War Of Honor

of a second to confirm the preposterous readings, then looked up.

'The Andy just launched on the pirate, Skipper! I have three birds in acquisition!'

Ferrero's eyes dropped to her own repeater plot, and she swallowed a curse of disbelief as it updated. Harris was right. Preposterous as it sounded, Hellbarde had just launched missiles at Jessica Epps' prize in complete violation of all interstellar naval practice. Not to mention at least half a dozen solemn protocols Ferrero could think of right off hand.

There was nothing she—or anyone in the universe—could have done to change what happened next. Hellbarde was much closer to the target than Jessica Epps was, and the flight time on her missiles was little more than seventy seconds. None of them were warning shots, either.

The hapless suspected pirate altered course, rolling ship frantically in an effort to interpose the roof of its impeller wedge between it and the incoming warheads. It was wasted effort, and its pathetically outclassed counter missiles and point defense were equally useless. Seventy-four seconds after Hellbarde's launch, what had been a forty-seven thousand-ton starship had become a spreading pattern of very small pieces of wreckage.

'Jessica Epps, this is Hellbarde,' the same harsh, hard voice said from the bridge speakers. 'As we said, we will deal with it. Hellbarde, clear.'

Every eye on Jessica Epps' command deck turned to Erica Ferrero. Most of them turned away, almost as quickly, for not one of her officers could ever recall having seen so much raw fury on their captain's face. She glared at her plot, lips tight in a snarl of anger, and every fiber of her being wanted to lash out at that smug, disdainful voice.

But a small, clear voice of warning sounded in the back of her brain, despite her rage. She had no doubt that Kapitan der Sterne Gortz—whoever the hell she was—had enjoyed what she'd just done, but the fact that she'd done it at all, coupled with the increased Andermani presence throughout this entire region, suggested a great many unpleasant possibilities. No warship captain in her right mind would gratuitously violate all accepted interstellar law and standards of behavior and simultaneously insult another navy the way Gortz just had . . . unless there was a very good reason for it.

It was always possible that Gortz wasn't in her right mind, but that seemed unlikely, to say the least. Another possibility was that she was one of the Andies who particularly resented the RMN's presence in Silesia—or, at least, the Star Kingdom's refusal to give her own star nation a free hand in the Confederacy—and who believed she was sufficiently well born (or had sufficiently powerful personal patrons within the IAN) to escape the consequences of her actions.

Or, Fererro thought, it's also possible that she was under orders to do precisely what she just did. Or something else like it.

The Andies had been confronting Manticoran warships more and more openly and aggressively for months now. There'd never been anything else quite this blatant, but if Gortz's actions did represent a deliberate, pre- sanctioned act, it was arguably a direct, straight-line evolution of what they'd already been doing. Yet if that were the case, it was also a substantial escalation, a deliberate provocation.

And whatever it was, it was Erica Ferrero's job to respond to it.

'Skipper?'

Lieutenant Commander Harris's voice drew her attention, and she looked up from the plot at which she'd been glaring.

'Yes, Shawn?' She was just a bit surprised by how calm her own voice sounded.

'CIC's just completed an analysis of the Andy missiles, Ma'am,' Harris told her. 'They were pulling ninety- one thousand gees. And they detonated over fifty thousand klicks from the target.' Her eyes widened in surprise, and he nodded. 'Not only that, but CIC estimates that they scored at least eighty-five percent of possible hits.'

Ferrero understood immediately why CIC had passed its analysis on to Harris . . . and why Shawn had passed it on to her so quickly in turn. Those figures represented an increase of over seven percent in what ONI listed as the maximum acceleration for an Andermani shipkiller missile, and fifty thousand kilometers represented an increase of well over sixty percent in any standoff attack range the RMN had ever previously observed out of an Andy laser head, as well.

And eighty-five percent of possible is damned impressive targeting for a laser head at any range, she thought.

The question was why Gortz should choose to deliberately reveal that improvement in capabilities to Jessica Epps. And it had to have been deliberate. She certainly hadn't needed to launch her birds at maximum accel—assuming, of course, that that was what she'd done, and that she hadn't had still more drive power in reserve—just as there'd been no compelling tactical need to show off her laser heads' reach and accuracy. It was entirely possible that the Andy had had still more performance in reserve, she reflected. Even if Gortz was deliberately making a statement, it would make sense to keep at least a little bit back to use as a surprise in an emergency. But whether or not what they'd just seen was the maximum possible performance envelope for the IAN's current generation of missiles, it was a substantial improvement in what everyone had thought were the limits of the Andies' hardware.

Which suggested that this entire episode did indeed reflect a new and even more dangerous level in the Empire's aggressive foreign and naval policy.

'Record for transmission, Mecia,' Ferrero said after a moment.

'Recording, Ma'am,' Lieutenant McKee acknowledged.

'Captain Gortz,' Erica Ferrero said in icy tones, 'this is Captain Ferrero. Your high-handed intervention in my pursuit of a suspected pirate represents a violation of the established protocols in existence between the Andermani Empire and the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Your destruction of the vessel in question, leading to the death of all aboard, whose guilt or innocence had not been confirmed and who had not received the warning shot specified by numerous interstellar accords, also represents an unacceptable violation of customary naval usage and interstellar law and arguably constitutes an act of cold-blooded murder. I protest your actions in the strongest terms, and I will be filing a record of this incident with my own command authorities and the Star Kingdom's Foreign Office. My recommendation will be that interstellar legal proceedings against you and your bridge officers be initiated immediately, and I look forward with anticipation to the time at which you may be invited before a court of admiralty to explain and justify your performance here this afternoon. Ferrero, clear.'

'On the chip, Ma'am. ' McKee's confirmation was soft, and Ferrero smiled humorlessly at the com officer's tone. Yet she had no choice but to respond to Gortz's actions in uncompromising terms . . . especially if they did represent a deliberate shift in the IAN's policy towards the Royal Navy. Higher authority could always back off from her initial hard-line position, but until those same higher authorities could be advised of what had just happened, it was up to her to do anything she could to make the Andermani rethink any inclination towards confrontation.

'Send it,' she told McKee, then turned to Lieutenant McClelland, her astrogator.

'Turn us around, James,' she told him. 'Take us back out across the limit. And calculate a least-time transit to Marsh.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.' The short, brown-haired, brown-eyed officer—one of the few native Sidemorians in Jessica Epps' company—studied his plot, then looked at the cruiser's helmsman.

'Helm, reverse heading and go to five-zero-five gravities,' he said.

'Reversing heading and going to five-zero-five gravities, aye, Sir,' the helmsman replied, and Jessica Epps turned end-for-end and began decelerating towards the hyper limit.

'Captain,' McKee said in a very formal voice, 'Hellbarde is hailing us. They sound . . . pretty insistent about speaking to you.'

'Ignore them,' Ferrero told her in a voice of liquid helium.

'Aye, aye, Ma'am,' McKee acknowledged, and Ferrero returned her attention to her plot.

Chapter Eighteen