Honor Among Enemies

Chapter THIRTY-TWO

The actual mechanics took hours to haggle out, but the basic format was the one Honor had proposed. It was galling to listen to Warnecke's mocking urbanity as he drove her to submit to his demand for freedom, but she could accept that, for in all the complicated negotiations, there was one thing he never seemed to realize. It was a minor point, perhaps, but a vital one.

She'd never once said she actually intended to let him go.

At every stage, she couched her own comments in conditionals. If Warnecke accepted her terms and if every point went as agreed, then he would be free to leave. But she'd already chosen the point at which she would make certain they were not carried out... and she'd never given her word that she wouldn't.

Putting boarders aboard Warnecke's ship was the first step, and it went more smoothly than Honor had anticipated. Scotty Tremaine's pinnaces delivered Susan Hibson and an entire company of battle-armored Marines to the repair ship while two of Jacquelyn Harmon's LACs hovered watchfully alongside. The repair ship's crew was obviously frightened at having those grim, heavily armed and armored troopers aboard their ship, but there was nothing they could have done to prevent them from boarding. The most cursory examination showed the ship was even slower than Honor had anticipated, a big, lumbering mobile repair yard, capable of a maximum acceleration of no more than 1.37 KPS². Nor was it armed in any way. It didn't even mount point defense, which turned it into a target waiting to be killed whenever one of Harmon's skippers decided to press his firing key, and its crew knew it.

Some of those crewmen were delighted to see Hibson’s Marines, for almost a third of them were captured merchant spacers, many Manticoran nationals, from the prizes Warnecke's squadron had taken, who'd been given the choice of working for their captors or dying. Very few of them were women, and Hibson's green eyes took on the cast of sea ice as Warnecke's liberated slaves told her what had happened to their female crewmates. She longed to turn her Marines loose on the repair ship's sweating crew, but she throttled her anger. She could wait, because she already knew what Captain Harrington intended to happen.

Once Hibson had secured the ship, and transferred the freed slaves to Wayfarer, the destruction of its communications systems began. Parties of Harold Tschu's personnel, shepherded by Hibson's watchful troopers and accompanied by dry-mouthed "privateer" technicians, made a clean sweep of the com sections, removing some components and simply smashing others. Instead of a single radio, Warnecke had insisted he and his three companions in the shuttle must be in skinsuits with their built-in coms. Those were somewhat more powerful than Honor had had in mind, but the change was acceptable, and the ship's receivers were left intact, as was one short-ranged transmitter, so that Warnecke could communicate with his crew from the shuttle. But every other transmitter was reduced to scrap. The crew could fix the damage eventually, of course, it was a repair ship, but that would take at least two days, which was ample for the purposes of what almost everyone involved thought was going to happen.

With the com systems disabled, Hibson withdrew all but one platoon of her Marines. The remaining platoon took station in the boat bay, where it both served as hostages against any attempt by Honor to destroy the ship and watched each shuttle as it arrived from Sidemores surface. The major wondered just how the garrison still on the planet was reacting to all this, but they probably didn't even know what was happening. Indeed, she thought, that was inevitable. If they had known, a free-for-all battle for space on the repair ship would have erupted instantly.

Getting Warnecke himself from Sidemore to the ship was particularly tricky. It would have been simplicity itself for the LACs' lasers to annihilate his shuttle during transit, and the light-speed weapons would have given him no warning to press the button before he died. Honor had been afraid he'd respond by setting up a deadman switch to set off the charges if his transmitter stopped broadcasting, but she'd been ready for the possibility. After all, the whole object of their negotiations was to set up a situation in which there was only a single transmitter which would be taken away from Warnecke just before he hypered out of Marsh, and she'd been prepared to argue that those considerations made a deadman switch unacceptable.

Fortunately, however, the point never arose, since Warnecke accepted her proposal for dealing with the problem of getting him safely to his ship. The total transfer would require fifteen shuttle flights, and she offered to move her LACs beyond laser range and use only unarmed cutters to withdraw her Marines once all other arrangements had been successfully concluded. Since she couldn't know which shuttle Warnecke was aboard until it actually arrived and could no longer engage them with anything but sublight missiles, she couldn't attack them at all without giving him time to press the button.

