Uncompromising Honor - eARC

by David Weber

  There was a lot of that going around.

  Six days. That was how long had passed since the Beowulf Strike. Six days of nightmare labor, and a huge part of that had landed on Hawthorne. She was one of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s Whitethorn-class rescue ships, superbly designed and equipped for search and rescue operations under the most difficult conditions imaginable. But there were only eight of them in the entire SDF…and no one had ever imagined conditions like this. No wonder Badilotti—all of Neitz’s people—were so exhausted.

  No really big chunks of wreckage had gotten through to the planet, thank God. There’d been no major surface strikes, no tsunamis like the one which had killed his third cousin and her family in Yawata. The block ships which had been unable to protect the habitats had at least managed to intercept their broken bones before that happened.

  Not that plenty of bits and pieces still in orbit didn’t pose potential threats. One of the first things Search and Rescue Command had done was to plot vectors for all the larger chunks of debris. Those which had threatened other habitats had been intercepted first, but scores of others tumbled on new, highly eccentric orbits that swooped low enough to graze the fringe of atmosphere. Those would have to be dealt with soon, as well, before they lost sufficient velocity to nosedive to the surface like the lost hammer of Thor.

  Most of the debris threatened no one, though. Not immediately.

  And God alone knew how many pieces of that “debris” had once been human beings.

  Neitz’s jaw tightened at that thought. The debris pattern, coupled with the sensor records of the actual event, made it clear the charges had been placed with vicious forethought. Law enforcement and military intelligence were only starting their relentless assault on how it had been done, but at least a dozen competing theories had already emerged. Personally, Neitz went with what was generally regarded as the most probable. The devices had to have been in one of the central cargo hubs aboard each habitat. It was the only way to account for the wreckage patterns…and those hubs had been located at the cores of the enormous platforms’ personnel sections. That was why the bastards had taken that approach, chosen those locations for some innocuous, well camouflaged crate or container. A cargo cannister in one of the open-space orbital holding areas would have inflicted little—probably even no—damage when it detonated. Even one of the long-term controlled condition storage booms would have provided sufficient separation for much of something as massive as Beowulf Alpha was—had been—to survive. But not in the cargo hubs. They’d been deliberately located as conveniently as possible to the places where people lived.

  “How much longer, honey?” Christina asked in his ear, and his nostrils flared.

  “However long it takes.” It came out much more harshly than he’d intended. “Lord, I’m sorry,” he said a moment later, his tone contrite. “It’s just…just that we can’t quit. We just can’t.”

  “I know. And I shouldn’t push for answers you can’t give me anyway. I know that, too.” He could picture that small, loving, half-apologetic smile perfectly. “It’s just that we miss you down here.”

  “Miss you, too,” he said, but he knew what she was really thinking. It had been almost a T-week. An entire T-week. Hawthorne alone had recovered over six hundred bodies so far, and that wasn’t even her primary mission. He had no idea how many had been recovered by Search and Rescue’s small craft, and he didn’t want to know. Not really. But that wasn’t Hawthorne’s job. Her teams were out amid the densest parts of the debris field in her specialized salvage shuttles, threading their way through the thousand-ton chunks of alloy, cutting their way into compartments that might still be intact. Searching desperately for someone who might still be alive.

  So far, they’d found sixteen. Sixteen…and they weren’t going to find any more of them. He’d made himself accept that twenty-four hours ago. Anyone who’d been trapped in one of those compartments had run out of air or heat or power long since.

  But that didn’t mean they’d stop looking. “No One Left behind.” That was Search and Rescue’s motto, and they would by God keep the faith. No matter what, no matter who, they’d honor that trust.

  “I’m sorry to say that the real reason I commed you is that I just heard from Lizzy,” Christina said after a moment, and Neitz frowned. Lizzy—Elizabeth—was their daughter, a student at Hippocrates University. She’d been safely on the other side of the planet when Alpha blew up, so why…?

  “Lizzy?” he repeated.

