The Honor of the Qween hh-2 Read online

  Her subordinates nodded.

  "Commander Truman, your ship will take point. Commander McKeon, I want you tucked in astern. Stay tight and tie into Fearless's radar to cover the gap in your own coverage. Clear?"

  "Yes, Ma'am," her captains replied in unison.

  "Very well, then, people. Let's be about it."

  * * *

  "Captain? I have a transmission from Grayson," Lieutenant Metzinger said, and the tension on Fearless's bridge redoubled. Barely five minutes had passed since the ambush, and unless the Graysons were stupid as well as crazy, they couldn't possibly expect to talk their way out of this with a message sent before their ships had even opened fire!

  But Metzinger wasn't finished.

  "It's from Ambassador Langtry," she added, and Honor's eyebrows rose.

  "From Sir Anthony?"

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  "Put it on my screen."

  Honor felt a surge of relief as Sir Anthony's face appeared before her, for the wall of his embassy office was clearly visible behind him, and Reginald Houseman stood beside the ambassador's chair. She'd been afraid the entire diplomatic staff was in Grayson custody; if they were still in the safety of their own embassy, the situation might not be totally out of control after all. But then the ambassador's grim, almost frightened expression registered. And where was Admiral Courvosier?

  "Captain Harrington." The ambassador's voice was taut. "Grayson Command Central has just picked up a hyper footprint which I assume—hope—is your squadron. Be advised Masadan warships are patrolling the Yeltsin System." Honor stiffened. Could it be those LACs hadn't been Grayson ships? Only, if they weren't, then how had they gotten here, and why had they—?

  But the prerecorded message was still playing, and the ambassador's next words shattered her train of thought like a hammer on crystal.

  "Assume any ship encountered is hostile, Captain, and be advised there are at least two—I repeat, at least two —modern warships in the Masadan order of battle. Our best estimate is that they're a pair of cruisers, probably Haven-built." The ambassador swallowed, but he'd been a highly decorated Marine officer, and he carried through grimly. "No one realized the Masadans had them, and Admiral Yanakov and Admiral Courvosier took the Grayson fleet out to engage the enemy four days ago. I'm ... afraid Madrigal and Austin Grayson were lost with all hands—including Admirals Courvosier and Yanakov."

  Every drop of blood drained from Honor's face. No! The Admiral couldn't be dead—not the Admiral!

  "We're in serious trouble down here, Captain," Langtry's recorded voice went on. "I don't know why they've held off this long, but nothing Grayson has left can possibly stop them. Please advise me of your intentions as soon as possible. Langtry clear."

  The screen blanked, and she stared at it, frozen in her command chair. It was a lie. A cruel, vicious lie! The Admiral was alive. He was alive, damn it! He wouldn't die. He couldn't die—he wouldn't do that to her!

  But Ambassador Langtry had no reason to lie.

  She closed her eyes, feeling Nimitz at her shoulder, and remembered Courvosier as she'd left him. Remembered that impish face, the twinkle in those blue eyes. And behind those newer memories were others, twenty-seven years of memories, each cutting more deeply and cruelly than the last, as she realized at last—when it was too late—that she'd never told him she loved him.

  And behind the loss, honing the agony, was her guilt. She'd run out on him. He'd wanted her to stay and let her go only because she insisted, and because Fearless hadn't been there—because she hadn't been there—he'd taken a single destroyer into battle and died.

  It was her fault. He'd needed her, and she hadn't been there ... and that had killed him. She'd killed him, as surely as if she'd sent a pulser dart through his brain with her own hand.

  Silence enfolded Fearless's bridge crew as all eyes turned to the woman in the captain's chair. Her face was stunned as even the total surprise of the LACs' attack had not left it, and the light had gone out of her treecat's eyes. He crouched on her chair back, tail tucked in tight, prick ears flat, and the soft, heartrending keen of his lament was the only sound as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

  "Orders, Captain?" Andreas Venizelos broke the crew's silence at last, and more than one person flinched as his quiet voice intruded upon their captain's grief.

