"I suppose that makes sense," Cardones agreed, studying his CO's 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 southwestern 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-s.p.a.ce between gravity waves. They weren't uncommon; in fact, most of h-s.p.a.ce 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-s.p.a.ce 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 wanderl.u.s.t, adrenaline addiction, and incredible salaries-but people taking their families to the stars had settled for n-s.p.a.ce and cryo.

In 1273 P.D., 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-s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s.

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 "Warshawskis" 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 acc.u.mulated, acc.u.mulating 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 sidewalls 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 pa.s.s 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 by-pa.s.s 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 emba.s.sy. 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 them, 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 a.s.sist 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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

"All right, people." Honor looked levelly around her bridge, then at the split-screen com which held the faces of Harold Tschu and Jacquelyn Harmon, and wished the IAN's Sachsen commander had had someone to send along. But the best Commodore Blohm could promise was to organize a proper squadron with a ground combat echelon within three months, which left the situation squarely up to her in the meantime.

"Let's do this right the first time, shall we?" she went on. "Is Engineering ready, Harry?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I guarantee it'll be spectacular, Skipper."

"Just so long as it's only spectacular. Let's not lose an alpha node for real."

"No sweat, Ma'am."

"Good. Your people are fully briefed, Jackie?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Commander Harmon said from Peter's command deck, and her dark eyes glittered.

"Good." Honor turned in her chair and glanced at her irregular guests. Warner Caslet and Denis Jourdain lacked proper chairs with shock frames, but they wore their skinsuits as they stood beside the main plot. Wayfarer's green bead tracked steadily across that plot, coming up on the Marsh System's alpha wall, and she nodded to Caslet as the Peep glanced over his shoulder at her. Then she drew a deep breath. "In that case, let's be about it," she said calmly.

Admiral Rayna Sherman, who'd once been something approaching a real admiral in something which could almost be mistaken for a navy, braced against her ongoing despair as the lift stopped. By the time it opened and she stepped out onto her command deck, her face was utterly expressionless. The watch acknowledged her arrival respectfully but without the spit and polish of a regular navy crew, and she hid a familiar flash of sourness as she nodded back.

She crossed to the plot and glanced into it, but nothing had changed-of course-and she continued to her command chair while her flagship continued its slow, monotonous sweep. It was ridiculous. Her own President Warnecke (and wasn't that a modest name), Willis, Hendrickson, and Jarmon (named for the three systems of the Chalice, which anyone but an idiot knew they'd never see again) represented a full third of Andre Warnecke's "navy." They were also its most powerful units, and keeping them here was a complete misuse of their potential. Sherman had long since realized just how stupid she'd been to sign on with Warnecke in the first place. But if she was stuck here-and she was; people Warnecke suspected of planning to desert died messily, and the Confederacy's government had already condemned her to death, which left her nowhere to run anyway-she would have preferred to at least operate effectively. The squadron had been designed to cruise as a squadron, and with the heavy cruisers' support to take out convoy escorts, the lighter units could have cut a swath through Silesian s.p.a.ce. Especially now that the Manties had cut their local forces to the bone. And the whole point in coming to Marsh had been that no one else ever came here. Their base's primary defense was its isolation, and if anyone ever did figure out where they were and came calling, her four cruisers were unlikely to stop them.

Besides, if Sherman had been there to ride herd on him, "Commodore" Arner and his pigs would have been denied their favorite form of entertainment. Most of Andre Warnecke's original female followers had bailed out once he showed his true colors, and Sherman understood exactly why she and the majority of his remaining female personnel had been transferred to the ships which never left Marsh.

She grimaced internally, careful to keep it from reaching her face. At least being stuck here is better than watching someone like Arner at work, she thought grimly. Arner's squadron should already have hit the convoy to Posnan, and knowing how he would have allowed his crews to amuse themselves sickened Sherman. How did it come to this? she wondered yet again. I actually believed in this once, thought it would actually make a change for the better in the Chalice. Now I just don't see any way out of it . . . and "The Leader" is getting crazier every day. It was bad enough before they chased us out of the Chalice, but now- She shivered. He may actually believe he'll go back someday, but I doubt it. I think he's just p.i.s.sed off with the universe. He wants to get even by hurting as many people as he can . . . and I'm stuck right in the middle of it.

