In compliance with Honor’s orders to minimize tensions as much as possible, Ephraim Tudor had broken off the engagement when it became obvious the Andies were maneuvering to avoid further action. Honor had no reports on exactly how bad Andermani casualties had been, but she knew they had to have been much heavier than her own. Not that the thought was going to offer much comfort to the families of her dead.

“Maybe the Andie SO in Walther had heard about what happened in Schiller,” Brigham suggested. “It’s obvious that they haven’t been able to match the defensive side of Ghost Rider—or, at least, to find a way around that side. Maybe what Ephraim Tudor managed to do to them is making them more cautious.”

“It’s possible,” Honor conceded. “But given the time interval, any courier from Schiller would have had to cut it pretty tight to pass that word to the second force before it headed out for Walther. And whatever was going through their heads when Ellis decided to run his bluff, it certainly looks like they’d been planning to crowd him, at the very least, before he managed to convince them he had so much firepower in reserve.”

“Well,” Brigham said, “at least we’ve gotten all of our units warned by now. And unless someone’s managed to ambush one of our people even after we’d warned them, we shouldn’t lose any more ships without making the Andies pay the ferryman.”

“I know.” Honor smiled again, more crookedly than before. “I know, Mercedes. The only problem is that I’d just as soon not kill anyone. Vengeance won’t bring back anyone we lose, and the more shooting incidents we have, even if we ‘win’ all of them, the tenser things are going to get out here. If there’s any chance of containing this thing, we’ve got to get a handle on it before it spins entirely out of control.”

“You’re right, of course,” Brigham agreed. “But Sternhafen’s response to your message doesn’t strike me as a good sign. If he’s so unwilling to consider even the possibility that his man could have made a mistake that he’s officially rejected any board of inquiry, it doesn’t sound like he’s very interested in containing the situation, does it?”

“No,” Honor agreed somberly, remembering the uncompromising communique Admiral Sternhafen had released to the Silesian and interstellar media in response to her message to him.

“No, it doesn’t sound like it,” she admitted.

· · • · ·

“Perhaps, Herr Graf, you would be so kind as to explain this to me?” Chien-lu Anderman, Herzog von Rabenstrange, requested in tones of icy courtesy as he tapped the message chip. It was in the color-keyed folio which identified an official naval press release, and it lay on the corner of the desk which belonged—so far, at least—to Admiral Xiaohu Pausch, Graf von Sternhafen.

That, of course, was subject to change.