CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was the first time she'd been to Command Central. Its size impressed her, but the noisiness of the status room was startling, and the shrill ringing of priority com signals, the rumble of voices, and the clatter of printers did more than startle Nimitz. He rose high on her shoulder, ears half-flattened, and his high-pitched bleek of protest cut through the background noise like a knife.

Heads turned all over the huge room, and Honor felt the ugliness of her wounded face like a brand. Commander Brentworth bristled at her side and stepped forward, glaring back at all comers, regardless of rank, but she stopped him with a tiny gesture. There was curiosity in all those stares, and shock, even repugnance, in some of them as they saw her face, but not intentional rudeness, and most of them flushed and looked away almost as quickly as they'd turned towards her.

Commodore Brentworth had been waiting for her small party. Now he materialized out of the crowd and offered his hand with only the slightest hesitation.

"I'm Commodore Walter Brentworth, Captain," he said, and if there'd been any hesitation when he held out his hand, there was none in his use of her rank. "Welcome to Command Central."

"Thank you, Commodore," she said as clearly as she could. She'd practiced hard to master her stiff lips, but his eyes flickered at the slurring she couldn't quite overcome. She knew they wanted to cling to the crippled side of her face, but he kept them resolutely under control.

"These are my captains," she went on. "Commander Truman of the Apollo, and Commander McKeon of the Troubadour. I believe-" the mobile corner of her mouth quirked slightly "—that you know Commander Brentworth."

"Yes, I believe I do." The commodore smiled at her, then nodded to his son and shook hands with Truman and McKeon. Then he turned back to Honor. "Captain," he began, "please allow me to apologize for any-"

"No apologies are necessary, Commodore," she interrupted him, but the commodore clearly shared his son's stubborn integrity. He seemed about to disagree, and she went on in the short sentences her impaired speech enforced. "We come from very different backgrounds. There was bound to be some friction. What's important is seeing to it that there isn't any more."

He looked up at her, letting his gaze rest frankly on her swollen, paralyzed face at last, then nodded slowly.

"You're right, Captain," he said, then smiled. "Mark said you had your head on straight, and I've always had considerable faith in his judgment."

"Good, because I do, too," Honor said firmly, and the commander blushed. His father chuckled and waved for the Manticorans to follow him.

"Let me escort you to Admiral Garret, Captain." There was a hint of amusement in his voice. "I believe he's been awaiting you with some anticipation."

Admiral Leon Garret was a craggy-faced man whose hooded eyes watched Honor with a sort of hypnotized fascination as she stepped into the conference room. It was a fascination which extended itself to Nimitz, as well, and she wondered which of them he found more outré—the six-limbed "animal" who'd proved so unexpectedly deadly, or the woman who wore a captain's uniform?

He rose at her approach, but he didn't extend his hand. Had his inner confusion been less evident, she might have construed that as an insult. As it was, and despite the gravity of the situation, his expression almost betrayed her. A totally inappropriate giggle fluttered at the base of her throat, and she suppressed it only with difficulty as Commodore Brentworth introduced her small group to Garret and his officers.

The man at the admiral's right hand had already attracted her attention. He wore a commodore's uniform but an admiral's collar insignia, and she wasn't surprised when he was introduced as Admiral Wesley Matthews. She sized him up carefully, not rudely but without making any effort to hide her one-eyed evaluation, and he squared his shoulders and looked back frankly.

She liked what she saw. Matthews was short, even for a Grayson, stocky and solid, with an intelligent, mobile face, and there were no sex-based reservations in his hazel eyes. She remembered what Lord Mayhew had said and decided he'd been right. She wouldn't have any problems working with this man.

"Thank you for coming, uh, Captain Harrington." Garret flushed as he stumbled over her rank, then pointed at the empty chairs on her side of the conference table and went on more naturally. "Please, be seated."

"Thank you, Admiral." She sat, followed by her subordinates. She felt Nimitz's expressive tail twitch against her back, but he was aware of the need to mind his manners. She lifted him down to sit beside the blotter before her and noted the way the Grayson officers watched him move. Clearly they'd been impressed by the video of his bloody handiwork, and one or two of them looked a bit uneasy. Well, it was hard to blame them; few Manticorans realized how lethal a 'cat could be when he or his human was threatened.

"Yes, well." Garret cleared his throat. "As you know, Captain," he got her title out without hesitation this time, "Com—Admiral Matthews has been placed in command of our mobile units. It's my understanding that you believe it would be more advantageous to employ them with your vessels in a forward defense rather than from an orbital position."

He hid the chagrin he must be feeling (given that the orbital idea had been his) quite well, Honor thought with unexpected sympathy.

