The Honor of the Queen

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Honor cut another morsel of steak and slid it into her mouth. Eating, she'd found, was a monumental pain when only one side of your face worked. The left side of her mouth was useless for chewing, and she had a humiliating tendency to discover food was dribbling down her dead cheek and chin only when it dripped onto her tunic. She'd made progress over the past few days, but not enough to be willing to eat with an audience.

But at least worrying about eating was fairly mundane, almost comforting, compared to other things. Five days had passed since Apollo's departure. If the Masadans were going to try something more—and despite all she'd said to Venizelos about the insanity of their doing so, she remained convinced they were—she knew it would be soon. Yet, to her own surprise, she could think about it almost calmly. She'd reached a state of balance, of acceptance. She was committed. She'd done all she could to prepare herself and her people. All that remained was to meet whatever came, and once that was accepted, grief and guilt and hatred, like terror, had faded into a strange sort of serenity. She knew it wouldn't last. It was simply the way she adjusted to the waiting, but she was grateful for it.

She chewed very carefully, keeping her numb inner cheek out from between her teeth and glad her tongue had escaped damage, then swallowed and reached for her beer. She sipped with equal care, cocking her head to minimize the chances of a spill. She was just setting her stein back down when the musical tone of a com terminal floated through the dining cabin hatch.

"Bleek?" Nimitz said from his end of the table.

"Beats me," she told him, and waited. After a moment, MacGuiness poked his head through the hatch with the expression of severe disapproval he reserved for occasions when his captain's meals were interrupted.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, but Commander Venizelos is on the com." The steward sniffed. "I told him you're eating, but he says it's important."

Honor's good eye twinkled, and she used her napkin to hide the smile that twitched the right corner of her mouth. MacGuiness had guarded her rare moments of privacy, especially during meals, like an irritable mastiff ever since she'd been wounded, and he would never forgive her if she giggled.

"I'm sure it really is, Mac," she soothed, and the steward stepped back with another sniff to let her pass, then crossed to the table and placed the warming cover over her plate. Nimitz looked up at him and, when MacGuiness shrugged his ignorance, hopped down and pattered after his person.

Honor hit the acceptance key to clear the "WAIT" prompt, and a worried-looking Venizelos appeared on the screen.

"What is it, Andy?"

"RD Niner-Three just picked up a hyper footprint at extreme range, Ma'am, right on the fifty light-minute mark."

Honor felt the right side of her face turn as masklike as the left. A crack yawned in her serenity, but she schooled herself into calm. At that range, there was time.

"Details?"

"All we've got so far is the alert sequence. Troubadour's standing by to relay the rest of the transmission as it comes in, but—" He paused as someone said something Honor couldn't quite catch, then looked back at his captain. "Scratch that, Skipper. Commander McKeon says Niner-Two is coming in now, reporting a low-powered wedge moving across its range. Niner-Three has the same bogey and makes it right on the ecliptic. Looks like they're heading around the primary to sneak up on Grayson from behind."

Honor nodded while her mind raced. That kind of course meant it could only be the Masadans, but they knew Masada still had at least one other hyper-capable ship, so it wasn't necessarily the battlecruiser either. And with Fearless's gravitics down, she couldn't read the drones' FTL pulses direct, which meant she couldn't send Troubadour out to check without losing her real-time link to her main tactical sensors.

"All right, Andy. Alert Admiral Matthews and bring our own wedge up. Have Rafe and Stephen start a plot. Until we get mass readings from one of the drones, that's all we can do."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

"I'll be right up, and—" Honor paused as she felt a presence behind her. She turned to look over her shoulder, and James MacGuiness folded his arms. She met his eyes for a moment, then turned back to Venizelos. "I'll be right up as soon as I finish lunch," she corrected herself meekly, and despite his tension, the exec grinned.

"Yes, Ma'am. I understand."

"Thank you." Honor cut the circuit, stood, and marched straight back to the table under her steward's stern gaze.

