Chapter Nine

GNS Jason Alvarez's flag briefing room was on the small side, compared to that of a battlecruiser or ship of the wall, but it was well equipped and large enough for Honor's needs. A little more space between the back of her chair and the compartment’s forward bulkhead would have been welcome, and inviting anyone in addition to her staff quickly made it seem badly congested, but she'd had to work under much less congenial conditions, and at least her chair was comfortable.

"All right, people," she said now, rapping a knuckle lightly on the long, narrow table which ran the length of the compartment. "Let's settle down."

The others found their chairs and slid neatly into them. Except, inevitably, for Carson Clinkscales, who managed to trip over what appeared to be his own feet. The ensign fell to his right, and his left arm, windmilling for balance, took Lieutenant Commander McGinley's GSN cap off her head. The heavy peaked cap catapulted across the conference table, hit the polished surface, slid past Andreas Venizelos' reaching hand with demonic precision, and struck a carafe of ice water dead center. The unintentional missile had just enough kinetic energy to knock the carafe over, and water exploded from it as the top some steward had neglected to fasten properly popped clear. Three different people clutched for the carafe, but none reached it, and Captain Greentree gasped as the container rolled off the table and an ice-cold fountain inundated his lap.

The silence which followed was profound, and Clinkscales stared in horror at the flag captain, waiting for the blast of outrage which would reduce him to a grease stain on the spot. But the blast didn't come. Greentree simply looked down into his lap, then picked up the (now empty) carafe between thumb and index finger, and extended it gingerly to Lieutenant Mayhew. The intelligence officer took it without comment and carried it to the hatch for disposal while Venizelos and Howard Latham retrieved their electronic memo pads from the small lake on the table, and the flag captain plucked a handkerchief from his tunic pocket and dabbed at his drenched trousers.

"I..." Clinkscales blazed crimson and looked as if he would have preferred dying on the spot. "I-I'm sorry, Captain," he managed to get out. "I don't know, That is..." he swallowed and started around the table "...if you'd let me help..."

"That's quite all right, Mr. Clinkscales," Greentree said. "I know it was an accident, and I can deal with it myself, thank you."

Clinkscales' blush burned even darker, and Honor felt his humiliation. She was certain Greentree hadn't done it intentionally, but his refusal of the flag lieutenant's assistance had come just quickly enough to sound defensive, as if he didn't want the young man anywhere near him. She contemplated saying something herself, but for the life of her, she couldn't think of anything that wouldn't simply make things worse, and she looked up to meet the gaze of the only other person present who wasn't one of her staff officers. Alistair McKeon stood just inside the hatch, gray eyes twinkling as he surveyed the carnage. His wry amusement came clearly over her link to Nimitz, and it appealed to her own sense of the ridiculous. Embarrassing accident or not, no permanent damage had been done, and living with the consequences might actually do Clinkscales some good. The galaxy wasn't going to go around padding its sharp corners for him. Sooner or later he'd either have to stop having accidents or learn to cope with their aftermath gracefully, and without covering fire from his superiors, and so she simply leaned sideways to collect McGinley's cap from the carpet.

"I believe this is yours, Marcia?" she said, and the ops officer smiled at her, tucked it under her left arm, and pressed back against the bulkhead to let Clinkscales squeeze by her. The ensign's broad shoulders drooped miserably as she obviously got herself out of his way, but Honor noticed the gentle, unobtrusive pat of encouragement the lieutenant commander gave him as he passed.

Jasper Mayhew returned to the table with a fresh carafe and a towel. He placed the former on the table and handed the latter to Greentree, then settled back into his own chair with catlike composure as Honor rapped on the table top once more.

"As I was saying, let's settle down," she repeated calmly, and McKeon, as her second-in-command, took the chair facing hers from the far end of the table. Clinkscales sank into his own chair with unmistakable relief at having made it without further disaster, and she suppressed an urge to shake her head.

"Thank you for coming, Alistair," she went on instead, nodding to McKeon. He nodded back just as gravely as if accepting an invitation from a commodore were optional, and she glanced at Greentree. "The reason I wanted you and Thomas present is that we've received official notification that we'll be escorting Convoy JNMTC-Seventy-Six from Grayson to Treadway. I know we discussed this the other night, but we've been given real numbers and destinations to work with now, instead of guesstimates, and we've got some decisions to make. Marcia?"

