"The Colonel needs a pilot, Ma'am."
"He's got a pilot," Hibson pointed out. "A reasonably competent fellow he brought all the way from Nike with him."
"Yes, Ma'am. But I'm worried about his nav systems." He met Hibson's gaze with total innocence. "Chief Harkness and I have run a complete diagnostic series without managing to isolate a fault, but I'm pretty sure there is one."
"Oh?" Hibson leaned back and popped her gum thoughtfully. Lieutenant Tremaine hadn't been briefed for the operation, but that didn't seem to have kept him from figuring things out. "Is it bad enough to downcheck the boat?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Ma'am. It's just that the Chief and I would feel better if we were along to ride herd on the systems. And, of course, if something did happen to go wrong, he and I would be on the spot to make repairs... and verify the fault for the record."
Hibson raised an eyebrow. "Have you mentioned your concern to Captain McKeon?"
"Yes, Ma'am. The Skipper says the pinnaces are your and Colonel Ramirez's responsibility, but if you'd care to ask for a little Fleet technical support just in case, he's willing to detach the Chief and me for a few days."
"I see." Hibson popped her gum a couple of more times, then shrugged. "I'll take it up with the Colonel, then. If he says you can tag along, it's all right with me."
"Now hear this. Now hear this. Drop point in thirty minutes. Ninth Battalion, man drop stations. Ninth Battalion, man drop stations."
Men and women looked up as the announcement rattled from the speakers in HMS Prince Adrian's Marine Country. The two companies of Nike's Marines scheduled to make the drop in heavy assault configuration were already armored up; their more fortunate fellows put down coffee cups, playing cards, and book viewers and began climbing into their skinsuits while they invoked traditional and time-honored maledictions upon the designers of their equipment. Navy skinsuits were designed primarily for vacuum, with an eye to allowing their wearers to engage in delicate repair work and similarly intricate activities over what could be very lengthy periods indeed. Marine skinnies, on the other hand, while undeniably more comfortable than powered battle armor, were heavier, bulkier, and generally far more of a pain in the ass than Navy gear, because they incorporated light but highly effective body armor and were intended for hostile planetary environments as well as vacuum. As long as the wearer's efficiency wasn't impaired, comfort ran a poor second to toughness under the Marine design philosophy, but even the Corps' most accomplished bitchers had to admit that the worst a Gryphon—or even a Sphinx—winter could offer would do little more than inconvenience a skinsuited Marine. Which, given the mission briefs weather reports, was probably a very good thing.
Orders rapped out as Nike's Marines formed up in Prince Adrian's boat bays. Some of the heavy cruiser's own Marines ambled by to see them off, with looks that varied from commiseration to comfortable enjoyment of someone else's misfortune. Nike's Marines responded with pooh-pooh expressions and false enthusiasm, comforting themselves with the reflection that their hosts would find themselves in similar situations soon enough. What went around, came around; that was one of the Corps' imperishable truths. Besides, scuttlebutt said this particular operation was in a more worthy cause than most.
Scotty Tremaine settled himself in the copilot's seat of Nike One, Colonel Ramirez's command pinnace. Major Hibson would ride in Nike Two, ready to take over if something happened to the colonel's com systems; Captain Tyler, operating from Apollo's boat bay in Nike Three, would be equally ready to back up the major. Coxswain Petty Officer First Class Hudson regarded the lieutenant with hooded eyes, then bent forward to bring his internal systems on-line. He'd just detached the pinnace umbilicals when a senior chief with a prize fighter's battered face poked his head into the cramped cockpit.
"Looking good so far, Mr. Tremaine," Horace Harkness announced, then winked. "Still got a tiny glitch in the nav systems, though. I've logged it."
"Good, Chief. I'll keep an eye on things from up here," Tremaine replied with no expression at all.
"Yes, Sir."
Harkness disappeared, and Tremaine's earbug crackled with Colonel Ramirez's voice.
"How's it looking, Hudson?"
"Hatches sealed... now, Sir," Hudson replied as a red telltale flicked to green on his panel. "Docking tube retracted. Ready to launch, Sir."
"Good. Inform the duty control officer and proceed on his release."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Hudson acknowledged, and switched from intercom to his intership link.
Seven pinnaces separated from the heavy cruiser and her light cruiser consort. Thrusters blazed at full power, but they left their impeller wedges down as they arrowed toward the blue and white marble so far below. This was a full dress rehearsal; they not only ran silent to avoid any betraying scrap of com chatter but killed every readily detectable system, even their internal grav plates, and scorched down on the huge, curdled weather system assaulting Gryphon's southern hemisphere at their maximum safe reentry speed.
Noses and leading edges of wings and stabilators began to glow as they hit atmosphere. Their passengers had been briefed on the flight conditions they could expect and clung grimly to their equipment as the pinnaces began to buffet. However rough the ride was now, it was going to get worse.
Howling winds and driving snow awaited them, and their pilots were in airfoil mode, without even counter-grav as they drove into the teeth of the winter storm. Pinnaces were made for such conditions, but no one had yet found a way to reengineer human stomachs. A few passengers grinned at their neighbors with the cheerful brutality of the immune; others fought grim battles to hang onto their lunches, and a handful of unfortunate souls lost them.
Turbines howled louder than the storm, slicing down to get below the worst of the weather and close on their designated LZs, and Captain Alistair McKeon smiled at his tracking reports. Six of the pinnaces were dead on course; the seventh had already vanished from his scanner area, veering off into some of the worst weather on the planet.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness poked his head back into the cockpit with a toothy smile.
"Yes, Chief?" Tremaine never looked up from his instruments. PO Hudson was doing a dynamite job, but these weren't the weather conditions for anyone's attention to wander on the flight deck.
"Just thought you'd like to know, Sir. The nav systems must've just packed up completely, 'cause they say we're over thirty degrees off course."
"Scandalous, Chief. Just scandalous. I suppose you may as well shut the recorders down. No point logging an erroneous course, after all. PO Hudson and I'll just have to do the best we can."
Tomas Ramirez patted his equipment with an absent hand, checking his gear out of ingrained habit even as he watched his display. Nike One was further off course with every second—because of the storm, no doubt. The colonel smiled thinly, then looked up as someone appeared beside him.
"Why aren't you strapped in, Marine?" he began, then stopped, and his eyebrows knitted in an ominous frown before he shook his head with a sigh.
"Sar'major Babcock, would you mind telling me just what the hell you think you're doing here?" His tone was more resigned than his words might have suggested, and Iris Babcock snapped to attention.
"Sir! The sergeant-major respectfully reports that she seems to have become confused, Sir! I was under the impression this was one of Prince Adrian's pinnaces, Colonel."
Ramirez shook his head again. "Won't wash, Gunny. Prince Adrian doesn't even have the Mark Thirty yet."
"Sir, I—"
"Hold it right there." The colonel turned to glare at Francois Ivashko, his own battalion sergeant-major. "I don't suppose you happened to log Sar'major Babcock as an observer supernumerary, did you, Gunny?"
"Uh, no, Sir," Ivashko said. "But—"
"Well, in that case, get her logged now. I'm surprised at you, Gunny! You know how important the proper paperwork is. Now I'm going to have to clear this retroactively with Major Yestachenko and Captain McKeon!"
"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir. I guess I just dropped the ball, Sir," Ivashko said with a sudden, huge grin.
"Don't let it happen again," Ramirez growled, then shook a finger under Babcock's nose. "As for you, Sar'major, get back in your seat. And stay where I can keep an eye on you to make sure you behave dirt-side. Understood?"
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
"Nike Flight, this is Nike Two," Susan Hibson said into her com, her voice clear and composed. "Nike Two has lost track on Nike One and is assuming command until Nike One reestablishes contact. Two clear."
She leaned back in her seat and smiled down at her panel with a trace of regret. Life's a bitch, she told herself, but someone has to mind the store... and the Colonel outranks me.
"Snowfall" was too passive a word for what was happening around the isolated hunting chalet. A sixty kilometer-per-hour wind drove the flakes before it like a solid wall, screaming around the chalet's eaves so violently no one could have said where the ground ended and the white hurricane began, so one might reasonably have expected any sane person to be safely indoors.
One would have been wrong. Five men and women huddled in the lees of walls and exterior stairways, cursing their employer and themselves for ever taking this job while they peered halfheartedly out into the night. Their cold weather gear was excellent, but the wind was hitting gust speeds of up to a hundred KPH; even at max, the heating systems were losing ground to that sort of cutting bite. All of which only went to prove they were out here on a fool's errand. Exterior security might have made sense under most conditions, but only a lunatic would be out in weather like this!
None of them saw the huge, swept-wing shape come slicing in from downwind, turbine scream lost in the gale. PO Hudson threw it into vertical hover at three meters while his landing legs deployed, and it bucked and staggered in the gusting wind. Then it dropped like a rock, and massive shock absorbers soaked up the impact as it touched down on the flat sheet of rock Hudson's belly radar had mapped for him. The pinnace rocked drunkenly for a moment, but he brought up the ventral tractors, killing the oscillation and locking the craft immovably in place, then began powering down his flight systems, and Scotty Tremaine patted him on the shoulder.
"That, PO Hudson, was good. It was better than good—it was outstanding!"
"Thanks, Sir." Hudson grinned, and Harkness stuck his head back into the cockpit.
"All them grunts are getting ready to jump ship, Sir," he said to Tremaine. "Reckon we better go keep an eye on them?"
