Chapter Twenty Eight

"…So I did exactly what Mister Pirate told me to," Thomas Bachfisch said with an evil grin. "We hove to, opened our personnel locks, and stood by to be boarded. And then, when their boarding shuttles were about five hundred klicks out, we opened the weapons ports and put an eighty-centimeter graser straight through their ship."

More than one of his listeners winced at the thought of what it must have been like aboard that piratical cruiser in the fleeting instant its crew had to realize what had happened. There was, however, a marked absence of sympathy for the crew in question. These were all experienced naval officers; they'd seen too much of the wreckage pirates left behind.

"Your ships must have come as a nasty surprise to the pirate community out here, Sir," Roslee Orndorff observed as she handed another celery stick to Banshee.

"Not so much to the community as a whole, as to the individuals who ran into us," said Bachfisch. "We haven't really tried to make our presence a secret—after all, half the effect of a Q-ship derives from the fact that potential raiders know she's out there somewhere. If they don't know she exists, then they're not going to be worried over the possibility that any given merchantman might be her. But by the same token, we haven't exactly broadcast a description of any of our ships, and we've been known to change the paint scheme from time to time. The smart paint cost us a pretty penny, but it was worth it."

"I often think it's more useful to Q-ships than it's ever been to regular men-of-war," Alistair McKeon observed, and several heads nodded. The "paint" used by the RMN and most other navies was liberally laced with nanotech and reactive pigments which allowed it to be programmed and altered, essentially without limit, at will. Unfortunately, as McKeon had just suggested, that was of strictly limited utility for a warship. After all, the distinctive hammerhead hull form of a warship could scarcely be mistaken for anything else, whatever color it might be. Besides, no one was likely to rely on visual identification of any man-of-war, which was one reason most navies also had a distinct tendency to choose one paint scheme—like the RMN's basic white—and leave it that way.

But merchantmen were another matter entirely. Even there, cruisers and pirate vessels alike tended to rely primarily upon transponder codes, but anyone who wanted to steal a ship's cargo had to come close enough to do it. And at that point, visual identifications—or mis identifications, in some very special cases—became the norm.

"I'm guessing that if you're using smart paint, you're also using . . . inventive transponder codes, Admiral," Lieutenant Commander Reynolds put in. Bachfisch looked as if he were about to correct the rank title yet again, then visibly gave up and simply nodded once more.

"I'm confident my people could take just about any pirate out here in straight fight," he said. "But to be honest, our primary function is to carry cargo. Besides, we may be armed, and Pirates' Bane may have started life as an armed auxiliary, but that doesn't make her a dreadnought. She's got a military-grade compensator and the impellers and particle shields to go with it, and she and Ambuscade both have fairly respectable sidewall generators. But none of our ships have real military hulls or damage control capability.

"You were with Her Grace when her Q-ships deployed out here several years back, weren't you, Admiral Truman?" he asked, turning to Honor's second-in-command, and shrugged when Truman nodded in agreement. "Well, then you know what happens to a merchant hull that takes a hit from any heavy shipboard weapon. So under the circumstances, neither my crews nor I are particularly interested in 'fair fights' with pirates. Which is why we practically never sail under our own transponder codes until we're actually ready to make port."

"And the Confed Navy doesn't have a problem with that, Sir?" Rafe Cardones asked. It was a reasonable question, given that falsifying transponder codes was a moderately severe offense under the law of most star nations . . . including the Silesian Confederacy.

"Officially, they don't know anything about it," Bachfisch replied with a slight shrug, "and what they don't know about, they don't object to. In fact, most of their skippers know we're doing it, but they're not going to object to almost anything we do as long as we keep nailing the occasional pirate for them."

"Makes sense to me," Truman agreed, and reached for her wineglass. James MacGuiness materialized magically to refill the glass before she quite touched it, and she smiled her thanks at him, sipped the ruby wine, and turned her attention back to Bachfisch.

"I have to say that we're probably luckier than we deserve to have you run into us, Admiral Bachfisch," she said in a more formal tone.

"I didn't exactly 'run into' you, Admiral," Bachfisch replied with a crooked smile. "I came looking for you."

