In Enemy Hands hh-7

by David Weber

  "Of course, Citizen Secretary. I'll be delighted to assist however I can, and I'm certain I speak for every officer here in Barnett," Theisman assured her. We'd better, anyway, if we want to avoid firing squads, he added silently, and smiled at her.

  "Thank you, Citizen Admiral. I appreciate that." Ransom returned his smile with interest. "And I assure you that Public Information will make the best possible use of our time here," she added.

  Chapter Fourteen

  "All right, Commander. What's so damned urgent?"

  Vice Admiral of the Red Dame Madeleine Sorbanne wasted no time on pleasantries, and her expression, as brusque as her tone, made it clear she had better things to waste her time on than courtesy calls from newly arriving starship captains who refused to take her yeoman's "no" for an answer. The petite admiral had only half-risen to offer a perfunctory handshake, and she flopped back into the chair behind her desk even as she spoke. That desk, unusually littered with data chips and folders of hardcopy, lacked the spartan neatness that was the RMN’s ideal, and Sorbanne's short, white-stranded mahogany-red hair looked as if she were in the habit of running her fingers through it while she fretted.

  Well, Dame Madeleine had plenty of excuses for her desk's untidiness... and any fretting she happened to be doing, Jessica Dorcett reminded herself. As the senior officer on Clairmont Station, Sorbanne had seen half her capital ship strength siphoned off to build up Eighth Fleet, but no one had bothered to reduce her command area or responsibilities to reflect her lower strength. And with all the comings and goings leading up to Earl White Havens eventual advance on Barnett, the bustling confusion of Clairmont’s local and through traffic must be enough to try the patience of a saint. Of course, no one had ever nominated Dame Madeleine for canonization, and Dorcett's request for an immediate personal meeting had clearly ticked her off.

  "I'm sorry to interrupt your schedule, Ma'am," the commander said now. She ignored the admiral's gestured invitation to take a seat of her own, choosing to remain standing at parade rest instead, and saw Sorbanne's eyebrows rise in surprise. "Under the circumstances, however, I thought that I should make my report directly to you."

  "What report?" Some of the irritation faded from Sorbanne's tone. Her reputation for irascibility was exceeded only by her reputation for competence, and crispness diluted her testiness as Dorcett’s strained expression began to register fully. The commander hesitated just a moment, then drew a deep breath and took the plunge.

  "Admiral, we've lost Adler," she said, and Sorbanne's chair snapped suddenly upright. The admiral leaned forward, and her high-cheekboned face lost all expression, as if Dorcett had cast a magic spell.

  "How?" she asked harshly, and the commander shook her head.

  "I don't have all the details, Windsong was too far out for good tactical imagery, but I'm afraid the bare bones were pretty clear. We screwed up, Ma'am, and whoever planned the Peeps' attack had the guts and the smarts to take advantage of it." Dorcett didn't like saying that, yet it had to be said, and her own anger, and shame, made her voice come out flat.

  "Explain." Sorbanne sounded as if she were regaining her mental balance, and Dorcett wondered how much of that was real and how much was acting ability.

  "Commodore Yeargin had too few sensor platforms for complete coverage, Ma'am, so she placed what she did have to cover the most obvious approach vectors. Then she put her main force into Samovar orbit... and aside from detaching my destroyer division to cover the main asteroid processing node, she posted no pickets at all." Despite iron self-control, Sorbanne winced, and Dorcett went grimly on. "The Peeps came in from above the system ecliptic, which let them skirt the Commodores platforms and avoid my command's sensor envelope entirely And they also came in ballistic."

  "Peeps came in ballistic?" Sorbanne repeated carefully, and Dorcett nodded.

  "Yes, Ma'am. They must have. Either that, or their stealth systems have achieved a much higher degree of improvement than ONI's been projecting. Even on the course they followed, they should have passed close enough to at least one of our sensor platforms for active impellers to've been detected."

  "They came in powered down all the way to attack range?" Sorbanne still seemed to be having trouble with the concept, and Dorcett nodded again.

  "Yes, Ma'am. And I'm afraid that isn't all." Sorbanne eyed her narrowly and made a "tell me more" gesture, and Dorcett sighed. "They used missile pods, Admiral," she said quietly.

