In Enemy Hands

Chapter Twenty-One

The guards aboard the shuttle wore the black tunics and red trousers of State Security, not Navy green and gray or the brown and gray of the People's Marines, and there were more of them. In fact, there was as many guards as there were prisoners, each of them with a flechette gun and the expression of someone who would enjoy using it.

Honor sat straight and still, with Nimitz a stiff, motionless weight in her lap, and tried to hide behind an assumed calm as hard, hostile eyes bored into her back. It wasn't easy, and her mask had slipped when the SS guards arrived to replace the naval escort she'd expected. Nor had the prisoners remained together for their trip planet-side, for this shuttle held only her own staffers and the more senior of Prince Adrian's commissioned personnel. The rest of McKeon's officers and the senior noncoms Tourville had been ordered to deliver to Barnett were in a second shuttle, following behind this one, and a corner of her brain wondered if they would be reunited after landing.

She didn't know, but she almost hoped not, for they would be better off as far as possible from whatever the Peeps planned for her. She knew that now, for the emotions whipping through the shuttle roared and echoed within her, and she understood exactly why Nimitz was such a knot of tension. The anxiety and fear of her fellow prisoners, their helpless ignorance as they waited to discover what their futures were, would have been bad enough, but she also felt the emotions—and anticipation—of the StateSec thugs.

And thugs they were, she thought grimly, fighting to hold onto her stability and maintain her pretense of calm while the fear of others fed her own. Manticore's intelligence agencies had analyzed State Security and its role in maintaining the Committee of Public Safety in power, and Honor had seen ONI's reports. For the most part, Admiral Givens' analysts had been more concerned with StateSec's impact on the operations of the People's Navy than with how it functioned within civilian society, but even ONI's summary reports had noted that the SS had recruited its members not just from the elements which had been the most disaffected under the old regime but from the now defunct Office of Internal Security, as well. InSec's enforcers and executioners had been professionals, not ideologues. They'd been willing enough to shift allegiance to the new regime and teach its minions their trade, and their new colleagues had learned their lessons well. In fact, they'd learned to surpass their instructors, for they'd had lots of practice.

One reason for the Legislaturalists' fall was that their repression had been... uneven. One week they might make dozens of troublemakers disappear; the next, the government might grant a general amnesty to curry favor with the Dolists. But unevenness was a mistake the Committee of Public Safety had no intention of making. Cordelia Ransom herself had proclaimed, "Extremism in the defense of the People is the first responsibility of the State," and not a day passed without StateSec's doing its best to live up to that instruction. Even the official Peep news channels made no bones about State Security's deliberate use of terror against "enemies of the People"—who, after all, deserved whatever they got.

Honor hadn't questioned the accuracy of those ONI reports, yet neither had she thought their implications through. If she had, she would have realized what sort of people were required to embrace that sort of action.

She realized now. She couldn't help it, for their emotions beat in upon her like jeering demons, whispering malevolently in the back of her mind. The red fangs of hunger radiated from some of them, jagged with the need to prove their own power by grinding others under their heels. There was a sickness in that appetite for cruelty, one that turned Honor's stomach, yet there was worse, as well, for some of the guards standing behind her felt no hunger. They felt nothing when they looked at Honor and the other prisoners. She and her people might have been so many insects for all the emotion those guards would feel if the order were given to murder them all, and the deadness of their feelings carried a charnel reek more horrible than the most savage sadism. They were no longer human themselves. They had become automatons, and whether they'd been drawn to State Security because they'd always been sociopaths, or whether they had been dehumanized into sociopaths mattered not at all. When their gazes rested upon her, she felt the chill anticipation coiling behind their eyes. All the shuttle guards knew what had been planned for Honor, and she didn't have to be told what it was to know it had nothing at all to do with the Deneb Accords. The fierce delight of the haters told her that. Yet the other ones, the dead ones, were even more frightening, for they waited with the cold-eyed patience of pythons. There was little eagerness in their emotions, but neither was there any hesitation... and there was no pity at all.

The shuttle buffeted gently as it entered atmosphere, and Honor closed her eyes, resting her hands on Nimitz's warm softness. She wasted no effort hoping for the best. Not any longer.

Thomas Theisman glanced at Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville from the corner of one eye. Ransom had summoned Tourville, Honeker, Bogdanovich, and Foraker to face her even before she'd ordered Harrington and the other prisoners brought down from orbit. Theisman had been excluded from that meeting, but the normally fiery Tourville had emerged from the hour-long session white-faced and taut, and Honeker had looked equally shaken. Theisman hadn't been able to decide how much of Tourville's tension had been fear and how much fury, but he'd entertained no such doubts where Honeker was concerned, for the People's Commissioner had looked outright terrified.