"In this weather?" Tremaine hit the button to slide his seat back from the controls. "Chief, it's the Navy's job to look after the helpless. We couldn't possibly trust a bunch of Marines to find their way home without us on a night like this!"
"'S what I thought, too, Sir," Harkness agreed, and extended a stun rifle to his lieutenant. "Hope you wore your warm undies, Sir."
The first warning any of the shivering exterior guards had was a brief glimpse of something materializing out of the snow. They didn't get a chance to identify it. Colonel Ramirez's official ops plan had called for his HQ platoon to play the role of a local quick-reaction defensive force against the rest of his Marines, and, just to make things interesting for the "raiders," he'd armed all the HQ types with stunners instead of the laser-tag rifles and sidearms their fellows carried.
The entire outside security force was down and unconscious before it even realized it was under attack.
"What do we do with 'em, Sir?" Sergeant-Major Ivashko asked over his suit com, prodding one limp body with a toe.
"I'd like to let them freeze, but that wouldn't be neighborly." Ramirez looked around through the howling snow, orienting himself against the map Prince Adrian had plotted from orbit before the weather closed in. "There's a storage shed over there, Gunny. Stack them in there."
"Aye, Sir." Ivashko checked the small tactical display inside his helmet and picked two nearby beacons. "Coulter, you and Malthus have babysitter duty. Get these sleeping beauties tucked away."
Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness didn't like Marines. It was an instinct he'd never questioned, but he was willing to make exceptions tonight. He padded along at Lieutenant Tremaine's heels, watching over his lieutenant with one eye while the other watched Colonel Ramirez's people in action.
With the exterior guards down, the Marines threw a perimeter about the chalet, located and disabled the emergency land-line, and took out the building's satellite up-link with their jammers, all in less than four minutes. While most of them dealt with that, the HQ section formed up around Colonel Ramirez while he parceled out the doors each of them should make for.
Lieutenant Tremaine attached himself directly to the colonel, and Harkness hadn't even realized Sergeant-Major Babcock had joined the show until he saw her padding along behind Ramirez. He shook his head. The Skipper had to be up to his neck in this whole thing, which meant there wasn't a lot he could do to the gunny—officially. But Harkness suspected he was going to tear a long, blood strip off her in private.
The colonel led the way to the chalet's front entrance and tried the latch gently. It was locked, but that didn't stop Ramirez. He shifted his stun rifle to his right hand, holding the heavy weapon like a pocket pistol, and drew a small, flat box from his equipment harness. He pressed it to the door and touched a button, and the latch sprang.
Ramirez toed the door open, and someone said some thing sharp and indignant as cold wind blasted through it. The massive officer didn't even blink. He just squeezed the stunner trigger and stepped through the door before who ever had complained hit the floor.
"One down," he murmured over the com as Babcock followed him.
"Make that two," someone else said over the same circuit.
"Three," a second voice said, followed a moment later by yet a third. "Four," it said quietly.
Tremaine followed Babcock into the paneled interior, with Harkness bringing up the rear. The others were inside now, as well, advancing with quick, efficient stealth and taking out the chalets inhabitants as they went. Things were going well, Harkness reflected, when he heard someone behind him.
"What the he—?!"
Harkness spun. A beefy, over-muscled type gawked at him, one hand reaching for a shoulder-holstered pulser in bemused reflex, and the chief swore under his breath. The bastard was too close for Harkness to get the muzzle of his stun rifle around, so he brought the butt up in a crisp, flashing arc that landed neatly on the other mans jaw and sent him crashing to the floor.
"Aw, shit!" someone muttered as the impact shook the hall. Harkness flushed, but there was no time to feel properly embarrassed, for other doors were opening as "guests" in the bedrooms off the hall roused.
The chief dropped one with a quick shot, then whipped back around to the front just as Lieutenant Tremaine stunned a third man. A single pulser shot whined, and Ramirez took three—two men and the woman who'd fired—with a wide-angled shot, less efficient but just as effective at this range.
But Sergeant-Major Babcock had been directly in front of a door when it jerked open, and the man and woman inside it had clearly been engaged in something besides sleep. They were minimally clothed but wide awake, and the woman grabbed Babcock's stunner before she could even begin to react.
Harkness cursed and tried to get his own weapon up, but the sergeant-major was too close to them. He couldn't get a clear shot—and a moment later, he didn't need one. Babcock let the woman tighten her grip on her stunner, and then both the Marine's feet left the floor at once. She pivoted on the firmly held weapon like a gymnast, and the other woman flew back with a gurgling grunt as two size-eight Combat Boots, Marine skinsuit, Mark Seven, hit her in the belly. The impact flung her into her fellow, who opened his mouth to shout—just as Babcock touched the floor once more and her left elbow struck his skull like a hammer. He went down without a sound, and the Marine stepped back, still holding her stunner, and calmly shot the woman before she stopped whooping for breath.
It was all over in a heartbeat, and Harkness gawked at Babcock's swift, silent efficiency. The sergeant-major glanced into the room her victims had come from and gave the man an insurance stun bolt of his own, then looked over her shoulder at the chief.
"Next time, bring a goddamned drum and bugle band along!" she snarled over the com.
"Can it, Gunny!" Ramirez snapped. The colonel stood stock-still, running his skinsuit's external sound pickups up to max, then relaxed. "No damage done, I think." He did a quick count of the unconscious bodies littering the hallway. "Twelve, repeat, total twelve down," he said over the com, and turned to dart his own look at Harkness. The chief expected something severe, but the colonel only shook a finger at him and turned back to his front.
Maybe, Harkness reflected, Marines weren't all that bad after all.
Five minutes later, the Marines had accounted for what should be every guard in the place, assuming their information was correct. Tomas Ramirez wasn't especially fond of assumptions, however. He positioned his people to cover the access routes to the central staircase, then led Babcock, Ivashko, and Tremaine up the stairs. Harkness wasn't invited, but he wasn't about to stay behind, either, and found himself bringing up the rear beside Babcock.
The door at the head of the stairs was closed and locked. The colonel tried his magic box again, but whoever was on the other side of that door didn't trust powered locks. He'd used an old-fashioned mechanical key, as well, and the colonel shrugged.
He handed his stunner to Ivashko. They couldn't afford to put this one to sleep for a couple of hours, and that meant he had to do things the hard way. Which didn't exactly disappoint him.
He stepped back to the edge of the landing, balanced on the balls of his feet, and then launched himself at the door. He had room only for three running strides, but the chalet door that could stop Tomas Ramirez had never been built, and he went through the rain of splinters like a boulder.
The man sleeping on the other side had the reflexes of a cat. He jerked upright in bed, one hand sliding under his pillow before his eyes had fully opened, yet he was still far too slow. Ramirez reached his bedside just as his fingers closed on the pulser's butt, and a hand like a power scoop gripped the front of his expensive pajamas.
Denver Summervale flew out of bed like a missile, and his gun hand hit a bedpost as he passed. He cried out in pain as the pulser was torn from his grip, and Ramirez released him as he reached the top of his arc.
Summervale sailed across the bedroom and barely managed to get an arm up to protect his head before he hit the opposite wall like a cannon ball. He bounced back, and even taken totally unawares in a sound sleep, he managed to land on his feet. He fell into an automatic defensive stance, shaking his head to clear it, and Ramirez let him. The colonel simply stood there, giving him time to recover, and waited for his charge.
It came. Summervale disliked physical combat. He was a specialist, a surgeon who removed unwanted problems with a gun, but he'd killed more than once with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he was nowhere near as fast—or as strong—as Tomas Ramirez, and he was in pajamas, not a Marine skinsuit.
Ramirez brushed aside a killing blow with his left hand and drove his right like a wrecking ball into Summervale's belly. The smaller man folded over it with a wailing grunt, and the colonel brought his left up in a vicious slap. The assassin flew backward, but he didn't hit the wall again. Ramirez caught him in midair, spun him like a toy, slammed him belly-down over the edge of his own bed, jerked one wrist up behind him, and locked an arm of iron across his throat.
Summervale fought to writhe free, only to scream in pain as Ramirez, his face totally without expression, rammed a skin-suited knee into his spine.
"Now, now, Mr. Summervale," the colonel said softly. "None of that."
The killer whimpered—a sound of involuntary anguish poisoned by his humiliation as it was forced from him—and Ramirez glanced over his shoulder at Ivashko, who laid a small recorder on the bed.
"Do you recognize my voice, Mr. Summervale?" Ramirez asked. Summervale gritted his teeth and refused to answer—then screamed again as stone-crusher fingers twisted his wrist. "I asked a question, Mr. Summervale," the colonel chided. "It's not nice to ignore questions."
Summervale screamed a third time, writhing in agony, then threw his head back as far as he could.
"Yes! Yes!" His aristocratic voice was ugly with pain and hate.
"Good. Can you guess why I'm here?"
"F-Fuck you!" Summervale panted past the arm about his throat.
"Such language!" Ramirez said almost genially. "Especially when I'm just here to ask you a question." His voice lost its pretense of humor, cold and hard. "Who paid you to kill Captain Tankersley, Summervale?"
"Go to hell, you-son-of-a-bitch!" Summervale gasped.
"That's not nice," Ramirez chided again. "I'm going to have to insist you tell me."
"Why the fuck should I?" Summervale actually managed a strangled laugh. "You'll just—kill me—when I do—so fuck you!"
