by David Weber
"Over there, Ma’am. To port," Tremaine said. "What about there?"
"Um." Honor twisted in her seat to look in the indicated direction. It looked like one of the trees—and a titan among titans, at that—must have fallen and taken two or three others with it. The result was a breach in the overhead cover that seemed to offer a way under the remaining canopy.
"All right," she said finally, "but take it slow. And take some more weight off her so you can cut back on the VT. Let’s try not to kick up trash and FOD a turbine."
"Yes, Ma’am. That sounds like a real good idea," Tremaine replied, then grinned tightly despite his gathering tension. "Chief Barstow would appreciate it, too, I’m sure."
"Hey, the heck with Chief Barstow," Harkness growled over the com. "This here is my bird, Sir. She can look after Two."
"I stand corrected—or at least chastened," Tremaine said in a somewhat distracted tone, his hands flickering over his controls with the precision of an absent-minded concert pianist while his eyes never left his intended landing site.
The pilot in Honor wanted to help him, but she knew better than to try. Her single hand would make her slow and awkward, and it was better to let him handle the entire load rather than risk getting in his way.
The shuttle came in very slowly, gleaming in the moonlight, and the black shadow of the jungle reached out for it. Tremaine slid it forward, no more than half a dozen meters above the ground, and Honor watched with carefully hidden nervousness as foliage rippled and danced below them. Even with the reduction in downward thrust, there was a lot of small trash flying around down there, and foreign object damage to a turbine could have deadly consequences this close to the ground.
But the turbines continued their whining song of power, and Tremaine eased the shuttle carefully down and forward. The long fuselage slid in under the tree cover, and he fed in some side thrust, edging to port.
"We’re not going to be able to get as deep as we were at Site One, Ma’am," he observed through gritted teeth. His voice was still conversational, despite the sweat glistening on his taut face, and his hands moved the stick and thrust controls with smooth delicacy. "Best I can do is scrunch over as far as I can this way and let Gerry have the right side."
"I’ll go with your call, Scotty," Honor said softly, without commenting on the fact that he’d given himself by far the tougher landing spot. But he was a better natural pilot than Metcalf—as good as Honor herself, but with more recent practice and two hands—and he brought his shuttle another twenty meters to its left, then nodded to himself.
"Deploy gear, please, Ma’am," he said. That much she could do, one-handed or not, and she pulled the big handle. The landing legs deployed quickly and smoothly, and Tremaine let the shuttle sink slowly down onto them. There was one scary moment as the outboard starboard leg flexed alarmingly and a red light flashed on the panel, but assault shuttles were designed for rough field landings, and the computer controlling that leg adjusted quickly. The red light died, and Tremaine gradually reduced his counter-grav, watching his readouts carefully for several taut seconds. Then he exhaled explosively.
"We’re down, Ma’am," he announced. "Chief, kill the fusion plant."
"Aye, Sir," Harkness replied, and Honor reached across her body to pat Tremaine on the shoulder.
"That was good work, Scotty," she told him, and he smiled at her. Then she turned away to watch through her side window as Geraldine Metcalf brought Shuttle Two in on the far side of the opening. From here, it looked almost effortless, but Honor could imagine exactly what it felt like from inside that other cockpit. After all, she’d just experienced it herself.
"All right, people," she said as the other shuttle finally settled and its turbines died. "We’re going to have to work faster than we’d expected to get the nets up. Senior Chief O’Jorgenson?"
"Yes, Ma’am?" Senior Chief Tamara O’Jorgenson was a fellow Sphinxian who had been a senior environmental tech aboard Prince Adrian but also happened to be a fully qualified small craft gunner.
"You’ll man the dorsal turret while we get squared away, Senior Chief," Honor said.
"Aye, Ma’am."
"Very well, then." Honor hit the release on her own straps and stood. "Let’s be about it, people."
