Mission of Honor-ARC (39 page)

"I'm referring, as you know perfectly well, to the deliberate and unprovoked destruction of the battlecruiser
Jean Bart
, with all hands, in the New Tuscany System two and a half months ago," she half-snapped, then slashed one finger at Chatfield. The com officer cut the visual from her end, and she turned her chair to face Bautista.

"This bastard's just
asking
for it, Pépé!" she snarled, still watching the Manticoran perusing his novel.

"Which will only make it even more satisfying when he finally gets it," the chief of staff replied. Crandall grunted and looked at Ou-yang.

"I don't think this brainstorm about 'negotiating' is going to work out very well, Zhing-wei." It wasn't quite a snarl, this time, although it remained closer to that than to a mere growl.

"Probably not, Ma'am," the operations officer acknowledged. "On the other hand, it was never for
their
benefit, was it?"

"No, but that doesn't make it any more enjoyable."

"Well, Ma'am, at least it's giving us plenty of time to take a look at what they've got in orbit around the planet," Ou-yang pointed out. "That's worthwhile in its own right, I think."

"I suppose so," Crandall admitted irritably.

"What
do
they have, Zhing-wei?" Bautista inquired, and Shavarshyan wondered—briefly—if the chief of staff was deliberately trying to divert Crandall's ire from the Manticorans. But the question flitted through his brain and away again as quickly as it had come. If anyone aboard
Joseph Buckley
was even more pissed off at the Manties than Crandall, that person was Vice Admiral Pépé Bautista.

"Unless we want to take the remotes in close enough the Manties may pick them up and nail them, we're not going to get really good resolution," Ou-yang replied. "We are picking up a superdreadnought and a squadron—well eight, anyway—of those big heavy cruisers or small battlecruisers or whatever of theirs, but I'm pretty sure that isn't everything they've got."

"Why?" Crandall sounded at least a bit calmer as she focused on Ou-yang's report.

"We've got some fairly persistent 'sensor ghosts,'" the ops officer told her. "They're just a bit too localized and just a shade too strong for me to believe the platforms are manufacturing them. The Manties' EW capabilities are supposed to be quite good, so I'm willing to bet at least some of those 'sensor ghosts' are actually stealthed units."

"Makes sense, Ma'am," Bautista offered. "They probably want to keep us guessing about their actual strength." He snorted harshly. "Maybe they think they can pull off some sort of 'ambush!'"

"On the other hand, they might just be trying to make us worry about where the rest of their ships are," Ou-yang pointed out. The chief of staff frowned, and she shrugged. "Until we actually turned up, they couldn't have been confident about what kind of strength we'd have. They may have expected a considerably smaller force and figured we'd be leery of pressing on when the rest of their fleet might turn up behind us at any moment."

Shavarshyan started to open his mouth, then closed it, then drew a deep breath and opened it again.

"Is it possible," he asked in a carefully neutral tone, "that what they're really trying to do is to convince us they're even weaker than they actually are in order to make us overconfident?"

He knew, even before the question was out of his mouth, that the majority of his audience was going to find the very idea preposterous. For that matter, he didn't really expect it to be true himself. Unfortunately, suggesting possibly overlooked answers to questions was one of an intelligence officer's functions.

Crandall and Bautista, however, didn't seem to appreciate that minor fact. In fact, they both looked at him in obvious disbelief that even a Frontier Fleet officer could have offered such a ludicrous suggestion.

"We've got seventy-one
ships-of-the-wall
, Commander," the chief of staff said after a moment in an elaborately patient tone. "The last thing these people want to do is actually
fight
us! They know as well as we do that any 'battle' would be a very short, very unhappy experience for them. Under the circumstances, the
last
thing they'd want would be to make us even more confident than we already are. Don't you think they'd be more interested in encouraging us to feel
cautious
?"

Shavarshyan's jaw tightened. It was hardly a surprise, however; he'd known how Bautista would react before he ever spoke. That, unfortunately, hadn't relieved him of his responsibility to do the speaking in question. But then, to his surprise, someone else spoke up.

