Storm from the Shadows-OOPSIE

by David Weber

  Helen managed to stifle a groan. It wasn't particularly easy. If there was one thing Aivars Terekhov hated, it was what he called the "fuss and feathers" side of his duties. Personally, Helen suspected it had something to do with all the years he'd spent in the Foreign Office's service, with their endless succession of formal dinners and political parties, before he returned to active naval duty.

  On the other hand, she told herself rather hopefully, that same Foreign Office experience means he'll probably understand the importance of Krietzmann's request. After he gets done pitching a fit, that is.

  "Is anyone else planning on attending in mess dress?" she asked after a moment. Helga quirked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. "He's not going to be happy about climbing into his 'monkey suit,' Helga. But if I can tell him he's not going to be alone . . . ."

  She allowed her voice to trail off hopefully, and Helga chuckled.

  "Well, I doubt we could get everyone all dressed up," she said. "If it will help, though, I can go and have a word with at least a few of the others—Admiral Khumalo, Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler, Captain Saunders—and suggest that the Minister would appreciate their attendance in mess dress, as well."

  "Oh, good!" Helen made no particular effort to hide her relief. "If you can do that, I'll exaggerate a little myself and suggest that the Minister would appreciate it if Commodore Chatterjee and Captain Carlson came the same way. I mean, it wouldn't exactly be a lie. Minister Krietzmann would appreciate it, wouldn't he?"

  "Oh, I'm sure he would," Helga agreed.

  * * *

  Getting Aivars Terekhov into full scale mess dress had been almost as hard as Helen had been afraid it would. He'd started to dig his heels in the instant she opened her mouth, pointing out that nobody had mentioned anything about stupid mess dress uniforms to him in the original invitation. She'd headed that one off by reminding him that although the request was a late change, it was also one which had been made at the Quadrant's Minister of War's personal request for important political reasons. He'd glowered at that one, then brightened and pointed out that he didn't have a commodore's mess dress uniform . . . at which point Chief Steward Agnelli had silently opened his closet and extracted the captain's mess dress which she had thoughtfully had re-tailored for his new rank during the voyage out from Manticore.

  Balked on that front by his underlings' infernal efficiency, he'd tried arguing that Chatterjee probably didn't have the right uniform, and he wouldn't want to embarrass the other officer. Helen and Agnelli had simply looked at him patiently, rather the way Helen supposed a nanny looked at a rambunctious child. He'd looked back at them for a moment or two, then heaved a deep sigh, and surrendered.

  It was really a pity it took so much work to get him into the uniform, Helen reflected, since it could have been purposely designed to suit him. His height, blond hair, blue eyes, and erect, square-shouldered posture carried off even the archaic sword to perfection, and she saw eyes turning toward him as he followed her out of the official Navy air car on the landing stage of the downtown Thimble mansion that was the temporary Government House while the Governor General's permanent, formal residence was being built. There were quite a few air cars already there, or in the act of lifting off again after disgorging their passengers, and she saw Vice Admiral Khumalo—also in mess dress—waiting for them.

  The vice admiral couldn't carry off his resplendent uniform—and sword—the way Terekhov could. Few could, after all, Helen thought just a tad complacently. But from his posture, it was obvious that he was quite accustomed to putting up with it, and Captain Shoupe, standing at his shoulder, looked almost as resplendent as he did as he extended his hand to Terekhov with a chuckle.

  "I had a side bet with Bernardus that Ms. Zilwicki wouldn't manage to get you into mess dress!" he said.

  "Well," Terekhov half-growled, glaring humorously at Helen, "you almost won. Unfortunately, she used to be Bernardus' aide. That's probably why he had a more realistic appreciation of her ability to . . . convince me than you did, Sir."

  "He did say something about the Ensign's extraordinary persistence," Khumalo agreed with a smile. He glanced at Helen, but it was obvious even to her that at this particular moment, silence was the best policy.

