unlikely in this instance.'

'Regardless, it's a question that won't be resolved until we get a closer look at the ship itself,' Trent put in. 'And obviously, we need this nailed down as quickly as possible. Which is why, Honor, if you spot this emission spectrum, your new orders are to give complete priority to getting us that closer look.'

He leveled a hard look at her. 'Complete priority,' he repeated.

Honor felt her breath catch in her throat. 'Are you saying, Sir, that I'm to abandon my convoy in order to give chase?'

'If necessary, yes,' Trent said. 'I don't like it any better than you do. But those are your orders.'

He glanced at Wallace. 'And to be perfectly honest, I agree with them,' he added reluctantly. 'If the Andies have decided to finally make their move on Silesia and are feeling us out by hitting our merchantmen, we need to know about it. Certainly before we allow relations between Manticore and Haven to deteriorate any further.'

'That assumes we have some actual control over that deterioration,' Honor murmured.

'True,' Trent said. 'But that's out of our hands. This —' he gestured to the memo pad '—is not.'

'Yes, Sir,' Honor said. She still wasn't completely convinced; but then, Trent hadn't invited her aboard for a debate on the subject. She was a Queen's officer, and once she'd been given her orders she was expected to carry them out. 'I take it that the Andy connection is to be kept confidential?'

'Absolutely confidential,' Trent confirmed with a nod. 'As Commander Wallace pointed out, ONI had to do some serious digging in order to coax the Andy spectrum out from under the Silesian camouflage. We don't want word getting back to the Andies that we were able to do that.'

'We can still identify the raider by his fake Silesian emission spectrum,' Wallace added. 'That's all the rest of the crew needs to know about for you to watch for him.'

Unless he has a way of changing that, too. Still, as long as she knew about the underlying Andy spectrum, it should still work.

'Understood,' Honor said. 'I will need to bring my tac officer in on this, though. If we're going up against an Andy warship, he'll need to have some contingency plans prepared.'

'No need,' Wallace said, his lip twisting into something halfway between a smile and a grimace. 'For the next few months, I'm your new tac officer.'

Honor blinked. 'What's happened to Rafe?'

'He's been temporarily detached for some other duty,' Trent said, pulling out a data chip. 'Something also