Mission of Honor

Chapter Twenty-Three

And now , Michelle Henke thought dryly as she stood on Artemis ' flag bridge, hands clasped behind her, and watched the icons of Admiral Enderby's LACs move steadily towards their destinations, for the fun part. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help thinking everything would've been a bunch simpler if O'Cleary just hadn't surrendered for another salvo or two. As it is, we've got a hell of an interesting little problem here .

She snorted, grimacing at her own thoughts, but it was true. And, ironically, the direct consequence of one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's greater advantages.

The one huge problem with the RMN's decision to adopt increased automation in order to reduce its warships' manpower requirements was that it worked even better than anyone had expected. There were very few warm bodies aboard modern Manticoran or Grayson cruisers or destroyers, and even superdreadnoughts had crews smaller than prewar battlecruisers. That was an enormous advantage in Fifth Space Lord Cortez's Sisyphean task of manning the navy's ships, but it also meant the smaller companies of the ships in question found it much more difficult to generate detachments for little things like, oh, boarding parties, for example.

Solarian ships' companies, conversely, were even larger and more manpower-intensive than prewar Manticoran designs had been, and Sandra Crandall had entered the Spindle System with seventy-one superdreadnoughts, each with a ship's company of over six thousand. Even completely ignoring the rest of her task force, that had amounted to the next best thing to a half-million personnel. Tenth Fleet, on the other hand, had nowhere near that many people. A Roland -class destroyer like Naomi Kaplan's Tristram had a total company of less than seventy, and not a single one of them was a Marine. A Saganami-C , like Aivars Terekhov's Quentin Saint-James , was somewhat better off—at least each of them had a hundred and forty Marines available, but that was out of a total crew of only three hundred and fifty-five. For that matter, even one of the lordly Nikes , like her own Artemis , had a company of barely seven hundred and fifty. Which meant the total personnel of all Michelle's warships—including Khumalo's superdreadnought flagship and the four carriers of Stephen Enderby's CLAC squadron and their LAC groups—amounted to barely thirty-two thousand. Crandall's surviving forty-eight superdreadnoughts, alone, carried ten times that many men and women, and that didn't even consider the fifty thousand or so aboard her battlecruisers and destroyers.

Nor did it consider the need to provide search and rescue parties for the nine crippled superdreadnoughts which had not been totally destroyed.

All of which meant she was incredibly shorthanded for dealing with such a stupendous haul of POWs, and she frankly didn't know what she was going to do with all of them. She had nowhere near the hyper-capable personnel lift to transfer them back to the prison camps in the Star Empire currently populated by the personnel of Lester Tourville's Second Fleet. For that matter, she wasn't at all certain those camps, despite their frenetic expansion following the Battle of Manticore, would have had sufficient space for her current catch even if she'd been able to get them there!

Baroness Medusa was scrambling to find someplace to store them, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, no one on Flax had ever contemplated the absurd notion that the planet might suddenly have to absorb the better part of four hundred thousand "visitors" like these, and the governor's options were limited. At the moment, Michelle knew, Medusa was inclining towards the same solution Michelle herself had experienced during her brief stint as a prisoner of war on Haven. Flax possessed several large, uninhabited tropical islands, many with the sorts of climates that evoked Pavlovian salivation from vacation resort developers. There was no housing on them at the moment, but food and water could be transported in, emergency sanitation arrangements could be made, and more permanent housing could be built once the immediate crisis had been dealt with.

No matter what we do, the Sollies're going to scream we've "abused" their personnel by "refusing" to house them properly and deliberately leaving them "exposed to the elements," she thought glumly. But all we can do is the best we can do, and hope the Admiralty can find someplace back home to keep them . . . not to mention the shipping to get them "someplace back home!"

From the perspective of pure combat power, Crandall's task force wasn't even in the same league as Tenth Fleet. In fact, Michelle and her senior tacticians had been shocked by the totality of their own success. They'd deliberately adopted pessimistic assumptions about their ability to penetrate Solarian missile defenses, only to find their most optimistic estimations had fallen short of the reality. Despite everything, she'd been convinced it would take at least several salvos to inflict the sort of damage required to extort a surrender from someone as belligerent and obviously arrogant as Sandra Crandall. She'd certainly never anticipated that Terekhov's opening salvo would shatter its targets so completely.

