The Price of Honor (The United Federation Marine Corps' Grub Wars Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Words have meaning,” the Klethos said again, revealing nothing more.

  “So, when you say honor must be restored, whose honor?”

  Foue nudged Sky’s foot with hers, unseen under the heavy table.

  “Any honor, all honor. That is the way with all d’lato.”

  “And are we humans d’lato?” Sky asked, repeating the Klethos word for which they referred to themselves, not specifically as Klethos but as a class of being, the best human linguists could tell.

  “D’lato are d’lato. It comes from within.”

  “Let me ask, Ambassador,” Foue said. “We believe we are d’lato, just as you. We’ve honored the fighting ring for over 100 of our years. All humans have honored the ring. Is this a sign of d’lato?”

  “All d’lato honor the ring,” “Gerly,” the nickname they used for one of the other Klethos, said, only the fourth or fifth time Sky had ever heard her speak.

  Glinda stared at the humans impassively.

  “So, even the Brotherhood, who had provided Gladiators for the ring, they are d’lato?” Foue asked.

  “D’lato is not a permanent state of being. It is the now and when.”

  When?

  Sky felt she was at the cusp of a breakthrough, and with just one or two more pieces of information, everything would fall into place. One thing was evident to her, however. “D’lato” gave a being status. The Trinoculars and all the species the Klethos had exterminated were not d’lato, and so they had been beneath notice, “sub-human” in human thinking. By understanding the Klethos honor and agreeing to the terms of gladiatorial combat, humanity had elevated itself to d’lato status.

  But now she was sure that the term wasn’t a description such as human, Klethos, or even sentient; it was something that had to be maintained, and those in the Brotherhood alliance had somehow lost that status. The big question was how that would affect the relationship between the Klethos and the UAM alliance.

  No, it isn’t, she suddenly realized. The big question is how that affects the Klethos and the Brotherhood alliance.

  The more she thought about it, the more she was certain. Foue had been on to something, asking about the Brotherhood.

  “So, please forgive the question, as I know it is obvious, but for clarity’s sake, what happens when honor is forfeit?”

  Sky was sure she saw a quick flick of Gloria’s nictitating membrane.

  “When honor is forfeit, those with honor must remediate the situation to bring honor into balance again.”

  “So, if a Klethos warrior lost honor, it would be her fellow warriors who would remediate and bring honor back into balance.”

  “Your words are words,” Glinda said, speaking once again.

  Meaning what I say is true, and so my words are real words.

  She was sure that the Klethos was telling her that the Brotherhood alliance had lost honor, that they were no longer d’lato. More importantly, it was up to the rest of humanity to restore the balance in honor.

  “And if we don’t?” Dr. Pavoni asked.

  Sky kept her face straight. Pavoni understood where the conversation was going, but evidently, he didn’t believe in diplomacy.

  “Honor must be remediated or there is no honor.”

  And with that, we’re no longer d’lato. They’re getting their asses kicked by the Grubs. Would they really jeopardize our help for a matter of obscure honor?

  Looking at the four Klethos, Sky was suddenly sure that they would. They would cripple their effort if it meant keeping their honor intact.

  “It is acceptable for those in need to request help from other d’lato to remediate honor,” Gary said. “It would be mandatory for another d’lato to render such aid, whether it was asked for or not.”

  Sky’s mouth opened in shock. This was the first time any male Klethos had spoken to a human. Some specialists had conjectured that they couldn’t speak at all. Not only had he spoken, but he’d been clear in his meaning.

  She exchanged a quick glance with Foue, wondering if they’d both come to the same conclusion. The UAM forces had better deal with the Brotherhood alliance to restore humanity’s honor. If they didn’t, the Klethos were going to step in and “remediate” the situation themselves.

  SMS Zrínyi

  Chapter 16

  Hondo

  “OK, that’s enough for now,” Doc Leach shouted up to Tony B, who was crouched above the container of zip-locks.

