Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  “Your Grace!”

  “Commander.” Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington crossed the room in three long strides and held out her hand. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I’m glad I did, though. It gives me the chance to personally commend you for what you and all of Admiral Kotouč’s people did in Hypatia. That was well done, Commander. Very well done.”

  “Your Grace, I appreciate the sentiment, but, really, Arngrim didn’t do nearly as much as the others.” Megan’s face tightened with the memory of her helplessness as the rest of the squadron died. “We mostly just sat there and watched it happen.”

  Duchess Harrington cocked her head, her expression thoughtful, and her treecat mirrored the movement.

  “I wondered if you’d feel that way,” the duchess said after a moment. “I suppose it’s natural you should feel you somehow let down the rest of your squadron. Allow me to point out, however, that Arngrim couldn’t have improved on what her consorts accomplished. I mean that seriously, Commander.” Those steady brown eyes held hers. “You literally couldn’t have increased the damage the rest of your squadron inflicted in that exchange, and your ship is alive today because Admiral Kotouč gave you an order—exactly the correct order, as it happens—and you obeyed it. And afterward, when yours was the only ship left, you and your people performed brilliantly, Commander.”

  “Your Grace,” Megan felt her face heat and shook her head hard, “we were bluffing. We couldn’t have stopped them if Yountz had been willing to pull the trigger!”

  “I was never much of a poker player, myself, but my husband and my wife are fanatics.” Megan blinked at the non sequitur, but the duchess only smiled. “According to them, a ‘bluff’ is when you raise on a busted flush, Commander Petersen. You had at least a pair of aces, and if Yountz had called, you would have hurt them badly.”

  “If they’d realized how little ammunition we had—”

  “You’re not listening to me,” the duchess said more sternly. “No, you couldn’t have destroyed his entire remaining task force. You couldn’t even have destroyed all his remaining battlecruisers. But you didn’t have to. After what Admiral Kotouč had already done to them, they didn’t have the stomach to find out if you could. No.” She shook her head. “What you did—what you and your people did—saved at least six million lives. You didn’t do it in a vacuum, and you couldn’t have done it if Admiral Kotouč hadn’t made the hard call and decided to fight, but you did do it when it counted. And the prisoner interrogation we’ve already done makes it clear that if you hadn’t intervened, Admiral Gogunov most certainly would have killed all of those civilians.”

  Harrington’s brown eyes had gone bleak and cold, and the cat on her shoulder bared his fangs. Then she shook herself and gave another of those crooked smiles.

  “I’d say we owe a vote of thanks to Commodore Haskell, too, although we probably wouldn’t do her any favors if we were to publically thank her for it just yet.”

  “No, Your Grace, we wouldn’t,” Megan agreed, recalling her own interview with Haskell…and the incredible hatred burning in Martin Gogunov’s eyes when he spoke about his chief of staff.

  “Actually,” she went on after a moment, “I think what Arngrim may really have done was to give Yountz a pretext to avoid carrying out Buccaneer. I can’t prove that, but we do know he specifically ordered the screen not to launch when Lepanto sent out the fire distribution orders. I’m pretty sure he’ll downplay that in his after-action report, but that wasn’t the decision of a man who wanted to murder people in job lots.”

  “Let me remind you of something I know they taught you at the Academy, Commander,” Harrington said. “Battles aren’t always—or even usually—won by killing everybody on the other side. They’re won inside the other side’s brains and wills. Given the right weapons, the right tactical situation, anyone can kill an enemy. Convincing her to yield, to do what you set out to compel her to do without killing her—that’s harder. That’s a lot harder, and it’s also exactly what you and Arngrim did.”

  Megan looked at her, absorbing what she’d said. If there was an officer in Manticoran uniform who knew what she was talking about—knew exactly what the squadron had faced—that officer was standing in front of her. And if she said…

  “I know people are going to compare Hypatia to Grayson,” the duchess said, and Megan managed not to blink at the way the older woman’s thought had followed her own. “I suppose that’s inevitable, given the similarities. Of course, the differences are a lot more significant than any of those idiot newsies are going to realize!”