  "Shit." The soft, whispered expletive was almost a prayer, and Sorbanne closed her eyes. She sat that way for several seconds, then opened them and looked at Dorcett once more. "What's the Peep strength in the system?"

  "I'm not certain, Ma'am. As I say, we were too far out for really good scans, but my best estimate is four battlecruisers, six to eight heavy cruisers, and half a dozen light cruisers. My tac officer and I saw no destroyers, but I can't guarantee there weren't any."

  Sorbanne winced again, this time at the disparity in weight of broadside Dorcett's estimate suggested, especially if the Peeps had, indeed, used missile pods.

  "How bad were Commodore Yeargin's losses?" she asked after a moment.

  "Ma'am, I..." Dorcett stopped and swallowed. "I'm sorry, Admiral. I must have been... unclear." She inhaled, then went on very flatly. "Aside from my division, the task group’s losses were total, Dame Madeleine. I'm... the senior surviving officer."

  Sorbanne didn't say a word. She only sat there for endless, aching seconds, staring at Dorcett while her mind raced. The news that the Peeps had finally deployed missile pods was unwelcome and frightening, but hardly unexpected. Every thinking officer had known the enemy had to be working at full stretch to overcome the huge advantage the Allies' pod monopoly had conferred upon them. But having the long-awaited weapons employed so competently and to such crushing effect by the despised Peeps... that was unexpected. And the moral shock was far more than merely frightening.

  Madeleine Sorbanne leaned slowly back in her chair once more, still staring at Dorcett, but she wasn't really seeing the commander. She was seeing another woman's face and thinking about Frances Yeargin and her command. Yeargin always was an arrogant, overconfident bitch, she thought slowly, remembering the dead commodore and her oft expressed contempt for the People's Navy. Damn it, she knew she was short of platforms! The woman should have had at least some pickets out, for God's sake! What the hell did she think she was stationed there for?

  But what Yeargin had been thinking was immaterial now. Rightly or wrongly, the future was going to condemn her even more harshly than Sorbanne did now, for never in its entire history, had the RMN suffered a disaster like this... until now. An entire generation of analysts would examine every tiny facet of the Battle of Adler, apportioning blame and assigning guilt with twenty-twenty hindsight and the fine ruthlessness of people who'd never been there, and that was just as immaterial right now as what Yeargin had been thinking. What mattered was that her entire command was gone, wiped out. Blotted away. And if the Peeps had used missile pods with the advantages of surprise and short range, casualties must have been massive, for no one would have been suited up and very few people would have gotten off in life pods before their ships died.

  Pain twisted deep inside her at the thought of all the dead, but then another thought hit her, and her eyes dropped back into intent focus.

  "If you're the surviving SO, then who's picketing the system, Commander?"

  "No one, Ma'am. I only had three ships: Windsong, Rondeau, and Balladeer. Under the circumstances, I judged that my immediate duty was to use all three of them to spread the word as quickly as possible, so I brought Windsong here and sent the other two to Quest and Treadway."

  "I see." Something in the vice admirals almost mechanical reply gripped Dorcett's attention by the throat, and her hands clenched behind her. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but she knew she'd failed when Sorbanne shook her head.

  "It's not your fault, Commander." She sighed, reaching up to pinch the b
ridge of her nose hard. "You reasoned that your command would be best employed in alerting other station commanders before more ships were dispatched to Adler than in dodging around the system trying to avoid Peep pursuers, correct?" She lowered her hand, gazing at Dorcett, and the commander nodded. "That was the proper and logical judgment, and my report to the Admiralty will endorse it as such. But you're too late."

  "Too late, Ma'am?" Cold, intuitive despair burned in Dorcett's belly even as she repeated the admiral's words, and Sorbanne nodded.

  "Seventeen merchantmen and their escorts sailed from Clairmont just over five days ago, Commander Dorcett. They should arrive in Adler within the next twelve hours, and with no pickets to warn them..."

  She shrugged, and Jessica Dorcett closed her eyes in horrified understanding... and guilt.