  The Zrínyi was a hybrid, neither a real man-of-war nor a transport, and that meant it did neither well. The container carrying the medical supplies had been packed among a myriad of other containers that made normal access impossible. One of the ship’s engineers had to cut open the top just to give the Marines access to it.

  And access was needed. The two companies’ corpsman had each carried two zip-locks in their personal kits. Only three zip-locks that had been carried by the Charlie corpsmen had been recovered in usable condition, so that left the zip-locks carried by Doc Leach and the other surviving Alpha Company corpsmen, twelve zip-locks in all.

  There were twenty-two Marines, one corpsman, and five Brotherhood host KIA on the ship who had a chance at resurrection, and they needed to be put into stasis. Captain Ariç had given First Squad the task of recovering more zip-locks and breaking into the weapons containers, while Second Squad collected the dead.

  All told, Hondo was glad that he was in the cargo hold and Cara was moving the KIA into the ship’s galley.

  Hondo had been glad to leave the CIC. Tension had been high, as the two captains didn’t seem to be on the same page. The skipper was angry, but it was a collected anger, as she tried to develop a course of action with the ship’s CO. Captain Warrant, the Charlie Company commander, was mad enough to take action himself if he could, and he even told the ship’s CO to get the impulse engines online and ram the Brotherhood frigate.

  The two captains looked about to come to blows when the four sergeants had been dismissed and given their tasks. Hondo wasted no time in beating feet out of there.

  He understood Captain Warrant’s anger. As the senior Marine onboard, he was the commander of troops, and he’d been in CIC when the frigate had attacked. He’s lost almost his entire company while he’d been in the safest part of the ship. It was no wonder he wanted to take it to the Brotherhood.

  But the question was how. The Zrínyi’s weapons were offline or destroyed. The ammo locker was even off-limits. One of the larger pieces of ordnance had been cracked, and radiation had flooded the space. The ship had no propulsion power and could not get underway, which was probably a good thing with Captain Warrant wanting to play Roman galley and ram the frigate. They didn’t have EVA suits other than the eight, brightly-colored Navy EVA suits used for external repairs.

  What they did have was one ship-to-shore shuttle, a cargo sled, and their personal escape pods, and it was looking more and more like those pods might be their last hope if the frigate’s captain decided to fire on the Zrínyi again. With the ship being inside the Lore system, the pods wouldn’t have any trouble making it down to the system’s lone inhabitable planet.

  They also had the five resurrectable Brotherhood KIA and three EPWs, all wounded. As per the Harbin Accords, the names of the three prisoners and the KIA were being sent to the frigate, so the captain would know that action taken against the Zrínyi would be action taken against their own personnel.

  As Tony B climbed down from on top of the containers, Hondo looked at the long line of them that filled the cargo hold. Inside those containers were over two hundred PICS, armed and ready for battle. They represented a very significant force, but they weren’t much use in the confines of a ship. Even if they’d been accessible during the fight, they wouldn’t have done much good; they were simply too big. One of them hunched over in a passage would have been a pretty serious obstacle, but it would have been more of a pillbox than a maneuverable asset.

  The thought of beaming a squad of PICS Marines inside of the f
rigate to wrack havoc gave him a temporary smile, but beaming was a figment of the scifi flicks and books, not real life. A PICS Marine would have to shuttle over, or even use their putt-putt, the tiny impulse pack that could be strapped on to maneuver a PICS in the vacuum of space.

  The thought of the putt-putts perked Hondo up for a moment.

  What if we . . .

  He dropped that line of thought almost before it began. The putt-putts could move a PICS at possibly five klicks an hour, even if they had 200 of them onboard, which was extremely doubtful. They would advance so slowly that a gunner on the frigate could use visual sighting to blast each Marine on the transit over. Even if the frigate was still 800 meters off, that would mean it would take ten long minutes for a PICS Marine to cross that distance. It would make more sense to use the container jockey to throw the Marines across that distance.

  He laughed at the mental image of Marines being shot across like so many containers, ready to be caught by the appropriate distribution rails. Wal-Tesco might have developed the system to get its myriad of products to the customer, so why not Marines?

