The Short Victorious War

Commodore Banton had commanded the squadrons second and third divisions and their screen while Sarnow commanded the first and fourth, but that was only for the record. In fact, Sarnow had informed Honor five minutes into the exercise that both he and Captain Rubenstein, Division 54s senior officer, had just become casualties and that she was in command.

That was all the warning she'd gotten, but it was obvious she'd been thinking ahead, for her own orders had come without any hesitation at all. She'd used the FTL sensor platforms to locate Bantons ships, split her own force into two two-ship divisions, accelerated to intercept velocity, then killed her drives and gone to the electronic and gravitic equivalent of 'silent running.' But she hadn't stopped there, for she'd known Banton's Achilles had the same ability to spot and track her. And since Honor knew the commodore had plotted her base course before she closed down her emissions, she'd launched electronic warfare drones, programmed to mimic her battlecruisers' drives, on a course designed with malice aforethought to draw Banton into a position of her choice.

The commodore had taken the bait—partly, perhaps, because she didn't expect anyone to use up EW drones (at eight million dollars a pop) in an exercise—and altered course to intercept them. By the time she realized what was really going on, Honor had brought both her own divisions slashing in on purely ballistic courses, wedges and sidewall down to the very last instant and still operating separately in blatant disregard of conventional tactical wisdom. She'd hit Banton's surprised formation from widely divergent bearings, and her unorthodox approach had used Banton's more traditional formation against her, pounding her lead ships with fire from two directions, confusing her point defense, and using her own lead division to block the return fire of her rearmost ships for almost two full minutes. And, just to make it even better, she'd had Commander Chandler reprogram their screens antimissile decoys so that the heavy cruisers suddenly looked like battlecruisers.

The decoys had come on-line at the worst possible moment for Banton's tac officer. With no running plot on Honor's 'invisible' ships until their drives suddenly came back up, he'd had to sort out who was who before he engaged, and the decoys had confused him just long enough for Nike,Agamemnon,Onslaught, and Invincible to 'MI' Banton's flagship and 'cripple' her division mate Cassandra with no damage of their own. Defiant and Intolerant had done their best after that—indeed, Captain Trinh's stellar performance had gone far to redeem his earlier problems—but they'd never had a chance. The final score had shown the complete destruction of Banton's force, moderate damage to Agamemnon and Invincible, and a mere two laser hits on Nike.Onslaught had escaped completely unscathed and even recovered all but two of the EW drones Honor had used. The drones would require overhaul before they could be reused, but their recovery had saved the Navy something like forty-eight million dollars, and Henke suspected Rubenstein's crew was going to do even more gloating than her own people.

Admiral Sarnow hadn't said a word, but his grin when he ambled onto Nike's bridge for the closing phase of the 'battle' had been eloquent. Besides, Commodore Banton was a fair-minded woman. She knew she and her people had been had, and she'd commed her personal congratulations to Honor even before the computers finished calculating the final damage estimates.

A most satisfactory two days, taken all together, Henke decided. A whole week had passed without incident since Admiral Parks disappeared over the hyper limit, which had produced a deep sense of relief but hadn't lessened the squadron's determination to disprove any reservations Parks might entertain about their admiral and his flag captain... and the last couple of days' successes looked like an excellent first step.

Of course, she thought smugly, it had been an even better step for some than for others. Eve Chandler was already licking her chops in anticipation of her next conversation with Invincible's tac officer. Queen's Cup for gunnery, indeed! And Ivan Ravicz was as happy as a treecat with his own celery patch. His new fusion plant had performed flawlessly, and Agamemnon had been pushed to the limit matching the acceleration of Nike's superbly tuned drive. Even George Monet had been seen to crack a smile or two, and that constituted an historic first for the com officer.

Besides, Commodore Banton had already promised that her ships' companies were buying the beer.

Honor noted the gleam in Henke's eyes and smiled fondly as her exec turned back to her own panel. Mike had a right to be pleased. It was her training programs which had kept Nike in such top- notch fighting trim, after all.

But there was more to it than training alone. Exercises and simulations could do many things, but they couldn't provide that indefinable something more that separated a crack crew from one that was simply good. Nike had that something more. Perhaps it came from the mysterious esprit de corps which always seemed to infuse the ships of her name, the sense that they had a special tradition to maintain. Or perhaps it came from somewhere else entirely. Honor didn't know, but she'd felt it crackling about her like latent lightning, begging her to use it, and she had. She hadn't even thought about her maneuvers—not on a conscious level; they'd simply come to her with a smooth, flawless precision. Her people had executed them the same way, and they had every right to feel pleased with themselves.

It helped that Commodore Banton was a good sort, of course. Honor could think of several flag officers who would have reacted far less cheerfully to the drubbing Banton had just taken, especially when they discovered they'd been beaten not by their admiral but by his flag captain. But she suspected Banton shared her own suspicions about the Admiral's motive for declaring himself a casualty. Honor might be his flag captain, yet she was also junior to six of the seven other battlecruiser captains under his command, and it was the first chance she'd had to show her stuff anywhere but in the simulators. Sarnow had deliberately stepped aside to let her win her spurs in the squadron's eyes, and she wanted to preen like Nimitz at how well it had gone.

In fact, she thought, leaning back to steeple her fingers under her pointed chin, 'preen' was exactly what she intended to be doing very shortly... among other things. It was Wednesday, and the squadron was going to rendezvous with the repair base well before supper. She intended to arrive in Paul's quarters with a bottle of her father's precious Delacourt and find out just what his laughing hints about hot oil rubdowns were all about.

The corners of her mouth quirked at the thought, her right cheek dimpled, and she felt her face heating up, and she didn't care at all.

'Captain, I'm picking up a hyper footprint at two-zero-six,' Commander Chandler announced. 'One drive source, range six-point-niner-five light-minutes. It's too heavy for a courier boat, Ma'am.'

Honor looked at the tac officer in faint surprise, but Chandler didn't notice as she queried her computers and worked the contact. Several seconds passed, and then she straightened with a satisfied nod.

'Definitely a Manticoran drive pattern, Ma'am. Looks like a heavy cruiser. I won't know for sure till the light-speed sensors have her.'

'Understood. Keep an eye on her, Eve.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

A cruiser, hmmm? Honor leaned back in her chair once more. One cruiser wouldn't make much difference, but Van Slyke would be happy to see her. She would bring his squadron up to full strength at last, and the rest of the task group would probably see her as a harbinger of the far more powerful reinforcements they'd been promised. Besides, she'd probably have dispatches on board, and even the tiniest scrap of fresh information would be a vast relief.

She reached up and drew Nimitz down into her lap, rubbing his ears and considering the com conference the Admiral had scheduled for tomorrow morning. There were several points she wanted to make—not least how lucky she'd been to get away with that EW drone trick—and she slid further down in the chair as she considered the best (and most tactful) way to express them.

Several minutes ticked away, and the quiet, orderly routine of her bridge murmured to her like some soothing mantra. Her mind toyed with phrases and sentences, maneuvering them with a sort of languid, catlike pleasure. Yet her dreamy eyes were deceptive. The soft chime of an incoming signal from the com section brought her instantly back to full awareness, and her gaze moved to Lieutenant Commander Monet's narrow back.

The com officer depressed a button and listened to his earbug for a moment, and Honor's eyes narrowed when his shoulders twitched. If she hadn't known what an utterly reliable, totally humorless sort he was, she might actually have thought he was chuckling.

He pressed another sequence of buttons, then swiveled his chair to face her. His face was admirably grave,