“Apparently, Jessica Epps successfully intercepted the false Sittich. In the process, however, there was an… incident with the Andermani heavy cruiser Hellbarde. Chantilly didn’t have complete details, but Captain Nazari, her skipper—who holds a Reserve naval commission as a full commander—decided that it was more important for her to reach us with the information she did have than to delay in the hopes that she might somehow obtain still more. Fortunately, Captain Nazari herself was close enough to the scene of the incident for her sensors to provide us with at least some firsthand observational data. Unfortunately, Chantilly is a merchant ship. As such, her sensor suite is scarcely up to military standards, and the data available to us leave much to be desired.”

Brigham paused again, as if to be sure her listeners were still with her, then continued.

“Nonetheless, despite any shortcomings of the raw data, Commander Reynolds, Captain Jaruwalski, and myself have been able to reach certain conclusions. I stress that these are only conclusions, although the three of us believe them to be valid.

“Apparently, while Jessica Epps was in the process of challenging the suspected slaver, Hellbarde challenged Jessica Epps, in turn. I say ‘apparently,’ because Chantilly’s sensors showed absolutely no trace of Hellbarde at that time. This leads us to conclude that Hellbarde was operating under stealth, and from the course of events, we strongly suspect that Jessica Epps was unaware of her presence when she began the interception of the ‘Sittich’.

“Without access to the message logs of the ships involved, there’s no way for us even to guess at this point about what communications passed between Jessica Epps, Hellbarde, and ‘Sittich.’ All that Chantilly and Captain Nazari can tell us for certain, is that Captain Ferrero apparently fired a single warning shot across ‘Sittich’s’ bows. Almost immediately, Hellbarde fired a full missile broadside at Jessica Epps.”

Something like a sigh ran around the compartment as Brigham said the words at last. They were hardly a surprise; all of them knew why they had been summoned to this meeting. But somehow, that foreknowledge hadn’t robbed them of their impact, and Honor tasted the internal tightening, the sense of foreboding, that came with them.

“Chantilly, given the limitations of her sensor suite and the capabilities of Andermani EW, was completely unaware of Hellbarde’s presence until she opened fire. Nonetheless, the sequence of shots, and their firing bearings, can be unambiguously determined from her sensor records. Clearly, Jessica Epps fired the first shot, but it was a single missile, fired almost directly away from Hellbarde. Hellbarde’s broadside, on the other hand, was clearly targeted on Jessica Epps and was not intended in any way as a ‘warning shot.’ Moreover, although it isn’t really germane to the cause of this incident, it would appear from Chantilly’s sensors that Hellbarde opened fire from a range in excess of ten million klicks from Jessica Epps.”

This time, Honor did taste a ripple of true surprise… and dismay. That was still much shorter than Ghost Rider’s maximum effective range, but it was also much greater than even their most pessimistic estimates had assigned to Andermani missiles.