She nodded to McGinley, and the ops officer leaned forward slightly in her chair.

"According to Command Central, Milady, we're looking at taking a total of twenty vessels from Yeltsin to Casca, then to Quest, Clairmont, Adler, Treadway, and finally home via Candor. All our merchies will be JNMTC units, so we should make fast passages, but we'll have a layover of at least thirty-six hours in Casca to transship cargo. We'll also be detaching one ship there and three more for Clairmont Station. The biggest delivery will be to Adler: two Marine transports and five support ships, but we'll simply detach those ships in passing and continue on to Treadway. We'll drop off three more ships there and pick up four empties headed back to Yeltsin, then spend at least four days at Candor unloading the other seven ships of the original convoy before departing for Yeltsin. Estimated time for the round trip is approximately two months."

She paused, inviting questions. There were none, and Honor nodded for her to continue.

"Obviously, our single greatest concern has to be the possibility of encountering Peep raiders," McGinley went on. "According to our latest intelligence, the Peoples Navy is in deep trouble on its southern flank. Unfortunately, that intelligence is less definite than I could wish, which leaves room for some differing interpretations. With your permission, Milady, I'll ask Jasper to address this point."

"Certainly. Jasper?"

The Grayson intelligence officer looked even younger than usual, but his blue eyes were serious as he returned his senior officers' combined gazes.

"First of all," he began, "I must stress that, as Commander McGinley's indicated, our intelligence is a lot softer than I'd prefer. We're fairly confident the Peeps haven't managed to scrape up the strength to hold Barnett against serious attack, but they have enough firepower there to prevent us from carrying out any manned deep penetrations or getting recon drones into the inner system, so all we can say with certainty is that our patrols haven't reported the arrival of any substantial number of ships of the wall.

"Our biggest problem is that, for the moment, we aren't anywhere near as strong in the sector as we could wish, either. The situation around Trevor’s Star has drawn off most of the available Peep tonnage, but it's done the same thing for us, too. Given how many capital ships the final fighting there sent to the repair yards, quieter sectors, including ours, have been raided pretty hard to build up Admiral Kuzak's strength, and drawing in Eighth Fleets designated units has stripped the cupboard still barer between Yeltsin and Barnett. What that means for us is that our pickets are all relatively light and much too shorthanded for aggressive reconnaissance of Peep-held systems, which means we have to pretty much guess at what's on the other side of the hill."

He paused for a moment to let that settle in, then continued.

"On the basis of the information we do have and the best estimates our analysts can come up with, Command Central feels we can anticipate that most local Peep pickets will be weak, probably no more than a screen of cruisers whose primary function is more to warn Barnett an attacking force is inbound than to mount any serious defense of their station. Command Central also feels Peep system COs will tend to be cautious, since they must be aware that we're planning an eventual move into their command areas in strength. While Central's latest update stops short of predicting that the enemy will adopt a purely defensive posture, it clearly anticipates a high degree of timidity on his part."

"I see." Honor leaned back and pursed her lips. She reached up to rub Nimitz's ears where the 'cat lay stretched across the top of her chair back and let her eyes rest on Mayhew’s face. "Should I gather, Lieutenant, that you don't share that anticipation?"

"No, My Lady. I don't." Many a lieutenant would have waffled, but Mayhew shook his head firmly. "According to the Manty Office of Naval Intelligence’s last download, the new system commander at Barnett is Admiral Thomas Theisman." Honor felt her eyebrows arch. This was the first she'd heard of that, and the news put a human face on the enemy, for she and Thomas Theisman had met, and she had a high respect for his ability and initiative. "I've studied Theisman's record," Mayhew went on, unaware of his commodore's thoughts, "and he doesn't fit the standard Peep profile. He's a chance-taker. I wouldn't call him rash, but he's proved he's willing to go against the odds when his own judgment tells him to. Sooner or later, that's almost certain to get him shot. He can't be right all the time, and the first time he blows an operation, he's done for. But so far he's always managed to deliver, and I don't see him changing his approach now."

