Mission of Honor

Chapter Twenty

“All right, Jacomina,” Sandra Crandall said flatly. “These people have just run out of time.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Captain Jacomina van Heutz, SLNS Joseph Buckley’s commanding officer, nodded from the small display on Crandall’s flag bridge. The admiral looked over her shoulder at Bautista and Ou-yang, and both of them nodded, as well. Shavarshyan thought Ou-yang’s nod seemed less cheerful than Bautista’s, although that could have been his imagination.

But whatever the ops officer might be feeling, it didn’t matter. Not anymore. As Crandall had just observed, the Manties’ time had run out, and she wasn’t wasting any effort on additional attempts to communicate. Nor was she demonstrating a great deal of finesse, although the intelligence officer supposed there wasn’t much point being fancy when you were a sledgehammer and your target was an egg.

He’d helped Ou-yang work on her analysis of the sensor ghosts her recon platforms had been picking up, and he’d come to the conclusion that the operations officer was correct. Those “ghosts” really were there, although it had proven impossible to wring any details out of the frustratingly vague data. Apparently the reports about the efficacy of Manticoran stealth systems had actually understated the case, which didn’t make Shavarshyan a lot happier when he reflected on all the other reports which had been so confidently dismissed by naval intelligence at the same time. And to add insult to injury, it seemed the ops officer’s fears about the Manties’ ability to pick up their recon platforms had been well founded. They’d tried getting in close enough for a better look, and each time their platforms had been detected, localized, and killed before they could get close enough to penetrate their targets’ stealth. He wasn’t at all certain Solarian sensors could have locked them up that well, but from Ou-yang’s reaction, he suspected it would have been at best a toss-up.

On the other hand, there were only ten of those ghosts. Even if every one of them was a superdreadnought, Crandall’s force still outnumbered the enemy by a margin of almost seven-to-one, and even if every single story about Manticoran capabilities proved accurate, those were still crushing odds. And if, as seemed much more likely, they were simply more of those outsized battlecruisers, Bautista’s confident expectation of a rapid, devastating victory was amply justified.

Shavarshyan wondered if he was the only one who felt dismay at that prospect. He’d continued to hope the Manties might recognize the insanity of taking on the entire Solarian League. Both sides had painted themselves thoroughly into corners, yet he’d hoped—almost prayed—that Medusa would recognize she was dealing with a maniac. That Crandall really would destroy every single Manticoran ship in the star system unless the Manticoran governor gave her what she wanted.

But it would appear Medusa was just as done talking as Crandall. Despite the horrific odds, she’d declined to take the only escape available to her uniformed men and women, and now Hago Shavarshyan was going to be an unwilling party to their massacre. That was bad enough, yet what was going to happen when word of this reached the capital system of the Star Empire of Manticore would be even worse. When the SLN did come face-to-face with a true Manticoran battle fleet—when Manty superdreadnoughts squared off against their Solarian counterparts in anything remotely resembling even numbers—the carnage was going to be incredible. Whatever Crandall and Bautista thought, he knew better, and so did Ou-yang Zhing-wei. And the inevitability of the League’s final victory was going to be very cold consolation to the mothers and fathers and wives and husbands and children of the thousands of people who were going to be killed first.

It was like watching helplessly from an orbiting satellite as an airbus loaded with schoolchildren plummeted directly towards a mountainside, and even though none of it had been his decision, he felt contaminated—unclean—as the eagerness of Crandall, Bautista, and the others like them flowed about him.

At least it should be fairly quick, he thought grimly as the battle boards at Ou-yang’s station flickered from the amber of standby to the unblinking blood-red of readiness. Then he grimaced at his own reflection. Sure it’ll be “quick;” and isn’t it a hell of a thing when that’s the best I can think of?

“So much for any last-minue outbreak of sanity on their side.”

