by David Weber
“You did mention a slight up-charge, didn’t you?” Honor asked even more warily, and Betsy laughed.
“You have the look of a true aficionado, Commander. People like you are likely to have a bit more elastic definition of ‘slight’ when it comes to something you’re really interested in.”
Betsy, Honor decided, didn’t need a treecat to recognize a sucker when one of them walked up to her kiosk. Whatever else happened, she felt sure her bank account was going to take that hit before this was all over.
“Given the fact that I strongly suspect I’m about to give you the equivalent of a full week’s worth of business,” she said, “would it be possible for me to sit down and discuss their handiwork with your father and your brother?”
“Oh,” Betsy’s tone was light, but her eyes were suddenly dark and very steady, “I think that would be a very good idea.”
* * *
It didn’t take Betsy long to turn the kiosk over to one of her friends. Obviously, most of the park’s hucksters were accustomed to looking out for one another, and the young man she’d waved over simply nodded and stepped behind the counter.
As soon as he did, Betsy beckoned to Honor, and the two of them set off down one of Onyx’s innumerable brick sidewalks.
Betsy kept up a steady flow of conversation about her sailboats as they walked, and Honor’s genuine interest was sufficiently piqued to let her keep up her end without too much strain, despite the mingled anticipation, wariness, and anger (at Sector Governor Charnowska, not Betsy) bubbling away inside her.
The walk was longer than Honor had really expected, and as the brick sidewalks turned into ceramacrete—and then into badly maintained ceramacrete—she realized they were straying into one of those slums most Silesian cities boasted. The people around her were more poorly dressed, and the majority of them looked like they were probably stuck in minimum-paying jobs or eked out a living as causal labor. Yet few of the faces around her had that sullen, closed-in look she’d seen too often in other Silesian cities, and while it was obvious no one was falling over herself to perform street or building maintenance, the neighborhood was significantly cleaner than many of the rundown, hopeless, dead-end stews Honor had seen on more than one world. Nimitz’s head was up, his ears pricked, as he savored the emotions flowing around them, and Honor found his obvious relaxation reassuring.
Several people looked at her and Betsy curiously. They couldn’t be in the habit of seeing foreign naval officers with exotic pets on their shoulders in these parts, but no one commented, no one stopped them, and as they made their way deeper into the neighborhood, Honor realized that that was precisely what it was—a neighborhood. A community, where—like the kiosk operators by the lake—people looked after (and out for) each other. However rundown and hardscrabble it might be, this was a community of neighbors, not simply a gathering of more-or-less strangers who happened to have addresses near one another.
She found that comforting, although she was also aware that looking out for each other could have unpleasant consequences for any outsider who turned out to spell trouble for one of their friends.
After another couple of blocks, she and her guide found themselves outside a rather dingy building with a worn out-looking glowsign that proclaimed that it was “The Onyx Fitness, Exercise, and Health Club.” From the looks of things, the Onyx Health Department hadn’t carried out any recent inspections, but she followed Betsy up the walk and through the old-fashioned, manual doors.
The interior was a surprise, although Honor scolded herself for the preconceptions which made it surprising. The walls were freshly painted, the floor was worn but spotlessly clean, and the equipment she glimpsed as they walked past several exercise rooms looked well maintained and, in a few cases, virtually new.
Betsy led her down a long corridor, down a flight of stairs, and then out onto the ceramacrete surround of a large indoor swimming pool. There was no one in the water, but a half dozen or so people sat on well-worn benches and chaise longues, watching as she and Betsy approached them.
One of them was John Brown Matheson, who stood and held out his hand.
“Should I assume from your presence, Commander Harrington, that Governor Charnowska didn’t seem . . . especially impressed by your information?” he asked.
“Something like that,” she agreed. “Actually, what bothered me more was that she didn’t seem very surprised by my information.”
“Ah.” Matheson nodded, then cocked his head to one side. “Tell me, Commander—did she also suggest that what might be happening in Casimir wasn’t any of your business?”