  She grimaced, and Megan surprised herself with a chuckle. Arngrim had returned to Manticore with dispatches, accompanying the Hypatian transport carrying the squadron’s survivors, barely two T-days earlier, and she’d already decided she’d rather face a salvo of Cataphracts than the Manticoran news corps any day!

  “Better,” the duchess said approvingly, then laid a hand on Megan’s shoulder.

  “I had a heavy cruiser to face a single battlecruiser,” she said more soberly. “The tech imbalance was a lot narrower than the one you had, but in a way, that only made the situation simpler. I mean, there weren’t a lot of fancy tactical options. You found a much more…elegant solution, and at least Hypatia doesn’t have steadings.”

  “I beg your pardon?” This time, Megan did blink.

  “After my own escapade, I got dragged kicking and screaming into the wonderful world of politics, Commander. Without any hereditary titles to hang on you, the Hypatians can’t do the same thing to you. Speaking with the voice of experience, I advise you to count your blessings.”

  “I hadn’t even thought about that, Your Grace!” Megan shuddered.

  “Well, don’t let your hopes get too high,” the duchess advised her. “Hypatia may not have a toy chest full of steadings and titles and things, but Her Majesty does. And, still speaking with the voice of experience, she likes to open it up for people who accomplish the sorts of things you accomplished. And, to be honest,” her expression softened and the hand on Megan’s shoulder squeezed once, firmly, “you deserve it. Everyone in your entire squadron deserves it, and I’m pretty sure Her Majesty will make her own feelings in that regard abundantly clear.”

  “Your Grace, I’ve already got the only thing I could possibly have wanted,” Megan said softly.

  “I know. Believe me, I know.” Harrington smiled oddly, and the treecat made a sound that seemed to fall somewhere between a soft croon and a laugh. “And I understand Commander Stob responds well to regen.”

  “That’s what he’s been telling me, anyway.” Megan’s smile turned a bit tremulous. “I wouldn’t put it past him to lie about it, though.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, jaw tightening as memory replayed the moment when the HSP told her they’d recovered Jayson’s life pod…and another moment, the one in which she’d realized he’d lost both legs.

  Sixty people. That was how many they’d recovered alive out of the 1,948 men and women aboard Phantom, Shikomizue, Talwar, and Cinqueda. Three percent. And one of them—miracle of miracles—had been the man she loved. At that instant, she hadn’t cared about his legs; she’d cared about his life.

  “As it happens, he isn’t—lying, I mean,” the duchess assured her with a smile. “Personally, I don’t regenerate at all, so I made a point of asking about all your people from the squadron. As it happens, I have pretty fair contacts here at Bassingford, so I didn’t get any nonsense about patient confidentiality, and the only one who doesn’t is Commander Ilkova. Mind you, Commander Stob’s going to be in what my father refers to—somewhat inelegantly—as the ‘body shop’ for quite a while, but in the end, you’ll get him back in one piece, I promise.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Megan said sincerely.

  Somehow, coming from Duchess Harrington, that reassurance went deeper than it had coming from mere doctors or even Jayson himself. Was that because she knew Harrington had paid the price of combat more
than once herself? Or was it simply something about the woman the newsies called the Salamander?

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you how incredibly well I think you performed.” The duchess’s voice was brisker, and she patted Megan’s shoulder once, then stood back. “Until my pinnace grounded, I didn’t realize you’d be here so I could tell you that in person. I’m glad I had the chance, but my real motive in coming dirt-side was to have lunch with my parents, and my dad, especially, doesn’t have a lot of flex in his schedule anymore, so I’m afraid I have to get a move on. Especially since I need to drop in on Admiral Kotouč while I’m here.” She shook her head. “He’s going to be in the shop even longer than your fiancé, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m just glad he’s here to be in it, Your Grace,” Megan said frankly, and Harrington nodded.

  “You and me, both,” she said. “And I imagine he’s at least as prone to ‘survivor’s guilt’ as you are.” The duchess’s nostrils flared and her lips tightened for just a moment. “Trust me, that’s something else I know a little about, Commander. Fortunately, I had Nimitz. You don’t, but be smarter than I was. Talk to the counselors here at Bassingford.”

  “I’m already talking to them, Your Grace.”

