What price victory, p.1
What Price Victory?, page 1
Table of Contents
TRAITOR by Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope
DECEPTION ON GRYPHON by Jane Lindskold
THE SILESIAN COMMAND by Jan Kotouč
IF WISHES WERE SPACE CUTTERS by Joelle Presby
FIRST VICTORY by David Weber
WHAT PRICE
VICTORY?
WORLDS
OF
HONOR
#7
DAVID WEBER
with
Timothy Zahn & Thomas Pope
Jane Lindskold
Jan Kotouč
What Price Victory?
David Weber
THE HOTTEST MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION SERIES OF ALL TIME CONTINUES WITH A COLLECTION OF TALES SET IN DAVID WEBER’S NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING HONORVERSE
The hottest military science fiction series of all time continues. The mission: to boldly explore David Weber’s Honorverse; to deliver all the action, courage, derring-do, and pulse-pounding excitement of space naval adventure with tales set in a world touched by the greatness of one epic heroine—Honor Harrington.
New Honorverse tales by Timothy Zahn & Thomas Pope, Jane Lindskold, Jan Kotouč, and Joelle Presby. Plus “First Victory,” an all-new novella by David Weber!
BAEN BOOKS by DAVID WEBER
HONOR HARRINGTON
On Basilisk Station • The Honor of the Queen
The Short Victorious War • Field of Dishonor
Flag in Exile • Honor Among Enemies
In Enemy Hands • Echoes of Honor
Ashes of Victory • War of Honor
At All Costs • Mission of Honor
Crown of Slaves with Eric Flint
Torch of Freedom with Eric Flint
The Shadow of Saganami • Storm from the Shadows
A Rising Thunder • Shadow of Freedom
Cauldron of Ghosts with Eric Flint
Shadow of Victory • Uncompromising Honor
WORLDS OF HONOR
edited by David Weber
More than Honor • Worlds of Honor
Changer of Worlds • The Service of the Sword
In Fire Forged • Beginnings
What Price Victory?
MANTICORE ASCENDANT
A Call to Duty with Timothy Zahn
A Call to Arms with Timothy Zahn & Thomas Pope
A Call to Vengeance with Timothy Zahn & Thomas Pope
A Call to Insurrection with Timothy Zahn & Thomas Pope
THE STAR KINGDOM
A Beautiful Friendship
Fire Season with Jane Lindskold
Treecat Wars with Jane Lindskold
A New Clan with Jane Lindskold
MULTIVERSE SERIES
Hell’s Gate with Linda Evans
Hell Hath No Fury with Linda Evans
The Road to Hell with Joelle Presby
What Price Victory?
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Words of Weber, Inc.
“Traitor” copyright © 2023 by Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope, “Deception on Gryphon” copyright © 2023 by Jane Lindskold, “The Silesian Command” copyright © 2023 by Jan Kotouč, “If Wishes Were Space Cutters” copyright © 2023 by Joelle Presby, “First Victory” copyright © 2023 by Words of Weber, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
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www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-9241-9
eISBN: 978-1-62579-899-2
Cover art by David Mattingly
First printing, February 2023
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022050409
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
TRAITOR
* * *
Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope
PROLOGUE
Cutler Gustavus von Tischendorf was eight T-years old when he had his first space battle.
Though in retrospect, he realized it probably wasn’t actually the first such battle he’d been in. He had vague memories of his mother disappearing for hours at a time while he floated in zero-gee in their cabin, listening to rumblings and thuds and occasional shouts from the passageways beyond. Afterward, when all was quiet again, his mom would come back into their cabin, and the deck would slowly become a deck again instead of just another bulkhead. Sometimes his mom would then go out again and not be back for another few hours, but sometimes they went off to the wardroom to eat. There was laughter and loud talk at those times, and he always got an ice cream sundae before his mom took him back and tucked him in for the night.
But it wasn’t until the Battle of Jorgan’s Star that Cutler finally learned the whole truth.
His mom was a kapitän now. That meant their cabin on Schreien was bigger than the ones on their previous ships. But it also meant that the cabin had a small set of repeater bridge displays that let Cutler see what was going on.
And it was glorious.
The rumbling was autocannon fire as the ship defended itself from incoming missiles. The thuds marked the launch of Schreien’s own missiles in response. The shouting was men and women swimming rapidly through the passageways on their way to fix equipment that had failed or to reroute power or sensor lines.
Finally, it was over. Cutler had kept track as he watched, and by his reckoning his mom and Schreien had destroyed three whole enemy ships.
And sure enough, an hour later, he got his ice cream sundae.
“Did you watch the battle from the cabin?” his mom asked as he dug into the bowl.
“Uh-huh,” Cutler said. “It was really cool. We got three of their ships, right?”
“Three ships were destroyed, yes,” she confirmed with a smile. “But we didn’t do it all by ourselves. The other ships helped, too.”
