War Of Honor

have managed it if the Andies hadn't been forced to cycle in fresh drones to replace them as they exhausted their onboard power. He'd caught one of the replacement drones on its way in, and once he had its locus precisely defined, he'd managed to find the others by working his way out from there.

Which said some remarkably ominous things about the hellacious stealth technology the Andies had built into the damned things. At least their platforms' endurance time seemed to be lower than the RMN's, but that was rather cold comfort just at the moment.

Ferrero stood gazing at the icons of the elusive drones for several more moments. She was reasonably confident that they hadn't noticed the even stealthier Ghost Rider drones creeping up behind them, but she wasn't prepared to place any expensive bets on the proposition. Not after the way the Andies had managed to sneak their own platforms in on her. From everything Harris and Bob Llewellyn could detect or extrapolate, Ghost Rider's technology was still superior to what they were seeing. But that assumed the Andy systems were working at full power without holding anything in reserve. Which seemed likely, but couldn't really be confirmed.

On the other hand, whatever else they might be, those drones had to be equipped with extremely sensitive passive sensors. Which suggested the perfect way to deal with them to Erica Ferrero.

She glanced at the bulkhead time-date display, then rested one hand on Harris's shoulder and smiled evilly.

'I'm afraid your day isn't quite done yet, Shawn,' she told him. 'We're going to terminate our pinnace exercises at the end of the current evolution. When we do, I want you to track those things for another . . . seventy-nine minutes. I know it won't be easy to hold them without the Andies catching on, but I want to put a little more time between our course changes for the exercises and the moment of truth.'

'Moment of truth, Ma'am?' Harris repeated.

'Exactly,' she told him. 'I don't know whether it's her idea or her superiors', but this 'Captain Gortz' is obviously trying to make a statement about the Andies' technical capabilities. That being the case, I think it's time we made a statement about our capabilities, too. So at the end of your seventy-nine-minute tracking period, I want you to bring both of our tethered platforms around so that their active sensors bear on the Andie drones. And then I want you to go to maximum power. I don't just want a radar hull map of those drones, Shawn. I want to be able to read the mag combinations on their service access ports. I want their frigging serial numbers and the fingerprints of the last tech to service them. And I especially want to reduce those things' passive sensors to slag. Got it?'

'Oh, yes, Skip!' Harris agreed with a smile every bit as evil as her own had been. 'Fried recon drones in hollandaise sauce coming right up!' he promised.

'Good.' She patted him on the shoulder again. 'Very good,' she repeated, then turned and walked across to her own command chair.

She sat back down, and her smile faded slightly as she gazed once again at her own plot, and the steady crimson dots of Hellbarde's shadowing drones. However satisfying it might be to repay the Andy cruiser's rudeness with interest—and she was honest enough with herself to admit that it would be extremely satisfying—it wouldn't change the fact that Hellbarde had managed to get them into position undetected in the first place.

Exactly why Gortz had chosen to reveal the ability to do that remained as much a mystery as ever, but there was clearly a pattern to the other captain's actions. She (or he) was escalating slowly but steadily, revealing ever more capable layers of technology and, probably, using that same opportunity to probe at Jessica Epps' capabilities. That was one reason Ferrero had gone to such lengths to conceal the fact that she was using Ghost Rider. The tractor-tethered electronic warfare remotes she'd had Llewellyn deploy as part of his 'exercises,' were scarcely new. They'd been around for generations, and they'd undoubtedly be around for generations more, because unlike even the most capable drones, they could be powered directly from the ship which had deployed them, which gave them effectively unlimited endurance. It also allowed them to mount extremely powerful decoy, jammer, and sensor systems, since they could draw directly on their mother ships for the energy to power them. So when she used them to take out Hellbarde's platforms, she would be using 'old' technology.

But by the same token she would be showing Gortz that Jessica Epps had spotted Hellbarde's spies, hopefully without revealing precisely when or how that had been accomplished. That should remind Gortz that however good Andie technology might have become, the RMN continued to have the best hardware in space. Which, Ferrero devoutly hoped, was still true.

Yet it was the other half of the message she most looked forward to delivering, she admitted to herself. Because when Lieutenant Commander Harris reduced the exquisitely sensitive passive systems aboard their drones to so much useless junk, the personal message from Captain Erica Ferrero to Kapitan der Sterne Gortz would be excruciatingly clear.

Don't fuck around with me, smart ass!

Chapter Twenty Four

'I don't like it.' Thomas Theisman's voice was mild as he leaned back in his comfortable chair in President Pritchart's office. His expression was another matter, and he frowned fiercely as he considered what he'd just said. 'In fact, I don't like it one bit,' he amended.

'And you think I do?' Eloise Pritchart demanded. Her voice was harsh, although Theisman knew her anger wasn't directed against him. 'On the other hand, Kevin's report doesn't seem to leave us a whole lot of options, does it?'

'You can always fire the son-of-a-bitch,' Theisman suggested.

'I thought about that. Hard,' Pritchart admitted. 'Unfortunately, according to certain other sources, he's prepared to challenge any demand for his resignation as unconstitutional.'

'Unconstitutional?' Theisman stared at her in disbelief, and she smiled bitterly.

'Well, illegal, at least. It seems that according to arguably competent legal opinion, the resolution readopting the Constitution gave Congress the right to approve or disapprove my Cabinet appointments . . . and any changes to them.'

'That's ridiculous!'

'My own opinion exactly. Which doesn't mean Arnold won't take the matter to the courts anyway if I try to fire him.'

'Have you asked Denis about this?'

'I have,' the President confirmed. 'He's of the same opinion you are. Unfortunately, the same source which told me Arnold might try something like this pointed out his longstanding friendship with Chief Justice Tullingham.'

'Oh shit,' Theisman muttered with intense disgust.

'Precisely,' Pritchart agreed. 'I doubt very much that he could win in the long run, but he could certainly tie things up in legal arguments for weeks—probably months. And that would be just as bad, in the long run. Which means there really isn't anything I can do to punish him.'

'It leaves us at least one other one possibility,' Theisman growled. Pritchart cocked her head at him, and he smiled thinly. 'If you can't fire him, then have Denis indict the scheming bastard, instead.'

'Indict the Secretary of State?' Pritchart stared at him.

'Damned straight,' Theisman shot back. 'At the very least, he's already spilled classified information, and there's no way he did it 'accidentally'! Not to the bunch Kevin tells us he's been talking to about it.'

'He's also a cabinet secretary,' Pritchart pointed out. 'And while I personally agree a hundred percent with you, the people to whom he's 'spilled' the information all hold Top Secret clearances of their own.'

'And not one of them, aside from his lying brother, was cleared for this information, or has any demonstrated need to know it,' Theisman shot back. 'And you know perfectly well that if he's told them, it's only a matter of time before the information gets made public. Which brings us back to exactly the national security