CHAPTER THIRTY

"I'm afraid we don't have much on their merchant raiders, Skipper." The air-conditioned bridge was cool, but Alistair McKeon scrubbed irritably at a drop of sweat on his forehead as he downloaded what he did have to Honor's secondary tactical display.

"We don't have anything at all to indicate they've modified Astra—class ships like Sirius, so there's no telling what they did to her, but some of the refugees from Trevor's Star gave ONI pretty good stats on a Q-ship built on a Trumball—class hull. She was over a million and a half tons smaller than Sirius, but it's all we've got."

Honor nodded, studying the readout and trying not to show her dismay. Smaller than Sirius or not, the Trumball—class Q-ship had been more powerfully armed than most modern heavy cruisers, and she scrolled through the data till she found the notes on its chase armament. Three missile tubes and a pair of spinal mount lasers fore and aft. If Sirius's chasers had simply been scaled up proportionally, her fire would be twice as heavy as anything with which Fearless could reply.

She leaned back in her chair and felt her bridge crew's tension. This was no Fleet maneuver, and even if it had been, there was no brilliant ploy to let them ambush Sirius. A stern chase sliced away the options, and Fearless's sole, tiny advantage was that she was a smaller target. Even that was offset by the fact that the open front of her impeller wedge was twice the size of the after edge of Sirius's wedge, and despite her lower acceleration, the "freighter's" greater mass gave her wedge more powerful stress bands and, probably, sidewalls, as well.

She bit her lip while her mind raced, searching for an answer, but her thoughts slithered like a groundcar on ice. Once her overtake velocity was high enough, she could try turning from side to side. At anything above two or three million kilometers, she couldn't turn far enough to completely interpose her sidewalls—not without giving up too much of her acceleration advantage, if she meant to stop the other ship short of the hyper limit—but at least she might deny Sirius straight down-the-throat shots by zig-zagging across her wake. It wasn't much, but it was absolutely all she could do, and her mouth tried to twist bitterly. All those clever maneuvers at ATC, all that sneaky forethought she'd put into ambushing Admiral D'Orville's flagship, and all she could think of to do now was writhe like a worm in hot ashes to avoid destruction.

She glanced back at McKeon, trying to get behind his eyes and read his thoughts. He was a tac officer by training, too; what did he think she should do? Had it occurred to him that all she had to do was break off the pursuit? Fearless was the pursuer, not the pursued. If Honor let Coglin go, Sirius would simply vanish into hyper space, and Fearless would survive.

But it wasn't an option. She might well be wrong about Sirius's mission. She was preparing to throw away her ship and her crew's lives in pursuit of a foe at least five times as powerful as they were when it was entirely possible that foe posed no threat to the Kingdom at all. Yet she couldn't know that, and she did know that if Haven was prepared to risk open war to secure Basilisk, Coglin's freighter might bring overwhelming firepower into the system before Home Fleet could respond.

Which meant she had no choice at all.

She checked the chronometer again. Sixty-three minutes into the pursuit. She'd come thirty-six and a half million kilometers, and the range was down to seven-point-six million kilometers. Another thirteen-plus minutes until her missiles could reach Sirius before burnout. She looked down at the Havenite's light dot and wondered what he was thinking.

"What's the range, Jamal?"

"Two-five-point-three-five light-seconds, Captain."

"Time to hyper limit?"

"Ninety-four-point-six minutes."

"Their overtake speed?"

"Four-five-eight KPS, Sir."

"Missile flight time?"

"Approximately one-eight-nine seconds, Sir."

Coglin nodded and rubbed his lower lip. His missiles would still burn out nine seconds before they reached Fearless, and part of him wanted to wait. To conceal the fact that Sirius was armed until Fearless was close enough that his birds' drives would last all the way to their target. The chance of a hit would be marginally greater if they retained their power to maneuver and follow Fearless's evasion, but only marginally at such a range. And, truth to tell, it probably wouldn't really make a good goddamn's difference. Under power or ballistic, the flight time would be long enough to give the cruiser's point defense plenty of time to engage them.