“Oh. Right.” Vaguely, Cutler remembered other ships being in the battle. He hadn’t paid much attention to them. “Was Uncle Gustav’s ship one of them?”
“Oh, yes,” his mom said. “His ship is always one of them. And always the best one.”
“I don’t think so,” Cutler said firmly. “Schreien’s the best. Because you’re the captain.”
“Well, thank you,” she said with another smile. “I’m glad you think so.” Her eyes shifted across the room—“Pablo?” she called.
“Yes, Kapitän Jen?” a swarthy man Cutler remembered seeing around the ship said, coming over to their table. He shot a smile at Cutler. “How you doing, Kapitän Jen’s son?”
Cutler bristled. He hated when people on his mother’s ship called him that. Almost as much as he hated it when they called her Kapitän Jen.
But she didn’t notice, or else didn’t care. She launched into some stuff with Pablo that was way too technical for Cutler to understand. “Yes, Ma’am,” Pablo said when she’d finished. “I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you,” she said. She almost always said thank-you to people.
Cutler wasn’t sure he liked that. He’d heard Uncle Gustav order people around, and he was a lot more firm and a lot less friendly sounding.
And they called him Admiral Anderman, not Admiral Gustav.
“Trouble?”
Cutler blinked. His mom was looking at him, her forehead wrinkled a little. “How come they call you Kapitän Jen?” he asked. “I don’t think that’s very polite.”
“Oh, they’re polite enough,” Jennifer assured him. “The thing is, when politeness and protocol are fighting practicality, the practicality—”
“What’s practicality?”
“Practicality is doing things the practical way,” his mother explained. “Being efficient. Making sure you get to the result you want in the simplest way that works. In this case, Kapitän von Tischendorf takes”—she paused, her lips moving—“seven syllables to say. But Kapitän Jen takes—?”
Cutler did a quick count. “Four.”
“Four,” Jennifer agreed. “A little over half as many. Besides that, von Tischendorf is a bit hard for some of the crew to pronounce. So I just told everyone to call me Kapitän Jen. You see?”
“Uh-huh,” Cutler said. But he still didn’t like it. A kapitän should be respected, not called by her first name. “But when I’m a kapitän I’m going to make them call me Kapitän von Tischendorf.”
“When you’re a kapitän?” Jennifer asked, raising her eyebrows. “You want to command a ship like this?”
Cutler looked around the wardroom. Of all the ships he’d been on, this was the one he liked the best. He liked it even better than Uncle Gustav’s battlecruiser Seydlitz. “Not a ship like this,” he corrected her. “I want this ship.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, you know, there’s a lot of work to captaining a ship. And a lot of study and learning first. Are you ready to spend your whole life that way?”
Cutler looked around the wardroom again. “Yes,” he said firmly.
“Good,” his mom said. “Then finish your ice cream and let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Cutler asked. He stuffed in the last two mouthfuls, wincing at the momentary brain freeze.
“Forward Weapons,” she said, getting up and picking up his bowl and spoon. “Commander Pablo is going to tear apart one of the autocannon.”
She leveled a finger at him. “And you, Kapitän Jen’s Son, are going to watch.”
I
“Bayern to escort commanders,” Großadmiral von Tischendorf’s voice came over Schreien’s bridge speaker. “Call in ready.”
Cutler waited until the vanguard leader and each of the two flank leaders checked in with confirmations. After that, it was his turn. “Schreien reporting ready,” he called.
“Thank you,” the Großadmiral said.
Mentally, Cutler shook his head. There she went again—and a Großadmiral now, too—still thanking people for doing nothing more than their jobs. And probably still letting her senior officers call her by her first name. At the very least, he could hope it was Großadmiral Jen now.
Though if he wanted to get really technical, it was Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf von Tischendorf. Gustav Anderman had always been amused by their family name, not just because of how incredibly German it was, but also because the “von” part made it sound like a relic of nobility from pre-Diaspora days. A few years ago, when Gustav started really leaning into his obsession with the Old Prussian leader Frederick the Great and began handing out titles and lordships, he’d decided to double down on the von Tischendorf name and also make it their title.
Cutler’s mother took it as a sign of affection for her and her son. Cutler himself wasn’t so sure it wasn’t just Anderman laughing to himself.
“Everyone stay sharp,” the Großadmiral warned. “We’re getting some gravitic signatures from behind T-116.”
Cutler peered at his display. Sure enough, someone lurking behind one of the larger asteroids in the distance ahead had lit off a wedge. Right on schedule, the Tomlinson Security Force was coming out to play.
For all the good it would do them. Andermani Naval Intelligence had already done a complete workup on the Tomlinson forces, and they weren’t in the least bit impressive: two frigates, five corvettes, and an unknown but probably small number of remote-operated missile batteries on some of the larger rocks of the asteroid zone the Andermani task force was currently decelerating through.
