by David Weber
"You've got a big mouth, lady," one of Warnecke's bodyguards snarled. "How about I splatter your ass all over the bulkhead?"
"Go ahead," she said coldly. "Your 'Leader' knows what will happen if you do."
"Calmly, Allen. Calmly," Warnecke said. "Captain Harrington is our guest." He smiled and cocked his head. "Nonetheless, Captain, you do need to convince me you're unarmed."
"But I'm not." Honor’s answering smile was thin, and Warnecke's eyes narrowed in sudden alarm as she raised the rectangular case hanging from her left wrist. It was twenty-two centimeters long, fifteen wide, and ten deep, and its upper surface bore three switches, a small number pad, and two unlit power lights.
"And just what might that be?" He tried to make his voice light, but an edge of tension crackled in it and his bodyguards' weapons came up instantly.
"Something far more potent than a flechette gun, Mr. Warnecke," Honor said coolly. "This is a remote detonator. When it's activated, the charge out there is armed. It will detonate if I fail to input the proper code on the number pad at least once every five minutes."
"You never said anything about that!" This time his voice was almost a snarl, and Nimitz hissed as Honor laughed. It was a chill sound, like the snapping of a frozen sword blade, and her brown eyes were colder still.
"No, I didn't. But you don't have any choice but to accept it, do you? You're up here now, Mr. Warnecke. You can kill me and all three of my officers. You can even blow up the planet. But that charge will still be out there where my ship can detonate it, and you'll be dead ten seconds after we are." His mouth twisted, and she smiled mockingly. "Come now, Mr. Warnecke! You have your flechette guns, and, as agreed, my people aren't even in skinsuits. You can shoot us or depressurize the shuttle any time you care to. All I can do is kill us myself... and, of course, take you with us. It seems like a reasonable balance of force to me."
Warnecke's eyes glittered, but then he forced his expression to smooth out.
"You're cleverer than I thought, Captain," he observed in something like his normal smooth tones.
"You didn't really think I'd forgotten the light-speed limit when I set this up, did you?" Honor countered. "We agreed to separate the shuttle ten minutes' flight time from the hyper limit... which would just happen to place the demolition charge twelve light-minutes from my ships transmitters. But that won't matter if the transmitters right here in the shuttle, will it?"
"But how can I be certain there's not a weapon hidden inside it?" Warnecke inquired lightly. "There's ample room in there for a small pulser, I believe."
"I'm sure you have a power sensor around somewhere. Run a check."
"An excellent suggestion. Harrison?"
The pilot glowered at Honor, then opened an equipment locker. He pulled out a hand scanner and ran it over the case when she held it out.
"Well?" Warnecke asked.
"Nothing," the pilot grunted. "I'm picking up a single ten-volt power source. That's plenty for a short-range transmitter, but it's too little juice for a pulser."
"Please excuse my suspicious nature, Captain," Warnecke murmured, nodding acceptance of the report. "I trust, however, that it's the only weapon you brought aboard?"
"All I brought is what you see," Honor said with total honesty. "As for other weapons..." She handed her case to LaFollet, set Nimitz down in a seat, unsealed her tunic, shrugged it off, and turned in place in her white turtleneck blouse. "You see? Nothing up my sleeves."
"Would you mind removing your boots, as well?" Warnecke asked politely. "I've seen quite a few nasty surprises hidden in boot tops over the years."
"If you insist." Honor toed her boots off and handed them to the pilot, who examined them with surly competence, then threw them back to her with a glare.
"Clean," he grunted, and she returned his glare with a mocking smile as she sat beside Nimitz and pulled them back on. She slipped back into her tunic and sealed it, then gathered the 'cat back up, reclaimed the case from her armsman, and moved to the extreme rear of the passenger compartment. She settled into one of the comfortable seats and laid the case in her lap, then pressed the top button. One of the power lights blinked to life, glowing a steady amber, and the two bodyguards regarded her uneasily.
