War Of Honor

actually transports or not.'

'I see.' Honor continued across the flag deck to her command chair and racked her own helmet on its side. Her command station was no more than three long strides from the flag plot, and her small com screen blinked to life as she eased Nimitz down from her shoulder and set him on the back of her chair. Rafe Cardones' face looked out of it at her, and she smiled in welcome.

'Good morning, Rafe,' she said.

'Good morning, Ma'am,' he responded more formally, and his smile was a bit tighter than hers had been. 'It looks like we've got visitors,' he added.

'So I've heard,' she agreed. 'Give me a few minutes to get myself brought up to speed, and we'll decide what sort of welcome mat we want to put out.'

'Yes, Ma'am,' he said, and she turned her attention to the plot.

Werewolf was a new ship, and she and her sisters had been designed from the keel out to serve as task force or fleet flagships, so her flag plot's holo sphere was at least two-thirds the size of CIC's master plot. It was less cluttered than the master plot because the automatic filters removed distracting items— like the Marsh System's civilian spacegoing infrastructure—which were both unnecessary and possibly confusing. They could be put back if Honor really wanted to see them, but at the moment she had eyes only for the red icons of unknown starships sweeping steadily inward from the system hyper limit.

'What's their time to Sidemore orbit?' she asked.

'They came out on our side of the primary, Your Grace,' Lieutenant Theophile Kgari, her staff astrogator, replied crisply. Kgari's grandparents had migrated to the Star Kingdom directly from Old Earth, and his skin was almost as dark as Michelle Henke's. 'They made transit at a very low velocity—no more than a hundred KPS or so, almost directly in-system. But they've been piling on the accel ever since. They translated out of hyper just under—' it was his turn to consult a time readout '—nineteen minutes ago, so they're up to four-point-three-four thousand KPS. Assuming a zero/zero intercept with Sidemore, they'll hit turnover in almost exactly two hours, at which time they'll be up to approximately three-two-point-niner thousand KPS at seven-point-six-five light-minutes from the planet.'

'Thank you, Theo,' Honor said, turning to smile briefly at him before she returned her attention to the plot. She reached down to caress Nimitz's ears once more as he sat upright on the back of her command chair. She stood that way for several thoughtful seconds, gazing at the light dots in the plot silently, then drew a deep breath, shrugged, and turned to face her staff.

'Until they tell us differently, we'll consider them hostiles,' she told them. 'It would take a lot of chutzpah for anyone to come in on us with only twenty-two of the wall, but that's not to say someone might not be crazy enough to try it. So we won't take any chances. Andrea,' she looked at the ops officer, 'this looks like an excellent opportunity to dust off Buckler Bravo-Three, wouldn't you say?'

'Yes, Ma'am, I would,' Jaruwalski agreed.

'Mercedes?' Honor asked, cocking her head at her chief of staff, and Brigham frowned ever so slightly.

'As you say, Your Grace, it would take someone with more guts than good sense to take us on with what we've seen so far. The only thing that bothers me about that supposition is that presumably whoever they are, they realize that too. Which leads me to reflect upon that axiom of Admiral Courvoisier's you're so fond of quoting.'

'The same thought had occurred to me,' Honor told her. 'That's why I figure this is a good time to run Buckler Bravo-Three. If it turns out it's only an exercise, well and good. But if it should turn out we need it, I want those pods and those LACs in space and in position when it hits the fan.'

'That's more or less what I was thinking, Ma'am,' Brigham said. 'My only problem is that Bravo-Three takes us out of Sidemore orbit towards them. If it's all the same to you, I'd really prefer Bravo-Two.' She shrugged. 'I may be being paranoid, but if these really are hostiles and not just terminally stupid friendlies who think it's humorous not to respond to our challenges, then I'd just as soon not be drawn any further from the planet than we have to be.'

'Um.' Honor rubbed the tip of her nose thoughtfully, considering what the chief of staff had said.

Buckler Bravo-Three called for the task force to advance to meet any potential enemy, closing into extreme Ghost Rider missile range with the ships of the wall behind an advanced screen of LACs. Bravo-Two, on the other hand, kept the ships of the wall in close proximity to Sidemore while LAC scouting forces fanned out to make a more precise ID and, if appropriate, launch the initial attacks independently of the wall. It was the more cautious approach, and the LACs, unlike the capital ships, would have to enter any adversaries' range to engage them. That meant exposing them to potential losses the ships of the wall could avoid, thanks to the range advantage Ghost Rider gave their missile pods. On the other hand, the LACs could go out, make positive identification, and then report back rather than sweeping in to attack automatically, and there ought to be time to bring the wall into range instead if that seemed appropriate.

She considered a moment longer, then nodded.

'I can't think of any good reason for them to be trying to suck us away from the planet—not on the basis of anything we've seen up to this point, anyway. But that doesn't mean there isn't one, and you're right. Bravo-Two will do the job just as well as Three.'

She turned her attention to the com screen and her flag captain.

'You heard, Rafe?'

'Yes, Ma'am. Bravo-Two, it is. Shall I pass the word to Admiral McKeon and Admiral Truman?'

'Yes, please. And tell them we'll be setting up a four-way com conference in fifteen minutes, as well.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am. I'll see to it.'

'Thank you,' she said, and slid into her command chair, then rotated it to face her staff once more.

'And now, ladies and gentlemen,' she said calmly, 'the Chair will entertain theories as to just what these people think they're doing.'

* * *

Ninety minutes trickled past without a single transmission from the incoming strangers. The transports—or whatever they were—had fallen back, trailing along behind the probable ships of the wall with what looked like three light cruisers or large destroyers riding herd on them. The rest of the unidentified formation simply continued to bore straight in, and tension had ratcheted steadily higher on Werewolf's flag deck as the range continued to drop just as steadily.

'Scotty is about fifteen minutes from contact, Ma'am,' Jaruwalski reported.

'Has he gotten a visual yet?' Honor asked.

'No, Ma'am,' the ops officer admitted with an unmistakable edge of chagrin. 'Whoever this is, they're clearly familiar with our remote sensor platform doctrines. They haven't tried to take any of them out, but the formation they've adopted makes that unnecessary . . . so far, at least.'

Honor nodded in understanding. The strangers' formation was unorthodox, to say the least. Rather than a conventional wall formation, the capital ships had settled into a roughly spherical alignment, then rotated ever so slightly on their axes. The result was to turn the roofs and floors of their impeller wedges, which had just as powerful a warping effect on visible light as on anything else, outward in all directions. In effect, they had created a series of blind spots directed towards their flanks, which just happened to be where doctrine called for sensor drones to be deployed.

'Has Scotty considered vectoring his drones around behind them for a look up their kilts?' she asked.

There wasn't that much to choose between looking down the throat or up the kilt of an impeller wedge, except that the throat was deeper than the kilt, which gave a sensor drone a better angle on its target. Unfortunately, the forward sensors and point defense armament of a warship were better than those guarding its stern precisely because the throat was more vulnerable than the kilt. Given these people's apparent awareness of the defenders' probable doctrine, it was a fairly safe bet that any drone, however stealthy, which wandered in front of them would be dead meat unless they chose not to kill it.

'Yes, Ma'am, he has,' Jaruwalski acknowledged. 'But they should be going for turnover in another ten minutes or so.'

'Understood,' Honor said. When the bogeys flipped to begin decelerating towards Sidemore, they'd turn their own kilts directly towards Scotty's shipboard sensors.