Honor Among Enemies

1996

After a number of years on Grayson, Honor is finally recalled to active service with the Manticoran Navy. Not, unfortunately, as the Admiral she is in Grayson service, but merely as a lowly Commodore where she is given command of a squadron of Q-ships.

What with the War, the anti piracy convoys that Manticore ran in the Silesian Confederacy have had to be vastly scaled down and this was hurting some of the Kingdom's wealthiest merchants. One of these had had trouble with Honor before so he uses his influence to assign her to the task force. A win-win situation for him; either Honor successfully tackles the pirates or she dies in the attempt and just to decrease her chances of success the only crew that was available were the dregs of the service.

But this is Honor we are talking about and she sets about her job with typical panache.

Not only are there the pirates to worry about though, the Peeps have commerce raiders operating in the Confederacy too and whilst Honor's ships are capable of attacking pirate ships the Peep raiders are a different kettle of fish! But for once, it's not the Peeps who would give Honor the most grief. Seizing his chance in the confusion, a pirate has decided to set himself up as a ruler in his own right, but it's his tactics of terror and fear that drives Honor into an alliance that would tell her more about the enemies of her people than is really a good idea.

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