  Honor's nostrils flared. The sound of her indrawn breath was harsh, and the heel of her hand scrubbed angrily, brutally, at her wet face as she squared her shoulders.

  "Record for transmission, Lieutenant Metzinger," she said in a hammered-iron voice none of them had ever heard, and the communications officer swallowed.

  "Recording, Ma'am," she said softly.

  "Ambassador Langtry," Honor said in that same, deadly voice. "Your message is received and understood. Be advised that my squadron has already been engaged by and destroyed three LACs I now presume to have been Masadan. We've suffered casualties and damage, but my combat power is unimpaired."

  She inhaled again, feeling her officers' and ratings' eyes on her.

  "I will continue to Grayson at my best speed. Expect my arrival in Grayson orbit in—" she checked her astrogation readout "—approximately four hours twenty-eight minutes from now."

  She stared into the pickup, and the corner of her mouth twitched. There was steel in her brown eyes, smoking from anger's forge and tempered by grief and guilt, and her voice was colder than space.

  "Until I have complete information, it will be impossible to formulate detailed plans, but you may inform the Grayson government that I intend to defend this system in accordance with Admiral Courvosier's apparent intentions. Please have a complete background brief waiting for me. In particular, I require an immediate assessment of Grayson's remaining military capabilities and assignment of a liaison officer to my squadron. I will meet with you and the senior Grayson military officer in the Embassy within ten minutes of entering Grayson orbit. Harrington clear."

  She sat back, her strong-boned face unyielding, and her own determination filled her bridge crew. They knew as well as she that the entire Grayson Navy, even if it had suffered no losses at all, would have been useless against the weight of metal she'd just committed them to face. The odds were very good that some of them, or some of their friends on the other ships of the squadron, were going to die, and none of them were eager for death. But other friends had already died, and they themselves had been attacked.

  None of Honor's other officers had been Admiral Courvosier's protegee, but many had been his students, and he'd been one of the most respected officers in their service even to those who'd never known him personally. If they could get a piece of the people who'd killed him, they wanted it.

  "On the chip, Captain," Lieutenant Metzinger said.

  "Send it. Then set up another conference link with Apollo and Troubadour. Make certain Commander Truman and Commander McKeon have copies of Sir Anthony's transmission and tie their coms to my briefing room terminal."

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am," Metzinger said, and Honor stood. She looked across the bridge at Andreas Venizelos as she started for the briefing room hatch.

  "Mr. DuMorne, you have the watch. Andy, come with me." Her voice was still hard, her face frozen. Grief and guilt hammered at the back of her brain, but she refused to listen to them. There would be time enough to face those things after the killing.

  "Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch," Lieutenant Commander DuMorne said quietly to her back as the hatch opened before her.

  She never heard him at all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Commander Manning paused outside the briefing room and drew a deep breath.

  Manning liked Captain Yu. In a service where too many senior officers came from Legislaturist families, Yu was that rarest of birds: a self-made man. It couldn't have been easy for him, but somehow the Captain had won his way to the very brink of flag rank without forgetting what he himself had been through on the way up. He treated his officers firmly but with respect,
even warmth, and he never forgot those who served him well. Thomas Theisman commanded Principality because he'd served with Captain Yu before and Yu had wanted him for the slot, and Manning had been handpicked as Thunder's exec for the same reasons. That sort of treatment earned the Captain a remarkable degree of personal loyalty and devotion, but he was only human. He had his bad days, and when a CO—any CO—was out of sorts, his subordinates trod warily.

  And if the Captain had ever had reason to feel out of sorts, now was certainly the time, Manning thought as he pressed the admittance button.

  "Yes?" The voice over the intercom was as courteous as ever, but it held a dangerous, flat undertone for ears which knew it well.

  "Commander Manning, Sir."

  The hatch opened. Manning stepped across the sill and braced to attention, and some instinct told him to do it Havenite style.

  "You wanted to see me, Sir?"

  "Yes. Sit down, George."

  Yu pointed to a chair, and the commander relaxed just a tad at the use of his first name.

