Storm From the Shadows Read online

  STORM FROM THE SHADOWS

  David Weber

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by David Weber

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4165-9147-8

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-9147-4

  Cover art by David Mattingly

  Interior schematics by Thomas Marrone, Thomas Pope and William H. Edwards

  First printing, March 2009

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Weber, David, 1952–

  Storm from the shadows / David Weber.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-9147-4

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-9147-8

  1. Harrington, Honor (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Space warfare—Fiction. 3. Women soldiers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.E217S76 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2008042780

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Always for Sharon.

  Baen Books by David Weber

  Honor Harrington:

  On Basilisk Station

  Honor Among Enemies

  The Honor of the Queen

  In Enemy Hands

  The Short Victorious War

  Echoes of Honor

  Field of Dishonor

  Ashes of Victory

  Flag in Exile

  War of Honor

  At All Costs

  Honorverse:

  Crown of Slaves (with Eric Flint)

  The Shadow of Saganami

  Storm from the Shadows

  edited by David Weber:

  More than Honor

  Changer of Worlds

  Worlds of Honor

  The Service of the Sword

  Mutineers' Moon

  The Armageddon Inheritance

  Heirs of Empire

  Empire from the Ashes

  In Fury Born

  The Apocalypse Troll

  The Excalibur Alternative

  Bolos!

  Old Soldiers

  Oath of Swords

  The War God's Own

  Wind Rider's Oath

  with Steve White:

  Crusade

  The Shiva Option

  In Death Ground

  Insurrection

  The Stars At War

  The Stars At War II

  with Eric Flint:

  1633

  1634: The Baltic War

  with John Ringo:

  March Upcountry

  March to the Sea

  March to the Stars

  We Few

  with Linda Evans:

  Hell's Gate

  Hell Hath No Fury

  An Authorial Note

  Many readers will notice that some of the earlier chapters in this book retell, or fill in between, events which occurred in At All Costs. The retold material constitutes a very small portion of the entire book, and there is a definite method to my madness in taking this approach.

  Once upon a time, in the simpler days of yore when I first began the Honor Harrington series, I hadn't quite visualized the scale of the project upon which I'd embarked. I always knew the story that I wanted to tell, and I'd always intended to arrive at the portion of the story line of which this book is a part. What I hadn't really counted on was the degree of detail, the number of characters, and the sheer size of the canvas I was going to end up with.

  It isn't often that a writer is blessed with the response the Honor Harrington books have generated. When it happened to me, I was deeply gratified, and that's still true today. I also think that when readers are kind enough to support a series as strongly as these books have been supported, the writer has not only a special relationship with his readers, but also a special responsibility to them. At the same time, when a series extends through as many novels (thirteen, including Shadow of Saganami and Crown of Slaves) and anthologies, the writer sometimes finds himself forced to consider taking the storyline in directions of which not all of his readers are likely to approve. There's a fine balance between going where you know you have to go with a book and worrying about how you meet that special responsibility to your readership. And, to be honest, the Honor books reached that point about two novels ago.

  Some of my readers who have spoken to me at conventions know that Honor was supposed to be killed in At All Costs under my version of what Mentor of Arisia used to refer to as his "visualization of the cosmic all." I always knew that killing Honor would have been a high-risk move, and that many readers of the series would have been very angry with me, but at the time I'd organized the timeline of Honor's life—that is, before I'd even begun On Basilisk Station—I hadn't really anticipated the fierce loyalty of the readership she was going to generate. Nor, for that matter, had I fully realized just how fond I was going to become of the character. Nonetheless, I remained steadfastly determined (my wife Sharon will tell you that I can sometimes be just a tad stubborn) to hew to my original plan. The fact that I'd always visualized Honor as being based on Horatio Nelson only reinforced my determination, since the Battle of Manticore was supposed to be the equivalent of his Battle of Trafalgar. Like Nelson, Honor had been supposed to fall in battle at the moment of victory in the climactic battle which saved the Star Kingdom of Manticore and ratified her as the Royal Manticoran Navy's greatest heroine.

  At the same time, however, I had always intended to continue writing books in the "Honorverse." The great challenge of the later books was supposed to emerge about twenty-five or thirty years after Honor's death, and the primary viewpoint characters would have been her children, Raoul and Katherine. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending upon your viewpoint—Eric Flint screwed up my original timetable when he introduced the character of Victor Cachat and asked me for an enemy which Manticoran and Havenite secret agents could agree to fight as allies, despite the fact that their star nations were at war. I suggested Manpower, which worked very well for Eric's story. But, especially when I incorporated Eric's characters into the mainstream novels, and when Eric and I decided to do Crown of Slaves, it also pulled the entire storyline forward by two or three decades. Which meant I wasn't going to have time to kill Honor off and get her children grown up before the Manpower challenge hit Manticore.

