Flag In Exile

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"There! You see that?"

Honor pointed into the depths of CIC's huge master display and looked at Mercedes Brigham and Fred Bagwell. The three of them stood in Terrible's combat information center to watch the replay of their last exercise, because the flag deck plots were too small for the detail Honor had wanted. Now she watched their faces, tasting their concentration through her link to Nimitz as they pondered the faint light at the heart of the holo sphere. She felt them trying to understand what she'd already deduced had to be there, then heard a muttered expletive from Mercedes, though Bagwell still looked perplexed.

"I see it, My Lady, but I don't know what it is," he admitted, peering at the small, ghostlike trace reading. That was one of the things Honor most liked about him. His determination to make everything go precisely to plan could make him a fussy pain in the posterior, but when he didn't know something he admitted it.

"Mercedes?" she prompted, and the chief of staff sighed.

"Yes, Milady. I know what it is," she admitted wryly, and turned to Bagwell. "What that is, Fred, is a powered down, stealthed reconnaissance drone, and it went right through the middle of our formation."

"An RD?" Bagwell blinked, and then the light went on behind his eyes. "Is that how Admiral Henries knew what we were up to?"

"It is, indeed," Honor murmured with a rueful smile. She hadn't thought Sir Alfred Henries, CO of the Manticoran battle squadron which had dropped by for maneuvers on its way to Thetis, was quite that devious.

She shook her head and folded her arms. She'd spent hours with Mercedes and Bagwell planning her surprise for Henries, and it should have worked. In fact, but for that RD, it would have worked.

Peep EW systems were inferior to those of the RMN. Getting comparable performance out of them required much more massive installations, and the Grayson Navy hadn't been able to resist the temptation of all that available volume when they refitted their prize vessels. They'd gutted their new SDs' original EW sections and then filled the same space with Manticoran systems, which meant Terrible boasted almost the same electronic warfare capabilities as a sixteen-million-ton orbital fortress, and that was just fine with Honor. If someone was going to be shooting at her flagship, she wanted all the nasty tricks she could get to play on that someone's fire control.

Still, she had been a bit surprised to learn that Grayson's new-build warships were also more heavily equipped with EW systems than their Manticoran counterparts. Not by as great a margin as the SDs, perhaps, but they carried considerably more capable suites on a class-for-class basis, though the GSN hadn't yet learned to use the potential of its systems to full effect.

The discovery of all that capability had inspired Honor, and her formation for the exercise had looked like a standard deployment, with her SDs in tight and her escorts covering its flanks while a squadron of battlecruisers screened its line of advance. Only the "battlecruisers" had actually been superdreadnoughts, using their EW to mask the true power of their emissions, and the "superdreadnoughts" had actually been battlecruisers using their EW to augment their emissions. It should have been impossible for Henries to detect at anything over four million klicks, which should have let Honor flush her towed missile pods and get in the first, devastating broadsides from her SDs before his own ships of the wall even realized where the fire was coming from.

Unfortunately, Sir Alfred’s wiliness had taken most of the punch out of her surprise, and that was her own fault. She'd deliberately come in on a completely predictable course to help him see what she wanted him to. But that had also given him the opportunity to deploy recon drones from beyond the range at which her own sensors could detect their drives. He'd accelerated them up to speed, then shut down their impellers and let them coast straight down her nice, predictable line of approach to such close range that no EW could fool them, and the RDs' lack of power, coupled with their built-in stealth features, had caused her people to miss them even when one physically penetrated her formation.

"That's how he did it," she repeated to Bagwell. "Sneaky devil, isn't he?"

"Well, yes, My Lady, I suppose he is. Which just means we have to be even sneakier tomorrow."

"Exactly." Honor smiled at him, and he smiled back. He would never be truly comfortable with unconventional tactics, but he'd come a long way, and so far, BatRon One had held its own against Henries. Despite the way Sir Alfred had trumped her latest ploy with his RDs, the honors had been about evenly split over the past week. In a total of four exercises, BatRon One had won one hands down, two had been draws, and Henries had won the last one by a narrow, if respectable, margin. No doubt he was pleased by yesterday's outcome, but she knew he hadn't expected things to be quite so hard. Oh, he'd been polite, but there'd been a certain confidence, almost an arrogance, about him at the initial conferences.