  Alistair McKeon sat at the head of his dining cabin table and watched his guests. They'd pretty much come to the end of their comfortable, tasty dinner; now they were working on the last few morsels while they engaged in a dozen separate conversations and sampled their wine, and McKeon allowed himself the mild, self-congratulatory glow a successful host deserved.

  Honor sat to his right, as his guest of honor, and Commander Taylor Gillespie, Prince Adrian’s executive officer, faced her across the table. Lieutenant Commander Geraldine Metcalf, McKeon’s tactical officer, sat to Gillespie's right, facing Nimitz, and Honors officers and Surgeon Lieutenant Enrico Walker, Prince Adrian's doctor, occupied the rest of the chairs around the table. James Candless shared the watch outside the hatch to McKeon’s quarters with the Marine sentry while Andrew LaFollet and Robert Whitman stood against the bulkheads, courteously unobtrusive but nonetheless an alert reminder that CruRon Eighteen's commodore was also a great feudal lady.

  Some RMN officers, McKeon knew, would have found Honors title and status either ridiculous or irritating. A certain percentage of Manticorans, mostly civilians, but including a number of Queen’s officers who should know better, had never bothered to amend their mental images of the Yeltsin System. They still looked down on Grayson (and its navy) as some sort of comic opera, technically backward vest-pocket principality of religious fanatics with delusions of grandeur, and their contempt extended itself to the planet's aristocratic titles and those who held them. And however much most of the RMNs officers might respect Honors achievements, there would always be those souls who would denigrate her reputation, whether out of jealousy, resentment, or the genuine belief that she owed it all to luck.

  God knows there're enough idiots like Jurgens and Lemaitre, he reflected. They actually buy the theory that she's some sort of loose warhead, that her casualties and the ships she's lost or had damaged only happened because she was too reckless to think before she went charging in! The fact that no other skipper could have brought anyone home doesn't mean squat to them. And, of course, there are always the Housemans and the Youngs. It doesn't matter what she accomplishes as far as they're concerned. He reached for his own wineglass as he watched Honor turn her head to address Walker across Nimitz, and hid a mental smile. Well, screw them. We know how good she is, and so does the Admiralty.

  Honor paused in her conversation with Walker, as if she felt McKeon’s eyes upon her. She turned to smile at him, and he made a small, semisaluting gesture with his glass. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated, eyes refocusing as she gazed over his shoulder. McKeon looked a question at her, but she said nothing, so he half-turned in his chair to look in the same direction and felt his eyebrows arch in surprise.

  Alex Maybach, McKeon’s personal steward, hovered over two junior stewards as they wheeled an enormous confectionery monstrosity through the pantry hatch. The cake was at least a meter long, baked in a stylized shape obviously intended to represent Prince Adrian, and blazed from end to end with burning candles, and a corner of his surprised brain wondered how Maybach could possibly have kept the thing hidden from him.

  He was still wondering when someone gave the signal and the entire dining cabin burst into what a particularly charitable observer might have called singing. McKeon wheeled back to his guests, trying to glare while those of them with sufficient seniority grinned like loons and those too junior for such levity did their best to maintain straight faces, and Nimitz's clear "Bleek!" of delight cut through the chorus.

  "...birrrthday to yoouuu!"

  The song came to a merciful close in a burst of applause, and McKeon shook his head at Honor.

  "How did you manage it?" he demanded under cover of the general hilarity. It never occurred to him to doubt that she was behind it. His own officers might have been willing to ambush him in the wardroom, but none of them would have had the nerve to try the same thing in his own quarters. Yet not even she could have planned this without using the com to arrange things, for until the scrubber unit failed, she'd had no way to know she would be aboard at the proper time. So how had she kept him from realizing that she was in communication with his people while she set it up?

  "You remember that long parts list and technical data file Commander Sinkowitz downloaded to your Engineering Department?" she asked with a lurking smile, and he nodded. "Well, I got him to hide a personal message to Commander Palliser in it, and Palliser relayed it to Alex. Surely you didn't think we were going to let you get away without inflicting some sort of party on you!"

  "I could hope," he mock-growled, and she laughed, then held out her hand to him. The background noise faded as he gripped it, and she glanced at the others, then looked back at him.

