War Of Honor

thought of accepting some of the personnel who served aboard his ships. There'd been a time when he would have experienced profound second thoughts about allowing some of them aboard, himself. But that had been a long time ago, and what he felt today was a deep pride in how well his disparate people had come together. Indeed, he would have backed either of his crews against most regular warships of up to battlecruiser tonnage, not just against the typical pirate scum they usually encountered.

He looked back at the visual display for a moment, then glanced at his tac officer's plot and frowned. In keeping with her armed status, Pirates' Bane boasted a sensor outfit and weapons control stations superior to those aboard most official Confederate Navy warships, and his frown deepened as he noted the data sidebar on the plot.

He stepped closer and looked over the tac officer's shoulder. She sensed his presence and turned to look up at him with a questioning expression.

'Can I help you, Skipper?' she asked.

'Um.' Bachfisch rested his left hand lightly on her right shoulder and leaned forward to tap a query on her data pad. The computer considered his inquiry for a nanosecond or two, then obediently reported Todfeind's tonnage. Lieutenant Hairston looked down at the fresh numbers blinking on her own display, compared them to the acceleration sidebar, and pursed her lips.

'They'd appear to be in a bit of a hurry, wouldn't they?' she observed.

'I suppose that's one way to put it, Roberta,' Bachfisch murmured.

He straightened and rubbed his chin gently while he gazed intently at the plot. Todfeind wasn't the very newest ship in the Andy inventory, but her class had been designed less than ten T-years ago, and she massed right on four hundred thousand tons. At that tonnage, her normal maximum acceleration should have been around five hundred gravities. Since the Andermani Navy, like every other navy in space, normally restricted its skippers to less than the maximum acceleration available to them under full military power, she should have been accelerating at no more than four hundred or so. But according to the tac officer's sensors, she was pulling just over four-seventy-five.

'They're right on the edge of their compensator's max performance,' Hairston observed, and Bachfisch glanced at her. He started to say something, then shrugged, smiled at her, patted her shoulder once more, and turned to the exec.

'I know the contract specifically allows for delays in transit occasioned by piratical activity, Jinchu,' he said. 'But we've lost a bit more time than I'd wanted to, even to swat another pirate. I think we can make it up if we can talk Santerro into letting us jump the transshipment queue in Broadhurst, but I don't want to dawdle on the way there.'

'Understood, Skipper,' Gruber replied, and nodded sideways at Pirates' Bane's astrogator. 'I've had Larry working an updated course ever since we diverted to deliver our 'guests.' '

'That's what I like to see,' Bachfisch observed with a smile. 'Conscientious subordinates with their noses pressed firmly to the grindstone!' Gruber chuckled, and Bachfisch waved at the main maneuvering plot.

'We've got a long way to go,' he observed. 'So let's be about it, Jinchu.'

'Yes, Sir,' the exec said, and turned to the astrogator. 'You heard the Captain, Larry. Let's take her out of orbit.'

'Aye, aye, Sir,' the astrogator replied formally, and Bachfisch listened to the familiar, comforting efficiency of his bridge crew as he walked slowly across the deck and settled into his own command chair. No one could have guessed from his demeanor that he was barely aware of his officers' well-drilled smoothness as he leaned back and crossed his legs, but most of his attention was someplace else entirely as he considered Todfeind's acceleration numbers.

It was always possible Hairston's explanation was the right one. High as that acceleration rate might be, it was still within the safe operating envelope of most navies' inertial compensators. But not by very much, and the Andies were just as insistent about avoiding unnecessary risks or wear on their compensators and impeller nodes as the Royal Manticoran Navy. So if Todfeind's captain had elected to push the envelope that hard, then logically he must be in a very great hurry, indeed.

But what Bachfisch knew that Hairston didn't was that the Andermani captain had invited Bachfisch and his senior officers to supper aboard his ship. The IAN didn't extend that sort of invitation to mere merchant spacers every day of the week, and Bachfisch had been sorely tempted to accept it. Unfortunately, as he'd just finished remarking to Gruber, the detour to deliver the captured pirates had put Pirates' Bane well behind schedule, so he'd been forced to decline the invitation. But if Kapitan der Sterne Schweikert had seen fit to issue one in the first place, then he'd obviously planned on hanging around long enough for the meal to be served.

Which suggested that he wasn't in any particular hurry. Which, in turn, suggested that he wasn't pushing the envelope on his compensator.

Which suggested that the Andermani Navy had cracked the secret of the improved compensator efficiency which had been one of the RMN's major tactical advantages over the Peeps for years.

Thomas Bachfisch had visited his native star nation no more than half a dozen times over the past forty T- years. Most of his old friends and associates in the Star Kingdom had given up on him decades ago, sadly writing him off as someone who had 'gone native' in Silesia, of all places. And, he admitted, there was at least some truth to that verdict. But that didn't mean he'd failed to stay abreast of the news from Manticore, and he had a shrewd notion that the Queen's Navy would not be happy to discover that the increasingly resentful Imperial Andermani Navy's ships were now just as fast as its own.

Assuming anyone at the current Admiralty was prepared to believe it, at any rate.

Chapter Five

Admiral Sir Edward Janacek (retired), Royal Manticoran Navy, looked up from the report on his desk terminal and hid a frown as his yeoman secretary ushered Reginald Houseman into his office. He hid it because the First Lord of Admiralty of the Star Kingdom of Manticore wasn't supposed to greet one of his fellow lords with a grimace. But despite almost thirty T-years as a civilian, he continued to think of himself as a naval officer, and any naval officer would have regarded Houseman with distaste. Houseman rarely even attempted to conceal his own deep and abiding contempt for the Star Kingdom's military, and when he did make the attempt, he failed. Worse, Houseman and his entire family were hopelessly inept and politically naive in Janacek's view . . . to put it mildly. The fact that they were exactly the sort of Liberal Party idiots Janacek had left the Navy in order to oppose more effectively made the current situation more ironic than he cared to contemplate, but there it was. Houseman and his allies among the Liberals were absolutely essential at the moment, which was what made it politically impossible for Janacek to allow his distaste to show.

'The Second Lord is here, Sir,' the secretary announced unnecessarily, in the obsequious voice he kept on tap especially for Houseman's visits. Like many who not so secretly despised the military, Houseman reveled in any opportunity to extract subservience from it.

'Thank you, Christopher.' Janacek nodded dismissal to the secretary, then stood and extended his hand to Houseman. 'It's always good to see you, Reginald,' he lied smoothly. 'Should I assume you have those projections for me?'

'Edward,' Houseman replied, shaking the proffered hand with a smile Janacek felt certain was at least as false as his own. The First Lord waved for his visitor to seat himself, and Houseman settled into one of the comfortable chairs facing Janacek's desk.

'I do, indeed, have the numbers you requested,' he went on, and produced a chip folio. He leaned forward to place the folio on the corner of Janacek's blotter, then leaned back once again. 'And they support your conclusions rather well, actually.'

'Good.' Janacek managed to conceal his irritation at the edge of condescension in Houseman's tone. It wasn't easy, even for someone with his decades of political experience, but he made it look that way. And it wasn't as if Houseman's attitude was a surprise. Even though Janacek was now a civilian, the fact that he'd ever been a naval officer was sufficient to contaminate him—in Houseman's eyes—with the automatic ineptitude and stupidity of