Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  He shook his head again, this time heavily.

  “All Kotouč and his people could do would be to die gallantly, Mister Yale. I don’t doubt they’d do that in a minute…if it could stop Hajdu. But it couldn’t. They might be able to hurt him badly first, but not badly enough to stop him from carrying out his orders in the end, and no military commander could justify throwing away his own people’s lives when the sacrifice couldn’t make any difference in the end.”

  “So what do we do?” Vice President Morris said after a moment.

  “We go on doing what we’re already doing,” Vangelis replied heavily. “We’ve got every orbit-capable shuttle, cutter, runabout, and garbage scow in the system moving everyone we possibly can in the time Hajdu’s so graciously given us. There’s already been some panic—you just can’t organize an evacuation on this kind of scale without telling people why you’re evacuating them—but so far, it’s manageable. Commodore Nisyrios’s people are providing armed parties for the major habitats’ boat bays to prevent—we hope—things from getting too out of hand, and we’re beginning with the major residential habitats. We should—should, probably—be able to get between eighty and eighty-five percent of the residents down to the planetary surface in thirty-six hours. That’s almost a hundred and nine million people.”

  “And it still leaves eighteen-point-seven million people up there,” Morris said.

  “And another one-point-two million in the Alexandria Belt,” Roanoke said. “My God. We’re talking about twenty million dead as our best case scenario!”

  She looked around the conference room’s frozen-helium silence, and the clatter of a falling pin would have been deafening.

  SLNS Camperdown

  Hypatia System

  “Do you think the Admiral will really keep to his timetable?” Captain Adenauer asked very quietly as he and Commodore Koopman worked to update his best estimate of the number of Hypatians who’d been evacuated to the planetary surface so far.

  “What do you think?” Koopman replied after a moment.

  The sable-haired operations officer’s eyes were a very dark brown under normal circumstances. Now they could have frozen oxygen as she considered him, and the intelligence officer, reminded himself that Daphne Koopman was not a good person to get sideways of. She was smart, she was ambitious, she had lots of family connections, she’d made a habit of discovering the locations of as many buried bodies as possible, and rumor said she kept meticulous lists of those who’d helped her career, those who’d harmed her career, and those who’d simply really, really pissed her off.

  “I don’t know what to think,” the captain said after considering his options. “I just know that all of this—” he gestured at the displays full of intelligence data his remotes were pulling him from the system datanet, side-by-side with the results of Koopman’s remote sensors “—says these people really are doing their dead level best to get their people evacuated. I mean, so far almost twenty of their System Patrol people have been killed in accidents because they’re cutting the margins so fine. I’m just wondering if he’s going to take that into consideration.”

  “Worried about what might splash onto you if the opposition groups back home get hold of the casualty figures?” Koopman didn’t—quite—sneer, and Adenauer flushed.

  “Maybe I am, some,” he acknowledged with a defiant jut of his chin. “Mostly, though? Mostly, Commodore, I don’t want to be a Solarian officer who’s remembered for his part in killing fifteen or twenty million Solarian citizens.”

  Koopman started to say something sharp, then stopped herself, and what might have been a certain grudging respect showed in her eyes. It took more than a little courage for a member of a Solarian flag officer’s staff to voice anything which could be taken as a criticism of the flag officer in question. And that was especially true when Admiral Hajdu had to know that, orders or no orders, billions of people who weren’t here and hadn’t had to make the decision were going to bitterly criticize whatever he did. He had a reputation as a ruthless survivor of the Solarian League Navy’s Byzantine bureaucracies and turf wars, and he knew all about burying inconvenient witnesses. That meant the consequences for any officer he suspected of disloyalty, or whose opinions might help fuel the criticism, were likely to be…significant.

  “It’s a little late to be developing cold feet, Adenauer,” she said, after a moment.

