War Of Honor

But if the Manties hadn't built their light forces back up, they had established a treaty relationship with the Sidemore Republic in the Marsh System. Over the past eight T-years, Sidemore had been built up into a fairly powerful fleet base, despite the Manticorans' need to concentrate most of their effort against the Peeps. The Marsh System's location, just outside the somewhat amorphous borders claimed by the Confederacy and on the flank of the Empire-to-Confederacy leg of the Manties' 'Triangle Route,' made it an ideal logistics base for the RMN's operations throughout southwestern Silesia.

Other than a certain desire to do it for himself, Glockauer had no objection to watching the Manticorans swat pirates. And their Marsh-based flotillas had enabled them to do a remarkable job of pacifying something like a tenth of the entire Confederacy. But they'd done it by establishing a Manticoran presence in an area in which they had persistently refused to countenance an Andermani one. If any star nation had a legitimate interest in controlling the situation in Silesia to protect its own borders and territorial integrity, that nation was the Andermani Empire . . . not the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Worse, the Manties had based an entire task force, two understrength squadrons of the wall, with battlecruiser and cruiser support, at their new Sidemore Station.

Ostensibly, those forces, which were far heavier than would have been required for any legitimate anti- piracy operations, were intended to cover Confederate space against a fresh intrusion of Peep commerce raiding squadrons. The official Manty position—to which the freelance operations of rogue ex-State Security and ex-People's Navy warships lent a certain point—was that covering against any renewal of the Peeps' commerce warfare in the Confederacy was the true (and only) reason for their treaty with Sidemore. No one in the Empire believed that for a moment, and resentment against Manticoran high-handedness had grown steadily over the last five T-years or so. Now that the Peeps had been militarily defeated, whether an actual peace treaty had been finalized or not, that excuse for the RMN's presence in Marsh was growing steadily more threadbare. Resentment over it had increased in direct proportion, and Glockauer suspected that the foreign policy considerations which had mitigated against any confrontation with Manticore were rapidly eroding.

He had no idea of where that might eventually lead. No, that wasn't really true. He had a very good idea of where it might lead . . . he only hoped fervently that it wouldn't in the end. Despite the recent and continuing upgrades in his navy's combat power, and despite the obvious idiocy of the new Manticoran First Lord of Admiralty, he had no desire to face the fleet which had proven its undisputed ability to annihilate the once-mighty People's Navy.

But at the moment, he reminded himself, watching Karawane's icon altering course on his plot, turning futilely away in a wallowing effort to evade his own, fleeter vessel, he didn't have to worry about Manties.

All he had to worry about was what sort of atrocity his boarding parties were likely to discover aboard the fleeing merchantman.

Experience suggested that it would not be pleasant.

* * *

'Message from Commodore Zrubek, Sir.'

Admiral Lester Tourville, who was unabashedly delighted that he was no longer Citizen Admiral Tourville, looked up from his plot at Lieutenant Eisenberg's announcement. It still seemed odd to see her on his flag deck, but he supposed Tom Theisman was right. The smoothly functioning staffs he and Javier Giscard had assembled over the last several years had been a major factor in the success of the task forces and fleets under their command. But as valuable as those well-tested command teams had been, they'd also been replaceable. He and Javier had built them once; they could build replacements, if they had to, and in the meantime, those superbly trained staffers were far too valuable for them to hang selfishly onto. And so the subordinates with whom Tourville had fought against the Manties for the better part of ten T-years had moved on to other duties and long overdue promotions.

On the other hand, his new com officer, Lieutenant Anita Eisenberg, was even newer than most of his replacement staff. She'd been assigned to him less than six T-months ago, and he was still getting accustomed to her rather extreme youthfulness. He had to keep reminding himself that, at a mere twenty-eight T-years, the solidly built blonde wasn't actually the babe in arms she so resembled. The fact that, as a third-generation prolong recipient, she looked as if she were about twelve didn't help, and neither did the fact that she stood only a very little over a meter and a half in height. The truth was that she was extremely young for her rank, but that was true of a lot of officers in Haven's navy these days. And, he reminded himself, despite a pronounced predilection for military formality, she possessed a competence and a self-confidence at odds with her undeniable youth.

He brushed the thought aside once more, not without the reflection that perhaps his impression of her youth had something to do with the bone-deep weariness which made him feel every month of his own much greater age, and waved her closer to his command chair. She handed him an electronic memo board, and a dark- haired man looked out of the small screen at him when he pressed the playback button.

'You were right, Sir,' Commodore Scott Zrubek told him without preamble. 'They were trying to sucker us, just as you suspected they might. So I held the rest of the squadron at extreme range and sent a couple of destroyer divisions in to take a closer look at those 'merchantmen' of theirs. I think there may have been a small change of management when they saw what we were doing.'

Zrubek's smile could really be extremely unpleasant, Tourville noted approvingly.

'It looks like they'd stuffed their cargo holds full of missile pods,' the commodore continued. 'They'd obviously hoped we'd come in close enough for them to roll the pods, but when they realized we weren't going to bring the heavy ships into their range, someone figured out that just killing off the destroyers was only going to really, really piss us off. So since we'd declined to walk into their ambush and there was no way in hell those merchies could run away from us, they decided to own up and surrender while we were in a prisoner-taking mood. Unfortunately, from the preliminary reports, it sounds like their CO had other ideas, so apparently his exec shot him in the back of the head to change his mind.'

Tourville grimaced. There'd been a lot of that going around lately, and he supposed he had to consider it a good sign, over all. But that didn't make the scenario Zrubek was describing any less ugly.

'At any rate, Sir,' the commodore went on, 'we've got the merchantmen, and what looks like the better part of three of the old StateSec intervention battalions that were serving as Marines—more or less, anyway. Some of the StateSec goons may have been conscripts since Saint-Just got the boot, but it looks to me like the bulk of them are pretty hard core. One or two of them actually wanted to put up a fight when we boarded, and I've got my staff spook running them through the database now. I'm not going to be surprised if some of them turn up on the 'shoot on sight' list.

'In the meantime, we're firmly in control of all six ships, with what I'd estimate to be the equivalent of two or three superdreadnought load-outs worth of missile pods on board. My people are vacuuming the computers now, and the previous owners were too busy bargaining for their lives and surrendering to worry about data dumps. We've got our crypto teams ready for a preliminary run at the secure portions, and I'm having complete downloads prepared to send over to the flagship.

'My present estimate is that Carson sent these poor turkeys out to slow us down because his cupboard is bare of real warships. I wouldn't be surprised if we're able to get our hands on the IFF codes for his minefields, as well. On the other hand, he might be smart enough to plant fake ones on us, so I'm not planning on having any sudden inspirations without clearance from you. I should have the situation here completely squared away within the next five to six hours. I'll put prize crews aboard the merchies and send them back to Haven, and barring anything untoward, I should rendezvous with the rest of the fleet no later than seventeen hundred hours on the twenty-third. The locals seem pretty glad to see us, and I don't think we're going to need much in the way of a garrison to hang onto the planet, so I don't expect anything to delay me.

'Zrubek clear.'

The screen blanked, and Tourville nodded in approval. Zrubek was one of the new crop of junior flag officers he and Javier had been grooming for the past three years. The assignment to clear the Montague System of the ragtag remnants of Citizen General Adrian Carson's forces had been the commodore's first real solo operation, and it sounded as if he'd passed his graduation exercise with flying colors. Which was exactly what Tourville had anticipated when he sent the youngster off. In many ways, Montague had been something of a training operation with teeth, but if Zrubek had gotten cocky and strayed into range of the sort of missile firepower which seemed to