  "Well," Khumalo continued after a moment, "I suppose we should head on in. In some ways, you're the guest of honor tonight, Aivars, so they can't get this dog and pony show off the pad until you turn up."

  "Wonderful," Terekhov sighed. Then he shook himself. "All right, I'm ready. I don't suppose it can be much worse than the Battle of Monica!"

  * * *

  The initial description of the evening as "an informal little supper with the Governor General and the Prime Minister" seemed to have been somewhat in error, Helen thought as she followed her commodore and Vice Admiral Khumalo down a broad hallway and into what was obviously the mansion's main ballroom. It was stupendous, and the tables which had been arranged in it filled it to capacity. There must have been at least three hundred chairs at those tables, probably more, and most of them were already filled.

  Only someone who knew Aivars Terekhov well would have recognized the way his neck stiffened ever so slightly, the way his shoulders squared themselves that tiny bit further. He continued chatting with Vice Admiral Khumalo as the two of them headed for the head table, pausing occasionally for a brief aside with someone Terekhov had met on his original deployment to Talbott. From the vice admiral's expression, he wasn't surprised, Helen noticed, and began to wonder exactly what was going on.

  As they finally approached the head table, she recognized three other commodores waiting for them. One of them—Commodore Lázló—she'd expected, as the senior officer of the Spindle Space Navy. The second startled her a bit, although she supposed that Commodore Lemuel Sackett, the uniformed commander of the Montana Space Navy, legitimately qualified as "a guest from Montana." How he'd happened to be there was something of a puzzlement, of course, but not as big a puzzle as the presence of Commodore Emil Karlberg, the senior officer of the Nuncio Space Force.

  This time, Terekhov couldn't quite hide his surprise. Spindle was scarcely conveniently located for either of them—transit time between Spindle and their home systems was better measured in weeks than days; Montana, the closer of the two, lay eighty-three light-years from the Quadrant's capital system—but it would scarcely have been good manners to ask what they were doing here. Especially not when the two of them were so obviously delighted to see him.

  And they damned well should be, Helen told herself. The Commodore and the Kitty cleaned those Peep "pirates" out of Nuncio when nothing Karlberg had could even have found them, much less fought them! And it's obvious Sackett isn't going to forget the way the Commodore and Mr. Van Dort convinced Westman to hang up his guns in Montana, either. Still, I wonder why nobody mentioned they were going to be here?

  She was still wondering when a polite usher separated her from her astronomically superior officers and showed her to a much humbler table to one side. Helen was delighted to go with him and get her junior rank (and absurd youth) out of the spotlight of attention focusing on Terekhov and the others. The table to which he led her was close enough that she could keep an eye on him, in case he needed her, and the unobtrusive earbug in her left ear meant he could summon her anytime he wished to.

  She was pleased to see Helga Boltitz seated at the same table, although Helga didn't seem quite as delighted by their location as Helen was. On the other hand, that might well owe something to her table companion. Well, Helen's, too, she supposed, since he was seated between the two of them. She didn't know who the dark-haired, brown-eyed man with the pencil mustache and the Rembrandt accent might be, but she recognized his bored, superior expression from too many of the political dinners she'd attended as Catherine Montaigne's adopted daughter. Some people, she thought dryly, didn't need cheering sections; they took their own with them wherever they went.

  She was still reflecting on that point—and tryin
g to decide if it would be cowardly of her to abandon Helga to the Rembrandter rather than trying to draw fire from the other woman—when a sharp, musical tone sang through the background rumble of side conversations. All heads turned toward it, and she saw Baroness Medusa standing in her place at the head of the master table still holding the table knife with which she had just struck a crystal pitcher.

  The rumble of voices died almost instantly, and Medusa smiled.