  I wasn't precisely heartbroken when I realized I no longer had any choice about granting Honor a reprieve. Not only did I think her fans would be less likely to come looking for me with pitchforks and ropes, but the closer I'd come to actually killing her, the less and less I'd liked the thought myself.

  This still left me with something of a problem, however, since Honor had grown too senior to be sent on any more "death rides." I needed some additional, less senior officers who could become the fresh viewpoint figures on the front lines that Raoul and Katherine had originally been supposed to provide. So, I wrote Shadow of Saganami, and it and Crown of Slaves were supposed to be the lead books in two separate, subsidiary series. They were supposed to proceed separately from but in parallel with the "main stem" novels in which Honor would continue to be a primary viewpoint character. I actually intended for one of her kids to take the lead in the military portion of the storyline and for the other to become the "spymas
ter," which would have permitted a logical division of the Honorverse into two separate but related storylines. And these two new series were also supposed to be a device which would allow me to cut down on the amount of "back story" which had to be included in each of those "main stem" books.

  To some extent, that original plan continues to hold good, but I've found myself forced to modify it. What I've discovered over the last two or three novels is that incorporating those two subsidiary series much more closely into the main series permits me to advance the story line on a broader front and focus on specific areas of the same story in separate novels. Thus, Shadow of Saganami and Storm from the Shadows both focus primarily on the events in and around the Talbott Cluster, and Crown of Slaves and Torch of Freedom focus on the "covert war" between the two sides and on the moral issues of genetic slavery. And Mission of Honor, the next "main stem" book, will weave events from both of those areas together and advance the general storyline towards its final destination. (Which does not now necessarily include the demise of Honor Alexander-Harrington.)

  Both Torch of Freedom and Mission of Honor have been delivered and are currently in the production pipeline, so hopefully readers won't be left too long between books.

  One aspect of this new master scheme of mine, however, is that scenes which have appeared in one book may very well appear—usually from another character's point of view—in another book. This is not an effort simply to increase word count. It is intended to serve the function of more fully developing additional characters, giving different perspectives on the events they observe and participate in, filling in missing details, and—perhaps most importantly of all—nailing down exactly when these books' events occur relative to one another.

  So far, this seems to be working out fairly well. That doesn't necessarily mean it will continue to do so, or that something won't come along to send me off in yet another direction, but at this moment, I don't expect that to happen. So for the foreseeable future, at least, expect this pattern to continue.

  And I suppose I should also warn you that the ride is going to get a lot rougher for the good guys over the next few books.

  Take care,

  David Weber

  Chapter One

  "Talk to me, John!"

  Rear Admiral Michelle Henke's husky contralto came sharp and crisp as the information on her repeater tactical display shifted catastrophically.

  "It's still coming in from the Flag, Ma'am," Commander Oliver Manfredi, Battlecruiser Squadron Eighty-One's golden-haired chief of staff, replied for the squadron's operations officer, Lieutenant Commander John Stackpole. Manfredi was standing behind Stackpole, watching the ops section's more detailed displays, and he had considerably more attention to spare for updates at the moment than Stackpole did. "I'm not sure, but it looks—"

  Manfredi broke off, and his jaw clenched. Then his nostrils flared and he squeezed Stackpole's shoulder before he turned his head to look at his admiral.

  "It would appear the Peeps have taken Her Grace's lessons to heart, Ma'am," he said grimly. "They've arranged a Sidemore all their own for us."

  Michelle looked at him for a moment, and her expression tightened.

  "Oliver's right, Ma'am," Stackpole said, looking up from his own display as the changing light codes finally restabilized. "They've got us boxed."

  "How bad is it?" she asked.

  "They've sent in three separate groups," Stackpole replied. "One dead astern of us, one at polar north, and one at polar south. The Flag is designating the in-system force we already knew about as Bogey One. The task group to system north is Bogey Two; the one to system south is Bogey Three; and the one directly astern is Bogey Four. Our velocity relative to Bogey Four is just over twenty-two thousand kilometers per second, but range is less than thirty-one million klicks."

  "Understood."

  Michelle looked back at her own, smaller, display. At the moment, it was configured to show the entire Solon System, which meant, by definition, that it was nowhere as detailed as Stackpole's. There wasn't room for that on a plot small enough to deploy from a command chair—not when it was displaying the volume of something the size of a star system, at any rate. But it was more than detailed enough to confirm what Stackpole had just told her. The Peeps had just duplicated exactly what had happened to them at the Battle of Sidemore, and managed to do it on a more sophisticated scale, to boot. Unless something reduced Task Force Eighty-Two's rate of acceleration, none of the three forces which had just dropped out of hyper-space to ambush it could hope to overtake it. Unfortunately, they didn't need to physically overtake the task force in order to engage it—not when current-generation Havenite multidrive missiles had a maximum powered range from rest of over sixty million kilometers.

