by David Weber
Except that he was reasonably confident “escape” was the last thing on their mind.
The icons on the plot changed abruptly as every one of those ships strobed its transponder, and his mouth tightened at the fresh—no doubt intentional—display of contempt for the best the SLN could do. Those transponders would have been homing beacons for any missile he decided to fire at them, but they obviously didn’t care. In fact, it was more than simply not caring. They wanted him to know exactly what they’d brought to the dance, and something with thousands of tiny feet crawled up and down his spine as the hundreds of transponder codes identifying superdreadnoughts of at least four different star nations spangled the plot.
“Sir, we have a com request,” Captain Volodimerov said carefully. “It, ah, seems to be coming from a relay less than ten thousand klicks out.”
“Put it on my display.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Volodimerov nodded to one of his techs. A moment later, Haeckle’s com display came alive with the face of a dark-haired woman in the skinsuit of a Royal Manticoran Navy admiral. He’d never met her, but he would have recognized her from the intelligence files’ imagery even without the cream-and-gray creature glaring into the com from the back of her command chair.
“Good afternoon, Admiral Harrington,” he said.
“You recognize me,” she replied, less than seven seconds later, despite the vast gulf which still lay between them. “Good. That will save some time.”
She had not, he noticed, asked who he was. He wondered if that meant she already knew…or that she simply didn’t care.
“Listen to me carefully,” she continued in a voice which could have been carved from Ganymede’s ice, “because I’m only going to say this once. I am prepared to allow you and your personnel to surrender to the Grand Alliance upon the following terms.
“First, you will immediately evacuate all personnel from all active warships and scuttle them. There will be no exceptions. You may transfer as many of those personnel as you desire and have the capacity for to the transports and support vessels also in Jupiter orbit, and I will permit any such vessels to depart unhindered for the inner system at such time as the last of your warships has been destroyed.
“Second, you will stand ready to be boarded by my Marines, and be aware that any resistance of any type to any of my personnel will be met immediately by the use of lethal force. Under the circumstances, the lives and safety of my personnel are my sole concern; preserving the lives of people stupid enough to threaten those lives and that safety isn’t even on my to-do list. Be certain all of your people understand that, because no warnings will be given.”
Haeckle’s blood ran cold as he suddenly recognized the ferocious hunger in that icy soprano. He didn’t know where it had come from, and it was wildly at odds with the mental picture of her he’d built reading between the lines of media reports and ONI’s analyses. But she meant it, he thought. Her Marines would shoot without warning.
“Third, your personnel will cooperate in transferring control of your platforms’ power, environmental, and engineering systems to my engineering personnel,” she continued. “Fourth, you will surrender to my control—intact and undamaged—every computer and computer file in your possession. And, fifth, your Systems Development Command—and Technodyne Industries—will surrender every prototype and every system under development, undamaged, with complete documentation.”
He swallowed hard. If he gave her what she was demanding, the Manties and their Allies would know everything there was to know about the Solarian League Navy. Everything, from secure communications protocols to the very latest R&D. The consequences of that would be—
“You don’t have to meet my conditions,” she told him. “That decision is up to you. But be advised that if you have not accepted my terms within the next ten minutes, I will open fire upon you and no further offer of surrender will be accepted.”
The blood ran from his face. She couldn’t mean that! She was talking about a massacre!
“And be further advised,” she told him very, very softly, “that if you accept my terms and then violate them in any way whatsoever, I will withdraw my personnel from your platforms and destroy every…single…one…of…them.”
The creature on her shoulder bared needle-sharp fangs at him, but, somehow, her smile was far more terrifying.
“I will await your decision…for ten minutes,” she said, and his com display went blank.
George Benton Tower
City of Old Chicago
Old Earth
Sol System
“And Kingsford says he couldn’t do anything about it?” Malachai Abruzzi demanded. “Not one frigging thing?!”
“Haeckle had accepted Harrington’s terms before Kingsford even knew what they were,” Innokentiy Kolokoltsov said flatly. He sat back in his chair, smelling the panic in the palatial conference room, and his expression was grim. “For that matter, he says that even if he’d known and been able to order Haeckle to reject them, he wouldn’t have. Not after her…demonstration.”
And not, he acknowledged to himself, after seeing the record of Harrington’s icy delivery of those terms. Kingsford hadn’t commented directly on that part of his reasoning, but Kolokoltsov had viewed the recording himself, and the way she’d spoken, the look in those almond eyes, had frozen him to the marrow. He’d always thought Abruzzi’s efforts to demonize Honor Alexander-Harrington were ludicrous. His propagandists had picked up on every allegation the People’s Republic of Haven had ever made against her—from Basilisk Station on—to portray her as some out-of-control murderess in their bid to undermine the woman’s towering reputation.
Now he wasn’t so certain they’d been lying, after all. The woman in that com message had wanted Haeckle to reject her terms. To fight.
To give her an excuse.
And that’s who’s just taken out the biggest, most powerful naval base in the entire Solarian League.
Without us so much as scratching her paint.
The thought was terrifying, because at that moment, the woman who’d done that was only fifteen light-minutes from where he and his colleagues sat, and if anything in the galaxy was sure, it was that she’d soon be much closer.