  “Good woman!” Harrington smiled broadly and this time, she punched Megan lightly on the same shoulder. “Not only a good tactician, but a wise one, too! I see great things in your future, Commander. And at the risk of sounding rude, would I be too far out of line if I invited myself to your wedding?”

  “To our wedding?!” Megan managed to get her mouth shut again after a moment. “We’d be honored! It never occurred to me that—”

  Words failed her, and the duchess chuckled, but her expression was serious when she spoke again.

  “The honor will be mine, Commander. Trust me, the honor will be mine.”

  * * *

  “There you are!” Crown Princess Consort Rivka Rosenfeld-Winton exclaimed as Honor stepped out of the old-fashioned elevator in King Michael’s Tower with Spencer Hawke on her heels.

  “Your Highness,” Honor replied with a faint smile.

  “I’ll ‘Your Highness’ you!” Rivka said, reaching out to take both of Honor’s hands in hers and squeeze. “I’ve got a ribbon cutting in Haynes Port I’m already late for, so I can’t stay right now, but Roger and I would love to have you join us for supper! How long will you be in Landing?”

  “Only about another six hours, I’m afraid.” Honor grimaced. “I’m on my way to Admiralty House from here for a conference, and as soon as it’s over, I’ve got to head back to Imperator. Now that you’re an experienced married woman, you can probably figure out why I’m not especially happy I won’t be able to spend the night dirt-side.”

  “Actually, I can’t imagine why,” Rivka said innocently, and Honor snorted.

  “Of course you can’t. Tell me, have your loving subjects started talking to you about heirs to the Crown the way my loving steaders have been talking to me about heirs to the Key?”

  “Not yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.” Rivka shook her head. “You’d think that as long as we’ve had prolong…”

  “Hah!” Honor snorted again, this time with magnificent disdain. “Maybe someplace where they don’t think in terms of dynasties! Although, at that, Manticorans aren’t quite as…obsessive about it as Graysons. Trust me, no one’s cutting me a pass in Harrington Steading! Not,” she added with a judicious air, “that the preliminaries to produce heirs don’t make up for a lot, now that I think about it.”

  “True,” Rivka agreed with a smile. “Very true. Thank you for helping me keep this in perspective.”

  “One of the things I’m here for,” Honor reassured her. “And now, I believe I have an appointment with your mother-in-law.”

  * * *

  “And how was lunch with your parents?” Elizabeth Adrienne Samantha Annette Winton inquired as the lieutenant from the Queen’s Own opened the sitting room door and ushered Honor through it.

  Honor nodded her thanks to their guide—not that she’d actually needed guiding after so many years—and Major Hawke peeled off to join the sergeant standing post outside the door.

  “Lunch was good, if a little on the hurried side,” she said, crossing the room to hug the woman who was arguably the most powerful monarch in the explored galaxy. “I thought I’d allowed plenty of time, but Admiral Kotouč was conscious. He wasn’t much in the mood for small talk, but Nimitz and I needed to have a word with him.” Her expression sobered. “He’s not taking what happened to his squadron well, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m not surprised.” The empress waved her into one of the worn, comfortable armchairs. “After the last twenty odd T-years, I’ve had entirely too much experience with people who have to deal with something like that. And I’ve discovered that being the Queen—or even the Empress—doesn’t make me feel one bit better when people go out and die for me.”

  She sighed, her eyes sad, then shook herself.

  “Still,” she said in a brighter voice, “I’m sure you and Nimitz did him a world of good.”

  “Not us so much as Commander Ilkova,” Honor said.

  “Oh, really?” Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose.

  “Oh, definitely ‘really’!” Honor rolled her eyes. “Not that either of them is saying a word about it yet to the other one. Trust me, though, they’re both picking up on what the other one isn’t saying, if you take my meaning. I think they’re probably smarter than Hamish and me, too.”

  “Is Article One-Nineteen going to be a problem for them?”

  “Not as far as I’m concerned,” Honor said. “One thing I’ve never had a taste for is hypocrisy, Elizabeth! But from Ilkova’s mind-glow, I’d say there’s not much chance of her letting Kotouč get away. And from his mind-glow, he won’t be trying to!”

  “Wise man.”

  Elizabeth’s tone was even drier than Honor’s had been. Then she leaned back in her own chair, her eyes darker.