Captain Loretta Shoupe looked up from her displays and wondered if Augustus Khumalo was as aware as she was of how calm his voice sounded. She glanced at his profile as he studied the icons in HMS Hercules‘ flag bridge master plot, and the calmness of his expression, the steadiness of his eyes, were not the surprise they once would have been.

He’s grown, she thought, with a possessive pride whose fierceness did surprise her a bit, even now. He’s no happier about this than anyone else, but if there’s a gram of hesitation anywhere in him, I can’t see it.

“Well,” Khumalo said with more than a little regret, “I suppose it’s time.” He raised his voice slightly. “Communications, pass the word to Tristram. Instruct Commander Kaplan to execute Paul Revere. Then contact Commodore Terekhov and inform him that Code Yankee is now in effect. Captain Saunders,” he looked down at the command chair com display tied into Hercules‘ command deck, “tactical command is passing to Commodore Terekhov at this time.”

“Yes, Sir,” Vicotria Saunders replied, and he sat back in his chair. Much as it galled him to admit it, Quentin Saint-James‘ fire control was far better suited to manage modern missile fire than his aged flagship’s antiquated systems. He’d actually considered shifting his flag in order to exercise tactical command himself, and a part of him wished he had, even now. But efficiency was more important than getting his own combat command ticket punched. And Augustus Khumalo was too self honest to pretend he was in Aivars Terekhov’s league as a combat commander.

“Signal from Hercules, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Wanda O’Reilly announced. “Execute Paul Revere.”

“Acknowledged,” Naomi Kaplan replied. O’Reilly was the closest thing HMS Tristram’s officer complement had to a genuine problem child, but there was no trace of her occasional petulance in that crisp report. Kaplan gave her a nod of approval, then looked at Abigail Hearns.

“Is your sensor data fully updated, Guns?”

“We’re just finishing an update from Commodore Terekhov now, Ma’am,” Abigail replied, watching the waterfall graphic rising steadily on one of her side displays. “Estimate fifteen seconds to complete the upload.”

“Very well.” Kaplan turned to Lieutenant Hosea Simpkins, her astrogator and, like Abigail, one of her Grayson officers. “Astro, unless Tactical’s update hits a glitch, execute Paul Revere in twenty-five seconds.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Execute Paul Revere in twenty-five seconds from… now.”

Tristram disappeared from normal-space forty light-minutes outside the Spindle hyper limit without fuss or bother. Unlike the translation from hyper-space into normal-space, a stationary upward translation left no betraying footprint behind, and she materialized almost exactly where she was supposed to be in the alpha bands.

“Fleet challenge, Ma’am!” O’Reilly announced.

“Reply,” Kaplan ordered calmly.

“Replying, aye, Ma’am,” the com officer acknowledged, and triggered Tristram’s transponder code.

That transponder had been locked down, for fairly obvious reasons, while the destroyer hid outside Crandall’s massive task force. And while Kaplan didn’t really anticipate any itchy trigger fingers among the rest of Tenth Fleet’s tactical officers, she still felt a profound sense of relief when HMS Artemis acknowledged her identity. Unlike Sandra Crandall, Naomi Kaplan had an excellent appreciation of just how much firepower was waiting for her.

“Very well, Guns,” she said, once Tristram’s right to be there had been confirmed. “Send the data.”

“Aye, aye, Ma’am. Sending now.”

“Lord, what an arrogant bitch,” Michelle Henke said quietly, standing between Dominica Adenauer and Cynthia Lecter as the three of them studied the data Tristram had just transmitted to Artemis.

“And this is a surprise because—?” Lecter asked equally quietly, and Michelle snorted in bitter amusement.

“More a case of a confirmation I didn’t really want,” she acknowledged “I did think she might at least inform the Governor her time limit had officially expired, though.”

“With all due respect, Ma’am, I don’t see where it makes much difference.” Lecter twitched her shoulders slightly. “It’s obvious the same people who picked Byng also picked her, and whether she’s here as a knowing cat’s-paw or got selected because she’s just as stupid as he was, we all knew what she was here for from the outset.”

