Honor Among Enemies

Chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

Aubrey Wanderman trotted into the gym. A dozen Marines who'd gone from incomprehensible strangers to friends over the last few weeks nodded in welcome, and he heard a handful of cheerfully insulting greetings to the "vacuum-sucker" in their midst. He'd gotten used to that, and, rank permitting, gave as good as he got. It was odd, but he felt more at home here than he did anywhere else in the ship, and he suspected he was never going to be able to share the proper naval disdain for the "jarheads."

He was looking forward to his scheduled session, and that, too, was odd for someone who'd only considered such training out of desperation. But the fact was that he'd come to enjoy it, despite the bruises. His slender frame was filling out with muscle, and the discipline, and confidence, was almost more enjoyable than the sense of physical competence which came with it. Besides, he admitted, the gym was his refuge. The people here actually liked him... and he didn't have to worry about Steilman turning up. He grinned. If there was one place where Randy Steilman would never dare show his face, Marine Country was certainly it!

But he came to a surprised halt, smile vanishing, as he saw the two people in the center of the gym. Sergeant Major Hallowell wasn't in his usual, well-worn sweats. Today he was in a formal gi, belted with the black sash of his rank, and Lady Harrington stood facing him.

The Captain, too, wore a gi, and Aubrey blinked as he saw the seven braided rank knots on her belt. He'd known she held a black belt in coup de vitesse, but he'd never realized she ranked quite that high. There were only two formally awarded ranks above seventh; the handful of people who ever hit ninth were referred to simply as "Master Grade," and only a particularly foolish individual asked for a demonstration of why.

Sergeant Major Hallowell’s belt, however, had eight knots, and Aubrey swallowed. He'd known the Gunny was holding back in their sessions, but he hadn't guessed Hallowell was holding back quite that much, and he suddenly felt much better about his inability to score on his mentor. Yet the thought was almost lost in his surprise at seeing the Captain here. So far as he knew, she never came to the Marine's gym, and he felt a surge of ambiguous emotion over her presence.

He hadn't exactly been avoiding her, acting third-class petty officers seldom found it necessary to "avoid" the demigod who commanded a Queens ship, but he'd been acutely uncomfortable in her presence ever since Steilman had beaten him up. Which, he admitted, was entirely because he knew Ginger and Senior Chief Harkness had been right; he should have told the truth about what had happened and trusted the Captain to handle things. But he was still worried about what a nasty customer like Steilman might do to his friends, or have his friends do to them. Besides, he admitted, he'd gone from total disbelief that he could do anything to square accounts with Steilman on his own to a burning desire to do just that. It was personal, and while he knew that was in many ways a stupid attitude, it was the way he felt.

He'd been afraid the Captain herself would ask him what had happened, and he'd dreaded the possibility. He didn't think he could have lied to her, and he knew he couldn't have held back if she'd explicitly ordered him to come clean. But though she'd given him a few searching looks the next time he'd reported for duty, she hadn't pressed him. Yet she was here now, and if she saw him, would she guess why he was? And if she did, would she put a stop to it? That she could was a given, Aubrey couldn't conceive of anything the Captain couldn't do if she put her mind to it, and he wondered if that was why she'd come.

At the moment, however, her attention was entirely focused on Hallowell. They both wore heavier protective gear than the Marines usually did, and they bowed formally before they fell into their set positions.

All other activity had ceased as the rest of the Marines gathered silently around the central mat, and Aubrey joined them. The Captain's treecat lay stretched out along the uneven parallel bars, ears cocked as he watched, and Aubrey felt himself holding his breath as the Captain and Hallowell faced one another in absolute motionlessness. Tall as the Captain was, the Marine was ten centimeters taller, and Aubrey knew from painful experience just how fast he could be. But seconds ticked past with neither so much as twitching. They simply watched one another, with an intensity so focused Aubrey felt he could almost have reached out and touched it.