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on his condition myself,” she said. “We need him back, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that he seems to be doing so well. But this whole ‘Operation Buccaneer’ has me worried, Honor. Worried a lot.”

  “It should,” Honor replied. Nimitz flowed from her chairback. He sat upright in her lap, leaning back against her, and she wrapped her arms about him and rested her chin between his ears. “It should. This was a lot uglier than I expected it to get, even after Cachalot. Than any of us expected, I think. Which probably says something about our own wishful thinking, in the end.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself. I never saw it coming, either.”

  “Maybe that’s because not even the People’s Republic at its worst went around casually embracing Eridani violations. Of course, we’re not dealing with the Peeps anymore, are we? We’re dealing with the Solarian League, the shining beacon to which all the rest of the galaxy aspires!”

  Elizabeth winced at the bitterness of Honor’s tone.

  “Is it confirmed that the Mandarins did sign off on Hajdu’s decisions?” the Empress asked after a moment.

  “Not on his time limit, but, yes. They sent him out with specific authorization to execute ‘Buccaneer’ against Hypatia. We pulled his orders out of what was left of Lepanto’s computers. They’ve upgraded their security software since we hammered Filareta, but we’d gotten too good a look inside first, and Arngrim brought back Lepanto’s actual data core. It was in pretty bad shape, but our cyber people cracked its security protocols within six hours of getting their hands on it. I think the Sollies need better cybernauts of their own.”

  “I’m sure they’ll come up with them entirely too soon to make any of us happy,” Elizabeth observed, and Honor snorted in agreement.

  “Anyway, we’ve got what we believe is a complete copy of the Buccaneer ops plan and orders,” she continued, “and even if Hajdu wasn’t sent out with a specific timeframe for his response to Vangelis’s rejection of Yang-O’Grady’s ultimatum, I do
ubt anyone in Old Chicago would have objected to the one he picked.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Elizabeth’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t just a case of an out-of-control admiral reinterpreting his orders to suit himself?”

  “Elizabeth, I haven’t had time to sit down and discuss this in detail with Pat or anybody else at Admiralty House yet. That’s where I’m going from here, and Tom Theisman and Tom Caparelli will be joining us. But just based on what I already know, I’m pretty darn sure he didn’t do much ‘reinterpreting.’ In fact, he may not have done any at all. There’s something in the basic Buccaneer plan called ‘Parthian Shot.’”

  “‘Parthian Shot’?” Elizabeth repeated, and Honor nodded.

  “It’s a reference to an ancient Old Earth cavalry tactic.” She grimaced. “Apparently, the SLN isn’t very good at picking deceptive codenames. I doubt it would even occur to them to name a decisive offensive operation ‘Buttercup,’ for example! But, the Parthians—and quite a few other light cavalry forces—used a tactic in which they turned in the saddle and fired arrows at their pursuers while fleeing at a full gallop.”

  “They—?” Elizabeth began, then broke off, her eyes widening, and Honor nodded again.

  “Exactly,” she said grimly. “Their task force commanders are specifically authorized to ‘launch and leave’ in the face of anything like serious opposition. No delays to let civilians evacuate…and if they happen to deorbit a few megatons of wreckage onto an inhabited planet, well, that’s just too bad.”

  Elizabeth sat back, shaking her head slowly, and it was Ariel’s turn to flow down into her lap. The two women sat there, hugging their ’cats while the horrific potential consequences of the tactic flowed through them.

  After the Yawata Strike, it didn’t take much imagination.

  “What’s worse, in some ways,” Honor continued, “is that we have an at least partial list of their objectives. Cachalot’s on it—we already knew that, even if Capriotti’s obviously a very different breed of cat from Hajdu and Gogunov—but so are half a dozen other star systems, Elizabeth. Most of them are neutrals where we don’t have any naval presence to do anything about it, too. I guess the one good side of that is that if we don’t have anybody there to reprise Kotouč’s accomplishment at Hypatia, that ought to at least deprive their COs of any excuse to resort to ‘Parthian.’ But it’s going to be ugly when the other reports start coming in, and we’ll have to respond to it somehow. That’s another thing both Toms and Hamish and I will be kicking around at Admiralty House.”