"Actually, Pépé," Ou-yang Zhing-wei said, "Commander Shavarshyan may have a point." The chief of staff looked at her incredulously, and she shrugged. "Not in the way you're thinking. As you say, they can't
want
to fight us, but they may have orders to do just that. And I suggest all of us bear in mind that this particular batch of neobarbs has been fighting a war for the better part of twenty T-years."

"And that experience is somehow supposed to make battlecruisers and heavy cruisers capable of taking on superdreadnoughts?" Bautista demanded.

"I didn't say that," Ou-yang replied coolly. "What I'm suggesting is that whether they want to fight us or not, there probably aren't a whole lot of shy and retiring Manty flag officers these days. Hell, look at what this Gold Peak's already done! So if they've got orders to fight, I expect they'll follow them. And in that case, it's entirely possible they'd want us to underestimate their strength. It might not help them a
lot
, but when the odds are this bad, I'd play for any edge I could find, if I were in their place."

"I see your point, Zhing-wei," Crandall acknowledged, "but—"

"Excuse me, Ma'am," Captain Chatfield said. "Two minutes to the Manties' response."

"Thank you, Darryl." Crandall nodded to him, then looked back at Bautista and Ou-yang. "There may be something to this, Pépé. At any rate, let's not automatically assume there
isn't
. I want you and Zhing-wei to give me an analysis based on the possibility that all of her sensor ghosts are those big-assed battlecruisers. And another based on the possibility that all of them are superdreadnoughts that managed to get here from Manticore faster than we got here from Meyers. Understood?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Bautista acknowledged, although it was evident to Shavarshyan that he continued to put very little credence in the suggestion.

Crandall turned back to face the com display and composed her features just as O'Shaughnessy nodded from it.

"Oh, I'm perfectly well aware of what happened in New Tuscany, of course, Admiral," O'Shaughnessy said with an affable smile. Then his eyes narrowed, and his voice hardened ever so slightly. "I'm just not aware of any unprovoked aggression on the
Star Empire's
part."

He looked out of the display at her for another heartbeat, then deliberately cocked his chair back and returned his attention to his novel.

Crandall seemed to swell visibly, and Shavarshyan closed his eyes. He wasn't especially fond of Manties himself, but he had to admire the skill with which O'Shaughnessy had planted his picador's dart. On the other hand, he also had to wonder what the lunatic thought he was doing, baiting the CO of such a powerful force.

"Unless you wish me to move immediately upon your pathetic little planet, I advise you to stop splitting semantic hairs, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Crandall said, as if underlining Shavarshyan's last thought, and her expression was as ugly as her tone. "You know damned well why I'm here!"

"I'm afraid that since I'm not a mind reader, and since you haven't bothered to respond to any of our earlier communication attempts, I really don't have a clue as to the reasons for this visit," O'Shaughnessy told her coolly eighteen minutes later, looking up from his reader once more. "Perhaps the Foreign Ministry protocolists back in Old Chicago will be able to figure it out for me when they play back the recording of your edifying conversation which will undoubtedly be attached to Her Majesty's next note to Prime Minister Gyulay."

Crandall twitched as if he'd tossed a glass of ice water over her, and her face turned a full shade darker at his none too subtle reminder that whatever her ultimate intentions might be, this was at least theoretically an exchange between official representatives of two sovereign star nations.

"Very well, Mr. O'Shaughnessy," she said with icy precision three or four fulminating seconds later. "In order to avoid any misunderstandings—any
additional
misunderstandings, I should say—I would like to speak to . . . 'Governor Medusa' personally."

She slashed her finger at Chatfield again, bringing up
Joseph Buckley
's wallpaper in place of her own image. Then she went a step further, pressing the stud that cut off the Manticorans' video feed as well, and glared at the blank display.

No one offered any theories this time as the admiral sat stolidly and silently in her command chair. Bautista, Ou-yang, and Ou-yang's assistants were poring over the take from the remote reconnaissance platforms, and Shavarshyan suspected they were just as happy to have something else to do while their admiral fulminated. He wished
he
did. In fact, he punched up his own threat analysis files and sat earnestly—and obviously—studying the already thoroughly studied and over-studied data. The minutes dragged by until Chatfield cleared his throat.

