In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (19 page)

“No,” Rabenstrange said again, just as flatly. “Can you prove this?”

“If you mean do I carry ID in that name, no,” Charles said. “Working undercover this way, I can’t take the chance someone will stumble across something that compromises my identity while I’m on a story. I can of course give you references, but they’re all on Earth or other League worlds, which means they aren’t going to do either of us much good at the moment.”

“Mm,” Rabenstrange said. He was clearly still a long way from being convinced, but at least he no longer sounded ready to offer his
Totenkopfs
a little exercise. Maybe he
had
heard of Rufus Perry, even if he hadn’t read any of the columns. “And this story you fed
Herr
Weiss?”

“One hundred percent true, My Lord,” Charles assured him. “I’ve been sensing something funny about the regions in question for a long time. When I finally figured out what was going on—” He let his lip twitch. “Let’s just say journalism is a tough game, and the scars are starting to show. It occurred to me that quietly presenting this to the Empire instead of laying it out in front of a bunch of jaded readers who couldn’t see the longer picture if you silk-screened it on their corneas might allow me to retire with grace and a certain degree of comfort.”

“Somewhere out of reach of Manty reprisals?” Rabenstrange suggested.

Charles winced. “If at all possible, yes.”

“And you think this time I should believe you?”

Charles spread his hands. “Whether you do or not, I didn’t make up the Manty ship that attacked the
Eule
and
Krause Rosig,
” he said. “Nor can I make up a—you know what—in the Irrlicht system. Put me under guard if you wish, but I urge you to get to Irrlicht with all due speed. That’s where all the answers lie.”

For another few seconds Rabenstrange continued to gaze at him in silence. Charles waited; and after what seemed like forever the admiral gave a microscopic nod. “I’ll want a list of those references,” he said.

“Of course, My Lord,” Charles said. “I have them in an overlaid code on one of my data chips. I can have a decoded copy for you within the hour.”

“No need,” Rabenstrange said. “The
Derfflinger
’s cryptologists haven’t much to do right now. They’ll enjoy the challenge.”

Charles suppressed a grimace, but there was nothing for it but to comply. Opening his data chip holder, he selected one at random and set it down on the table in front of him. “Will there be anything else, My Lord?”

“Not at present,” Rabenstrange said. “One of the Marines outside will take you to the others.”

Charles nodded, and once again turned to the door. This time, Rabenstrange let him escape.

*
   
*
   
*

To Charles’s relief, Rabenstrange didn’t take him up on the suggestion that he be clapped in irons, or whatever the IAN used in its brigs. On the contrary, as they headed toward Irrlicht it almost seemed that the crew members assigned to watch over the passengers went out of their way to treat him better than they did Mercier or even their own countryman Weiss. No doubt it was all part of some arcane plan on Rabenstrange’s part, pressuring the passengers with lopsided kindness in the hope of forcing open a few interesting and illuminating cracks.

If that was his goal, it was a waste of everyone’s time. Mercier, no doubt reading the situation the same way Charles was, made a point of not reacting to any of it, but simply maintained his brooding expatriate persona.

Two days of hyper-space travel later, they reached the Irrlicht system.

“We’re here,” Rabenstrange announced, swiveling in his command chair to look at the three passengers he’d had brought onto his bridge. “
Herr
Navarre? Any thoughts?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Charles admitted. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure this is the place, but I have no idea where exactly the terminus might be located.
Herr
Weiss’s analysis suggested it would be two to four light-hours outside the system, but there’s no way to know where. On the other hand, if the Manties have a base in the outer asteroid belt somewhere, we should be able to find it, shielded or otherwise. Once we have the base, we should be able to pull records of the terminus itself.”

“It’s a reasonable place to begin,” Rabenstrange agreed, swiveling back around again. “Captain Preis?”

The flag captain nodded and turned to the helm. “Take us in slow—two hundred gees,” he ordered. “Bow and sidewall sensors, set up a crisscross search pattern, starting at
null-null.
Stern sensors, search outward for anything that might indicate a gravitic or spatial anomaly. Deploy the LACs with similar instructions.”