  And, of course, there was always the possibility that there was yet another Havenite task group waiting in hyper, prepared to drop back into normal space right in their faces as they approached the system hyper limit . . .

  No, she decided after a moment. If they had the hulls for a fourth force, it would have already translated in, as well. They'd really have us in a rat trap if they'd been able to box us from four directions. I suppose it's possible that they do have another force in reserve—that they decided to double-think us and hold number four until they've had a chance to see which way we run. But that'd be a violation of the KISS principle, and this generation of Peeps doesn't go in much for that sort of thing, damn it.

  She grimaced at the thought, but it was certainly true.

  Honor's been warning us all that these Peeps aren't exactly stupid, she reflected. Not that any of us should've needed reminding after what they did to us in Thunderbolt! But I could wish that just this once she'd been wrong.

  Her lips twitched in a humorless smile, but she felt herself coming back on balance mentally, and her brain whirred as tactical possibilities and decision trees spilled through it. Not that the primary responsibility was hers. No, that weight rested on the shoulders of her best friend, and despite herself, Michelle was grateful that it wasn't hers . . . a fact which made her feel more than a little guilty.

  One thing was painfully evident. Eighth Fleet's entire operational strategy for the last three and a half months had been dedicated to convincing the numerically superior navy of the Republic of Haven to redeploy, adopt a more defensive stance while the desperately off-balance Manticoran Alliance got its own feet back under it. Judging by the ambush into which the task force had sailed, that strategy was obviously succeeding. In fact, it looked like it was succeeding entirely too well.

  It was so much easier when we could keep their command teams pruned back . . . or count on State Security to do it for us. Unfortunately, Saint-Just's not around anymore to shoot any admiral whose initiative might make her dangerous to the régime, is he? Her lips twitched with bitterly sardonic amusement as she recalled the relief with which Manticore's pundits, as well as the woman in the street, had greeted the news of the Committee of Public Safety's final overthrow. Maybe we were just a little premature about that, she thought, since it means that this time around, we don't have anywhere near the same edge in operational experience, and it shows. This batch of Peeps actually knows what it's doing. Damn it.

  "Course change from the Flag, Ma'am," Lieutenant Commander Braga, her staff astrogator announced. "Two-niner-three, zero-zero-five, six-point-zero-one KPS squared."

  "Understood," Michelle repeated, and nodded approvingly as the new vector projection stretched itself across her plot and she recognized Honor's intention. The task force was breaking to system south at its maximum acceleration on a course that would take it as far away from Bogey Two as possible while maintaining at least the current separation from Bogey Four. Their new course would still take them deep into the missile envelope of Bogey One, the detachment covering the planet Arthur, whose orbital infrastructure had been the task force's original target. But Bogey One consisted of only two superdreadnoughts and seven battlecruisers, supported by less than
two hundred LACs, and from their emissions signatures and maneuvers, Bogey One's wallers were pre-pod designs. Compared to the six obviously modern superdreadnoughts and two LAC carriers in each of the three ambush forces, Bogey One's threat was minimal. Even if all nine of its hyper-capable combatants had heavy pod loads on tow, its older ships would lack the fire control to pose a significant threat to Task Force Eighty-Two's missile defenses. Under the circumstances, it was the same option Michelle would have chosen if she'd been in Honor's shoes.

  I wonder if they've been able to ID her flagship? Michelle wondered. It wouldn't have been all that hard, given the news coverage and her "negotiations" in Hera.

  That, too, of course, had been part of the strategy. Putting Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, in command of Eighth Fleet had been a carefully calculated decision on the Admiralty's part. In Michelle's opinion, Honor was obviously the best person for the command anyway, but the appointment had been made in a glare of publicity for the express purpose of letting the Republic of Haven know that "the Salamander" was the person who'd been chosen to systematically demolish its rear-area industry.

  One way to make sure they honored the threat, Michelle thought wryly as the task force came to its new heading in obedience to the commands emanating from HMS Imperator, Honor's SD(P) flagship. After all, she's been their personal nightmare ever since Basilisk station! But I wonder if they got a fingerprint on Imperator at Hera or Augusta? Probably—they knew which ship she was aboard at Hera, at least. Which probably means they know who it is they've just mousetrapped, too.

  Michelle grimaced at the thought. It was unlikely any Havenite flag officer would have required extra incentive to trash the task force if she could, especially after Eighth Fleet's unbroken string of victories. But knowing whose command they were about to hammer certainly couldn't make them any less eager to drive home their attack.