She snorted in memory, and Nimitz bleeked a laugh on her shoulder. She was becoming more Grayson than Manticoran, she thought wryly, and wondered whether the Graysons had thought she was arrogant when they first met? She knew Henries hadn't meant anything by it. He probably hadn't even realized he had what Honor's mother had always called "an attitude." The RMN had a tradition of victory, after all, and it had done very well so far in this war. Its officers expected to be better than anyone they met, and it had showed.

Well, Sir Alfred ought to have known better where Grayson was concerned ... and Honor and her squadron had cleaned his clock in the first exercise, so perhaps she shouldn't begrudge his victory in this one. Not that she intended to give him any more.

"All right," she said more crisply, turning from the display. "We get another chance at him tomorrow. It's our last crack before he moves on to Thetis, and I want to go for match point. Have we received the ops order yet?"

"Yes, My Lady." Bagwell took a message board from under his arm and keyed it alive. "The umpires have decided to upgrade his battlecruisers to dreadnoughts for the exercise. That will give him eight SDs and six DNs, but we'll have BatRon Two under command."

Honor hid an internal grimace behind an expression of calm attention. High Admiral Matthews personally commanded Grayson’s second battle squadron, and he'd be coming along as an observer. BatRon Two had had time to drill to a much higher level of readiness than her own squadron, and she'd be glad to have his well-trained ships' companies. But she wasn't as familiar with BatRon Two's captains as with her own, and knowing her commander in chief would be looking over her shoulder made their support a mixed blessing.

"We'll only have eleven of the wall to his fourteen," Bagwell went on, "but ours will all be SDs, so..."

"Excuse me, My Lady?"

Honor turned her head. Jared Sutton stood behind her with another message board. Her flag lieutenant had become much more relaxed over the past months. He'd gone from an almost painful deference to actually responding to her teasing in kind. Respectfully, of course, God help any lieutenant who got too familiar with his admiral, however much she liked him!, but almost as comfortably as she would have expected from a Manticoran. Which, considering that she was both a steadholder and female, said quite a lot. But his puppy dog eyes were hooded now, and he wore no expression at all.

"Yes, Jared?" she said, and her eyebrows rose as he extended the board wordlessly. A wisp of uneasiness came to her from him over Nimitz's empathic link, and then her own face tensed as she scanned the board. She felt Bagwell and Mercedes reacting to her expression, but that seemed unimportant as the dispatch's contents sank home.

She scrolled ahead to the second page, then the third, and her mouth tightened. It was worse than she'd thought, and she made her lips relax as she finished the message and looked up again.

"Thank you, Jared. Please ask Commander Brannigan to inform the High Admiral that I'll join him on Vengeance as soon as possible. And ask Mac to lay out my dress uniform."

"Yes, My Lady." Sutton came briefly to attention, then hurried away, and she looked at the armsman standing unobtrusively against a bulkhead. "Simon, inform Andrew that I'll be leaving the ship in fifteen minutes. Have him alert my pinnace crew and meet me in Boat Bay One."

"Yes, My Lady." Simon Mattingly reached for his com, and Honor turned back to her staff officers and smiled thinly at their questioning expressions.

"The High Admiral didn't specifically invite chiefs of staff, Mercedes, but maybe you'd better come along. I don't think we'll need you, Fred, and you'll have enough to do here. I want a complete readiness update from every unit on my desk terminal within the hour."

"Of course, My Lady. May I ask what's happening?"

"You may." She handed him the message board. "The Peeps have taken Minette and Candor." Mercedes stiffened in disbelief, and Honor nodded. "High Admiral Matthews has confirmation from both systems. We don't know what they're up to, but it changes the situation rather radically."

"It certainly does, Milady," Mercedes said, then shook herself. "How heavy are their forces?"

"Heavier than I would have thought they could pry loose from Trevor's Star. According to the dispatches, they used over thirty SDs." Mercedes pursed her lips silently, and Honor nodded again. "Of course, that’s split between both systems, so they're still pretty thin if they intend to hold them."

"Unless they reinforce, My Lady," Bagwell pointed out.

"Exactly." Honor shook herself and glanced at the chrono. "Well, we don't have time to dwell on it now. I'll meet you in Boat Bay One, Mercedes, and you'd better get started on that readiness report, Fred."

High Admiral Wesley Matthews rose in greeting as Lady Harrington stepped into his flag briefing room. Admiral Henries had had a shorter flight, and he'd arrived several minutes earlier, but he was still reading the original dispatches when Lady Harrington appeared with her chief of staff and trailed by two other armsmen. Matthews saw Major LaFollet's eyes flick once about the briefing room in the automatic threat-search of his calling, but a small motion from Lady Harrington sent both armsmen back through the hatch. Matthews appreciated the gesture, though he had no security qualms where her bodyguards were concerned and this was hardly something that could be kept quiet for long.