She was fullyaware of the scale of her victory, andthat her firepower advantage was overwhelming. Yet from the perspective of securing its prizes, Tenth Fleet was in the position of someone who'd chartered a small boat to fish for near-tuna and landed a twelve-meter fluke-shark, instead. An impressive achievement, yes, but what did you do with the thing?

Well, I guess we're about to find out, aren't we? she thought.

At the moment, Terekhov's cruisers and Khumalo's superdreadnought flagship maintained their positions in orbit around Flax, just over eight hundred thousand kilometers from what remained of Crandall's wall of battle. The undamaged Solarian ships, plus their lighter consorts, were motionless relative to the planet, sidewalls and impeller wedges down in obedience to Michelle's orders, and all of her battlecruisers lay seven hundred and fifty thousand kilometers outside their current positions. That geometry put every hyper-capable Manticoran combatant beyond effective energy range of the Solarian SDs—a not so minor consideration, given the fact that any one of those superdreadnoughts could have annihilated Michelle's entire fleet if she'd been foolish enough to stray into the effective envelope of their massive energy batteries.

Which was the reason she had absolutely no intention of doing any such thing. It was also the reason both the Saganami-Cs and the Nikes were surrounded by veritable shoals of missile pods. Even if these superdreadnoughts' wedges had been active, it would have taken them six minutes at their maximum acceleration to reach energy range even of the battlecruisers, much less Terekhov's cruisers. Flight time for a Mark 23 over the same range would have been only twenty-four seconds. Based on what had already happened to Task Force 496, Michelle rather doubted it would survive the fifteen far larger salvos it would have received during those six minutes. More importantly, she felt confident the Sollies could do the same sums.

But even as she held her starships at a discreet distance, her LACs had maneuvered into position "above" and "below" the surviving Solarian warships. Since it had seemed likely the Sollies would have underestimated the capabilities of new-generation Manticoran light attack craft at least as badly as they'd underestimated those of current-generation Manticoran missiles, she'd arranged demonstration firings of the Shrike-Bs ' massive grasers. She wanted no misconceptions about what those capital ship-weight energy weapons could do to the unarmored topsides and bottoms of the Solarian ships-of-the-wall.

And while all that was being arranged, her destroyers—all five of them—had accelerated off in pursuit of the nine hulked SDs. Five old-style destroyers could easily have found the boarding parties for search-and-rescue operations aboard nine superdreadnoughts. Whether or not her five Rolands were up to the task was another question.

Now it was time to find out if they were . . . and if her other arrangements were going to work, after all.

For the Sollies' sake, she hoped they did.

"Put me through to O'Cleary, Bill," she said without looking over her shoulder.

"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Commander Edwards replied.

Michelle gazed into the plot for another few seconds, then turned to face the master com display as a fair-haired, dark-eyed woman in the white uniform of the Solarian League Navy appeared upon it.

"Admiral O'Cleary," Michelle said, and at this piddling range the light-speed transmission lag was barely two seconds.

"Admiral Gold Peak," the other woman responded. Originally TF 496's third in command, she'd become it's second in command when Admiral Dunichi Lazlo's flagship, Andreas Vesalius , blew up with all hands. With what remained of Joseph Buckley currently unable to communicate with anyone (assuming there was anyone aboard to do be communicated with ), O'Cleary had become the task force's acting CO. Her voice was a little gravelly, but Michelle suspected that was normal, not something—like the stunned anger glowing at the backs of O'Cleary's eyes—produced by the shocking outcome of the Solarian attack on Spindle.

"My boarding parties are now prepared to take possession of your superdreadnoughts, Admiral," Michelle said levelly, "and I fully realize emotions are going to be running high among your personnel. My personnel have been instructed to exercise as much restraint as possible, but they've also been instructed to remember that their own security and the discharge of their orders takes precedence over all other considerations. I sincerely hope no one on either side will cause any avoidable incidents, but I remind you formally, for the record, that under the Deneb Accords, the legal responsibility to avoid such incidents by prompt compliance with my instructions and those of my designated prize crews rests with your personnel, as the ones who have been permitted to surrender."