  “I didn’t say I was developing cold feet. On the other hand, that might be one way to put it,” Adenauer admitted. “And it’s not exactly like you or I were asked to volunteer when the orders were handed out. For that matter, I know the Hypatians voted to secede, which, I guess, means they aren’t Solarian citizens anymore. It just…just bothers me, Ma’am.”

  “Well,” Koopman returned her attention to the data on the display between them, “I guess if I’m going to be honest, it bothers me, too, and I’m the one who drew up the ops plan.” She shook her head. “But exactly what he plans on doing when the time limit runs out—?”

  She shrugged.

  Prásino Phúllo Habitat

  Hypatia Planetary Orbit

  and

  Hypatia System Patrol Shuttle Asteria

  Hypatia System

  “Come on, Petra!” Kassandra Tsoliao tried to keep the impatience—and fear—out of her voice. “We’ve got to go, Honey!

  “But I can’t find Mikhalis!” five-year-old Petra protested tearfully. “We can’t go without Mikhalis!”

  “He’ll be fine, Honey,” Kassandra promised her.

  She hated lying to her daughter. It was one of the things she and Sebastianos never did. But today, she didn’t hesitate. Nor did she tell Petra that the reason she couldn’t find the cat was that Kassandra had locked him in his carrier in the storage closet down the passageway from their apartment.

  God, she’d hated doing it—hated it! She loved that cat, too, but she’d had no choice. The evacuation orders were harsh, uncompromising, and draconian. No pets—not even a parakeet—on the evacuation boats. No carry-on luggage beyond a single bag small enough to fit into its carrier’s lap. No family treasures, no heirlooms, nothing that wouldn’t fit into that single bag.

  But she could never have explained that to Petra, and so she’d rubbed Mikhalis under the chin, kissed him between the ears one last time, and then dashed the tears out of her eyes with both hands as she left him purring comfortably in the familiar confines of his carrier and went back to the daughter she could never have convinced to leave him behind.

  Forgive me, Mikey, she thought now. I’m so sorry. But I know you love Petra, too, and I have to get her out of here.

  “Are you sure he’ll be all right, Mommy?” Petra pressed, and Kassandra made herself smile.

  “Of course I am, Honey. Tell you what, we’ve really got to run, but why don’t you dash out to the kitchen and make sure there’s water in his bowl?”

  “Good idea, Mommy!” Petra beamed and scurried toward the kitchen while her mother covered her eyes with the palms of her hands and tried not to cry.

  * * *

  “Prásino Phúllo Control, this is—”

  Lieutenant Paulette Kilgore, Hypatia System Patrol, felt her exhausted mind blank completely. She jammed her thumb down on the mute button on her joystick and stared at the display, cursing herself as she realized she hadn’t entered the flight number into her onboard computer when she lifted for the current run. Then she shook herself and twisted around to look over her shoulder at her flight engineer—they were so desperately pressed for people that she didn’t have a copilot—Sergeant John Debnam.

  “God, what number are we now, John? Don’t tell me you didn’t write it down either,” she begged.

  “One-Seven-Niner-Papa-Papa-Echo-Six,” Debnam replied without looking up from his own panel.

  “Thank you, thank you!”

  The bearded sergeant only nodded, still without looking up, and Kilgore took her thumb off the mute button.

  “Sorry about the
com glitch, Prásino Phúllo Control,” she said. “Had to deal with something. This is One-Seven-Niner-Papa-Papa-Echo-Six. Requesting approach to Bay Nineteen Bravo.”

  “One-Seven-Niner, Prásino Phúllo Control,” a voice even more exhausted than she felt replied. “Negative Bay Nineteen Bravo. I say again, negative Bay Nineteen Bravo. You are cleared approach Bay Eighteen Bravo. I say again, Eighteen—One-Eight—Bravo. Confirm copy.”

  “Control, One-Seven-Niner confirms diversion to Bay Eighteen—I repeat, One-Eight—Bravo.”

  “That is correct, One-Seven-Niner. The holding beacon is Niner-Niner-Zero-Alpha. You are…seventh in the approach queue.”