"I know." Truman considered him thoughtfully. "I'm grateful that you did. But at the same time, I'm sure you understand why we might be a little hesitant to accept one person's testimony, however credible that person might seem, when it flatly contradicts certain aspects of our ONI briefings."

"Well," Bachfisch said, letting his smile grow a bit broader, "I know why I might be a little hesitant, but then, when I was on active duty, the people running ONI could usually find their own asses . . . if they used both hands, at least."

Despite herself, Truman's lips twitched, and Cardones grinned openly.

"What I meant to say, Sir," the golden-haired admiral said after a moment, when she was confident she had her voice fully under control once more, "was that I'd feel more comfortable about relying on your information if you could describe firsthand how you came into possession of it."

"I understand what you're getting at, Dame Alice," Bachfisch said more seriously. "And I certainly don't blame you for wanting to be a bit cautious about relying on fortuitous windfalls of information. I've already promised Admiral Harrington to make my sensor log recordings available to support some of my observations—like the acceleration rates I've seen the new cruisers pulling, and the stealth capabilities that Andy heavy cruiser demonstrated in the Melbourne System. You can make your own analysis of those events from them, and, frankly, you have better facilities for doing that than I do.

"But I suspect that what probably concerns you most are the reports I don't have any log recordings to back up. Especially the ones about the new Andy battlecruisers."

"I will admit that that's one of the areas which causes me concerns," Truman agreed, clearly relieved that Bachfisch understood her worries and chose not to take them as aspersions upon his veracity.

"I've already given Commander Reynolds here as detailed a written description as I could put together," Bachfisch told her. "You'll probably do better to get the details from him, because it's based on notes I jotted down immediately after I saw the ship, not on what I can recall from unaided memory right this moment. But the way I came to be in a position to observe it has a lot to do with the Q-ship operations we were just discussing. I had a fresh crop of pirates to turn over to the Silly authorities in Crawford, but an Andy battlecruiser squadron was passing through the system and shortstopped my delivery. Not," he added wryly, "that the Confederate governor was at all happy about it. He seemed to feel the Andy admiral was being just a bit high-handed about the whole thing."

"Why am I not surprised?" McKeon murmured with a grimace. "Lord knows the only people the Sillies think are more arrogant and high-handed than the Andies are Manticorans, after all!"

"With all due respect, Admiral," Bachfisch told him, "and speaking as someone who's seen it from both sides, the Sillies have a point. From their perspective, both the RMN and the IAN are high-handed as hell. The fact that they know perfectly well, whatever they may choose to pretend, that they don't have the capability to police their own space lanes without outside interference only makes it worse, but how would you feel if foreign navies came sweeping into the Star Kingdom at will to police our commerce? Or if they took custody of criminals captured in our space because they distrusted the integrity of our legal system . . . or the honesty of our government officials?" He shook his head. "I know the situations are different, but the fact that our lack of confidence in them is justified so much of the time only makes them resent it even more. And too many Andy and Manty naval officers let their contempt for the locals show. For that matter, I probably did the same thing when I was on active duty!

"At any rate, I don't think the squadron CO realized I was a Manticoran myself when he ordered me to deliver my prisoners to him. He certainly didn't realize I was a half-pay Navy officer, anyway! I was just as happy to hand them over to the Andies, because I could be fairly confident they weren't going to simply be turned loose again that way, but I have to admit that I didn't much care for his attitude, myself. Interesting how it changed when he realized he wasn't talking to a Silesian after all.

"On the other hand, I don't think he was especially pleased to realize he'd allowed anyone who might be connected with the Star Kingdom close enough to get a good look at the after hammerhead of his flagship. Under the circumstances, I didn't think it would be especially wise of me to pull out a pocket camera and snap a few shots, and the Andies were pretty careful to keep their bow towards the Bane after I got back aboard her, so I couldn't get any good visuals from her, either. But there were definitely some major differences between her construction and a regular battlecruiser's. My personnel shuttle crossed her stern at less than half a klick on the run to deliver our 'guests,' and it was obvious that she didn't have much in the way of conventional stern chasers. But what she did have was a great big cargo hatch."

"I don't much like the sound of that," McKeon observed unhappily.

