by David Weber
Honor looked around at the silent, watching faces, and shrugged unhappily.
“Which is why I said I think we’re screwed,” she said quietly. “I don’t like saying that, either. At the same time, though, I’m not going to commit to attacking something like this when all indications are that we won’t be able to get in clean enough, or have remotely close to the boarding strength we’d need, to pull it off. I won’t risk getting that many noncombatants killed if there’s so little chance of success.”
All of them looked back at her for several moments. Then they looked at each other, and Matheson raised an eyebrow at one of the others—a tall, massively built and extremely ugly man, with a face which looked as if it had been hacked out of a boulder with a blunt object and a complexion darker than Honor’s friend Michelle Henke’s. He sat straddling one of the chairs, sitting backwards in it with his folded forearms across the top of the chair back and his chin resting on their cushion. He also hadn’t been formally introduced yet, however, and Honor wondered what that raised eyebrow was asking him about.
He didn’t say anything, only looked back at Matheson for a second or two. Then he shrugged and raised his head far enough to nod, and Matheson turned back to Honor.
“I’m not sure we have any fast and easy answers about how to get close enough, Commander,” he said, speaking very, very carefully. “We might, however, be able to find a few more people to fill out your boarding parties.”
“More people?” Honor sat for a moment, eyes narrowed in speculation. “What sort of ‘more people’ did you have in mind?” she asked then, in a tone which was even more careful than his had been.
“Well, that’s really more Opener’s bailiwick than mine,” Matheson said, twitching his head in the direction of the man who’d just nodded. He looked over his shoulder at his companion again. “You want to handle this bit, Opener?”
Honor looked thoughtfully at the man he’d called “Opener.” So far, Opener hadn’t said a single word, and if she’d known a bit less about genetic slaves, Honor might have been inclined to write him off as someone who was all brawn and very little brain. She recognized the basic genotype—one of Manpower’s heavy labor models—and she knew some of those lines really had been designed to be as slow-witted as they might look, just as almost all of them had been designed for limited “service lives.” Nobody was going to waste prolong on a slave under any circumstances, but a lot of the heavy labor slaves were deliberately genegineered for maximum strength and toughness at the expense of overloaded metabolisms which burned themselves out in as little as twenty-five or thirty T-years. Yet some heavy labor required well developed technical skills and the intelligence to support them, and Manpower produced slaves for that sort of requirement, as well. Her mother and her Uncle Jacques had always said that only the pleasure slaves were more dangerous—to their owners, at least—than the heavy labor/technician crosses, and unless Honor was sadly mistaken, this “Opener” was a case in point. She’d recognized both the intelligence and the bitter experience—and steely purpose—in the dark-brown, almost black eyes under those craggy brows, and Matheson’s obvious deference to him at this point only reinforced her original impression.
“All right,” he replied to Matheson now, sitting up straighter and looking across at Honor.
“I’m François-Dominique Toussaint,” he told her in a deep, rumbling voice perfectly suited to his powerful physique and deep chest. He watched her for a moment, waiting to see if she’d make the connection between his nickname and the name he’d chosen as a free person, and what looked like satisfaction flickered in his eyes when she pursed her lips and nodded slowly.
“The reason John said this was my bailiwick, Commander,” Toussaint continued, “is that I’m the local Ballroom’s dance instructor.”
He was still watching her expression, even more carefully now, and she understood exactly why. He’d just informed her that she was sitting beside a swimming pool with the man who was the commander of the Audubon Ballroom’s local “direct action” organization. The Ballroom’s battle cry—“Let’s dance!”—might have struck some people as humorous, but Honor knew too much about the way those dances normally worked out. And “Opener” had just identified himself as the man directly responsible for every bombing, act of arson, murder, and other atrocity committed by the Ballroom in the vicinity of Saginaw. If there was a single human being in the entire Confederacy who a Queen’s officer had less business talking to, Honor couldn’t imagine who it might be. She could no longer pretend, even to herself, that she didn’t know exactly who she was meeting with, and she knew with total certainty that what she really ought to do was call this insanity off, get up, and leave—quickly.
