Mission of Honor-ARC (14 page)

"Have a seat," the captain invited, pointing at a chair across the table from his own, and Nagchaudhuri settled into it with a grateful sigh. FitzGerald smiled and shook his own head.

"Are you anywhere near a point where you can actually sit down for a couple of hours with a beer?" he asked, and Nagchaudhuri chuckled sourly.

It had never occurred to the tall, almost albino-pale commander that he might find himself the executive officer of one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's most powerful heavy cruisers. He was a communications specialist, and posts like that usually went to officers who'd come up through the tactical track, although that tradition had been rather eroded over the past couple of decades by the Navy's insatiable appetite for experienced personnel. On the other hand, very few XOs had inherited their positions under circumstances quite like his, which had quite a bit to do with his current weariness.

"By my calculations, it won't be more than another T-year before I can take a break long enough for that, Sir," he replied. "Ginger was one hell of an engineer, but we're
still
finding things that managed to get broken somehow." He shrugged. "Most of what we're finding now is little crap, of course. None of it's remotely vital. I imagine that's one reason Ginger hadn't already found it and dealt with it before they transferred her out. But I'm still annotating her survey for the yard dogs. And the fact that BuPers is pilfering so enthusiastically isn't helping one damned bit."

FitzGerald nodded in understanding and sympathy. He'd held Nagchaudhuri's position until
Hexapuma
's return from the Talbott Quadrant. He was intimately familiar with the problems the commander was experiencing and discovering, and the XO's frustration came as no surprise—not least because they'd all anticipated getting the ship into the yard dogs' hands so quickly.

FitzGerald's eyes darkened at that thought. Of course they'd expected that! After all, none of them were psychic, so none of them had realized the Battle of Manticore was going to come roaring out of nowhere only five days after their return.
Hexapuma
's damages had kept her on the sidelines, a helpless observer, and as incredibly frustrating as that had been at the time, it was probably also the only reason Fitzgerald, Nagchaudhuri, and the cruiser's entire complement were still alive. That cataclysmic encounter had wreaked havoc on a scale no one had ever truly envisioned. It had also twisted the Navy's neat, methodical schedules into pretzels . . . and the horrendous personnel losses had quite a bit to do with how Nagchaudhuri had ended up confirmed as
Hexapuma
's executive officer, too.

"Well," he said, shaking off the somberness memories of the battle always produced, "I've got some good news for once. Rear Admiral Truman says she's finally got a space for us in R&R."

"She does?" Nagchaudhuri straightenedr, expression brightening. Rear Admiral Margaret Truman, a first cousin of the rather more famous Admiral
Alice
Truman, was the commanding officer of Her Majesty's Space Station
Hephaestus
, and HMSS
Hephaestus
happened to be home to the Repair and Refit command to which
Hexapuma
's repair had been assigned.

"She does indeed. Captain Fonzarelli will have docking instructions for us by tomorrow morning, and the tugs will be ready for us at oh-nine-hundred."

"That's going to piss Aikawa off," Nagchaudhuri observed with a grin, and FitzGerald laughed.

"I imagine he'll get over it eventually. Besides, he was due for a little leave."

Ensign Aikawa Kagiyama had been one of
Hexapuma
's midshipmen on her previous deployment. In fact, he was the only one still aboard her. Or, rather, assigned to her, since he
wasn't
onboard at the moment.

"I guess we can always ask
Hephaestus
to delay our repairs a little longer. Long enough for him to get back from
Weyland
for the big moment, I mean," Nagchaudhuri suggested.

"The hell we can!" Fitzgerald snorted. "Not that I don't appreciate the way he looked after me after Monica, or anything. I'm sure he'll be disappointed, but if we delay this any longer just so he can be here for it, his loyal crewmates would probably stuff him out an open air lock!"

"Yeah, but he's fairly popular. They
might
let them have a helmet, first," Nagchaudhuri replied with an even broader grin.

"And they might not, too." Fitzgerald shook his head. "No, we'll just let this be his little surprise when he gets back."

"I hope he's enjoying himself," Nagchaudhuri said more seriously. "He's a good kid. He works hard, and he really came through at Monica."

