Uncompromising honor, p.84
Uncompromising Honor, page 84
part #19 of Honor Harrington Series
He reminded himself of that now as he unlocked the number pad on his console and entered the second of the long, complicated commands he’d been given. The one he’d been told to use if he couldn’t transmit until after the Sollies’ attack had ended.
He’d been placed in Beowulf over forty T-years ago, and despite the excitement of knowing the Detweiler Plan had finally been launched, his had been a terminally boring assignment. He was confident the intelligence data he sent up the line was valuable, but he doubted it was of earthshaking importance, and he’d come to the conclusion that he was one of the countless agents who’d spend their entire careers on the periphery: valuable, dedicated, conscientious, and with damn-all to show for it at the end of the day. So he’d felt an undeniable surge of adrenaline when his control told him he’d been activated as a vital component of a major operation. She hadn’t told him what that operation was, although the fact that it was supposed to coordinate with a Solly attack on the system—assuming the Sollies ever got off their arses and launched the damned thing—had underscored its importance. He had no idea what his transmission would accomplish, but whatever it was, he was pretty damned sure the Beowulfers around him would never forget it.
Even if they never knew he was the one who’d done it…whatever the hell it was!
He entered the last digit of the code and looked down at his panel for a moment, wondering if he should abort his part of the operation, since he hadn’t been able to execute it as the missiles attacked, after all. He was tempted, despite the second code he’d been given. Whatever happened when he sent it, the Grand Alliance was unlikely to blame it on the Sollies, and hadn’t that been the purpose of the entire operation?
But he didn’t know if all the missiles out there had attacked yet, now did he? The System Defense Force might know, but he didn’t, and if there was another attack inbound and he aborted his part of the operation…
His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply, and then he shrugged. Wiser heads with far more information than he could possess had come up with the plan and they had given him the second code. All he could do was the best he could do. And, he admitted to himself, there was another reason.
If he’d been brought operational for a moment that let him contribute to the Detweiler Plan on the grand stage, he was damned if he was going to miss it!
He smiled at that thought and hit the transmit button.
Cargo Container H&L 1007-9-463(h) received the command and implemented it.
Twenty-seven seconds later, Beowulf Gamma, the third largest orbital habitat in the Beowulf System, ceased to exist, along with 9.5 million human beings…including a Mesan gamma line named Harold Simmons-Gilchrest.
System Defense HQ
City of Columbia
Beowulf
Beowulf System
Someone inhaled sharply behind Corey McAvoy.
He could never decide, later, why that single, sharp inhalation sent such a sudden, instinctive stab of dread through him. It wasn’t all that loud, and there’d been no reason to expect additional bad news, given the Sollies’ decisive defeat. The lives they’d lost had been painful, a higher price than he’d ever have wanted to pay, and yet the admiral’s part of his brain—the cold part the human being in him so often disliked—had told him it was a ludicrously low price compared to the one which might have been demanded. So, no—there’d been no reason at all for that icy flash that told him not to turn around, not to ask who the sound had come from.
But he was an admiral, and so he turned away from his conversation with Caddell-Markham anyway, and found Cheryl Dunstan-Meyers staring at him, her green eyes huge with shocked horror.
“What?” he asked.
“Beowulf Gamma, Sir.” Unlike his, her voice was hoarse, stunned.
“What about it?”
“It’s…gone, Sir. It’s just—” She shook her head. “It’s just gone.”
Her voice quivered, almost breaking, on the final word, and he looked at her in confusion. What could she possibly—?
Then his eyes strayed to the master plot, and the mental question chopped off brutal, guillotine suddenness.
“How?” he snapped instead.
“I don’t know, Sir.” Dunstan-Meyers was one of the most professional officers Corey McAvoy had ever met, but those green eyes suddenly welled with tears. “I don’t know!” She shook her head again. “We got all the missiles—I know there weren’t any left! But…but—”
She broke off, her face pale, and McAvoy looked past her shoulder at the display where almost ten million of the civilians he was supposed to protect had just died.
Planetary Director’s Office
City of Columbia
Beowulf
“My God, Gabe!” Chyang Benton-Ramirez’s face was bloodless. “My God, my God! What the hell just happened?”