“That’s an interesting admission, Mr. Toussaint,” she heard herself say instead. “Does it have some direct bearing on this discussion, though?”
“It might,” he replied, his tone as calm as hers. “You see, the Ballroom happens to have come into possession of a transport vessel. A slaver.” His voice was still calm, yet lava seemed to churn with slow, deadly patience in its depths. “It masses a bit over two megatons, and up until about five T-months ago, it belonged to the Jessyk Combine. Now it belongs to us.”
Honor wasn’t even tempted to ask what had happened to the previous crew.
“We’ve managed to come up with the people we need to man its critical systems,” Toussaint continued. “I won’t pretend we have anything a naval officer would even remotely consider an adequate crew, or the bridge officers we really need, but we’re capable of basic astrogation and we’ve managed to keep propulsion and life support on line. In that regard, it’s probably just as well it’s got so few bells and whistles; there are less things for us to break.”
Honor gave a small nod of understanding, and he shrugged.
“For obvious reasons, we’re not keeping it here in Saginaw. In fact, we’ve got it in . . . another star system, let’s say. One with no real estate worth developing, where we’ve managed to cobble together a habitat of our own. Now, this ship is totally unarmed, so even if we had something like a trained crew, there’s no way we could use it against Casimir like some sort of Q-ship. But”—he looked very levelly into her eyes—“in that same unnamed star system, aboard that habitat, we’ve managed to assemble almost twelve hundred experienced fighters. Fighters who all have skinsuits . . . and weapons. We’re not Marines, Commander, but one thing we damned well are is as motivated as it gets when it comes time to dance.”
Honor inhaled deeply and settled back in her chair. She was so far into deep, dark water now that it wasn’t even remotely funny. It was one thing to gather information from someone like the Ballroom. It was another to propose to act upon that information in the Star Kingdom’s name. Yet bad as both those actions undoubtedly would have been from her superiors’ viewpoint, they could be at least arguably justified. It would be quite another thing for an officer of the Royal Manticoran Navy to actually cooperate operationally in what would undoubtedly be denounced as “an unprovoked terrorist attack” by the very sector governor with whom she’d been ordered to coordinate her activities here in Silesia. In fact, it would be the sort of “quite another thing” which led to interstellar incidents, heated diplomacy, demands for reparations, and the catastrophic end of the officer in question’s career.
But without Toussaint’s “dancers,” she didn’t begin to have the manpower to do anything about that depot.
It was that simple. If she staged a raid on Casimir with the Ballroom’s support, her career would almost certainly be over. She might be permitted to resign her commission, but it was far more likely to lead to an extraordinarily messy court-martial. Probably even to prison time, given the Ballroom’s official—and, frankly, well deserved—“terrorist” label. She never doubted that the majority of the Navy would understand, even approve, but that approval would be cold comfort after the ax fell.
She knew that. And for two or three heartbeats, she quailed from
the vista of the future she saw opening before her. Yet she was who she was, and as she’d told Matheson in Chez Fiammetta’s, she was her mother’s daughter. She knew precisely what Allison Harrington would do in her place, if she had the training, the capability, and the resources. And she knew even more clearly than that what her father would do in her position, because once upon a time, he’d been there.
But in the end, what it came down to was less about what her parents would have thought or felt—less what they might have done—than it was about what she might do. About the maelstrom where her love for the Navy, the deep, satisfying joy she’d found in her career, met her sense of duty to her Queen and the bedrock of her own principles. She looked cold-eyed at the agonizing loss of that career, at the certainty that men and women she respected would condemn her for deliberately setting out on a course she knew would be devastating to the foreign policy she’d been ordered to support, and remembered something Raoul Courvoisier had told her so many years ago at the Academy.