"Mr. Summervale, Mr. Summervale!" Ramirez sighed. "The Captain would have my ass if I killed you, so just answer the question."
"Like hell!" Summervale panted.
"I think you should reconsider," Ramirez said softly, and Scotty Tremaine turned away, his face white, at the sound of his voice. "I only said I wouldn't kill you, Mr. Summervale," the colonel whispered almost lovingly. "I never said I wouldn't hurt you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"He's got a pilot," Hibson pointed out. "A reasonably competent fellow he brought all the way from Nike with him."
"Yes, Ma'am. But I'm worried about his nav systems." He met Hibson's gaze with total innocence. "Chief Harkness and I have run a complete diagnostic series without managing to isolate a fault, but I'm pretty sure there is one."
"Oh?" Hibson leaned back and popped her gum thoughtfully. Lieutenant Tremaine hadn't been briefed for the operation, but that didn't seem to have kept him from figuring things out. "Is it bad enough to downcheck the boat?"
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Ma'am. It's just that the Chief and I would feel better if we were along to ride herd on the systems. And, of course, if something did happen to go wrong, he and I would be on the spot to make repairs... and verify the fault for the record."
Hibson raised an eyebrow. "Have you mentioned your concern to Captain McKeon?"
"Yes, Ma'am. The Skipper says the pinnaces are your and Colonel Ramirez's responsibility, but if you'd care to ask for a little Fleet technical support just in case, he's willing to detach the Chief and me for a few days."
"I see." Hibson popped her gum a couple of more times, then shrugged. "I'll take it up with the Colonel, then. If he says you can tag along, it's all right with me."
"Now hear this. Now hear this. Drop point in thirty minutes. Ninth Battalion, man drop stations. Ninth Battalion, man drop stations."
Men and women looked up as the announcement rattled from the speakers in HMS Prince Adrian's Marine Country. The two companies of Nike's Marines scheduled to make the drop in heavy assault configuration were already armored up; their more fortunate fellows put down coffee cups, playing cards, and book viewers and began climbing into their skinsuits while they invoked traditional and time-honored maledictions upon the designers of their equipment. Navy skinsuits were designed primarily for vacuum, with an eye to allowing their wearers to engage in delicate repair work and similarly intricate activities over what could be very lengthy periods indeed. Marine skinnies, on the other hand, while undeniably more comfortable than powered battle armor, were heavier, bulkier, and generally far more of a pain in the ass than Navy gear, because they incorporated light but highly effective body armor and were intended for hostile planetary environments as well as vacuum. As long as the wearer's efficiency wasn't impaired, comfort ran a poor second to toughness under the Marine design philosophy, but even the Corps' most accomplished bitchers had to admit that the worst a Gryphon—or even a Sphinx—winter could offer would do little more than inconvenience a skinsuited Marine. Which, given the mission briefs weather reports, was probably a very good thing.
Orders rapped out as Nike's Marines formed up in Prince Adrian's boat bays. Some of the heavy cruiser's own Marines ambled by to see them off, with looks that varied from commiseration to comfortable enjoyment of someone else's misfortune. Nike's Marines responded with pooh-pooh expressions and false enthusiasm, comforting themselves with the reflection that their hosts would find themselves in similar situations soon enough. What went around, came around; that was one of the Corps' imperishable truths. Besides, scuttlebutt said this particular operation was in a more worthy cause than most.
Scotty Tremaine settled himself in the copilot's seat of Nike One, Colonel Ramirez's command pinnace. Major Hibson would ride in Nike Two, ready to take over if something happened to the colonel's com systems; Captain Tyler, operating from Apollo's boat bay in Nike Three, would be equally ready to back up the major. Coxswain Petty Officer First Class Hudson regarded the lieutenant with hooded eyes, then bent forward to bring his internal systems on-line. He'd just detached the pinnace umbilicals when a senior chief with a prize fighter's battered face poked his head into the cramped cockpit.
"Looking good so far, Mr. Tremaine," Horace Harkness announced, then winked. "Still got a tiny glitch in the nav systems, though. I've logged it."
"Good, Chief. I'll keep an eye on things from up here," Tremaine replied with no expression at all.
"Yes, Sir."
Harkness disappeared, and Tremaine's earbug crackled with Colonel Ramirez's voice.
"How's it looking, Hudson?"
"Hatches sealed... now, Sir," Hudson replied as a red telltale flicked to green on his panel. "Docking tube retracted. Ready to launch, Sir."
"Good. Inform the duty control officer and proceed on his release."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Hudson acknowledged, and switched from intercom to his intership link.
Seven pinnaces separated from the heavy cruiser and her light cruiser consort. Thrusters blazed at full power, but they left their impeller wedges down as they arrowed toward the blue and white marble so far below. This was a full dress rehearsal; they not only ran silent to avoid any betraying scrap of com chatter but killed every readily detectable system, even their internal grav plates, and scorched down on the huge, curdled weather system assaulting Gryphon's southern hemisphere at their maximum safe reentry speed.
Noses and leading edges of wings and stabilators began to glow as they hit atmosphere. Their passengers had been briefed on the flight conditions they could expect and clung grimly to their equipment as the pinnaces began to buffet. However rough the ride was now, it was going to get worse.
Howling winds and driving snow awaited them, and their pilots were in airfoil mode, without even counter-grav as they drove into the teeth of the winter storm. Pinnaces were made for such conditions, but no one had yet found a way to reengineer human stomachs. A few passengers grinned at their neighbors with the cheerful brutality of the immune; others fought grim battles to hang onto their lunches, and a handful of unfortunate souls lost them.
Turbines howled louder than the storm, slicing down to get below the worst of the weather and close on their designated LZs, and Captain Alistair McKeon smiled at his tracking reports. Six of the pinnaces were dead on course; the seventh had already vanished from his scanner area, veering off into some of the worst weather on the planet.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness poked his head back into the cockpit with a toothy smile.
"Yes, Chief?" Tremaine never looked up from his instruments. PO Hudson was doing a dynamite job, but these weren't the weather conditions for anyone's attention to wander on the flight deck.
"Just thought you'd like to know, Sir. The nav systems must've just packed up completely, 'cause they say we're over thirty degrees off course."
"Scandalous, Chief. Just scandalous. I suppose you may as well shut the recorders down. No point logging an erroneous course, after all. PO Hudson and I'll just have to do the best we can."
Tomas Ramirez patted his equipment with an absent hand, checking his gear out of ingrained habit even as he watched his display. Nike One was further off course with every second—because of the storm, no doubt. The colonel smiled thinly, then looked up as someone appeared beside him.
"Why aren't you strapped in, Marine?" he began, then stopped, and his eyebrows knitted in an ominous frown before he shook his head with a sigh.
"Sar'major Babcock, would you mind telling me just what the hell you think you're doing here?" His tone was more resigned than his words might have suggested, and Iris Babcock snapped to attention.
"Sir! The sergeant-major respectfully reports that she seems to have become confused, Sir! I was under the impression this was one of Prince Adrian's pinnaces, Colonel."
Ramirez shook his head again. "Won't wash, Gunny. Prince Adrian doesn't even have the Mark Thirty yet."
"Sir, I—"
"Hold it right there." The colonel turned to glare at Francois Ivashko, his own battalion sergeant-major. "I don't suppose you happened to log Sar'major Babcock as an observer supernumerary, did you, Gunny?"
"Uh, no, Sir," Ivashko said. "But—"
"Well, in that case, get her logged now. I'm surprised at you, Gunny! You know how important the proper paperwork is. Now I'm going to have to clear this retroactively with Major Yestachenko and Captain McKeon!"
"Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir. I guess I just dropped the ball, Sir," Ivashko said with a sudden, huge grin.
"Don't let it happen again," Ramirez growled, then shook a finger under Babcock's nose. "As for you, Sar'major, get back in your seat. And stay where I can keep an eye on you to make sure you behave dirt-side. Understood?"
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
"Nike Flight, this is Nike Two," Susan Hibson said into her com, her voice clear and composed. "Nike Two has lost track on Nike One and is assuming command until Nike One reestablishes contact. Two clear."
She leaned back in her seat and smiled down at her panel with a trace of regret. Life's a bitch, she told herself, but someone has to mind the store... and the Colonel outranks me.
"Snowfall" was too passive a word for what was happening around the isolated hunting chalet. A sixty kilometer-per-hour wind drove the flakes before it like a solid wall, screaming around the chalet's eaves so violently no one could have said where the ground ended and the white hurricane began, so one might reasonably have expected any sane person to be safely indoors.
One would have been wrong. Five men and women huddled in the lees of walls and exterior stairways, cursing their employer and themselves for ever taking this job while they peered halfheartedly out into the night. Their cold weather gear was excellent, but the wind was hitting gust speeds of up to a hundred KPH; even at max, the heating systems were losing ground to that sort of cutting bite. All of which only went to prove they were out here on a fool's errand. Exterior security might have made sense under most conditions, but only a lunatic would be out in weather like this!
None of them saw the huge, swept-wing shape come slicing in from downwind, turbine scream lost in the gale. PO Hudson threw it into vertical hover at three meters while his landing legs deployed, and it bucked and staggered in the gusting wind. Then it dropped like a rock, and massive shock absorbers soaked up the impact as it touched down on the flat sheet of rock Hudson's belly radar had mapped for him. The pinnace rocked drunkenly for a moment, but he brought up the ventral tractors, killing the oscillation and locking the craft immovably in place, then began powering down his flight systems, and Scotty Tremaine patted him on the shoulder.