"One minute to the Manties' response, Ma'am," he said in an extraordinarily neutral tone.

"Turn it back on," Crandall growled, and the display came back to life.

O'Shaughnessy had been reading his book again until Crandall's demand to speak to Medusa actually reached him nine minutes earlier. Now he looked up.

"I see." He gazed at her for a moment, then nodded. "I'll see if the Governor's available," he said, and his image was replaced by the Star Empire of Manticore's coat of arms.

The silence on
Joseph Buckley
's flag bridge was intense as this time the Manties turned on
their
wallpaper. As the single Frontier Fleet outsider present, what Shavarshyan felt was mainly dark, bitter amusement as he sensed the conflicting tides within Crandall's staffers. They were only too well aware of her fury, and most of them obviously wanted to express their own anger to show how deeply they agreed with her. But at the same time, a countervailing survival instinct left them hesitant to launch into a flood of vituperation at O'Shaughnessy's arrogance for fear of drawing Crandall's ire down upon themselves when her frustration lashed out at the nearest target of opportunity. It was an interesting dilemma, he reflected, since their silence might also be construed as an effort to avoid any suggestion that O'Shaughnessy had just humiliated Crandall by putting her in her place.

He was just making a mental bet with himself that Bautista would be driven to speak before Ou-yang when the Manticoran wallpaper disappeared and a smallish woman with dark, alert, almond-shaped eyes appeared on the master display in its place. He recognized Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, from his file imagery, and she looked remarkably composed. But there was something about the glitter in those dark eyes . . . .

Not a woman to take lightly, Shavarshyan decided. Particularly not after the exchanges between O'Shaugnessy and Crandall. In fact, her obvious self-control only made her more dangerous. And if anger sparkled in the depth of those eyes, there was no more sign of fear than there'd been in O'Shaughnessy's, as far as
he
could see. Indeed, she looked much too much like the matador, advancing into the ring only after her picadores had well and truly galled the bull. Which, given that she was clearly not an idiot and
had
to be aware of the minor fact that she had nine obviously hostile squadrons of ships-of-the-wall deliberately violating her star system's territoriality, made Hago Shavarshyan extremely nervous.

"Good afternoon, Admiral Crandall," she said frostily. "What can I do for the Solarian League Navy?"

"You can begin by surrendering the person of the flag officer who murdered Admiral Josef Byng and three thousand other Solarian military personnel," Crandall said flatly. "After that, we can discuss the surrender of every warship involved in that incident, and the matter of reparations to both the Solarian League and to the survivors of our murdered spacers."

This time, neither party was prepared to retreat behind its wallpaper. Personally, Shavarshyan thought that was fairly foolish, given that they couldn't reduce the awkward intervals between exchanges even if they'd wanted to. Yet if it was arguably foolish for Medusa, it was much more obviously foolish for Crandall. She was an admiral in the Solarian League Navy—a Battle Fleet admiral—on what she'd intended from the beginning to be a punitive expedition, and there she sat, locking eyes—uselessly—with a com image which was nine minutes old by the time she even saw it. The image of the official representative of the star nation of neo-barbarians she'd set out to chastise.

"I see," Medusa said finally. "And you think I'm going to submit to your demands because—?"

She cocked her head slightly and raised polite eyebrows.

"Unless you're considerably more foolish than I believe," Crandall's tone made it obvious
no one
could be more foolish than she believed Medusa was, "the nine squadrons of ships-of-the-wall just outside your hyper limit should suggest at least one reason."

Yet another endless interval dragged past; then Medusa nodded calmly.

"Which means I should assume this enumeration of warships is intended to communicate the threat that you're prepared to commit yet more acts of deliberate aggression against the Star Empire of Manticore?"

"Which means I am prepared to embrace whatever means are necessary to safeguard the sovereignty of the Solarian League, as every Solarian flag officer's standing orders require," Crandall retorted.

It was remarkable, Shavarshyan thought, still studiously pondering the facts and figures on his own display, how an eighteen-minute wait between exchanges undeniably robbed threats of immediacy and power while simultaneously distilling the pure essence of anger behind them.