A Rising Thunder-ARC

A Rising Thunder-ARC

David Weber

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER

HONOR HARRINGTON:

On Basilisk Station

Honor Among Enemies

The Honor of the Queen

In Enemy Hands

The Short Victorious War

Echoes of Honor

Field of Dishonor

Ashes of Victory

Flag in Exile

War of Honor

At All Costs

Mission of Honor

HONORVERSE:

Crown of Slaves
(with Eric Flint)

Torch of Freedom
(with Eric Flint)

The Shadow of Saganami

Storm from the Shadows

EDITED BY DAVID WEBER:

More than Honor

Changer of Worlds

Worlds of Honor

The Service of the Sword

Mutineers' Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Empire from the Ashes

In Fury Born

The Apocalypse Troll

The Excalibur Alternative

Bolos!

Old Soldiers

Oath of Swords

The War God's Own

Wind Rider's Oath

WITH STEVE WHITE:

Crusade

The Shiva Option

In Death Ground

Insurrection

The Stars At War

The Stars At War II

WITH ERIC FLINT:

1633

1634: The Baltic War

Torch of Freedom

WITH JOHN RINGO:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

March to the Stars

We Few

WITH LINDA EVANS:

Hell's Gate

Hell Hath No Fury

A Rising Thunder

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.

Copyright © 2012 by David Weber

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3806-6

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, March 2012

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

March 1922 Post Diaspora

“I’d rather not go there, but if we have to, we might as well go all the way.”

—Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

Chapter One

“Get your goddamned ships the hell out of
my
space!”

The burly, dark-haired man on Commander Pang Yau-pau’s com was red-faced and snarling, and Pang took a firm a grip on his own temper.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Commodore Chalker,” he replied as courteously as the circumstances permitted. “My orders are to protect Manticoran vessels passing through this terminus on their way home to Manticoran space.”

“I don’t give a
damn
about your ‘orders,’ Commander!” Commodore Jeremy Chalker spat back. His six destroyers were 2.4 million kilometers—eight light-seconds—from Pang’s cruiser, and one might have thought it would be difficult to maintain a properly infuriated conversation over such a distance, especially with the delays light-speed transmissions built into its exchanges. Chalker seemed able to manage it quite handily, however. “You’re in violation of my star system’s sovereignty, you’ve evicted Solarian Astro Control personnel from their duty stations, and I want your ass
gone!
”

“Sir, it’s not my intention to violate anyone’s sovereignty,” Pang replied, choosing to let the rather thornier question of the Solly traffic controllers lie. “My sole interest at this time is the protection of the Star Empire’s merchant vessels.”

Sixteen more seconds ticked past, and then—

“Shut your mouth, return control of this terminus to the personnel whose control stations you’ve illegally seized, and turn your ass around
now
, or I will by
God
open fire on the next fucking Manty freighter I see!”

Pang Yau-pau’s normally mild brown eyes hardened, and he inhaled deeply.

“Skipper,” a quiet voice said.

The single word couldn’t have been more respectful, yet it was edged with warning, and Pang hit the mute button and glanced at the smaller screen deployed from the base of his command chair. Lieutenant Commander Myra Sadowski, his executive officer looked back at him from it.

“I know he’s a pain in the ass,” she continued in that same quiet voice, “but we’re supposed to do this without making any more waves than we have to. If you hand this guy his head the way you want to—the way he
deserves
, for that matter—I think it would probably come under the heading of at least a ripple or two.”

Myra, Pang reflected, had a point. There was, however, a time and a place for everything. For that matter, the Admiralty hadn’t sent Pang and HMS
Onyx
to the Nolan Terminus to let someone like Jeremy Chalker make that sort of threat.

No, they didn’t
, another corner of the commander’s brain told him.
At the same time, I don’t suppose it’s too hard to understand why he’s so pissed off. Not that it makes me like him any better
.

At the moment,
Onyx
, her sister ship
Smilodon
, the
Roland
-class destroyer
Tornado
and the much older destroyer
Othello
were over six hundred and fifty light-years from the Manticore Binary System and barely
two
hundred light-years from the Sol System. It was not a particularly huge force to have wandering around so deep in increasingly hostile territory, as Pang was only too well aware. In fact, Nolan was a protectorate system of the Solarian League, and Chalker was an SLN officer, the senior Frontier Fleet officer present. He looked old for his rank, which suggested a certain lack of familial connections within the SLN, although he must have at least some influence to have ended up with the Nolan command. The system’s proximity to the Nolan Terminus of the Nolan-Katharina Hyper Bridge was what had brought it to the Office of Frontier Security’s attention a hundred-odd T-years ago, and the local OFS and Frontier Fleet officers had been raking off a comfortable percentage of the terminus user fees ever since. Judging from the reaction of the SLN captain who’d commanded the OFS-installed terminus traffic control staff when Pang ordered him to turn his control stations over to Manticoran personnel, another chunk of those fees had probably been finding its way into his pockets, as well. Precious little of that revenue had ended up in Nolan itself, at any rate.

Well, at least this time we can be pretty confident we’re not hurting some innocent third-party star system’s revenue stream
, he thought
. And it’s not like we’re planning to
keep
the terminus…just now, anyway
.
We’ll give it back to them when I’m sure we’ve gotten all our ships safely through it. And if someone like Chalker takes one in the bank account in the meantime, I’m sure I’ll be able to live with my regret somehow
.

Of course, Pang never doubted that the rest of theSolarian League Navy was going to be just as infuriated as Chalker by Manticore’s “arrogance” in seizing control of Solarian-claimed termini even temporarily. What was going to happen when Lacoön Two kicked in hardly bore thinking upon, although anyone who really thought
not
executing Lacoön Two was going to make one bit of difference to the Sollies was probably smoking things he shouldn’t.

