David Weber - At All Costs

"Yes, Your Grace." The com officer nodded his head at Jaruwalski. "Commander Jaruwalski's arrays are actually picking up most of them, but we've been looking at them over here, as well. So far, it all looks like our own early-generation traffic, probably from fixed recon arrays scattered around the system. Their pulse repetition frequency rate's still on the low side, so the information they're passing is probably limited, but there are at least a couple of stations out there with a higher PRF."

"Can you localize the more capable transmitters?"

"We've nailed down two of them, Your Grace," Jaruwalski reported. "One of them seems to be aboard this space station."

A red sighting ring popped into existence around the system's main space station as she spoke. It was a big thing, though no more than twenty percent the size of Hephaestus, back home.

"And the other?" Honor asked, eyes narrowing intently.

"The other one is out here, Your Grace."

Jaruwalski dropped another icon into the display. This one appeared to be in orbit around Merlin, which put it over forty light-minutes outside the system hyper limit on the far side of the primary.

"Are they talking to each other, Harper?"

"I'd say, yes, Your Grace. I can't be positive, of course, but pattern analysis strongly suggests that they are."

"Thank you."

Honor nodded and walked slowly back across to her command chair, right hand gently caressing the plushy fur between Nimitz's ears.

"Your Grace, I know that expression," Brigham said quietly as Honor and Nimitz rejoined her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said I know that expression. May I ask what's provoking it this time?"

"I don't know, really." Honor shrugged. "There's just... something wrong. It's like they're going off in all directions at once-panicky evacuation of their orbital platforms, ships heading out to meet us without even bringing along heavy pod loads, no effort to communicate with us at all, and now this FTL message traffic."

"Maybe they really are going off in all directions at once, Your Grace," Brigham suggested. "It's one thing to know the other side is scouting your system; it's another to see a force this powerful coming down on you."

"I know, I know." Honor snorted. "Maybe I'm simply being paranoid! But I just can't shake the feeling that there's something out of kilter."

"Well, Ma'am, even if Arthur is talking to someone out at Merlin, it's not like either of them were close enough to pose any sort of threat to us. For that matter, Merlin's on the entirely wrong side of Solon!"

"Exactly. So why-"

Honor broke off abruptly, her eyes suddenly widening.

"Your Grace?" Brigham asked sharply.

"Sidemore," Honor said. "They're taking a page from Sidemore!"

Brigham looked blank for a moment, then inhaled deeply.

"They'd have to have accurately predicted our objectives," she said.

"No reason they couldn't have," Honor replied almost absently, eyes intent as she stared into the depths of her tactical plot. "Not in a general sense, at least. Deciding what sorts of targets we'd be likely to hit wouldn't be that hard. Picking the exact, specific targets would probably come down to a guessing game, but it looks like someone guessed right."

She looked into the plot for a few more seconds, then turned away.

"Harper, get me a priority link to Admiral Mikl¢s!"

"Too bad they didn't go for the cheese, Sir," Captain Marius Gozzi said as he and Javier Giscard watched the master plot aboard RHNS Sovereign of Space.

"I never figured there was more than one chance in three they would," Giscard replied. "Still, it was worth a try."

He stood back from the plot and folded his hands behind him while he thought. From the reports of his own sensor platforms, it was very likely that one of those Manty superdreadnoughts was Eighth Fleet's flagship. In which case, he was about to sit down across the table from the best the Manties had.

But this time I get to use my own cards, he reminded himself. And they're marked.

The one thing he wished he had was real-time intelligence on exactly what the Manties were up to, but that simply wasn't possible. The Tarantula net could get tactical information to him, but only by sending it aboard dispatch boats, and he didn't have an unlimited supply of them. Nor could he send any of the boats back after they'd reported to him, since the Manties would have been much too likely to detect their hyper footprints when they translated back into normal-space.

At least, so far, the raiders appeared to be doing what he wanted them to do. He would have preferred for them to take the "cheese," as Gozzi had called it. If they'd decided the missile pods planted around Merlin indicated there was something out there worth attacking, they might have divided their forces. Of course, the real reason for the pods had been to provide background clutter to hide the Tarantula platforms, because Shannon hadn't been able to get the new FTL coms into something small enough to count on evading the notice of Manty sensor arrays. But there'd always been the chance of killing multiple birds with a single stone. And once they'd come in close enough to Merlin, they would have been trapped inside the massive gas giant's own hyper limit, pinned while his units closed in behind them. Still, as he'd told his chief of staff, he'd never really had much confidence they would.

He checked the time display. Four minutes until the next dispatch boat was due.

"Selma, pass the preparatory signal for Ambush Three," he said.

"Aye, Sir," Commander Selma Thackeray, his operations officer responded.

"Yes, Your Grace?" Vice Admiral Samuel Mikl¢s said as he appeared on Honor's com display.

"It's a trap, Samuel," Honor said flatly. The FTL com grav pulses meant there was no light-speed lag in their conversation, and Mikl¢s' eyes widened in surprise. "I can't prove it-yet," she continued, "but I'm sure of it. Get your carriers out. Go to Omega One."

It was obvious from Mikl¢s' expression that he wanted to ask her if she was certain that was what she really wanted to do, but he didn't. He only nodded.

"Yes, Your Grace. At once. And you?"

"And we, Samuel, are going to have our hands full, I'm afraid," she said grimly.

"Captain Durand!"

"Yes, Charles?" Durand turned quickly towards Bibeau.

"Sir, their carriers just translated out!"

"Damn."

Durand thought furiously for perhaps ten seconds. There could be a perfectly innocent reason for the Manties to have suddenly decided to move their carriers, but he didn't believe it for a moment. No. Somehow, they'd guessed what was coming, and he suppressed a desire to swear yet again.

"Communications, pass Lieutenant Bibeau's current sensor data on to Tarantula. Tell them I recommend an immediate relay to Admiral Giscard."

The dispatch boat one light-minute outside Merlin's orbit received the Durand's FTL transmission, relayed to its light-speed communications arrays by the Tarantula net, seventy-two seconds after it was transmitted. The boat's computers updated, and it translated smoothly across the alpha wall. Javier Giscard's task force was waiting exactly where it had been for the past week and a half, and the dispatch boat quickly relayed the tactical update to his flagship.

"Sir, it looks like the Manties smelled a rat," Commander Thackeray reported. "Their CLACs just translated out."

"Damn it," Gozzi muttered, but Giscard only showed his teeth in a tight grin.

"Actually catching them that far outside the limit would have been problematical, at best, Marius," he said. "You know how hard it is a to plot a hyper jump this short. And they weren't exactly likely to be sitting there with their hyper generators off-line and their impeller nodes cold. Unless we'd translated down right on top of them, they'd have had time to get into hyper before we could range on them." He shrugged. "I'd figured we were going to lose them from the moment the Manties left them behind. However," his grin turned positively lupine, "if the carriers are gone, the LACs are stuck, aren't they?"