Chapter Eleven
It was almost dawn before they had the nets in place once more, and Honor was more nervous about the quality of their camouflage than she cared to show. The climate was definitely drier here, and the soil seemed to be less rich. There was far less undergrowth than the ferociously fecund four-canopy jungle in which they had originally landed had offered, and the trees, for the most part, tended to be smaller. It was much harder to snuggle the shuttles in under them, and there were fewer natural vines and lianas to complement the cammo nets. She knew McKeon was as unhappy about the situation as she was, and they’d already made plans for most of their people to spend the coming night weaving more natural elements into the nets, but for now they’d just have to hope the concealment was good enough.
"If things work out, maybe we should consider sending at least one of the shuttles back to Site One after all," she said quietly as the two of them sat under a wing and watched the sun come up. He glanced at her, and she shrugged, knowing that he would recognize her oblique apology for what it was.
"Maybe," he agreed after a moment. "I suppose we could use tight beam off one of the Peeps’ comsats to stay in touch without their noticing if we were careful. Bit risky, though."
She made a soft sound of agreement and leaned back against the seat cover Harkness and Andrew LaFollet had removed from the shuttle for her. Her energy levels still hadn’t come back up to her precapture standards, and she felt utterly wiped out.
"You shouldn’t have pushed yourself so hard," McKeon growled softly as Nimitz limped over to her and curled up on chest. She tucked her arm around the ’cat and closed her eyes wearily.
"Had to do my part. A CO has an example to set. I read that somewhere when I was at Saganami Island," she told McKeon, and he snorted with the fine fervor of an old friend.
"Sure you did. But while I realize you may not’ve noticed that you’re shy an arm, we have. So next time Fritz ‘suggests’ you take a break, you damned well take a break!"
"Is that an order?" she asked sleepily, feeling Nimitz’s purr blending into her bones even as his love echoed soothingly about the corners of her soul, and McKeon snorted again, albeit with slightly less panache.
"Actually, I think it is," he said after a moment. "We’re both commodores now, after all. You told me so yourself, even if Their Lordships haven’t gotten around to making it official. I’ve noticed that they seem to have lost my address over the last few months." Honor snorted, and he grinned at her. "Besides, Ms. Coup de Vitesse, I can probably beat you up in your present condition. Assuming Andrew didn’t hurt me first."
"Actually, I’d try very hard not to hurt you, Sir," Major LaFollet called softly from where he sat atop the wing, keeping watch over his Steadholder.
"There, see?" Honor said even more sleepily. "Andrew’ll stop you."
"Oh, I didn’t say that, My Lady!" LaFollet chuckled. "I meant I’d try not to hurt him while I helped him make you take a break."
"Traitor!" Honor murmured, right cheek dimpling with a smile that never touched the left side of her mouth at all, and then she drifted off to sleep.
It was not only drier here, it was also hotter. They were squarely in the middle of the continent, far away from the moderating influence of the oceans, and the aptly named Camp Inferno was, indeed, directly on the equator. It was as well that Nimitz had shed his winter down before they moved, yet even so, he and Honor were driven to retreat into one of the shuttles by noon.
But at least no overflying Peeps seemed to have spotted them, and by late afternoon McKeon, Marchant, and Metcalf had organized work parties to bring in native greenery to supplement the cover of the cammo nets. While they did that, Harkness, Barstow, and Tremaine got all t
he thermal convertors on-line, and the temperatures in the shuttles dropped dramatically as extra power began to augment their battery backups.
There were about three or four hours of daylight left when Honor found herself back under the wing with LaFollet, Carson Clinkscales, and Jasper Mayhew. Clinkscales fair redhead’s complexion had not reacted well to Hell’s climate. At least the dense canopy at Site One, coupled with copious use of sun blocker from the shuttles’ emergency stores, had protected him from direct sunlight and he hadn’t burned—yet—but he tended to stay an alarming, heat-induced beet-red which looked fairly awesome on someone his size. At a hundred and ninety centimeters, he was a good two centimeters taller than Honor, which made him a veritable giant for a Grayson.
At the moment, however, he was standing with crossed arms and regarding her with an expression which looked just as unhappy as Andrew LaFollet’s. Or, for that matter, Jasper Mayhew’s. Or, she reflected wryly, as Alistair and Fritz are going to look when they hear about this. Fortunately, rank does have its privileges... and we’ll be long gone by the time they find out what I’m up to.
