by David Weber
“But what?” Benton-Ramirez demanded. He wasn’t asking Givens that’ he was asking the universe, and he knew she realized that, but she answered him anyway.
“I don’t know, Sir. I only know we aren’t going to like the reason when we find out what it was.”
Access Boom
Industrial Annex No. 6
Beowulf Alpha
Beowulf System
“Of course it was Mesa,” Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou said harshly. “I don’t know why the bastards did it, but it was damned well them.”
Hamish Alexander-Harrington nodded in agreement, his blue eyes colder than ice. The two of them were staying out of the conversation between Chyang Benton-Ramirez and the senior officers in the Jennifer O’Toole Room. It was hard, but they were still stuck on the access boom, with only the small screen Jacques had managed to reconfigure as a window into what was happening. Neither could have contributed much, so they had no intention of getting in the way of people who did have something useful to say.
“Of course it was,” he said now, cradling Samantha in his arms as the ’cat quivered to the emotions ripping through the two humans. “I think Chyang’s question about their intending to synchronize it with the Solly attack probably has a lot going for it, but Pat’s right that that’s only a part of it.” He bared his teeth briefly. “I’m sure it wouldn’t break their hearts for us to blame the Sollies. That may even be a big part of why they did it, but I’ll guarantee we’ll find out that’s not what it was really about when we finally dig down to the bottom of it. Not really. I can smell it.”
“Agreed. But what the hell was it about, then? Aside from pure viciousness, I mean.” Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s voice was ineffably bitter as he waved one hand at the tiny display and the expanding sphere of wreckage where Beowulf Gamma once had been. It was hard to believe, but the time chop on the display said it had been barely eight minutes since the explosion. “There sure as hell weren’t any critical targets on Gamma! Just ten million human beings.”
“I know, Jacques.” White Haven rested one hand on his wife’s uncle’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know.”
Cargo Container H&L 1007-9-464(h)
Freight Hub No. 19
Bay 8-Delta
Beowulf Beta
Beowulf System
It was very quiet in Bay 8-D.
Like all modern cargo-handling facilities, Freight Hub No. 19 was heavily automated, so there was no one to pay attention to cargo container H&L 1007-9-463(h). Even if there had been, no one would have noticed anything. The crated shuttle fusion plant only sat there…giving no sign at all of the clock ticking down inside it.
Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou and Hamish Alexander-Harrington hadn’t figured it out…yet. If they’d been given enough time, they might have. Possibly not, though. Neither of them had ever met Albrecht Detweiler or his sons. More importantly, they didn’t understand what Albrecht Detweiler had done…or why. They assumed the nuclear detonations covering the end of Operation Houdini had been planned from the beginning, and so they had. What they didn’t know was the way Tenth Fleet’s arrival had rushed Houdini’s final phase, or how bitterly Benjamin Detweiler and his brothers blamed everyone but their father for their parents’ deaths.
And because they didn’t know those things, they didn’t understand how hatred and grief and loss—and guilt—had shaped the brothers’ response. They were looking for the calculation, the strategic plan, behind Beowulf Gamma’s destruction because they didn’t realize how intensely personal it was.
That was why their brains hadn’t yet caught up with the possibility that more than one nuclear weapon might have been smuggled aboard more than one orbital habitat.
Ten minutes, precisely, after Beowulf Gamma’s death, they discovered that one had.
System Defense HQ
City of Columbia
Beowulf
Beowulf System
Admiral McAvoy grunted as if he’d just been punched in the belly—or stabbed in the heart—as Beowulf Beta blew up and took another 11.25 million Beowulfers with it. He wrenched his eyes from the cool, bland lights of the hideous master plot and looked at Dunstan-Meyers. The ops officer sat staring at the plot, frozen, her expression a mask of grief…and failure.
“Cheryl,” he said. She didn’t even blink. “Cheryl!” he said again, more sharply, and she twitched. Then she shook herself and turned to look at him.
“Yes, Sir?” She sounded rusty, broken.
“Same pattern?” he asked.