And then they moved. Despite the concentration with which he'd watched, Aubrey was never certain who initiated the movement. It was as if they'd moved absolutely simultaneously, their muscles controlled by a single brain, and their hands and feet struck with a speed and power he'd never imagined possible. He'd thought Major Hibson was greased lightning, and she was, but the Captain and the Sergeant Major were at least as fast, and both of them were far larger.

Coup de vitesse lacked the elegance of judo or akido. It was an offensive hard style which borrowed shamelessly from every source, from savate to t'ai chi, and distilled them all down into sheer ferocity. Aubrey knew some people regarded the coup as crude or pointed out that its offensive emphasis was far more wasteful of energy than akido, that most perfect of defensive arts. But as he watched the Captain and the Sergeant Major, he knew he was in the presence of two killers... and why Honor Harrington preferred the coup over all other forms. It was a moment of strange insight into his captain, an instant in which he realized she would never be content with the defense if she could possibly take the offense, and that no one had ever taught her how to back up. She moved directly into Hallowell, and despite his greater reach and strength and his higher rating, it was she who pushed the attack.

Mittened hands and padded feet thudded on their protective gear, and he watched them execute combinations he couldn't even have described, much less, laughable thought!, executed himself. Their faces were blank with concentration, and then he winced as Hallowell’s left foot slammed its sole into the Captains midriff.

But she'd seen it coming. She couldn't evade it, so she moved into it, striking down with her right elbow an instant before his foot made contact. Aubrey heard the sharp crack! as her padded elbow hammered the Sergeant Majors thinly fleshed shin, and Hallowell grunted as the blow negated much of his kick's force. Enough got through to make the Captain grunt in turn, but her expression didn't even flicker as her striking arm rebounded and straightened. Her fist struck straight for Hallowell’s solar plexus, but his own arm came down to block. It deflected her strike, but while he was blocking that hand, her left hand came up in a vicious chop to the back of his still-extended leg's knee. The knee bent sharply in reflexive response, and she spun to his right on one foot while the other swept for his right ankle and her right arm flailed around in what looked like an uncontrolled windmill but was nothing of the kind. Hallowell moved his head, snapping it out of the path of her blow even as an arm flew up to block, but her fist dropped instantly under the block and hammered his rib cage just as her scything foot found his ankle. He went down, deliberately throwing his weight towards her legs in a bid to take her down with him, and he almost succeeded. He did bring her down, but she folded in a move so controlled it looked as if she'd wanted him to.

Her left arm shot out, snaking through his left armpit from behind, then down to catch his wrist. She half-turned away from him and jerked up on his wrist, straining his elbow backward and leaning hard to her left to force him over onto his right side, which pinned that arm beneath him, and her own right hand flashed down in a chop that stopped dead the instant it touched the side of his exposed neck. "Point," Hallowell acknowledged in unruffled tones, and they rolled apart and came back to their feet.

The Marine worked his left arm, flexing the fingers of that hand, and smiled. "Iris Babcock taught you that one, didn't she, Ma'am?"

"As a matter of fact, she did," the Captain agreed with an answering smile.

"She always was a sneaky one," Hallowell observed. He finished working his arm and bowed again. "On the other hand," he added, "so am I," and the two of them came set once more.

Twenty minutes later, Aubrey Wanderman knew he never, and he meant never, wanted to get the Captain or Sergeant Major Hallowell pissed at him. The Sergeant Major had out-pointed the Captain by seven to six, but even Aubrey knew it could have gone the other way just as easily. She'd also managed something else Aubrey never had; Gunny Hallowell was actually sweating and out of breath when they exchanged bows at the end of the session. Of course, the Captain was, too, and she had an interesting bruise developing on her right cheek.

"Thank you, Gunny," she said quietly as they stepped off the mat and the rest of the gym came back to life. "I haven't had a bout that good since the last time Iris and I sparred."

"You're welcome, My Lady," Hallowell rumbled back, massaging an ache in the back of his neck. "Not too shabby for a Navy officer, either, if the Captain will permit."