"That, PO Hudson, was good. It was better than good—it was outstanding!"
"Thanks, Sir." Hudson grinned, and Harkness stuck his head back into the cockpit.
"All them grunts are getting ready to jump ship, Sir," he said to Tremaine. "Reckon we better go keep an eye on them?"
"In this weather?" Tremaine hit the button to slide his seat back from the controls. "Chief, it's the Navy's job to look after the helpless. We couldn't possibly trust a bunch of Marines to find their way home without us on a night like this!"
"'S what I thought, too, Sir," Harkness agreed, and extended a stun rifle to his lieutenant. "Hope you wore your warm undies, Sir."
The first warning any of the shivering exterior guards had was a brief glimpse of something materializing out of the snow. They didn't get a chance to identify it. Colonel Ramirez's official ops plan had called for his HQ platoon to play the role of a local quick-reaction defensive force against the rest of his Marines, and, just to make things interesting for the "raiders," he'd armed all the HQ types with stunners instead of the laser-tag rifles and sidearms their fellows carried.
The entire outside security force was down and unconscious before it even realized it was under attack.
"What do we do with 'em, Sir?" Sergeant-Major Ivashko asked over his suit com, prodding one limp body with a toe.
"I'd like to let them freeze, but that wouldn't be neighborly." Ramirez looked around through the howling snow, orienting himself against the map Prince Adrian had plotted from orbit before the weather closed in. "There's a storage shed over there, Gunny. Stack them in there."
"Aye, Sir." Ivashko checked the small tactical display inside his helmet and picked two nearby beacons. "Coulter, you and Malthus have babysitter duty. Get these sleeping beauties tucked away."
Senior Chief Petty Officer Harkness didn't like Marines. It was an instinct he'd never questioned, but he was willing to make exceptions tonight. He padded along at Lieutenant Tremaine's heels, watching over his lieutenant with one eye while the other watched Colonel Ramirez's people in action.
With the exterior guards down, the Marines threw a perimeter about the chalet, located and disabled the emergency land-line, and took out the building's satellite up-link with their jammers, all in less than four minutes. While most of them dealt with that, the HQ section formed up around Colonel Ramirez while he parceled out the doors each of them should make for.
Lieutenant Tremaine attached himself directly to the colonel, and Harkness hadn't even realized Sergeant-Major Babcock had joined the show until he saw her padding along behind Ramirez. He shook his head. The Skipper had to be up to his neck in this whole thing, which meant there wasn't a lot he could do to the gunny—officially. But Harkness suspected he was going to tear a long, blood strip off her in private.
The colonel led the way to the chalet's front entrance and tried the latch gently. It was locked, but that didn't stop Ramirez. He shifted his stun rifle to his right hand, holding the heavy weapon like a pocket pistol, and drew a small, flat box from his equipment harness. He pressed it to the door and touched a button, and the latch sprang.
Ramirez toed the door open, and someone said some thing sharp and indignant as cold wind blasted through it. The massive officer didn't even blink. He just squeezed the stunner trigger and stepped through the door before who ever had complained hit the floor.
"One down," he murmured over the com as Babcock followed him.
"Make that two," someone else said over the same circuit.
"Three," a second voice said, followed a moment later by yet a third. "Four," it said quietly.
Tremaine followed Babcock into the paneled interior, with Harkness bringing up the rear. The others were inside now, as well, advancing with quick, efficient stealth and taking out the chalets inhabitants as they went. Things were going well, Harkness reflected, when he heard someone behind him.
"What the he—?!"
Harkness spun. A beefy, over-muscled type gawked at him, one hand reaching for a shoulder-holstered pulser in bemused reflex, and the chief swore under his breath. The bastard was too close for Harkness to get the muzzle of his stun rifle around, so he brought the butt up in a crisp, flashing arc that landed neatly on the other mans jaw and sent him crashing to the floor.
"Aw, shit!" someone muttered as the impact shook the hall. Harkness flushed, but there was no time to feel properly embarrassed, for other doors were opening as "guests" in the bedrooms off the hall roused.
The chief dropped one with a quick shot, then whipped back around to the front just as Lieutenant Tremaine stunned a third man. A single pulser shot whined, and Ramirez took three—two men and the woman who'd fired—with a wide-angled shot, less efficient but just as effective at this range.
But Sergeant-Major Babcock had been directly in front of a door when it jerked open, and the man and woman inside it had clearly been engaged in something besides sleep. They were minimally clothed but wide awake, and the woman grabbed Babcock's stunner before she could even begin to react.
Harkness cursed and tried to get his own weapon up, but the sergeant-major was too close to them. He couldn't get a clear shot—and a moment later, he didn't need one. Babcock let the woman tighten her grip on her stunner, and then both the Marine's feet left the floor at once. She pivoted on the firmly held weapon like a gymnast, and the other woman flew back with a gurgling grunt as two size-eight Combat Boots, Marine skinsuit, Mark Seven, hit her in the belly. The impact flung her into her fellow, who opened his mouth to shout—just as Babcock touched the floor once more and her left elbow struck his skull like a hammer. He went down without a sound, and the Marine stepped back, still holding her stunner, and calmly shot the woman before she stopped whooping for breath.
It was all over in a heartbeat, and Harkness gawked at Babcock's swift, silent efficiency. The sergeant-major glanced into the room her victims had come from and gave the man an insurance stun bolt of his own, then looked over her shoulder at the chief.
"Next time, bring a goddamned drum and bugle band along!" she snarled over the com.
"Can it, Gunny!" Ramirez snapped. The colonel stood stock-still, running his skinsuit's external sound pickups up to max, then relaxed. "No damage done, I think." He did a quick count of the unconscious bodies littering the hallway. "Twelve, repeat, total twelve down," he said over the com, and turned to dart his own look at Harkness. The chief expected something severe, but the colonel only shook a finger at him and turned back to his front.
Maybe, Harkness reflected, Marines weren't all that bad after all.
Five minutes later, the Marines had accounted for what should be every guard in the place, assuming their information was correct. Tomas Ramirez wasn't especially fond of assumptions, however. He positioned his people to cover the access routes to the central staircase, then led Babcock, Ivashko, and Tremaine up the stairs. Harkness wasn't invited, but he wasn't about to stay behind, either, and found himself bringing up the rear beside Babcock.
The door at the head of the stairs was closed and locked. The colonel tried his magic box again, but whoever was on the other side of that door didn't trust powered locks. He'd used an old-fashioned mechanical key, as well, and the colonel shrugged.
He handed his stunner to Ivashko. They couldn't afford to put this one to sleep for a couple of hours, and that meant he had to do things the hard way. Which didn't exactly disappoint him.
He stepped back to the edge of the landing, balanced on the balls of his feet, and then launched himself at the door. He had room only for three running strides, but the chalet door that could stop Tomas Ramirez had never been built, and he went through the rain of splinters like a boulder.
The man sleeping on the other side had the reflexes of a cat. He jerked upright in bed, one hand sliding under his pillow before his eyes had fully opened, yet he was still far too slow. Ramirez reached his bedside just as his fingers closed on the pulser's butt, and a hand like a power scoop gripped the front of his expensive pajamas.
Denver Summervale flew out of bed like a missile, and his gun hand hit a bedpost as he passed. He cried out in pain as the pulser was torn from his grip, and Ramirez released him as he reached the top of his arc.
Summervale sailed across the bedroom and barely managed to get an arm up to protect his head before he hit the opposite wall like a cannon ball. He bounced back, and even taken totally unawares in a sound sleep, he managed to land on his feet. He fell into an automatic defensive stance, shaking his head to clear it, and Ramirez let him. The colonel simply stood there, giving him time to recover, and waited for his charge.
It came. Summervale disliked physical combat. He was a specialist, a surgeon who removed unwanted problems with a gun, but he'd killed more than once with his bare hands. Unfortunately, he was nowhere near as fast—or as strong—as Tomas Ramirez, and he was in pajamas, not a Marine skinsuit.
Ramirez brushed aside a killing blow with his left hand and drove his right like a wrecking ball into Summervale's belly. The smaller man folded over it with a wailing grunt, and the colonel brought his left up in a vicious slap. The assassin flew backward, but he didn't hit the wall again. Ramirez caught him in midair, spun him like a toy, slammed him belly-down over the edge of his own bed, jerked one wrist up behind him, and locked an arm of iron across his throat.
Summervale fought to writhe free, only to scream in pain as Ramirez, his face totally without expression, rammed a skin-suited knee into his spine.
"Now, now, Mr. Summervale," the colonel said softly. "None of that."
The killer whimpered—a sound of involuntary anguish poisoned by his humiliation as it was forced from him—and Ramirez glanced over his shoulder at Ivashko, who laid a small recorder on the bed.
"Do you recognize my voice, Mr. Summervale?" Ramirez asked. Summervale gritted his teeth and refused to answer—then screamed again as stone-crusher fingers twisted his wrist. "I asked a question, Mr. Summervale," the colonel chided. "It's not nice to ignore questions."
Summervale screamed a third time, writhing in agony, then threw his head back as far as he could.
"Yes! Yes!" His aristocratic voice was ugly with pain and hate.
"Good. Can you guess why I'm here?"
"F-Fuck you!" Summervale panted past the arm about his throat.