  “Niner-Niner-Zero-Alpha and we are number seven,” Kilgore replied.

  “Confirm, One-Seven-Niner. Godspeed.”

  “Thank you, Prásino Phúllo Control.” Kilgore started to key off the com, then paused. Stacking shuttles seven deep under the current conditions suggested a major snafu of some sort at a time when no one could afford snafus.

  “Control, can I ask why we’re being diverted?” she asked.

  There was silence for several seconds. Then she heard someone sigh at the other end of the link.

  “There was an…incident, One Seven Niner. I don’t have the details, but there was some sort of explosion. Took out two shuttles and at least three hundred civilians. We’re not getting Nineteen Bravo back today.”

  This time Sergeant Debnam looked up from his displays, his dark eyes meeting his pilot’s blue gaze.

  “Thank you, Control,” Kilgore said quietly. “And…Godspeed to you, too.”

  “Appreciate it, One Seven Niner. Now get your arse over to Eighteen Bravo.”

  “On our way. One-Seven-Niner, clear.”

  Kilgore altered her heading, then leaned back in her couch, looking over her shoulder at Debnam again.

  “An explosion,” she said. “Don’t like the sound of that, John. I don’t like it at all.”

  “Don’t much care for it myself, Ma’am.”

  They looked at one another for a handful of seconds, and then she turned back to her controls, thinking about that voice on the other end of the com. The voice which must have realized from the beginning that it wasn’t getting out, whatever happened to the civilians it was trying to save.

  Guts, she thought. God, that takes guts. Look after him, Jesus. Look after all of them.

  * * *

  Sebastianos Tsolias watched the icon alter heading away from the atmosphere-spewing wound in Prásino Phúllo Habitat’s skin. He wondered if he’d ever met its pilot. The chances that he had were excellent; he’d worked with the HSP’s pilots for a lot of years now. But never like this, and he wondered if the pilot of that shuttle knew how fervently he wished her “Godspeed.”

  He checked his displays. At least twenty seconds till the next incoming, he thought, maybe as much as a full minute, and he punched the button on his uni-link.

  “Yes, Sebastianos!” his wife’s beloved contralto said even before he’d heard the first buzz from his end.

  “How are you and the baby doing?” he asked, trying to drag a little of the exhaustion out of his voice, trying to infuse a bit of energy. Of hope.

  “We’re fine.” He wondered if she realized her chipper tone sounded as false as his own. “Petra didn’t want to leave Mikhalis behind, but I told her he’d be fine until we get back and she checked his water bowl.”

  “Little pitchers have big ears?” he asked softly.

  “Yep.”

  “Well, can you put me on speaker for just a few seconds? I don’t have much time before the next inbound flight.”

  “You’re on…now,” she said, the sound of her voice shifting as she lowered the wrist unit so that Petra could hear him.

  “How you doing, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “Fiiiiiine, Daddy,” she said, and his heart twisted as he heard the anxiety—the little-girl bravery—in her drawn out reply.

  “I’m glad to hear it!” he said cheerily. “You’re taking good care of Mommy?”

  “Of course I am. I’m carrying both bags!”

  “That’s my big girl. I knew I could count on you. You stay close to Mommy, now, hear me? And you go on looking after her until—” his voice wavered ever so slightly, and he yanked it ruthlessly back under control “—until I see you again, all right?”

  “Of course I will, Daddy. Are you coming soon?”

  “Just as soon as I can, sweetheart. You know Daddy has a job to do. Sometimes it’s more important than others, and this is one of those times. So it may be a little while. Just remember how much I love you and Mommy until I get there.”

  “Yes, Daddy. And do you think you can bring Mikhalis when you come? I know he’ll be all right, but he’s really kind of a small cat without his people there to look after him.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him for you,” he promised. “Now Mommy and I need to do some grown-up talk for just a second, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy. Love you!”

  “Love you, too, baby girl.”

  “We’re off speaker,” Kassandra told him a moment later, and he cleared his throat.