Ensign Wolcott felt her own apprehension reflected from the people about her as she updated the rough plot. Commander Venizelos circulated between the control stations, yet Wolcott was more conscious of the Captain's absence than of the Exec's presence. She suspected she wasn't alone in that, either, for she'd seen more than one other glance being cast at the empty chair at the center of the bridge.

She finished and sat back, and a quiet voice spoke in her left ear.

"Don't sweat it, Ensign. If the shit were about to hit the fan, the Skipper wouldn't have taken time to finish lunch."

She turned her head and blushed as she met Lieutenant Cardones' knowing eyes.

"Was it that obvious, Sir?"

"Well, yes." Cardones smiled—grinned, really—at her. "Of course, that could be because I wish she were up here, too. On the other hand, this—" he gestured at their plot "—tells me nothing much is going to happen for a while, and I'd a lot rather have the Old Lady rested when it does happen than have her waste energy holding my hand in the meantime."

"Yes, Sir." Wolcott looked back down at the plot. They had tentative mass readings from three drones now, and CIC called it ninety-plus percent that the bogey was the Peep battlecruiser. It wasn't a comforting thought.

She stared at the innocent, unthreatening lines of light and felt her pulse race. Her chestnut hair felt damp with sweat, and there was a hollow, singing void where her stomach should have been. She'd been terrified as Fearless charged into the missiles at Blackbird, but this was worse. Much worse. This time she knew what could happen, for she'd seen ships blown apart, seen the consequences of the cruelty visited upon her classmate Mai-ling Jackson, and lost two close friends aboard Apollo, and she was afraid to her very bones. An awareness of her own mortality filled her, and the enemy's slow, dragging approach gave her too much time to think about it.

"Sir," she said softly, without looking up, "you've seen more action than me, and you know the Captain better. Can we—" She bit her lip, then met his gaze almost imploringly. "How much chance do we really have, Sir?"

"Well ..." Cardones drew the word out and tugged on an earlobe. "Let me just put it this way, Carol. The first time the Skipper took me into action, I knew she was going to get me killed. I didn't think she was, I knew it, and I just about pissed myself, let me tell you."

He grinned again, and despite her fear, Wolcott's lips sketched a tremulous smile of their own.

"As it turned out, I was wrong," Cardones went on, "and it's a funny thing. You sort of forget to be scared with the Old Lady sitting behind you. It's like you know they'll never get her, and that means they won't get you. Or maybe it's just that you're too embarrassed to be scared when she isn't. Or something." He shrugged almost sheepishly.

"Anyway, she nailed a seven-and-a-half-million-ton Q-ship with a light cruiser. I figure that means she can take a battlecruiser with a heavy cruiser. And if she were worried, I imagine she'd be sitting up here fretting with the rest of us instead of finishing lunch."

"Yes, Sir." Wolcott smiled more naturally and turned back to her panel as her beeping earbug warned of fresh data from Troubadour. She updated the plot again, and Rafael Cardones looked at Commander Venizelos over her lowered head. Their eyes met with a certain sad empathy for Ensign Wolcott. They understood her need for reassurance perfectly ... and they also knew there was a universe of difference between engaging a Q-ship while it tried to run and a battlecruiser which had come to kill you.

Honor opened the life-support module, and Nimitz hopped into it with an air of resignation. At least this time it wasn't an emergency, and he took time to check the water and food dispenser and arrange his nest to his satisfaction. Then he curled down and looked up at her with an admonishing little sound.

"Yeah, and you be careful, too," she told him softly, caressing his ears. He closed his eyes to savor her touch, and then she stepped back and sealed the door.

"CIC confirms the drone mass readings, Ma'am," Venizelos reported as he met her at the lift. "She's coming round the backside of the primary."

"ETA?"

"She's still close to two billion klicks out, Ma'am, and she's holding her accel down to about fifty gees, probably to avoid detection. Her base velocity's up to five-niner-point-five thousand KPS. Assuming she holds current acceleration, she'll hit Grayson in about eight hours at a velocity of approximately seven-four thousand."