"They were
all
good kids," FitzGerald agreed. "And I'll admit, I worry about him a little. It's not natural for the XO to have to
order
an ensign to take leave. Especially not someone with his record from the Island!"

"He has been well behaved since we got back from Monica," Nagchaudhuri acknowledged. "You don't think he's sick, do you?"

"No, I think it's just losing all his accomplices." Fitzgerald shrugged. "With Helen off as the Skipper's new flag lieutenant, and with Paulo assigned to
Weyland
with Ginger, he's sort of at loose ends when it comes to getting into trouble. For which we can all be grateful."

"That depends. Are we going to get a fresh complement of snotties for him to provide with a suitably horrible example?"

"I doubt it." Fitzgerald shrugged again. "Given the fact that we're going to be sitting in a repair dock for the next several months, I imagine they'll be looking for something a bit more active for snotty cruises. Besides, even if we get a fresh batch, he's an ensign now. I think he'd actually feel constrained to set them a good example."

"Somehow I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the concept of Aikawa being a
good
example for anyone—intentionally, I mean. At least without having Helen around to threaten him if he doesn't!"

"Oh, come now!" Fitzgerald waved a chiding finger at the XO. "You know perfectly well that Helen never threatened him. Well, not
too
often, anyway."

"Only because she didn't have to make it explicit," Nagchaudhuri countered. "One raised eyebrow, and he knew what was coming."

President Eloise Pritchart raked stray strands of platinum-colored hair impatiently from her forehead as she strode into the sub-basement command center. In contrast to her usual understated elegance, she wore a belted robe over her nightgown, and her face was bare of any cosmetics.

The head of her personal security team, Sheila Thiessen, followed close behind her. Unlike the President, Thiessen had been on duty when the alert was sounded. Well, not precisely
on
duty, since her official shift had ended five hours earlier, but she'd still been on-site, wading through her unending paperwork, and she was her well-groomed, fully clothed, always poised normal self.

Despite which, she thought, the hastily-dressed President still managed to make her look drab. In fact, the President always made everyone around her seem somehow smaller than life, especially at moments of crisis. It wasn't anything Pritchart
tried
to do; it was simply what genetics, experience, and her own inherent presence did for her. Even here, even now, awakened from what had passed for a sound sleep in the months since the twin hammer blows of Javier Giscard's death and the massive casualties the Republic of Haven had suffered in the Battle of Monica, despite the ghosts and sorrow which haunted those striking topaz eyes, that sense of unbreakable resolve and determination was like a cloak laid across her shoulders.

Or maybe that's just my imagination
, Thiessen told herself.
Maybe I just
need
for her to be unbreakable. Especially now
.

Pritchart crossed quickly to the comfortable chair before her personal command and communication console. She nodded to the only two members of her cabinet who'd so far been able to join her—Tony Nesbitt, the Secretary of Commerce, and Attorney General Denis LePic—then settled into her own seat as it adjusted to her body's contours.

Nesbitt and LePic both looked tense, worried. They'd been working late—the only reason they'd been able to make it to the command center this quickly—and both had that aura of end-of-a-really-long-day fatigue, but that didn't explain their tight shoulders and facial muscles, the worry in their eyes. Nor were they alone in their tension. The command center's uniformed personnel and the scattering of civilian intelligence analysts and aides threaded through their ranks were visibly anxious as they concentrated on their duties. There was something in the air—something just short of outright fear—and Thiessen's bodyguard hackles tried to rise in response.

Not that the anxiety level about her came as any sort of surprise. The entire Republic of Haven had been waiting with gnawing apprehension for almost half a T-year for exactly this moment.

Pritchart didn't greet her cabinet colleagues by name, only gave them that quick nod and smiled at them, yet her mere presence seemed to evoke some subtle easing of their tension. Thiessen could actually see them relaxing, see that same relaxation reaching out to the people around them, as the President took her place without haste then settled back, shoulders squared, and turned those topaz eyes to the uniformed man looking down from the huge smart wall display at one end of the large, cool room.

"So, Thomas," she said, sounding impossibly composed. "What's this all about?"