O'Cleary's jaw tightened visibly, but despite her anger, she had herself firmly under control.

"I assure you, Admiral, that I've made all my personnel aware of that fact," she grated. "As you say, emotions are . . . running high among them. And as you, I hope there will be no 'avoidable incidents'."

"Good." Michelle inclined her head in a brief, courteous half-bow of agreement, then cleared her throat.

"I'm sure you realize, Admiral O'Cleary, that no one here in the Quadrant has made any provision for quartering such a large number of prisoners of war."

Michelle saw O'Cleary's eyes flash at the term "prisoners of war," but she didn't especially care. In point of fact, she was conceding them a status she wasn't required to under interstellar law, and O'Cleary knew it. There'd been no formal declaration of war when Crandall attacked the sovereign territory of another star nation. Technically, her actions amounted to piracy on the grand scale, and Michelle was under no legal obligation to accord her officers and crews the courtesies normally due regular POWs. The fact that she'd allowed them to surrender under the provisions of the Deneb Accords meant she'd chosen to extend that status to them, but whether or not she was legally required to continue to extend it was what the lawyers like to call "a gray area."

"Governor Medusa is currently making arrangements to provide food, shelter, and any necessary medical attention," she continued levelly. "We'll do everything in our power to ensure that no one suffers any hardship. Despite that, however, it's very likely—inevitable, to be honest—that housing and services are going to be jury-rigged, at best, at least initially. As I say, we'll try to avoid imposing hardship conditions, but, again, I remind you that the Deneb Accords specifically recognize the right of any belligerent to use whatever means are necessary, up to and including lethal force, to maintain order among POWs. We have no intention of attempting to pressure any of your personnel into collaborating, and we recognize the Deneb Accords' stipulation that it's the duty of captured personnel to attempt to escape. However, it would be well for you to remind your personnel that that stipulation does not grant immunity from the use of force to stop them from escaping or to maintain order among them."

"Is that an order, Admiral?" O'Cleary asked coldly.

"No, it is not," Michelle replied, equally coldly, enunciating each word carefully. "It is, however, a very strong suggestion , and I remind you our current conversation is being recorded. It can—and will be—produced at any inquiry which may result from your personnel's conduct—or ours—while your people are in our custody."

Their eyes locked for several seconds. Then O'Cleary inhaled deeply.

"Very well. Your 'suggestion' is noted, and I'll speak to my people. Is there anything else?"

"Yes," Michelle said, "there is. As I'm sure you've already deduced for yourself, the combined manpower of my fleet is far inferior, numerically, to that of your own task force." Not that I have any intention of admitting just how inferior , she added silently. "That poses some obvious difficulties for my boarding parties—difficulties which might well provoke the sort of incident we've both just agreed should be avoided—and I've been giving some thought to ways those difficulties might be alleviated. By my staff's calculations, the combined small craft and escape pod capacity of your superdreadnoughts should suffice to remove approximately five thousand of your personnel from each ship."

O'Cleary's face stiffened, and she began to open her mouth indignantly, but Michelle continued coldly.

"Before you say a word, Admiral. I advise you to consider your position carefully. As you've just acknowledged, interstellar law requires you to obey my lawful commands. I, on the other hand, am obligated to provide for the reasonable safety of your personnel as long as you and they do obey my lawful commands. The planet Flax is less than one million kilometers from your present position. That's well within the powered range of your life pods, even allowing a two hundred percent reserve for an unassisted landing. In short, removing your personnel from your vessels in the manner I've indicated poses no threat to life or limb, assuming you've properly maintained the equipment in question. As a consequence, I'm formally informing you that failure to comply with this instruction will be interpreted as a decision on your part to resume hostilities."

She held the Solarian's eyes with her own, daring O'Cleary to call her bluff while silently praying the other woman was smart enough to realize it was no bluff at all. After a handful of tense heartbeats, it was O'Cleary's eyes which fell.

"I understand," she grated.