Bogdanovich and Foraker had been at least as pale as their superiors, but there'd been a subtle difference between the two of them. The stone-faced chief of staff was clearly frightened, though he had it under better control than Honeker did. The ops officer, on the other hand, looked like a woman who wanted to strangle people with her bare hands. For all her fabled lack of social graces, Shannon Foraker was no fool, and she clearly had herself under iron self-control, but her long, narrow face's utter lack of expression only made the murderous fire in her blue eyes more obvious.

And now it was time for the macabre circus to play itself out, and Theisman spared a thought for Warner Caslet as the shuttle settled onto its pad. Caslet had been even more upset by Harrington's probable fate than Theisman himself. Indeed, he'd been angry enough to storm into Theisman's office and protest it openly in front of Dennis LePic... and in language no commissioner could possibly overlook. Yet LePic had overlooked it. He must have, for Caslet hadn't been arrested, and Theisman had done his best to protect his ops officer by ordering him out on an inspection tour of the system's perimeter sensor platforms. It's not much, he told himself bitterly, but the way things are going, just keeping Warner out of StateSec's clutches has to count as a major victory!

The shuttle grounded and opened its hatch, and Theisman realized StateSec had already taken over custody of the prisoners. The uniforms of the disembarking guards were unmistakable, and the shuttle bore the hull number of PNS Tepes. More than that, the guards who surrounded the pad were also SS, without a single Marine or Navy uniform in sight. There were a lot of them, too, and they were armed to the teeth. Then again, the SS was always armed to the teeth. Its troopers never went anywhere except in pairs, and they never went anywhere unarmed... which said a great deal about their paranoia, how they were regarded by the People they nominally protected, or perhaps both. Theisman's lip wanted to curl in contempt, but there was no room for contempt today. Not when he was afraid he knew why those guards were present in such strength.

He glanced across the terminal to where Ransom stood in casual conversation with Citizen Captain Vladovich, Tepes' captain. Vladovich's presence was one more thing to rasp Theisman's raw nerves, for the man should never have been promoted to his present rank. Theisman knew that from personal experience, for he'd sat on the last prewar promotion board that had rejected Vladovich's promotion to lieutenant commander... for the seventeenth time. The man had spent over twenty-six T-years as a lieutenant. Even in a navy in which Legislaturalist connections were required for promotion above captain, almost three decades in grade should have given the man a hint that he was in a dead-end career. And he had been. His undeniable ambition, drive, and experience had made him just too valuable to be ordered to retire, but the nasty stripe of sadism running through his personality had put any promotion to higher rank out of the question. He took too much delight in tormenting those junior to him, always in ways which didn't—quite—violate the letter of the regulations. That was something the Legislaturalists were prepared to tolerate only in one of their own, and much as Theisman himself had resented the Legislaturalist stranglehold on the senior rank ladder, he'd been more than happy that Vladovich would never climb it. Of course, Vladovich had never understood the true reason for his lack of promotion. He'd convinced himself it was due solely to the fact that he wasn't a Legislaturalist. Indeed, he'd actually come to believe—not simply claim, but genuinely believe—that he was the subject of a vendetta, a deliberate plot to exclude him from higher rank lest his capability and skill embarrass the Legislaturalists about him.

Under the old regime, that had been merely pathetic. Under the new, it made him a natural for service in the SS's paramilitary arms. For all his flaws, he did have a firm basic grasp of naval realities, and his ardor in rooting out and destroying "enemies of the People" was legendary. Unfortunately, he seemed to have learned nothing at all about the responsibilities of command. He was rumored to be unpopular, even with other StateSec personnel, and from reports, he ran Tepes as if the ship were his personal property and her crew (aside from his favorites) were his serfs. No doubt he was always careful to cloak his attitude in the proper platitudes about service to the People, but his particularly nasty type of favoritism and the way he played one faction of his crew off against another turned Theisman's stomach. And it was incredibly stupid, as well. Vladovich probably believed there was no chance his command would be called to battle like a normal fleet unit, but if it ever happened, he was going to find himself wielding a grievously flawed weapon, Theisman thought grimly. A crew whose own captain set its members at one another's throats would go into battle with both hands tied behind its back, crippled by lack of cohesion, and Vladovich didn't even seem to realize it.