  Then he stopped short.

  Why not Marines? Could it work?

  He looked over at the five container jockeys locked into the rails in the overhead. This was an extremely stupid idea, but at the moment, he couldn’t think of an obvious reason why a jockey couldn’t handle the job. They handled just about everything Wal-Tesco sold.

  I’ve got to talk to the lieutenant.

  EARTH

  Chapter 17

  Skylar

  “I’ve got to talk to the minister,” Sky told Keyshon as she took the maglev back to Paris.

  She’d just left the meeting and was sitting with Foue in a secured government compartment, thanks to her Greater France counterpart. Sky had only met Affoue Kouassi once before, two months ago, but she’d taken an immediate liking to the tall scientist. Liking her or not, though, did not matter as much as the fact that she’d read the same thing into the meeting that Sky had. The Klethos had been giving them a warning: either take care of the Brotherhood alliance, or they would.

  Given the relatively small numbers of Klethos warriors, Sky wasn’t sure if they could actually defeat half of humanity in an all-out war, even given their better technology. No matter what, however, such a war would be devastating. The Klethos had to be convinced not to let honor take both species down.

  “The minister left for Brussels two hours ago,” her assistant told her.

  Foue looked at her with raised eyebrows from her seat across from her.

  “Change my schedule. I’m going to Brussels. I’m arriving in Paris in . . .”

  “Eight minutes,” Foue told her.

  “ . . . in eight minutes. Get me to Brussels as quickly as possible.”

  “Will do. I’ll have it up to you in two minutes.”

  “Is that related?” Foue asked in her lilting accent.

  Greater France and the Federation had somewhat of a love-hate relationship, going back to France’s decision not to join the Federation upon its inception. They’d been allies, and they’d been at war with each other. High-level officials from each government were not prone to sharing certain information.

  Well, luckily, I’m a scientist, not a bureaucrat, and we’re allies in this.

  “I don’t think so. The minister was supposed to meet with the chairman this morning, so something big is up, but as far as I know, you and I are the first to discover this issue.”

  “And Pavoni,” Foue said.

  “He’s Confed through-and-through. He’ll be reporting back to the counsel himself, most likely, before he makes a move.”

  “I’ve downloaded my initial report,” Foue told her.

  Sky wrinkled her forehead. She had an initial report ready to upload, but she’d wanted to speak to the minister face-to-face, to make sure he understood exactly how she felt. Bulleted notes on an eDoc couldn’t convey the same urgency. She didn’t know why the minister was on his way to Brussels, but he hated leaving Pittsburgh, even to go to DC.

  Her PA softly chimed, and she glanced down to see she had a maglev to Brussels in 23 minutes, leaving off track 23 at Gare du Nord. She’d be in Brussels by 11:54.

  The minister needed to know now. With a sigh, she sent the report, with a request to meet him in his UAM office at 12:30. She stared at her PA for forty-five seconds before he responded confirming the meeting.

  She held up her PA for Foue to read, then asked, “When’s your meeting?”

  “One,” she said. “If you’re still in Brussels at three, give me a call. If your minister approves, I’d like to compare notes with you.”

  “Will do,” Sky said without hesitation, as the first buildings of the Paris metroplex came into view.

  SMS Zrínyi

  Chapter 18

  Hondo

  “It would be suicide,” Captain Ariç said. “Anyone would still be picked off before they got halfway there.”

  “Some might be, but not all,” Captain Warrant said. “Hell, I’ll lead the wave over myself.”

  Hondo, trying to fade into the bulkhead in the back, raised his eyebrows at that. Marine captains were not known to be lead-from-the-back officers, but to volunteer to lead what probably would be a suicide mission gave the man cred, and he had to give him props.

  Hondo had been surprised when Lieutenant Abrams had thought his crazy idea had merit. He hadn’t been pleased, however, when the lieutenant had dragged him into CIC to tell the skipper.

