Эрик Флинт - The Service of the Sword

Wallace's head twisted around. "Captain?"

"We're going back, Mr. Wallace," she repeated. "The convoy needs us."

"But the raider—"

"The raider will keep," she cut him off, warning him with her eyes.

His mouth worked, but he turned back to his board without comment, shoulders hunched in silent protest. Thinking of their orders from Admiral Trent, no doubt.

Or else thinking about the fact that the enemy was a battlecruiser that outgunned Fearless by probably three to one.

"Peep's altered course toward the Dorado ," Venizelos announced. "From the data, CIC speculates that whatever they're doing to the merchie's impellers operates at a range of about a million klicks."

Or in other words, ten times the range of a grav lance. Or at least, of a Manticoran grav lance.

Which meant that Honor's gut reaction a minute ago had been correct. If this was indeed a new Peep weapon, they needed to find out as much as they could about it. Admiral Trent might not be happy that she'd let the Andermani raider escape, but under the circumstances—

"Aspect change in the raider, Skipper," Venizelos announced. "She's also flipped and decelerating."

"Run the numbers, Stephen," Honor ordered. "Assume the battlecruiser waits for us. What's our intercept time?"

"For a zero-zero intercept, two hours thirteen minutes," DuMorne said. "We'll be in missile range twelve minutes before that."

"And the raider?"

"She'll be in missile range of us four minutes after that," DuMorne said.

"Good," Honor said, forcing her voice to remain calm. So the enemy wasn't going to be content with just looting the convoy, or even with suckering Fearless into going up against a ship three times her size. Instead, they were going to guarantee victory by making Fearless fight both ships at the same time.

"Good?" Wallace echoed. "What's good about it?"

"They'll have us surrounded," Honor said evenly, remembering an old, old quote. " This time they won't get away."

She turned back to her displays, ignoring Wallace's look of disbelief. In the distance, the battlecruiser's wedge fluctuated again—

—and with a distant thundercrack and a jolt that could be felt straight through the deck plates, Dorado 's wedge collapsed.

"Hot diggedy damn," Captain McLeod's strained voice said into the sudden silence. "Is that what was supposed to happen?"

"Part of it," Sandler assured him, crossing to the engineering status board. "Georgio?"

"Don't know yet," Pampas said, his fingers playing almost tentatively with the keys. "The breakers are still popped, but they might just be too hot to reset."

Cardones looked back at his displays. The Peep was still moving among the scattering convoy, methodically popping merchie wedges as it went.

But something new had now been added to the picture. On the distant marker indicating the Fearless , the green number indicating acceleration away had been replaced by a red one.

Which meant Fearless had given up on the chase. She was decelerating hard, killing her forward velocity and preparing to come to the convoy's rescue.

Where she would face a Peep battlecruiser.

"Captain Sandler?" he called. "You'd better come see this."

"What is it?" Sandler asked, making no move to leave Pampas's side.

" Fearless is decelerating," Cardones told her. "I think she's going to come back."

"Understood," Sandler said, and turned back to Pampas's board.

Cardones blinked. "Captain?"

Reluctantly, he thought, she turned back. "What?"

"Aren't we going to do something?" he asked. "I mean, she's coming back ."

"What exactly would you like me to do, Commander?" Sandler countered. "Warn the Peep off? Or shall we just charge to the attack ourselves? Don't worry, Captain Harrington can handle him."

"But—"

"I said don't worry," Sandler said, cutting his protest off with a stern look. "Kilo for kilo, Fearless has far better weapons than any Peep warship. You know that."

"Besides, this particular Peep has almost certainly had a lot of its armament gutted to make room for their wedge-killer," Damana added. " Fearless should be all right."

"Got it!" Pampas crowed suddenly. "There they go, Skipper. Breakers have closed, and the nodes are back up to standby."

He grinned up at Sandler. "We did it, Ma'am."

"We did indeed," she agreed, some of the lines smoothing out of her face as she clapped Pampas on the shoulder. "Well done, Georgio."

"So what are we waiting for?" McLeod asked. "They're moving away from us right now. We could bring up the wedge and make a run for the inner system, and they'd have to decelerate before they could even think about coming after us."

"No," Sandler said, an odd note to her voice. "No, leave the wedge down."

"But we might at least be able to distract them," Cardones put in. A number on his display caught his eye as it changed— "Uh-oh."

"What?" Damana asked.

"The raider's also flipped over and started decelerating," Cardones told him.

"ETA?"

Cardones was running the numbers. "Looks like they'll reach here pretty much together," he said. "They're trying to box Fearless between them."

"They're going to succeed, too," Damana agreed, eying his captain. "This changes things, Skipper. Even if Fearless can handle a gutted battlecruiser, adding a light cruiser's tubes to the mix stacks the odds the other way."

"Again, what do you want me to do about it?" Sandler asked.

"As Captain McLeod suggests, we could run for it," Damana said. "If we can draw the Peep far enough out of position, it would give Fearless a chance to take out the raider first instead of having to face both of them together."

"Unless the Peep decides we're not worth bothering with," Sandler pointed out. "She might just let us go, in which case we'll have done it for nothing."

"So?" Cardones said. "I mean, what have we got to lose by trying?"

"What have we got to lose ?" Sandler demanded. "We have everything to lose."

She looked back and forth between Cardones and Damana. "Don't you see? Either of you? We now have the counter to their wedge-killer; but they don't know we have it . If they leave here without finding that out, who knows how much time and money Haven will waste building these things and putting them aboard their ships?"

Cardones stared at her in disbelief. "You mean you'd let Fearless die for that ?"

"People die all the time in war, Mr. Cardones," Sandler said tartly. "If it makes you feel any better, they won't have died for nothing."

"Yes, they will," Cardones shot back. "The Peeps aren't going to just recall all their ships to base and load these things aboard them. They'll keep on testing; and sooner or later, they're bound to run into a merchie with the breakers installed."

A sudden cold wave washed over him. "Or weren't you going to tell anyone outside ONI about this?" he breathed. "Were you just going to let merchies continue to get slaughtered?"

"I'm not going to debate it with you, Lieutenant," Sandler said icily. "You have your orders. The wedge stays down." Deliberately, she turned her back on him. "Georgio, let's see the self-diagnostics on those junction points."

Cardones turned back to his displays, his stomach churning with anger, an odd sense of loss digging an empty spot into his soul. He'd been wrong. Elayne Sandler was nothing at all like Honor Harrington. Captain Harrington would never, ever sacrifice people for nothing this way. When she put people at risk it was for duty or defense, not for some stupid psychological game played by dark-minded men and women in dark-minded rooms. That was what she had done at Basilisk . . . and it was what she was about to do right now.