  "First," she said, "allow me to thank you all for coming. Some of you"—she glanced in Terekhov's direction—"were quite possibly under the impression that tonight's dinner would be a somewhat smaller and more humble affair. I apologize to anyone who received that mistaken impression. Actually, tonight represents a rare opportunity for all of us. As Her Majesty's personal representative here in the Quadrant, it is my privilege—as well as my pleasure—to welcome all of you on Her Majesty's behalf. We are fortunate tonight in having several of the Quadrant's senior naval officers present, and equally fortunate that they were able to take time away from the official conferences which brought them here to join us for dinner tonight. And, in addition, we are particularly fortunate to have with us tonight a man to whom the entire Quadrant owes a tremendous debt of gratitude. Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in extending my heartfelt thanks to Commodore Aivars Terekhov!"

  The stillness of the ballroom disappeared in a roar of applause. Vice Admiral Khumalo was probably the first person to come to his feet, applauding sharply, but if he was, it could only have been by half a heartbeat or so. Helen found herself standing, as well, clapping wildly, and it was all she could do to restrain a jubilant whistle as pandemonium erupted.

  She hadn't realized until that moment how much she'd resented—on Terekhov's behalf, not her own—the way the rush to redeploy him had deprived him of the public recognition back home that he had so amply earned. Yet now that the moment was here, she realized how much more fitting it was for him to receive that recognition here, in the Cluster and from the people his moral courage had served so well.

  The applause lasted quite some time, and Helen could see the heightened color in the commodore's face as the sound of all those clapping hands battered his ears. She didn't doubt that it embarrassed him, but she didn't really much care about that. He deserved it—deserved every decibel of it—and her smile felt as if it were going to break her face as she recognized how cunningly Khumalo and Medusa had arranged things so that he couldn't avoid it.

  But the clapping died at last, people sat back down, and the Governor General waited for silence to fall once more. Then she cleared her throat.

  "By now," she said, "I'm sure it's occurred to most of you that we got Commodore Terekhov here under what might be called false pretenses. Frankly, we were a little concerned that he might have bolted if he'd realized what we had in mind."

  Laughter muttered across the room, and she smiled.

  "I'm afraid, however," she continued then, "that we're not quite finished with the Commodore tonight."

  She glanced at Terekhov, who looked back at her with an expression which could only have been described as wary.

  "There is a phrase with which Queen's officers become altogether too familiar, Ladies and Gentlemen," she went on, her tone much more serious. "That phrase is 'the exigencies of the Service,' and what it means is that those men and women who have chosen to wear the Queen's uniform and to guard and protect all of us—you and me—frequently find their own lives being stepped upon by the demands of the service they have chosen to give. They do not simply risk life and limb for us, Ladies and Gentlemen. They also sacrifice the rest of their lives—sacrifice time as fathers and mothers, as wives and husbands. Commodore Terekhov was spared less than one T-week in Manticore before he was sent back to us. Less than one T-week, Ladies and Gentlemen, after all of the tremendous risks and dangers he and the men and women of HMS Hexapuma and the other ships of his squadron in Monica endured for all of us."

  The huge ballroom was completely still, now. Completely hushed. Baroness Medusa's voice sounded clear and quiet against that backdrop of silence.

  "There can be no true, adequate compensation for the sacrifices men and women in uniform make for the people they serve and protect. How does one set a price on the willingness to serve? How does one set a proper wage for the willingness to die to protect others? And how does one honor those who have honored their oaths, given the last true measure of devotion, in the service of their star nation and the belief in human dignity and human freedom?"

  She paused in the silence, then shook her head.

  "The truth is, that we cannot give them the compensation, the honor, they have so amply deserved of us. Yet whether what we can give them is what they deserve or not, we recognize our obligation to try. To try to show them, and everyone else, that we recognize the sacrifices they have made. That we understand how very much we owe them. And that they are to us pearls beyond price, men and women we cannot deserve yet must always thank God come to us anyway.

  "Those were the men and women of HMS Hexapuma. Of HMS Warlock, HMS Vigilant, HMS Gallant, HMS Audacious, HMS Aegis, HMS Javelin, HMS Janissary, HMS Rondeau, HMS Aria, and HMS Volcano.