"Such language!" Ramirez said almost genially. "Especially when I'm just here to ask you a question." His voice lost its pretense of humor, cold and hard. "Who paid you to kill Captain Tankersley, Summervale?"
"Go to hell, you-son-of-a-bitch!" Summervale gasped.
"That's not nice," Ramirez chided again. "I'm going to have to insist you tell me."
"Why the fuck should I?" Summervale actually managed a strangled laugh. "You'll just—kill me—when I do—so fuck you!"
"Mr. Summervale, Mr. Summervale!" Ramirez sighed. "The Captain would have my ass if I killed you, so just answer the question."
"Like hell!" Summervale panted.
"I think you should reconsider," Ramirez said softly, and Scotty Tremaine turned away, his face white, at the sound of his voice. "I only said I wouldn't kill you, Mr. Summervale," the colonel whispered almost lovingly. "I never said I wouldn't hurt you."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"Tractor lock."
"Cut main thrusters," Michelle Henke responded. "Stand by attitude thrusters. Chief Robinet, you have approach control."
"Cut main thrusters, aye," Agni's helmswoman repeated, and her fingers tapped keys, killing the last thrust from the light cruisers auxiliary reaction engines. "Main thruster shutdown confirmed. Standing by for attitude thrusters. I have approach control, Ma'am."
"Very good." Henke leaned back in her chair and watched the ugly, comforting bulk of HMSS Hephaestus filling the forward visual display. Agni was well inside the safety perimeter of her own impeller wedge; she'd been on conventional thrusters for the last twenty minutes, but Hephaestus' tractors had her now, drawing her hammerhead bow steadily into the waiting docking bay. All Henke's ship had to do was insure the correctness of her final docking attitude, which required a finicky degree of precision the space station's tractors simply couldn't provide.
She watched silently over CPO Robinet's shoulder. Robinet probably could have picked up her moorings in her sleep, but the ultimate responsibility was Henke's, whatever happened. That thought jabbed uneasily at the back of her mind, as it always did at moments like this, for she'd never really liked docking maneuvers. She was a competent shiphandler, but she would never have Honor's total, almost innocently arrogant self-confidence. She knew perfectly well that it was that very lack of confidence which kept her from performing with Honor's bravura flair—which, in turn, kept her from feeling confident!
She snorted in familiar self-criticism, but the fact was that she vastly preferred a simple parking orbit that let small craft and tenders make rendezvous with her. All the same, she was glad Hephaestus had an open berth, for Nike's repair slip was barely five minutes by personnel tube from Agni's intended mooring. Henke had already commed Eve Chandler to warn her of Honor's arrival, and Chandler had responded with a warning of her own: the newsies were waiting in force.
Henke felt her mouth twist, then forced it to relax with deliberate, conscious effort and squared her shoulders. There was no way—no way!—those vultures were getting at Honor. Which was why Hephaestus Central had copied a flight plan for a cutter to deliver Countess Harrington and party to the main concourse. Falsifying flight plans was a moderately serious offense, and there might be repercussions when no cutter materialized to match the concourse arrivals board, but Henke thought she'd detected a certain knowing note in the senior controller's voice when he receipted her bogus flight plan. His casual mention that the newsies would no doubt be waiting for Lady Harrington only reinforced her suspicion—and her feeling that she'd done the right thing, even if she caught a reprimand for it.
A soft, musical tone sounded, and Chief Robinet nodded to herself.
"On docking station, Captain."
"Engage mooring tractors."
"Engaging mooring tractors, aye, Ma'am."
"Jack," Henke turned to her com officer, "request umbilical lock and see how fast they can get the boarding tubes run out to us."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
"Thanks." Henke pushed herself up out of her command chair and glanced at her exec. "Mr. Thurmond, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch."
"Good." She rubbed her temple for just a moment, then sighed. "If anyone needs me, I'll be with Lady Harrington."
Honor's cabin had no view port, but she'd patched her com terminal into Agni's forward visual sensors. Now she sat silently, hands loose in her lap, and gazed at the flat screen as the ship nosed into her berth.
She felt... empty. Emptier than the wind or space itself, sucked clean by the silent undertow of entropy. She heard MacGuiness moving about behind her, felt Nimitz as he stretched along the back of her chair and radiated his love and concern, and there was only stillness and silence within her. The pain waited, but she had sheathed it in an armor of ice. She could see it in her mind's eye, razor-edges glittering within its crystalline prison, yet it couldn't touch her. Nor would it be able to, for it would destroy her too soon if she let it free. And so she'd frozen it, not in fear but with purpose, imprisoning it until she chose to shatter the ice and loose it upon herself, and that would have to wait until she had found Denver Summervale.
Her mind ticked smoothly away, considering ways and means. She knew Mike was frightened for her, but that was silly. Nothing could hurt her now. She was a glacier, a thing of ice and stone grinding implacably toward its appointed end. Like the glacier, nothing would be allowed to stop her... and, like the glacier, there would be nothing left of her at all at journeys end.
She hid that thought deep, so deep even she could barely sense it, lest Nimitz read it in her, but there was a clean, clear logic to it. It was inevitable, and it was justice, too.
She shouldn't have let herself love Paul, she thought distantly. She should have known better. Part of her wished she'd been allowed more time before the trap sprang, but the end had been ordained. It was his love for her which had doomed him; she'd known that the moment she browbeat Mike into telling her the final insult Summervale had used against him. Mike hadn't wanted to tell her. She'd fought against it, yet she must have known Honor would find out eventually. And so she'd told her, looking away, unable to meet her eyes, and Honor had known. She still had no idea why a total stranger had picked a quarrel with Paul, but she had been the chink in his armor. She was what Summervale had used to reach him, goad him... kill him.
Just as she would kill Summervale. Her wealth would serve a purpose after all, for she would spend it all if she must to find him.
A colder, more savage ache went through her, and she embraced it. She built it into her armor, raising the icy walls higher and thicker to hold the pain at bay just a little longer. Just long enough to do the last thing that would ever matter to her again.
Honor looked better, Henke told herself as she stepped into her friend's cabin, and it was true... as far as it went. Her face had lost that shattered, broken look, yet it remained a mask. Henke's heart ached every time she thought of what hid behind it, and she only had to look at Nimitz to guess what that hidden thing was. The 'cat was no longer gaunt and hunched, but the quick, eager mischief had gone out of him. His ears never rose from their half-flattened position, and he seemed to radiate a strange, dangerous aura, like an echo of the hunger Henke knew filled Honor. It was cold, as she was cold, and alien to everything Henke had ever sensed from him in the past. Still worse, perhaps, was the way he watched Honor. He sat quiet and still on her shoulder whenever she left the cabin; within her quarters, he refused to let her out of his sight, and his grass-green eyes were quenched and dark.
"Hello, Mike. I see we've arrived."
"Yes." Henke's reply came out awkwardly, in the tone of someone who didn't know exactly how to respond. There was no obvious stress in Honor's voice; indeed, the reverse was true, but its very lifelessness, its flattened timbre and deadness, made it a strangers. Henke cleared her throat and managed a smile. "I've run a little interference with the newsies, Honor. If we can get you aboard fast enough, you may make it clear to Nike before they realize you aren't coming in through the main concourse after all."
"Thank you." Honor's lips formed a smile that never touched her eyes. Those dark, ice-cored eyes that never warmed, never seemed to blink even on Agni's range. Henke had no idea how many rounds Honor had fired, but she knew she'd spent at least four hours a day there, every day, and her absolute lack of expression as she punched bullet after bullet through the hearts and heads of human holo targets had terrified Henke. She'd moved like a machine, with a dreadful, economic precision that denied any human feeling, as if her very soul had frozen within her.
Honor Harrington was a killer. She'd always been one; Mike Henke knew that better than most, yet she'd also known that killer streak was controlled by the compassion and gentleness which were far more important parts of Honor. It was channeled by duty and responsibility and, in a sense, it was the complement and consequence alike of her compassion. Honor cared about things; that had made her capacity for violence even greater, in many ways, but it had also made it something she could use at need, not something that used her. It had threatened to break free a time or two, yet it never had. If the whispers from the Blackbird Raid were accurate, it almost had that time, but she'd managed, somehow, to stop it.
This time she didn't even want to, and Henke sensed her terrifying aptitude for destruction as never before. Henke had feared for her sanity; now she knew the truth was almost worse than that. Honor wasn't insane—she simply didn't care. She'd lost not only her sense of balance but any desire to regain it. She wasn't berserk. She was something far more dangerous, for her killer self was in command, inhumanly logical and cruel as a Sphinx winter, utterly devoid of her usual compassion and not at all concerned with consequences.
Honor stood silently, watching her best friend from within her icy walls. She felt Mike's fear for her through her link with Nimitz, and a tiny piece of her heart longed to comfort that fear. Yet it was no more than reflex, too small and lost to be more, and she'd forgotten how to offer comfort, anyway. Perhaps she would remember, someday, but it hardly mattered. All that mattered now was Denver Summervale.
"I suppose I'd better be going," she said after a moment. She held out her hand, and Mike took it. Nimitz let Honor feel the tears burning behind her friends eyes, and that lost fragment of the woman Paul Tankersley had loved longed to feel her own eyes burn. But she couldn't, and so she squeezed Mike's hand, patted her gently on the shoulder, and left without ever looking back.