Honor nodded, then turned her head as someone else stepped out of the lift. Stores had found Commander Brentworth a Manticoran skin suit, and only the Grayson insignia stenciled on its shoulders picked him out from the rest of her crew as he gave her a tense smile.

"Still time to put you planet-side, Mark," she said, her voice low enough no one else could hear.

"This is my assigned duty post, Ma'am." His smile might be tense, but his voice was remarkably level. Honor's good eye warmed with approval, yet that didn't stop her from pressing the point.

"It may be your assigned post, but we're not going to be doing much liaising over the next few hours."

"Captain, if you want me off your ship, you can order me off. Otherwise, I'm staying. There ought to be at least one Grayson officer aboard if you're going up against those fanatics for us."

Honor started to speak again, then closed her mouth and gave a tiny headshake. She touched him lightly on the shoulder, then crossed to DuMorne's astrogation station to look down at his display.

Thunder of God —or Saladin, or whatever she wanted to call the battlecruiser—was holding her acceleration down, but that was probably just a general precaution. She was over a hundred light-minutes from Grayson on her present course, and she was still over forty light-minutes out from Yeltsin, which put her well beyond any range at which any Grayson sensor array could possibly pick up her impellers.

Of course, her captain knew he was up against modern warships, but he certainly didn't see Fearless or Troubadour on his own sensors, nor would the heavily stealthed drones be visible to him. So assuming he didn't know they'd been deployed (which he couldn't) and about their detection range and FTL transmission capability, he had to believe he was undetected so far.

She rubbed the tip of her nose. It wasn't the way she would have proceeded, given the disparity in weight of metal, but he'd clearly opted for a cautious approach. By the time he crossed the outer edge of the Grayson sensor envelope, he'd be on the far side of Yeltsin, and he'd almost certainly cut his drive before he did. That would extend his flight time but bring him around the primary on a ballistic course, and without the betraying grav signature of his impellers, it meant he'd be into missile range of Grayson and firing before active sensors saw him coming.

But she'd already seen him. The question was what she did with her information, and she bent over DuMorne's panel and laid in a rough line for a shorter, tighter course that originated at Grayson and curved around the primary inside Saladin's projected parabola.

"Punch this up and refine it for me, Steve. Assume we go to maximum acceleration on this course. Where would we come into his sensor range?"

DuMorne started crunching numbers, and she watched a hypothetical vector build around Yeltsin as he turned her rough course into a finished one.

"He'd pick us up right about here, Ma'am, one-three-five million klicks out from Yeltsin, in about one-niner-zero minutes. Our base velocity would be five-six-six-six-seven KPS. He'd be right here—about four-niner-five million klicks from Yeltsin and one-point-three billion klicks short of Grayson on his present track. Our vectors would merge two-point-three million klicks short of Grayson five-point-two-five hours after that. Of course, that assumes accelerations remain unchanged."

Honor nodded at the qualification. If anything in this universe was certain, it was that Saladin's acceleration wouldn't remain unchanged once she saw Fearless and Troubadour.

"And if we go around Yeltsin on a straight reciprocal of his course?"

"Just a second, Ma'am." DuMorne crunched more numbers, and a second possible vector appeared on his display. "Going at him that way, he'd pick us up approximately one-point-five billion klicks out of Grayson orbit in two-five-zero minutes. Closing velocity would be one-four-one-four-niner-seven KPS, and vectors would intercept four-eight minutes after detection."

"Thank you." Honor folded her hands and walked across to her command chair while she contemplated her options.

The one thing she absolutely couldn't do was sit here and let the enemy come at her. With that much time to build her velocity advantage, Saladin would have every edge there was for the opening missile engagement, and she could overfly Grayson—and Honor's ships—with relative impunity.

To prevent that, Honor could meet her head-on by simply reversing the battlecruiser's course. Saladin couldn't evade her if she did, but their closing velocity would be high, severely limiting engagement time. They would cross the powered missile envelope in little more than four minutes, and energy range in barely seven seconds. Saladin would have to accept action, but her captain could count on its being a very short one.