"I'm glad to hear that." Michelle gave her a tight smile. "Once your small craft and life pods have separated from your starships, they'll proceed to Flax. There, they will enter orbit as Admiral Khumalo directs and comply with any additional instructions he may issue. They will not land except as he or I specifically order. We'll make every effort to get them planet-side as promptly as possible, consonant with Governor Medusa's ability to arrange accommodations. I'll guarantee that, under any circumstances, your life pods will be allowed to make planetfall well within their life-support endurance. If, however, any of your small craft or life pods fail to comply with instructions from myself, Admiral Khumalo, or our designated subordinates, they will be destroyed. I realize these arrangements are unusual, but so are our present circumstances. I've attempted to reach the best compromise I can between the security of my own people and the proper treatment of yours. I expect you to make it clear to all your personnel that we intend to treat them as decently and honorably as circumstances permit, but that any disobedience to our lawful instructions will be met promptly with whatever level of force—up to and including deadly force—we feel is required. Is that understood, as well?"

"Yes," O'Cleary got out.

"Good. You may not believe this, Admiral, but I take no pleasure in issuing instructions I know must seem humiliating. Unfortunately, I have no choice. In fact, I'd be derelict in my responsibility to ensure the safety of your personnel if I failed to take the measures necessary to control the present situation and prevent the sort of escalation which would require me to use force to enforce the terms of your surrender."

Michelle gazed into O'Cleary's eyes for another moment, hoping the Solarian could recognize the sincerity in her own expression. Then she nodded courteously.

"Gold Peak, clear," she said, and turned back to the master plot with an inner sigh.

Truth be told, O'Cleary's attitude had been less belligerent than she'd feared. Unfortunately, that didn't mean it made Michelle happy. Nor, for that matter, did it mean the other officers and enlisted personnel aboard those surrendered ships were going to share O'Cleary's attitude.

* * *

"ETA three minutes, Ma'am," the pinnace's flight engineer said.

"Thank you, PO Pettigrew," Abigail Hearns replied, then stood and turned to face the armed, skinsuited men and women of her boarding party. Given the nature of their mission, there weren't a great many of them. In fact, there were a lot less of them than she wished she had.

"Three minutes, people," she said, and saw expressions and shoulders tighten. "Remember your briefings, and watch yourselves. We don't want any accidents—or incidents—and this sort of thing can be risky enough even aboard a friendly ship. So while we'd like to avoid any unpleasantness, we'd really like to have all of you back on board safe and sound, too."

One or two people chuckled, and Abigail allowed herself an answering smile. Then she looked at the youthful midshipman in the seat beside hers. In some ways, young Walter Corbett reminded her of Gwen Archer, with the same red hair and green eyes. But Corbett had a truly monumental nose, compared to Archer's, and he was only nineteen and skinny as a rail, to boot. He was also possessed of a nervous energy that found the onerous task of sitting still difficult under normal conditions.

Today's conditions were anything but normal, however, and Corbett had sat almost unbreathing for the last ten minutes, his nose two centimeters from the viewport as he stared out it at the shattered behemoth waiting for them.

Abigail didn't blame him. Corbett's snotty cruise might have been less personally and directly terrifying (so far, at least) than her own aboard then-Captain Oversteegen's Gauntlet , but there'd been terror and cataclysm enough to go around. And, she thought, any temptation to smile fading as she remembered how the other ships of HMS Tristram 's division had been slaughtered by Josef Byng, he'd had ample demonstration of the risks attendant upon his chosen profession.

And he's about to get more , she reminded herself e grimly. Unlike young Corbett, she'd seen the insides of butchered starships before. Let's try and see to it he gets back aboard Tristram in one piece so he can at least profit from the experience that's about to provide so much nightmare fodder .

"Remember, Walt," she hadn't spoken loudly, but Corbett's head twitched around like a startled rabbit's, "you're a Queen's officer. I know you never expected to be doing anything like this on your snotty cruise. Well, I didn't expect everything that happened on my snotty cruise, either, as Lieutenant Gutierrez here could testify."

She twitched her own head at the massive lieutenant sitting in the row of seats immediately behind the two of them. His Marine-style armored skinsuit was badged with the shoulder flash of the Owens Steadholder's Guard, not the Royal Manticoran Marines, and a well-used flechette gun rode the cargo rack above his head. A sound which might have been an understatement-spawned snort came from the general direction of the lieutenant in question, and a quick grin danced across Corbett's face in response. Clearly he'd heard all about then-Sergeant Matteo Gutierrez and Midshipwoman Hearns' adventures on the planet Refuge.