Turning toward the faint point of light in the distance that marked the system’s sun, the big ship headed forward.

There was a breath of displaced air as Weiss stepped to Charles’s side. ”This is it,” he murmured.

“Yes,” Charles murmured back. “Did I hear Captain Preis mention LACs?”

“Yes, two of them,” Weiss confirmed. “They came with us from Mischa’s Star, tractored to the hull. They’ll ride escort for us, as well as help with the search.”

“Ah,” Charles said, nodding. “What was the
null-null
reference?”

“That’s
zero-zero,
the part of the outer belt directly ahead of us,” Weiss explained. “The miners who occasionally come here to try their luck call the belt the Double Diamond because it has two relatively small, relatively dense areas, with the rest of the ring much more open and empty. Since those are the two likeliest places for the Manties to hide a base, we might as well start with one of them.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Charles murmured.

Weiss peered oddly at him. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” Charles said. “Just nervous, I suppose.”

“About what?”

Charles shook his head. “Just nervous.”

“Ah.” Weiss studied him another moment. Then, without another word, he drifted away.

Charles bit back a curse. That bit of unfocused weirdness had probably cost him ten points’ worth of class in Weiss’s estimation. But right now, he couldn’t care less what Weiss thought about him.

The
Ellipsis
’s orders, coming from Saint-Just himself, had been to wait at Irrlicht for Charles and Mercier to bring in the
Derfflinger
or a ship of equal size and status. But Tyler had taken his ship to Mischa’s Star instead, and had furthermore risked the entire mission just to shoot a few missiles at a cruiser and a harmless freighter.

The question—the crucial, damnable question—was
why?
What had Tyler thought he could accomplish?

Had he wanted to stir up the Andies to come charging into Irrlicht? But Charles had already promised he would do that, and Saint-Just had accepted that promise, and that should have been good enough for Tyler. Had he hoped an attack would irritate the Andies into sending a big, important ship to investigate the suspect system? But Charles had promised to do that, too.

So why had Tyler deviated from the plan? More importantly, were there other such deviations waiting down the line?

Charles didn’t know. But sometime in the next few hours, he had damn well better figure it out.

*
   
*
   
*

“ID confirmed,” the
Ellipsis
’s sensor officer announced. “It’s the IAN superdreadnought
Derfflinger,
Admiral Herzog von Rabenstrange’s flagship.”

“Excellent,” Captain Tyler said, leaning back in his seat and smiling one of his wolfish smiles. It was all going exquisitely according to plan, Navarre’s overall scheme and Tyler’s improvements to it. The Imperials had taken the bait, and now the cousin and close friend of the Andermani Emperor himself was aboard the ship bearing down on him.

Navarre’s plan had been a bold one: point the Andermani to the Irrlicht system and talk them into sending a ship to investigate; have the
Ellipsis
“appear” from its supposed wormhole, spot the “unexpected” intruder, and attack under the guise of a Manty ship jealously defending “its” wormhole; damage the Andy as much as possible before his own destruction; and then let nature and Andermani militarist pride take its course. Tyler had never doubted for a minute that it would work.

But Tyler had now seen the inherent risks of straining his alpha nodes in order to create the fake wormhole footprint. He could do permanent damage to them, and here in the Irrlicht system there was no PRN tender standing by ready to repair that damage. Or worse, the energy surge might blow the impeller rooms and destroy the entire ship. That would end Citizen Navarre’s plan right there and then.

Besides, wouldn’t it be better if, instead of merely damaging the Andermani ship, the
Ellipsis
was able to completely destroy it?

Of course it would. Not only would it enable the People’s Republic to retain the
Ellipsis
for future service, but the Emperor’s outrage at the Royalists would be orders of magnitude greater.

So Tyler had taken it upon himself to modify Navarre’s plan. And now, thanks to that initiative, this new, better result was all but guaranteed.

Because under the original plan, there was no way of knowing which direction the investigating ship might come from. The two large clusters of this so-called Double Diamond asteroid belt were more or less equidistant from New Berlin, and a captain coming from the Andermani capital could basically flip a coin as to which cluster he chose to investigate first.

