Mission of Honor

Chapter Twenty-Four

Evgeny Markiewicz had never thought much of officers who fretted over details which should have been left in the hands of their noncoms. He'd seen entirely too many examples of that from the noncom's perspective, which meant he knew exactly how much it pissed off the noncoms in question. What was worse, it represented a misuse of the officer's time and attention. He was supposed to be in charge of managing his command, however big or small it might be, not allowing himself to become absorbed in the sorts of details which could all too easily distract him from that management function.

At the moment, he found that somewhat more difficult than usual to remember.

The boat bay aboard SLNS Anton von Leeuwenhoek , Admiral Keeley O'Cleary's flagship, was larger than it would have been the aboard a Manticoran superdreadnought. Partly that was because Solarian ships carried greater numbers of small craft. That had been true even before Manticoran crews had been downsized, although the difference was even more marked these days. For another thing, Solarian small craft tended to be larger than their Manticoran counterparts. According to his briefing, they didn't carry any more personnel or cargo—in fact, they carried slightly less—but they had a longer designed operating radius, and their basic designs were much older and hadn't profited from the RMN's wartime emphasis on greater operational efficiency and component reduction.

At the moment, all those small craft, aside from two purely reaction-drive cutters, were absent, however. By this time, they were sitting obediently in orbit around Flax, under the watchful eyes—and weapons—of Commodore Terekhov's cruisers, and the boat bay was a huge, gaping cavern in their absence. A cavern which looked even larger with only a trio of Manticoran pinnaces docked in it like lonely interlopers.

Captain Ingebrigtsen had lt Lieutenant Lindsay and Platoon Sergeant Francine Harper handle First Platoon's debarkation, and Markiewicz had been pleased by the way Ingebrigtsen managed not to hover. For that matter, he'd been pleased by the way Lindsay had let Harper get on with it. But now, as the platoon's forty-four men and women formed up in Leeuwenhoek 's boat bay gallery, he recognized Ingebrigtsen's itchy expression. He ought to, given that he shared the same ignoble temptation to start fooling around with those details he was supposed to stay clear of.

Fortunately, young Lindsay seemed unaware of the pair of incipient backseat drivers somehow managing to restrain themselves. The lieutenant glanced around, then looked at Sergeant Harper.

"Let's get a squad on each of the lift banks, Frankie," he said.

"Aye, Sir!" Harper replied, and barked a few, crisp commands. The platoon quickly and smoothly unraveled into its constituent squads, and Markiewicz gave a mental nod of approval. It was a simple evolution, but the confidence in Lindsay's voice and the briskness with which he'd acted were both good signs.

And, unlike one Major Markiewicz, Lindsay appeared completely immune to the temptation to micromanage his platoon sergeant.

"Bay secure, Ma'am," Lindsay reported a moment later to Ingebrigtsen.

"Thank you, Hector," the captain replied gravely, and keyed her battle armor's com. "Bay secure," she announced. "Second Platoon, come ahead."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Lieutenant Sylvester Jackson, responded almost instantly. "On our way."

The second pinnace's hatch cycled open, and Jackson's platoon swam briskly down the personnel tube. They fell in just inside the gallery, and Jackson—four years older than Lindsay, with sandy hair and a pronounced Sphinxian accent—reported to Ingebrigtsen.

"You know what to do, Sly," Ingebrigtsen told him.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am." Jackson saluted her and Markiewicz, then turned to his own platoon sergeant and passed through Lindsay's people into the central shaft of each bank of lifts. They did not enter the lift cars , however. Instead, they sent the cars upward, overriding the automatic command to close the shaft doors behind them, and, as per their pre-mission orders, followed the cars up the shaft in their armor. Markiewicz didn't really expect anyone aboard Leeuwenhoek to be stupid enough to try anything, but if anyone was so suicidally inclined, he had no intention of offering his people up in neatly packaged, easily bushwhacked lots.

"All right, Aldonza," Ingebrigtsen said over her com. "Your turn."

"Understood, Ma'am."