  “Yes.” Christina paused, almost as if she was gathering her strength. “She just found out Felicia Cummings, Tim Qwan, Katsuko Johnson, and half a dozen of her other friends were at the Broken Arrow concert.”

  Neitz closed his eyes in sudden pain.

  Broken Arrow. He remembered how hard he’d tried to get Lizzy a ticket to the band’s live concert. She shouldn’t have been going—not with mid-terms coming up this week—but he’d known how badly she’d wanted to. And he’d been bitterly disappointed when he found out he’d waited too long.

  Then. Before all forty thousand concert-goers died with the rest of Beowulf Alpha. And Katsuko…Katsuko who’d been Lizzy’s best friend since nursery school…

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he whispered.

  “I know. I know.” He heard the tears glittering in his wife’s voice. “You know what she’s like. She’s visiting Katsuko’s mom right now, and then she’s headed over to the Qwans. She’s like you. She has to be there for people.”

  Neitz nodded silently. He knew exactly what his daughter was doing at that moment, despite her own terrible grief.

  “I just wanted you to know,” Christina went on. “You know she’s not going to mention it to you—certainly not while you’re still up there. But I figured—”

  “You figured I should know before she and I have a chance to talk about it,” he finished for her. “Because the last thing either of us need is for me to say something that hurts her all over again. And because you’re a good mom and a better wife. We’re both lucky to have you.”

  “Oh, I’ve always known that!” she said with a slightly watery chuckle, and he smiled wearily.

  “Well, at least I’ve finally started figuring it out, too,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to say I could be a little sl—”

  “Priority signal!” Lieutenant Simpkins-Howard announced suddenly from Communications, and Neitz’s eyes popped open.

  “Gotta run, honey!”

  “Go,” Christina said. “And promise me you’ll try to get at least a little rest.”

  “Love you,” he said, instead of issuing any promises he knew he couldn’t keep. Then he killed the uni-link and swiveled his chair to face Communications.

  “What is it, Carla?”

  “It’s the Bosun, Sir. Charlie Three’s reporting a live suit beacon!”

  “A live beacon?”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  Badilotti leaned forward, looking over the sensor officer of the watch’s shoulder. Now he straightened and turned to face Neitz.

  “That’s sure as hell what it looks like, Skipper,” he said. “One of Platform Engineering’s suits, from the transponder code.”

  “After this long? Where’s it been for the last week? It’s got to be some kind of sensor glitch.”

  “Don’t know where it’s been, Sir, but it’s Bosun Lochen.” Badilotti twitched a tired smile. “If you want, I can ask him to double check.”

  “Bad idea,” Neitz said, shaking his head.

  Senior Master Chief Petty Officer Bill Lochen, Hawthorne’s senior NCO, had been in Search and Rescue since the year Captain John Neitz graduated from high school. He was the best wreck-diver Neitz had ever met, which was the reason he and Charlie Three, Neitz’s most experienced shuttle crew, were the point of Hawthorne’s spear. If he said he was picking up a signal, he was picking up a signal.

  Which didn’t explain why no one had picked it up sooner.

  “The Bosun does say it’s coming from insi
de a real rat’s nest of wreckage, Skipper,” Badilotti continued, as if he’d heard his captain’s thought. “In fact, if I had to guess, the problem’s how deep it is, how much junk it has to punch through. That’s got to be why we didn’t spot it earlier.”

  “What’s the status of the survivor?”

  “We don’t know there is a survivor yet.” Badilotti’s excitement waned visibly. “All the Bosun’s got so far is the beacon. He says there’s no telemetry, or if there is, it’s not getting through, anyway. He’s working on it.”

  “Understood.”

  Neitz inhaled. No wonder Badilotti’s initial exhilaration had faded. Skinsuit beacons were designed to be incredibly powerful, but suit telemetry channels were shorter-ranged and considerably weaker. If the wreckage around it had been sufficient to block it for so long, it was entirely possible there was telemetry and it just couldn’t get through.

  But it was far, far more likely that no telemetry was getting through because there was no one—no one alive, at least—inside the suit in question.