But at the moment he looked every inch a battlecruiser's captain—allowing for the black-and-red State Security uniform—as Ransom chatted with him, apparently oblivious to the HD crew recording every instant of the day. Her back was turned to the windows—and the shuttle pad beyond them—in an elaborate show of disinterest, and Theisman clenched his jaw. Such obvious theatrics would have been amusing in someone with less power; in Cordelia Ransom they were terrifying. For she wasn't someone without power, and there was a message in her body language. She would not have made her contempt for the prisoners being brought to her so blatant—not with the cameras running—if she'd had any intention of treating them with respect, and Vladovich's smile of anticipation only confirmed the citizen admiral's dread.

He turned away from the two of them, gazing back out the window as the captured Manticoran and Grayson personnel emerged from the shuttle and were prodded roughly into a single file. Their guards marched them across the pad's ceramacrete apron and up the escalator to the terminal, and Theisman's eyes narrowed as he recognized the woman at the head of the line. He would have known that tall, athletic figure even without the cream-and-gray 'cat in her arms, and he inhaled deeply as he recognized the broad-shouldered senior captain immediately behind her. Alistair McKeon. Another Manticoran Thomas Theisman knew, and one whose good opinion he valued. What would McKeon think of him after today? It wasn't Theisman's fault, and he knew it, and part of him felt a fresh, terrible spasm of anger—this one directed as much at Harrington and McKeon as at Ransom. It was irrational, and he knew that, too, but still he felt it. They were going to judge him, just as he would have judged them if the roles had been reversed. And, as he would have, they would feel only contempt for him, for unlike him, they had never found themselves trapped between duty to themselves and duty to a star nation which had fallen into the grip of maniacs.

That was why he felt that dreadful flash of anger. Because however deeply his impotence shamed him, it was real. Because he longed to be worthy of their respect, and could not be. And because he knew there was no point even attempting to defy Ransom. Defiance could achieve nothing beyond dooming him beside Harrington, and even though a tired, angry part of him insisted he could do far worse than die in such company, the rest of him knew better. Impotent as he might be in this moment, it was his duty to remain alive and do what he could—anything he could—to mitigate the excesses of the madmen.

He knew that now, and a cold corner of his brain wondered why so few repressive regimes seemed to realize that they themselves created the rebels who must ultimately destroy them. How could someone like a Cordelia Ransom or a Rob Pierre, after taking advantage of that very blindness in the Legislaturalists, fail to recognize it in themselves?

The line of prisoners reached the top of the escalator, and Theisman's thoughts chopped off as one of the guards turned Harrington towards the large VIP lounge in which Ransom and her court—willing and unwilling—waited. The SS trooper used the butt of his flechette gun, none too gently, to direct his prisoner, and they were close enough now for Theisman to see and recognize the snarl on Alistair McKeon's face as the gun butt smacked Harrington's shoulder. But strong as it was, McKeon's obvious anger was less frightening than the utter lack of expression of the green-uniformed man beside him. The cut of his uniform labeled him a Grayson, which made him one of the "Marines" who were obviously Harrington's armsmen... and no doubt explained the dangerous tension churning within him. Theisman had seen that sort of nonexpression before. He knew what it meant, and the helpless spectator trapped within him begged the auburn-haired Grayson not to lose control. Surrounded by so many heavily armed guards, the consequences of a berserk attack could only be a massacre.

A growled command brought the prisoners to a halt and, for the first time, Theisman forced himself to meet Honor Harrington's eyes.

If possible, she looked worse than he'd dreaded, and he bit his lip painfully. Her face was even more expressionless than her armsman's. The only times he'd seen her before in person had been during and immediately after the Republic's first disastrous Yeltsin operation. Her left eye had been covered by an eye patch then, and the entire side of her face had been crippled from her wounds, yet even so, it had been more expressive than today. Now it showed nothing—not fear, not hope, not defiance, not even curiosity. But it was only a mask, and a poor one, at that, and Theisman was shocked by what hid behind it. He'd been prepared for anger, for contempt, even for hatred; what he saw was fear. Worse than fear, it was terror, and with it came desperation.

He tasted blood as his teeth sank into his lip with involuntary strength. In her situation, he knew he would have been afraid, yet he hadn't expected Harrington to show it so clearly. But then he saw the way her arms cradled her treecat, the hopeless protectiveness of her body language, and he understood.

"So." The single, flat word jerked his eyes away from her. Cordelia Ransom had turned from her conversation with Vladovich to regard the prisoners, and her blue eyes were as contemptuous as her voice. Her lip curled as she swept her gaze across the line of prisoners, and then she sniffed disdainfully. The dismissive sound carried clearly in the silence of the lounge, and Theisman saw more than one POW stiffen angrily.

"And who might these be, Citizen Major?" Ransom asked the senior SS guard.