Michelle nodded. And Cindy was right. She had known why Crandall was here, and all of her own planning had been predicated on that knowledge. Yet that didn’t diminish the undeniable flicker of fury she felt as she contemplated Crandall’s dismissive arrogance.

No, that’s not being quite fair to yourself, girl, she thought. Sure, part of you is pissed off because even though the overconfident idiot is doing exactly what you predicted when you made your own plans—exactly what you want her to do, if she’s stupid enough to attack in the first place—you resent being taken so lightly. Because it’s part and parcel of the kind of arrogance you’ve seen out of so many Sollies. But what really pisses you off is that she doesn’t give a single solitary damn about all the people she’s about to get killed. Of course, her lips skinned back in a hexapuma’s hunting snarl, at the moment she’s thoroughly convinced that none of the people in question are going to be hers. And she doesn’t know she took long enough getting here for the Apollo pods to beat her, either.

Her smile turned even thinner and colder for a moment as she contemplated how the arrival of those pods had changed her initial defensive planning. But then she put that reflection aside and concentrated on the data in front of her. There hadn’t been any changes she could see, although a few additional details had been added to the initial report HMS Ivanhoe had delivered three days ago. Mostly little stuff, like additional data on individual ships’ electronic and gravitic emissions.

As she’d expected, the various destroyers’ emissions signatures varied widely, which wasn’t surprising given how much the Rampart and War Harvest classes had been refitted over their lifetimes. The heavier ships’ emissions were much closer to their “book” profiles, though. Hercules‘ CIC had easily tagged the individual units of Rear Admiral Gordon Nelson’s battlecruiser squadron, since they’d lifted his ships’ electronic fingerprints out of the data they’d captured from Byng’s task force. And although they didn’t have hard individual IDs on the other battlecruiser squadron, it was obvious all of them were Nevadas.

There was an impressive uniformity among the superdreadnoughts, as well. All but seven of them were Scientist-class ships, and all seven of the others were members of the Vega class, which were basically only repeat Scientists with a couple of additional missile tubes in each broadside. By the standards of the prewar Royal Manticoran Navy, they weren’t that bad a design, although the first of the Scientists had been built long enough ago that they’d still been equipped with projectile-firing point defense systems. At least all of these ships seemed to have been upgraded to laser clusters since, judging from the detailed passive scans Augustus Khumalo’s Ghost Rider platforms had pulled in. And it was painfully obvious that even now the Sollies didn’t begin to grasp just how capable—and stealthy—the Ghost Rider recon drones actually were. To be sure, the really close passes had been purely ballistic, with no active emissions to betray their presence, but even so they shouldn’t have been able to get in close enough to literally read ships’ names off their hulls without someone noticing something.

Don’t complain, she told herself firmly, and considered the armament readouts on Crandall’s ships.

The Scientists were 6.8 million-ton units with thirty-two missile tubes, twenty-four lasers, and twenty-six grasers in each broadside. That was a heavier—or, at least, more numerous—energy broadside than any modern Manticoran or Grayson superdreadnought would have mounted. On the other hand, they had only sixteen counter-missile tubes and thirty-two point defense stations in each broadside, whereas Artemis, although technically only a battlecruiser, had thirty-two CM tubes and thirty much heavier and much more capable point defense clusters. Even the Saganami-Cs had twenty tubes and twenty-four clusters in each broadside, and given the fact that Michelle Henke had absolutely no intention of straying into energy range of her opponents, that imbalance was just likely to prove fatal for Admiral Sandra Crandall.

Stay out of energy range, hell, Michelle thought astringently. I’m going to stay clear out of her missile envelope, too!

“I wonder if Crandall’s superstitious?” she mused. Adenauer looked up from the plot and raised one eyebrow, and Michelle chuckled coldly.

“You didn’t recognize her flagship’s name, Dominica?”

The ops officer shook her head, and it was Lecter’s turn to chuckle.