"Yes, Sir, I do." Her sympathy helped her keep any hint of satisfaction out of her voice. "Our current estimate is that one heavy and one light Havenite cruiser are supporting Masada. If that's true, my squadron should be able to take them on without the assistance of your orbital defenses. At the same time, Masada used nuclear weapons against planetary targets thirty-five years ago and has repeatedly stated its willingness to do so again. Now that 'Maccabeus' has failed, we must assume they'll do just that. Under the circumstances, I believe we must keep them as far from Grayson as possible."

"But if you deploy yourself on the wrong bearing," one of Garret's staff officers said quietly, "they may slip past and get the attack in anyway. And with your ships out of position, our own defensive systems are unlikely to stop warheads with modern penetration aids, Captain."

"I'm sure the Captain's thought of that, Commander Calgary," Garret said uncomfortably. It was clear Protector Benjamin had had a long talk with him, but Honor simply nodded, for Commander Calgary's point was well taken.

"You're correct, Commander. But there are offsetting considerations." She spoke firmly, minimizing the slurring of her words. "They know where Grayson is. If their goal is simply to bombard, they can launch from extreme range at near-light velocity. Once their missile drives go dead, even our sensors will have trouble localizing them for point defense. My ships could intercept most of them, but we're talking about nukes. We have to catch them all, and our best chance for that is while they're still in boost phase."

Calgary nodded his understanding, and she went on.

"Admittedly, moving away from Grayson will open the threat window. We have, however, certain technical advantages we believe are unknown to Haven."

A stir went through the Graysons, and she felt Truman's residual unhappiness beside her. What she proposed to describe to the Graysons was still on the Official Secrets List, and Truman had opposed its revelation. On the other hand, even Alice had to admit they didn't have any choice but to use it, and that meant telling their allies about it.

"Advantages, Captain?" Garret asked.

"Yes, Sir. Commander McKeon is our expert on the system, so I'll let him explain. Commander?"

"Yes, Ma'am." Alistair McKeon faced the Grayson officers. "What Captain Harrington refers to, gentlemen, is a newly developed reconnaissance drone. RDs have always played a role in our defensive doctrine, but like every surveillance system, light-speed data transmission has always limited the range/response time envelope. In essence, the RD can tell us someone's coming, but if we're too far out of position, we can't respond in time."

He paused, and several heads nodded.

"Our R&D people have been working on a new approach, however, and for the first time, we now have a limited FTL transmission capability."

"An FTL capability?" Calgary blurted, and he was far from alone in his astonishment, for the human race had sought a way to send messages faster than light for almost two thousand years.

"Yes, Sir. Its range is too limited for anything other than tactical purposes—our best transmission radius is only about four light-hours at this time—but that's quite enough to give us a marked advantage."

"Excuse me, Commander McKeon," Admiral Matthews said, "but how does it work? If, that is," he looked at Honor, "you can tell us without compromising your own security."

"We'd rather not go into details, Admiral," Honor replied. "Less because of security, than because it's too technical for a quick explanation."

"And," Matthews grinned wryly, "because it's probably too technical for our people to duplicate even if we understood the explanation."

Honor was appalled by his remark, but then a rumble of chuckles came from the other side of the table. She'd been afraid of stepping on sensitive toes by flaunting her ships' technical superiority, but it seemed Matthews understood his people better than she did. And perhaps it was his way of telling her not to worry.

"I imagine that's true, Sir," she said, smiling with the right side of her mouth, "at least until we bring you up to speed on molycircs and super-dense fusion bottles. Of course," her smile grew, "once the treaty is signed, I expect your navy is going to get much nastier all around."

The Grayson chuckles were even louder this time, tinged with more than an edge of relief. She hoped they didn't expect a God weapon to come out of her technological bag of tricks, but anything that bolstered their morale at this moment was well worthwhile, and she nodded for Alistair to continue.

"Basically, Admiral," he said, "it's a reversion to old-fashioned Morse code. Our new-generation RDs carry an extra gravity generator which they use to create extremely powerful directional pulses. Since gravitic sensors are FTL, we have effective real-time receipt across their maximum range."

"That's brilliant," a captain with Office of Shipbuilding insignia murmured. Then he frowned. "And difficult, I'd imagine."

"It certainly is," McKeon said feelingly. "The power requirement is enormous—our people had to develop an entire new generation of fusion plants to pull it off—and that's only the first problem. Designing a pulse grav generator and packing it into the drone body came next. As you can probably imagine, it uses up a lot more mass than a drive unit, and it was a monster to engineer. And there are certain fundamental limitations on the system. Most importantly, it takes time for the generator to produce each pulse without burning itself out, which places an insurmountable limit on the data transmission speed. At present, we can only manage a pulse repetition rate of about nine-point-five seconds. Obviously, it's going to take us a while to transmit any complex messages at that rate."