"Enemies of the People, Citizen Committeewoman!" the major barked.

"Indeed?"

Ransom walked slowly down the line. But no, Theisman reflected, "walk" was scarcely the word. She swaggered down the line. She strutted, and he was suddenly ashamed of the image she projected. Didn't she even begin to realize how shallow and petty—how stupid—she made herself look? Or how her contempt could affect the members of the Republic's Navy? Whatever else her prisoners were, they had fought openly and with skill for their own star nations, just as Theisman had fought for his, and when Ransom spat upon their courage and their dedication, she spat upon his. And what had she done to earn the right to treat them with contempt? What enemies had she faced in combat? Even as an insurrectionist before the coup, she'd been a terrorist—a bomber and assassin; a murderer, not a warrior. Perhaps she didn't see it that way, but that couldn't change the reality. And because it couldn't, her theatrical contempt belittled her, not them, whether she could see it or not, and her own HD crews were recording it all. All too soon it would be broadcast all over the People's Republic, and after that it would just as surely find its way onto the airwaves of the Manticoran Alliance and the Solarian League, and he ground his teeth at the thought.

But there was nothing he could do except stand there, his own face like stone, and watch as Ransom stopped in front of McKeon.

"And you are?" she asked him coldly, as if he were the senior officer present. For an instant he said nothing, and his gaze flicked to where Harrington stood at his side. She didn't look back at him, but she nodded—ever so slightly—and he inhaled sharply.

"Captain Alistair McKeon, Royal Manticoran Navy," he grated in tones of hammered iron. His gray eyes glittered with anger, but Ransom only sniffed again and swaggered down the entire length of the line. Then she returned to her original position, and the HD crew shifted around to get her profile as she pointed at Harrington.

"What's that animal doing here, Citizen Major?" she demanded.

"It belongs to the prisoner, Citizen Committeewoman."

"And why hasn't it been removed?" Ransom's voice was softer, almost silky, and her lip curled in a hungry smile as she watched her victim's eyes. Not a muscle twitched in Harrington's face, but Theisman sensed the way her muscles coiled still tighter as Ransom savored her power like some rare vintage.

"We were instructed not to remove it, Citizen Committeewoman," the SS major told her. "Its owner is the senior prisoner, and we were instructed to allow her to keep it."

"What?" Ransom looked at Tourville, and arctic ice glittered in her blue eyes. There was more than triumph in her expression now, and Theisman's heart sank, for he was suddenly certain what was coming. She was going to pay Tourville off for his efforts to protect Harrington by taking the treecat away and having it destroyed in front of the cameras, he thought sickly. He was sure of it... but he was also wrong, for his suspicions fell short of what Ransom actually intended.

"Did I hear you identify this woman as the senior military prisoner, Citizen Major?" she asked softly.

"Yes, Citizen Committeewoman!"

"Then there's been some mistake," Ransom informed him, eyes still locked on Tourville's white face. "This woman isn't a military prisoner at all."

"I beg your pardon, Citizen Committeewoman?" the citizen major said, and if anything had been needed to prove his entire conversation with Ransom was a cruel charade, his tone supplied it. The words were right, but there was absolutely no surprise in his voice, and Theisman tensed as several of the citizen major's troopers shifted position ever so slightly behind the prisoners.

"Of course not," Ransom said coldly. "This woman is Honor Harrington, Citizen Major. I double-checked the records just this morning, and there's a civilian arrest order out for her. One which predates the outbreak of hostilities." Even Harrington twitched in surprise at that, and Ransom grinned viciously.

"Honor Harrington," she said very precisely, "was arraigned for murder following her deliberate, unprovoked destruction of the unarmed Republican freighter Sirius in the Basilisk System eleven years ago, Citizen Major. She was offered the opportunity to defend herself in court, but she rejected it and her plutocratic masters refused to surrender her for trial, which left the Ministry of Justice no choice but to order her tried in absentia. She was, of course, convicted... and the sentence was death."

She stared into Tourville's eyes, and the citizen rear admiral's fists clenched. His own eyes whipped to Harrington for a moment, then back to Ransom. Theisman felt his fury and agonized shame and willed him desperately to keep his mouth shut, but Tourville had been goaded too far.

"Citizen Committeewoman, I must protest!" he grated. "Commodore Harrington is a naval officer. As such, she—"

"She is not a naval officer!" Ransom's voice cracked like a whip. "She is a convicted murderer, Citizen Rear Admiral, and you would do well to remember that!"

"But—"

"Be careful, Citizen Rear Admiral. Be very careful."