And with those seven defenders facing a battlecruiser, two heavy cruisers, two frigates, three destroyers and one of Gustav Anderman’s incredibly powerful battleships, the Tomlinson force was going to be less than a speed bump on the way to teaching President McIntyre that destroying an Andermani heavy cruiser was not a good idea.
Especially when that battleship was the flagship of Großadmiral Jennifer von Tischendorf von Tischendorf.
“Getting telemetry signals,” Cutler’s sensor officer announced. “Probably sending to one or more local missile batteries. Jamming now.”
“Acknowledged,” Cutler said, glowering at the displays. Sitting back here in the three-ship aft screen, he could certainly disable the Tomlinson missile batteries. But that was about all he could do. Where he should be was near the center of the formation, between the battlecruiser and his mother’s battleship, where Schreien’s sophisticated EW suite could draw enemy attacks away from those high-value targets and then neutralize them with her heavy antimissile systems.
The problem was that there were three more warships in the TSF’s collection: a frigate and two corvettes, warships that the ANI report said were currently undergoing repairs. But that was a conclusion, not hard data, and Großadmiral von Tischendorf was too good a commander to put her full trust in even expert extrapolations.
Hence, Schreien’s position in the aft screen. If the TSF had managed to get the frigate and corvettes back to operational status, they might hide them out here among the asteroids to pop out behind the Andermani force and attempt to throw some missiles up their kilts. Such an attack would be a long shot at best, given that the Andermani were still racing away from such a theoretical ambush and those theoretical missiles, which would give the Großadmiral plenty of warning and enough time to pitch wedges against them. But it was possible, and the Großadmiral wanted to make sure Schreien was there to foil any such backstabbing attack.
“Trakhener and Drachen, decrease deceleration fifty gees,” the Großadmiral ordered.
The two commanders acknowledged, and on Cutler’s tactical the frigates’ icons began drifting forward of the main group. Now that contact with the enemy had been made, the admiral was sending the flanking ships ahead of the force to hopefully sniff out any surprises the Tomlinson defenders might have planted up there.
For whatever good it would do them. In a few hours—a few days at the most—Tomlinson would cease to exist as an independent nation.
They had only themselves to blame, of course. Gustav Anderman had never intended to create an empire out here. He’d been perfectly happy to take over the struggling colony world Kuan Yin, rename it Potsdam, find a solution to the genetic plant problem that was killing the crops and starving the colonists, and accept their gratitude in the form of being proclaimed king.
But not everyone had been so pleased with the planet’s regime change. Seven T-years after Anderman’s arrival, Ronald Devane of Nimbalker had allowed one of his vassals, Baron Sigismund, to raid the New Berlin system. At the time, the prevailing theory among Cutler’s circle of friends and fellow officers was that Devane had known what was happening to the Kuan Yin colonists and had a solution, but had deliberately withheld it in the hopes that everyone would die off and he could pick up some new real estate at bargain prices. Gustav’s arrival had ruined that plan, and so he was going to call out the upstart and see what he was made of.
On paper, at least, the plan looked reasonable. Nearly a quarter of the Liegnitz, Ltd., officers and spacers had chafed at the prospect of settling down on Potsdam, and had been permitted to take their ships and return to mercenary life elsewhere in the galaxy. Many of those who stayed were rotated from shipboard duty to civilian police and ground security forces. Looking at the resulting “official” size of what was then the New Potsdam Protectorate Navy, Devane had clearly concluded that Gustav’s fighting strength was almost nonexistent.
But numbers were only half the story. Devane should also have looked into the tales of Gustav’s fighting skill and checked out Liegnitz’s success rate. He hadn’t, and as a result was forced to watch as his world was annexed barely a T-year later. Three years after that, New Berlin and Nimbalker were formally redesignated as the Andermani Empire, with King Gustav now Emperor Gustav.
That should have been the end of it. The Empire’s other neighbors should have taken the hint and steered clear of New Berlin. Certainly Gustav wouldn’t have made any further trouble on his own. Even before his coronation he’d told his closest friends, including Cutler’s mother, that he had no interest in further expanding his new empire.
But Hereditary President Trudy McIntyre of Tomlinson was rotten at taking hints. There had been tension between the Tomlinson and Nimbalker systems dating back well before Gustav arrived on the scene, and McIntyre wasn’t the type to let a change in management interfere with a good feud. Six T-years after Nimbalker’s annexation she sent three frigates to attack the heavy cruiser SMS Sirene in Nimbalker space, destroying her and her entire crew.
To no one’s surprise, except possibly McIntyre’s, Gustav took it personally.
Which was why today, eight T-months later, Großadmiral von Tischendorf and the battleship Bayern had arrived to deliver an ultimatum: McIntyre would surrender herself, and the remainder of the Tomlinson government would cede control of their world to the Andermani Empire.