"Well, I can see where a battlecruiser built on the pod format would have a lot of short term firepower," Wraith Goodrick replied. "But how sustainable would that firepower be? And how long could any battlecruiser's defenses stand up to a real ship of the wall, especially a pod design, if it came down to that?" He shook his head. "I don't know. It just doesn't sound like a really practical concept to me."

Honor and Brigham glanced at one another, and Honor gave her chief of staff a very small nod.

"Actually," Mercedes said then, turning to the rest of the table, "the Andies weren't the first ones to come up with the idea. Or, at least, if they've had it, the Graysons have, too, completely independently."

"Really?" McKeon looked at her sharply. "Why haven't I heard anything about it, then?"

"You'd have to take that up with High Admiral Matthews, Sir," Brigham told him calmly. "If I had to guess, though, I'd say it was probably a bit of tit for tat. First Lord Janacek and Admiral Chakrabarti decided to shut down the joint Grayson-Manticoran R&D teams shortly after they took over at the Admiralty. Officially, it was another economy measure, but I'm afraid there were persistent rumors in the GSN that the new management wanted to close down the information flow to Grayson."

"Why in the world would anyone think that?" Truman demanded in disbelief. "We're allies, for God's sake!"

"I'm only telling you what the rumors said, Ma'am," Brigham replied in a very carefully neutral voice. "No one ever said rumors have to make sense."

"But—"

Truman started to reply hotly, then closed her mouth with an almost audible click, and Honor hid a bitter little smile as she tasted her friend's sudden understanding of just how much damage Janacek and High Ridge truly had managed to do to the bonds Grayson and the Queen's Navy had forged out of so much shed blood.

"At any rate," Brigham went on, returning her attention to McKeon, "the new Courvoisier II- class battlecruisers are a pod design. The Office of Shipbuilding reduced their conventional missile broadsides by over eighty percent, which let them build in superdreadnought-sized energy weapons." McKeon's eyes widened and turned suddenly thoughtful, and the chief of staff shrugged. "I think there was some pressure to go to something more on the lines of the Invictuses and suppress the broadside tubes entirely, but Shipbuilding decided against it. Still, Wraith is right that they can't sustain their maximum rate of missile fire for anything like as long as a pod superdreadnought. But then, a conventional battlecruiser design couldn't sustain the missile fire of a pre-pod ship of the wall, either. And the exercises we've conducted in Grayson certainly seem to suggest that the new design has a much better chance of surviving against ships of the wall."

"Not on any sort of one-to-one basis, though," Goodrick argued.

"Depends on how old the ship of the wall's design is," Brigham said. "Against a pre-pod ship, a Courvoisier has a damned good chance, actually. She can roll enough pods to throw salvos that can saturate even an SD's missile defenses. Not a lot of them, maybe, but enough to do the job against one, maybe even two, of the older classes. And once she's beaten down the SD's offensive fire, she's actually got the energy weapons to get through its defenses, as well. And if two or three Courvoisiers concentrate on a single target, even an SD(P) will find herself in trouble. She'd have to get through to them and start killing them really quickly if she didn't want them to do exactly the same thing to her."

Goodrick looked shocked by the very notion, and Brigham grinned at him.

"Not only that, and not only are the Courvoisiers a hell of a lot more dangerous in energy-range, but the designers used the new automation systems even more heavily than they did in the design of the Harrington class, as well. The crews are really, really small. As a matter of fact, you can run one of the new ships with a few as three hundred people if you really have to."

"Three hundred?" Goodrick repeated in something very like disbelief, and Brigham nodded.

"Three hundred," she confirmed. "That kind of reduction in life support requirements, coupled with the hollow core design, explains how they were able to pack an enormously powerful graser broadside into the new design. They only have about two-thirds as many mounts as their predecessors did, but the ones they have are just as powerful as those the Harrington —class mount."

"Which was the real point of the design, when you come right down to it, Wraith," Honor put in. "Oh, not the energy broadside, per se, and not the ability to go toe-to-toe with superdreadnoughts, either. What the Graysons have built is a battlecruiser to do to older battlecruiser designs what the SD(P) can do to older superdreadnoughts. So if the Andermani have been pursuing the same design philosophy, the ships Captain Bachfisch has just described to us are going to be even more dangerous than anything we've predicted this so far."

"That was my own thought," Bachfisch agreed.

