David Weber - Honor 10 - War of Honor

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War of Honor

by David Weber

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3545-1

Cover art by David Mattingly

Interior maps by Hunter Peddicord & N.C. Hanger

First printing, October 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

For every adoptive parent who knows the true heart-hunger.

God bless.

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER

Honor Harrington:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Echoes of Honor

Ashes of Victory

War of Honor

edited by David Weber:

More than Honor

Worlds of Honor

Changer of Worlds

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Path of the Fury

The Apocalypse Troll

The Excalibur Alternative

Oath of Swords

The War God's Own

with Steve White:

Insurrection

Crusade

In Death Ground

The Shiva Option

with John Ringo:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

with Eric Flint:

1633

Prologue

"Com confirms it, Sir." Korvetten Kapitän Engelmann sounded as if he couldn't quite believe

his own report.

"You're joking." Kapitän der Sterne Huang Glockauer, Imperial Andermani Navy,

commanding officer of the heavy cruiser IANS Gangying, looked at his executive officer in

astonishment. "Code Seventeen-Alpha?"

"No question, Sir. Ruihuan's positive. As of thirteen-oh-six hours, that's what they're

squawking." Engelmann glanced at the bulkhead date/time display. "That's over six minutes, so I

doubt that it's a mistake."

"Then it's got to be a malfunction," Glockauer half-muttered, eyes swinging back to his

auxiliary plot and the glittering icon of the four-megaton Andermani-flagged freighter from

which Gangying had just requested a routine identification. "Nobody could be stupid enough to

try to sail right past us squawking a Seventeen-Alpha—much less squawk it in response to a

specific challenge!"

"I can't dispute your logic, Skipper," Engelmann replied. He knew Glockauer wasn't actually

speaking to him, but one of an executive officer's responsibilities was to play the part of his

commanding officer's alter ego. He was responsible for managing the smooth functioning of the

captain's ship, of course, but that was only part of his job. He was also responsible for providing a

sounding board when the captain needed one, and this situation was so bizarre that Glockauer

needed a sounding board badly at the moment.

"On the other hand," the exec continued, "I've seen pirates do some pretty stupid things over

the years."

"So have I," Glockauer admitted. "But I've never seen any of them do anything this stupid."

"I've been thinking about that, Skip," Engelmann said diffidently, "and I wonder if it's

actually so much a case of their being stupid or of someone else's having been sneaky."

"How?"

"Well, every merchant line knows that if one of its ships is taken, whoever grabbed her will

want to pull the wool over the eyes of any Navy ships they run into. But most navies have at least

their own national shipping list in memory—complete with transponder codes matched to

emissions signatures. So pirates also know there's at least some risk an alert plotting and com

team will cross check and notice some little flaw any time they use a false transponder code." The

exec shrugged. "That's why pirates tend to go on using the original code until they get a prize

safely tucked away somewhere, rather than generating a fresh, false one."

"Of course it is," Glockauer said as his second-in-command paused. His comment could have

sounded impatient, since Engelmann was busy saying something both of them already knew

perfectly well. But he recognized that tone of voice. Binyan was onto something, and Glockauer

was willing to give him time to lay out the groundwork for whatever it was.

"The thing I'm wondering, Skipper," the korvetten kapitän said, "is whether or not someone at

Reichenbach figured out a way to take advantage of that tendency. Suppose they set up the

beacon software to tag the transponder with a Seventeen-Alpha if the ship was taken? If they did,

then they could also have rigged the rest of their software to strip the tag off when it plays the

transponder code back to the bridge crew."

"You're suggesting that someone in the command crew activated a booby trap in the

transponder programming when he realized his ship was about to be taken?"

"I'm suggesting that that might be what happened," Engelmann agreed. "Think about it.

There's no way a normal merchie can hope to stand off a pirate. They're not armed, and the only

thing trying to resist boarding parties would accomplish would be to absolutely assure a massacre

once they actually got aboard. So if the command crew figured they might be able to pull off

something like I'm suggesting may have happened here, it would have to be pretty tempting."

"Um." Glockauer rubbed his upper lip thoughtfully. "You're right about that," he said after

moment. "Especially if the pirates decided to keep the original crew alive and force them to work

the ship for them. Their best chance of being rescued—their only chance, really—would be for

the people who grabbed them to stumble across a warship which somehow managed to realize

they'd been taken."

