"Hardly," Ackenheil agreed dryly.
There were two more incidents than there'd been the last time he checked, he noticed, and rubbed his chin while he considered them. He supposed he should be grateful the Imperial Andermani Navy had chosen to make a substantial effort to squash the operations of pirates in and around the region the RMN patrolled from its base in the Marsh System. God knew there'd been enough times he'd felt as if he needed to be in two or three places simultaneously to deal with the vermin. Ever since Honor Harrington had destroyed Andre Warnecke's "privateer" squadron in Marsh, no pirate in his right mind was going to come anywhere near Sidemore, but that hadn't prevented the run-of-the-mill attacks, murders, and general atrocities which were standard for Silesia along the fringe of Sidemore Station's area of responsibility. So whatever else he might think, he had to admit to feeling an undeniable relief as he watched the steady drop in pirate attacks, on planets, as well as merchant shipping, which the Andies' efforts had produced.
But welcome as that might be, it was also disturbing. The Andermani had been careful to tread lightly in the region after the Admiralty announced its intention to establish a fleet base in Marsh. A few Andermani officers Ackenheil had met hadn't bothered to disguise the resentment they'd felt over the Star Kingdom's treaty with the Republic of Sidemore. They'd obviously regarded it as one more example of Manticoran interference in an area they felt properly belonged to the Andermani Empire's sphere of interest. But whatever they might have felt, the Empire had made no formal protest, and the official Andie position was that anything which reduced lawlessness in Silesia was welcome.
The diplomats who said that lied in their teeth, and everyone knew it, but that had been the official position for almost nine T-years. And during those same nine T-years, the Andie Navy had restricted its presence in and around the Marsh System to port visits by destroyers, interspersed occasionally with the odd division of light cruisers, and very rarely by individual heavy cruisers or battlecruisers. It had been enough to remind the Star Kingdom that the Empire also had an interest in the region without using forces heavy enough to be seen as some sort of provocative challenge to Manticore's presence.
But over the past few months, that seemed to be changing. There'd been only three Andie port calls during those months, and aside from one heavy cruiser of the new Verfechter class, only destroyers had actually visited Sidemore. But if the situation remained unchanged in the Marsh System itself, that was certainly not true elsewhere. It seemed that everywhere Ackenheil looked, Andermani patrols were suddenly picking off pirates, privateers, and other low-lifes, and they weren't using destroyers or light cruisers to do it with, either.
He leaned a bit closer to Zahn's plot and frowned as he read the data codes beside the two incidents he'd been unaware of.
"A battlecruiser division here at Sandhill?" he asked, crooking one eyebrow in surprise as he indicated a star in the Confederacy's Breslau Sector.
"Yes, Sir," Zahn confirmed, and pointed to the second new incident, in the Tyler System, near the northeastern border of the Posnan Sector. "And this one was apparently an entire squadron of heavy cruisers," she said.
"I didn't know they had this many cruisers in their entire navy," Ackenheil said ironically, waving at the widely scattered crimson icons. Three of them represented pirate interceptions by forces containing nothing heavier than a destroyer; all the rest marked operations which had involved cruisers or battle cruisers.
"They do seem to be turning up everywhere we look, Sir," Zahn agreed, and pulled at the lobe of her left ear in an "I'm thinking" gesture Ackenheil was pretty sure she didn't know she used.
"Which suggests what to you?" he pressed, returning to his original question.
"Which suggests, at an absolute minimum," she said in a crisper voice, lowering her hand from her ear and forgetting her diffidence as she grappled with the problem, "a very substantial redeployment of their available assets. I think sometimes we forget that the only Andermani ships we're hearing about are the ones which actually intercept someone, Sir. There are probably half a dozen ships, or even more, out there that we aren't hearing about for every one someone does tell us about."
"An excellent point," Ackenheil murmured.
"As to why they should redeploy this way just to catch pirates, though," Zahn went on with a tiny shrug, her dark eyes distant, "I can't think of any compelling operational reason for it, Skipper. It's not as if they'd suddenly started suffering particularly heavy losses among their merchies—or not that we've heard anything about, anyway. I checked the Intelligence reports to confirm that. And even if they have developed some sudden concern about pirates or privateers, why use battlecruisers?"
"Why not use them, if they've got them?" Ackenheil asked, slipping smoothly into the Devil's advocate role. "After all, they have to blood and train their ships somehow, and it's not as if they had any major wars to do it in. That's one of the reasons the RMN deployed some of its best crews and skippers out here before the war—to use anti-pirate operations as a tactical finishing school."
"That might make some sense, Sir," Zahn agreed. "But it doesn't fit their previous operational patterns. And I asked Tim to do some research for me."
She looked a question at Ackenheil, and he nodded. Her husband was a civilian analyst employed in Fleet Operations' Records Division in Marsh, and he was very highly thought of by Commodore Tharwan, who headed RecDiv. Which was one reason the captain was so interested in the lieutenant commander's opinion, he admitted to himself.
"He says that as far as ONI's database is aware, they've never committed anything as heavy as a battlecruiser division to routine anti-piracy ops," Zahn went on. "Records says that the only times they've used forces that heavy were when someone had managed to put together a force of pirates or privateers capable of carrying out at least squadron-level strikes, like Warnecke did." She shook her head and waved a hand at the red icons on her plot. "Nothing like that has been going on anywhere in the region they're operating across now, Skipper."
"So if they're operating outside their normal parameters, using heavier forces, despite the fact that threat levels have remained basically unchanged, that brings me back to my original question," Ackenheil said. "What do you think they're really up to?"
Zahn gazed at the plot for several silent seconds. The captain didn't think she even saw it, and he could almost physically feel the intensity with which she pondered. Whether she was thinking about the raw data or considering whether or not to tell him what she really thought was more than he could say, but he made himself wait patiently until she turned her head to look back up at him.
"If you want my honest opinion, Sir," she said quietly, "I think they want us to know they're transferring steadily heavier forces into Silesia. And I think they want us to know that they're conducting active operations—against pirates . . . for the moment—all along the periphery of our own patrol areas."
"And they want us to know that because—?" Ackenheil arched one eyebrow as he gazed down at her somber expression, and she drew a deep breath.
"It's only a gut feeling, Skipper, and I don't have a single bit of hard evidence I could use to support it, but I think they've decided it's time to press their own claims in the Confederacy."
Ackenheil's other eyebrow rose to join its fellow. Not in rejection of her theory, but in surprise that so junior an officer, even one whose ability he thought so highly of, should have come up with it. He'd considered the same possibility himself, and he wished he'd been able to dismiss it out of hand.