"You need to remember three things," Abigail continued in a rather sterner tone. "First, you are a Queen's officer. Second, any Sollies still alive in there "—she nodded towards the forward bulkhead, beyond which the wreck of SLNS Charles Babbage , one-time flagship of Battle Squadron 371, Solarian League Navy, waited for them—"have spent their entire careers thinking of themselves as the most powerful navy in the galaxy and of the Star Empire of Manticore—and it's navy—as an upstart little pipsqueak with delusions of grandeur. Third, we have no idea how many Solly personnel may still be alive aboard the Babbage or what kind of shape they may be in, but there are less than thirty people in our boarding party."

She looked into his eyes steadily until he nodded, then continued.

"Right this minute, most of Babbage 's surviving crew are probably still in a state of shock. I don't know how long that's going to last, and from our perspective, it could be either a good thing or a bad thing . . . or possibly even both at once. On the one hand, most of them are probably too stunned and too focused on hoping someone's going to come and find them to be thinking about any organized, effective resistance. On the other hand, even if ninety percent of her company is dead, there are still ten times as many survivors aboard her as in Tristram 's entire complement. A lot of them are going to be too happy to see anybody coming to pull them out of the wreckage to give us any trouble, but I'll be astonished if any of them are thinking very clearly. For the ones who aren't, the shock and humiliation—and the anger— of being hammered so badly by a bunch of 'neobarbs' may push some of them into open defiance. And, frankly, the fact that you're only a midshipman's going to piss off a lot of the people you're about to run into. They'd probably resent taking orders from you under any circumstances; under these circumstances, what they feel is going to be a lot worse than simple resentment.

"That leaves you with two problems you're going to have to balance off. First, be aware of their resentment and make what allowance for it you can, but, second, remember you are an officer, that they are subject to your orders, and that an appearance of weakness may well lead to some kind of incident."

She paused once more, and Corbett nodded again.

"Yes, Ma'am," he said, and despite her grim awareness of what awaited them inside that broken ship, Abigail's lips twitched. It would have been unfair to call his tone plaintive, but that was headed in the right direction.

"It probably won't be that bad, Walt. Not where the survivors are concerned, at least. Yes, you have to be aware of all the things I've just said. But that's why I've attached the Bosun to your group. I wouldn't go so far as saying I'm sending him along to 'look after you,' but I will say I expect you to remember he's been in the Navy since you were five T-years old. Use his experience accordingly."

"Yes, Ma'am," Corbett said more firmly, and Abigail glanced over his shoulder at Gutierrez. The lieutenant's eyes met hers with the memory of another middy who'd desperately needed the experience of another veteran noncom, and his reassuring nod was a vast relief. Obviously, Matteo had had a few words of his own with Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Musgrave, Tristram 's bosun.

"Then all I'm going to add," she told the youngster, "is that you're going to see some terrible things in the next few hours." She held his gaze steadily and felt a glow of approval when it didn't waver. "No matter what you think you can imagine, it's going to be worse. I know. I've seen it before, and there's no way to really prepare someone for it until they've experienced it for themselves. It's all right to feel shocked, nauseated. In fact, there'd be something wrong with you if you didn't. But whatever we feel, we still have our responsibilities, and I think if you focus on your responsibilities, on getting the job done, you'll find it helps. That's another thing I found out the hard way."

"Yes, Ma'am," he repeated.

"Good."

She looked up into her personal armsman's eyes again for a moment, gave him a tiny nod of acknowledgment, then patted Corbett lightly on the shoulder and—as she'd just advised the midshipman to do—turned her thoughts to her own duties.

* * *

Rear Admiral Michael Oversteegen watched his plot aboard HMS Rigel . Despite his relaxed, comfortable, loose-limbed sprawl in his command chair, his eyes were alert, sharply focused on the display's icons.

"Anythin' from Major Markiewicz or Sebastiбn, Irena?" he asked.