Alternatively, Honor could shape her own, tighter parabola inside Saladin's. The battlecruiser would still have the higher base velocity when she detected Fearless and Troubadour, but they'd be on convergent courses, and Honor's ships would be inside her. Her ships would have less distance to travel, and the battlecruiser would be unable to cut inside them even if she stopped stooging along and went to maximum power on her wedge.

The drawback was that it would be a converging engagement, a broadside duel in which the battlecruiser's heavier missile batteries, bigger magazines, and tougher sidewalls could be used to best advantage. The very length of the engagement would give her more time to pound Fearless and Troubadour apart ... but it would also give them more time to hurt her.

In essence, her choices were to go for a short, sharp closing engagement and hope she got lucky and Saladin didn't, or else go for a battering match.

Of course, she did have one major advantage, and she smiled hungrily at the thought, for it was the same one Saladin had enjoyed when Masada killed the Admiral; she knew where the enemy was and what he was doing, and he didn't know what she was up to.

She played with her projected course briefly, varying DuMorne's numbers on her command chair maneuvering repeater, then sighed. If Saladin had come in a bit more slowly or on a course with a broader chord, she might have had enough time to accelerate onto a converging course, then go ballistic to sneak into range with her own drives down. But Saladin hadn't, and she didn't.

And when she came right down to it, she couldn't risk the head-on interception, either. If that ship was irrational enough to press an attack now, then she had to assume its captain truly was crazy enough to nuke Grayson. That meant she couldn't engage hoping for a lucky hit when her failure to get it would let Saladin past her. It had to be the convergent approach.

She leaned back, rubbing the numb side of her face for a moment, and considered the way Saladin had chosen to come in. That was a cautious captain out there. Indeed, she was surprised to see such timidity, especially given that any attack on Grayson had to be an act of desperation. If the People's Navy had amassed one thing over fifty T-years of conquest, it was experience, but this fellow showed no sign of it. He certainly wasn't a bit like Theisman—not that she intended to complain about that!

But the point was that if she presented a cautious captain with a situation in which his only options were a fight to the death short of the planet or to break off, especially if she did it in a way which proved she'd been watching him when he'd believed it was impossible, he might just flinch. And if she got him to break away to rethink, it would use up hours of time ... and every hour he spent dithering would bring the relief from Manticore one hour closer.

Of course, it was also possible he might decide he'd given sneakiness his best shot and do what she would have done from the beginning—go straight for Fearless and dare her to do her worst before he blew her out of space.

She closed her good eye, the living side of her face calm and still, and made her decision.

"Com, get me Admiral Matthews."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Matthews looked anxious on Honor's screen, for Troubadour's gravitic sensors had been feeding the drone data to his own plot aboard Covington, as well, but he met her gaze levelly.

"Good afternoon, Sir." Honor formed her words with care, making herself sound cool and confident, as the rules of the game required.

"Captain," Matthews replied.

"I'm taking Fearless and Troubadour out to meet Saladin on a convergent course," Honor told him without further preamble. "The cautious way she's coming in may mean this is mainly a probe. If so, she may break off when she realizes we can intercept her."

She paused, and Matthews nodded, but she could see his mind working behind his eyes and knew he didn't believe it was only a probe, either.

"In the meantime," she went on after a moment, "there's always the chance Masada has more of its own hyper-capable ships left than we think, so Covington,Glory, and your LACs are going to have to watch the back door."

"Understood, Captain," Matthews said quietly, and Honor heard the unspoken addition. If Saladin did get past Fearless and Troubadour, they might at least take a big enough piece out of her for the Grayson ships to have a chance against her.

Might.

"We'll be on our way, then, Sir. Good luck."

"And to you, Captain Harrington. Go with God and our prayers."

Honor nodded and cut the circuit, then looked at DuMorne.

"Update your first course for the helm and get us under way, Steve," she said quietly.