Uncompromising honor, p.86
Uncompromising Honor, page 86
part #19 of Honor Harrington Series
For a moment, something seemed alive behind the frozen flint of her eyes, but then she took her hand from Katherine’s head and whatever it had been disappeared once again into the ice.
“I have to get back to the ship. We’ve got a lot to do, and I don’t want to lose the time window.”
“If you’re sure,” Allison repeated with a very different emphasis and Honor looked at her.
Honor had raised every barrier she could against the emotions of those about her. Her ability to feel what others felt wasn’t something she could turn off or on. It simply was, an inescapable part of who she’d become over the years. She had learned to…adjust the volume, though, and she needed that now. Needed it because the loss and the pain, the fury and the sympathy pouring into her and Nimitz from everyone around them threatened to drag them under. That tide of emotion threatened to break her concentration. Threatened to divert her from the task before her, and nothing could be permitted to do that.
But her mother’s very special anguish could not be escaped. The grief over the death of her beloved twin brother. The knowledge of how Jacques’s death, especially like this, would hammer all of Alfred Harrington’s wounds from the Yawata Strike. The aching sense of loss for a son-in-law and, especially, a daughter-in-law she’d come to love dearly. The knowledge that dozens of other friends, family, must have died aboard the Beowulf habitats with Jacques and Hamish.
And fear. Fear for her daughter.
“I’m sure, Mother.” There was no emotion in Honor’s voice, but she managed a brief caricature of a smile. It vanished quickly, and her nostrils flared as she reached up to the silent, grieving treecat on her shoulder. “Like I told Elizabeth, this has to end. And I’m going to end it, once and for all.”
Allison shifted Katherine’s weight so she could lay one hand on Honor’s arm.
“I know you are, sweetheart.” Her voice was calm, almost serene, despite the tears glittering on her lashes, and she shook her head. “I know that, believe me. But you come back to me. Raoul and Katherine need you now, more than ever. And your father and I—We’ll always need you, Honor. So you come back to us.”
“Mother, I’ll be aboard the fleet flagship.” She managed another fleeting smile. “The Sollies don’t have a thing that could touch her in a standup fight. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe we just didn’t make that clear enough.” A very different expression replaced the smile, and her frozen eyes filled with a chill, flickering fire. “That’s one of the oversights I intend to set right.”
She felt Allison’s concern spike higher, but she refused to allow it in, denied it access to the frozen helium of her purpose. She knew what Allison really meant. Knew what her mother really wanted to say was “Give me back my daughter and take away this stranger. Give me back the person who still knows how to love, how to care. Give me back my child and give back the mother my grandchildren need.”
But Honor didn’t know if she could do that.
She didn’t know if anyone could do that.
She reached out, touched her mother’s cheek very gently, and her thumb brushed away one of Allison’s tears.
“Take care of Daddy and the babies,” she said softly.
“Of course I will.”
“I know.”
She leaned close, kissed Katherine’s cheek, then leaned her forehead against her mother’s for a long, still moment.
And then Honor Alexander-Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, turned and walked out of that foyer, into the driving Landing rain, down the steps to the waiting air car, without a backward glance.
HMS Imperator
In Hyper-Space
“Will there be anything else, Ma’am?”
Honor looked up from her plate at the quiet question. James MacGuiness stood at her shoulder, holding the carafe of cocoa, his gray eyes dark.
“No, Mac.” She shook her head. “No, that’s fine. I think we’re both done.”
“Are you sure?” He tried so hard to keep the anxiety out of his voice, but she tasted it anyway.
“Yes,” she said, as gently as she could. “I’m sure. Thank you.” She reached out to lay one hand gently on his forearm. “That’s from Nimitz, too.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” It came out husky and he set the cocoa on the dining cabin table, then ducked his head. “Just…just buzz if you change your mind.”
“I will.” She tried to smile at him. She failed. “I promise.”
He looked at her a moment longer, then nodded once and disappeared, and Honor looked back at the largely untouched food on her plate. The steak had been perfect, with the cool red center she loved. The salad, the baked potato, the stein of Old Tillman…all the components of one of her favorite meals.
And she’d eaten less than half of it.
She gazed at it for a few more seconds, then sighed and pushed back her chair.
She stood, gathering Nimitz into her arms, and crossed the deck. She stood in the hatch between the dining cabin and her day cabin and looked at the portrait on the bulkhead above her desk. Her mother had taken that picture in the White Haven family chapel. Honor stood between Hamish and Emily, holding Emily’s hand, her eyes glowing as Hamish faced Reverend Sullivan and recited his wedding vows. Nimitz rode her shoulder and Samantha perched on Hamish’s, and she tasted Nimitz’s pain as he, too, looked at the people they would never see again. Despite his thick coat, she thought she could feel his ribs, but that was probably imagination. Both of them were losing weight, but it had been less than three days since that last hideous afternoon at White Haven.