“Well, why isn’t he doing something to kick her arse back out of the system?” Abruzzi said, as if he’d been listening to Kolokoltsov’s thoughts. “Maybe he couldn’t stop the gutless bastard from rolling over for her out at Ganymede, but why the hell is he just sitting on his own arse now?”
“Because going after her on her terms would be a frigging disaster.”
Kolokoltsov’s eyebrows rose in surprise and all eyes turned to Nathan MacArtney as he answered Abruzzi’s question. The permanent senior undersecretary of the interior glared at his usual ally and shook his head with an obvious disgust whose strength, Kolokoltsov was privately confident, owed quite a bit to his own sense of panic.
“Why?” Abruzzi shot back, chin jutting aggressively.
“Because she left less than ten percent of her fleet to hold Ganymede.” MacArtney’s tone was flat. “The other ninety percent—and probably ninety-nine percent of her firepower—is parked two light-minutes outside the hyper-limit. That means she can pop into hyper anytime she wants to—like any time she sees him coming at her. All she has to do is sit there, wait for him to head her direction, and then rip his arse off with those fucking long-ranged missiles of hers. And he can’t even touch her, because she can translate out before anything he fires at her gets there.”
Abruzzi glared at him, fists clenched on the tabletop, but there really wasn’t much he could say in response. And MacArtney hadn’t even added that at her current range, Harrington was four light-minutes closer to Old Earth than she’d been to Ganymede when she fired on it. If she chose to unleash those “fucking long-ranged missiles” on the inner system, there was nothing she couldn’t destroy without ever crossing the limit. The only thing that could possibly stay her hand was the po
ssibility of mega casualties among the Sol System’s civilians, and remembering the ice in those brown eyes…
Kolokoltsov’s own eyes strayed to the time display. Twelve hours. Naval Station Ganymede had surrendered twelve hours ago, and she had yet to say a single word to anyone on Old Earth. The long, drawn out wait clawed at his nerves, exactly as she undoubtedly meant for it to, and it was obvious she was in no hurry to break her silence.
He didn’t expect to like it when she finally did.
HMS Imperator
Sol System
The timer on her uni-link pinged and Honor Alexander-Harrington closed the book she’d been pretending to read. She glanced automatically at the bulkhead chrono, then inhaled and ran one gentle hand down the spine of the treecat huddled in her lap.
Nimitz looked up at her, then rose on his true-feet to wrap his arms around her neck and press his muzzle against the live nerves of her right cheek. He stayed that way for a long, still moment, clinging to her physically almost as tightly as they clung to one another’s mind-glows, and she closed her eyes as she hugged him back.
Then she stood, climbing out of the comfortable couch, and lifted him, swinging him around to his proper place upon her shoulder.
It was time, she thought. Grand Fleet had been in the Sol System for exactly thirty-six hours, and it was time.
The cabin’s smart wall was configured to show the master plot, and her eyes sought out the green icon which represented Naval Station Ganymede’s current status as a “friendly unit.” Haeckle had honored the terms of his surrender with scrupulous fidelity, and she wished—oh, how she wished—he hadn’t. The part of her which was still an admiral recognized the enormous prize he’d yielded to her intact. Recognized the stupendous victory she’d accomplished without losing a single man or woman. Knew the intelligence windfall from Ganymede, alone, would have made this operation utterly decisive even if she’d accomplished nothing else.
The admiral in her recognized that. The angel of death only resented it.
She closed her eyes, fighting to balance those two conflicting imperatives. Fighting to remember she wasn’t here for herself, or for Nimitz, but for her star nation. For the entire Grand Alliance.
And for Beowulf, the killer corner of her soul whispered. For Beowulf.
She looked across the cabin at her wedding picture once again. She walked across to it, reached out and laid a hand upon it. She stood there, lips quivering, then leaned her forehead against it as a single tear leaked down her cheek.
I’m sorry, she thought. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to keep you alive, Hamish. Or you, Samantha. And I’m so sorry I killed you telling you about it, Emily. Another tear crept down her cheek and she tasted its salt upon her lips. I’m sorry Nimitz and I will never see or hold or touch any of you ever again. I hope wherever you are you can forgive us for that. And I’m sorry I can’t even kill the people who killed you. God help me, I want the Sollies to give me a reason, give me an excuse, to punish someone—anyone—for it, and if they do—
She chopped that thought off. Made herself inhale deeply. Felt the sick hunger guttering along her nerves. If they gave her an excuse, she would take it. She would take it and the killer in her soul would drown itself in the fiery elixir of their blood and her vengeance. She knew that. And even in her present state, she knew itwas the one thing she must not do. But some things were simply more—
She shook herself, leaned harder against the picture.
Even if they give me a reason, she thought drearily, it won’t be the ones who really killed you. They’ve taken even that away from us, because I’ll be killing the wrong people.
She straightened and caressed their faces—all three of those faces—and her own face hardened.