Ransom's voice was suddenly soft, and Honeker surprised Theisman by reaching out and gripping Tourville's elbow. He hadn't thought the people's commissioner had that much courage—or concern for Tourville—but the pressure of his fingers seemed to remind the citizen rear admiral he wasn't the only one in Ransom's sights. Bogdanovich and Foraker were in as much danger as he, with less seniority to protect them, and he clamped his jaw shut.

Ransom watched him for several seconds, then nodded slightly.

"Better," she said, and turned back to the senior guard, dismissing Tourville as beneath her attention. "Now, Citizen Major," she said. "Since the warrant for this woman's arrest and execution is a civilian order, she's hardly a matter of concern for the military, is she? Whatever unhappy events may subsequently have transpired between the People Republic and the Star Kingdom of Manticore—" her tone made the last four words into expletives "—can have no bearing on the decisions of the civilian judiciary in time of peace, nor can a naval uniform be permitted to shield its wearer from the prewar verdict of a civil court. I believe Section Twenty-Seven, Subsection Forty-One of the Deneb Accords addresses that very point." She darted a swift glance at Theisman, who managed—somehow—to keep his hatred from his expression.

"In fact," she went on, "Section Twenty-Seven specifically states that the military status of individuals is nullified if they've been convicted of a civil crime before the commencement of hostilities ... which means this woman isn't a military prisoner at all. So it's fortunate you and your people, as representatives of the People's civilian legal system, are here to take charge of her, isn't it, now?"

"Yes, Citizen Committeewoman!" The citizen major snapped to attention and saluted. "What are your orders?"

Thomas Theisman's teeth ground helplessly as Ransom smiled at the SS thug, for he knew what she was going to say. And it was his fault, he thought bitterly. No doubt she would have found a way to do what she wanted anyway, but he was the one who'd argued for observing the forms of the Deneb Accords, and the most sickening thing of all was that she'd cited them correctly. Section Twenty-Seven, Subsection Forty-One had been inserted after the Kersey Association's war against the Manitoban Republic. The Kerseyites' so-called government had put several dozen convicted Manitoban murderers into uniform for "special operations" against their home world and then claimed their status as prisoners of war protected them, if captured, from the execution of their sentences. Of course, the Kersey Association had been little more than organized pirates and murderers themselves, but their abuse of the Accords had led to their postwar modification in an effort to close the loophole the Kerseyites had exploited. And now another band of murderers was going to use that modification for its own twisted purposes, Theisman thought sickly, and the legal farce of that prewar "trial" would make it all technically legal.

"You will take her into custody for transfer to Tepes, Citizen Major." Ransom spoke to the SS officer, but her cold, triumphant eyes never left Harrington's face. "You will place her in close confinement aboard ship for transport to the State Security prison facility in the Cerberus System, where you will deliver her to the warden of Camp Charon for execution."

It was all a nightmare. It wasn't real, a part of Honor's mind insisted. It couldn't be happening. But the rest of her knew it could happen, and that it was. Her eyes flicked to Thomas Theisman's face as Ransom called her a murderer, and the helpless shame she saw there was the final straw. Ransom's cold, cruel delight in pronouncing her fate fed into her through Nimitz, like a knife twisting slowly and gloatingly in a wound, but it was Theisman's despair which made it all real by stripping away any pretense of hope.

She'd all but forgotten that so-called conviction. Everyone had known it was a propaganda ploy, an attempt by the Legislaturalists to convince their own subjects and the Solarian League that they were the innocent victim of Manticoran aggression. What else could they have done? If they hadn't maintained that Sirius was an "unarmed freighter," they would have had to admit they'd sent a seven-and-a-half-million-ton Q-ship on a deliberate violation of Manticoran territory. But the entire thing had been so absurd that she'd never believed anyone could possibly take it seriously—especially at this late date.

But as Ransom's vindictive triumph flowed into her like venom, Honor realized it didn't really matter. Ransom wanted Honor dead, and not just because of what Honor had done to the People's Navy. No, there was something dark and poisonous—something personal—in her hatred, and even through her own despair, Honor realized what it was.

Fear. Ransom was afraid of her, as if she personified every threat to Ransom's own position. In the other woman's mind, Honor was the embodiment of the Alliance's military threat to the Republic, and hence to Ransom herself. Yet the committeewoman's hatred went even deeper than that should explain, and as Ransom glanced back at Tourville, Honor understood. The citizen rear admiral's efforts to protect her had only turned her into yet another threat: the threat that the Republic's own military would turn upon the Committee of Public Safety.

