War Of Honor

'I suppose it is.'

Honor took a long pull at her beer, then made a face as her wrist chrono beeped.

'Rafe, I'm sorry, but I've got an appointment with Richard Maxwell and Merlin Odom. I've simply got to get some management details nailed down here in the Star Kingdom before I go haring off to Silesia!'

'Not a problem, Ma'am. I imagine you've got a whole bunch of 'details' to deal with, given the number of hats they've got you wearing these days.'

'You're not wrong there,' she agreed feelingly. 'In fact, I'm going to have to make a quick run to Grayson to settle the same sorts of details there. I'm planning on taking the Tankersley, and I hope I'll be back by the time Werewolf gets out of the slip, but I can't guarantee it.'

'We'll survive until you do get back,' he assured her.

'I know. I'll be bringing Mercedes back from Grayson with me when I come. According to the last update I got from BuPers, Alistair should be arriving at Hephaestus day after tomorrow, before I leave, though. And Captain Jaruwalski is already here in the Star Kingdom. You should meet her tomorrow. I'm hosting a small dinner here at the house, and you're both invited.' Cardones nodded, and she shrugged. 'Alice may be here in time for dinner as well; if not, she'll be on hand within another day or two, and hopefully, between the four of you, you can handle almost anything that comes up before Mercedes and I get home. If not, just put it on hold. I explained to the Admiralty that my responsibilities as Steadholder Harrington were going to cause some delays in how quickly I could get up and running, so no one should be breathing too hard on the backs of your necks while I'm gone.'

'I'm sure Admiral McKeon and Admiral Truman will be able to deal with any bureaucratic types in your absence, Ma'am,' Cardones agreed.

'And if they can't, I know who can,' Honor assured him with a chuckle. 'Scotty and Sir Horace should be at dinner tonight, as well. So if things get too out of hand, just remember that Harkness has a certain way with computers and sic him on the Admiralty database.'

Chapter Seventeen

'Tell him one more time, Mecia,' Captain Erica Ferrero, commanding officer, HMS Jessica Epps, said. Her voice was cold and flat. 'And tell him we won't ask again.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am!' Lieutenant Mecia McKee, Jessica Epps' communications officer replied crisply. She turned back to her panel, pushed an errant strand of long red hair behind her left ear and keyed her microphone.

'Unidentified starship, you are instructed to cut your wedge and stand by to be boarded. I repeat, you are instructed to cut your wedge and stand by to be boarded. If you do not comply, we will employ deadly force. This is your final warning. Jessica Epps, clear.'

The crimson icon on Ferrero's plot made absolutely no response to her youthful com officer's warning. It simply continued to flee at its maximum acceleration, which was fairly stupid, the captain reflected. Admittedly, it represented a much smaller starship, which, with equally efficient inertial compensators, ought to have enjoyed an acceleration advantage of at least thirty or forty gravities over a ship of Jessica Epps' tonnage. Unhappily for whoever commanded that icon, however, it didn't enjoy equal efficiency, because Jessica Epps mounted the very latest version of the Royal Manticoran Navy's improved compensator. The suspect vessel's actual advantage, even at the eighty percent settings which represented the RMN's normal maximum power load, was barely twenty-one gravities, less than a quarter of a KPS?. If Ferrero had chosen to go to maximum military power and run the risk of compensator failure, the advantage would have lain firmly in Jessica Epps's favor.

Not that it mattered either way, because Ferrero's cruiser had surprised the other ship skulking along at a low base velocity. That was what had attracted her tac officer's attention in the first place. Given its small size, its low velocity and position just inside the hyper limit of the Adelaide System, especially headed towards the primary, was a dead giveaway. The only logical reason for a vessel the size of a very small frigate to be moving in-system at such a low speed (especially in Silesia) was that it was a pirate or privateer trolling for prizes. The low velocity at which merchantmen normally made the final translation into normal-space from hyper made them extremely vulnerable to interception immediately upon arrival, particularly since it always took at least a short interval for their sensors to settle down enough for them to be able to detect anything in their vicinities. Until they could at least see what lay in proximity to them, they couldn't even know a threat was there to begin trying to evade it. Even when they realized they were in danger, merchantmen were slow and clumsy ships. When a potential enemy also had the advantage of surprise, the chance that a merchant skipper could evade him was remote, at best.

If evasion failed and an armed vessel, however small, managed to bring its weapons into range of an un armed freighter, the merchant ship would find itself completely helpless. And the best way for an armed vessel to do that was to be moving at a relatively low velocity on the same approximate heading a merchie might be expected to arrive upon. Too much relative speed, and it would overrun its intended victim, unable to decelerate to rendezvous before the merchantman could reverse her own acceleration, break back across the hyper limit, and escape into hyper-space. Too little, and even a whalelike merchantman might be able to somehow twist aside and make it back into hyper before she could be overhauled.

That was obviously what the ship on Ferrero's plot had had in mind. The fact that it had gone to maximum acceleration directly away from her own command the moment she identified herself and instructed it to heave to for examination was ample confirmation in her own mind that it was a pirate. Unfortunately for it, the same tactical considerations which applied to merchantmen at low velocity evading pirates applied to pirates at low velocity evading heavy cruisers . . . with one notable exception. A pirate needed to rendezvous with its prize if it wanted to loot it; a heavy cruiser was under no obligation to rendezvous with a pirate, because said pirate could be blown out of space in passing just fine. And that was the situation which obtained in this instance.

Ferrero and her crew hadn't really planned on doing any pirate-hunting this afternoon, but sometimes God rewarded the virtuous when they expected it least. This was clearly one of those times, and Jessica Epps had found herself heading in-system at just over sixty-three thousand KPS. Given the geometry of the cruiser's pursuit curve, that had worked out to an overtake advantage of forty-two thousand kilometers per second—well, 40,007.162 KPS, if Ferrero wanted to be fussy about it—over an initial range of three and a half light-minutes. Which meant that even with its slight acceleration advantage, the ship she was pursuing couldn't possibly evade her. In fact, assuming constant acceleration for both ships, Jessica Epps would overtake her prey completely in just under twenty-five minutes, and bring it into missile range well before that.

So it had to be obvious to the other ship's commander that Ferrero's only problem was when to begin reducing her own acceleration still further in order to give her sufficient time in passing to do a proper job of reducing her target to dispersing wreckage. Under the circumstances, his only real option was to heave to and allow her Marines to board him, and common prudence should have suggested that it would be wise of him to do that promptly, before Jessica Epps' obviously short-tempered captain decided it was too much bother to take prisoners and worry about trials.

It appeared, however, that prudence was in somewhat short supply aboard the fleeing vessel. Either that, or its crew was on the list of convicted pirates for whom no trials—beyond the necessary establishment of their identities—would be in order, anyway. This was Silesia, after all, and Silesian governors had a bad habit of 'losing' condemned pirates whom the Star Kingdom had turned over to them rather than keeping said pirates safely locked up or executing them. That was the reason the RMN had authorized its skippers to summarily execute such 'escapees' if they were captured by Manticoran ships a second time. Given that interstellar law mandated the death sentence for piracy, that authorization was completely legal, and Ferrero strongly suspected that the crew in front of her knew its names were on her list somewhere. In that case, being boarded and captured would leave them just as dead as being blown apart in combat, and there was always a possibility, however remote, that they might somehow manage to roll ship and squirm away from Jessica Epps.

They'll be ice skating in Hell before that happens, Mr. Pirate! she thought coldly. But at least my conscience will be clear, because you'll have had your warning . . . and your chance.