  Captain Warrant had immediately seized on the idea and championed it, allowing Hondo to retreat into the background. The ship’s commander, Alezerdes Black, had called the cargo chief to CIC to ask if using the container jockeys would be possible.

  He looked up at the overhead as if searching for an answer there, then shrugged and said, “Igen, sir, it could be done.”

  Captain Warrant fist-pumped the air in triumph before Captain Ariç asked, “One, how accurate would it be, and two, how . . . well . . . fast would it shoot someone?”

  “Well, ma’am, extremely accurate. It don’t make no difference in a vacuum as to size and shape. If you shoot it, it will go where you want it. Some of the big commercial pod liners, they send containers nigh on four klicks to get into the right distribution system. As to speed, well, up to 48 meters per second.”

  Shit, that’s . . . he had to stop to do the calculation in his head . . . over 170 KPH.

  Hitting a ship at that speed would mess up a PICS, and more so the Marine inside.

  Captain Ariç could do the math herself.

  “Could you slow that to about ten meters per second?”

  “Aye-ah, Captain. It’s just an adjustment on the actuator ring.”

  “See, Tess? A PICS can withstand a 35 KPH hit,” Captain Warrant said. “It can take a 50 KPH hit.”

  Probably. Not a good idea, though, especially if we’ve got to stop on a ship’s hull, Hondo thought.

  “OK, say 15 meters a second, then. That’s still a minute to get from the Zrínyi to the frigate. That’s a long, long time to be a target. Think of it, a minute.”

  Hondo hadn’t considered that, and his tempered enthusiasm dropped a few levels. Almost every weapon a frigate had would make mincemeat of a Marine in PICS.

  “No one would be a target for a full minute. A frigate like that has cutouts for anything close in.”

  Hondo knew what a cutout was in a Marine tank. The main guns could not be lowered so far as to fire and hit itself. But tanks also had close-in anti-personnel weapons, too, to take care of infantry who got in too close. A frigate might have the same kind of cutouts for her main weapons, but he couldn’t imagine an expensive investment like that wouldn’t have many ways to repel boarders.

  “It’s still too long,” Captain Ariç said. “One sweep with the Borring Gun, and every Marine would be cooked.”

  “That gun takes time to aim.”

  One of the Navy officers said, “About thirty seconds f
or a one-eighty shift.”

  “Which would be enough time to get in close,” Captain Warrant said, pouncing on the statement like a cat on a mouse.

  “You’re assuming that the gun is already pointed at a one-eighty away from the ship, and I’m betting its crosshairs are locked onto us right now.”

  The Buddie captain sat quiet during most of this interchange. The New Budapest Navy and the Marines were not technically in the same chain of command, but as the master of the ship, no action would be taken against the Brotherhood frigate without his say-so. Hondo tried to read into the man’s expression, but he was a blank slate.

  “What if we drew the gun away from the ship?” Lieutenant Abrams asked, the first words he uttered after Hondo and Cara had given their reports.

  “What do you mean?” another of the Navy officers asked.

  “Alezerdes, you still have a cargo sled, right?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t have any offensive capability,” the cargo chief answered for the ship’s captain.

  “None that are built in, but what if it looked like it was a threat?” the lieutenant said, but still looking at the ship’s CO. “There’s also one of your bombs in the magazine, leaking radiation.”

  “Yeah, one of the HR-40s. Leaking bad.”

  “So, what if we loaded it aboard the sled and sent it out?”

  “Won’t do nothin’. The forty can’t just be carried over there to detonate. It don’t work that way.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” the lieutenant said, looking right at the New Budapest commander. If we strap your HR-40 into the sled, trailing a stream of radiation and send it looping around, then what’s that Brotherhood commander going to do? Ignore it? He doesn’t have time to analyze the thing. He’s got to assume it’s a threat, and he’ll have to take action.”

  For the first time, Hondo saw the CO break his stony demeanor. The man seemed to be considering it. All hands in the CIC waited silently for him to say something.