"The Captain will permit," she agreed with a dimpled smile. "We'll have to try it again."

"As the Captain says," Hallowell agreed with a grin. She nodded, then glanced at Aubrey.

"Hello, Wanderman. I understand you've been working out with the Sergeant Major and Senior Chief Harkness."

"Uh, yes, Ma'am" Aubrey felt his face flaming, but she only cocked her head and regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, then looked back to Hallowell.

"How's he shaping up, Gunny?"

"Fair to middling, Milady. Fair to middling. He was a little hesitant when we started, but he's coming in like he means business now." Aubrey felt his blush deepen, but Hallowell gave him a wink as he smiled at the Captain. "We're still working on basic moves, but he's quick and I don't think he makes the same mistake twice very often."

"Good." The Captain mopped her face with a towel then draped it around her neck and bent to pick up her treecat as he scampered across to her. She held him in her arms and smiled at Aubrey. "I'd say you're putting on some muscle, too, Wanderman. I like that. I always like to see my people stay in shape... and I like to think they can take care of themselves if they have to."

Her 'cat cocked his head at Aubrey, and the young man felt his pulse stop. She knew, he thought. She knew the real reason he was here, what he was trying to get into shape for. And then the second part of it hit him. She not only knew, she approved. No captain could come right out and tell a member of her crew she wanted him to kick the shit out of another member of her crew, but she'd just told him so anyway, and he felt his shoulders straighten.

"Thank you, Milady," he said quietly. "I'd like to think I could do that, if I had to. Of course, I still have an awful lot to learn from the Gunny and Senior Chief Harkness."

"Well, they're both good teachers," the Captain said lightly, and slapped him smartly on the shoulder, brown eyes bright with a curiously serious twinkle. "On the other hand, I've done all I can for you by trying to wear the Gunny out. From here on, you're on your own."

"I understand, Milady." Aubrey eyed the smiling Hallowell and felt a crooked grin on his own face. "Just as long as you didn't make him decide to take it out on me, Ma'am!" he added.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that, Wanderman," Hallowell said. "After all," he added, and gave the Captain a huge smile as he and Aubrey ended in unison, "this ship has a fine doctor!"

"Have a seat, Rafe." Honor tipped her own chair back and pointed to the one on the far side of her desk. Nimitz and Samantha sat side by side on the perch above it, and Cardones smiled wryly at them as he sat. Honor followed his glance and shrugged. Samantha was just as capable of operating lifts as Nimitz was, and the 'cats appeared to be trying to split their time so that neither had to abandon his or her person for too extended a period.

"You said you had something new, Ma'am?" the exec said, and she nodded.

"We didn't realize it right away, but we hit a minor gold mine aboard Vaubon after all. You know Carol's been working her way through everything we took off her?" Cardones nodded. Lieutenant Wolcott had wound up filling the slot of Honor's intelligence officer, and she'd shown a gratifying flair for the position. "Well, last night she and Scotty were going over some of the personal memo pads we recovered, and they turned up something very interesting."

"Carol and Scotty, hm?" Cardones glanced back up at the treecats, then cocked an eyebrow at his captain, who shrugged. Regulations forbade liaisons between officers in the same chain of command, but Tremaine and Wolcott held the same rank, though Scotty was senior, and they were in different departments. "So what did they find?" Cardones asked.

"This." Honor laid a pad on the desk. "It seems Lieutenant Houghton keeps a diary."

"A diary?" Cardones eyes narrowed. "Does Caslet know?"

"I don't know, and I don't intend to tell him," Honor replied. "Obviously we'd just as soon not let him know how much we know, but I don't want him coming down on Houghton for it, either. For one thing, he likes the man, and, in fairness to Houghton, I don't think he put any classified elements into writing. But a little reading between the lines tells us a lot."

"Such as?" Cardones leaned forward, face intent.

