“You think they’re waiting for orders to attack?” Truman mused aloud.

“Or for orders to turn around and go home and pretend they were never here,” Honor replied.

“There may something to that,” Yu said slowly. Of all the officers in the compartment, he was probably the least happy. “On the other hand,” he continued with stubborn integrity, “much as I would prefer for my old homeland not to be the heavy of the piece, there’s no way they would sent a force as heavy as the one Commander Reynolds is postulating this far if they didn’t seriously intend to use it. They may be waiting for orders from home to kick off the attack, and they may actually be hoping they’ll get recall orders, instead. But the mere fact that they’ve sent an attack force into a region where they know the Star Kingdom is already confronting a possible war scenario indicates all sorts of things I’d really rather not think about.”

“Things none of us would like to think about, Alfredo,” Honor agreed grimly. “Nonetheless, I think we do have to consider them. And whatever may be going on closer to home, we still have to respond to our own situation out here.”

“What did you have in mind, Your Grace?” Jaruwalski asked, regarding her intensely. Honor glanced at her, and the ops officer shrugged. “I’ve known you for a while now, Your Grace,” she said, “and I’ve heard that tone of voice before. So since you’ve already made up your mind about what it is you’re planning to do, perhaps you’d care to share it with the rest of us?”

A rumble of laughter rolled around the compartment as Jaruwalski’s wry tone punctured the tension, and Honor smiled at her. Any number of flag officers would have stamped on an operations officer who semi-twitted them that way in front of the rest of the staff, but no one thought twice about it on this staff.

“Actually,” she said, “I have made up my mind. Alice,” she turned to Truman, “I’m going to pull Werewolf out of your task group to hold her here. I’ll swap you the Glory from the Protector’s Own to replace her; she’s a little bigger, but her emissions signature is close enough that I doubt anyone who sees her will realize she’s Grayson and not Manticoran. Then I want you to take your entire group and run a LAC sweep through the star system Hecate was headed for. And I want you to be obvious about it.”

There was a moment of silence, then Truman cleared her throat.

“May I ask why you want me to be obvious, Your Grace?” she asked quietly and a bit more formally than usual.

“First,” Honor told her with a tight smile, “I don’t want any more accidents. If we seem to be sneaking LACs into the middle of their fleet under stealth, then there’s entirely too much chance that they might mistake it for a serious attack. We don’t need that when things are already this tense with the Andies.” Several heads nodded, and she went on. “Second, I want them to know that we know they’re here.”