"Have you seen—or heard anything about—proper pod-armed ships of the wall, Sir?" Lieutenant Commander Reynolds sounded more than a little anxious, and Bachfisch shook his head.

"No, I haven't, Commander. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean they don't have any; only that if they do, I haven't seen them. By the same token, though, it occurred to me the other day that you can build battlecruisers a hell of a lot faster than you can build ships of the wall. It may be that they have SD(P)s in the final design stage or even under construction but not yet in commission."

"Which could be why they're still ratcheting up the pressure but haven't actually made their move yet," Rafe Cardones thought aloud.

"I wouldn't rely too heavily on that possibility, Rafe," Honor cautioned. "Even if that's what's happening, we don't know how far along they are in their preparations. And if it isn't what's happening, and we assume that it is . . ."

"Understood, Your Grace," Cardones acknowledged. "Still, I think it's an interesting possibility."

"It is," Bachfisch agreed. "And to be honest, I wouldn't be too surprised if that consideration, or one very like it, didn't play a part in their calculations. But as Her Grace says, I wouldn't care to rely on it."

"No, I can see that," Truman agreed, and leaned back in her chair, her eyes intent as she considered what Bachfisch had told them. It was obvious from her expression, and even more from the taste of her emotions, that if she'd had reservations about their information source, those reservations were dissipating rapidly.

"Wraith and I are looking forward to examining those sensor recordings of yours, Captain," she said. "Especially the ones of the Andies' new LACs."

"I'm not surprised," Bachfisch told her with a small smile. "And, to be honest, I was very interested in the readings I got on your own LACs here in Marsh, Admiral. I haven't had the leisure to compare them exhaustively, but my initial impression is that your design is still faster and more powerful than anything of theirs I've seen."

"But you haven't seen any sign of Andy CLACs?" Truman asked.

"No, I haven't. But if I were the Andies, I'd probably be even more leery of showing off my CLACs than of letting out the fact that I had pod-battlecruisers. And it wouldn't be all that difficult to keep them a secret, either. You know how easy it would be to hide CLACs in some out-of-the-way star system while they worked up."

"As a matter of fact, Captain, I know exactly how easy it would be," Truman told him with a small chuckle. Then she sobered, and looked at Honor.

"I agree with Alistair, Honor. I don't much like the sound of any of this. Not when you combine it with things like Zahn's analysis and Ferrero's reports. Especially not combined with what Ferrero's had to say. If the Andies are deliberately showing us the sort of technology advances she's reported, but at the same time they're busy concealing the existence of these new pod-battlecruisers—or trying to conceal it, at any rate . . ."

She let her voice trail off, and Honor nodded. The same thought had already occurred to her. The actions of Hellbarde's captain looked more and more like deliberate provocations. If they were, then Gortz's revelation of the new weapons and sensor capabilities of the Andermani Navy took on the appearance of a deliberate attempt to intimidate, or at least to make Honor, as Sidemore Station's CO, worry about what else they might have in store for her. For that matter, they were busy doing exactly the same thing to the Sillies, according to all reports. Which suggested that they were busy attempting to intimidate the Confederacy's navy, as well. But the fact that they hadn't also flaunted their new warship types was an ominous suggestion that whatever new technology they were prepared to reveal, they were keeping some major surprises tucked away up their sleeves.

She drew a deep breath and looked around the table at the assembled officers . . . and at Thomas Bachfisch. His merchant service uniform looked totally out of place amid the black and gold of the RMN, and yet for all that, she felt a curious sense of completion at seeing him there. It was right that her first commanding officer should be here when she assumed her first station command, and as she looked at him, she felt the same awareness—or something very like it—radiating from him, as well.

"Very well, Ladies and Gentlemen," she told them all. "Thanks to Captain Bachfisch, we have significantly more information about possible threat levels than we had when we arrived. What I'd like to do now is to move down to the flag deck simulator and play with some of the new possibilities. And if you have the time, Captain," she said, gazing directly into his eyes, "I would be both pleased and honored if you'd join us there. I would value your input greatly."

"The honor would be mine, Your Grace," Bachfisch replied after a moment.

"Good!" Honor said with a huge smile, then stood and scooped Nimitz onto her shoulder.

"In that case, People," she told her officers with another smile for Bachfisch, "let's be about it."