The side party came to attention and saluted when Honor caught the grab bar and swung from the boarding tube's zero gee into Nike's internal gravity. Bosun's pipes wailed, Honor's own hand rose in automatic response, and Eve Chandler stepped forward and held out her hand in welcome. Honor took it, and the diminutive redhead's eyes were dark with compassion and more than a little shock, even fear, as she absorbed her commanding officer's expression.
"Captain," she said quietly. It was a simple greeting, without the condolence she sensed Honor didn't want to hear.
"Eve." Honor nodded to her, then to the side party, and beckoned one of her armsmen forward. "Commander Chandler, this is Major Andrew LaFollet, commanding my Grayson security team." That cold ghost of a smile touched her lips again. "Protector Benjamin sent him along to keep me from doing anything foolish." LaFollet's mouth tightened, but he shook Chandler's hand without comment. "Please introduce him to Colonel Ramirez as soon as convenient. I think they'll find they have quite a bit in common."
"Of course, Ma'am," Chandler murmured.
"Thank you." Honor turned to MacGuiness. "See to getting my gear transferred, please, Mac. I'm going directly to my quarters."
"Yes, Ma'am." Chandler had never heard the steward sound so weary—or worried—and her heart went out to the exhausted, sad-eyed man.
Honor moved forward out of the entry port, headed for the lift, and LaFollet cleared his throat behind her.
"Armsman Candless," he said quietly, and James Candless came briefly to attention and padded off on Honor's heels. Chandler looked at the major, and he shrugged. "I'm sorry, Commander, but I have my orders."
"I see." Chandler gazed at him a moment longer, and then her expression softened. "I do see," she said more quietly, with a different emphasis, "and we're all concerned for her. We'll work something out, Major."
"I hope so, Commander," LaFollet murmured, watching the lift carry his Steadholder away. "I hope to God the Tester we do."
The cabin hatch closed, sealing Honor away from Candless and her normal sentry. She felt a vague sense of guilt for failing to introduce the two men to one another or explain Candless's presence to the Marine, but there was too little of her left to spare for things like that.
She stood looking around the cabin, and dry-eyed agony twisted despite her armor as her gaze touched the holo cube on her desk. Paul smiled at her from it, laughing, wind whipping his ponytail while he held his flight helmet in the crook of his arm and the needle nose of a Javelin gleamed behind him.
She crossed to the desk. Her hand trembled as she lifted the holo cube, staring down at it, longing for the tears that would not come. Her mouth quivered, and her fingers tightened, but still her frozen soul refused to weep. All she could do was close her eyes and press the cube to her breasts, rocking it like the stony heart of all her loss and pain.
She never knew how long she stood there while Nimitz huddled against the side of her neck, keening softly and stroking her cheek with a delicate true-hand. She only knew she couldn't do anything else—and that she lacked the courage to open her sleeping cabin's hatch. There was too much agony beyond it, too many treacherous reminders of joy. She couldn't face that. Not now. It would break her, and she dared not break before she did what she had to do, and so she stood, a black-and-gold-uniformed statue frozen at the corner of her desk, until the admittance chime sounded behind her.
She inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. Then she set the holo cube gently back on her desk. She ran a fingertip down Paul's smiling face like a kiss and pressed the com key.
"Yes?" The quaver in her voice surprised her, and she crushed it in a grip of ice.
"Colonel Ramirez, Ma'am," her Marine sentry said.
"I don't—" She stopped herself. She didn't want to face Ramirez. He'd been Paul's second, and she knew him too well. Knew he blamed himself and expected her to share his self-condemning verdict. She didn't, but dealing with his guilt would open her own wounds wider, threaten her armor. Yet if she refused him admittance it might seem she did blame him. He deserved better of her, and when she had so little left she could give her own conscience refused to let her withhold it.
She drew another deep breath and straightened with a sigh.
"Thank you, Private," she said. She touched the button to open the hatch and turned to face it.
Tomas Ramirez looked even worse than she'd feared, and she braced herself as he stopped just inside the hatch and it closed behind him.
"Dame Honor, I—" he began, but she raised a hand.
"Don't, Tomas," she said as gently as the ice about her heart allowed. She knew she sounded mechanical, uncaring, and crossed to him. She rested one hand on his arm, trying to break through to herself in order to reach out to him and knowing she'd failed. "You were Paul's friend. I know that, and I know it wasn't your fault. Paul wouldn't blame you for what happened... and neither do I."
Ramirez bit his lip. A tear glittered at the corner of his eye, another of those tears she couldn't shed, and he bent his head for just a moment. Then he drew a deep, shuddering breath and looked up once more. Their eyes met, and she saw the understanding in his, the knowledge that this was the very best she could do and his acceptance of it.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he said softly.
She patted his arm and walked around her desk. She sank into her chair and gestured for him to take one facing her while she eased Nimitz down into her lap. The 'cat curled tightly, burying his muzzle against her while he radiated his love for her. It hurt, like a hammer chipping at the anesthetic shield of her detachment, but she stroked his spine slowly and gently.
"I realize you've just returned, Ma'am," Ramirez said after a moment, "and I apologize for intruding, but there's something you need to know before you... do anything else."
Honor smiled without humor at his choice of words. Tomas Ramirez had been with her on Blackbird. If anyone in the galaxy knew what "anything else" she intended to do, it was he.
"Last week," the colonel went on, "Major Hibson and I carried out a training exercise on Gryphon." Honor felt a slight stir of interest and raised an eyebrow, wondering how they'd gotten to Gryphon with Nike still in dock.
"Captain McKeon and Commander Venizelos were kind enough to assist us by transporting the battalion to Manticore-B," Ramirez went on, and she felt a stronger stir of interest, a sharpening as something about his tone probed at her icy cocoon. "The exercise was a general success, Ma'am, but we suffered a nav systems failure aboard my command pinnace. I'm afraid we landed several hundred klicks from our intended LZ—there was a severe blizzard in the exercise area, which probably contributed to our navigation error—and it took me some hours to rejoin the rest of the battalion."
"I see." Honor tipped her chair back with a slight frown as Ramirez paused. "May I ask why you're telling me this?" she said finally.
"Well, Ma'am, it just happened that our actual landing site was very close to a hunting chalet. Naturally, my party and I proceeded to the chalet in hopes of discovering exactly where we were so that we could rejoin the exercise. It was pure coincidence, of course, but, well, Ma'am, it seems Denver Summervale was vacationing at that same chalet."
Honor's chair snapped upright, and Ramirez swallowed at the sudden, savage glitter of her eyes.
"Is he still there, Colonel?" she half-whispered, her half-mad gaze ravenous on his face, and he swallowed again.
"I don't know, Ma'am," he said very carefully, "but in the course of our conversation, he... volunteered certain information." He reached into his tunic pocket and laid a recording chip on Honor's desk, refusing to look away from her frightening eyes.
"He said—" Ramirez paused and cleared his throat. "Ma'am, he said he was hired. He was paid to kill Captain Tankersley... and you."
"Paid?" Honor stared at him, and a silent tremor ran through her. Her chill armor shivered, cracking ever so slightly as heat flared suddenly within her. She'd never heard of Denver Summervale before he killed Paul. She'd assumed he must have acted for some personal reason of his own, but this—
"Yes, Ma'am. Paid to kill both of you," Ramirez reemphasized. "But he was hired to kill Captain Tankersley first."
First. Someone had wanted Paul killed first, and the way Ramirez said it echoed and reechoed through her, battering at the ice. It hadn't been the uncaringly cruel act of an impersonal universe to punish her for loving. It had been deliberate. Someone wanted her dead, and before she died, he wanted to hurt her as hideously as he possibly could. Someone had paid for Paul's legal murder as a weapon against her.
Nimitz snarled upright in her lap, fur bristling, tail belled and claws bared, and she felt her armor crumbling in ruin, felt the terrible heat of her own fury blasting away her detachment. And even as her rage roared higher within her, she knew. She knew who it had to be, the only person who was sick and sadistic enough, who hated her enough to have Paul killed. She knew, but she only stared at Ramirez, willing him to confirm it.
"He was hired, Ma'am," the colonel said softly, "by the Earl of North Hollow."
"Cut main thrusters," Michelle Henke responded. "Stand by attitude thrusters. Chief Robinet, you have approach control."
"Cut main thrusters, aye," Agni's helmswoman repeated, and her fingers tapped keys, killing the last thrust from the light cruisers auxiliary reaction engines. "Main thruster shutdown confirmed. Standing by for attitude thrusters. I have approach control, Ma'am."
"Very good." Henke leaned back in her chair and watched the ugly, comforting bulk of HMSS Hephaestus filling the forward visual display. Agni was well inside the safety perimeter of her own impeller wedge; she'd been on conventional thrusters for the last twenty minutes, but Hephaestus' tractors had her now, drawing her hammerhead bow steadily into the waiting docking bay. All Henke's ship had to do was insure the correctness of her final docking attitude, which required a finicky degree of precision the space station's tractors simply couldn't provide.
She watched silently over CPO Robinet's shoulder. Robinet probably could have picked up her moorings in her sleep, but the ultimate responsibility was Henke's, whatever happened. That thought jabbed uneasily at the back of her mind, as it always did at moments like this, for she'd never really liked docking maneuvers. She was a competent shiphandler, but she would never have Honor's total, almost innocently arrogant self-confidence. She knew perfectly well that it was that very lack of confidence which kept her from performing with Honor's bravura flair—which, in turn, kept her from feeling confident!