“In the end,” he’d said, “there comes a time when a Queen’s officer has to decide. Not follow orders, not seek counsel and advice, not pass the responsibility on to someone else—decide. Make a choice. Recognize the costs and the consequences in the full knowledge that people who weren’t there are going to pass judgment upon him for it without any particular interest in being fair about it. That’s the true measure of an officer—of a human being. Right or wrong, popular or unpopular, he has to know where duty, moral responsibility, and legal accountability meet the honor of his uniform and the oath he swore to his monarch and his kingdom. When that time comes, an officer worthy of that uniform and that oath and that monarch makes the hard decision, in full awareness of its consequences, because if he doesn’t make it, he fails all of them . . . and himself.”
She doubted Admiral Courvoisier had ever imagined in his wildest dreams that one of his protégés might someday find herself in the basement of a Silesian health club hobnobbing with admitted murderers and terrorists. Yet when all was said and done, however hard the decision might be, it was also a simple one, wasn’t it?
“So,” she heard her voice say calmly, “tell me more about this ship of yours, Opener. Two megatons, you said? With something that size to work with, sneaking Hawkwing into range of the platform just got a lot simpler.”
* * *
Honor watched from behind eyes which were calmer than she actually felt as Chief Bonrepaux poured coffee into her senior officers’ cups. She herself nursed a mug of her favored cocoa, but the rest of her officers—with the exception of Surgeon Lieutenant Neukirch, who wasn’t present—were all firmly in the official coffee camp with the rest of the Navy. At the moment, however, most of them seemed a bit too preoccupied to properly appreciate their beverage of choice.
Bonrepaux finished pouring while two of her minions placed trays of small sandwiches and other finger food on the table. The chief steward surveyed their work, nodded to them when she found it good, and then twitched her head at the door. They disappeared, Bonrepaux took one last look around, then followed them.
The day cabin door slid shut behind the chief steward, and Honor took a slow sip of her cocoa while she considered the other men and women at the table. It wasn’t a particularly large day cabin—Hawkwing was only a destroyer, and on the small side compared to her younger sisters, at that, and cubic space for living quarters was limited, even for her commanding officer. The wardroom was considerably larger, but the wardroom aboard a Royal Manticoran Navy ship belonged to all of its officers except the captain. The CO was a guest there. It was her subordinates’ refuge and social center, and she didn’t intrude upon it unless she was invited.
Especially not, she thought now, for something like this.
“I imagine you’ve all got a few questions about exactly what it is we’re up to,” she said finally, setting her cup neatly on the saucer in front of her. From their expressions, her last sentence would appear to be one of the grosser understatements she’d uttered lately, she reflected, and felt the faint vibration of Nimitz’s almost silent purring chuckle against the back of her neck as he followed her thoughts, or at least her mood.
“Well, I imagine we are all at least a little . . . curious, Skipper,” Taylor Nairobi said after a moment. His tone was light, almost whimsical, but his expression wasn’t. In fact, there was an almost hurt look in his eyes, Honor thought. She regretted that, but there was a reason why, for the first time in the two T-years they’d served together, she hadn’t taken him fully into her confidence.
“I’m sure you are,” she said, “and I apologize for leaving all of you in the dark until now. But I had my reasons—which had nothing at all to do with my trust or personal and professional regard for all of you.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” Aloysius O’Neal observed cheerfully, although his gray eyes were serious and thoughtful across the table from her.
“That isn’t exactly the word I’d choose, Al,” Honor told him, “but it’s headed in the right direction. In about eighteen hours, we’re going to be arriving at our current destination, and I’m sure Aniella”—she flashed a smile at the astrogator—“wasn’t the only one who felt a certain degree of curiosity when I told her where we were going.”
The “where” in question was, in fact, a thoroughly useless, completely planetless red dwarf. The only value it possessed was as a convenient beacon. Not even the best astrogator could guarantee a pinpoint arrival at her intended destination, and even a useless star was a lot more visible than any starship. Especially if the starship in question was doing its best to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Bad novels frequently had single ships making contact at deep-space rendezvous in the “trackless depths of interstellar space,” but professional spacers knew exactly how much time the ships in question could spend looking for each other, given how much distance even the smallest astrogational error amounted to over the course of a voyage light-years in length.