"My Lady, Carson and Jasper and I can do this quite well by ourselves," LaFollet said flatly. "Frankly, you’ll just be in the way."
"Oh?" She cocked her head. "Let’s see, now. Jasper here grew up in Austin City, as I recall. I don’t remember seeing any jungles there. And then there’s Carson. He grew up in Mackenzie Steading, and I don’t remember any jungles there, either. In fact, Andrew, I don’t recall any Graysons having grown up running around the woods. It’s not the sort of thing people do on a planet with environmental hazards like Grayson’s. Now I, on the other hand, grew up in the Copperwalls. And if we don’t have jungles on Sphinx, we do have picket wood and crown oak and tangle vine, not to mention large and hungry predators, all of which I happen to have learned how to cope with as a wee tiny child."
She raised her hand, palm uppermost, and smiled at them and was rewarded by the audible grinding of LaFollet’s teeth.
"Be that as it may, My Lady, this is still no job for you. You’re still weak, and you’re blind on one side." He didn’t mention her missing arm, but his very lack of mention only drew attention to it. "And while you’re right about conditions on Grayson, My Lady, and while I may not have known how to swim before I entered your service, Palace Security gives its people a thorough grounding in wilderness and rough terrain training, as well as urban environs. In fact, we get exactly the same training the Army’s special forces teams get. I haven’t had a refresher in the past several years, but I understand it’s like riding a bicycle."
"Andrew, stop arguing," she told him, firmly but with a much gentler smile, and laid her hand on his arm. "I’ll concede your point about weakness and vision, but I need to be there. There won’t be any time to send messages back and forth if decisions have to be made." And you know I can’t send anyone else off to take this kind of risk without taking it myself, she carefully did not say, but the flicker in his gray eyes told her that he’d heard it anyway.
He glowered at her for another long moment, then sighed and shook his head.
"All right," he surrendered. "All right, My Lady! I suppose that by now I should know better than to argue with you."
"Well, it’s certainly not my fault if you haven’t figured it out," she told him with a chuckle, and smacked him on the shoulder. "On the other hand, I think I’ve heard it said somewhere that Graysons are just a bit stubborn."
"Not stubborn enough, obviously!" he growled, and this time Mayhew and Clinkscales chuckled as well. "Well, if you’re coming, My Lady, then we’d better get moving before Commodore McKeon or Commander Montoya figure it out. I’m sure you wouldn’t let them talk you out of it, either, but by the time they got done trying it’d be midnight."
"Yes, Sir," she murmured docilely, and he glared at her, then bent to pick up the treecat carrier she’d had Harkness run up for her and helped her into it.
Until they could get Nimitz home and into the hands of a good Sphinx veterinary surgeon to fix his twisted limb, it was impossible for him to ride her shoulder as he normally would have. Even if it hadn’t been, Honor had none of her custom tunics and vests which had been reinforced to resist a ’cat’s claws, and without them, Nimitz would quickly have reduced her tee-shirt to tatters... which wouldn’t have done her shoulder any good, either. But her own injuries meant she couldn’t carry him in her arms the way she would have under other circumstances, so Harkness and Master Chief Ascher had whipped up a sort of lightly-padded knapsack for her. It was just big enough for Nimitz to stand upright in, and it hung from the front of her shoulders, covering her front rather than her back, so that he could look forward from his lower vantage point.
"I still wish you’d stay put, My Lady," LaFollet murmured much more quietly, his voice too low for the other two to here. "Seriously. I don’t like you risking yourself this way, and you are still weak. You know you are."
"Yes, I do. And I also know that it’s my job as senior officer to be there if you three actually run into someone from Inferno," she said equally quietly. "I’m responsible for whatever decisions get made, so I need to be there when they get made in the first place. Besides, it’s going to be essential that I get a... feel for anyone we contact."