“This is the sixth Joseph Buckley they’ve built,” she said, “and I’ve got to wonder why even Sollies haven’t learned from that much history. It hasn’t been exactly the luckiest name in the SLN’s history.”

“Well, fair’s fair, Cindy,” Michelle pointed out. “They didn’t name any of them for the luckiest scientist in history, either.”

“Is that your understatement for the day, Ma’am?” Lecter asked, and this time Adenauer chuckled, too, as the name finally clicked for her, as well.

Dr. Joseph Buckley had been a major figure in the development of the original impeller drive on Beowulf in the thirteenth century. Unhappily, he hadn’t been one of the more fortunate figures. He’d been a critical part of the original developmental team in 1246, but he’d had a reputation among his peers even then for being as eratic as he was brilliant, and he’d been determined to prove it was accurate. Although Adrienne Warshawski was to develop the Warshawski sail only twenty-seven years later, Buckley had been too impatient to wait around. Instead, he’d insisted that with the proper adjustment, the impeller wedge itself could be safely inserted into a hyper-space gravity wave.

Although several of his contemporaries had acknowledged the theoretical brilliance of his work, none had been prepared to endorse his conclusions. Unfazed by his peers’ lack of confidence, Buckley—whose considerable store of patents had made him a wealthy man—had designed and built his own test vessel, the Dahak, named for a figure out of Babylonian mythology. With a volunteer crew embarked, he’d set out to demonstrate the validity of his work.

The attempt, while spectacular, had not been a success. In fact, the imagery which had been recorded by the Dahak’s escorts still turned up in slow motion in HD compilations of the most awe-inspiring disaster footage in galactic history.

While Buckley undeniably deserved to be commemorated alongside such other greats as Warshawski and Radhakrishnan, and despite the huge body of other work he’d left behind, it was the dramatic nature of his demise for which he was best remembered. And his various namesakes in SLN service had fared little better than he himself had. Of the current ship’s predecessors, only one had survived to be withdrawn from service and decommissioned.

“Actually, only three of them were lost on active service, Cindy,” Michelle pointed out.

“Four, if you count the battlecruiser, Ma’am,” Lecter argued respectfully.

“Well, all right. I’d forgotten about her.” Michelle shrugged. “Still, I don’t think it’s exactly fair to blame the ‘Buckley Curse’ for a ship lost ‘to causes unknown’, though.”

“Why? Because having witnesses makes it more final? Or because faulty fusion bottles and wedge-on-wedge collisions are more spectacular?”

“They’re certainly more in keeping with the original’s final voyage,” Michelle pointed out.

“All right, I’ll grant that much,” Lecter agreed. “And, actually, I suppose losing only four of them—or three, if we go with your list—in the better part of seven hundred T-years probably isn’t really proof the Curse exists. And I’m not an especially superstitious gal myself. But having said all that, I wouldn’t care to serve aboard one of them! And especially not”—her smile disappeared and her eyes darkened—”if I was sailing into what promised to be ugliest war my navy’d ever fought.”

“Neither would I,” Michelle acknowledged. “On the other hand, she doesn’t think that’s what she’s doing, now does she?”

Sir Aivars Terekhov sat in his command chair on HMS Quentin Saint-James‘ flag bridge and thought about the last time he’d taken a Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser into combat. By most navies’ standards, the odds he faced were even worse this time, but he wasn’t really interested in most navies’ standards. Unlike Ou-yang Zhing-wei and Hago Shavarshyan, he knew precisely what those ten “sensor ghosts” they’d been picking up actually were.

Four of them were the CLACs Pegasus, Hippogriff, Troll, and Goblin, with the next best thing to four hundred LACs embarked. As stealthy as the Manticoran Alliance’s light attack craft were, four CLACs were much smaller sensor targets than all those LACs would have been if they’d been deployed, which meant they could be more readily concealed or, at least, that their natures could be readily disguised, while they remained in their shipboard bays.