"I see," Honor repeated. She rubbed the tip of her nose, then turned to Venizelos and McGinley. "Do you and Marcia agree with Jasper, Andy?"

"On balance, yes," Venizelos replied. "We differ a bit on the specific implications for our escort operation, but I think Jasper's read Theisman pretty well. I also discussed Theisman with Rear Admiral Yu." He paused, and Honor nodded. Like her, Venizelos had fought, and met, Thomas Theisman, but in his last operation as an officer of the People's Navy, Alfredo Yu had handpicked Theisman as his second-in-command. If anyone in Allied service might have insights into what made Theisman tick, Yu was the man.

"According to Admiral Yu," Venizelos said, "Admiral Theisman is a dangerous man. The Admiral described him to me as determined, intelligent, and calculating. He'll study a situation carefully and make his own assessment of it, and wherever possible, he'll act on his assessment, even if that requires some creative bending of his orders, which matches my own impression of the man. Frankly, I'm amazed he's lasted this long under the present regime, but I agree with Jasper that Command Central may be making a serious mistake if it expects him to stand passively on the defensive."

"So where do you and Jasper 'differ a bit'?"

"If I may, Milady, I'll take that one," McGinley said, and Honor nodded to her.

"The main difference between us isn't whether or not Theisman will act as offensively as his resources permit so much as it is a question of what resources he has. Bearing in mind how weak our own system pickets are in this region, Jasper is afraid that Theisman will launch a series of selective strikes against them. Assuming he actually has the strength for such a strategy, Andy and I certainly agree that it would represent his most effective option, but in light of the much greater threat Trevor's Star represents to the heart of the Peoples Republic, I can't see the People’s Navy dispatching serious numbers of the wall to Barnett. They can't possibly assemble sufficient strength there to keep us from taking it whenever we get around to it, and they know it. Accordingly, I'd expect any reinforcements to consist of fairly light units, vessels which would be both expendable and better suited to screening and commerce raiding. Theisman would be forced to commit battlecruisers at the very least to have a realistic chance of taking any of the local systems away from us, but light and heavy cruisers or even destroyers could be used to pounce on our shipping. If I were him, that's precisely what I'd do to get the biggest return on my investment."

"Hm." Honor rubbed her nose once more, then quirked an eyebrow at Mayhew.

"Jasper?"

"Commander McGinley’s certainly got a point, My Lady," the lieutenant conceded, "but her conclusion rests on two assumptions. One is that the Peeps won't cut loose the battlecruisers needed to take out one of our system pickets, and the other is that the lighter forces available to them would willingly attack our shipping. In response to the first, we can only guess at exactly what higher command authority is likely to assign to Theisman. Yes, they've probably written Barnett off. I know ONIs concluded that, on the basis of available shipping, they can't do anything else, and the logic is compelling. But even if they decide Barnett is expendable, they may make a fight for it anyway. I certainly would, if only to compel us to commit the maximum strength against that system and away from operations around Trevor."

He paused, and Honor nodded noncommittally. Mayhew was sticking his neck out by disagreeing with the received wisdom handed down by better paid, higher ranking heads. It took a certain amount of courage, or ego, for a mere lieutenant to dispute ONIs view, but Mayhew's very lack of seniority might actually make it easier for him in at least one sense. He could disagree and offer alternative hypotheses all day long, but he lacked the rank to make any of his interpretations stick. Even if one of his seniors chose to act upon his advice, the ultimate responsibility (and blame) for the outcome would rest not on Mayhew, but on the senior officer in question.

None of which changed the fact that the strategy Mayhew had just sketched out was the same one which Honor would have adopted in the Peeps' place.

"In response to the second point, that lighter Peep units would willingly attack our shipping," the lieutenant resumed, "I'd simply point out that our local shipping patterns have been materially altered to consolidate our escort capability over the past months. We're sending out more ships per convoy, but the total number of convoys, and thus potential targets, has been cut in half, which means, theoretically, at least, that the available escort strength per convoy has been doubled. The Peeps may not know that yet, though anyone sent out to raid our shipping lanes will catch on in a hurry. But what if they already realize how our deployments are shifting? Command Central is sending us out to escort a single convoy, which means that there will be six heavy cruisers waiting for any raiders. That comes close to matching the strength available to more than a third of our local system pickets, so why go after a moving target? The enemy would have to spread his available strength widely to locate a convoy in hyper, even if he knew its exact schedule, and that very dispersal would mean he was unlikely to have enough combat power to engage its escort if he managed to find it at all. On the other hand, star systems don't dodge around. He knows exactly where they are, and if he does have battlecruisers available and chooses to operate them aggressively, he'd be like a spider in a web. If he managed to seize a system, it would be impossible to warn any ships already en route to it until they arrived... at which point his concentrated strength would be available to take out any escorts before he massacred the merchantmen.