"That's true," Honor put in, "but what we propose to do is program the onboard computers to respond to the most likely threat parameters with simple three or four-pulse codes. They'll identify the threat's basic nature and approach in less than a minute. The drones can follow up with more detailed messages once we've started responding."

"I see." Matthews nodded quickly. "And with that kind of advance warning, we can position ourselves to cut them off short of optimum launch range against the planet."

"Yes, Sir." Honor nodded to him, then looked at Admiral Garret. "More than that, Admiral, we'll have time to build an intercept vector that lets us stay with them instead of finding ourselves with a base velocity so low as to give us only a limited engagement time before they break past us."

"I understand, Captain." Garret plucked at his lip, then nodded. "I understand," he repeated, and she was relieved at the absence of acrimony in his tone. "If I'd realized you had this capability, I would have approached the entire problem differ-" He stopped himself and smiled crookedly. "Of course, if I'd bothered to ask you, I might have known about it sooner, mightn't I?"

Honor saw amazement on more than one Grayson face, as if they couldn't quite believe what they'd just heard him say, and she wondered how to respond, but then he shrugged and smiled more naturally.

"Well, Captain, they say there's no fool like an old fool. Do Manticorans use that expression?"

"Not to senior officers, Sir," Honor said demurely, and Garret startled her by bursting into laughter. His guffaws reminded her of a neighing horse, but no one could have doubted their genuineness. He couldn't get a word out through them, though he pointed a finger at her and tried hard, and she felt herself grinning lopsidedly back at him.

"Point taken, Captain," he gasped at last, and there were smiles on other faces on his side of the table. "Point taken, indeed." He settled himself in his chair and nodded. "Do you have any other ideas, Captain Harrington?"

"Well, Sir, as you know, we've evacuated our own noncombatants aboard our freighters." Garret nodded, and Honor shrugged. "Commander Truman's report included an urgent request for reinforcements. I'm certain that request will be granted, but those are slow ships, Sir. I'd have preferred to send one of my warships, but I can't spare Apollo if we may be facing two modern cruisers, and Troubadour's node damage would restrict her to impeller drive. More, she couldn't get much above the gamma band without reliable Warshawski sails. If one of your hyper-capable ships could be sent—?"

She paused, for Garret and Matthews were both shaking their heads. Matthews glanced at Garret, and his superior nodded for him to explain.

"We can do it, Captain, but our hyper technology is much cruder than yours. Our ships are restricted to the middle gamma bands, and our Warshawski sails won't let us pull anywhere near as much accel from a given grav wave. I doubt we could cut more than a day or so off your freighters' time. Under the circumstances, I think we'll be better employed keeping what's left of the Masadan Navy off your back while you deal with the Havenites."

Honor glanced at Truman and McKeon. Truman gave her a small nod, and McKeon simply shrugged. None of them had realized Grayson hyper capability was that limited, but Matthews was right. The small time saving would be much less useful than the support of another warship here, especially since it was unlikely the Masadans would delay their attack more than another few hours.

"I think you're right, Admiral Matthews," she agreed. "In that case, I'm afraid all we can do is get our mobile units ready for action and deploy the RDs. Unless-"

Someone knocked on the conference room door, then opened it to admit the chatter of printers, and Honor's eyebrows rose. The newcomer was a white-haired man in the uniform of a Security general, not a naval officer.

"Councilman Clinkscales!" Garret exclaimed. He and his staff stood quickly, and the Manticorans followed them. "What can I do for, you, Sir?"

"Sorry to interrupt you, gentlemen . . . ladies." Clinkscales paused, his fierce old eyes examining Honor and Alice Truman with frank but wary curiosity. He advanced and held out his hand rather abruptly. "Captain Harrington." She took his hand, and he squeezed hard, as if he were determined to reject the least suggestion that he was concerned about feminine frailty.

"Councilman Clinkscales," she murmured, squeezing back with equal strength, and his mouth twitched into a wintry smile.

"I wanted to thank you," he said abruptly. "Grayson owes you a tremendous debt—and so do I." He was clearly uncomfortable saying that, but his determination to get it out was obvious.

"I just happened to be there, Sir. And it was actually Nimitz who saved the day. If he hadn't reacted so quickly-" She shrugged.

"True." Clinkscales gave a quick bark of laughter. "Wonder if he'd be willing to join Palace Security?"

"I'm afraid not, Sir." The undamaged side of Honor's mouth smiled, and she realized that he, alone of everyone she'd met since the attack, seemed unembarrassed by the condition of her face. Apparently once he decided someone was a real officer, he expected them to bear their battle scars the same way he would have, and she discovered that she actually liked this old dinosaur.