“Same non-pattern, Sir,” she grated and chopped one hand savagely at the plo. “We don’t see anything. Admiral Givens and Commander Lassaline have to be right. Those were both internal explosions.”
“And they may not be the last ones,” Caddell-Markham said flatly from McAvoy’s display. The CNO looked back at the defense director, and Caddell-Markham’s eyes were as bitter as they were level. “In fact, I don’t think they were.”
“But—” McAvoy began.
“I know we don’t want there to be any more,” Caddell-Markham cut him off. “For that matter, I know neither one of us wants to think about how they got one of these fucking things past us, much less more than one! But they obviously did, and I don’t see any reason the bloodthirsty fuckers would stop with just two if they didn’t have to.”
“But—” McAvoy said in a very different tone, and Caddell-Markham nodded.
“Exactly,” he said harshly. “If they managed to get more than two through, I know exactly where they’d have wanted to plant the next one. And whatever else they may have had in mind, one thing this damned well is is a message. Beta didn’t just coincidentally go up exactly ten minutes after Gamma.”
“We’ve got to get you—all of you—out of there!” McAvoy said desperately.
“How?” Caddell-Markham asked quietly, and the CNO’s jaw clenched as he looked at the man who’d been his boss for the last seven T-years…and his friend for almost fifty.
“I’m sure the bastards who did this timed it carefully,” the defense director continued. “They wanted us to realize it was a deliberate interval, that they’d planned it with malice aforethought. But there’s no way in hell we could evacuate any of our other habitats in anything less than a full day, and you know it. There are almost twenty-three million people aboard Alpha, and even the smallest of the others is over four million! All we’d do if we tried to evacuate would be to induce a panic aboard every habitat, and God knows how many of our people would be killed if we did. Besides,” his nostrils flared, “they’d just love for our people to be running in terror at the moment they die, and I will be damned if we give them that satisfaction.”
“But, my God, Sir—Gabe!” McAvoy’s voice was raw with anguish. “It’s not just you! It’s all of you—all of you at the conference!”
“I know,” Caddell-Markham said softly. “Believe me, I know. They couldn’t have realized we’d be here when they set this up, but we are, and there’s no way to get us off in less than thirty or forty minutes, either. Maybe they didn’t get another one aboard. I hope to hell they didn’t. But if they did, we’re not getting out, either. And, frankly, it would be pretty obscene if we did evacuate when no one else could.”
McAvoy stared at him silently, and Caddell-Markham inhaled deeply.
“Everybody up here is either talking to his family or recording messages, if they’re from out-system. I’m sorry, but I need to talk to Joanna now.” He flashed a brief almost-smile. “Hopefully, I’ll be talking to you again in the not-too-distant, too. If I don’t, it’s been a pleasure and an honor.”
“No, Sir,” McAvoy said softly. “No, Sir. The honor’s been mine. Now go talk to your wife.”
“God bless, Corey.”
“You, too, Gabe.”
White Haven
Manticore
Manticore Binary System
Star Empire of Manticore
“Oh, stop worrying, Sandra!”
Emily Alexan
der-Harrington looked worn and tired, but her tone was affectionate as her life-support chair drifted through the air van’s hatch. The sky the van had just left was a dramatic ocean of black-bottomed white as a line of thunder storms approached majestically from the east, and her nostils flared appreciatively as she inhaled the fresh, clean, rain-is-coming air.
“It’s not like it’s anything new,” she continued, turning her head to look over her shoulder and smile just a bit crookedly as her longtime companion followed her through the hatch. “I don’t want to hear any more fussing about it, understand? Especially not today, of all days!”
“It’s just—” Sandra Thurston began, then paused and looked across at Sergeant McClure. Emily’s personal armsman looked back at her, and Thurston drew a deep breath. “All right, Milady,” she said just a bit sternly. “You won’t hear any more ‘fussing’ out of me, but only if you discuss it with Her Grace.”
Emily’s smile disappeared and her eyes flashed, but Thurston held her ground.
“You need to discuss it with her, Milady,” she said more gently. “You know you do.”