"Most of it's as personal as you'd expect, but there are several references in here to 'the squadron,' though he was careful never to give its strength. There's also a rather pungent comment on orders to assist Andy merchies, which suggests an effort at diplomatic spin control in the event their activities get blown, and a reference to a Citizen Admiral Giscard. I didn't really expect to find anything, but I checked our database anyway, and we do have a little on Giscard. He was only a commander before the coup attempt, but we've got excerpts from the package ONI put together on him because he'd served as a naval attaché on Manticore... and because he'd served as an instructor at their war college."

"A commander?" Cardones blinked, and Honor nodded.

"I suspect he'd have held higher rank if he'd been a Legislaturalist. You know how hard it was for anyone else to break into flag rank, they only made Alfredo Yu a captain, for goodness sake! But it seems Javier Giscard was one of the PN's foremost advocates of commerce warfare."

"That would make him a logical choice to send out here then, wouldn't it?" Cardones murmured.

"Indeed it would. I wish we had more details on him, though I suppose we're lucky to have even this much on someone who was so junior under the old regime. I also wish we'd known about this before we sent Vaubon off.. There's a note in our file on him that ONI has a good bit more information than we do," Cardones nodded; even with modern data-storing technology, there was no way everything from ONI's massive files on enemy officers could have been crammed into a single ship's memory, "but what we do have suggests that he advocated deploying heavy forces for systematic operations. He also insisted on the necessity of a proper scouting element for the main force. Apparently, he believes in monitoring target systems in some detail before moving in, which is probably what Vaubon was up to when Caslet stumbled across Sukowski and found out about Warnecke."

"I don't like the sound of that." Cardones rubbed an eyebrow. "If they picked him to put his theories into practice, then they probably let him build the kind of force he wanted."

"Exactly. I'd say we've got an excellent chance of being up against at least a squadron of CAs, possibly even battlecruisers, with light cruiser scouting elements. CLs would be bad enough, but heavy cruisers or battlecruisers could blow away almost any of our convoy escorts, given our general drawdown of forces."

"And then there's us," Cardones said quietly.

"And then there's us." Honor toyed with the memo pad while she frowned down at it. "If Giscard is out here," she said at last in the tone of one thinking aloud, "and if he's got all those Peep legations and trade missions for an intelligence net, then he's bound to have gotten a feel for local shipping patterns, right?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Cardones nodded, wondering where she was headed, and she grimaced.

"All right, let's go further and assume he already has, or shortly will have, picked up on the fact that we have Q-ships in the area. From our existing loss patterns, allowing for the Peeps' involvement in them, he must have been operating spread out in detachments. He may have been operating his heavy ships solo, but its more likely he's kept them in at least two-ship divisions, his war college lectures were fairly emphatic about the necessity of never taking your security for granted and keeping your assets concentrated. But if you were Giscard and someone told you there was a squadron of Manticoran Q-ships in the area, would you change your ops pattern?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Cardones replied after several moments of thought. "If he stressed concentration of force for routine raiding, then he'd pull into larger forces. He couldn't cover as much ground, but he'd be better placed to deal with one or two of us. And, of course, he couldn't count on us operating solo, which would increase his own need to concentrate."

"Agreed, but I was thinking of something a bit more extreme than that."

"More extreme?" Cardones frowned. "How, Ma'am?"

"Let's grant that Giscard is at least as smart as we are, but that he doesn't know we've taken one of his ships or that we have any reason to suspect his presence. Given that, in his place I'd assume my Manticoran counterpart would do precisely what we have been doing: move into the area of maximum threat and patrol it."

She glanced at Cardones, who nodded, then went on "All right. Now, if I were he and operating from those assumptions, I think I might just decide to look some where else. Somewhere where I could swat a lot of ships, for relatively little risk, while all the Q-ships were busy looking elsewhere for me."

"I suppose that makes sense," Cardones agreed studying his COs face. "The question would be where you could find a target like that."

