Honor nodded. The "Confederacy cruisers" had made com contact hours ago, and the woman who'd introduced herself as "Admiral Sherman" was actually in Silesian uniform. Or her com image was, anyway. Honor's own image had gone out in Andermani merchant uniform, courtesy of a little computer alteration. But unlike "Admiral Sherman," Honor knew the face on her screen was lying, for Tactical had tracked Warnecke's cruisers' entire maneuver, and it bore no resemblance at all to the one "Sherman" had described.

"All right, people." She glanced up at Caslet, and the Peep nodded back. "Begin your attack, Commander Hughes," she said formally.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Carol, roll the pods."

"That's funny."

Sherman turned to look at Commander Truitt, and the tac officer shrugged.

"I just picked up something separating from the target," he said. "Not sure what it is. It looks like debris of some sort, but it must be pretty small-the radar return's mighty weak. It's falling astern of her now, and-" He frowned. "There goes another batch of it."

"What sort of debris?"

"I don't know," Truitt admitted. "Looks like they could be jettisoning cargo or- There goes another batch." He grinned suddenly. "You don't suppose they were running contraband into the Confederacy, do you?"

"Maybe," Sherman said, but her tone was doubtful. If Sternenlicht was, in fact, carrying contraband-and most captains did in Silesia-she'd want to get rid of it before a Confed squadron sent people aboard her. But if she was going to dump cargo, why wait this long? Surely she had to know Sherman's ships were close enough to see it on radar. Of course, from their medical reports, they had some pretty seriously hurt personnel over there. What with a major engineering failure and casualties, it might just have slipped her captain's mind until now.

A fourth wave of debris had kicked out the rear of the freighter's wedge while Sherman pondered. Now a fifth followed . . . and then the freighter suddenly rolled ship, turning the belly of her wedge towards the cruisers, and Rayna Sherman discovered what that "jettisoned cargo" truly was.

In light of any missile pod's complete vulnerability to any weapon, BuWeaps was still trying to come up with a design made out of sufficiently low-signature materials to defeat enemy fire control. They hadn't quite managed that yet, but they had come up with one whose radar return was far weaker than something its size ought to have been, and their new optical coating was much more effective against both visual detection and the laser pulses of the lidar most navies favored for short-range fire control, as well. Which meant they didn't look big enough to be any particular threat . . . a fact upon which Honor had counted when she, Cardones, and Hughes planned their initial tactics.

Five complete salvoes spilled astern, ejecting cleanly from the outsized cargo doors, and the pods' onboard fire control was programmed for delayed activation. The first salvo waited forty-eight seconds, the second thirty-six, the third twenty-four, and the fourth twelve . . .

The last fired on launch, and three hundred capital missiles streaked straight into the privateers' teeth.

The range was under a half-million kilometers, and the RMN's latest capital missiles accelerated at 92,000 KPS. Flight time to the closest enemy ship was twenty-four seconds; time to the most distant was only four seconds longer, and Hendrickson, Jarmon, and Willis never had a chance.

Seventy-five immensely powerful laser heads screamed in on each of them, and they didn't even have their fire control on-line, far less their point defense. There was no need for it. They were the hunters, and their prey was only a huge, slow, totally defenseless freighter. They'd known that-or thought they had. Now captains shouted frantic helm orders, trying to roll ship and interpose their wedges, and Jarmon actually managed it . . . not that it did her any good. Jennifer Hughes' exquisitely timed missile storm slashed down on them, and her birds had plenty of time left on their drives for terminal attack maneuvers. Bomb-pumped lasers smashed through their targets' sidewalls as if they were tissue, detonating at ranges as short as a thousand kilometers, and no heavy cruiser ever built could survive that sort of fire.

Warner Caslet stared at the plot in disbelief as the missile traces sp.a.w.ned like hideous serpents of light. He whirled to the visual display, and then staggered back a step as the laser heads detonated. The range was little more than a light-second and a half, and the savage white glare of nuclear fire stabbed at his eyes despite the optical filters.

G.o.d, he thought numbly. Dear sweet G.o.d, this is only a Q-ship! What the h.e.l.l happens if they fit a warship with . . . with whatever the h.e.l.l that was?!