She closed her eyes. You can't think about that, she told herself sternly. He may be crazy, but that only makes him more dangerous. If he even thinks you're going "unreliable" on him. . .

She opened her eyes with another shudder and c.o.c.ked her chair back. At least she wasn't forced to spend much time dirtside. That was something. "The Leader" had managed to cram over four thousand of his "Elite Guard" aboard the ships which had fled the Chalice, and every one of them was on Sidemore. G.o.d only knew what they did for amus.e.m.e.nt, and Sherman had no desire to find out. Her nightmares were bad enough already. Not that there was- "Hyper footprint!"

Sherman snapped upright in astonishment. Warnecke's tac officer was already bending closer to his console, and Sherman closed her mouth firmly. He'd tell her what he knew as soon as he knew something, and she made herself wait, but Tracking spoke up again before he did.

"Jesus!" Lieutenant Changa gasped. "We've got a Warshawski flare, Admiral-a big one! Looks like somebody lost an entire alpha node-maybe two-crossing the wall."

"A flare?" Sherman stood and crossed to Changa, and the lieutenant tapped a waterfall display.

"See, Ma'am? Output jumped at least four thousand percent just as the last transit energy bled off. Whoever this is, he's d.a.m.ned lucky that sail held through translation."

"Is it one of ours?" Sherman asked, swiveling her gaze to Tactical.

"No way," Commander Truitt said. "We don't have any scheduled returns for the next nine days local. Besides, this guy's a h.e.l.l of a lot bigger than any of ours. I'd say it's a merchie."

"Tracking concurs," Changa reported. "I've got his impellers now, and I make him at least six or seven m-tons. Could be a little more if he's lost more than one alpha node."

"Range and bearing?"

"He made a sloppy translation," Truitt replied. "Not surprising if he was losing a sail, I suppose. He's thirty light-minutes out, just above the ecliptic at zero-eight-two true. Present velocity . . . call it nine hundred KPS. Acceleration looks like about eighty gees-I'd say he has lost a chunk of one of his impeller rooms, if that's the best he can turn out."

"Heading?"

"Looks like he's headed for Sidemore," her astrogator said. "Unless he can get some more accel, though, its going to take him better than thirteen hours."

Sherman nodded and walked slowly back to her chair. The stranger was over eleven light-minutes from her own ships. Even if he knew they where here, it would be a while before any com transmission from him reached them, but she wondered who the h.e.l.l he was. This could be a prize sent in by one of the ships out on ops, but that was strictly against SOP. "The Leader's" contacts in Silesia were an inconvenient distance from Marsh-seclusion had its drawbacks-and his captains normally sent prizes straight to one of the fences. It made getting prize crews back a pain, but that was why Warnecke had kept Silas. The captured liner-c.u.m-freighter had a decent turn of speed and stayed busy on shuttle runs between Marsh and . . . elsewhere.

Yet if this wasn't a prize, what was it doing here? No one ever came to Marsh. That was why they'd chosen the system in the first place. And if anyone was going to come this way, it would certainly have been a smaller tramp freighter, not something this size.

The Warshawski flare. That has to be it. They knew their sail was about to fail, and we're not far off the least-time route between the Empire and Sachsen. They needed a system in a hurry, and we were the closest "safe port" they could reach . . . poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

She sat back down and rubbed her temple. If they were in trouble, they'd start screaming for help as soon as they saw someone to scream to, and what did she do then? Losing a sail didn't make it impossible for a ship to get into hyper; it only meant that if it got there and then hit a grav wave, it would be destroyed. But it could still maneuver there, and it could still attain an apparent velocity a thousand times greater than light. So if these people jumped back into hyper, they could eventually get somewhere else, as long as they were careful to avoid all grav waves en route. Sailing that kind of course would be inconvenient as h.e.l.l, but it could be done.

Which meant that if they picked up anything suspicious and ran for it, she'd have no choice but to chase them down in hyper. In theory, that shouldn't have been a problem, since both their acceleration and their top speed would be far lower than hers, but one reason Marsh was so seldom visited was that only a single grav wave, and that a fairly weak one, served the system. That had probably been a factor in the stranger's decision to come here, since the weaker wave would have put less strain on a failing sail. But it also meant the freighter could run in almost any direction under impellers, and local h-s.p.a.ce sensor conditions were lousy. If one of her people wasn't right on top of them when they made translation, they'd have an excellent chance to evade her. In which case the next people to call would be a Confed squadron.