  "Happy birthday, Captain, and best wishes from all of us," she said simply. Someone started to clap again, but she raised her left hand in a silence-restoring gesture and went on. "I'm certain your ship's company has its own gift for you, it better have one if it knows what's good for it!, but I brought along a little something of my own."

  She released McKeon's hand and reached out towards Robert Whitman. The armsman took three crisp strides forward and drew a small, gaily wrapped package from his tunic pocket. He handed it to his Steadholder with military precision, then came to attention at her shoulder. Andrew LaFollet braced simultaneously to attention against the bulkhead behind her, and the general air of festivity abruptly focused into something much more intense as Honor extended the package to McKeon.

  He took it from her slowly, his expression a silent question, but she merely shook her head and gestured for him to unwrap it. Her armsmen's formality and her own change of demeanor made McKeon's nerves tingle, and he untied the ribbon and quickly ripped away the wrapping to reveal the simple black box under it. He glanced back up at Honor, then opened the box slowly and inhaled sharply. Its velvet-lined interior held a pair of RMN collar badges, but instead of the single gold planet of a captain of the list, each of them bore a pair of planets, identical to the ones on Honors collar. He stared at them for a dozen heartbeats, then shook himself and met Honor's gravely smiling eyes.

  "Congratulations, Alistair," she said. "It won't be official until we return to Yeltsin, and I know it's supposed to be bad luck to let the cat out of the bag early. But the Admiralty sent out confirmation just before we sailed, and High Admiral Matthews knew I'd want to be the one to tell you, so he passed me the word. When you suffered your Environmental casualty, I decided your birthday was the perfect time to tell you."

  No one else said a thing, and as McKeon felt the curiosity hovering in the cabin like an extra presence he realized that she hadn't told anyone else, either. Only her armsmen and, he looked past her at the smile on Andreas Venizelos' face, her chief of staff had known, and he swallowed hard, then turned his wrist so the others could see into the box. There was a moment of intense silence, and then the applause began.

  "Congratulations, Skipper!" Commander Gillespie snatched up his glass, raising it to his captain, and other glasses rose around the table. "Hey, if they're kicking you upstairs, does this mean I get command of the Adrian?" Gillespie demanded.

  "Not unless BuPers is really desperate!" McKeon grow
led back. Gillespie laughed, and McKeon reached into the box to brush one collar pin with a fingertip. "Me, a commodore?" He shook his head wonderingly, and Honor laid a hand gently on his arm.

  "You deserve it," she said, quietly but firmly, "and I'm glad for you. Of course, this will make you awfully senior to command a heavy cruiser division, so I'll probably lose you, but I'm still glad. And given the way Eighth Fleets expanding, Admiral White Haven will probably find something for you to do without sending you home."

  "I..." McKeon paused, unable to decide exactly what he'd meant to say, then reached down to put his own hand over the one on his forearm. "Thank you," he said, equally quietly. "That means a lot, coming from you."

  She didn't reply, only squeezed his arm for a moment, then sat back with a smile, and he cleared his throat.

  "All right, you lot! That's enough racket!" He shook his head sternly at his unrepentant juniors. "This is no way for the senior officers of a Queens ship, or their allies!, to carry on. Not only have you demonstrated unruliness and a severe case of lese majeste, but a total ignorance of proper birthday party protocol!" He swept them all with twinkling gray eyes, then pointed at the candle strewn cake. "The guest of honor is supposed to blow out his candles to begin the celebration, and unless you people get your priorities straightened back out, I won't share my cake with any of you!"

  It was early the next morning by Prince Adrian's clocks when Convoy JNMTC-76 reached its next port of call. Honor had enjoyed her visit to McKeon's ship, and especially the success of her surprise party. Organizing it on such short notice without tipping off an alert skipper like McKeon had been much more complicated than her casual explanation might have suggested, and she felt rather smug at how well she'd pulled it off. But the truth was that she'd become even more spoiled than she'd realized. Alex Maybach had done his best, but she'd missed MacGuiness' unobtrusive services when she turned in after the party. She'd especially missed the rich cocoa that magically appeared just as she was getting ready for bed, regardless of how late that happened to be, and she was rather looking forward to getting "home" again once the convoy reentered normal-space and Scotty could chauffeur her back to Alvarez.