Especially if he could suck them inside the hyper limit to keep them from simply translating out on him."

Honor frowned and rubbed her chin thoughtfully. She considered for several seconds, then lowered her hand to point a long index finger at McGinley.

"If I understand correctly, you disagree with Jasper not over what would constitute a rational Peep strategy but over Theisman's probable resources. Is that correct?"

"Essentially," McGinley agreed. "So far we don't have any reports of attacks on convoys in the area, so I'm also inclined to doubt that the Peeps have caught onto our new shipping patterns yet, but that's a minor point. If, in fact, they have the strength to punch out one of our pickets even temporarily, there's no question but that it would be the smart move on their part. Not only would they get the shot at incoming traffic that Jaspers just described, but they'd also have an excellent opportunity to inflict significant losses on the picket they attacked. I simply find it difficult to believe that they're willing to pour more capital ships down a rat hole for a system they can't hope to hold in the end. And even if they did send him any substantial reinforcements, I question whether or not Theisman would dare risk them in some sort of unauthorized forward operation."

"Thomas Theisman might fool you, Marcia," Honor murmured. She rocked her chair back and forth for several thoughtful moments, then focused once more on McGinley.

"You may well be right about Barnett's resources," she said, "but I think Jasper has his finger on our worst potential danger. Whether it actually happens or not, we have to assume it's at least possible that the enemy will choose to attack our forward pickets rather than carry out search and destroy operations against convoys between star systems. How do we protect ourselves against both possibilities?"

"If we had a larger escort, I'd vote for the Sarnow Deployment," McGinley replied promptly, and Honor nodded once more.

Any commerce raider knew that the best chance to hit a merchantman (or a convoy of them) was immediately after it translated from hyper— to normal-space, before its sensors had time to locate potential threats and while its velocity was at its lowest. Since the general volumes in which traffic was likely to make translation could be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy, placing a raider in position to hit merchantmen at their most vulnerable wasn't particularly difficult. Covering all probable target areas might require a goodly number of hulls, but their actual placement was straightforward.

By the same token, the best relative position from which to attack a convoy, whether in hyper— or n-space, was from directly ahead of it, where its velocity would carry it straight towards you. The execution of any effective evasion maneuver would require its ships to overcome a potentially enormous relative closing velocity, and no vast, lumbering merchantman, with its commercial grade inertial compensator and impellers, could match the acceleration and maneuverability of a warship. As a consequence, raiders preferred to get ahead of a convoy and let it come to them.

The classic defensive gambit was for the escort commander to place the majority of her strength ahead of her charges, so as to put her warships between them and the most probable axis of threat while one or two pickets watched the rear as a hedge against the lesser threat of a raider overtaking from astern. Against pirates, whose primary goal was to take prizes (and those prizes' cargoes) intact, that remained RMN convoy doctrine, but against Peep commerce raiders, the Navy had adopted the new strategy proposed by Vice Admiral Mark Sarnow. Instead of massing the escorts ahead, they were concentrated on the flanks and astern of the convoy, with relatively weak scouting elements deployed at least thirty to forty minutes of flight time ahead of the entire formation.

It made sense, given that Peeps, unlike pirates, were interested only in denying a convoys cargo to the Alliance. They might prefer capturing it, but simply destroying it would do the job just as well, so from their perspective, it only made sense to open fire the moment they reached attack range of the merchies, which, in turn, made it imperative for the escorts to keep them out of range. The new doctrine placed the escorts' main fighting strength in a position which let them use their superior speed to intercept a threat coming in on any attack vector, and the forward scouting elements served to "sanitize" the convoys projected course in order to prevent surprises. It also, of course, meant that the ships assigned to break trail were the most exposed units of the escort, but that couldn't be helped, and the scouts should have time to fall back on the main body of the escort before they could be overwhelmed in isolation.