No, she had to get close enough to be certain they couldn't evade. The best solution would be to intercept inside the Marsh hyper limit, where they couldn't get back into h-s.p.a.ce at all, which meant less than nineteen light-minutes from the G6 primary. But it would take them a long time to get there-certainly long enough to change their minds and run if anything did make them suspicious-so the first order of business was to keep them from suspecting anything.

All right. If that was a merchant ship, it presumably had civilian-grade sensors, which were unlikely to see her ships at anything much above eight light-minutes, and it wouldn't send a message to her unless it could see her. So her first priority had to be to hold the range open until they were where she wanted them. It would also give her a chance to see if their sensors were better than she a.s.sumed, since they'd certainly send a message to her if they saw her. Ergo, no message meant they didn't know she was here. But if they didn't, they were bound to transmit straight to Sidemore, which meant. . . .

She rubbed her temple harder, then nodded and turned her chair to face her astrogator.

"New squadron course, Sue. We've should have a good three light-minutes to play with before we enter their sensor range. I want a vector to take us out and around in a dog leg that will bring us up from astern of them after they've made turnover for Sidemore, but we'll maintain our heading for-" she checked the plot's time display-"another ten minutes."

"No sweat," the astrogator replied. "We've got six times their accel to play with."

"Good." Sherman turned to her com officer. "Raise Sidemore. Tell them I'm going to maneuver to stay outside the target's sensor envelope until we get it inside the hyper limit and send them our course once Sue works it out. If these people send them a message, I want dirtside to tell them there's a visiting Confed anti-piracy patrol out-system of them, that their message is being relayed, and for them to maintain their present profile. Tell them the 'naval units' will make rendezvous with them at the point Sue's calculating. Got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am," the com officer said, and Sherman leaned back in her chair again.

"Sidemore should be receiving our message now, Ma'am," Fred Cousins said, and Honor nodded.

The privateers' maneuvers made it clear they had Wayfarer on gravitics, but very few "merchantmen" would be able to pick them up at this range, and they evidently figured Wayfarer hadn't. Their ships were swinging out to skirt Wayfarer's theoretical sensor envelope, then loop back in behind her in an obvious-and logical-attempt to head off any possibility of flight. All four of them were staying together, as well. That was nice. If she could suck them all in for the initial exchange, she wouldn't have to worry about any of them getting away.

She made herself sit back, radiating serene confidence while a skinsuited Nimitz curled in her lap. Tschu's "Warshawski flare" had been just as convincing as promised, and, as he'd also promised, he'd managed it without actually damaging anything. Which was not to say he hadn't stressed the system right to the limit, and things like that always had some consequences. It had taken all eight forward alpha nodes to project a suitable power pulse, and Honor expected BuShips to speak to her firmly for taking a good thousand hours off their projected service life, but it had been worth it. Or, she corrected herself, it seemed to have been worth it so far.

Caslet had moved over to stand beside her, and their eyes met as she looked up. He and his senior officers had dined with her each night, and a sense of mutual respect and even wary liking had grown up between her and the Peep commander. She remembered Thomas Theisman, the Peep destroyer skipper-and now admiral-she'd captured at the Battle of Blackbird, and smiled slightly. Theisman and Caslet had a lot in common. For that matter, so did Allison MacMurtree, Shannon Foraker, and-reluctant though she'd initially been to admit it about any "people's commissioner"-Denis Jourdain. All of them were too darned good at their jobs for her comfort, and all of them were people of integrity.

"Four heavy cruisers make for pretty stiff odds, Captain," Caslet observed quietly.

"I told you our teeth are sharp," she replied calmly. "I'm less worried by the numbers than I am by how slow we are. If they detach anyone, the detachee is going to get away from us."

Caslet blinked. She was worried that a heavy cruiser might "get away" from a converted merchantman? He was willing to admit her ship mounted powerful energy weapons, but he'd had ample opportunity to realize Wayfarer truly was a civilian design, with all the vulnerabilities that implied, and there couldn't be many places to put missile tubes. Her long-range armament had to be weak, especially given the s.p.a.ce those G.o.d awful grasers must eat up, and she couldn't take much damage. All of which meant a properly handled CA would cut her slow, unarmored, ungainly hull to pieces in any sort of sustained engagement. Granted she did carry those LACs, but LACs were fragile and weakly armed themselves. No matter how Warner Caslet looked at it, he expected Wayfarer to be severely damaged before she could take out that many opponents.