"No, Sir," Lieutenant Irena Thomas' tone could not have been more respectful, but Oversteegen's lips twitched in a slight smile. Respectful or not, it was the tone a subordinate used to inform a superior officer that he should tend to his own knitting, secure in the knowledge she would somehow remember to inform him if anyone asked to speak to him.

Showin' more worry than you want to, aren't you, Michael? he asked himself sardonically. Still, I s'pose you're not th' only one that's true of just now .

His smile faded, and he glanced at the tactical board at Commander Steren Retallack's station. His ops officer sat tipped back, arms folded, but Oversteegen knew Retallack was watching the "surrendered" Solarian SDs like the proverbial hawk. And well he should be.

Like everyone else in Tenth Fleet, Oversteegen devoutly hoped Michelle Henke's elaborate precautions would prove unnecessary, but he fervently agreed with his CO's disinclination to be proven wrong about that sort of assumption. At the moment, none of the Solarian SDs had more than fifteen hundred personnel still aboard, which—given their old-fashioned manpower-intensive design philosophy—was too few people for them to effectively move or fight. That, unfortunately, wasn't quite the same thing as saying they didn't have enough people to fire their weapons. To be sure, their active targeting systems were down, as were their wedges and defensive sidewalls, but the hugely redundant passive sensors any ship-of-the-wall mounted would be more than capable of providing accurate target data on anything inside energy range.

The Deneb Accords and interstellar law were very clear on the mutual responsibilities of victor and vanquished. When O'Cleary dropped her impeller wedges in the universal FTL signal that she surrendered, Tenth Fleet had been legally obligated to grant quarter rather than continuing the attack while it waited for her formal, light-speed surrender offer to arrive. (Assuming, of course, that Michelle Henke had chosen to regard them as anything besides pirates.) By the same token, O'Cleary's ships were legally required to stay surrendered, with their crews obedient to the lawful orders of any boarding party, if they didn't want the other side to renew the action. There was, however, a bit of a gray area in that the crew of any captured ship had a legal right to attempt to retake their vessel, and one could argue that ambushing a boarding party when it first came onboard constituted a sort of preemptive retaking. Whether or not the argument held up in court would depend upon whose court it was, but that would be cold comfort to anyone—on either side—who got killed in the course of the attempt.

And although at the moment, Michael Oversteegen admitted with a cold lack of apology, he didn't really much care what might happen to any Sollies who tried something like that, he did care—very much—what happened to any Manticoran personnel who might be involved.

So just remember we're watchin' you, Admiral O'Cleary. And it's perfectly all right with me for you t' go right on sweatin' all those missile pods. Because th' first time one of those superdreadnoughts even twitches, we are goin' t' blow the son-of-a-bitch straight t' hell .

* * *

This , Major Evgeny Markiewicz reflected sourly, is the kind of story you really like to kick back over a good beer and bullshit about later. Preferably, much later. It's not the kind of story you enjoy while the damned thing is happening .

He'd collected quite a few stories like that over the eighteen-T-years since he'd enlisted in Her Manitocran Manjesty's Marine Corps, and he'd just as soon have avoided adding this one to his collection.

Well, if I can't take a joke, I shouldn't have joined , he told himself, and turned his attention to the task at hand.

The good news was that a Nike -class battlecruiser carried a three hundred-man Marine detachment, twice the size of a Saganami-C 's. The bad news was that that still gave HMS Rigel only two companies. And the even worse news, as far as he was concerned, was that he'd been tasked to provide Marine support for two separate naval boarding parties.

Which wouldn't be all that bad, I suppose, if we weren't going to be outnumbered ten-to-one by the Sollies still aboard the damned ships .

He glanced at lieutenant Sebastiбn Fariсas, Admiral Oversteegen's San Martin-born flag lieutenant, standing at his shoulder, then across the pinnace's troop compartment at Captain Luciana Ingebrigtsen, the commander of his Alpha Company. He'd more or less flipped a coin to decide whether he should accompany her or Motoyuki MacDerment, Bravo Company's CO. Since he was going with Ingebrigtsen, he'd sent Gunny Danko (otherwise known as Sergeant Major Evelyn Danko) along with MacDerment to keep an eye on him. Both Ingebrigtsen and MacDerment were good, solid officers, but they were undeniably still a bit young for their rank. There was a lot of that going around, and while he was confident in their competence, there was no harm providing a little adult supervision. By the same token, he was equally confident that whichever one of them he chose to accompany, it was the other one Murphy would choose to drop straight into the crapper. (Both of those beliefs, he supposed, might owe a little something to his eleven years' enlisted experienced before the Corps sent him off to OTC.)

