“I think you’re exactly right,” Honor said. “And bearing that in mind, I also think it’s time we welcomed our visitors.” She looked at Brantley. “Ready, Harper?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And are you ready?” Honor asked, turning to Theisman with a crooked smile.
“Oh, I believe you could say that, Your Grace,” he replied. “And I’m sure Lester is, too.”
“Then just make sure you’re out of the pickup’s field of view until the appropriate moment.”
She made shooing motions, and Nimitz bleeked in laughter as the Havenite Secretary of Defense obeyed the gesture. The ’cat’s skinsuit’ kept him from flirting his tail the way he would have under other circumstances, but his amusement was obvious, and Springs From Above (who’d been fitted with his own skinsuit) laughed back from Theisman’s shoulder.
Honor waited another moment to make sure everyone was where he or she was supposed to be, then nodded to Jaruwalski.
“Send Cantata through to Admiral Tourville, Andrea.”
* * *
“We’ve got clearance, Skipper!” Brynach Lacharn said suddenly. “Number seven in the queue!”
Hamilton Trudeau looked up in surprise at the announcement. He hadn’t really expected the Manties to let DB-17025 make transit at all, and certainly not this early in the queue. Maybe the people who’d picked the INS cover weren’t as dim as he’d thought they were.
“All right, Tommy,” he said briskly, turning to Ensign Thomasina Tsiang, the dispatch boat’s astrogator and third in command, “get us in line! The last thing we need is to miss our slot now that they’ve given us one.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
The dispatch boat was small enough for Tsiang, who enjoyed being hands-on whenever possible, to take the helm herself instead of simply passing orders to someone else, and DB-17025 accelerated smoothly, sliding out of the mass of waiting freighters and passenger liners. Trudeau suspected there were some alarmingly high blood pressures on the bridges of the ships they were leaving behind, but that was fine with him. He only wished he had some better intelligence — like any intelligence — on how the rest of Operation Raging Justice was making out.
Somehow, he felt sure, Admiral Tsang would probably wish the same thing.
* * *
“Are we sure this is a good idea, Ma’am?”
Christopher Dumbrowski tone sounded more than a bit doubtful as he watched the dispatch boat’s icon moving towards the terminus to Beowulf.
“Define ‘good idea,’” Admiral Stephania Grimm replied with a wry smile.
“Well, it just seems to me it would have been simpler all around to sit on them,” Captain Dumbrowski said. “I mean, they wouldn’t be going anywhere without our permission. We could’ve just kept them cooling their heels right here until it was all over one way or the other, without ever bringing the Beowulf end into it at all. Seems to me that keeping Beowulf up our sleeve as a holdout card in case we need to play it even worse later on might have a lot to recommend itself.”
“In some ways, I’m inclined to agree with you,” Grimm acknowledged. Given their positions and the role they had to play, she and Dumbrowski knew quite a lot about the thinking behind this part of the plan. And in Grimm’s opinion, the captain had a very valid point. But…
“It’d be a hard call for me, either way,” she said finally. “I’m sure it was for everyone else involved, too. In fact, even though no one’s told me this in so many words, I think it was ultimately the Beowulfers who made the decision, not anyone at our end. And I think the deciding factor was probably that they’re really and truly royally pissed off at this Mesan Alignment. There’s no way in this universe they’re going to sit on the sidelines when we go after them, and they’re about as disgusted as anyone could possibly get with the way Kolokoltsov and the Mandarins have botched the entire situation. For that matter, they’re disgusted as hell with all the rest of the League for letting itself get turned into such a bitched up mess instead of a star nation in the first place. So this is their way of punctuating all the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing — jumping ship to sign up with us, I mean. And I think they want to draw Admiral Tsang in, get her to openly commit to her part of ‘Operation Raging Justice,’ so they’ll have that additional evidence of just how fast and loose with the League Constitution Kolokoltsov’s apparatchiks are really willing to play.”
She paused, lips pursed in thought, then shrugged.
“Anyway, senior and better-paid heads made the decision, not us, so that’s the way it’s going to be. And,” she smiled slightly, “I have to admit I’m going to be interested as hell to see how it all works out in the end.
* * *
“All right, Harper,” Honor said as she watched HMS Cantata’s icon disappear from her plot. “Why don’t you go ahead and put me through to Admiral Filareta now?”
* * *
“Fleet Admiral, we have an incoming communications request.”
Filareta glanced at Admiral Burrows and arched one eyebrow at the announcement. At 14,875,000 kilometers, the grossly outnumbered Manty wall of battle remained motionless, holding position relative to the planet, fifty light-seconds from his own far larger formation. He was astonished that they hadn’t even begun accelerating away from him, but he wasn’t going to complain about it.
“I wondered how much longer it would take them,” he said.
“Frankly, I’m surprised they managed to wait this long, Sir!” Burrows replied with a harsh chuckle.
“Who’s the message from, Reuben?” Filareta continued, turning his back on the main plot to face Captain Reuben Sedgewick, his staff communications officer.
“It’s from Admiral Harrington, Sir,” Sedgewick replied, but there was something odd about his tone, and Filareta frowned. Any light-speed com request had to be coming from Tango Two if it had reached them this soon, and he was a little surprised Harrington was there, instead of with Tango One. But that wasn’t enough to account for the odd note in Sedgewick’s response.
“Is there a problem, Reuben?”
His own tone was a bit colder than it had been.
“It’s just…” Sedgewick paused, then shrugged very slightly. “It’s just that she asked for you, specifically, by name, Fleet Admiral. And she, ah, asked for you as the commanding officer of Eleventh Fleet.”
Filareta felt his expression stiffen. He gazed at the com officer a moment longer, then looked back at Burrows. The chief of staff’s amusement had vanished, and he met his superior’s eyes with a frown.
“So much for operational security,” Filareta observed.
“Yes, Sir.” Burrows shook his head in disgust. “Somebody must have blabbed back on Old Terra.”
“One of the many joyful disadvantages of having to come the long way round while the other side can get intelligence reports directly through the damn Junction.”
Filareta’s light tone was almost whimsical; his expression was not.
“I wonder how long they’ve known?” Burrows continued, thinking out loud.
“That is an interesting thought, isn’t it?”
Filareta showed his teeth. Burrows had an excellent point. If the Manties had learned of his orders far enough in advance, there was no telling what sort of welcome they might have decided to set up.