She snorted in familiar self-criticism, but the fact was that she vastly preferred a simple parking orbit that let small craft and tenders make rendezvous with her. All the same, she was glad Hephaestus had an open berth, for Nike's repair slip was barely five minutes by personnel tube from Agni's intended mooring. Henke had already commed Eve Chandler to warn her of Honor's arrival, and Chandler had responded with a warning of her own: the newsies were waiting in force.
Henke felt her mouth twist, then forced it to relax with deliberate, conscious effort and squared her shoulders. There was no way—no way!—those vultures were getting at Honor. Which was why Hephaestus Central had copied a flight plan for a cutter to deliver Countess Harrington and party to the main concourse. Falsifying flight plans was a moderately serious offense, and there might be repercussions when no cutter materialized to match the concourse arrivals board, but Henke thought she'd detected a certain knowing note in the senior controller's voice when he receipted her bogus flight plan. His casual mention that the newsies would no doubt be waiting for Lady Harrington only reinforced her suspicion—and her feeling that she'd done the right thing, even if she caught a reprimand for it.
A soft, musical tone sounded, and Chief Robinet nodded to herself.
"On docking station, Captain."
"Engage mooring tractors."
"Engaging mooring tractors, aye, Ma'am."
"Jack," Henke turned to her com officer, "request umbilical lock and see how fast they can get the boarding tubes run out to us."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
"Thanks." Henke pushed herself up out of her command chair and glanced at her exec. "Mr. Thurmond, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch."
"Good." She rubbed her temple for just a moment, then sighed. "If anyone needs me, I'll be with Lady Harrington."
Honor's cabin had no view port, but she'd patched her com terminal into Agni's forward visual sensors. Now she sat silently, hands loose in her lap, and gazed at the flat screen as the ship nosed into her berth.
She felt... empty. Emptier than the wind or space itself, sucked clean by the silent undertow of entropy. She heard MacGuiness moving about behind her, felt Nimitz as he stretched along the back of her chair and radiated his love and concern, and there was only stillness and silence within her. The pain waited, but she had sheathed it in an armor of ice. She could see it in her mind's eye, razor-edges glittering within its crystalline prison, yet it couldn't touch her. Nor would it be able to, for it would destroy her too soon if she let it free. And so she'd frozen it, not in fear but with purpose, imprisoning it until she chose to shatter the ice and loose it upon herself, and that would have to wait until she had found Denver Summervale.
Her mind ticked smoothly away, considering ways and means. She knew Mike was frightened for her, but that was silly. Nothing could hurt her now. She was a glacier, a thing of ice and stone grinding implacably toward its appointed end. Like the glacier, nothing would be allowed to stop her... and, like the glacier, there would be nothing left of her at all at journeys end.
She hid that thought deep, so deep even she could barely sense it, lest Nimitz read it in her, but there was a clean, clear logic to it. It was inevitable, and it was justice, too.
She shouldn't have let herself love Paul, she thought distantly. She should have known better. Part of her wished she'd been allowed more time before the trap sprang, but the end had been ordained. It was his love for her which had doomed him; she'd known that the moment she browbeat Mike into telling her the final insult Summervale had used against him. Mike hadn't wanted to tell her. She'd fought against it, yet she must have known Honor would find out eventually. And so she'd told her, looking away, unable to meet her eyes, and Honor had known. She still had no idea why a total stranger had picked a quarrel with Paul, but she had been the chink in his armor. She was what Summervale had used to reach him, goad him... kill him.
Just as she would kill Summervale. Her wealth would serve a purpose after all, for she would spend it all if she must to find him.
A colder, more savage ache went through her, and she embraced it. She built it into her armor, raising the icy walls higher and thicker to hold the pain at bay just a little longer. Just long enough to do the last thing that would ever matter to her again.
Honor looked better, Henke told herself as she stepped into her friend's cabin, and it was true... as far as it went. Her face had lost that shattered, broken look, yet it remained a mask. Henke's heart ached every time she thought of what hid behind it, and she only had to look at Nimitz to guess what that hidden thing was. The 'cat was no longer gaunt and hunched, but the quick, eager mischief had gone out of him. His ears never rose from their half-flattened position, and he seemed to radiate a strange, dangerous aura, like an echo of the hunger Henke knew filled Honor. It was cold, as she was cold, and alien to everything Henke had ever sensed from him in the past. Still worse, perhaps, was the way he watched Honor. He sat quiet and still on her shoulder whenever she left the cabin; within her quarters, he refused to let her out of his sight, and his grass-green eyes were quenched and dark.
"Hello, Mike. I see we've arrived."
"Yes." Henke's reply came out awkwardly, in the tone of someone who didn't know exactly how to respond. There was no obvious stress in Honor's voice; indeed, the reverse was true, but its very lifelessness, its flattened timbre and deadness, made it a strangers. Henke cleared her throat and managed a smile. "I've run a little interference with the newsies, Honor. If we can get you aboard fast enough, you may make it clear to Nike before they realize you aren't coming in through the main concourse after all."
"Thank you." Honor's lips formed a smile that never touched her eyes. Those dark, ice-cored eyes that never warmed, never seemed to blink even on Agni's range. Henke had no idea how many rounds Honor had fired, but she knew she'd spent at least four hours a day there, every day, and her absolute lack of expression as she punched bullet after bullet through the hearts and heads of human holo targets had terrified Henke. She'd moved like a machine, with a dreadful, economic precision that denied any human feeling, as if her very soul had frozen within her.
Honor Harrington was a killer. She'd always been one; Mike Henke knew that better than most, yet she'd also known that killer streak was controlled by the compassion and gentleness which were far more important parts of Honor. It was channeled by duty and responsibility and, in a sense, it was the complement and consequence alike of her compassion. Honor cared about things; that had made her capacity for violence even greater, in many ways, but it had also made it something she could use at need, not something that used her. It had threatened to break free a time or two, yet it never had. If the whispers from the Blackbird Raid were accurate, it almost had that time, but she'd managed, somehow, to stop it.
This time she didn't even want to, and Henke sensed her terrifying aptitude for destruction as never before. Henke had feared for her sanity; now she knew the truth was almost worse than that. Honor wasn't insane—she simply didn't care. She'd lost not only her sense of balance but any desire to regain it. She wasn't berserk. She was something far more dangerous, for her killer self was in command, inhumanly logical and cruel as a Sphinx winter, utterly devoid of her usual compassion and not at all concerned with consequences.
Honor stood silently, watching her best friend from within her icy walls. She felt Mike's fear for her through her link with Nimitz, and a tiny piece of her heart longed to comfort that fear. Yet it was no more than reflex, too small and lost to be more, and she'd forgotten how to offer comfort, anyway. Perhaps she would remember, someday, but it hardly mattered. All that mattered now was Denver Summervale.
"I suppose I'd better be going," she said after a moment. She held out her hand, and Mike took it. Nimitz let Honor feel the tears burning behind her friends eyes, and that lost fragment of the woman Paul Tankersley had loved longed to feel her own eyes burn. But she couldn't, and so she squeezed Mike's hand, patted her gently on the shoulder, and left without ever looking back.
The side party came to attention and saluted when Honor caught the grab bar and swung from the boarding tube's zero gee into Nike's internal gravity. Bosun's pipes wailed, Honor's own hand rose in automatic response, and Eve Chandler stepped forward and held out her hand in welcome. Honor took it, and the diminutive redhead's eyes were dark with compassion and more than a little shock, even fear, as she absorbed her commanding officer's expression.
"Captain," she said quietly. It was a simple greeting, without the condolence she sensed Honor didn't want to hear.
"Eve." Honor nodded to her, then to the side party, and beckoned one of her armsmen forward. "Commander Chandler, this is Major Andrew LaFollet, commanding my Grayson security team." That cold ghost of a smile touched her lips again. "Protector Benjamin sent him along to keep me from doing anything foolish." LaFollet's mouth tightened, but he shook Chandler's hand without comment. "Please introduce him to Colonel Ramirez as soon as convenient. I think they'll find they have quite a bit in common."
"Of course, Ma'am," Chandler murmured.
"Thank you." Honor turned to MacGuiness. "See to getting my gear transferred, please, Mac. I'm going directly to my quarters."
"Yes, Ma'am." Chandler had never heard the steward sound so weary—or worried—and her heart went out to the exhausted, sad-eyed man.
Honor moved forward out of the entry port, headed for the lift, and LaFollet cleared his throat behind her.
"Armsman Candless," he said quietly, and James Candless came briefly to attention and padded off on Honor's heels. Chandler looked at the major, and he shrugged. "I'm sorry, Commander, but I have my orders."
"I see." Chandler gazed at him a moment longer, and then her expression softened. "I do see," she said more quietly, with a different emphasis, "and we're all concerned for her. We'll work something out, Major."
"I hope so, Commander," LaFollet murmured, watching the lift carry his Steadholder away. "I hope to God the Tester we do."
The cabin hatch closed, sealing Honor away from Candless and her normal sentry. She felt a vague sense of guilt for failing to introduce the two men to one another or explain Candless's presence to the Marine, but there was too little of her left to spare for things like that.
She stood looking around the cabin, and dry-eyed agony twisted despite her armor as her gaze touched the holo cube on her desk. Paul smiled at her from it, laughing, wind whipping his ponytail while he held his flight helmet in the crook of his arm and the needle nose of a Javelin gleamed behind him.