Nor was it something he looked forward to dealing with. Admiral Henries was thirty T-years older than Lady Harrington, which made Matthews the youngest person present. Unfortunately, he was also the senior Allied officer, which made it his job to decide what to do about this mess.

"Please, be seated, My Lady," he invited.

Honor took the indicated seat. Mercedes slipped into the chair beside her and keyed a terminal, scanning the dispatches, but Honor kept her eyes on Matthews and raised one eyebrow. The high admiral had time for one frank look, exposing his own uncertainty to her, before Henries looked up and he banished his worry with a professional expression.

"I will be dipped in shit if I ever expected anything like this," Henries said frankly, and Matthews nodded. Hearing such language in Lady Harrington's presence annoyed him, but no doubt she'd heard worse, and it was typical of Henries. Sir Alfred was a highly competent officer, but he'd started out as a merchant spacer and earned his flag, and knighthood, the hard way. That might be easier in the RMN than in many other navies, but it remained a remarkable achievement, and he cultivated a certain deliberate bluntness as if to remind everyone of it. He was short and stocky for a Manticoran, though still several centimeters taller than Matthews himself; and his brown eyes were worried as he ran a hand through sandy hair he wore as short as most Graysons.

"How in hell did they pry that much tonnage loose?" Henries went on, unconsciously echoing Honor's earlier remark to Mercedes. "And if they had it to use someplace, why not throw it at Thetis? Surely that's more important to them than a raid on somewhere like Minette or Candor!"

"If it is a raid, Sir Alfred," Honor said quietly. Henries looked at her, and she shrugged. "You're right. They've sent a good seven percent of their total surviving wall a hundred-plus light-years behind the front and used it to take two systems that aren't especially vital to us. That seems like an awfully stupid diversion when they have to be aware of what will happen to them if Admiral White Haven breaks through to Trevor's Star." Henries' grunt of agreement held an interrogative note, as if asking what her point was, and she shrugged again. "I don't object to the enemy doing stupid things, Sir Alfred, but when it's something this stupid, I have to wonder if there's something behind it that we just haven't seen yet."

"You don't suppose they're trying to force Earl White Haven to weaken his own forces, do you?" Henries asked. "Figuring he'll detach from his own command to take them back?"

"They could be. Or they could be after something else entirely. The question is what."

Henries nodded again, thoughtfully, Matthews noted. Despite his occasionally rough-edged language in her presence, Sir Alfred had always shown Lady Harrington the respect her Grayson rank demanded, in spite of the fact that her permanent Manticoran rank was only that of captain. It was one of the things Matthews liked about Henries, and probably also a sign of the RMN's professional respect for her, half-pay or no.

"That's the question, My Lady," the high admiral said now, "but since we can't answer it, a more immediate question is deciding how to respond."

He pressed a button, and a holo display of a conical volume of space defined by the Manticore Binary System, Clairmont, and Grendelsbane blinked to life. Most of the stars were the green of the Manticoran Alliance, but Minette and Candor now burned a sullen red.

"They've driven a wedge into our flank," he pointed out. "I suppose they might be planning to stage follow-up attacks through Solway and Treadway, but Lady Harrington is right; diverting enough ships of the wall to make it effective will weaken them before Trevor's Star. If they maintain their strength at Nightingale, then they'll have to divert from Maastricht or Solon, and weakening either of those systems will let Admiral White Haven hook around Nightingale's flank. Somehow I can't quite see them doing that."

Honor and Henries nodded. The Peeps had to realize Trevor's Star was the true target of Earl White Haven's campaign, for the Republic's possession of the system constituted a direct threat to the Manticore Binary System. Trevor's Star was over two hundred light-years from Manticore. It would take a superdreadnought over a month to make the hyper-space voyage between them, but Trevor's Star also contained one terminus of the Manticore Worm Hole Junction, and a battle fleet could make the same trip effectively instantaneously via the Junction.