  "We cannot individually honor those men and women. Too many of them are no longer here for us to honor, and most of those who survived are somewhere else this night, somewhere else in the Queen's uniform, serving her—and all of us—yet again as 'the exigencies of the Service' demand. But if we cannot individually honor each of them, we can honor all of them collectively in the person of the man who commanded them."

  Aivars Terekhov looked straight before him, and it wasn't simple modesty. He was looking at something only he could see—the men and women of those ships. The faces no one would ever see again.

  "Commodore Terekhov," Medusa said, turning to address him directly for the first time, "you were not aware that among the dispatches you carried when you returned to Spindle was a letter of instruction from Her Majesty to me. Please stand, Commodore."

  Terekhov obeyed slowly.

  "Come here, Commodore," she said quietly, and he walked across to her. As he did, Augustus Khumalo, Lemuel Sackett, and Emil Karlberg rose in turn and followed him. Sackett carried a small velvet case which had apparently been hidden under the table at his place. Karlberg carried a small cushion which had been similarly concealed.

  The four of them came to a halt in front of Medusa, and Sackett presented the small case to her. She accepted it, but she also looked at Khumalo.

  "Attention to orders!" the vice admiral's deep voice announced, and Helen felt herself coming to her feet in automatic response, accompanied by every other uniformed man and woman in that vast ballroom.

  "Commodore Aivars Terekhov," Medusa said in a clear, carrying voice, "on the sixteenth day of February, 1921 After Diaspora, units of the Royal Manticoran Navy under your command entered the Monica System, acting upon intelligence which you had developed consequent to your previous actions in the Split System and the Montana System. In the course of developing that intelligence, and of suppressing violent terrorist movements in both of those star systems, you had become aware of an additional, potentially disastrous threat to the citizens of those star systems then known as the Talbott Cluster and to the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Acting upon your own authority, you moved with the squadron under your command to Monica and there demanded the stand down of the ex-Solarian League Navy battlecruisers which had been delivered to the Union of Monica by parties hostile to the Star Kingdom who were determined to prevent the annexation of the star systems now known as the Talbott Quadrant by the Star Kingdom, for which the citizens of those star systems had freely and democratically petitioned.

  "When the senior officer present of the Monican Navy refused to comply with your demand and opened fire upon your vessels, although surprised by the heavy volume, weight, range, and accuracy of that fire, and despite heavy damage and severe casualties, you and the units under your command successfully destroyed
the military components of a massive industrial platform and nine of the battlecruisers in question, which were there moored. And, when subsequently attacked by three fully operational and modern battlecruisers, the six remaining units of your squadron engaged and destroyed all of their opponents.

  "At the cost of sixty percent of the vessels and seventy-five percent of the personnel under your command, your squadron destroyed or neutralized all of the Solarian-built battlecruisers in the Monica System. Subsequently, although your surviving vessels were too severely damaged to withdraw from the system, you neutralized all remaining units of the Monican Navy, prevented the withdrawal or destruction of the two surviving Solarian battlecruisers, and maintained the status quo in the system for a full week, until relieved by friendly forces.

  "It is now my duty, and my enormous honor, by the express direction of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of Manticore, acting as Her Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant and her personal representative, to present to you the Parliamentary Medal of Valor."

  Helen inhaled sharply as Sackett opened the case and Medusa extracted the golden cross and starburst on its blue and white ribbon. Terekhov was much taller than she was, and she rose on tiptoe as he bowed to her so that she could slip the ribbon around his neck and adjust its fall. She positioned the gleaming medal carefully, then looked up at him and—in a gesture Helen was certain hadn't been formally choreographed—touched him very gently on the cheek.

  "Her Majesty awards this medal to you, Commodore," she said, "both because you have so deeply and personally merited it, but also as a means of recognizing every man and woman who served with you in Monica. She asks you to wear this medal for them, as much as for yourself."