Rayna Sherman went paper-white as the missiles tore down on President Warnecke. Her flagship had been about to demand the "freighter's" surrender, and her fire control was on-line for the task. Warnecke's merely human crew was taken totally by surprise, but her point defense computers observed the sudden eruption of threat sources and engaged automatically, salvoing counter missiles and snapping the laser cl.u.s.ters around to engage the leakers.

Unfortunately, her defenses were too weak to stop that much fire even if they'd known in advance that it was coming. She was only a heavy cruiser, and not even a superdreadnought could have thrown seventy-five missiles at her in a single broadside. She stopped a lot of them, but most got through, and Sherman clung to her command chair as lasers slashed into her ship. Plating shattered under the kinetic transfer, air belched out in huge, obscene bubbles, damage alarms screamed, and there was nothing-nothing at all-Sherman could do about it.

Warnecke's wedge fluctuated madly as alpha and beta nodes were blasted away. Half her radar and all her gravitics were blown to bits, and a raging wall of blast and fragments crashed through her communications section. Both sidewalls flickered and died, then came back up at less than half strength, and two-thirds of her armament was totally destroyed. She reeled sideways, alive but dying, and her half-crippled plot showed the unmistakable radar returns of LACs exploding from the flanks of the huge "freighter."

"Com! Tell them we surrender!" Sherman shouted.

"I can't!" the panicked com officer shouted back. "They're gone-they're all gone in Com One and Two!"

Sherman felt her heart stop. The "freighter" was already rolling back down, presenting her broadside to Warnecke, and there could be only one reason for that. But without a com, she couldn't even tell them she surrendered! Unless- "Strike the wedge!"

Warnecke's astrogator stared at her for an instant before she understood. It was the universal, last-ditch signal of surrender, and her hands flashed for her panel.

"Coming on target," Jennifer Hughes said coldly as Wayfarer completed her roll. Eight ma.s.sive grasers came to bear on their target, and she punched the b.u.t.ton.

Grasers, like lasers, are light-speed weapons. Rayna Sherman didn't even have a chance to realize she'd found an escape from Andre Warnecke's madness at last, for the deadly streams of focused gamma radiation arrived before she knew they'd fired.

"And that," Honor Harrington said quietly, staring into the visual display at the boil of light and expanding wreckage which had once been Bogey Two, "is that."

CHAPTER THIRTY.

"Message coming in from Sidemore, Skipper." Honor held up a hand, halting her conversation with Rafe Cardones, and raised an eyebrow at Fred Cousins. "Same guy as before, but we're getting a visual to go with it this time,"the com officer said.

"Really?" Honor smiled thinly. "Put him through."

Her small com screen blinked alive with the face of a man in the immaculate uniform of a commodore in the Silesian Navy. He was dark-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard, and without the uniform, he could easily have been mistaken for a college professor or a banker. But Honor recognized him from her intelligence file imagery despite the beard.

"My G.o.d, woman!" he gasped, his face twisted with horror. "What in G.o.d's name d'you think you're doing? You just killed three thousand Silesian military personnel!"

"No," Honor replied in a cold soprano. "I just exterminated three thousand vermin."

It took over four minutes for her light-speed transmission to reach the planet, and then Warnecke's eyes narrowed. His furious expression went absolutely blank as he gazed into his own pickup for several seconds, and when he spoke again, his voice was completely calm.

"Who are you?" he asked flatly.

"Captain Honor Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy, at your service. I've already destroyed four of your vessels in Sharon's Star and Schiller"-she felt guilty at taking credit for Caslet's kills, but this was no time to introduce distracting elements-"and now I've taken out all four of your heavy cruisers. You're running out of ships, Mr. Warnecke, but that doesn't really matter, does it?" She smiled, her almond eyes colder than liquid helium. "After all, you've just run out of time, as well."

She sat back, waiting out the inevitable com lag, but Warnecke didn't even flinch when her transmission reached him. He only leaned back in his own chair and bared his teeth at her.

"Perhaps I am, Captain Harrington," he said. "On the other hand, I may have more time than you think. After all, I've got a garrison and an entire planetary population down here. Digging my people out could get . . . messy, don't you think? And, of course, I've also taken the precaution of planting a few nuclear charges here and there in various towns and cities. We wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to those charges, now would we?"