In the event, Warnecke arrived in the fourth shuttle, which immediately locked itself to the outer hull of the repair ship with its belly tractors ninety meters from the nearest personnel lock. With no docking tube, there would be no way for any of the ship's crew to rush the shuttle, or reach the demolition charge Tschu’s engineers rigged on its hull, without going extravehicular, and the shuttle's view ports would allow Honor to maintain a visual watch over the charge.

Once again, personnel from the repair ship watched as Tschu's people emplaced the charge, and then it was time.

"You're mad, My Lady." Major LaFollet's voice was low but intense as the cutter approached Warnecke's shuttle. "This is the most insane thing you've ever done, and that takes some doing!"

"Just humor me, Andrew," Honor replied, watching through a view port as her pilot maneuvered for a lock-to-lock mating with the shuttle. Her chief armsman clamped his mouth shut with an almost audible grinding of teeth, and she smiled faintly at her reflection in the port. Poor Andrew. He really hated this, but it was the only option that offered a chance of success, and she turned from the view port to inspect her "officers" as the locks came together.

There'd never been any question who would accompany her; she'd have had to brig her armsmen to make any other choice. That was why LaFollet, James Candless, and Simon Mattingly had exchanged their Harrington Guard uniforms for Manticoran ones, and she was pleased at how well ship's stores had managed to fit them. Candless wore the uniform of a commander, Mattingly that of a senior-grade lieutenant, and LaFollet that of a lowly Marine second lieutenant. That should tend to divert attention from the true commander of her bodyguard, but the main reason for the choices was that, of all her armsmen, LaFollet had the most pronounced Grayson accent. Candless had learned to mimic Honor’s crisp, Sphinx accent almost perfectly, and Mattingly could pass for a native of Gryphon at need, but LaFollet simply could not shake the soft, slow speech of his birth world. It was unlikely Warnecke would be sufficiently familiar with Manticoran dialects to spot an imposter, but there was no point taking any chances, and no one would expect so junior an officer to say much.

The green light blinked, the hatch slid open, and Honor drew a deep breath.

"All right, people," she told her armsmen quietly. "Let's be about it."

LaFollet grunted like an irate bear, then stepped in front of her as she lifted Nimitz to her shoulder. She'd thought long and hard about leaving the 'cat behind, but he'd made his opinion of that option abundantly clear. That wouldn't have been enough to stop her from doing it anyway, but Nimitz had proved himself far too useful in the past. He was so small few strangers realized how lethal he could be, and his ability to read the emotions of Warnecke and his henchmen might literally be the difference between life or death this time. She felt his taut, coiled-spring readiness as she settled him in position and took the time to send him one last admonition to wait. She sensed his agreement, but she also knew it was conditional, and despite her own nervousness, she was content with that. In sudden threat situations, 'cats were prone to revert to instinct-level response, but she'd made certain Nimitz understood what she intended to happen, and she trusted his judgment. Besides, if things went utterly wrong, the empathic 'cat was far more likely than she or her armsmen to have sufficient warning to react in time.

Four skinsuited men were waiting in the shuttle when she followed LaFollet through the natch. Warnecke sat at the extreme front of the passenger compartment, a transmitter in his lap. It was bigger than the one he'd had on the planet, more than sufficiently powerful to set the charges off from orbit, but Honor expected that, for the change had been discussed. All the pirates wore pulsers, and the two who flanked Warnecke carried flechette guns, as well. The fourth, whose skinsuit bore the stylized silver wings of a command pilot, stood just inside the hatch to search each of them for weapons. LaFollet already stood to one side, his face flushed angry from the humiliation of submitting to a search, and the pilot smiled nastily as he reached for Honor. "Keep your hands to yourself unless you want me to break them," she said. She didn't raise her voice, but it struck like an icy lash and Nimitz bared his fangs. The man froze, and her lip curled as she turned her head to meet Warnecke's eyes. "I agreed to be checked for weapons, not to be pawed by one of your animals."

"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 comfortingly 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.