She waited while Candless and Mattingly followed her into the shuttle and submitted to the pilot's search, then cleared her throat.
"One more thing, Mr. Warnecke. Before my cutter undocks and my Marines leave your boat bay, Commander Candless will take a look at the flight deck. We wouldn't want anyone extra to be hiding up there, now would we?"
"Of course not," Warnecke said. "Allen, go with the Commander, and make sure he doesn't touch anything."
The bodyguard jerked his head, and the two men disappeared into the nose of the shuttle while Honor and Warnecke regarded one another down the ten-meter length of the passenger compartment. They were back in seconds, and Candless nodded.
"Clear, Captain," he said in his best Sphinx accent, and Honor nodded.
"And now, I think we should all have seats right here where I can keep an eye on you," she said pleasantly. "I realize your little transmitter has ample power to send the detonation command from here, but once we get beyond its range, I wouldn't want anyone having an accident with your com when I couldn't see it happen."
"As you wish." Warnecke nodded to his henchmen, and they took seats alongside him. All of them were between Honor and her armsmen and the flight deck, and they turned their chairs to face her just as her case beeped and the second light began to flash red. All four of the privateers tensed, and Honor smiled.
"Excuse me," she murmured, and punched a nine-digit code into the number pad. The red light went out instantly, and she leaned back comfortably.
"Everything green, Captain?" the cutter's flight engineer called through the open hatches.
"That's affirmative, Chief. Instruct Commander Cardones and Major Hibson to proceed."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
The hatches slid shut, and the cutter undocked. It drifted away on a puff of thrusters and turned for Wayfarer. Five minutes, and another beep from Honor’s case later, another trio of cutters left the boat bay carrying Susan Hibson and her Marines.
"Check to be certain they're all off, Harrison," Warnecke ordered. The pilot activated his skinsuit’s com and murmured into it, then listened to his earbug for several seconds.
"Confirmed. They're all off, and we're breaking orbit now.
"Good." Warnecke leaned back in his seat. "And now, Captain, I suggest we all get comfortable. We still have several hours to spend in one another's company, after all."
The next three hours passed with glacial slowness. The seconds limped into eternity, and tension hung in the shuttle like smoke. Every five minutes, the audible alarm on the case in Honor’s lap beeped and the red light flashed, and every five minutes she input the code to still them both. Mattingly and LaFollet each sat at a view port, Mattingly watching the demolition charge while LaFollet made certain no skinsuited crewmen were creeping up on the shuttle hatch. Warnecke had laid his heavy little transmitter in the seat beside him, but his bodyguards watched Honor and her armsmen as intently as Mattingly and LaFollet watched the charge and the hatch. One of them kept his weapon at instant readiness at all times, but flechette guns are heavy, and they changed off every fifteen minutes so that one of them could put his down and rest his arms. One flechette gun was more than adequate, however. Manifestly, no one could possibly get to Warnecke or his henchmen alive.
There was no conversation. Warnecke was content to sit in silence, smiling slightly, and Honor had no desire to speak to him or his men. She could feel their stress through Nimitz, but she could also feel their growing triumph as the repair ship left her warships further and further astern. They were actually going to get away with it, and their gloating exhilaration was hard on the 'cat. He curled in the seat beside Honor’s, kneading his claws in and out of the upholstery, and her hand caressed his spine slowly and comfor
tingly as the minutes dragged away.
Her case beeped once more, and she took her hand unhurriedly from the 'cat and punched numbers into the keypad yet again. But this time it was a slightly different code. The red light went out, and she glanced casually at the bulkhead chrono.
Three hours and fifteen minutes. She and Fred Cousins had considered the maximum range of Warnecke’s hand-held transmitter carefully before she allowed the privateer to exchange it for the original. It was remotely possible, assuming a sufficiently sensitive receiving array, that a unit that small might have a range of as much as two light-minutes. With that in mind, Honor had decided Warnecke had to be at least five light-minutes from the planet before she dared take any action against him, and that time had now come.