“Oh, I think you can take that as a given, Mr. Matheson.”
“And should we assume you’ve come to visit us because you don’t agree with that particular assessment?”
“Before we go any farther,” Honor said quietly, “I think we both need to understand something here. Yes, I’m not so very happy about what you say is going on in Casimir. And I happen to think this is the sort of . . . activity the Queen’s Navy is supposed to be discouraging. But that doesn’t mean I’m prepared to go charging in there half-cocked with a single destroyer on the simple say-so of someone who—I hope you’ll forgive me for pointing this out—has admitted to me that he represents a terrorist organization which everyone knows has its own agenda and hasn’t shown . . . a whole bunch of scruples in the past, let’s say. What I’m here for is to pursue your information a little further, see where it leads. Frankly, if this operation is on the scale you suggested to me earlier, I don’t believe Hawkwing has the resources to do anything meaningful about it. In that case, the best I can do would probably be to pass your information along to higher authority—higher Manticoran authority—and hope priorities, moral responsibilities, and hardware availability will let older, wiser heads in command of significantly more powerful forces do something about it. Whenever they finally get around to it, that is.”
She faced him unflinchingly. She scarcely expected him to be pleased by all the qualifiers she’d just hung on him, but she was darned if she’d lie to him, even by implication.
To her surprise, instead of becoming angry or irritated, he smiled at her, instead.
“You may not expect this, but I’m actually pleased to hear you say that,” he said.
“You are?” She realized she hadn’t managed to completely conceal her surprise, and he chuckled.
“The last thing any of us wants would be to discover that you were some sort of glory hound or, even worse, so stupid you wouldn’t recognize potential problems when you met them. Yes, we’d like you to do something about Casimir. And, yes, we’re prepared to help in any way we can. But we’d rather have you do nothing than find ourselves with a botched operation. Especially the sort of ‘botched operation’ which could lead those Manpower bastards to space a couple of thousand inconvenient witnesses.”
His amusement vanished with the final sentence, and Honor nodded slowly and soberly.
“I’m relieved to hear you feel that way,” she said. “And I’ll admit I’m also a little puzzled. I have the distinct impression you people have a reasonable estimate of Hawkwing’s capabilities. So why mention this to me at all? From what you’ve already said, this sounds like something that’s going to need a couple of companies of Marines, at the very least, and I’ve got one platoon.”
Matheson glanced over his shoulder at the four other men and two women still lounging at poolside behind him. Then he turned back to Honor and invited her with a gesture to accompany him back over to the others. He settled down on one of the benches, beside a woman who looked to be about his own age (and who had the same cheekbones and opulent figure as Betsy) and waved Honor into a battered, tattered, yet surprisingly comfortable chair facing the bench.
“Before we go any farther, to use your own phrase,” he said, “recognizing—as we both do—the limits of your ship’s capabilities, why are you here? Yes,” he waved one hand, “I believe you when you say that if you can’t
do anything about this situation you’ll pass the information on up the line. But you and I both know that when you pass along your information’s source, at least some of the people in your Admiralty are going to consider it tainted. So I suppose what I’m saying is that the limit of your capabilities—of what you could do, shall we say—would really only matter if you and your destroyer were interested in trying to do something about Casimir. Are you?”
Honor leaned back in the chair, rubbing the tip of her nose thoughtfully for several moments, then inhaled a deep breath of chlorine-scented air and shrugged.
“I’m under direct orders to cooperate with Governor Charnowska, Mr. Matheson. That means quite a few of my superiors would be inclined to regard anything I might try to do about Casimir as a clear and serious violation of my instructions. They would argue—correctly, from the perspective of the Star Kingdom’s foreign policy—that stepping on the toes of one of the very few Silesian sector governors who’s publicly advocating closer relations with Manticore would be . . . unwise.”
They looked into one another’s eyes, and Honor felt Nimitz’s buzzing purr vibrating against the side of her neck.