Admiral Thomas Theisman, Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations for the Republic of Haven, looked back at her from his own command center under the rebuilt Octagon, a few kilometers away. Given the late hour, Thiessen suspected that Theisman had been in bed until a very short time ago himself. If that was the case, however, no one would have guessed it from his faultless appearance and impeccable uniform.

"Sorry to disturb you, Madam President," he said. "And, to be honest, I don't have any idea what it's all about."

Pritchart raised one eyebrow.

"I was under the impression we'd just issued a system-wide Red Alert," she said, her tone noticeably more astringent than the one in which she normally addressed Theisman. "I'm assuming, Admiral, that you had a
reason
for that?"

"Yes, Madam President, I did." Theisman's expression was peculiar, Thiessen thought. "Approximately"—the Secretary of War glanced to one side—"thirty-one minutes ago, a force of unidentified starships made their alpha translations ten light-minutes outside the system hyper limit. That puts them roughly twenty-two light-minutes from the planet. The gravitic arrays detected them when they reentered normal-space, and our original estimate, based on their hyper footprints, was that we were looking at forty-eight ships-of-the-wall and/or CLACs, escorted by a dozen or so battlecruisers, a half dozen CLACs, and fifteen or twenty destroyers. They appear to have brought along at least a dozen large freighters, as well—most likely ammunition ships."

Thiessen felt the blood congeal in her veins. Those had to be Manty ships, and if they were, they had to be armed with the new missile systems which had broken the back of the Republic's attack on the Manticore Binary System. The missiles which gave the Royal Manticoran Navy such an advantage in long-range accuracy that they could engage even the Haven System's massive defenses with effective impunity. And which were undoubtedly loaded aboard those ammunition ships in enormous numbers.

Well, we've wondered where they were ever since the Battle of Manticore
, she thought grimly.
Now we know
.

From the com display, Theisman looked levelly into Pritchart's eyes.

"Under the circumstances, there didn't seem much doubt about who they belonged to or why they were here," he said, "but it's taken us a while to confirm our tentative IDs at this range. And it turns out our initial assessments weren't quite correct."

"I beg your pardon?" Pritchart said when he paused.

"Oh, we were right in at least one respect, Madam President—it is the Manties' Eighth Fleet, and Admiral Harrington
is
in command. But there's an additional ship, one we hadn't counted on. It's not a warship at all. In fact, it appears to be a private yacht, and it's squawking the transponder code of the GS
Paul Tankersley
."

"A
yacht?
" Pritchart repeated in the careful tone someone used when she wasn't entirely certain she wasn't talking to a lunatic.

"Yes, Ma'am. A yacht. A Grayson-registry yacht owned by Steadholder Harrington. According to the message she's transmitted to us from one Captain George Hardy, the
Tankersley
's skipper, Admiral Harrington is personally aboard her, not her fleet flagship. And, Madam President, Captain Hardy has requested permission for his ship to transport the Admiral to Nouveau Paris with a personal message to you from Queen Elizabeth."

Eloise Pritchart's eyes widened, and Thiessen sucked in a deep breath of astonishment. She wasn't alone in that reaction, either.

"Admiral Harrington is coming
here
, to Nouveau Paris. Is that what you're saying, Tom?" Pritchart asked after a moment.

"Admiral Harrington is coming to Nouveau Paris
aboard an unarmed private yacht
without first demanding any assurances of safety from us, Ma'am," Theisman replied. Then his lips twitched in what might have been a smile under other circumstances. "Although," he continued, "I have to say having the rest of Eighth Fleet parked out there is probably intended as a pretty pointed suggestion that it would be a good idea if we didn't let anything . . . untoward happen to her."

"No. No, I can see that," Pritchart said slowly, and now her eyes were narrow as she frowned in intense speculation. She sat that way for several moments, then looked at LePic and Nesbitt.

"Well," she said with a mirthless smile, "
this
is unexpected."

"'Unexpected'?" Nesbitt barked a laugh. "It's a hell of a lot more than that as far as
I'm
concerned, Madam President! If you'll pardon my language."