She waited another few seconds, then pressed the third button on the case, the one the new number code had armed, and two things happened. First, the small but efficient jamming pod hidden in the demolition charge on the outside of the shuttle came to life, putting out a strong enough field to trash any radio signal. The shuttle's com lasers could still get the detonation order through, but even as the jammer went into action, the end of the case opened and the familiar weight of a cocked and locked .45 automatic slid out into her hand.
None of Warnecke’s men realized anything had happened, for the seat in front of Honor hid the case from them. Besides, they knew she was unarmed, for they'd checked the case without finding the giveaway power source of a pulser or any other modern hand weapon. The possibility of something so primitive it used chemical explosives had never even occurred to them.
Honor’s expression didn't even flicker as she brought the pistol up in a smooth, flowing motion, and its sudden, deafening roar filled the passenger compartment like the hammer of God. The bodyguard named Allen had his flechette gun ready, but he never even realized he was dead as fifteen grams of hollow-nosed lead exploded through his forehead, and the stunning, totally unexpected concussion shocked every one of the privateers into a fatal fractional second of absolute immobility. The second bodyguard was just as shocked as anyone else, and he hadn't even begun to move when the gun roared again in the same sliver of time.
The bodyguard was hurled back out of his seat, spraying the bulkhead, and Andre Warnecke, with a gray-flecked bucket of red, and Honor was on her feet, holding the pistol in a two-handed grip.
"The party is over, Mr. Warnecke," she said, and her eyes were carved of frozen brown flint. She had to speak loudly to hear herself through the ringing in her ears, and she smiled as the privateer stared at her in disbelief. "Stand up and move away from the transmitter."
Warnecke swallowed, eyes wide as he realized he'd finally met a killer even more deadly than he, then nodded shakenly and started to push himself up. That was the instant the pilot made a dive for a fallen flechette gun, and the terrible, ear-shattering concussion of the .45 hammered the compartment twice more. The double tap wasn't a head shot this time, and the pilot had over fifteen seconds to scream, writhing on the deck while aspirated blood gushed from his mouth, before he died. But Honor didn't even blink, and the pistol was trained once more on Warnecke's forehead before he could even think about going for his own sidearm.
"Stand up," she repeated, and he obeyed. He moved away from the transmitter, and Honor nodded to LaFollet.
Her chief armsman wasn't gentle. He moved up the starboard passenger aisle, staying well clear of his steadholder's field of fire until he could reach Warnecke, then threw the privateer brutally to the deck. He drove a knee into his captives spine and twisted both arms so harshly up behind him that Warnecke cried out in pain.
Mattingly was there in a moment, scooping up both blood and brain-spattered flechette guns and tossing them to Candless before he and LaFollet jerked Warnecke to his feet once more. A hand removed the pulser from Warnecke's holster and tucked it inside Mattingly's tunic, and then the two armsmen frogmarched him to the rear of the compartment and shoved him into a seat. Mattingly sat three seats away, leveling the liberated pulser at Warnecke's chest, and Honor carefully lowered the .45’s hammer and shoved the heavy weapon into her tunic pocket.
"I made you an offer which would have left you alive," she told her prisoner. "I would have honored that offer. Thanks to you, I no longer have to." Her smile could have frozen a star's heart. "Thank you, Mr. Warnecke. I appreciate it."
She collected her case once more and punched a third combination into the number pad. The jamming pod shut down obediently, and the tractor pads holding the demolition charge to the shuttle disengaged. The device Warnecke had blithely assumed was only a demolition charge clanged to the repair ship’s hull, and the amber telltale flashed confirmation as a second set of pads locked it in place.
Honor scooped Nimitz up, feeling the 'cat's fierce exultation as she held him close, and stepped over the bodies of the men she'd killed into the flight deck. The controls were standard, but she set the 'cat in the copilots seat and took two full minutes to familiarize herself with them before she slipped the pilot's headset on and flipped up the plastic shield over the belly tractor power switch. Separating from a vessel underway under impeller drive was tricky, but at least the repair ship had no sidewalls, and she lit the acceleration warning in the passenger cabin and keyed the intercom.