She crossed to the desk. Her hand trembled as she lifted the holo cube, staring down at it, longing for the tears that would not come. Her mouth quivered, and her fingers tightened, but still her frozen soul refused to weep. All she could do was close her eyes and press the cube to her breasts, rocking it like the stony heart of all her loss and pain.
She never knew how long she stood there while Nimitz huddled against the side of her neck, keening softly and stroking her cheek with a delicate true-hand. She only knew she couldn't do anything else—and that she lacked the courage to open her sleeping cabin's hatch. There was too much agony beyond it, too many treacherous reminders of joy. She couldn't face that. Not now. It would break her, and she dared not break before she did what she had to do, and so she stood, a black-and-gold-uniformed statue frozen at the corner of her desk, until the admittance chime sounded behind her.
She inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. Then she set the holo cube gently back on her desk. She ran a fingertip down Paul's smiling face like a kiss and pressed the com key.
"Yes?" The quaver in her voice surprised her, and she crushed it in a grip of ice.
"Colonel Ramirez, Ma'am," her Marine sentry said.
"I don't—" She stopped herself. She didn't want to face Ramirez. He'd been Paul's second, and she knew him too well. Knew he blamed himself and expected her to share his self-condemning verdict. She didn't, but dealing with his guilt would open her own wounds wider, threaten her armor. Yet if she refused him admittance it might seem she did blame him. He deserved better of her, and when she had so little left she could give her own conscience refused to let her withhold it.
She drew another deep breath and straightened with a sigh.
"Thank you, Private," she said. She touched the button to open the hatch and turned to face it.
Tomas Ramirez looked even worse than she'd feared, and she braced herself as he stopped just inside the hatch and it closed behind him.
"Dame Honor, I—" he began, but she raised a hand.
"Don't, Tomas," she said as gently as the ice about her heart allowed. She knew she sounded mechanical, uncaring, and crossed to him. She rested one hand on his arm, trying to break through to herself in order to reach out to him and knowing she'd failed. "You were Paul's friend. I know that, and I know it wasn't your fault. Paul wouldn't blame you for what happened... and neither do I."
Ramirez bit his lip. A tear glittered at the corner of his eye, another of those tears she couldn't shed, and he bent his head for just a moment. Then he drew a deep, shuddering breath and looked up once more. Their eyes met, and she saw the understanding in his, the knowledge that this was the very best she could do and his acceptance of it.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he said softly.
She patted his arm and walked around her desk. She sank into her chair and gestured for him to take one facing her while she eased Nimitz down into her lap. The 'cat curled tightly, burying his muzzle against her while he radiated his love for her. It hurt, like a hammer chipping at the anesthetic shield of her detachment, but she stroked his spine slowly and gently.
"I realize you've just returned, Ma'am," Ramirez said after a moment, "and I apologize for intruding, but there's something you need to know before you... do anything else."
Honor smiled without humor at his choice of words. Tomas Ramirez had been with her on Blackbird. If anyone in the galaxy knew what "anything else" she intended to do, it was he.
"Last week," the colonel went on, "Major Hibson and I carried out a training exercise on Gryphon." Honor felt a slight stir of interest and raised an eyebrow, wondering how they'd gotten to Gryphon with Nike still in dock.
"Captain McKeon and Commander Venizelos were kind enough to assist us by transporting the battalion to Manticore-B," Ramirez went on, and she felt a stronger stir of interest, a sharpening as something about his tone probed at her icy cocoon. "The exercise was a general success, Ma'am, but we suffered a nav systems failure aboard my command pinnace. I'm afraid we landed several hundred klicks from our intended LZ—there was a severe blizzard in the exercise area, which probably contributed to our navigation error—and it took me some hours to rejoin the rest of the battalion."
"I see." Honor tipped her chair back with a slight frown as Ramirez paused. "May I ask why you're telling me this?" she said finally.
"Well, Ma'am, it just happened that our actual landing site was very close to a hunting chalet. Naturally, my party and I proceeded to the chalet in hopes of discovering exactly where we were so that we could rejoin the exercise. It was pure coincidence, of course, but, well, Ma'am, it seems Denver Summervale was vacationing at that same chalet."
Honor's chair snapped upright, and Ramirez swallowed at the sudden, savage glitter of her eyes.
"Is he still there, Colonel?" she half-whispered, her half-mad gaze ravenous on his face, and he swallowed again.
"I don't know, Ma'am," he said very carefully, "but in the course of our conversation, he... volunteered certain information." He reached into his tunic pocket and laid a recording chip on Honor's desk, refusing to look away from her frightening eyes.
"He said—" Ramirez paused and cleared his throat. "Ma'am, he said he was hired. He was paid to kill Captain Tankersley... and you."
"Paid?" Honor stared at him, and a silent tremor ran through her. Her chill armor shivered, cracking ever so slightly as heat flared suddenly within her. She'd never heard of Denver Summervale before he killed Paul. She'd assumed he must have acted for some personal reason of his own, but this—
"Yes, Ma'am. Paid to kill both of you," Ramirez reemphasized. "But he was hired to kill Captain Tankersley first."
First. Someone had wanted Paul killed first, and the way Ramirez said it echoed and reechoed through her, battering at the ice. It hadn't been the uncaringly cruel act of an impersonal universe to punish her for loving. It had been deliberate. Someone wanted her dead, and before she died, he wanted to hurt her as hideously as he possibly could. Someone had paid for Paul's legal murder as a weapon against her.
Nimitz snarled upright in her lap, fur bristling, tail belled and claws bared, and she felt her armor crumbling in ruin, felt the terrible heat of her own fury blasting away her detachment. And even as her rage roared higher within her, she knew. She knew who it had to be, the only person who was sick and sadistic enough, who hated her enough to have Paul killed. She knew, but she only stared at Ramirez, willing him to confirm it.
"He was hired, Ma'am," the colonel said softly, "by the Earl of North Hollow."
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tomas Ramirez cocked his chair back in his small shipboard office and studied the green-uniformed man across his desk. Major Andrew LaFollet returned his gaze with equally measuring gray eyes, and there was a subsurface tension between them; not anger or distrust, but the sort of wariness two guard dogs might have exhibited on first meeting.
"So, Major," Ramirez said at last, "am I to understand you and your men are permanently assigned to Lady Harrington? I'd gathered from what Commander Chandler told me that this was in the nature of a temporary assignment on Protector Benjamin's authority."
"I'm sorry about the confusion, Sir." LaFollet was tall for a Grayson, with a solid, well-muscled physique, but he was still a head shorter than Ramirez and looked almost puny in comparison. He was also ten years younger than the colonel, though they looked very much the same age thanks to Ramirez's prolong treatments, yet there was no lack of confidence in his face or posture. He ran a hand through his dark, auburn hair and frowned, obviously considering the best way to make himself understood to this foreigner.
"At the moment, Colonel," he said in his soft, slow Grayson accent, raising his eyes to examine some point above Ramirez's head, "the Steadholder doesn't seem to be thinking very clearly." The look in his eyes when he lowered them once more warned the colonel that anyone who tried to make his statement into a criticism would regret it. "I suspect she thinks we are a temporary fixture."
"But she's wrong," Ramirez suggested after a moment.
"Yes, Sir. By Grayson law, a steadholder must be accompanied by his—or, in this case, her—personal guard at all times, on Grayson or off."
"Even in the Star Kingdom?"
"On Grayson or off, Sir," LaFollet repeated, and Ramirez blinked.
"Major, I can appreciate that you didn't make the law, but Lady Harrington is also an officer in the Queen's Navy."
"I understand that, Sir."
"But what you may not understand is that general regs prohibit the presence of armed civilians or foreign nationals on a Queens ship. To put it plainly, Major LaFollet, your presence here is illegal."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Colonel," LaFollet said politely, and Ramirez sighed.
"So, Major," Ramirez said at last, "am I to understand you and your men are permanently assigned to Lady Harrington? I'd gathered from what Commander Chandler told me that this was in the nature of a temporary assignment on Protector Benjamin's authority."
"I'm sorry about the confusion, Sir." LaFollet was tall for a Grayson, with a solid, well-muscled physique, but he was still a head shorter than Ramirez and looked almost puny in comparison. He was also ten years younger than the colonel, though they looked very much the same age thanks to Ramirez's prolong treatments, yet there was no lack of confidence in his face or posture. He ran a hand through his dark, auburn hair and frowned, obviously considering the best way to make himself understood to this foreigner.
"At the moment, Colonel," he said in his soft, slow Grayson accent, raising his eyes to examine some point above Ramirez's head, "the Steadholder doesn't seem to be thinking very clearly." The look in his eyes when he lowered them once more warned the colonel that anyone who tried to make his statement into a criticism would regret it. "I suspect she thinks we are a temporary fixture."
"But she's wrong," Ramirez suggested after a moment.
"Yes, Sir. By Grayson law, a steadholder must be accompanied by his—or, in this case, her—personal guard at all times, on Grayson or off."
"Even in the Star Kingdom?"
"On Grayson or off, Sir," LaFollet repeated, and Ramirez blinked.
"Major, I can appreciate that you didn't make the law, but Lady Harrington is also an officer in the Queen's Navy."
"I understand that, Sir."
"But what you may not understand is that general regs prohibit the presence of armed civilians or foreign nationals on a Queens ship. To put it plainly, Major LaFollet, your presence here is illegal."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Colonel," LaFollet said politely, and Ramirez sighed.