"Well they seem to be sticking together for now," he said dryly. "So if that's your main concern, Captain, I'd say things are looking pretty good so far."

"Message coming in from dirtside," Warnecke's com officer reported. She listened intently for a minute or two, then looked over her shoulder at Sherman. "Base says they're the Andermani freighter Sternenlicht. They've suffered a double node failure in their forward sail, and they took some nasty casualties when the nodes blew. They request engineering and medical a.s.sistance."

"Truitt?" Sherman asked.

"Checking database now." The tac officer watched his display for a few seconds, then shrugged. "We don't have her listed, but our Andermani lists've never been very complete. The message header's definitely Andy merchant service, though, and the transponder matches."

"I see." Sherman crossed her legs and considered, then looked back up at the com officer. "How did dirtside respond?"

"I'll play it back," the com officer said, and a moment later, Andre Warnecke's strong, mellow voice came from the speakers.

"Sternenlicht, this is Sidemore. Your message has been received, and we're making arrangements to render a.s.sistance. I'm afraid we lack the facilities to repair your nodes locally, but we've got a little good news to go with the bad. Two divisions of Silesian cruisers on anti-piracy patrol out of Sachsen dropped by on a courtesy visit earlier this week, and they're still in-system. They probably can't help with your nodes, either, but they do have surgeons aboard, and they can at least let someone know you're here. I'm requesting their immediate a.s.sistance for you, but they've been conducting maneuvers in our outer asteroid belt, and it's going to take them a while to reach you. Maintain your present flight profile. I estimate they'll rendezvous with you in about five hours and escort you the rest of the way in. Sidemore, out."

"Not bad," Sherman murmured. He sounds like he actually means it. I wonder how someone that crazy can sound so reasonable and helpful? She shook herself and checked her plot once more. The range had fallen to ten light-minutes as her squadron skirted around Sternenlicht to reach its ambush position, but that was still well beyond reach of a merchie's sensors.

". . . way in. Sidemore, out."

Honor looked at Rafe Cardones with a raised eyebrow.

"'Oh what a tangled web we weave,'" he said with a grim smile. "At least it confirms that we're in the right place. If those are Confed cruisers, I'll eat our main sensor array."

"I agree, Milady," Jennifer Hughes put in. "Carol has their emissions dialed in across the board. They're a dead match for the profiles we pulled out of that tin-can's computers, and they sure as h.e.l.l aren't anywhere near any asteroid belts."

"Good." Honor nodded in satisfaction. There'd never been much doubt, but it was nice to be certain they'd be killing the right people.

She gazed into her plot, watching Wayfarer's bead move steadily towards the planet while the cruisers sidestepped the "oblivious freighter." They were maintaining a tight-interval formation, too. That was nice. It would put them all in range simultaneously when the time came.

"Reply, Fred," she said. "Thank them for their a.s.sistance, and tell them we'll maintain profile. Be sure you include Dr. Ryder's description of our crew casualties for their 'surgeons'."

Sherman stifled a sense of guilt as she watched the hapless freighter sail straight into her trap. Replacing that vessel's alpha nodes would be a gargantuan task for their repair ship-they'd have to build the d.a.m.ned things from scratch, since none of their ships used nodes that powerful-but it could be done. And Andre would be delighted to add her to his list of prizes. Better yet, there was a whole crew of trained s.p.a.cers over there, people who could be "convinced" to provide some of the additional technical support they needed.

It'd be more merciful just to blow them apart, she thought grimly, but I can't. Andre would take his time killing me if I blew away a prize. She watched the light dot of the freighter, less than ten minutes from rendezvous now, and her eyes were haunted. I'm sorry, she told the blip, and turned her chair to face her tac officer once more.

"Nine-and-a-half minutes to intercept, Ma'am," Jennifer Hughes said. "They're folding in from starboard, rate of closure just under two thousand KPS, decelerating at two hundred gees. Present range to Bogey One just over three-one-one-thousand klicks; range to Bogey Four is four-zero-niner thousand. We're picking up fire control emissions from Bogey Two, but the others aren't even pulsing us. We've got 'em where we want 'em, Milady."