  "What's the status of Tractor Five?"

  "Engineering says another ten or twelve hours, Sir." Yu's face tightened, and Manning tried to keep any defensiveness out of his voice. "The components were never intended for this sort of continual power level, Captain. They have to strip it clear down to the flux core to make replacements."

  "Goddamn it." Yu ran a hand through his hair in a harried gesture he never let a Masadan see, and then his free hand suddenly slammed the table top.

  Manning managed not to flinch. It wasn't like the Captain to carry on, but these Masadans were enough to try the patience of a saint. The cliche was less amusing than it might have been, but the fact that the Captain was allowing himself to use the sort of language he hadn't let himself use since arriving here was a fair indication of how far he'd been pushed.

  Yu smashed the table again, then sat back in his chair with a groan.

  "They're idiots, George. Fucking idiots! We could wipe out everything Grayson has left in an hour—in fifteen minutes! —and they won't let us do it!"

  "Yes, Sir," Manning said softly, and Yu shoved himself up to stalk back and forth across the briefing room like a caged tiger.

  "If anyone back home had told me there were people like this anywhere in the galaxy, I'd have called him a liar to his face," Yu growled. "We've got Grayson by the balls, and all they can see is how bad they got hurt! Goddamn it, people get hurt in wars! And just because Madrigal chewed the hell out of their piss-ant navy, they're shitting their drawers like they were up against the Manticoran Home Fleet!"

  This time Manning was tactfully silent. Anything he said could only make it worse at this point.

  No one, Captain Yu included, had been prepared for just how good Manticoran anti-missile systems had turned out to be. They'd known the RMN's electronic warfare capability was better than theirs, and they'd assumed a certain margin of superiority for their other systems as well, but the speed and accuracy of Madrigal's point defense had shocked all of them. It had turned what should have been a complete kill into something far less, and if the destroyer's defenses hadn't been overextended by her efforts to protect her consorts, she probably would have gotten out completely undamaged.

  It would have been different in a sustained engagement, when their own computers could have gotten a read on Madrigal's responses and they could have shifted their firing patterns and penaid settings until they found a way through them. But they'd only had one shot each, and the destroyer had knocked down entirely too many of their missiles.

  That had smarted badly enough for the "immigrants" in Thunder's crew—it had been their hardware that showed up so poorly, after all—but it had more than smarted for the Masadans. Sword Simonds had been livid as Madrigal and the two surviving Graysons raced out of their missile envelope. Manning was still astonished the Captain had managed to hang onto his temper as the Sword ranted and railed at him, and despite his outward calm, Manning knew he'd been as close to murder as the exec had ever seen him when Simonds refused to order Franks to bypass Madrigal and pursue the Grayson survivors.

  Simonds had practically danced with rage as he rejected Yu's suggestion. The extent to which Madrigal had degraded the ambush had not only infuriated but frightened him, and he'd known perfectly well that at least some of Franks' ships would have been exposed to her fire, however widely they dispersed, if the squadron spread out to over-fly her.

  Well, of course they would have been, but the Sword's response to the threat had proven once and for all that he was no tactician. If his ships had dispersed, he might have had to write off one or two cruisers to Madrigal's missiles, but the others would have been outside the destroyer's effective engagement range. She simply wouldn't have had the reach to hit that many targets. But he'd insisted on backing Franks' decision to go in together for mutual support—and paid the price hesitant tactics almost always exacted. The Masadan ships had actually decelerated to meet Madrigal in an effort to bring their own weapons into effective range and keep them there!

  It had been like a mob armed with clubs charging a man with a pulser. Madrigal's missiles had blown the cruisers Samson and Noah and the destroyer Throne right out of space as they closed, and then the Masadans entered her energy range and it only got worse. The cruiser David had survived, but she was little more than a hulk, and the destroyers Cherubim and Seraphim had been crippled before they ever got into their energy range.