“I’m not the one making the waves,” he told Sadowski out loud, then glanced across
Onyx
’s command deck at Lieutenant Commander Jack Frazier, his tactical officer.

“I hope we’re not going to have any business for
you
, Guns,” he said. “If we do, I want to hold the damage to a minimum.”

“You’re thinking in terms of something more like what Admiral Gold Peak did at New Tuscany than what she did at Spindle, Sir?”

“Exactly.” Pang smiled thinly. “Do you have Chalker’s flagship IDed?”

“Yes, Sir.” Frazier nodded with an answering smile. “I do. By the strangest coincidence, I’ve just this minute discovered that I’ve got her IDed, dialed in, and locked up, as a matter of fact.”

“Good.”

Pang paused a moment longer, taking an additional few seconds to make sure he had his own temper under control, then un-muted his audio pickup.

“Commodore Chalker,” he said in a hard, flat voice quite different from the courteous one he’d employed so far, “allow me to point out two things to you. First, this terminus is, in fact, not in Nolan’s territorial space. Unless my astrogation is badly off, it’s five light-hours from Nolan, which puts it just a bit outside the twelve-minute limit. The Solarian League’s claim to its possession rests solely on the SLN’s supposed power to control the space about it. And, second, in regard to that supposed power, I respectfully suggest you consider the actual balance of force which obtains at this moment. Based on that balance, I submit that it would be unwise to issue such threats against Manticoran shipping…and even less wise to carry them out.”

“Well piss on you,
Commander!
You and the rest of your ‘Star Empire’ may think you can throw your weight around any way you like, but there’s a cold dawn coming, and it’s going to get here sooner than you think!”

“I have my orders, Commodore,” Pang responded in that same flat voice, “and I don’t intend to debate the question of who’s responsible for the current state of tension between the Star Empire and the Solarian League. I fully intend to return control of this terminus to the League—and, obviously, to restore your personnel to their stations—as soon as I’ve satisfied myself, as my orders require, that all Manticoran merchant vessels in this vicinity have been given the opportunity to return to Manticoran space through it. I regret”—neither his tone nor his expression was, in fact, particularly regretful—“any inconvenience this may cause for you or any other Solarian personnel or citizens. I
do
, however, intend to carry out
all
of my orders, and one of those orders is to use whatever level of force is necessary to protect Manticoran merchant shipping anywhere. And ‘anywhere,’ Commodore Chalker, includes Solarian space. So if you intend to fire on Manticoran freighters, why don’t you just start with the ones right here under my protection? Go ahead—be my guest. But before you do, Admiral, I suggest you recall the Royal Navy’s position where the protection of merchant shipping is concerned.”

He sat waiting, watching his com for the sixteen seconds his words took to reach Chalker and for the signal to come back. Precisely on schedule, Chalker’s face turned even darker.

“And what the fuck does
that
mean?” the Solarian snarled.

“It means my tactical officer has your flagship identified,” Pang said, and his smile was a razor.

For another sixteen seconds, Chalker glared out of Pang’s display. Then, abruptly, his facial muscles went absolutely rigid, as if some magic wand had turned his face to stone. He stayed that way for several seconds, then shook himself.

“Are you
threatening
me?” he demanded incredulously.

“Yes,” Pang said simply. “I am.”

Chalker stared at him, and Pang wondered what else the other man could have expected to happen.

“You think you can come waltzing into Solarian space and
threaten
Solarian citizens? Tell a
Solarian
warship you’ll
open fire
on it?” Chalker said sixteen seconds later.

“It’s not my wish to threaten anyone, Admiral. It is my intention to carry out my orders and to deal with any threat to the merchant shipping for which I’m responsible, and you’ve just announced your intention to fire on unarmed merchant vessels. Should you do so, I will fire on
you
, and I suggest you recall what happened to Admiral Byng at New Tuscany. If you actually intend to attack after doing that, go ahead and let’s get it over with. Otherwise, Sir, I have rather more important matters which require my attention. Good day.”

He punched the stud that cut the connection and sat back in his command chair, wondering if Chalker was furious enough—or stupid enough—to accept his challenge. If the Solly officer did anything of the sort, it would be the last mistake he ever made. There was no question about that in Pang’s mind, although he was a bit less certain about the potential consequences for the future career of one Pang Yau-pau.

Better to be hung for a hexapuma than a housecat
, he thought.
And it’s not like I could’ve found some kind of magic formula to keep the jerk happy, no matter what I did! At least this way if he’s stupid enough to pull the trigger, it won’t be because he didn’t know exactly how I’d respond
.

He watched his tactical repeater, waiting to see what Chalker would do.
Onyx
and
Smilodon
were both
Saganami-Cs
, armed with Mark 16 multidrive missiles and mounting eight grasers in each broadside. At the moment, SLNS
Lancelot
, Chalker’s antiquated
Rampart
-class destroyer flagship and her consorts were far outside the effective range of their own pathetic energy armament, and the situation was almost worse when it came to missiles. The Sollies
were
within their missiles’ powered engagement range of Pang’s command, but
Lancelot
was barely twenty percent
Onyx
’s size, with proportionately weaker sidewalls and a broadside of only five lasers and a matching number of missile tubes. If Chalker was foolish enough to carry out his threat, he could undoubtedly kill any merchant ship he fired upon.
Lancelot
’s chance of getting a laser head through
Onyx
’s antimissile defenses, on the other hand, much less burning through the cruiser’s sidewalls, ranged from precious little to nonexistent.