Relieving that threat was one of Manticore's primary strategic goals, but the Star Kingdom had more than one motive. If White Haven could take the system, its Junction terminus would become a direct link to Manticore for the Alliance. Developed into a forward base inside the Republic, Trevor's Star would represent a secure bridgehead, a springboard for future offensives. Transit times between the Star Kingdom's shipyards and home-system fleet bases would become negligible. There wouldn't even be any need to detach convoy escorts to protect the long, vulnerable logistical chain between Manticore and a base like Thetis; unescorted merchantmen could pop through to Trevor's Star with total impunity, whenever they chose.

All of which meant the Peeps had to hold the system, and they'd been scraping the bottom of the barrel for months to do just that, which made this latest escapade still more inexplicable.

And, High Admiral Wesley Matthews reminded himself grimly, it made Lady Harrington's observation even more pertinent. If it looked this stupid, there had to be more to it than met the eye.

"Well, High Admiral," Henries said after a moment, eyes on the holo display, "whatever they're up to, I don't see that we've got any choice but to bounce their asses out. They're a direct threat to Doreas and Casca, neither of those systems is much more heavily picketed than Candor was, or they could hook up and try to retake Quest, I suppose." The stocky Manticoran admiral brooded over the green and red stars, then sighed. "Whatever they're after, they've damned well picked a couple of targets we have to take back from them!"

"Which may be all they really want," Matthews pointed out. "As you say, they may hope we'll detach forces from Admiral White Haven to do it."

"It may be what they want," Honor murmured, "but they have to know they're unlikely to get it. They must have a pretty accurate order of battle on the Earl, so simple math should tell them we still have more than enough ships of the wall in other places, like the Manticoran Home Fleet, or right here, for that matter, to throw them back out again. They can make us uncover, or at least weaken, other systems to concentrate a relief force, but we can do it without weakening Admiral White Haven. And once we do concentrate it, they won't risk losing that many SDs by trying to hold two relatively unimportant systems so far from Trevor's Star."

"Lady Harrington's right, High Admiral," Henries said. "All they can really make us do is burn the time to assemble our forces. Oh," he waved, "if they go ahead and try for Casca or Quest or Doreas, they can make us burn some more time, but they don't have enough ships of the wall to risk any sort of serious defense against the numerical superiority we can throw at them."

"Any word on what the Peeps are doing in the systems, Sir?" Honor asked, and Matthews shook his head.

"Not really. All we've got so far are the preliminary dispatches from the station commanders. I assume Admiral Stanton and Admiral Meiner are still managing to picket the outer systems, but we can't even be certain of that. As of the last report we have, the Peeps weren't carrying out any systematic destruction of the system infrastructures, though."

"Then maybe they are planning to stay," Henries said. "If they think they can hold them, they wouldn't want to wreck anything they could use."

"I see your logic," Matthews said, "but it only emphasizes that we don't know what they're after. And whatever it is, it seems to me that the immediate problem is to get enough strength into the vicinity to sit on them."

"According to Admiral Stanton's dispatch, he took his lumps, but he hurt them pretty badly in his single pass, Sir," Mercedes Brigham put in. She looked at Honor and tapped the terminal in front of her. "He lost four heavy cruisers and took heavy damage to Majestic and Orion, but he nailed one of their SDs, hit a second one hard, and took out a battlecruiser for good measure. They know they've been nudged, Milady."

"True, but he expended virtually his full missile load to do it," Henries pointed out. "He can picket the outer system, but until we get some missile resupply to him, he can't do anything more, and he's got cripples to worry about. Admiral Meiner's got full magazines and no crips, but battlecruisers can't go toe-to-toe with SDs."

"But we can," Matthews said. Honor and Henries looked at him, and he used the holo controls to throw a cursor into the display. He moved it to touch Grendelsbane, and neat letters displayed the Alliance strength in the system.

"As you can see, Admiral Hemphill has half-again the strength of either of these forces sitting down here on their southern flank." He touched the tracker ball, and the cursor whipped across to Clairmont. "At the same time, Admiral Koga has two divisions of dreadnoughts up here, and..." the cursor dashed up off the upper edge of the display and another star appeared in previously empty space "...Admiral Truman has a division of SDs up here at Klien Station. That gives us six ships of the wall north of Candor, though it'll take some time to concentrate them."

"Six against fifteen, Sir?" Henries couldn't quite keep the doubt out of his voice, and Matthews shook his head once more.

"No, nineteen against fifteen, Sir Alfred," he said quietly. "It's time Grayson made a little payback for all Manticore's done for us."

"Sir?" Henries sat straighter, and Matthews gave him a thin smile.