He rubbed his lip some more while he considered the scenario he and Engelmann were

discussing. Code Seventeen was a standard, universal merchant ship transponder code, although

it was used far more often in bad adventure fiction than in reality. The code's actual meaning was

"I am being boarded by pirates," but there wasn't really any point in squawking the code unless

there happened to be a friendly warship practically in the merchie's lap when the pirates turned

up. In very rare instances, a pirate might break off an attack in the face of a Code Seventeen if he

thought there was a warship in range to pick up the signal and intervene. But that happened so

seldom that a great many merchant skippers preferred not to squawk Code Seventeen under any

circumstances. Pirates had been known to wreak particularly gruesome revenge on merchant

spacers who'd attempted to resist . . . or to summon help.

Seventeen-Alpha was even rarer than a straight Code Seventeen, however. Seventeen-Alpha

didn't mean "I am being boarded by pirates;" it meant "I have been boarded and taken by pirates."

Frankly, Glockauer couldn't remember a single instance outside a Fleet training exercise in which

he'd ever heard of anyone squawking a Seventeen-Alpha.

"Still," he went on after a moment, putting his thoughts into words, "it'd be risky. If the

pirates' prize crew activated the transponder while their own ship was still close enough to pick it

up, they'd spot it in a heartbeat, however the merchie's own communications software might have

been buggered up. Even if they didn't bring the transponder up while their buddies were still in

range, eventually they're going to make port somewhere, and when they do, someone's going to

pick up the code. Which would almost certainly entail some seriously unpleasant consequences

for whoever activated the booby trap software."

"There's not much question about that," Engelmann acknowledged with a small shrug. "On

the other hand, it could be that whoever thought it up figured that between the possibility that the

crew would already have been massacred, or that they'd be massacred anyway whenever they

reached their final destination, the risk was worth it if it gave any of their people even a tiny

chance of being rescued."

"Fair enough," Glockauer conceded. "And I suppose they could have built a few additional

precautions into this hypothetical software we're theorizing about. For example, what if the

program was designed to delay the activation of the Seventeen-Alpha? If it squawked a clean

transponder for, say, twenty-four or thirty-six hours before it added the Code Seventeen, the odds

would be pretty good that the original pirate cruiser would be far out of range when it did. And

the program could also be set up to terminate the Code Seventeen after a set period, or under

specific circumstances—like after the ship translates back out of hyper the first time."

"It could be." Engelmann nodded. "Or, it could be even simpler than that," he pointed out.

"The only reason they squawked their beacon at all was because we requested an ID, Skipper.

And we identified ourselves as a warship when we did."

"Now that, Binyan, is an excellent thought," Glockauer approved. "If the software's set up to

automatically append the Seventeen-Alpha to any ID request from a warship, but not under any

other circumstances. . . ."

"Exactly," the exec said. "Although, it would have been nice—assuming that there's anything

to this entire theory—if Reichenbach had bothered to warn us that they were going to do

something like this."

"Might not be a line-wide decision," Glockauer replied. "Mind you, Old Man Reichenbach

was born with a poker up his ass, and he runs his company the way he damned well pleases. I

wouldn't put it past him to have come up with the idea and ordered it implemented without even

discussing it with his skippers. Or, on the other hand, it might be that this was the bright idea of

some individual captain. A one-time solo shot, as it were, that Reichenbach himself doesn't know

a thing about."

"Or," Engelmann said, reverting to another of a good executive officer's other roles and

playing devil's advocate, "it could be that there's nothing spectacular going on here at all. It might

just be that some merchie com officer has managed to screw up and accidentally squawk an

emergency code without even realizing he's done it."

"Possible," Glockauer said, "but not likely. As you already suggested, their own com

equipment ought to be picking up the discrepancy by now . . . unless there's some specific reason

why it's not. In any case, we don't have any option but to proceed on the assumption that it's

genuine."

"No, Sir," Engelmann agreed, and the two of them returned their attention to the plot.

The green icon of the freighter, still showing the alphanumeric transponder code assigned to

AMS Karawane and surrounded by the angry scarlet circle of Code Seventeen-Alpha, moved

steadily across the display. Glockauer considered the data sidebars carefully, then turned his head

to look across at Gangying's tactical officer.

"How's your solution look, Shilan?"

"We've got the overtake on him without any problem, Sir," Kapitän Leutnant Shilan Weiss

assured him. "And we can pull almost twice his maximum acceleration." She shrugged. "There's

no way he could evade us. Even if he turns and runs for it right this second, we can run him down

for a zero-zero intercept at least a full light-minute short of the hyper limit."

"Shilan's right, Skipper," Engelmann said. "But just turning and chasing them down would be

a brute force solution to the problem." He smiled thinly, and it was not a pleasant expression. "I

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WarofHonorbyDavidWeberThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright©2002byDavidWeberAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBaenPublishing...

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