LaFollet had opened his mouth to try one final protest, but her last sentence closed it with a click. He was one of the very few people who had realized that Nimitz’s empathy permitted her to feel the emotions of those about her. He’d seen it save her life on at least one occasion, but even more importantly than that, he knew she was right. If anyone in their group would be able to know whether or not they could trust someone on this Tester-damned planet, Lady Harrington—with Nimitz’s help—was that someone.
He helped her adjust the tension of the ’cat carrier’s straps, gathered up his pulse rifle, and gave her equipment a quick but thorough examination. All of them carried bush knives, and like himself, she’d hung a pair of Peep-made night vision goggles about her neck against the oncoming darkness. She also wore a heavy, holstered pulser on her right hip to balance her binoculars case and her canteen, and he sighed and looked at the other two. He and Mayhew each carried a pulse rifle and a sidearm, but young Ensign Clinkscales had fitted himself out with a light tribarrel. LaFollet had almost objected to that when he first saw it, but then he’d changed his mind. Clinkscales was big enough and strong enough to carry the thing, and however over-gunned LaFollet might think he was, there were definitely arguments in favor of his choice. The belt-fed infantry support weapon was capable of spitting out as few as a hundred or as many as two or three thousand five-millimeter hypervelocity darts a minute, which would make it awesomely effective as long as the ammo in the tank-like carrier on Clinkscales’ back lasted.
"All right, My Lady," the armsman sighed. "Let’s go."
* * *
Honor did her best to hide her profound relief when LaFollet called another rest stop. She had no intention of slowing the others down—or of giving LaFollet an opportunity for an ever-so-polite, not-quite-spoken-aloud "I told you so"—but her armsman had been right about her physical condition. She was far better than she had been, yet her endurance remained a shadow of its old self. The fact that Hell’s gravity was barely seventy-two percent that of her native Sphinx helped, but she wasn’t fooling herself. Her current state seemed even worse after a lifetime of regular workouts and the better part of forty T-years of training in the martial arts, and she dropped down to sit with her back against a tree, breathing deeply (and as quietly as possible).
LaFollet prowled watchfully around their resting point for another couple of minutes, and despite her earlier teasing, he moved with almost the silence of a Sphinx snow leopard. Not that I could hear a herd of Beowulf buffalo through my own pulse just now, she thought wryly, then looked up as her armsman blended out of the darkness and squatted easily beside her. He turned to look at her, his expression unreadable behind his night-vision goggles. But she did
n’t need to read his expression. Thanks to Nimitz, she could read his emotions directly, and she felt very much like a little girl under the gaze of a teacher who wondered where her homework had gotten to. Nimitz leaned back against her breasts in his carrier and bleeked softly, and neither his radiated amusement nor the taste of LaFollet’s affectionate resignation helped a lot. But she managed a wry half-smile and wiped sweat from her forehead before she let her hand fall to the ’cat’s head.
"I hope you’re not feeling too justified, Andrew," she said quietly, and he chuckled, then shook his head.
"My Lady, I’ve given up expecting prudence out of you," he told her.
"I’m not that bad!" she protested, and he chuckled again, louder.
"No, you’re not; you’re worse," he said. "Much worse. But that’s all right, My Lady. We wouldn’t know what to do with you if you weren’t. And all other things being equal, I guess we’ll keep you anyway."
"Oh, thank you," she muttered, and heard a snort of laughter out of the darkness from roughly Jasper Mayhew’s direction. One thing about being marooned here, she thought. There’s too few of us for us to go all formal on each other. That was a vast relief in many ways. She’d grown accustomed to her status as Steadholder Harrington, though it still felt unnatural sometimes, and she’d been a part of the stratified world of the Navy’s rank structure since she was seventeen T-years old, and she understood the value of military discipline and authority. But her present "command" was even smaller than the one she’d held when she’d skippered LAC 113 twenty-eight T-years ago, and she’d learned then that informality was just as valuable, as long as the chain of authority remained intact, in a group which must be tight knit and completely interdependent. More to the point at just this moment, it felt good not to be removed or barricaded off from people who were friends as well as subordinates.