Honor's nostrils flared. It wasn't unexpected, but that didn't make it any better. a.s.suming the threat was real. Unfortunately, it probably was. As far as Andrew Warnecke was concerned, the universe ended when he died, and he knew exactly what the Confederacy government would do if it ever got its hands on him. If he had to die anyway, he wouldn't hesitate to take hundreds of thousands of others with him. In fact, he'd probably enjoy it.

"Let me explain something to you, Mr. Warnecke," she said quietly. "I now control this star system. Nothing will move in or out of it without my permission; anything which attempts to do so will be destroyed. I'm sure you have sufficient sensor capability to confirm my ability to make good on those promises.

"I also have a full battalion of Manticoran Marines, with battle armor and heavy weapons, and I will shortly control your planet's high orbitals. I can drop precision kinetic strikes anywhere I want to support my personnel. You, on the other hand, have four thousand men who aren't worth the pulser darts to blow them to h.e.l.l as combat soldiers, and I will personally guarantee that your combat equipment is obsolescent, second-line garbage by Manticoran standards.

"Moreover, I've notified Commodore Blohm of the Andermani navy of your location, and heavy units of the IAN and Imperial Army will be arriving soon. In short, Mr. Warnecke, we can-and will-take that planet away from you any time we want. And, as I'm certain you're quire aware, if we don't, the Confederacy will."

She paused to let that register, then continued.

"It's quite possible you have, in fact, emplaced the nuclear charges you've just threatened to detonate. If you do detonate them, you die. If we send in the troops, you also die-either in the fighting, or on the end of a Silesian rope; it doesn't matter to me. But, Mr. Warnecke, if you surrender yourself, your men, and the planet, I will personally guarantee that you will be turned over to the Andermani, and not the Silesians. At the moment, none of you have been charged with any capital crime by the Empire, and Commodore Blohm has empowered me to promise you that the Empire will not execute you all as you so manifestly deserve. Prison, yes; executions, no. I regret that, but I'm willing to offer you your lives in return for a peaceful surrender of the planet."

She smiled again, colder even than before, and crossed her legs.

"The choice is yours, Mr. Warnecke. We'll speak again when my ships are in orbit around Sidemore. Harrington, out."

Warnecke's face disappeared from her screen, and Honor looked at Cousins.

"Ignore any additional hails until I tell you otherwise, Fred."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"You pushed him pretty hard there, Captain," Caslet said quietly, and she turned her chair to face him. The Peep had recovered from the shock of what Wayfarer had done to Warnecke's cruisers, and his hazel eyes were intent.

"I know." She stood, cradling Nimitz in her arms, and crossed to the main plot. Commander Harmon's LACs moved across it-three of them speeding ahead to planetary orbit while the other nine collected Wayfarer's missile pods and towed them in for reuse-and she watched Sidemore drawing closer. She stood brooding down at the planet for long, silent seconds, with Caslet by her side, then shrugged.

"I don't have much choice, Warner." It was the first time she'd called him anything other than "Citizen Commander," but neither of them really noticed. "I have to a.s.sume he really does have the place mined, and I also have to a.s.sume he really will press the b.u.t.ton. But if we-or the Andies-don't take him out, the Confeds certainly will. They have to, and, frankly, I don't think I could stomach seeing him walk away, either. That means that unless someone convinces him to surrender, that b.u.t.ton will get pushed and an awful lot of people will die."

She looked up at him, and Caslet nodded soberly.

"The man's an egomaniacal psychopath," she said flatly. "The only hope I see is to rub his nose in the fact that he's helpless and that the Confederacy will come in to get him, regardless of his threats. I've got to push him hard enough to break through his megalomania, then offer him a way out that lets him live. It's the only way to avoid enormous civilian casualties, but he's got to have that way out. If he figures he doesn't-" She shrugged, and Caslet nodded again.

"I understand your logic," he said after a moment, "but do you really think it will work?"

"With Warnecke?" Honor shook her head. "Possibly not. I have to try, but I can't count on anything where he's concerned. But he's not alone down there, either. He's got four thousand troops on the planet. They may be sc.u.m, but they may also be a bit closer to sane than he is. If I keep him talking long enough, sooner or later word of the options I've given him will get out. When that happens, somebody who doesn't want to die may just take Warnecke out for us."

Caslet looked at her silently and tried to hide a mental shiver as she gazed back. Her expression was calm and composed, but her eyes. . . He saw the doubt in them, the anguish . . . the fear. She sounded so dispa.s.sionate, so reasonable, projecting the aura of certainty which was one of a naval officer's essential weapons, yet deep inside she knew exactly what stakes she was playing for, and they terrified her.