There'd been rumors enough of mounting unrest in the Haven System, where lunatic factions in the Nouveau Paris Mob had mounted at least one coup attempt. The Navy had put that down—somewhat to the surprise of ONI—but what if the military didn't put down the next one? What if it began to think for itself, to make its own policies and resist the Committee's? That was the only way a person like Ransom could possibly interpret Tourville's actions—as the first move in some plot to overthrow the Committee's authority—because it would never occur to her that the citizen rear admiral had acted out of a sense of decency. Cordelia Ransom couldn't conceive of viewing her enemies as honorable opponents who deserved to be honorably treated, and so she assumed that, just as she would have been, Tourville must be playing some Byzantine game in which Honor was only one more marker on the board.

If that was the case, then he must be crushed, in a way which would teach the rest of the military not to cross swords with the Committee of Public Safety or its members, and if Ransom could use the same opportunity to have Honor killed, so much the better.

Those thoughts flickered through her brain in a heartbeat, but she seemed paralyzed, unable to react or move or speak. Ransom turned her triumphant smile back from Tourville to her victim, and Honor didn't even twitch. She couldn't, but a dangerous ripple of movement ran down the line of prisoners. Ransom noted it, and her smile would have frozen helium as the glanced back at the SS major and pointed at Nimitz.

"In the meantime, Citizen Major, take that creature outside and destroy it. Immediately," she said softly.

"Yes, Citizen Committeewoman!"

The citizen major saluted again, then gestured to two of his troopers.

"You heard the Citizen Committeewoman," he growled. "See to it."

"Yes, Citizen Major!"

The two guards started towards Honor, and something snapped inside her. Resistance was worse than futile, for if she resisted, at least some of her people would do the same, and they were surrounded by armed guards. She'd known that would be the case, and she'd told herself she must endure whatever happened to her or Nimitz. She could not—must not—let any useless gesture on her part spark a massacre of the men and women for whom she was responsible, and she'd ordered herself not to make one.

But that was an order she could not obey. In that instant, her link with Nimitz was suddenly deeper and stronger than ever before. They were no longer two beings, and their single identity had no doubts... and only one objective.

The guards had been briefed on Ransom's intentions and warned to expect trouble, but Honor's passivity had lulled them. Or perhaps her heavy-grav reflexes were simply too fast for them. Whatever the reason, they were too slow, even forewarned, as she rose on her toes and her up-sweeping arms launched Nimitz like a falconer with a hawk.

The treecat was a cream-and-gray blur, arcing sinuously over the guards' heads, and the ripping canvas snarl of his war cry was the only warning the citizen major had. The SS man shrieked in agony as six sets of scimitar claws reduced his face to ruin, and his shriek died in a hideous gurgle as one last slash severed his jugular. But he was only an intermediate step for Nimitz—a launching pad from which to redirect his trajectory, not his true objective—and he leapt from his first victim to hit another SS guard in the chest. The fresh target screamed, clutching uselessly at the six-limbed demon that hissed and snarled as it swarmed up him, claws savaging his belly and chest, and then sprang from his shoulders in a leap that carried him straight at Cordelia Ransom.

The first flechette gun butt slammed into Honor even before Nimitz hit the citizen major, but she'd sensed it coming and rode the force of the blow. She let it smash her aside, taking her out of the path of a second guard's swing, and her feet shot up as her back hit the floor. Both heels thudded into a man's belly, and she rolled frantically to avoid two more. She came up on one knee, and her left fist lashed out in a savage thrust to an unprotected groin. The stricken guard doubled forward as she came upright once more, and the heel of her right hand exploded into his face. It smashed his nose, driving shattered bone and cartilage up into his brain, and her left hand snatched for his flechette gun as he went down.

She never touched it. Another gun butt came down, and this time its owner made no mistake. It struck cleanly at the base of the neck, driving her back to the floor, stunned and unable to move, and two more slammed into her kidneys and ribs while shouts and orders and the sounds of blows erupted around her through the shrieks of Nimitz's second victim.

She couldn't even turn her head, but she caught glimpses of the chaos. She saw McKeon take down one guard with a smashed kneecap, then go down himself under battering gun butts. Andrew LaFollet was a madman. He spun like a cat, catching one SS trooper completely off guard, and his fist crushed the man's larynx like a hammer. Two more came at him, and he went into them in a blur of fists, elbows, and flying feet. Both of them went down, one with a broken neck, and he hurled himself at the woman who'd just smashed Honor in the ribs and was raising her weapon for yet another stroke.

Another guard's flechette gun came at him from the side, crunching into him so hard it lifted his toes into the air. A second gun butt crashed down, and he crumpled across Honor's legs just as Andreas Venizelos and Marcia McGinley were tackled and buried under the weight of half a dozen SS troopers.