That, at least, was the theory, and Honor's own experience suggested that it should work effectively. Unfortunately, as McGinley had just implied, her understrength squadron lacked the numbers to deploy multiple units ahead without unacceptably weakening the close-in escort. That meant that whoever she put out there was going to be dangerously exposed, with no one to watch his or her back.

She considered briefly, then looked at McKeon.

"Alistair?" she invited, and the heavyset captain leaned forward to brace his forearms on the table.

"I agree that the worst thing the Peeps could do from our perspective would be to punch out one of our system pickets. Commander McGinley may well be right that they don't have the strength to do it, but I think Lieutenant Mayhew is right about Theisman. As you may recall," he smiled wryly, "you and I have both had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. If he's got enough firepower to give him a realistic chance at a system raid, he'll go for it unless someone higher up the chain specifically orders him not to.

"At the same time, I don't think it matters a great deal to us which strategy he adopts. Commander McGinley is correct that a Sarnow Deployment will give us the best coverage against either possibility."

"And just who do we put on point?" Captain Greentree's question could have been a challenge, worded as it was, but his tone was mild, and he'd cut to the heart of Honors own concerns. "We don't have enough hulls to put as many as the Book calls for out in front, not unless we reduce our flank strength and defeat the entire point of the deployment," the flag captain went on. "If we had a few destroyers along things would be different; we could put two or three of them up front to cover one another's backs. As it is, though, we'd have to detail a single ship, and whoever we stick out there will be badly exposed. He'll be much too far ahead for us to cover him if he's attacked."

"True enough," McKeon agreed. "But our first responsibility is to the convoy. If it comes right down to it, any escort is expendable, and a Sarnow deployment will stretch the convoy's sensor envelope by a good nine light-minutes. Even those of us who don't have built in FTL coms have recon drones that do, and that means the picket will be able to see any bad guys and report them to the flagship long before they see the flagship. At worst, that should at least let us keep the merchies clear of them; at best, we'll have a pretty fair shot of sucking any weak raiding force into an ambush of our own."

"I don't disagree," Greentree said. "I'm simply asking who we put out in front."

"That's the easy part." McKeon grinned. "I'd say Prince Adrian is the only logical choice, wouldn't you?"

Greentree opened his mouth, then closed it, and Honor felt his irritation, not at McKeon, but at McKeon's logic. She not only felt it but understood it, for like Greentree, she would much prefer to take point herself. Position of maximum risk or no, it was also the one from which the escort would most probably have its first glimpse of any oncoming threat. Any good tactician hungered to be able to gauge the situation for herself, not through someone else’s reports. Besides, she hated the thought of sending people into any danger she couldn't share with them. It was irrational, and a weakness she knew a flag officer had to learn to overcome, but that didn't make it any less real.

Yet, like Greentree, she knew McKeon was right. The entire point was to extend the squadron’s sensor reach and trip any traps in the convoys path, and if she couldn't be there herself, which she couldn't; her command responsibilities precluded exposing her flagship unnecessarily, McKeon was the best person for the job. Not only was he her second-in-command, but she trusted his judgment implicitly. And, perhaps just as importantly, he knew her well enough to be willing to use that judgment in a time-critical situation without waiting for permission.

"All right," she said. Her calm soprano gave no sign of the thoughts which had flowed through her mind, and she nodded crisply. "Alistair is right, Thomas. We'll put Prince Adrian on point." Greentree nodded, and she switched her gaze back to Venizelos. "From Marcia’s original comments, I gather that we've received hard numbers on the convoy. Do we have an actual ship list yet?"

"There are still a couple of blanks, Ma'am," the chief of staff replied. "We should have them filled by fifteen-thirty, though. My understanding is that they're all present in Yeltsin but that Logistics Command is still deciding exactly which ships to load the last of the Samovar garrison's supplies aboard."

"Good. Howard..." she turned to her com officer "...once we have a complete list, I want you to contact the master of each ship on it. Invite him and his exec to a meeting here aboard Alvarez at, oh, call it nineteen hundred hours."