But she'd seen this coming from the outset, he realized. She'd considered the options she'd just offered Warnecke long since, for she'd known she was going to face this decision, require those options. That was why she'd discussed them with Commodore Blohm ahead of time. Yet even knowing, she'd decided to attack herself rather than pa.s.s the responsibility off to someone else. The Silesians or the Andermani would have moved if she hadn't; she had to know that as well as Caslet did, but she'd refused to evade the job. He'd come to know her during his time aboard Wayfarer-not well, but well enough to realize how the deaths on Sidemore would haunt her if Warnecke pressed the b.u.t.ton. And, he thought, well enough to know she'd recognized that, too. That she'd considered it the same way she'd considered every other aspect of the operation. If it happened, everyone in the galaxy would be ready to second-guess her, to blame her for the disaster, to argue that she'd been clumsy-that there had to have been a way to have avoided so many deaths. And she would, too. She would always believe she could have avoided it if she'd been smarter, cleverer, faster, and she knew she would, and still she'd come here to place herself on the line for a planet full of people she'd never met.

How did she do that? How did she make herself a.s.sume such a crushing responsibility when she could so easily have handed it off to someone else? Warner Caslet was also a naval officer, also accustomed to the burden of command, yet he didn't know the answer to that question. He knew only that she had . . . and that he could not have.

She was his enemy, and he was hers. Her kingdom was fighting for its life against the Republic, and the men and women who ran the Republic were fighting for their lives against her kingdom. There could be no other outcome. Either the Star Kingdom must be conquered, or the Committee of Public Safety would be destroyed by the mob its promises had mobilized to support the war. Caslet had no love for the Committee or its members, but if it came down in its turn, G.o.d only knew where the resultant paroxysms of bloodshed would leave his star nation. And because they were both naval officers, because the consequences of defeat were too terrible for either of them to contemplate, they could be only enemies. Yet at this moment, he wished it could be otherwise. He felt the magnetism which made her crews worship her, made them willing to follow her straight into the fire, and he understood it at last.

She cared. It was really that simple. She cared, and she could neither offer her people less than her very best nor settle for less than the complete discharge of whatever responsibilities duty required of her, however grim. He'd just seen the dreadful efficiency with which she'd annihilated four heavy cruisers, and he recognized the wolf in her. Yet she was a wolf who'd dedicated her life to facing other wolves to protect those who couldn't, and he understood that, for an echo of what she was lived within him, as well. He knew her now, recognized what she truly was and knew that what she was made her a terrible danger to the Republic, to his Navy-ultimately to Warner Caslet himself-yet for just this moment, it didn't matter.

He gazed at her a moment longer, then startled both of them by laying a hand lightly on her arm.

"I hope it works, Captain," he said quietly, and turned back to the plot before them.

"Entering orbit, Ma'am," John Kanehama said. Nimitz lay on his back in Honor's lap, true-hands and hand-feet wrestling with her, but she looked up at the astrogator's announcement and nodded. She gave Nimitz a last caress, savoring the surge of love and a.s.surance he sent back to her, then rose, set him on the back of her chair, and folded her hands behind her.

"Hail Warnecke, Fred."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Cousins punched a command into his panel, then nodded to her, and she faced the pickup, her eyes cold, as Warnecke's face appeared on the main screen. He looked almost as calm as before, but not quite, and she wished they were close enough for Nimitz to give her a read on his emotions. Not that she was certain it would have helped. She was convinced the man was insane, and a madman's emotions might have been the most dangerous guide of all upon which to rely.

"I said we'd speak again, Mr. Warnecke," she said.

"So you did," he replied, and the com lag now was barely noticeable. "You seem to have an uncommonly capable 'freighter' up there, Captain. My compliments." Honor bobbed her head in cold acknowledgment, and he smiled thinly. "Nonetheless, I'm still down here with my b.u.t.ton, and I a.s.sure you I will push it if you force me to. In which case, of course, the deaths of all these innocent civilians will be entirely your fault."

"I don't think we'll play that game," Honor replied. "You have an alternative. If you detonate your charges, you'll do it because you chose to do that rather than accept the unreasonably generous offer I've already made you."