“Honor has enough on her mind,” Emily retorted.
“I agree. But you still need to tell her.” Thurston shook her head. “I’m not making any horrible predictions!” she added quickly. “But, by the same token, you can’t let this blindside her, Milady. I know you too well to think you want to do that.”
Emily glowered at her for a moment, but then she drew a deep breath.
“You’re probably right,” she conceded. “And it’s not like there won’t be plenty of good news to go with it.”
“No, Milady,” Thurston agreed, reaching down to rest one hand lightly on her charge’s frail shoulder. “No, Milady, it’s not like there won’t be plenty of good news.”
“Well, in that case,” Emily said, resuming her progress across the White Haven landing pad towards the front door, where Nico Havenhurst awaited them, “I think the first thing you and I need to do is to take another look at the nursery.” She smiled as Sun Heart and Bark Master came bounding across the lawn. “I’m thinking Raoul and Katherine are old enough for toddler beds, and that means—”
She paused, then stopped her chair and turned it to the east, looking back the way they’d come, and her eyebrows rose.
“Jefferson? Were we expecting anyone else this afternoon?”
“No, My Lady.” Sergeant McClure had already turned in the same direction and his eyes narrowed as he squinted upward. “We’re not.”
He pressed the fingers of his left hand lightly to his earbug, never lowering his searching gaze from the incoming thunderclouds, while his right hand drifted towards his holstered pulser.
“Central, McClure,” he said, calling in to the Steadholder’s Guard command center. “Do we have an ID on the incoming?”
He listened for a moment, then smiled broadly and took his hand away from the pulser butt.
“It’s all right, My Lady. It’s cleared with Central. In fact, it’s the Steadholder.”
“Honor!” Emily’s weariness disappeared, and she sent her life-support chair drifting back towards the pad. Sun Heart leapt lightly into her lap, hitting the moving target with the casual ease of long practice, and Emily chuckled. She ran her good hand lightly down the treecat’s back, and Sun Heart buzzed with pleasure.
The distant turbine whine resolved itself into grumbling thunder and Emily’s eyes widened in surprise as its source emerged from the clouds. It wasn’t an air car. It wasn’t even a shuttle. It was a Condor II, an all-up Navy pinnace, and she saw HMS Imperator’s hull number blazoned just in front of its forward hatch as it flared and settled on its counter-grav.
That hatch opened, the landing stairs deployed, and a tall figure in black and gold came down them. Three more figures—these in the green-on-green of the Harrington Guard—came down the steps at her heels, and she paused as she caught sight of Emily, Thurston, and McClure. She stood still for a moment, then squared her shoulders and started toward them, and Sun Heart raised her head and stopped purring.
“Honor! Welcome home!” Emily called.
* * *
Honor Alexander-Harrington felt her expression tighten. She wanted to stop. She wanted to turn around, re-board the pinnace. She wanted to—
What she did was draw a deep breath and keep walking while Nimitz sat still and silent on her shoulder. Her pinnace’s flight crew had violated at least a dozen flight regulations to get her here in time, before the news leaked to the public boards. Before Emily could hear it from anyone else. And she could tell from her wife’s happy greeting that she’d made it.
And, oh God, how a part of her wished she hadn’t.
“It’s good to see you,” Emily said as she drew closer, and Honor tasted her mind-glow, tasted the ever present edge of sorrow, the weariness that went deeper than the merely physical. There was a bubble of joy and anticipation in it this time, though.
“We just got back from Briarwood,” Emily continued. “Doctor Illescue says the fertilization went perfectly! And as soon as we can work it into your schedule, he thinks we should—”
The happy voice broke off as Honor’s expression registered. Emily’s hand stilled on Sun Heart’s coat, and the treecat reached up, her green eyes dark and still, and patted her wrist with a gentle true-hand. Emily’s gaze flitted to Nimitz, and her mouth tightened. The ’cat sat hunched on his person’s shoulder, the normal mischief in his green eyes quenched, his tail hanging.
“Honor?”
