"Where's it coming from?"

"That cluster at two-seven-three, I think. As I say, it's very faint."

"Well, let's take a look," Ben-Fazal decided. "Bring us to two-seven-three, Helm."

"Yes, Sir."

The tiny warship altered course, heading for the elusive signal source, and the tac officer frowned.

"It really is garbled, Sir," he reported after a moment. "If it's a beacon, its identifier code's been completely scrambled. I've never heard anything quite like it. It's almost like—"

Lieutenant Commander Ben-Fazal never learned what it was almost like. The lean, lethal shape of a light cruiser swam into sight, drifting from the clustered asteroids like a shark from a bed of kelp, and he had one fleeting instant to realize the signal had been a lure to suck him in and to recognize the cruiser's Havenite emissions signature before it blew his ship apart.

"They're definitely crossing the line, Commodore."

Commodore Sarah Longtree nodded acknowledgment of her ops officers report and hoped she looked calmer than she felt. Her heavy cruiser squadron was a powerful formation, but not as powerful as the Peep force coming at her.

"Time to missile range?"

"A good twelve hours yet, Ma'am," the ops officer replied. He scratched his nose and frowned at his display. "What I don't understand is why they're making an n-space approach. They've taken out a dozen sensor platforms, but even with light-speed limits, they have to know we got full downloads before they did—and they're ignoring a dozen others that have them in range right now! That makes taking the others out completely pointless, and if they really want to hit us, the logical move was to get at least to the hyper limit before they translated down. Why let us see them coming from so far out?"

"I don't know," Longtree admitted, "but, frankly, that's the least of my concerns just now. Have we got class IDs on them yet?"

"Perimeter Tracking's still refining the data from our intact platforms, Ma'am, but the ones they've already hit got pretty good reads on their lead element, and there are at least two battlecruisers out there."

"Wonderful." Longtree pushed herself deeper into the cushions of her command chair and made her mind step back a bit.

The ops officer was right about the strangeness of their approach. The Zuckerman System's outer surveillance platforms had picked them up well short of the twelve-light-hour territorial limit, and letting that happen was an outstandingly dumb move on someone's part. If they'd just stayed in h-space to the hyper limit, they'd have been on top' of Zuckerman—and Longtree—before she even knew they were coming. As it was, she'd had plenty of time to get a courier away to Fleet HQ; even if they wiped out her entire squadron, Manticore would know who'd done it. As acts of war went, that made this one of the most pointless and stupid on record.

Which wasn't particularly comforting to the people who were going to get killed in the course of it.

"Update from Perimeter Tracking, Ma'am," her com officer announced suddenly. "Enemy strength now estimated at six battlecruisers, eight heavy cruisers, and screening elements."

"Acknowledged." Longtree bit her lip at the new information and watched them close. Her own ships would have stood a better than even chance without the battlecruisers, but they made the odds impossible.

"Still no reports of any other incursions?"

"No, Ma'am," her ops officer replied. "We're receiving continuous updates from all other sectors, and this is the only one."

"Thank you." She leaned back again and chewed delicately on a knuckle. What in Hell's name were these people up to? Both sides had been so careful to avoid overt violations of the other's territory for years—now the Peeps were sailing boldly in, in front of God and everyone to attack a Fleet base that wasn't even very important anymore? It made no sense at all!

"Status change!" The commodore's head snapped around, and her ops officer looked up at her with an utterly incredulous expression. "They're reversing course, Commodore!"

"They're what?!" Longtree couldn't keep the surprise out of her own voice, and the ops officer shrugged.

"It doesn't make any more sense than anything else they've done, but they're doing it, Ma'am. Perimeter Tracking reports they've altered course by one-eight-zero degrees and gone to four-zero-zero gees acceleration. They're heading right back where they came from!"

Longtree sagged about her bones in disbelief... and relief. She and her ships weren't going to die today after all, and, even more importantly, the war all Manticore dreaded wasn't going to begin in the Zuckerman System.

Yet even through her relief, her confusion only grew.

Why? What in God's name had it all been about? They had to know they'd been seen and identified, and all they'd managed was the destruction of a dozen easily replaced sensor platforms. So why had they committed what could be construed as an act of war—especially such a sloppy one—and then not even bothered to carry through and attack?

Commodore Longtree didn't know the answer to her question, but she knew that answer was of vital importance. For some reason, the People's Republic of Haven had committed a deliberate violation of Alliance territory, and if the destruction of sensor platforms was hardly a life-or-death fight to the finish, it was still a provocation the Star Kingdom of Manticore couldn't possibly ignore. There had to have been a purpose behind it.

But what?

Honor Harrington floated on her back, one toe hooked under a rung of the pool's ladder to hold her in place, and let welcome relaxation soak through her.

The last five weeks had been more than merely hectic. She'd never served as a flag captain before, but she'd held squadron command in her own right, and she'd thought she'd known what to expect.

She'd been wrong. Of course, her "squadron" had been a more or less ad hoc affair, thrown together by the Admiralty for a single operation, whereas the Fifth Battlecruiser Squadron was a permanent formation. It also dwarfed any force she'd ever commanded, and Admiral Sarnow's unending drive to correct its defects accounted for her present weariness.

The fact that she'd had to feel her way into her new role hadn't made things any more restful, and she'd been leery, at first, of stepping on Captain Corell's toes. The relationship between any chief of staff and flag captain was critical, but the Royal Manticoran Navy drew a clear distinction between staff and line responsibility. It was Corell's job to plan, organize, and advise—even to make policy decisions in Sarnow's absence—but it was Honor's job, as his flag captain, to serve as Sarnow's tactical and executive deputy.

It was also up to her to decide which decisions were hers to make and which had to be passed to her admiral and his staff, and in a way, she was almost glad Nike had been disabled. When the squadron's operable units weren't engaged on actual maneuvers, they spent at least four hours a day tied together by their computers, carrying out simulated maneuvers. From Honor's viewpoint, that was all to the good. However wearing, it had given her a chance to discover exactly what Sarnow expected of her, knowing he was watching every move but without the added strain of actually throwing seven battlecruisers (now that Defiant had joined) around in space.

On the whole, however, she was deeply pleased with her new position. Aside from Houseman, she'd had no problems with any of the admiral's subordinates, despite the occasional need to act as his hatchet woman when some outstanding snafu blew up in everyone's faces. And Sarnow himself was a genuine pleasure to work with. Serving under him could be exhausting, for he was like a fusion plant—crackling with energy and bristling with ideas—and he expected his officers to keep up with him. Some of his captains seemed to find that irritating, at least initially, but it was fine with Honor, who held flag officers to the high standards Raoul Courvosier had instilled into her.