Two more of the “ghosts” were ammunition ships, stuffed to the deckhead with Apollo missile pods crammed full of fusion-powered Mark 23 and Mark 23-E MDMs. And the other four were Scotty Tremaine’s cruisers: Alistair McKeon, Madelyn Hoffman, Canopus, and Trebuchet.

You just keep right on coming, Admiral Crandall, Terekhov thought coldly. You don’t even begin to realize just how much you’ve got us exactly where we want you… but you’re about to find out.

“Sir, Admiral Khumalo would like to speak to you,” Lieutenant Atalante Montella, his communications officer, said quietly.

“Put him on my display, Atalante.”

“Yes, Sir.”

A moment later, Augustus Khumalo’s face appeared on the tiny com screen deployed from Terekhov’s command chair.

“Good afternoon, Sir,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Aivars,” Khumalo acknowledged. The admiral looked considerably calmer than Terekhov suspected he actually was, and there was little sign of tension in his deep voice.

“As you can see,” Khumalo continued, “our friend Crandall at least has the virtue of punctuality.”

“I suppose anyone has to have at least some positive qualities, Sir.”

“You may have been disabused of that supposition by the time you’re my age,” Khumalo replied with a thin smile. “At any rate, assuming she maintains her current acceleration and heads for a zero/zero intercept with the planet, she probably expects to be joining us here in about four hours. Of course, she doesn’t expect any of us to still be alive when she gets here.”

“Life is full of disappointments, Sir.”

“My own thought exactly.” Khumalo’s teeth showed briefly. Then he twitched his shoulders in a sort of abbreviated shrug. “Admiral Enderby is launching his birds now. As soon as they’re all clear of the bays, he’ll pull the carriers further back in-system to keep them out from underfoot, and Commander Badmachin is rolling pods. Unless Admiral Gold Peak decides differently, it looks like we’ll be going with Agincourt.”

“Understood, Sir.”

“In that case, I’ll leave you to it,” Khumalo said with a nod. “Khumalo, clear.”

He disappeared from Terekhov’s com screen, and Terekhov returned his attention to Quentin Saint-James‘ master plot. In many ways, he supposed, Oversteegen’s Nikes might have been a better choice than his own heavy cruisers, given that the Nike was equipped with Keyhole, and the Saganami-C wasn’t. In fact, before the ammunition ships Aetna and Vesuvius had arrived with their massive loads of Apollo pods, the Nikes would have been in orbit around Flax while the Saganami-Cs played the part of the beaters coming along behind the quarry. The cruisers still had a lot of control links, however. Almost certainly enough of them, coupled with Apollo, to show Crandall the error of her ways.

And if there isn’t, he thought grimly, there’s always Admiral Gold Peak, isn’t there?

“Captain?”

“Yes, Nicolette?” Captain Jacomina van Heutz looked across Joseph Buckley’s command deck at Commander Nicolette Sambroth.

“Ma’am, I’m still picking up those grav pulses,” Sambroth said, and van Heutz frowned.

Sambroth was one of the better tac officers with whom she’d served, but the commander appeared to have been badly spooked by the implications of the Manties’ apparent FTL com ability. Not that van Heutz really blamed her, assuming the report of the single dispatch boat to escape the New Tuscan debacle was accurate. Not only that, but she knew Vice Admiral Ou-yang shared Sambroth’s concerns.

And I’m not too damned happy over them myself. Especially when I think about what’s going to happen two or three engagements down the road, when we run into a real Manty wall of battle. But for right now …

“You’re passing your observations along to Admiral Ou-yang?” Her tone made the question a statement, and Sambroth nodded.

“Of course, Ma’am.”

“Then we’re just going to have to assume Admiral Crandall has that information as well,” van Heutz pointed out rather gently.

Sambroth looked up from her displays. Their eyes met for a moment. Then the tactical officer nodded again, with a rather different emphasis.