Most of the other POWs never had time to react before they were beaten to their knees, but Nimitz's war cry still wailed as another SS trooper came between him and Ransom. The new guard wasn't trying to intercept him—in fact, she tried desperately to get out of his way—but she was the last barrier blocking him from his prey, and he snarled as he ripped her throat out. She went down in a gush of blood, but killing her had delayed him an instant too long, and he screamed as a gun slammed into him at last.

Honor screamed with him, her face against the floor, as the agony of his wound ripped through her. It was as if her shoulder, her ribs, had broken under the savage blow, and her body spasmed, trying to curl around the injury someone else had suffered. She sensed the flechette gun rising again, knew it was about to come smashing down, and she bared her teeth as Nimitz snarled up at his killer.

The gun butt started down, but a pair of hands caught it in midstroke, shoving it aside so that it thudded into the floor instead. The SS man spat a curse and turned towards the Manticoran who'd interfered, then froze in confusion.

It hadn't been a Manticoran after all, and he gaped at Shannon Foraker as she thrust him further aside and wheeled to Ransom.

"If you kill the 'cat, she'll die!" The ops officer's shout cut through the confusion, and she stretched out a hand to the committeewoman. "They're linked!" she shouted. "Don't you understand? If you kill the 'cat, she'll die, too!"

Honor lay on the floor, still too stunned to move or think coherently, but her body twitched and jerked as Nimitz writhed in agony, and Ransom's eyes narrowed. She'd expected something like this—in fact, she'd planned for it—but she hadn't expected to come so close to death herself, and it had all been over so quickly she hadn't really had time to react. Now she did have time, and after-the-fact panic filled her as she looked at the half dozen bodies Nimitz, Honor, and LaFollet had left in their wake. She bared her teeth at the injured 'cat who'd tried so hard to kill her and so nearly succeeded, and started to order Foraker out of the way.

But then she made herself draw a deep breath. She closed her eyes while she forced herself back under control, and her voice was cold when she opened them once more.

"What do you mean?" she snapped.

"Just what I said... Ma'am." Foraker went to her knees beside Nimitz, taking a risk even most Sphinxians would never have dared, for even a crippled 'cat could inflict terrible wounds. "Treecats are empaths, and probably telepathic," she went on, making herself speak urgently but clearly. "They bond to their partners, and when they die, their partners either die or go catatonic."

"That's nonsense!" Ransom snarled.

"No it isn't," another voice said, and the committeewoman turned towards the source. Like every other Manticoran in the room, Fritz Montoya was on his knees now, with the muzzle of a flechette gun pressed against the back of his head, but his Medical Branch caduceus glittered on his collar.

"What do you mean?" Ransom repeated suspiciously.

"It's in the medical literature," Montoya lied in support of Foraker's preposterous claim. "Treecats' bonds with humans are uncommon, and we don't know as much about them as we'd like, but the consequences of a 'cat's death are well established. Catatonia is more common than death, but the mortality rate is well above forty percent."

Ransom's mouth twisted as if to spit, but once again she made herself stop and draw a deep breath. She was on the downslope of the adrenaline rush now, her belated terror turning into a sense of elation at her survival, and it was hard to think as she ran her mind back over the SS dossier on Harrington. She'd studied it carefully before she planned this afternoon's events, and her estimate of Harrington's reaction to the order to kill the 'cat had been right on the money. The problem was that there were too many blank spots in the file for her to know whether or not Foraker was right.

She growled a mental curse as she admitted that. The clips from Grayson news broadcasts were their best source of information on treecats, for Harrington was a planetary heroine. She was always good copy on her adopted planet, and her bond to the beast was endlessly fascinating to her public. Unfortunately, the Graysons actually knew very little about how it all worked. Their coverage had warned Ransom that the animal was both dangerous and more intelligent than most people would have guessed, just as it had told her the best way to hurt Harrington would be to take it away from her and kill it, but she had no information at all on the actual nature of the bond between them.

Her eyes moved to Harrington, still twitching on the floor, and narrowed. The way she lay, half-turned on one side and curled around, mimicked the posture of the 'cat. Indeed, allowing for the fact that the animal had six limbs and Harrington had only four, it was virtually identical. But she wasn't even conscious. She couldn't have adopted that posture deliberately, and that argued for at least the possibility that Foraker had it right.

On the other hand, Foraker felt she owed Harrington something. Was she gutsy enough—and stupid enough—to risk spinning such a lie to protect the Manticoran?

"Just how did you happen to come by this knowledge, Citizen Commander?" the committeewoman asked after a long, fulminating moment.

"Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville assigned me as liaison to the prisoners aboard Count Tilly," Foraker replied without hesitation. "In the course of those duties, I asked Doctor Montoya about any possible specialized health needs they might have. Under the circumstances, he felt it best to alert me to the nature of Commo—of the prisoner's bond with the 'cat."

"I see," Ransom said very slowly. A part of her was certain Foraker was lying, but only a part, and the Manty surgeon had supported the ops officer quickly and smoothly enough. She wanted that disgusting beast dead, but what if Foraker and Montoya were telling the truth? Her plans for recording the details of Harrington's execution would go into the crapper if she had the 'cat killed and Harrington actually did die or go catatonic.

She thought furiously for several more seconds, and then she smiled. It was a chill smile, and an ugly one, and Thomas Theisman shivered as he saw it.

"Very well, Doctor Montoya," she said coldly, "you're now in charge of keeping the animal alive." She nodded for the doctor's guard to withdraw the flechette muzzle from the back of his head, and Montoya hurried over to kneel beside Foraker. "Do your best," Ransom told him. "I want it healthy when the prisoner goes to the scaffold."

Her smile turned even colder as she pictured Harrington's reaction to seeing the animal in a cage, knowing that the instant she was dead, her precious "Nimitz" would follow, and she turned to the massively muscled female SS captain who had been the major's second-in-command.

"As far as the rest of these... people are concerned, Citizen Captain... de Sangro," she said, reading the nameplate on her chest, "their actions here were clearly unprovoked." A wave of her hand took in the groaning SS wounded—and the bodies of those who would never groan again. "Even under the Deneb Accords, a prisoner of war who attacks our personnel except in the course of an escape attempt or in direct self-defense forfeits the standard protections accorded to captured military personnel."

She turned to smile at Theisman, who clenched his jaw as yet again she cited the letter of the Accords correctly in order to pervert their intent.

"The Accords don't give us the right to execute them for their actions—which, of course, we would never choose to do, anyway," she told the StateSec officer piously for the benefit of the watching cameras. "In light of their murderous, unprovoked assault on our personnel, however, a more secure disposition is clearly in order in their case. Under my authority as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, I instruct you to take charge of them in the name of the Office of State Security for transport to and imprisonment at Camp Charon. They can be shipped out on the same transport as their ex-commander."

"Of course, Citizen Committeewoman!" the citizen captain barked, snapping one hand to her cap brim in salute, and Theisman felt physically ill with impotent rage.

He shouldn't have been surprised, he told himself, but he was. Even now he was. It was amazing how a lifetime of expecting at least semicivilized behavior out of one's superiors could prevent one from seeing something like this coming, he thought almost calmly, but in retrospect, it should have been manifest from the first. Of course Ransom had played out her cruel game. The committeewoman hadn't had to be a genius to figure out how Harrington was likely to react to the death sentence of her treecat. Even a casual perusal of her dossier would have made that obvious. The reaction of her officers when the SS clubbed her to the floor had been equally predictable, and Ransom had relied on it to provide the pretext to send every one of them off to Cerberus with Harrington.

Of course she had, and malice and triumph mingled in her smile as she turned back to Tourville.

"As for you, Citizen Rear Admiral," she said, "I believe you ought to return to Haven with me. What's happened here raises serious questions as to the quality of your judgment where these prisoners are concerned. I think you should drop by the Admiralty for a discussion of proper procedure for dealing with captured enemy personnel."

Tourville said nothing. He met her gaze levelly, refusing to flinch, but that was all right with Ransom. She was willing to allow him his bravado. In fact, it would make the final outcome even more satisfactory.

"In fact," she went on, "I believe you should bring along your entire staff—and Citizen Commissioner Honeker." She glanced at Theisman. "Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville and his flagship will escort Tepes to the Cerberus System, Citizen Admiral," she told him. "Please have orders to that effect cut immediately."

"Yes, Citizen Committeewoman." Theisman managed to keep his voice more nearly normal than Tourville had been able to, but it was hard. And the fact that he'd succeeded made him feel contaminated.

"Then I think we're done," Ransom said brightly, and nodded to de Sangro. "See to having these—" she waved disdainfully at the battered, kneeling prisoners "—taken aboard ship, Citizen Captain. I'm sure we can find proper accommodations for them."

"At once, Citizen Committeewoman!"

The citizen captain saluted again, then jerked her head at her detail, and gun butts urged the prisoners back to their feet and out of the lounge. Those who couldn't walk were dragged, and as Thomas Theisman watched them go, he knew he would never feel clean again.