  “Stay on it, David,” he said after a moment. “And tell Bosun Lochen to keep us informed. I know he will, anyway, but, God, I could use some good news for a change.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Badilotti said. “We all could.”

  George Benton Tower

  City of Old Chicago

  Old Earth

  Sol System

  “Well, so much for our wonderful secret weapon,” Malachai Abruzzi said bitterly. “How the hell am I supposed to sell this as the ‘decisive victory’ we needed?”

  “It’s not a complete disaster,” Nathan MacArtney objected. “It looks like Hasta worked perfectly. If they’d seen it coming before the last stage lit off, they’d’ve stopped any of them from getting through, and they didn’t.”

  “Oh, that makes it much better,” Abruzzi half-sneered. “Now you’re telling me I’m supposed to tell the public we fired off twelve hundred of these wonderful new missiles, the other side didn’t even see them coming until the last second, and we still managed to take out one—count them, Nathan: one—of our eleven primary objectives.” He shook his head in disgust. “I’m pretty good. Hell, I could sell ice on Niflheim! I don’t think I can sell this, though.”

  “No one expects miracles, Malachai,” Innokentiy Kolokoltsov told him. “We’ll just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Abruzzi muttered. Then he shook himself. “I really, really need Kingsford to give me something to work with.”

  “I’m sure he will. As soon as he can.”

  Abruzzi snorted, but he also sat back in his chair, arms folded, and Kolokoltsov tried to be grateful for small mercies.

  Fabius had been almost as big a disaster as Kingsford had privately warned him it might. Unlike the CNO’s worst-case assumption—based on discovering that the Manties’ FTL system defense missiles were already fully operational—almost ten percent of Vincent Capriotti’s battlecruisers had survived. SLNS Québec had not been one of them, however, and the remnants of TF 790 had reached Sol less than eleven hours ago. So far, no one outside the Navy—and the Mandarins—knew they had or had any idea the Solarian League had once again suffered catastrophic losses.

  It would be a while before Kingsford could provide any sort of comprehensive after-action report or meaningful analysis of the attack’s results. Without Capriotti—or, for that matter, any of the task group flagships—just pulling together the sensor data was likely to take days. What he called the “hot wash” analysis suggested Abruzzi’s dismal summary of Capriotti’s accomplishments was likely to hold up, though. Kingsford’s face had been bitter on Kolokoltsov’s com display as he described the impeller wedges which had interposed themselves between the Hastas and their targets.

  “We’d have gotten better results going after something farther from the planet,” the CNO had said heavily. “We had to be so careful about our targeting commands to avoid civilian casualties that the birds’ tactical options were too limited to work around the obstacles. It looks like we probably killed at least a dozen of the ships they were using—more likely twice that many—but if I had to guess, they were freighters. Probably unmanned freighters—drones. So aside from the nano farm, I think it’s likely we didn’t get another damned thing. I’m sorry, Mister Senior Permanent Undersecretary. My people tried.”

  Yes, they did, Admiral, Kolokoltsov thought now. And a hell of a lot of them died trying. But Malachai’s right. We can’t sell this as the win we needed.

  “Anything more on that ‘data anomaly,’?” MacArtney asked.

  “No.” Kolokoltsov shrugged. “Kingsford says his people at Operational Analysis are working on it, but so far ‘data anomaly’ is as far as they’ve gotten.” He shrugged again. “Frankly, I think Kingsford’s pretty much of the opinion that it’s a sensor glitch. Only two of Capriotti’s recon drones even think they saw it…whatever it was.”

  “Good,” Abruzzi said with bitter amusement. “At least I won’t have to explain that one away. Last thing we need is for people to think the Manties are still producing new ‘secret weapons.’ Especially when ours all seem to suck wind.”

  “I have to say,” Omosupe Quartermain put in, her tone as subdued—and anxious—as her expression, “that I’m a lot more worried about how the Manties are going to react to this than I am about what we tell the newsies.”