"Acceleration in thirty seconds," she announced. "Strap in; it's going to be rough."
She waited, watching the chrono tick down, then killed the tractors holding the shuttle to the repair ship's hull and drove the belly and main thruster levers clear to the stop.
They were conventional thrusters, but they were also powerful, and just over one hundred gravities of acceleration hurled the shuttle away from the ship. The small craft's artificial gravity did its best, but its inertial compensator had no impeller wedge to work with. Twenty gravities got through, and Honor grunted as a giants fist slammed down. But the shuttle blasted straight for the perimeter of the repair ship's wedge at an acceleration of one kilometer per second squared. It was more than enough to clear the wedge before its narrowing after aspect could destroy the tiny craft, and she gasped with relief as she hurtled free and killed the belly main thrusters. She burned the thrusters for another thirty seconds, using her attitude thrusters to slew away from the repair ship at a more tolerable fifty gravities, then brought the shuttle's transmitter on-line.
"Pirate vessel, this is Captain Honor Harrington," she said coldly. "Your leader is my prisoner. The charges on the planet are now inoperable, but you have a two hundred k-ton charge in skin contact with your hull, and I have the transmitter which controls it. Reverse course immediately, or I will detonate it. You have one minute to comply."
The shuttle was far enough out to bring up its own impellers now, and Honor engaged the wedge and shot ahead at four hundred gravities. She watched the big vessel falling away from her with one eye and the chrono with another and keyed her mike once more.
"You now have thirty seconds," she said flatly, circling back around to maintain visual observation on the repair ship. Still it continued to run for the hyper limit, and she wondered if its crew thought she was bluffing or simply figured they had nothing left to lose.
"Fifteen seconds," she said emotionlessly, hand hovering over the case. "Ten seconds"
Still the ship maintained its course, and she slewed the nose of the shuttle away, taking it out of her cockpit's line of sight even as she polarized the passenger compartment view ports.
"Five seconds," she told the ship, her voice an executioner's as she watched it now on radar. "Four... three... two... one."
She pressed the second button on her case once, and the repair ship and its entire crew disappeared in a terrible flash.
Chapter THIRTY-THREE
Ginger Lewis watched her work section help the crew of Rail Number Three maneuver the pod back into Cargo One. The pod was smaller than a LAC, but it was much larger than a pinnace, and its designers had been far less concerned with ease of handling than with combat effectiveness. N
or was the situation helped by the fact that Wayfarer, as one of the first four ships to be fitted with the new, rail-launched version, had been forced to work out handling procedures more or less as she went. But each pod cost over three million dollars, which put their reuse high on BuShip's list of desirable achievements. And, Ginger admitted, having them available to shoot at another enemy made sense all on its own.
None of which made the task any less of a pain.
Commander Harmon’s LACs had tracked down all but three of the pods used in the short, savage destruction of Andre Warnecke’s cruisers, which was outstanding, given how difficult the systems low signature features made finding them. Be a good idea to put a homing beacon on them, Ginger thought, making a mental note to suggest just that. Wonder why no one at BuWeaps thought of that?
In the meantime, all twenty-seven of the (beaconless) relocated pods had been towed to Wayfarer, where skinsuited Engineering and Tactical crews had worked their butts off recertifying their launch cells. Two had been down-checked, they were repairable, but not out of Wayfarer's onboard resources, and the Captain had ordered them destroyed.
That left twenty-five, all of which had to have their cells reloaded. That could have been done on the launch rails, but Wayfarer was equipped with the latest Mark 27, Mod C missile, which weighed in at just over one hundred and twenty tons in one standard gravity. Even in free-fall, that was a lot of mass and inertia, and the damned things were the next best thing to fifteen meters long. All in all, Ginger had to agree that reloading them outside the ship, where there was plenty of room to work, and then remounting them on the rails made far more sense.