“As I say, they’d probably even have a point about that. But the thing is,” she said softly, “that sometimes the wise thing and the right thing aren’t the same thing.”
Matheson looked back at her for several seconds, then smiled slowly.
“No, they aren’t, are they? On the other hand, you’re half Beowulfan, Commander. That means you have dual citizenship, as far as Beowulf is concerned, at least. So, given your maternal connections, I imagine you could probably wrangle a commission in the Beowulf System-Defense Force, if worse comes to worst.”
That cold, damp sensation around your toes is the water of the good River Rubicon, and he knows it, Honor, she told herself, and leaned towards him.
“In that case, suppose you offer up a few details about this slave depot, Mr. Matheson.”
* * *
Over the next ninety-odd minutes, Honor discovered that Matheson and his friends—all of them obviously had their own ties to the Ballroom—actually had quite a lot of details about Casimir.
Unfortunately, none of them were good.
“So, let me summarize,” she said finally, sitting back in her armchair. “According to your information, what we have here is a mixed residential and industrial habitat in orbit around a gas giant that’s actually being used as a transfer point for slaves, drugs, and just about any other illegal commodity you’d care to name. Oh, and it’s also being used as a support base by at least half a dozen pirates who’re fencing their plunder through the smugglers using the habitat. It’s got some light defensive armament it’s not supposed to have, and there’s usually at least one armed vessel hanging around to keep an eye on things. You figure there are probably between five hundred and fifteen hundred slaves being held there at any given moment, plus ‘liberty facilities’ for the crews of the smugglers, pirates, and slavers wandering through the system. Then there’s the service population for those facilities, and probably at least some of these people actually have families, and those families are probably living aboard the habitat. And, finally, as far as you’re aware when the bad guys first moved in on the platform, they refused to let the original tech crews—and their families—leave. They’re still there, doing most of the basic maintenance and even continuing to operate the ‘legitimate’ side of things. Is that about the size of it?”
“About,” Matheson agreed. He didn’t seem especially dismayed by Honor’s recapitulation, which led her to wonder if she had perhaps been a little over-optimistic about how well he understood the problem.
“Actually, the station’s defensive armament is legal, Commander,” the dark-haired, dark-eyed man who’d introduced himself as Wolfe Tone said. He appeared to be the local Ballroom’s intelligence chief, and Honor had already concluded that he was one of the smartest people she’d ever met. “Before Manpower, Jessyk, and the others moved in on Casimir, when it really was just an industrial platform operating scoop ships in the jovian’s atmosphere, Charnowska’s predecessor signed off on arming it. It looks to us like the real reason the . . . call it the current management, is still running the scoop ships is less out of any profit motive than to provide a degree of cover if any Confed naval type who’s not in on the deal happens by. Or, of course, if any Manties should pass through.
“Not even the last governor was willing to let it have any really heavy stuff, though. We’ve got a detailed profile on what it’s got, and most of it’s pretty mediocre—the kind of outfit designed to stand off the kind of chicken thieves who’d usually be interested in hitting a low-profit target like that.”
“That’s all well and good,” Honor replied. “Unfortunately, a destroyer isn’t a lot tougher than a merchant ship when it comes to surviving damage. We can hand it out, but we can’t take it. So even relatively light weaponry would pose a significant threat if we got into its range . . . which, unless I’m mistaken, we’re going to have to do if we want to put a boarding party onto the platform.”
“Agreed,” Tone said.
“And next on the list of problems,” Honor went on, “is the fact that according to your information, these yahoos actually keep a guard ship on station.”