  Trust Omosupe to cut to the chase, Kolokoltsov reflected. And she had a point. The attack on Beowulf had upped the ante all around, and it was unlikely the Manties were very pleased about it. Still, there were a few glimmers in the darkness.

  Even from Kingsford’s current, partial analysis, it was obvious McArtney was right: the Manties had never even seen Hasta coming until the final stages went active. That meant the weapon had performed almost exactly as advertised, and the fact that at least some of their technology had done that—that the Manties’ monopoly on superior weapons wasn’t absolute, after all—was at least a little reassuring. According to Kingsford and Vice Admiral Kindrick, Systems Development Command and Technodyne were working on half a dozen other projects which should begin yielding results sometime within the next eight to twelve T-months. How good those results would be was an unknown, but if Hasta was representative, they might just provide a genuine equalizer, especially if they were employed en masse.

  And the preliminary vote on the taxation amendment went our way overwhelmingly, Kolokoltsov reminded himself. If Neng and Tyrone Reid are right, it’ll sail through on the final vote next week, too. If that happens, we’ll have all the money we need to buy anything Systems Development wants! We just have to hang on long enough for that to happen, and the Manties are frigging history!

  He reminded himself of that firmly—very firmly. And somewhere under that reassurance, he heard the lonely sound of whistling in a cemetery.

  CNO’s Office

  Admiralty building

  City of Old Chicago

  Old Earth

  Sol System

  The com pinged.

  Winston Kingsford snarled at the sound. He’d left strict orders that he wasn’t to be disturbed by anybody short of Innokentiy Kolokoltsov himself while he tried to make sense out of the confused reports from TF 790’s survivors. And since he’d just finished speaking to Kolokoltsov twenty minutes ago—and since if anyone in the entire Sol System understood why he needed to be left alone to get on with it, that someone had to be Kolokoltsov—he rather doubted this was the Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs.

  Which meant whoever was pinging his com was about to acquire a new anal orifice.

  It pinged again, and he stabbed the acceptance key angrily.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Excuse me, Admiral,” Chief Petty Officer Chernova said. She’d been Kingsford’s personal yeomen for well over ten T-years, and she sounded remarkably calm in the face of his obvious displeasure.

  “I said, ‘no interruptions,’ Ma
rilis,” he pointed out ominously.

  “Yes, Admiral. I know. But Brigadier Gaddis insists on speaking to you.”

  “Gaddis?” Kingsford blinked. “You mean Simeon Gaddis—the Gendarme?”

  “Yes, Sir. He says it’s urgent. A matter of life and death.”

  Kingsford started to refuse. He couldn’t imagine anything that might be “life-and-death” to the Gendarmerie that didn’t come a piss-poor second to keeping his Navy alive! On the other hand, Gaddis wasn’t stupid. In fact, aside from a certain quixotic streak where things like corruption were concerned, he had a reputation as one of the smartest people on the block. He was also one of the people who was most likely to have heard the truth about Operation Fabius, not the garbled accounts of victory which had leaked to the boards. That meant he had to know Kingsford was going to be…less than responsive to anything else for a while. From which it followed…

  “Well, in that case, I guess you’d better put him through, Marilis,” he sighed.

  “He’s not on the com, Sir,” Chernova replied. “He’s here in person.”

  Kingsford’s eyebrows tried to climb into his hairline. Then he shrugged.

  “In that case, change that to ‘I guess you’d better send him in,’” he said, and stood behind his desk as Chief Chernova showed the Gendarmerie officer into his office. Under the circumstances, he decided to dispense with the customary offer of refreshments and twitched his head at the office door. Chernova smiled faintly and effaced herself without another word.

  “With all due respect, Brigadier Gaddis,” Kingsford said then, waving brusquely for Gaddis to take a seat, “this really had better be damned important. I know the boards are starting to talk about our ‘great victory,’ but to paraphrase King Pyrrhys, another ‘victory’ or two like this one, and we’re all fucked.” He showed his teeth in something that wasn’t a smile. “So I’m just a little busy right now.”