Then again, he thought sourly, it was possible Harrington already suspected Sirius was armed. She certainly seemed to have figured everything else out! If she did suspect, holding his fire to try to surprise her would be pointless, yet even if she did suspect the truth, it was unlikely she realized quite how heavily armed the big Q-ship actually was. Coglin had come to possess a lively respect for the Manticoran officer's sheer guts as he watched her actions in Basilisk, but this was entirely too much like a mouse chasing a cat.

He considered his options carefully. The smartest thing to have done, he acknowledged grudgingly, would have been to obey Harrington's order to heave to. If he'd stopped, let the cruiser come into energy range, and then blown his panels, he could have wiped her out before she even realized what was happening. But he hadn't, and that mistake left him with a much less attractive range of choices.

Fearless was out-gunned by a factor of ten, whether Harrington knew it or not, but RMN cruisers were tougher than the numbers might suggest. If he turned on her, she would not only have the higher base velocity as they closed, but her higher acceleration and lower mass would make her far more maneuverable than Sirius in close combat. The way she'd taken out the courier boat's drive told him Harrington was no shiphandler to take lightly, and if his sidewalls were tougher than hers, her main impeller bands were just as impenetrable as his own. If he got drawn into a close-range dogfight against a more agile opponent, she might just get lucky and score a hit or two in the right place before she died. If she crippled his Warshawski sails, for example, it wouldn't even matter whether or not he could get into hyper. He'd get home eventually, no doubt, but he could never reach the rendezvous in time to stop the task force. Not under impeller drive alone, and especially not when he'd have to detour around the Tellerman rather than using it.

On the other hand, holding to his present course pointed his vulnerable stern straight at her, and it was always possible she might pop a missile past his point defense and through the rear of his wedge to score that same lucky hit. The odds were against it, given the angle at which any missile would have to come in, but it was possible. Yet his after firepower was three times as great as Fearless's forward armament, and her hull form meant her forward drive nodes were more exposed than his after ones. Besides, he had missiles to burn, many times the number that could possibly be crammed into a Courageous—class cruiser's magazines. That meant he could start firing early and hope he got lucky, whereas Harrington's limited ammunition supply would force her to hold her fire until she could reasonably hope for a hit. And her ship's greater theoretical maneuverability wouldn't help her as long as he held the range open while he smashed at her.

The only drawback was that she might break off once she realized what she was up against, and if she did, he would have to let her go. He hated that. The instant he opened fire, she'd have proof he was armed. That would be bad. Not only would it give away the fact that Haven had armed some of its Astra- class ships as commerce raiders, but the fact that a Q-ship had been in the system would certainly be persuasive evidence that Haven had played a major role in fomenting the native unrest on Medusa. And if he opened fire before she did, then Haven would be guilty of committing the first overt act of war, as well. On the other hand, her only proof would be her instrument readings, and everyone knew data could be faked up. In effect, it would be Manticore's word against Haven's, and while that might be embarrassing to certain high-ranking jackasses who had planned this entire abortion, it wouldn't necessarily be disastrous to the Republic. More importantly, it wouldn't be disastrous to PMSS Sirius, the waiting task force, or Captain Johan Coglin.

No. Obliterating Fearless before she could tell Manticore—and the galaxy at large—that Sirius had been armed would be the best possible outcome, and if Harrington didn't break off or if an opportunity to destroy her without jeopardizing his primary mission presented itself, that was precisely what he would do. In the meantime, he'd concentrate on discouraging her and keeping her from reporting back in case he did get a chance to kill her, but he'd do it while he kept right on running away ... even if he did have the more powerful ship.

"Inform me when missile flight time drops to one-eight-eight seconds, Jamal," he said. "And stand by to jam on my firing command."

"Yes, Sir."

The range continued to fall as Fearless's greater acceleration boosted her speed relative to Sirius. It wasn't a tremendous advantage at first, not when viewed against their absolute velocities, but it grew steadily, and a strange sort of tranquillity settled over Honor as it climbed.

She was committed. The first shot had yet to be fired—indeed, she didn't yet have any real proof Sirius was even armed—but she knew what was going to happen. Not how it was going to come out, perhaps, but how it was going to begin ... and what she would do about it.

"Mr. Cardones," she said quietly.

"Yes, Ma'am?" Cardones sounded tense, perhaps a bit breathless, and very young, and she smiled at him.