But one of those two clusters was on an almost direct line from Mischa’s Star. By creating an additional “Manty” incident there, an incident that would most likely be investigated by the same ship already tasked with the Irrlicht probe, Tyler had given the
Derfflinger
an obvious choice of which cluster to examine first.

The cluster that the
Ellipsis
itself was even now skulking inside, its wedge at low power, its ID beacon silent, its wonderful new Solly stealthing rendering it all but invisible.

“He’s stabilized his approach vector, Captain,” the navigator reported.

“Acknowledged,” Tyler said, studying the nav display. It would have been even more perfect if he could have known precisely where the
Derfflinger
would be coming in. Then he could have lain quietly along the Andermani’s approach vector until the Imperial lumbered unsuspectingly into point-blank energy range, where a single salvo of laser and graser fire poured down its unprotected throat would gut even a superdreadnought like a fish. Not only would that have finished him off in a single blow, but it would have had the extra irony of being exactly the same technique the accursed Royalist Honor Harrington had used in her cowardly attack on the People’s task force during her escape from Cerberus.

But alas, it wasn’t going to be so neat and clean. Even coming from a known position, the
Derfflinger
had any number of approach vectors to choose from, with no way for Tyler to know where to lie in wait for him.

Which was why, as far back as the repair work on his Alpha nodes, he’d conceived this new scheme instead.

“Prepare to get underway,” he ordered. “Minimal wedge, full stealthing, course as previously laid in.”

“Yes, Citizen Captain,” the helmsman acknowledged.

Tyler settled back in his seat. No, this new plan wouldn’t be as neat and clean as a graser ambush. But it would be just as spectacular.

And in the end, the
Derfflinger
and Admiral Rabenstrange would be just as dead.

*
   
*
   
*

The
Derfflinger
was six hours into the Irrlicht system when she spotted spotted the wedge.

“Given its current vector, and assuming constant acceleration and heading, it has to have come from right about here,” the superdreadnought’s tactical officer said. She tapped a command into her console, and a blinking icon appeared on the flight deck’s master plot.

“Even if they’d been under complete emissions control, the recon drones’ active sensors should have picked it up when they swept that area,” Captain Preis pointed out.

“Yes, sir,” the officer agreed. “Best explanation is that it was shielded somehow.”

Preis grunted and turned to the communications display which linked his position on
Derfflinger
’s command deck to Rabenstrange’s flag bridge.
 

“I think, Admiral, we may have found our camouflaged Manty base. If they got some kind of super stealth that can hide a starship, I don’t see any reason it couldn’t hide a basing facility just as well. Especially if the facility’s built into an asteroid, as well.”

“Perhaps,” Rabenstrange agreed. “Any ID on the ship?”

“Configuration, emissions, and impeller signature are consistent with a Manty
Star Knight
-class heavy cruiser,” the tactical officer reported. “So far, nothing else.”

For a moment Rabenstrange sat quietly. Then he gave a short nod, as if he’d come to a decision. “The base can wait,” he said. “Plot an intercept course with that ship. If they’re the ones who hit Mischa’s Star, we’re going to want to have a serious conversation with them.”

There was a flurry of acknowledgments, and the maneuvering plot shifted as the big superdreadnought began altering its course. In the midst of all the activity, Charles caught Mercier’s eye and gave a small nod toward a relatively unoccupied part of the bridge. Mercier frowned, but nodded back, and began drifting that direction. Charles did likewise, feeling the eyes of the silent
Totenkopfs
on him the whole way, and a moment later he and Mercier were as alone as they were going to get.

“What exactly is he doing?” Mercier murmured.

“That was
my
question,” Charles murmured back as he pulled out his reader. “Give me a chip—any chip. We need to look like we’re consulting on something. This isn’t the plan, Mercier. What the hell is Tyler playing at?”

“Why ask me?” Mercier countered, digging a chip out of his pocket and handing it over.

“Because he’s your countryman, and you’ve got a better handle on his psychology than I do,” Charles said, plugging in the chip. It turned out to be a collection of classic novels. “Could he have lost his nerve and be making a run for it?”