She knew why MacGuiness was worried. Just as she knew he, too, was grieving. She wished there was some way, any way, she could ease her steward’s—her friend’s—pain, but there wasn’t. She didn’t have it in her. She had nothing in her except a vast, singing emptiness where the people she’d loved should have been. Nothing except the single unwavering purpose left to her. The deadly determination, colder than the vacuum outside her flagship’s hull, more focused—and far more lethal—than any warhead or broadside graser.
She had no idea what would happen to her—and to Nimitz—when that purpose, that determination, had been discharged. She didn’t care. It was all she and Nimitz had, all the universe had left them. She didn’t know what the opposition would be, had less current information on her objective’s defenses than she’d had before any other operation in the last ten T-years. But she knew two things. She knew the Sollies couldn’t possibly expect her this soon, and she knew she would accomplish her purpose, her mission, even if Hell itself stood in her way.
What happened after that could take care of itself.
She stood another long, still moment, looking at that image of murdered love, cradling her beloved dead. Then she set Nimitz gently on the perch beside her desk, sat in her own chair, keyed her terminal, and punched up Grand Fleet’s order of battle.
BSDS Hawthorne
Beowulf Planetary Orbit
Beowulf System
“Sorry, Skipper. I know you don’t want any coms that aren’t essential, but I think you’d better take this one.”
Captain John Neitz looked up from his cup of coffee and tried not to scowl at his executive officer. Commander Badilotti and he had been friends for years, and the XO’s eyes were as exhausted as his own. They were also apologetic.
“Why is that, David?” It came out testier than he’d intended it to, and he shook his head in a quick apology of his own. “Sorry.”
“No sweat, Skip,” Badilotti said. “But like I say, I think you’ll want to take this one. It’s Christina.”
Neitz set his cup in the holder on his command chair’s arm and inhaled.
“For once, I think you’re right about something,” he said with a weary smile, and Badilotti’s lips twitched in brief response. Then Neitz looked over his shoulder at the com officer. “Patch it through to my uni-link, please, Carla.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Neitz leaned back in his command chair. It was one of the most comfortable chairs in the known galaxy, but somehow it wasn’t quite capable of feeling that way for a body as tired as his was.
“John?” a beloved voice said in his ear, and he closed his eyes while he savored it.
“Hi, honey,” he responded.
“I hate to disturb you,” Christina Neitz said. “I know you’re all exhausted and going crazy up there.”
“There are disturbances, and then there are disturbances, sweetheart.” He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see it. “Trust me, this is one I don’t mind. In fact, it’s one I think I need.”
“It must be like visiting hell,” she said softly.
“You got that one right, babe,” he replied. “My God, you got that one right.”
She was silent for a moment, and Neitz could almost physically feel her reaching across the thousands of kilometers of vacuum between BSDS Hawthorne and Columbia. Christina was a senior attorney in the Directorate of Justice, and things must be almost as crazy in her office as they were up here, he thought. Her boss, Devorah Ophir-Giacconi, the Board of Directors’ Solicitor, and her senior deputy had both been aboard Beowulf Alpha. He wasn’t sure who Ophir-Giacconi’s surviving senior deputy was now, but a hellacious workload had to be coming down on Christina, too.
There was a lot of that going around.
Six days. That was how long had passed since the Beowulf Strike. Six days of nightmare labor, and a huge part of that had landed on Hawthorne. She was one of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s Whitethorn-class rescue ships, superbly designed and equipped for search and rescue operations under the most difficult conditions imaginable. But there were only eight of them in the entire SDF…and no one had ever imagined conditions like this. No wonder Badilotti—all of Neitz’s people—were so exhausted.
No really big chunks of wreckage had gotten through to the planet, thank God. There’d been no major surface strikes, no tsunamis like the one which had killed his third cousin and her family in Yawata. The block ships which had been unable to protect the habitats had at least managed to intercept their broken bones before that happened.
Not that plenty of bits and pieces still in orbit didn’t pose potential threats. One of the first things Search and Rescue Command had done was to plot vectors for all the larger chunks of debris. Those which had threatened other habitats had been intercepted first, but scores of others tumbled on new, highly eccentric orbits that swooped low enough to graze the fringe of atmosphere. Those would have to be dealt with soon, as well, before they lost sufficient velocity to nosedive to the surface like the lost hammer of Thor.
Most of the debris threatened no one, though. Not immediately.
And God alone knew how many pieces of that “debris” had once been human beings.
Neitz’s jaw tightened at that thought. The debris pattern, coupled with the sensor records of the actual event, made it clear the charges had been placed with vicious forethought. Law enforcement and military intelligence were only starting their relentless assault on how it had been done, but at least a dozen competing theories had already emerged. Personally, Neitz went with what was generally regarded as the most probable. The devices had to have been in one of the central cargo hubs aboard each habitat. It was the only way to account for the wreckage patterns…and those hubs had been located at the cores of the enormous platforms’ personnel sections. That was why the bastards had taken that approach, chosen those locations for some innocuous, well-camouflaged crate or container. A cargo canister in one of the open-space orbital holding areas would have inflicted little—probably even no—damage when it detonated. Even one of the long-term controlled condition storage booms would have provided sufficient separation for much of something as massive as Beowulf Alpha was—had been—to survive. But not in the cargo hubs. They’d been deliberately located as conveniently as possible to the places where people lived.