Honor went to her knees beside the life-support chair. She reached out and caught Emily’s live hand, leaned forward, pressed her cheek against Emily’s shoulder.
“Honor?” Emily repeated, her voice a bit sharper, her hand tightening on Honor’s.
“I’m sorry, Emily.” Honor closed her eyes. “The Sollies attacked Beowulf. We just heard. Imperator’s in Manticore orbit. We receipted the report even before Mount Royal.” Her voice seemed to waver for a moment and she cleared her throat. “I don’t have the numbers yet,” she husked, “and I’m not sure yet how they got past Mycroft. It may be a while before we figure that out. But…but they hit the habitats, Emily. Gamma…Beta—”
Her voice broke, and her shoulders began to shake. Emily tugged her hand out of hers and cupped the back of her head.
“And Alpha,” Emily Alexander-Harrington finished very, very softly, tears fogging her own voice, and Honor nodded convulsively, unable to speak.
She felt Emily’s hand tighten on the back of her head, felt Emily’s grief rising with her own, but then she sensed something else under it, as well. A sudden stab of pain that was more than just emotional, more than just spiritual agony.
“Emily?” She pulled back, tear-soaked eyes wide, sudden tension burring her voice.
“I’m sorry, Honor.” Emily sounded hoarse, breathless. “I’m so sorry.”
“Emily!” Honor felt Emily’s mind-glow rising up, wrapped in grief and yet incredibly powerful, filled with bottomless sorrow…and blazing with boundless love.
“Forgive me, sweetheart.” Emily’s voice was a whisper, fading even as she spoke. “I didn’t want it to be like this. I wanted you and Hamish to have each other when—”
“Emily!” The cry ripped out of Honor Alexander-Harrington. She wrapped her arms around the frail body, crushing it in her desperate embrace, even as her mind fought to hold onto that blazing mind-glow. “Emily, no! No!”
“I love you,” the three words were soft, barely a sigh, heard more with heart than with ears, and then that glorious mind-glow went out forever.
Mount Royal Palace
City of Landing
Manticore
Manticore Binary System
Star Empire of Manticore
Empress Elizabeth III looked at the men and women around the gleaming ferran wood table and thought about the other men and women she would never see again.
What was already being called the Beowulf Strike was less than eightee
n hours old, and it was unlikely they’d know the final death toll for several days yet. Probably weeks.
And possibly, she told herself drearily, and most probably of all, we’ll never know it.
Frantic search and rescue operations were underway, although the odds of recovering more than a handful alive were minute. No one would be calling them off anytime soon, though. If anyone understood how that worked, it was a Manticoran who’d survived the Yawata Strike.
But one thing they did know: the Beowulf Strike’s confirmed death toll was already over forty-three million.
Forty-three million, including Sir Thomas Caparelli, Patricia Givens, Lucien Cortez, Anthony Langtry, Tyler Abercrombie, Francine Maurier, Barton Salgado, Gabriel Caddell-Markham, Jukka Longacre, Joshua Pinder-Swun, Judah Yanakov, Michael Mayhew, and—
Elizabeth’s eyes strayed to the stonefaced woman at the far end of the table and the cream-and-gray treecat huddled on the back of her chair. She’d never seen Honor Alexander-Harrington look that way. Never seen those dark eyes so frozen, colder than interstellar space itself. Never seen such dreadful, elemental purpose. Such focus.
“We’ll be a while confirming anything, I’m afraid, your Majesty,” Charles O’Daley said somberly. The man who would almost certainly be confirmed as Barton Salgado’s successor at SIS let his eyes circle the table, and his aristocratic drawl was nowhere to be heard. “What we have confirmed is that the explosions were definitely internal, from devices they somehow placed aboard the habitats. And the timing was a message. It was precise to the second: ten minutes between the first and the second detonations; fifteen between the second and the third. I suppose we’re lucky they were able to get only three of the damned things into position.” He seemed to settle deeper into his chair, his nostrils flaring. “At the moment, though, it’s a little hard to feel grateful for anything.”