"Right here," Honor said quietly, and lit a holo chart. It showed the approaches to the Confederacy's south-western quadrant, and she threw a light dot into it about twenty light-years short of Sachsen. Cardones looked at it for a moment, and then his eyes narrowed in understanding, for the light dot was in the area known as the Selker Rift. "Rifts" were volumes of hyper-space between gravity waves. They weren't uncommon; in fact, most of h-space was one huge rift, since grav waves tended to be quite narrow in interstellar terms. Unfortunately, the waves' crazy-quilt patterns meant most voyages required a starship to cross at least one. And since each wave was more powerful than anything man could generate and had its own unique frequency and flux, interference between it and an impeller wedge instantly generated an energy release sufficient to destroy any ship ever built.

That was the reason colonizing expeditions had continued to use cryo-equipped sublight, normal-space vessels, despite voyages which might last centuries, before the invention of the Warshawski sail and gravitic anomaly detector. Survey ships crewed by daredevil specialists had used hyper to explore the universe, yet the death toll had been heavy. Crews had continued to come forward, drawn by a combination of wanderlust, adrenaline addiction, and incredible salaries, but people taking their families to the stars had settled for n-space and cryo.

In 1273 p.o., however, hyper-physicist Adrienne Warshawski had mounted radically redesigned and much more powerful drive nodes, which she'd dubbed "alpha nodes", on the test ship Fleetwing and produced the very first Warshawski sails. On the gross scale, they were simply the two stressed-space bands of a normal impeller wedge, but Fleetwing had projected them as enormous disks, perpendicular to her central axis, not as a wedge. The real sorcery had lain in what Warshawski had managed to do with those sails, for what she'd done was to give them a "tuning" ability that allowed them to adjust phase and merge with a naturally occurring grav wave. They stabilized Fleetwing relative to the grav wave, and by making subtle adjustments to their strength and frequency, they generated a "grab factor" which allowed her to use the wave itself, in conjunction with her inertial compensator, to generate stupendous rates of acceleration. And just as a side benefit, the interface between sail and wave produced eddies of preposterously high energy levels which could be tapped by a ship underway, allowing her to enjoy enormous savings in reactor mass.

Needless to say, the Warshawski sail revolutionized interstellar travel. Rather than avoid grav waves like the plague, captains began seeking them out, aided by the gravitic detectors she'd already produced (and which were still known as "Warshawski’s" in her honor), for they had changed from death traps to the most efficient means of transportation known to man. A ship could generate the same sustained velocities under impeller drive, but the evasive routing required to avoid waves added enormously to voyage times, and the consequences of encountering an unexpected wave remained fatal. By riding the waves, however, a starship accelerated faster, cost less to operate, and eliminated the danger of running into one of them.

At the same time, it was almost always necessary for a ship to make at least one transition (and usually more between grav waves on any extended voyage, and those transitions were made, very cautiously, under impeller drive.

Especially, Cardones thought, in the Selker Rift.

The major interstellar routes had been worked out to avoid the wider rifts. It added a bit of length to several such routes, but that was considered well worthwhile in terms of safety and cost efficiency. The Selker Rift, however, was impossible to avoid. There simply was no way around it for vessels bound from the Empire to Silesia. And just to make things worse, it was also home to the rogue grav wave known as the Selker Shear.

Most grav waves were "locked," part of a web of mutually anchored and anchoring stress patterns which forced its strands to retain fixed relationships to one another. They moved over the years, but slowly and gradually, as a whole and in predictable fashion.

Rogue waves didn't. Rogue waves were spurs or flares thrown off by locked waves; they weren't part of the web.

They could appear and disappear without warning or shift position with incredible speed, and while most hyper-physicists believed rogue waves were, in fact, cyclical phenomena whose timing could be predicted once enough data had been accumulated, accumulating data on them was exactly what merchant skippers were most eager to avoid. But the Selker Rift couldn't be avoided, and so ships moving between the Empire and Confederacy crossed it under impeller drive at extremely low velocities, on the order of .16 c, in order to be sure they could dodge if the Selker Shear suddenly appeared on their detectors. It meant they took over five days just to cross the Rift, but it also meant they made it alive.