“How much longer, honey?” Christina asked in his ear, and his nostrils flared.
“However long it takes.” It came out much more harshly than he’d intended. “Lord, I’m sorry,” he said a moment later, his tone contrite. “It’s just…just that we can’t quit. We just can’t.”
“I know. And I shouldn’t push for answers you can’t give me anyway. I know that, too.” He could picture that small, loving, half-apologetic smile perfectly. “It’s just that we miss you down here.”
“Miss you, too,” he said, but he knew what she was really thinking. It had been almost a T-week. An entire T-week. Hawthorne alone had recovered over six hundred bodies so far, and that wasn’t even her primary mission. He had no idea how many had been recovered by Search and Rescue’s small craft, and he didn’t want to know. Not really. But that wasn’t Hawthorne’s job. Her teams were out amid the densest parts of the debris field in her specialized salvage shuttles, threading their way through the thousand-ton chunks of alloy, cutting their way into compartments that might still be intact. Searching desperately for someone who might still be alive.
So far, they’d found sixteen. Sixteen…and they weren’t going to find any more of them. He’d made himself accept that twenty-four hours ago. Anyone who’d been trapped in one of those compartments had run out of air or heat or power long since.
But that didn’t mean they’d stop looking. “No One Left behind.” That was Search and Rescue’s motto, and they would by God keep the faith. No matter what, no matter who, they’d honor that trust.
“I’m sorry to say that the real reason I commed you is that I just heard from Lizzy,” Christina said after a moment, and Neitz frowned. Lizzy—Elizabeth—was their daughter, a student at Hippocrates University. She’d been safely on the other side of the planet when Alpha blew up, so why…?
“Lizzy?” he repeated.
“Yes.” Christina paused, almost as if she was gathering her strength. “She just found out Felicia Cummings, Tim Qwan, Katsuko Johnson, and half a dozen of her other friends were at the Broken Arrow concert.”
Neitz closed his eyes in sudden pain.
Broken Arrow. He remembered how hard he’d tried to get Lizzy a ticket to the band’s live concert. She shouldn’t have been going—not with mid-terms coming up this week—but he’d known how badly she’d wanted to. And he’d been bitterly disappointed when he found out he’d waited too long.
Then. Before all forty thousand concert-goers died with the rest of Beowulf Alpha. And Katsuko…Katsuko who’d been Lizzy’s best friend since nursery school…
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he whispered.
“I know. I know.” He heard the tears glittering in his wife’s voice. “You know what she’s like. She’s visiting Katsuko’s mom right now, and then she’s headed over to the Qwans. She’s like you. She has to be there for people.”
Neitz nodded silently. He knew exactly what his daughter was doing at that moment, despite her own terrible grief.
“I just wanted you to know,” Christina went on. “You know she’s not going to mention it to you—certainly not while you’re still up there. But I figured—”
“You figured I should know before she and I have a chance to talk about it,” he finished for her. “Because the last thing either of us need is for me to say something that hurts her all over again. And because you’re a good mom and a better wife. We’re both lucky to have you.”
“Oh, I’ve always known that!” she said with a slightly watery chuckle, and he smiled wearily.
“Well, at least I’ve finally started figuring it out, too,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to say I could be a little sl—”
“Priority signal!” Lieutenant Simpkins-Howard announced suddenly from Communications, and Neitz’s eyes popped open.
“Gotta run, honey!”
“Go,” Christina said. “And promise me you’ll try to get at least a little rest.”
“Love you,” he said, instead of issuing any promises he knew he couldn’t keep. Then he killed the uni-link and swiveled his chair to face Communications.
“What is it, Carla?”
“It’s the Bosun, Sir. Charlie Three’s reporting a live suit beacon!”
“A live beacon?”
“Yes, Sir!”
Badilotti leaned forward, looking over the sensor officer of the watch’s shoulder. Now he straightened and turned to face Neitz.
“That’s sure as hell what it looks like, Skipper,” he said. “One of Platform Engineering’s suits, from the transponder code.”
“After this long? Where’s it been for the last week? It’s got to be some kind of sensor glitch.”
“Don’t know where it’s been, Sir, but it’s Bosun Lochen.” Badilotti twitched a tired smile. “If you want, I can ask him to double check.”
“Bad idea,” Neitz said, shaking his head.
Senior Master Chief Petty Officer Bill Lochen, Hawthorne’s senior NCO, had been in Search and Rescue since the year Captain John Neitz graduated from high school. He was the best wreck-diver Neitz had ever met, which was the reason he and Charlie Three, Neitz’s most experienced shuttle crew, were the point of Hawthorne’s spear. If he said he was picking up a signal, he was picking up a signal.
Which didn’t explain why no one had picked it up sooner.
“The Bosun does say it’s coming from inside a real rat’s nest of wreckage, Skipper,” Badilotti continued, as if he’d heard his captain’s thought. “In fact, if I had to guess, the problem’s how deep it is, how much junk it has to punch through. That’s got to be why we didn’t spot it earlier.”