"My, my! And I thought I was the villain of the piece!" Warnecke raised his hand, bringing a small, hand-held transmitter into the pickup's field, and bared his teeth. "Are you really so blase about the possibility of my pressing this b.u.t.ton? I have very little to lose, you know. I've heard about Andermani prisons. I'm not at all sure I'd prefer life in one of them to, well-"

He flipped his wrist to emphasize the transmitter he held, and his eyes burned with a dangerous light. Honor felt an icy breeze blow down her spine, but no trace of it touched her face.

"Perhaps not, Mr. Warnecke, but death is so permanent, don't you think?"

"Where there's life, there's hope, you mean?" The man on her com screen laughed and leaned back in his chair. "You intrigue me, Captain Harrington. Truly you do. Are you really so sanctimonious that you'd prefer to see hundreds of thousands of people killed rather than allow a single pirate and his henchmen to just sail away in their unarmed repair ship?"

"Oh?" Honor c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "You intend to put four thousand extra people into your repair ship's life support?" She shook her head. "I'm afraid you'd find the air getting rather thick before you made another planet."

"Well, sacrifices must be made, of course," Warnecke acknowledged, "and I suppose it would only be courteous of me to leave you some prisoners as a trophy. Actually, I was thinking in terms of myself and perhaps a hundred close a.s.sociates." He leaned towards the pickup. "Think about it, Captain. I'm sure my privateers must have taken at least a few Manticoran ships-there are so many of them, after all-but the Confederacy isn't your kingdom. What do you care about its rebels and revolutionaries? You can have Sidemore, rescue Marsh, send the ragtag 'pirate' leaders packing in a single ship, and collect thousands of prisoners, all without risking a single town or city. Quite an accomplishment, don't you think?"

"Your loyalty to your people overwhelms me," Honor observed, and he laughed again.

"Loyalty, Captain? To these fools? They've already failed me twice-they and their incompetent shipboard counterparts. They cost me my own nation, my place in history. Why ever should I feel 'loyalty' to them?" He shook his head. "A pox upon all of them, Captain Harrington. You can have them with my compliments."

"While you scurry off to try it all over again? I think not, Mr. Warnecke."

"Come now, Captain! You know it's the best deal you're going to get. Death or glory, victory or magnificent destruction-those are a naval officer's choices, aren't they? What makes you think mine are any different?"

Honor gazed at him for a long, silent moment while her mind ticked away. His mellow voice was so cultured, so powerful, made anything he said seem so rational and reasoned. It must have been a potent weapon when he first began his career in the Chalice. Even now, he exuded a twisted charm, like the seduction of an incubus. It was the emptiness within him, she thought. The void where a normal person kept his soul. The blood on his hands meant nothing-less than nothing-to him, and that was his armor. Since he felt no guilt, he projected none.

"Do you really think," she said finally, "that I can let you go? That it's as simple as that?"

"Why not? Who was it back on Old Earth who said, 'Kill one man and you're a murder; kill a million and you're a statesman'? I may not have that quite correct, but I'm sure the paraphrase is close. And navies and armies and even monarchs negotiate with 'statesmen' all the time, Captain. Come, now! Negotiate with me . . . or I may just press the b.u.t.ton anyway, to show you how seriously you should take me. For example-"

His other hand came up into the pickup's field, and his index finger pressed a b.u.t.ton on the transmitter number pad.

"There!" he said with a brilliant smile, and Honor heard someone suck in air behind her. She turned her head and saw Jennifer Hughes staring at her display in horror. The tac officer's head whipped up, and Honor's left hand made a quick, chopping motion outside her own pickup's field of view. Cousins was watching her intently, and he cut the sound in the instant before Hughes opened her mouth.

"My G.o.d, Ma'am!" the tac officer gasped. "We've got a nuclear detonation on the planet! Tracking makes it about five hundred k-tons . . . right in the middle of a town!"

Honor felt a fist punch her in the belly, and her face paled. She couldn't control that, but her expression didn't even flicker while the horror of it rolled through her.

"Casualty estimate?" she asked flatly.

"I-I can't be certain, Ma'am." The tough-as-nails tac officer was visibly shaken. "From the size of the town, maybe ten or fifteen thousand."

"I see." Honor inhaled deeply, then turned back to the com and flicked her hand at Cousins. The sound came back up, and Warnecke's smile had vanished.