"I imagine we're going to be under fire for some time before we can reply, Guns," she said, and saw his quick flush of pleasure, the slight relaxation of his shoulders, at her choice of title. "I don't want to do anything to suggest we suspect Sirius is armed until and unless she actually opens fire—she may let us in closer if she thinks we're unaware of the danger—but be ready to bring up the ECM and point defense the instant something comes our way. Don't wait for my order."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

"Mr. Panowski."

"Yes, Captain?" The navigator sounded much more anxious than Cardones, perhaps because he was a bit older, a bit more aware of his mortality.

"We're committed to a stern chase. Once we close to two million kilometers, however, I will want to zig-zag randomly either side of his base course to interpose our sidewalls as far as possible. Set up your plot accordingly and maintain a running update for Chief Killian."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Panowski turned to his console with renewed energy, as if relieved to have something to do. Or, Honor thought, perhaps it was her suggestion that they would survive to within two million kilometers. She felt herself smile once more, and to her amazement, it felt completely genuine. She looked up to see McKeon smiling back at her and shook her head at him. He shrugged, his smile suspiciously like a grin for just a moment, and she returned her attention to the chronometer. Sixty-six minutes into the pursuit.

"Missile flight time now one-eight-eight seconds, Sir."

"Very well." Coglin settled himself in his chair and crossed his legs. "Commence jamming and open fire with tubes twenty and twenty-one."

Buzzers snarled aboard Fearless.

Honor opened her mouth to snap orders, but Rafael Cardones had the reflexes of the very young. He had already reacted. The tactical board flashed as his ECM sprang from standby to active, and two fifty-ton decoys snapped out of their broadside bays, popping through specially opened portals in Fearless's sidewalls. Tractors moored them to the cruiser, holding the driveless lures on station to cover her flanks, as passive sensors listened to the incoming missiles, seeking the frequencies of their active homing systems, and jammers responded with white noise in an effort to blind them while fire control systems locked on the small, weaving targets.

Cardones started to reach for his counter-missile firing key, then paused and glanced over his shoulder at her.

"Not yet, Mr. Cardones," she said quietly. "Let the plot settle. Fire at a half-million kilometers to catch them as their drives go down."

"Yes, Ma'am."

The youthful tactical officer tapped the command into his computers, then sat tense and still, waiting, and Honor looked at Webster just as the com officer sat back from his own console in disgust. She raised an eyebrow in question, and he nodded.

"We're jammed, Ma'am. We're too far out on the wrong vector for me to hit any of the buckets in Medusa orbit with a laser, and they're blanketing everything else."

"Understood, Mr. Webster." She returned her attention to the tactical display, watching the missiles race towards her, and counted down the range. There! Cardones's counter-missiles streaked away at over ninety thousand gravities, charging to meet them, and she watched the incoming weapons' drives burn out. They coasted onward, suddenly sitting targets, unable to maneuver, and the counter-missiles adjusted their own vectors with finicky precision. They carried no warheads; their small but powerful impeller wedges were their weapons, sweeping the space before them, and she watched Sirius's missiles vanish from the display.

But there were two more behind them, and another pair launched as she watched. Cardones tapped keys, bringing his point defense laser clusters on line, and she made herself look calmly and deliberately at her own tactical readouts.

Ten more minutes before she could return fire with any realistic hope of a hit, and her forward magazines held less than sixty missiles. She couldn't waste them hoping for a lucky hit as Sirius was doing, and she cursed Lady Sonja Hemphill with cold and silent venom. If Hemphill hadn't butchered her armament, she might have turned long enough to open her broadside and pump a full sevenmissile salvo back at Sirius, just to test the limits of her point defense. But she no longer had a seven-tube broadside, and even if she'd had one, she didn't have the missiles to support that kind of fire.

She looked back up as Cardones picked off two more missiles and suckered the third pair with his decoys.

Johan Coglin snorted through his nose as his light-speed sensors reported what had happened twenty-five lightseconds behind him. The speed with which Fearless's decoys and ECM had sprung into action certainly answered the question of whether or not Harrington had suspected Sirius was armed! And they were better than NavInt had projected, he noted. Fleet HQ had been unable to provide him with solid data on Manticoran system capabilities, and it seemed their estimates had been low.