"I realize your orders are to report to Admiral White Haven, Sir Alfred, but I'm countermanding them. Battle Squadron Two will combine with your command and depart within three hours for Casca. At the same time, I'll send dispatches to Admiral Koga and Admiral Truman, instructing them to join us there at their best speed. If the Peeps haven't already pinched the system out from Candor, you and I should have enough strength to discourage them from making the attempt. Once the other divisions join us, we'll move in and throw them out of Candor, then advance on Minette. With any luck, we can coordinate with Admiral Hemphill to take that system back, as well, and do it without diverting a single ship from Thetis."

"Have you discussed this with Protector Benjamin, Sir?" Henries asked, regarding the high admiral with pronounced respect. "That's half your battle fleet, High Admiral, and, with all due respect, you haven't had a hell of a lot of time to drill your people."

"We've had long enough for Lady Harrington to hold her own against you, Sir Alfred," Matthews pointed out with a smile. "BatRon Two's had considerably longer to drill than her squadron has, that's why I'm tapping it for this operation instead of BatRon One," he added almost apologetically to Honor, though his eyes never left Henries'. "If we can do that well against you Manticorans, I think we can manage against Peeps."

"Yes, Sir, I imagine you damned well can," Henries agreed with a slow grin. "But it's still a lot of exposure for your Navy."

"It is, but I have, indeed, received the Protector's approval."

"In that case, High Admiral, all I can say on behalf of my Queen is thank you. Thank you very much."

"It's no more than you've done for us already, Sir Alfred," Matthews said. Their eyes held a moment longer, and then the high admiral looked squarely at Honor. "I wish we could take you along as well, My Lady," he said, "but someone has to stay home to mind the store, and..."

He shrugged, and Honor nodded silently. A part of her demanded to go with Matthews and Henries, yet she knew he was right. He was already reducing Grayson's security by almost half, and well as her people were now doing in the sims and exercises, they still had a dangerous number of rough edges. If anyone was going to be left to, as he put it, "mind the store," then it made sense to leave the units whose combat effectiveness was most doubtful.

And, she realized with a trace of surprise, however inexperienced her ships might still be at working together, he was also leaving the more seasoned command team. He himself would have three veteran Manticoran admirals, Koga, Truman, and Henries, upon whom to lean, but he was leaving his most experienced admiral, her, behind, with an equally experienced flag captain, to cover Yeltsin’s Star. The realization sent a shiver through her, but then she took herself to task. She'd held the system once with only a heavy cruiser and a destroyer; she could darned well do the same thing with an almost full-strength squadron of superdreadnoughts! Especially, she thought wryly, with Alfredo Yu on her side for a change.

She knew she was whistling in the dark, that any threat she might have to counter today would be vastly stronger than the Masadan threat of four years past, but she ordered herself to forget that part. Nimitz stirred uneasily on her shoulder, and she reached up to rub his ears, but she kept her eyes on High Admiral Matthews.

"I'll leave covering orders for you, My Lady, but mostly they'll just be to use your discretion. I'll also leave the picket in Endicott alone. If you feel the need, you can draw on them, but I'd prefer you didn't expose Masada any more than you can help."

Honor nodded. The Endicott picket had nothing heavier than a battlecruiser, and, if Endicott was less strategically important than Yeltsin’s Star, Masada also lacked Grayson's heavy orbital fortifications. More to the point, perhaps, even the briefest of raids could have catastrophic consequences if the Peeps only realized it. If they managed just to drive out the pickets and pick off the relatively weak orbital bases the Star Kingdom had placed in Masada orbit, General Marcel's ground forces would be hopelessly inadequate to police the planet. The Peeps wouldn't have to get involved in ground combat at all; all they'd have to do would be isolate the planet from outside relief, then sit back and watch the fanatics dirt-side swamp Marcel's people. The resultant massacre of the "infidel occupiers" and the government of moderates Marcel had managed to put in place would force Manticore to mount a punitive expedition and, all too probably, produce a long, bloody, ugly guerrilla war before control could be reasserted.

The effect of that on the Star Kingdom's domestic opinion could be catastrophic to public support for the war and the Cromarty Government, and that didn't even count the price in blood and suffering, Masadan as well as Manticoran, it would entail.

"I understand, Sir," she said, and Matthews nodded.

"I thought you would." He looked back and forth between the two older, and junior, admirals for a moment, then drew a deep breath and shoved himself to his feet. "Very well, then. Let's..." he smiled at Honor as he used one of her favorite phrases "...be about it."