  Of course, the clubs had had their own turn after that. Crude as Masadan energy weapons were, there'd simply been too many of them for her, and they'd battered her to bits. But even after she'd been mortally wounded, Madrigal had set her teeth in the destroyers Archangel and Angel. She'd pounded them until she didn't have a single weapon left, and she'd taken Archangel with her. Of the entire squadron which had closed with her, only the cruiser Solomon and the destroyer Dominion remained combat effective ... and, of course, Franks' decision to slow for the suicidal engagement meant the surviving Graysons had escaped.

  It shouldn't have mattered. If nothing else, what Madrigal had done should have made Simonds even more confident. If a destroyer could wreak that kind of carnage, what did he think Thunder could do?!

  "Do you know what that insufferable little prick said to me?" Yu whirled to face his exec, one finger pointed like a pistol, and his eyes blazed. "He told me—told me, damn him!—that if I hadn't lied to him about my ship's capabilities, he might be more inclined to listen to me now!" A snarl quivered in the Captain's throat. "What the fuck does he expect is going to happen when his frigging `admirals' have their heads so far up their asses they have to pipe in air through their navels?!"

  Manning maintained his silence and concentrated on looking properly sympathetic, and Yu's lips worked as if he wanted to spit on the decksole. Then his shoulders slumped, and he sank back into his chair.

  "God, I wish the Staff had found someone else to dump this on!" he sighed, but the fury had left his voice. Manning understood. The Captain had needed to work it out of his system, and for that he had to yell at one of his own.

  "Well," Yu said finally, "if they insist on being stupid, I suppose there's nothing we can do but try to minimize the consequences. There are times I could just about kill Valentine, but if this weren't so completely unnecessary, I might almost admire the cleverness of it. I don't think anyone else ever even considered towing LACs through hyper space."

  "Yes, Sir. On the other hand, they couldn't have done it with their own tractors or hyper generators. I guess by the time you've got the technical ability, you've figured out how to build good enough ships that you don't need to use it."

  "Um." Yu inhaled deeply and closed his eyes for a moment. Stupid as he thought the whole idea was, he also knew that only his chief engineer's suggestion had kept the Masadans going at all.

  They'd flatly refused to attack Grayson with their remaining combat strength in Yeltsin. As near as Yu could figure out, they were afraid Manticore might have s
lipped some sort of superweapon to the Graysons. That was the stupidest idea they'd had yet, but perhaps it shouldn't be so easy to blame them for it. They'd never seen a modern warship in action before, and what Madrigal had done to their antiquated fleet terrified them. Intellectually, they had to know Thunder and Principality were many times as powerful as Madrigal had been, but they'd never seen "their" two modern ships in action. Their capabilities weren't quite real to them ... and Yu's credibility had been damaged by Madrigal's escape from the ambush, anyway.

  For one whole day, Simonds had been adamant about the need to suspend all operations and seek a negotiated settlement. Yu didn't think Masada had a hope in hell of pulling that off after their sneak attack and Madrigal's destruction, but the Sword had dug his heels in and insisted he simply didn't have the tonnage in Yeltsin to continue.

  That was when Commander Valentine made his suggestion, and Yu didn't know whether to strangle his engineer or kiss him. It had wasted three days already, and Tractor Five's breakdown was going to stretch that still further, but it had gotten Simonds to agree, if only hesitantly, to press forward.

  Valentine had pointed out that both Thunder and Principality had far more powerful hyper generators than any Masadan starship. In fact, their generators were powerful enough to extend their translation fields over six kilometers beyond their own hulls if he redlined them. That meant that if they translated from rest, they could take anything within six kilometers with them when they did. And that meant that if Masadan LACs clustered closely enough around them, they could boost the lighter vessels into hyper space.

  Normally, that would have been little more than an interesting parlor trick, but Valentine had taken the entire idea one stage further. No LAC crew could survive the sort of acceleration ships routinely pulled in hyper for the simple reason that their inertial compensator would pack up the instant they tried it. But if they took the entire crew off and removed or secured all loose gear, Valentine suggested, there was no reason the ships themselves couldn't take the acceleration on the end of a tractor beam.