“I don’t know,” Caddell-Markham’s dark complexion showed his shock less obviously, but his eyes were stunned looking. “Nobody does! Or not yet, at least.”
“But, the missiles…”
“That’s the one thing we know it wasn’t,” Caddell-Markham said grimly.
“But if it wasn’t—?”
“Our best guess up here—and it’s what Corey’s working on, too, I think—is that it had to be internal.” The defense director’s voice was crushed gravel. “Somebody got a bomb aboard. One powerful enough to take out a seven billion-ton habitat. That’s the only way it could’ve happened.”
“But who—?”
“It was the Alignment, Sir,” Patricia Givens said, standing beside Caddell-Markham with Sir Thomas Caparelli and Judah Yanakov. Michael Mayhew stood on the defense director’s other side, his face like iron.
“We can’t prove it—yet,” Givens continued, reaching up to press one hand to Strong Mind’s flattened ears. “It’s the only answer, though.”
“Not the Sollies?”
“No, Mister Chairman.” Givens shook her head sharply. “That’s the one thing I’m absolutely sure of.”
Benton-Ramirez raised his eyebrows, and the second space lord nodded to the woman standing at her elbow.
“Commander Lassaline, my chief of staff, Sir,” she said. “She’s been coordinating with your local intelligence people since we got here for the conference.” She turned to look at the commander. “You want to take this, Terry?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Commander Lassaline’s face was tight with tension, but her eyes were clear and focused, Benton-Ramirez thought.
“Sir,” she said, speaking directly to him, “if the Sollies had wanted to do this—and if they could’ve gotten a bomb aboard—they’d never have committed that many ships to an open attack and taken such massive losses. They wouldn’t have needed to. For that matter, they would have wanted their navy as far away as possible when the bomb went off. My God, Sir—this is an even worse Eridani violation than the Yawata Strike! Total casualties are already high, even with the surviving block ships already in position to intercept wreckage before it de-orbits and kills anybody dirtside, but in terms of a cold-blooded, deliberate mass-casualty strike on a nonmilitary target, this is probably the worst violation since the Edict was promulgated! This single bomb’s killed more people than the worst-case estimate for all the ‘Mesa Atrocity’ explosions combined! There is no way—no way in hell—the Sollies would’ve done something like this while they’re so busy beating us over the head about Mesa.”
Benton-Ramirez nodded slowly. Her analysis made sense, although the reason for such an attack made none. Unless—
“You think they could have intended for this explosion to be simultaneous with the Sollies’ strike on Ivaldi?”
Givens glanced at her military colleagues, then back out of the display at him.
“I think that’s possible, Sir. Probable, even. I don’t know why they’d’ve done it at all, but it certainly looks like it was intended to coincide with the attack. I don’t know whether that’s because they were looking for some kind of deniability or because they wanted to saddle the Sollies with responsibility for some reason. But I can’t help thinking there was something else behind it, as well.”
“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.
Behind them, Tobias Stimson was methodically smashing the locks off one locker after another. White Haven had no idea what his armsman was up to, but right this minute he didn’t care. Like Benton-Ramirez y Chou, he was totally focused on the display screen.
“Of course it was Mesa,” he agreed 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 four 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.
Under the original operational planning, Beowulf Beta would have died at the same instant as Beowulf Gamma, at a moment coordinated with the Solarian attack. The planners had been unable to predict exactly when that moment would come, which was why they’d been forced to rely on their agent-in-place. But they’d also realized from the beginning that that coordination might prove unobtainable when the time actually came. And so, they’d programmed two separate attack sequences. If they lost the coordination with the missile strike and the detonation command was transmitted anyway, there was no point pretending the subsequent explosions were the direct result of the Solarian attack, and in that case, they had a rather different message to deliver.
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’d 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.
Five 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 plot. “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 five 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. It’d take the better part of a frigging week to evacuate that many people, 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 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 an hour, either. Maybe they didn’t get another one aboard. I hope to hell they didn’t. But if they did, they’re damned well not waiting half an hour before they blow it. So if that happens, 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 Alexander-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 thunderstorms approached majestically from the east, and her nostrils 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!”