“That’s probably putting it a bit strongly,” Boadicea Matheson (who was indeed John Brown Matheson’s wife and Betsy Ross Matheson’s mother) put in. At the moment, Nimitz lay in her lap, not Honor’s, and her hands moved slowly, caressingly, over the ’cat’s fluffy pelt. It was obvious to Honor that the green-eyed, auburn-haired woman had been genetically designed as a “courtesan.” Honor knew at least a little (which was far more than she wished she knew) about the “training” Manpower inflicted on its pleasure slave lines, and from the way Nimitz had reacted to Boadicea, the abuse she’d survived before managing to escape had left plenty of internal scars. If so, however, they hadn’t affected her native wit . . . or courage.
“It’s not actually a guard ship, Commander,” Boadicea went on, her hands stroking, stroking down Nimitz’s back while the treecat purred. “That would imply they’re actually expecting trouble.”
“I see the distinction you’re trying to make, Ms. Matheson, and it’s probably a valid one,” Honor conceded. “At the same time, the fact that this . . . passel of outlaws have managed to agree that at least one of their armed vessels should have hot impeller nodes at all times—and be far enough from the platform to maneuver—shows a lot more forethought than most pirates or slavers ever display. And that, in turn, suggests this outfit is likely to be at least a bit more security conscious—and probably more alert—than we normally see out of them.”
“Agreed,” Tone said again. Honor looked back at him, and he shrugged slightly. “At the same time, Boadicea’s right about how prepared they’re really likely to be. They’re going through the motions, but it looks to us as if that doesn’t actually help a lot. It’s as if the fact that they are going through the motions makes them feel overconfident, like they’ve got all the bases covered. And we’re scarcely talking about any sort of regular warship. For all intents and purposes they’ve simply stuck a few missile launchers and some point defense onto merchant hulls, so everything you said about your ship’s vulnerability to damage would be true for them, too—in spades.”
“Maybe so,” Honor said. “It’s still going to present a significant problem, though. If nothing else, any ship being used as a pirate is probably going to have better long-range sensors than whatever was originally authorized for this habitat. It’d be close enough to impossible to sneak Hawkwing into weapons range of the platform under any circumstances, but giving them extra sensor reach is going to make it even harder.”
“We recognize that, Commander Harrington,” Matheson said.
“I’m glad, because that’s going to be our first serious problem. When they see us coming, their ‘guard ship’ is probably going to have the option of running for it ins
tead of standing to fight. If they’ve got any other ships docked, they’ll almost certainly have cold nodes, which means they won’t be able to run. But if the platform has time to bring its weapons on line, I think we’re screwed. Not so much because of the damage they might do to Hawkwing, but because all of us know there are innocent bystanders aboard. I’m confident Hawkwing could destroy the entire platform if it refuses to surrender, but I’m not prepared to murder a thousand or so slaves and innocent technicians who were just unlucky enough to get their platform hijacked right out from under them. For that matter, I’d really rather not include the family dependents of the outlaws as ‘collateral damage,’ since I’ve got a hunch most of them didn’t exactly volunteer, either.
“But even assuming we could somehow deal with the guard ship, then take out or somehow neutralize the platform’s own weapons, there’s the little matter of how many people there are aboard the thing. Even leaving the question of innocent bystanders completely out of consideration, from what Mr. Tone’s been able to tell us, there’s going to be somewhere between eight hundred and two thousand actual pirates and smugglers aboard, given the permanent crew and whatever ships’ companies may be taking advantage of the platform-side facilities. Even at the minimum figure, that’s close to three times my ship’s total complement. If we can get Hawkwing into range, and if we can neutralize their weaponry, and if they’re willing to surrender without a fight once we’ve done those two things, there’s no problem. But if they’ve got the local civilian and naval authorities as deep into their pockets as you people are suggesting, all they really have to do is hold us off until some suitably outraged Confed cruiser comes along to kick my interfering ship out of sovereign Silesian territory. Which probably wouldn’t be all that difficult for them, given that sort of disparity in non-naval combat power. Even with my Marines in battle armor, they’d find it awful hard to hack that kind of odds, unless we wanted to use the kind of heavy weapons that would go right ahead and kill all of those innocent bystanders we’re trying to keep alive.”