Van Heutz nodded back, returned her own attention to her plot, and settled back in her command chair.

Josef Byng always was a frigging idiot, she thought. I’m not even going to pretend I miss him, either. But this—

She shook her head, eyes hardening on the plot, and wondered how many other members of the SLN officer corps secretly recognized that Byng’s demise could only improve that officer corps’ overall efficiency. Probably more than she was prepared to believe, actually. She certainly hoped so, at any rate, given what the ability to deny that reality implied. Yet as she contemplated what his removal was about to cost the Star Empire of Manticore—and ultimately cost the Solarian League Navy—the price tag seemed exorbitantly high.

And it’s only going to get worse. No matter how bad I think it’s going to be, it’s only going to get worse.

Captain Alice Levinsky, commanding officer of LAC Group 711, watched the Shrikes and Katanas of Carrier Division 7.1 forming up around Her Majesty’s Light Attack Craft Typhoon. She was aware of a certain queasiness as she contemplated the juggernaut of superdreadnoughts rumbling steadily towards Flax. Against a Havenite wall of battle, even the Manticoran Alliance’s newest-generation LACs no longer possessed anywhere near the survivability they’d boasted when the Shrike-A was first introduced all of nine T-years ago. And even if they had, superdreadnoughts—even Solly superdreadnoughts—were normally too heavily armored for even a Shrike’s enormous graser to damage significantly. Of course, the Shrike-B, like her own Typhoon, had significantly improved its graser’s grav lensing when the newest generation of bow wall came in. The Bravos really could blast their way through SD armor, assuming they could get close enough.

Despite that, two-thirds of her LACs were Katana-class space-superiority fighters with magazines packed with Viper dual-purpose missiles, because Manticoran LAC doctrine had changed—especially after the hideous losses of the Battle of Manticore—to emphasize the missile defense role rather than the strike role. LACs were smaller and much more elusive targets than any hyper-capable ship and, especially with Mark 33 counter-missiles (or the Vipers based on the same missile body and drive), one of them could provide very nearly as much screening capacity as an all up destroyer. Which meant a LAC group had become the most effective (and least costly) means of bolstering a wall of battle’s missile defenses, which also freed up the perpetually insufficient number of lighter starships for deployment elsewhere.

But, Levinsky reminded herself coldly, these weren’t Havenite superdreadnoughts. They were Sollies, and that was an entirely different kettle of fish. Like the rest of Tenth Fleet’s officers, Levinsky had studied the technical data from the captured Solarian battlecruisers attentively, and unless that data was grossly inaccurate, the Sollies’ anti-LAC capabilities were even more primitive—a lot more primitive—than the Havenites’ had been during Operation Buttercup.

Which suggested all sorts of interesting tactical possibilities to one Alice Levinsky.

“Commodore Terekhov confirms Agincourt, Sir,” Lieutenant Stilson MacDonald said.

“Thank you,” Scotty Tremaine acknowledged. There was no need for his communications officer to know just how much calmer his voice was than he was.

Had Captain Levinsky only known, a part of Tremaine—a rather large part, as a matter of fact—would have preferred to be sitting where she was rather than in his palatial command chair on the flag deck of a brand spanking new heavy cruiser. It wasn’t so much that he doubted his competence in his present role as that he’d become so comfortable in his previous role.

How did a nice boy who only wanted to be a shuttle pilot end up sitting here, of all places? he thought wryly.

He’d really assumed that when he finally got starship command it would be of a carrier, not a cruiser. But he’d also long since concluded that BuPers worked in mysterious and inscrutable ways. True, this one seemed a bit more inscrutable than most, but when the Navy offered you a command slot like this one, you took it. He couldn’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t, and if anyone had turned it down, the idiot in question would have signed the death warrant for any hope of future promotion. The Navy wasn’t in the habit of entrusting its starships to people whose own actions demonstrated they lacked the confidence for that sort of responsibility.