"You think the Peeps might hit a convoy in the Rift?" Cardones' question was a statement, and Honor nodded.

"Why not?" she asked quietly. "By now, everyone in the Confederacy knows we're using only destroyers to escort our convoys. That's enough to deter regular raiders, but not heavy cruisers or battlecruisers. And the particle density's abnormally low in the Rift. That gives greater sensor reach if you want to establish a picket line, and the low speed of your targets would make it a lot easier to intercept any you picked up. Not only that, you can go after them under impeller drive, with sidewall up and without losing your missile capability. Heavy ships could slaughter the escorts... and then run down the merchies at leisure."

"And take out as many as forty or fifty freighters at once," Cardones said softly.

"Exactly. Of course," Honor crossed her legs and laced her hands together over her right knee, "this is all speculation. We can't afford to overlook the possibility that he might choose to go right on working his present hunting grounds, or even try both ops at once, though that doesn't feel right, somehow. It's too foreign to his insistence on concentration of force."

"I don't think we can afford to dismiss it out of hand, though, Ma'am."

"No, we can't do that." Honor frowned at the holo. then sighed. "Well, I only see one way to proceed. We'll pass Sachsen the day after tomorrow. I was going to do a simple fly-by and continue straight to Marsh, but now I think we'll have to stop. It's possible the Andies or Confeds have something in-system that might want to come along to Marsh."

"Unlikely, Ma'am," Cardones pointed out. "The Confed Detachment was about ready to ship out against the Psyche secessionists when we came through, and unless there's actually a convoy in-system, the biggest thing the Andies'll have available will be a tin can or two."

"I know. That's why I was going to bypass until this new information came to light. Now we might as well check, since we'll have to stop long enough to drop fresh dispatches for the squadron with our embassy. I'll send Alice orders to continue her operations but to switch to Andy or Confed transponder codes and be darned sure she stays covert on any interception until she's positive what she's dealing with.

"At the same time," she went on, leaning back once more, "I'll send dispatches to Gregor and the Admiralty. If Giscard is operating out here, we need more than Q-ships, and we need it fast. I don't know where Admiral Caparelli will find the extra units, but he's simply going to have to come up with them from somewhere."

"And the attack on Warnecke?"

"We'll carry through on that with or without Andy support," Honor said crisply. "Going after raiders at the source is the best way to cut down on their operations, and this is the first base we've been able to ID. More to the point, Warnecke's a lot more dangerous than the average freelancer. We need to take him out, hard, as quickly as possible."

"And afterward, Ma'am?"

"Afterward, I think we'll have a look at the Rift. We can look after ourselves better than any merchant ship, if we have to, but what I'd like to do is just cruise through the area, using an Andy transponder setting, I think, while we see if we can pick up any sign of a picket line. They won't expect military-grade sensors aboard a merchie, and if they have orders to assist Andy shipping, they should leave us alone if they think that's what we are. We should be able to cross the area fairly safely, and if we get a sniff of lurking warships, it should confirm our hypothesis for higher command authority."

"What do we do in the short term if we pick them up, Ma'am?"

"One thing we don't do is engage them," Honor said firmly. "If they're operating with battlecruisers, they'll be a lot faster than us. And they can take us out eventually even in the Rift where we can use our pods and even if we get lucky against the first one or two ships. And if they've put together a picket line, somebody's going to notice if we start punching out their neighbors." She shook her head. "The Admiralty never intended us to take on capital ships, and I don't have any desire to rewrite our orders in that regard. Maybe with Fearless or Nike I'd feel more aggressive; with Wayfarer, I feel a very strong desire to be as inoffensive as possible where a Peep squadron is concerned."

"Um." Cardones considered that for all of two seconds, then grinned. "I can live with that approach, Ma'am," he said cheerfully.