"Pity," he said, then looked at Garret. "As I say, I'm sorry to interrupt, but my people've got one of the Maccabean resource ship pilots, and he's singing like a bird."

"He is?" Garret's eyes sharpened, and Honor felt a matching interest.

"He is," Clinkscales said grimly. "He doesn't know shi-" He stopped and looked at Honor and Truman, and Honor forced herself not to smile again.

"He doesn't know anything about the Havenite ships' actual classes," the councilman corrected himself, "but he does know that Masada's put in an advanced base in this system."

"In Yeltsin?" Garret sounded shocked, and Clinkscales shrugged.

"That's what he says. He's never seen it, and according to his friends who have, it wasn't easy to build. But he does know where it is, and he says their 'biggest ship,' whatever it is, may be in Endicott right now."

"It may?" Honor leaned towards him. "Did he say why?"

"Something about towing their LACs over here," Clinkscales said, and Honor's eye widened in surprise. She'd never heard of anyone trying that! Which didn't mean it was impossible. And it certainly explained how they'd gotten them here. But if they had modern ships, why were they wasting time bringing over something as crude as Masadan LACs in the first place?

"How positive is he that she's gone?" she asked, shaking off the irrelevant questions. "And does he know when she's due back?"

"He knows she was due to leave," Clinkscales said. "He doesn't know if she's still gone, but it occurred to me that her absence might explain why they haven't already attacked, and if it does, their continued lack of activity could be an indication that she hasn't gotten back yet."

"It could be, Sir," she murmured. She glanced at Truman and McKeon. "On the other hand, we've been in-system for almost twenty-six hours. Even if she left just before we arrived, she should have had time to get back by now. Unless . . ." She rubbed the numb side of her face, then looked back at Truman. "Any idea what their transit time might be towing LACs, Alice?"

"I don't think there's any way to know without actually trying it ourselves. No one else ever did it, as far as I know. In fact, I don't think they could have, if Yeltsin and Endicott were any further apart. As for how fast they can make the passage, they'd probably have to take it pretty easy, but as for how easy-" Truman shrugged.

"A lot would depend on what they're using as a tug, Skipper," McKeon offered. "The mass ratio would be fairly critical, I'd think. And they'd have to use something with enough tractor capacity to completely zone a LAC, too."

Honor nodded, still rubbing her dead cheek, then shrugged. "Either way, just knowing where to find them should be a major plus. Assuming the information is reliable."

She looked at Clinkscales, and the hard gleam in the Security commander's eye was almost frightening.

"Oh, it's reliable, Captain," he assured her in a chilling tone. "They've put in a base on Blackbird—that's one of Uriel's moons," he added for Honor's benefit, and she nodded. That made sense. Uriel—Yeltsin VI—was a gas giant larger than Sol's Jupiter, with an orbital radius of almost fifty-one light-minutes, which put it well beyond sensor range of anything Grayson had.

"What sort of basing facilities do they have?" Admiral Matthews asked sharply, and Clinkscales shrugged.

"That I don't know, Admiral, and neither does he. Not in any detail." The councilman produced an old-fashioned audio tape. "I brought along everything he could tell us in case your people could make a better estimate from it. All he could tell us for sure is that 'Maccabeus'-" the old man refused to use Jared Mayhew's name "—diverted some of our own construction ships with Maccabean crews to help them build it. His wasn't among them, unfortunately, but he heard one of the other captains commenting on the fact that they've put in modern sensors. They may have a few Havenite heavy weapons, as well, though he's not sure about that."

"Damn," someone muttered from the Grayson side of the table, and the right side of Honor's face tightened.

"I don't think they could have turned Blackbird into any kind of real fortress," Matthews said quickly. "Not unless they can generate a sidewall bubble around a moon eight thousand kilometers in diameter." He looked questioningly at Honor, and she shook her head.

"No, Sir. Not even Manticore can work miracles yet," she said dryly.

"Then whatever they've got was probably designed to stop us. They certainly haven't put up any orbital platforms. They took a risk just setting up a moon-side base, because we conduct periodic exercises in the area. Maccabeus-" like Clinkscales, Matthews refused to use Mayhew's name "—had access to our schedules, so he could have warned them when to lie low, but they couldn't have counted on hiding orbital installations from us."

Honor nodded again, following his logic.

"And fixed defenses would be far more vulnerable than my ships." She spoke more rapidly, and her words slurred badly, but no one seemed to notice.

"Exactly. And if there's a chance most of their Havenite firepower is elsewhere-" Matthews suggested.

Honor looked at him for a moment and realized she was rubbing her face much harder. She made herself stop before she further damaged the insensitive skin, then nodded decisively.

"Absolutely, Admiral. How soon can your units be ready to move out?"