War Of Honor

beside it. Instead, there was only a catalog number.

'Why do you think he should be headed there, Skipper?' Gruber asked intently.

'I could say it's because it lies within less than a light-year and a half of the point at which his projected course leaves the wave. But that's not really the question you're asking, is it Jinchu?'

He cocked an eyebrow at the exec, and, after a moment, Gruber nodded slowly.

'What I'm afraid of,' Bachfisch said then, 'is that he's headed there because he has friends waiting for him. Probably quite a lot of them.'

'Peep naval units in the middle of Silesia camped out in an uninhabited star system?' Gruber shook his head. 'I'm not quite ready to call you crazy, Skipper, but I'm damned if I can think of any reason for them to be doing something like that.'

'I can think of one,' Bachfisch said, and his voice was suddenly grim. 'Horus is the only star system in the Saginaw Sector which has an official Havenite diplomatic mission. It also happens to lie on an almost direct line from the Basilisk terminus of the Wormhole Junction to the Sachsen Sector. And if you extend our destroyer's course from Horus to this star,' he tapped the icon on his display yet again, 'you'll see that it also forms a straight line . . . from Horus towards Marsh.'

Gruber dropped his eyes to the plot and stared at it for several seconds, then looked back up at his captain.

'With all due respect, Skipper, that's crazy,' he said. 'You're suggesting that the Peeps have sent some sort of naval force clear from the Republic to the Confederacy and parked it in a star system in the middle of nowhere so they can attack Sidemore. Unless you're suggesting that they're out here to attack the Andies for some reason!'

'I can't see any reason for them to be picking a fight with the Andies right now, no,' Bachfisch said. 'And I admit that sending a big enough force out here to mount a credible attack on Duchess Harrington's forces at Sidemore would be a fairly lunatic act under any normal set of circumstances. But you've heard just as many rumors about the tension between the Star Kingdom and the Republic as I have, Jinchu. It's possible the new ships Theisman has been talking about really do exist. In fact, it's possible that there are more of them than he's chosen to tell us about.

'Now, if I were the Havenite Secretary of War, and I knew my government was getting sick and tired of being put continually on hold in its so-called peace negotiations with the Star Kingdom, I might be thinking very seriously about my war plans. And if the Admiralty had been kind enough to send one of the Star Kingdom's better admirals out to a distant station, with only a handful of modern ships and a lot of obsolescent ones, then I might figure that it would be worth my while to send a much larger force of my own modern capital ships out here to pounce on her as part of a coordinated offensive against the Star Kingdom and the Manticoran Alliance.'

'Skipper, are you seriously suggesting that the Peeps are not only planning to restart the war but looking to kick it off with some sort of sneak attack?' Gruber asked very quietly.

'Frankly,' Bachfisch said grimly, 'I've been surprised they didn't do it months ago. If I were President Pritchart or Thomas Theisman, I'd have been thinking about it very seriously for at least a T-year now.'

Gruber's surprise showed, and Bachfisch chuckled harshly.

'Of course I would have, Jinchu! It's been obvious from the beginning that the High Ridge Government had no intention of negotiating seriously or fairly with them. Why in the world should they feel any compunction about kicking someone who totally ignores their own efforts to actually end this damned war and normalize relations in the ass? I'd do it in a heartbeat, assuming I had the capability, under the same circumstances, and I think they've been trying to get the Star Kingdom's attention in hopes that someone would listen without their resorting to brute force. Hell, when you come right down to it, they've done everything short of handing a copy of their war plans to High Ridge and Janacek! Why do you think Theisman announced their new fleet units?'

'To bring pressure to bear on the Star Kingdom,' Gruber replied.

'Of course. But the kind of pressure they brought to bear is significant, too. I think in a lot of ways it amounted to a deliberate warning that they've developed the capacity to stand up to the Royal Navy. A warning they delivered in the forlorn hope that someone in Landing would be able to rub at least two brain cells together and realize the Star Kingdom has to start treating the Republic as a legitimate government and began negotiating in good faith.

'Neither of which High Ridge has done.'

'You sound almost as if you're on the Republic's side, Skipper,' Gruber said slowly.

'I'm not. But that doesn't mean I can't recognize that they have a perfect right to be angry at having their legitimate concerns so persistently ignored.'

'So what, exactly, do you think we're doing out here, Skipper?' Gruber asked after a moment.

'At the moment, all I'm really after is confirming the point at which this fellow is going to leave the grav wave. If we can get away with it, I'd really like to see the point at which he begins translating back down to n- space. That would confirm whether or not he's headed where I think he's headed. But I don't cherish any illusions about how likely they are to let an unidentified freighter go traipsing through the middle of their fleet if they really are out here. And given that the system I think this destroyer is bound for is officially uninhabited, I can't think of any possible way to come up with a convincing story for why we might 'just happen' to be dropping in on them.'

'And if we manage to confirm all of that?'

'If we manage to confirm all of that—or even half of it—then we immediately make tracks for Sidemore,' Bachfisch said. 'I know the people who are expecting us to deliver their cargoes are going to be more than a little pissed off when we don't show. And I know we're going to be looking at some pretty stiff penalties. But I strongly suspect that Duchess Harrington will defray any of our losses out of her discretionary funds when she hears what we have to tell her. And she and her intelligence people can probably help us concoct some sort of explanation for our customers' benefit.'

'I see.' Gruber looked back down at the plot.

'I realize I'm taking a chance shadowing a destroyer,' Bachfisch said softly. 'And I suppose it's not fair to our people for me to be doing it in the interests of my own kingdom. None of them signed on to be Preston of the Spaceways. But I can't just sit there and watch something like this happen.'

'I wouldn't worry about the people, Skipper,' Gruber told him after a moment. 'I don't say they're looking forward to any possible confrontations with the Peeps, but most of them have already figured out at least part of what you're up to. And the truth is, Skip, that if you figure this is what we need to be doing, we're all prepared to trust your judgment. You've gotten us into trouble a time or two, but you've always gotten us out the other side again.'

He looked up, and Bachfisch nodded in satisfaction at what he saw in the exec's face.

* * *

'That bogey is closing up on us a little, Sir.'

Lieutenant Commander Dumais, captain of the Trojan —class destroyer RHNS Hecate, cocked his head in an invitation for his tac officer to continue.

'I still can't tell you exactly what it is,' Lieutenant Singleterry admitted. 'Local h-space conditions are particularly bad just now. But it still looks like a merchie.'

'A merchie,' Dumais repeated, then shook his head. 'I don't question your judgment, Stephanie, but just what in Hell do you think a merchie would be doing following us around this way? Using us for cover against pirates, sure. But following us out into the middle of nowhere?'

'If I could tell you that, Skipper, then I'd be wasting my time in the Navy compared to the fortune I could be making choosing winning lottery numbers.' Singleterry shook her own head in turn. 'All I can tell you for sure is that whoever this is, she's been following along behind us ever since we left Horus. Well, that and the fact that she's closed up by almost half a light-minute in the last six hours.'

'Hmmm.' Dumais frowned in thought. 'You did say local sensor conditions are bad?'

'Yes, Sir. In fact, they pretty much suck, and they're getting worse. Particle count is way up, and that grav eddy at three o'clock is funneling them straight over us.'

'In that case, I can think of two possible explanations for her behavior,' Dumais said. 'The one I like better is that she is riding our heels as cover against pirates and she wants to stay close enough