But if they didn’t plant those bombs, they damned well created the circumstances that let someone else do it, and there’s a price for that. Oh, yes. There’s a price, and if they give me an excuse to make that point crystal clear to them I will by God do it. Because one thing I promise all of you: I will collect every penny of that price if I have to burn this star system to the ground.
She stood a moment longer, looking at the faces of her murdered love, tasting the bitter iron of that promise. Then she drew a deep, deep breath and turned away.
The cabin hatch opened at her approach and Major Hawke came to attention as she stepped out into the passage. She tasted the same murderous determination radiating from him, knew there was no question what he wanted to happen next, and she nodded to him.
“Let’s be about it, Spencer,” she said.
Central Command Center
Admiralty Building
City of Old Chicago
Old Earth
Sol System
Winston Kingsford arrived in the dimness of Central Command less than five minutes after his office com pinged. Three of those minutes had been spent in the lift shafts, and he’d paused outside the CCC’s entrance to catch his breath. No one needed him arriving obviously out of breath.
Wouldn’t do to look like I was panicking, now would it?
“Willis,” he said as Admiral Jennings turned at his approach to face him.
“Sir,” Jennings acknowledged.
“So she’s begun to move, has she?”
“Yes, Sir.” The chief of staff waved at the enormous holo display. “She’s taking her time about it, too.”
Kingsford looked at the display and nodded.
Harrington’s enormous wall of battle was headed directly towards the hyper-limit at its closest approach to Old Earth. And, as Jennings had said, she was advancing at a leisurely three hundred gravities. At that rate, it would take over an hour and a half for her to actually cross it, assuming that was what she intended to do, and he felt confident that slow, deliberate approach was yet another silent message.
She wants us to see her coming. To know she doesn’t care if we see her coming.
Every surviving warship in the Sol System had been gathered in Earth orbit. He had over two hundred superdreadnoughts, backed by four hundred battlecruisers and the next best thing to a million pods of improved Cataphracts, and his sensor platforms had kept her under a microscope, twenty-four hours a day, waiting for exactly this moment. He had enough firepower to shatter planets, been given as much warning—as much time to prepare for an attack—as any system commander in history.
And he knew she’d given him that time on purpose.
HMS Imperator
Sol System
Honor watched her plot as her massive formation decelerated once again to rest relative to Old Earth and shoals of LACs erupted from her carriers to form up about her wall of battle. She was exactly one light-second inside the hyper-limit, 231,559,727 kilometers from the planet of humanity’s birth, and her eyes were as bleak as her soul.
“In position, Ma’am,” Andrea Jaruwalski said.
“Thank you, Andrea.”
Honor nodded, then turned her head, looked at Lieutenant Commander Brantley.
“Put me through, Harper.”
Central Command Center
Admiralty Building
City of Old Chicago
Old Earth
Sol System
“Incoming transmission, Sir,” Commander Pamela Furman, the com officer of the watch announced, and Kingsford turned to face her.
It was almost a relief to look away from the master plot. No, that wasn’t accurate. It wasn’t almost a relief to look away from that horde of crimson icons. Harrington remained outside his Cataphracts’ powered envelope, and he wondered how many of the light codes spreading out about her superdreadnoughts represented missile pods and how many of them were the infernally powerful LACs ONI had finally gotten around to reporting to him.
“I assume it’s Admiral Harrington?” he said, and Furman nodded.
“Yes, Sir. It is.”
“Then I suppose you’d better put her on the main display,” he said.
He felt Jennings stir beside him, and gave t
he chief of staff an ironic smile. Jennings might have a point. Perhaps this was the sort of message he ought to be taking in private, but he doubted it would make much difference in the end.
“Yes, Sir,” Furman said, but she also paused, and he frowned.
“Is there a problem, Commander?” he asked, a bit coldly, and she inhaled.
“Sir, Admiral Harrington’s contacting you through a com relay less than forty thousand kilometers out. It’s actually in a geosynchronous orbit above the Atlantic.”
Kingsford stiffened. Geosynchronous orbit?
“Should I assume we didn’t know it was there?”
“No, Sir. We didn’t.” Furman’s expression was as unhappy as any Kingsford had ever seen, but she met his eyes levelly.
“I see.”
Kingsford glanced at Jennings again, and the chief of staff’s expression was even less happy than Furman’s. And little wonder, the CNO thought. The fresh proof of the Manties’ remote platforms’ ability to penetrate their sensors at will was chilling. But perhaps he should be grateful to Harrington for making that point yet again. Anything that inspired sanity and…restraint on his part was probably a good thing.
“Go ahead and put her through, Commander,” he said levelly.
“Yes, Sir.”
Kingsford tucked his hands behind him and turned back to the main communications display as it came alive and a face he knew from hundreds of megabytes of intelligence analyses looked out of it.
“Good afternoon, Admiral Harrington,” he said.
“Good afternoon, Admiral Kingsford,” she replied twelve seconds later. He wasn’t really surprised. In fact, he’d expected it. Which made the demonstration of the Manties’ FTL bandwidth no less galling to someone whose faster-than-light data transmission was still at least a full T-year from anything more advanced than the dots and dashes of old-fashioned Morse code.
“I’ve been rather expecting to hear from you,” he said now.