DeLaney’s comment on Harrington’s lack of stealth was a definite understatement, he reflected. And that made him a little nervous. One thing no one had ever accused Honor Harrington of was tactical obviousness. She had demonstrated repeatedly her willingness and ability to use the traditional Manticoran advantage in electronic warfare to deadly effect. Yet in the face of CIC’s definite identification of her units, it seemed that this time, at least, she had disdained such tactics. She wasn’t hiding or concealing a thing… which was the reason for his nervousness. “The Salamander” was at her most dangerous when an opponent was most certain he knew what she had in mind.

Let’s not double-think ourselves into a panic, there, Lester, he told himself dryly. Yeah, she’s sneaky. And smart. But she doesn’t really have a lot of options here. And besides…

“It may just be that she’s still hoping to get out of this without anyone shooting at anybody,” he murmured aloud, and DeLaney’s eyebrows rose.

“That seems… unlikely, Sir,” she said, and Tourville grinned at her tone of massive restraint.

“I didn’t say it was likely, Molly. I said it was possible. And it is, you know. She has to have IDed at least some of our emissions signatures by now, so she knows we’re Republican. And she’d have to be a hell of a lot stupider than I know she is if she didn’t suspect exactly why we’re here. But at the same time, she can’t know what’s going on back home—not yet. So there’s probably at least an edge of caution in her thinking right now. She’s not going to shirk her responsibilities, but she’s not going to want to start a war out here that could spill over on the Star Kingdom’s own territory unless she absolutely has to, either. I’d guess that’s why they’re continuing to challenge us despite the fact that we haven’t answered them.”

“Do you think she’ll actually let us into range because she doesn’t want to fire the first shot, Sir?”

“I doubt very much that she’s going to be that obliging,” Tourville said dryly. “We are in violation of the territorial space of a Manticoran ally at the moment, you know. That means she’s in a very strong position under interstellar law if she decides to shoot some dumb son-of-a-bitch who’s too much of an idiot to even reply to her communications attempts!”

He flashed his teeth in a white smile under his bristling mustache, and DeLaney heard someone chuckle.

“On the other hand, if NavInt is right and the Manties still haven’t confirmed that we have MDMs of our own, she may let us get in a lot closer before she gets around to opening fire. She knows we have SD(P)s, but she also knows by now that at least some of the SDs we brought with us are pre-pod designs. On top of that, she has to suspect from our acceleration rates that our older ships are towing heavy pod loads. She, on the other hand, isn’t, even though NavInt says that she has only six SD(P)s of her own. She may have some pods tractored inside her other superdreadnoughts’ wedges, but she can’t have as many of them there as we’re towing. Combined with how openly she’s coming to meet us, that suggests to me that she still believes she has a decisive range advantage. That she can open fire at a range of her own choosing, from outside our effective reach, and hold it there.”