And if they really insist on prying me out of the LACs, this is one hell of a lot better than a kick in the head, he admitted. Not only that, but at least they let me have the EWO I wanted.

He glanced at the battered and bedamned-looking chief warrant officer sitting at the electronic warfare officer’s station. Aboard any other starship he could think of, that position would have been held by a commissioned officer. Aboard a unit as powerful as a Saganami-C, especially on a division flagship’s staff, the officer in question would have been at least a senior-grade lieutenant, and more probably a lieutenant commander. But CWO Sir Horace Harkness was pretty much a law unto himself within the RMN.

“Of course you can have Harkness!” Captain Shaw, Admiral Cortez’ chief of staff, had snorted when he’d made the unusual request. “There’s a note somewhere in your personnel jacket that says we’re not supposed to break up Beauty and the Beast.” The captain’s lips had twitched at Tremaine’s expression. “Oh, you hadn’t heard that particular nickname, Captain Tremaine? I hadn’t realized it had escaped your attention.”

Then Shaw had sobered, tipping back in his chair and regarding Tremaine with thoughtful eyes.

“I don’t say it’s the sort of habit we really want to get into, Captain, but one thing Admiral Cortez has always recognized is that there are exceptions to every rule. Mind you, if it were just a case of favoritism, he wouldn’t sign off on it for a minute. Fortunately, however, the two of you have demonstrated a remarkable and consistently high level of performance—not to mention the fact that between you, you and his wife seem to have permanently reformed him. So unless we have to, no one’s interested in breaking up that particular team. Besides”—he’d snorted in sudden amusement—”even if we were, I’m quite sure Sir Horace would be more than willing to massage the computers in your favor.”

Tremaine had opened his mouth, but Shaw had waved his hand before he could speak.

“I’m perfectly well aware that he’s promised not to do that sort of thing anymore, Captain Tremaine. Even the best-intentioned can backslide, however, and we’d prefer not to expose him to too much temptation.”

Tremaine’s own lips twitched in remembered amusement, and he was astonished how much better the memory made him feel.

“All right, Adam,” he said, turning to Lieutenant Commander Adam Golbatsi, his operations officer. “You heard Stilson.”

“Yes, Sir. I’m on it,” Golbatsi acknowledged.

“Good.” Tremaine looked at Harkness. “Any change in their EW, Chief?”

“No, Sir. Not so’s you’d notice.” Harkness shrugged. “I know we didn’t get complete stats on their wallers at New Tuscany, Skipper, but so far, these guys don’t look to have anything better than Byng had. Or, if they do, they haven’t bothered to bring it to the party yet.”

“I have t’ agree with Chief Harkness, Sir,” Commander Francine Klusener, Tremaine’s chief of staff said, looking up from her own console.

If there’d been anyone on his staff who might have had his or her nose put out of joint by finding a mere warrant officer in the staff electronic warfare officer’s slot, Tremaine would have bet on Klusener. Not because the fair-haired, gray-eyed commander was anything but highly intelligent and competent in her own right. She was, however, by far the most nobly born of any of his staffers, with an accent that was almost as languid and drawling as Michael Oversteegen’s. Fortunately, that was the only thing about her anyone could have accused of languor, and she and Harkness had actually hit it off very well from the beginning.

“I’ve been lookin’ at th’ take from th’ platforms,” she continued now. “Assumin’ these people have th’ brains God gave a gnat—not that th’ evidence so far available would suggest they do, you understand—they ought t’ be pullin’ out all th’ stops after what happened t’ Byng. Better safe than sorry, after all.” She shrugged. “If they are, then I don’t think th’ attack birds are going t’ have much problem lockin’ up th’ real targets.”

“Compared to Peep EW?” Harkness shook his head with an evil smile. “Not hardly, Ma’am! These people’re toast, if that’s the best they’ve got.”

“Let’s not get carried away with our own enthusiasm, Chief,” Tremaine said mildly.

“No, Sir,” Harkness agreed dutifully.