  “What I wanted to say,” he said more briskly, “is that there was some kind of explosion at Nineteen Bravo. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it was pretty bad. So you’re going to have to use Eighteen Bravo, instead. You’ve got plenty of time! The tube cars are still running. Go up to Deck Seven and take the Number Twelve line. That’ll get you there without any problems, and I’ve already updated the passenger list. They’ll be holding places in line for you and Petra.”

  “I understand.”

  He heard the fresh flutter of fear behind the two words. She kept her voice light for Petra’s sake, but then she asked the question he’d dreaded. The question she had to ask, even with Petra listening.

  “Will you be leaving through Eighteen Bravo, too?”

  “No,” he said. “They’re pulling us out through Niner Charlie. You know it’s a lot closer to Flight Control.”

  “I guess it is.” She sounded a tiny bit less anxious, as if the reminder that Bay 9C truly was much closer to his duty station had reassured her. After all, he could get there in a hurry, especially with the high-speed tube cars reserved for station personnel’s emergency use. “How much longer do you think?”

  “Not much.” He closed his eyes as he lied to the woman he’d loved for twenty-seven years. “Third shift’s due to take over pretty soon. When they do, everybody on Second’ll get a chance for some rest, and those of us with families will be sent on to join them.”

  “Thank God,” she whispered, and he heard the tears quavering in the words.

  “Yeah, I think He’s working overtime for me today,” Sebastianos said with absolute sincerity. “You just look after the baby for me till I catch up with you.”

  “We’ll be waiting for you.”

  “I know you will, Honey. But I gotta run now. More shuttles incoming. Love you!”

  “Love you, too,” she said, and he killed the link.

  Then he sat there, looking down at the uni-link. He could count the number of times he’d told her even little white lies on the fingers of one hand. Now he’d lied to her three times in less than ten seconds, because he had at least another ten or fifteen seconds before his scopes needed him again. But he’d had to go, before his voice failed him completely and she realized the truth behind the other lies.

  He stroked the uni-link, his fingertip just brushing the call button, and drew a deep, shuddery breath.

  “Love you, Babe,” he whispered. “Look after the Moonbeam for me. I’ll be waiting for both of you…but not today. Not today.”

  SLNS Camperdown

  Hypatia System

  “Are you going to adhere to your deadline, Admiral?” Madhura Yang-O’Grady asked, and Hajdu Gyôzô looked up from the message board he’d been studying.

  “If they can’t get everyone off in time, are you going to adhere to your deadline?” she
repeated.

  “That depends,” he said after a moment. “I meant every word I said to that traitor Vangelis. This is their fault, not ours, and I have zero interest in exposing my personnel to risk just to save the lives of a few thousand traitors and their families.”

  “I’d just as soon not see anyone killed if we don’t have to kill them,” she said, and he regarded her thoughtfully. That decision was no longer hers, but he supposed he did owe her the courtesy of a fuller explanation.

  “As nearly as I can tell,” he said, “they’re working as hard and as fast as they can to get as many people as possible out of the residential habitats, at least. That tells me that whatever the arrival schedule they’re predicting for the naval force they requested, they don’t expect it to get here until after my original time limit runs out. I’m sure they’d want to get everyone they could out as early as possible under any circumstances, but the rate at which they’re working right now—and, frankly, the number of accidents they’ve absorbed because of the rate at which they’re working—tells me they’re truly desperate.

  “Because that indicates we have some time in hand, I’m more inclined to consider extending the deadline—possibly in five or six-hour increments—for as long as they stay desperate. I’m not about to give them more than another twenty-four hours or so, no matter what, given that there’s no way to know when the Manties are going to arrive, but I’m not especially eager to kill anyone we don’t have to, either. The instant it looks to me like they’re relaxing a bit, though, I’m going to assume that means they expect help momentarily. And at that point,” his voice was grim, “there won’t be any extensions.”

  “But you will extend it at least once?”