Unless, of course, there was some convenient, clearly visible target destination they could both make for.
“The reason we’re headed there,” she continued, “is to meet someone. And after we’ve done that, we’ll be moving on to another destination in company.”
“Another destination, Ma’am?” Lieutenant Hutchinson asked when she paused for a moment, and she smiled at the tactical officer.
“It seems there’s something rotten in Casimir, Fred,” she said, “and we’re going to do something about it. You see—”
* * *
The others had departed, leaving Honor alone with Nairobi and O’Neal. She waited until the door closed behind their juniors, then tipped her chair back, folded her hands over her stomach, and smiled crookedly at them.
“Somehow,” she said almost whimsically, “I seem to sense that the two of you are less than totally delighted with this operation.”
O’Neal snorted, but Nairobi’s expression was anything but amused, and he shook his head almost grimly.
“Skipper,” he said, “I hope I’m not out of line to say this, but you’re damned right I’m not ‘totally delighted’ about this little brainstorm of yours.” He shook his head again. “No wonder you didn’t tell any of the rest of us about it until just now! I suppose I’m grateful you didn’t, but what I really wish is that you’d opened your mouth about it in the very beginning so I could’ve done my damnedest to talk you out of it!”
“To be honest,” Honor said calmly, “that’s one of the reasons I didn’t tell you. I knew you’d try to convince me not to do it, and I also knew you wouldn’t succeed.” She shrugged ever so slightly. “You’d only have wasted a lot of time, energy, and concern over my sanity. Don’t think I don’t appreciate the fact that you would’ve tried to save me from myself, because I do. But since you weren’t going to manage to anyway, it just seemed kindest to everyone concerned to avoid the conversation.”
“Bull . . . excrement,” O’Neal said, shifting what he’d been about to
say in mid-word.
Honor cocked an eyebrow at him, and he snorted again.
“Oh, I don’t doubt for a minute that you knew exactly what Taylor would’ve been saying to you, Skip,” the sailing master told her. “And I don’t doubt you were just as happy not to have that conversation. But all three of us—and all those people who just left your cabin, for that matter—know the real reason you kept your mouth shut.” His eyes held hers unwaveringly. “You’re protecting us, and we damned well know it.”
“You’re right,” Honor admitted. “I know the main reason Taylor would’ve been trying to talk me out of this is that he knows exactly what our orders are, and he’d be trying to protect me from myself. That’s one of an exec’s jobs, and Taylor’s a darned good exec. But it’s my job to protect the rest of you from myself, when it’s necessary, and this is one of those times.”
“Let me guess,” Nairobi said bitingly. “Before we ever left Saginaw, you recorded a dispatch and sent it off home, informing the Admiralty of your intentions, and also informing them that you had not discussed this with any of us, that you were acting entirely on your own responsibility and authority, and that none of us shared any part in your decision to embark upon this lunacy. Is that about right?”
“About.” Honor nodded. “Although I might quibble just a bit over the word ‘lunacy,’ now that I think about it.”
“I wouldn’t,” O’Neal said in a considerably less amused tone.
She looked at him, and he scowled.
“Don’t get me wrong, Skipper. Assuming your information’s correct, there’s probably nothing in the entire Confederacy that needs squashing as much as these bastards do. For that matter, I’m all in favor of somebody doing it. Hell, I’m even in favor of the Navy’s doing it! But Taylor’s exactly right about our orders, and you wouldn’t even be considering this—especially not with your . . . allies—if you didn’t know Governor Charnowska flat out isn’t going to do it. That means you’re setting out to deliberately antagonize the person you were ordered to cooperate with, and that you’re doing it in company with a flipping batch of terrorists! Christ, Skipper, couldn’t you find a bigger club for her to beat you with? The Foreign Office’s going to want you crucified for this, and with these Ballroom fanatics cranked in—!”