Of course, the fact that he'd assigned himself to Alpha Company also meant that Alpha Company had been assigned to board SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek , which happened to be the flagship of one Admiral Keeley O'Cleary. Which also explained Fariсas' presence.

At the moment, Ingebrigtsen was involved in a quiet conversation with Master Sergeant Clifton Palmarocchi, Alpha Company's senior noncom. Palmarocchi had been around the block and back again, and the chunky, muscular master sergeant, with his thinning fair hair and pronounced Gryphon accent would have made an admirable illustration for the term "grizzled veteran." That was just fine with Markiewicz, especially when he contemplated the absurd youthfulness of the junior officer standing at Ingebrigtsen's elbow and nodding sagely at whatever she was saying. The captain might be young, but Lieutenant Hector Lindsay looked like he ought to be playing mumblety-peg in a schoolyard somewhere. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but it was bad enough. In fact, Lindsay was still a few months shy of his twentieth birthday, standard, fresh out of OCS, which made him even younger than Lieutenant Fariсas ( no ancient graybeard himself), and he'd had "his" platoon for just under two months, having come aboard literally asRigel was pulling out for Talbott.

There was a reason, the major suspected, Ingebrigtsen and Palmarocchi had both ended up accompanying First Platoon instead of either of her other platoons. And, he admitted to himself, if he'd thought about it, he would have picked this pinnace to help keep an eye on Lindsay. The boy was smart enough, and motivated as hell, but he was so shiny and new that it hurt.

Well, Markiewicz decided, glancing at his armor's HUD, where the pinnace's flight engineer was feeding him a duplicate of the pilot's HUD, we'll be finding out shortly how well this is all going to work .

* * *

"Good seal, Ma'am," Petty Officer 2/c John Pettigrew announced as a green light indicated a solid mating with Charles Babbage 's Emergency Airlock Number 117. "According to the diagnostic ping, the lock's operable, but it looks like it's running on emergency local power."

"Thank you, PO," Abigail acknowledged, then glanced at Gutierrez.

"Let's get them moving, Lieutenant," she said far more formally than she normally spoke to him.

"Yes, Ma'am."

Gutierrez took time to salute before sealing his helmet, which, Abigail knew, was his equivalent, under the circumstances, of pitching a tantrum. He hadn't liked the decision to place him in tactical command of the boarding party instead of staying where he was supposed to be, watching her back, one little bit. Unfortunately the fact thatTristram carried no Marine detachment made ex-Sergeant Gutierrez the closest thing to a Marine CO Naomi Kaplan had available. That, coupled with the fact that Abigail was the only one of her Navy officers with any experience in ground combat was what had determined who would command Tristram 's boarding party.

Everyone, including (perhaps even especially) Lieutenant Abigail Hearns hoped combat experience would be completely irrelevant to their present mission. The entire reason Tristram had been assigned responsibility for Charles Babbage was the sheer extent of the superdreadnought's devastating damage. Although Abigail's little command was technically a boarding party, their real function was search and rescue, and any Solly with a functional brain was going to be simply delighted to see them.

Unfortunately, as she'd pointed out to Corbett, they couldn't rely on the functionality of any survivors' brains. In fact, it was entirely possible that what they'd been through could have thoroughly unhinged some of them, in which case all bets were off and all of Matteo Gutierrez's experience might be required, after all.

He understood that as well as she did, but he also understood that it meant he was going to be concentrating on running the boarding party's entire security element instead of solely watching over one Abigail Hearns. And while he was far too professional to object, it was obvious he didn't see any reason to pretend—with Abigail, at least—that he was at all amused.

Well, you're just going to have to deal with it, Matteo , she thought, smiling affectionately at his broad back.