Lieutenant Aldonza Navarro, Third Platoon's CO, had a more pronounced San Martin accent than Fariсas'. At a hundred and seventy-two centimeters, she was on the short side for most of the San Martinos Markiewicz had met, but there was nothing wrong with her efficiency, and Third Platoon quickly assembled in the boat bay.

Markiewicz, meanwhile, was monitoring his HUD, watching the icons of Jackson's Marines as they ascended the lift shafts. Jackson's second squad left its shaft at the 03 Deck lift doors. The lieutenant himself stayed with his first squad, leaving the shaft at the 02 Deck level. His second squad continued to the 01 Deck, and Markiewicz gave another mental nod as all three squads settled into position.

"Take the banks, Aldonza," Ingebrigtsen instructed, and Third Platoon relieved Lindsay's people as the anchoring security element on the lift banks here in the boat bay. At the same time, First Platoon fell back in, and Ingebrigtsen nodded—in her case, physically—in approval.

"Ready to proceed, Sir," she said formally, turning to Markiewicz.

"Very good, Captain." Markiewicz smiled. "Let's get this show on the road, then."

"Aye, aye, Sir. Head them up-shaft, Hector."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am!" Lindsay acknowledged, and First Platoon started climbing into the shaft Jackson had used, with Ingebrigtsen, Fariсas, and Markiewicz trailing along behind.

This time, Markiewicz noted, Lieutenant Lindsay hadn't quite managed to keep his excitement out of his voice, but the major was inclined to cut the youngster a little slack. After all, his platoon had been chosen to accompany Markiewicz to Leeuwenhoek 's flag bridge to formally accept Admiral O'Cleary's personal surrender before the rest of his Marines began moving through the rest of the core hull to secure it. Which meant young Hector Lindsay was about to go into the Corps' history books as the first junior officer—very junior officer, in his case—of any star nation to command the squad which took a Solarian League Navy's flag officer's surrender on the flag deck of an SLN superdreadnought. Markiewicz wasn't exactly immune to the same awareness, which was one reason he couldn't justify taking Lindsay to task for it. At the same time, though, he wondered if Lindsay had figured out he'd drawn this particular assignment because he was the least experienced of Ingebrigtsen's platoon commanders? Navarro, with the most combat experience of all, had taken over the boat bay detachment because it constituted Markiewicz's reserve. If something went wrong and dropped them all into the crapper after all, he wanted somebody who'd been there and done that in charge of the force assigned to pull them all back out again.

I wonder if Luciana had the heart to explain that to Lindsay? he wondered. I know Ididn't!

* * *

Abigail Hearns took one more look around. The passageway immediately inboard from the emergency airlock was longer and a bit wider than it would have been in a Manticoran or Grayson-designed warship, but it looked rather cramped at the moment, with her entire boarding party and six counter-grav sleds of salvage and rescue gear packed into it. Other than that, about the best she could say was that it was still atmosphere tight. Only the emergency lighting was up, and close to a third of the lighting elements were dead. One of her engineering ratings had already determined that the backup hardwired emergency com system was down, but from the looks of things, that could just as easily have been due to lack of maintenance as to the damage Charles Babbage had suffered at Manticoran hands.

The ship—or, rather, the battered hulk which had once been a ship—was under an apparent gravity of about 1.2 g . The wreckage had been rotated perpendicular to its line of flight, putting the decks and deckheads back where they ought to be, and Tristram was playing tugboat to slow what was left of the Babbage down. In many ways, Abigail would have preferred to remain in microgravity. It would have made getting about faster and simpler, not to mention avoiding the stress the deceleration was putting on damaged structural members. And she was well aware that the deceleration might actually be life-threatening for survivors under some circumstances. Unfortunately, the wreck's velocity of almost eighteen thousand kilometers per second had already carried it past Flax. It was now hurtling across the inner system at roughly six percent of light-speed, bound for a fatal encounter with the gas giant Everest in just under twenty hours. It was extraordinarily unlikely, given Tenth Fleet's limited manpower, that the SAR parties would be able to completely search ships as mangled and torn as Babbage and her consorts in that time. Which meant they had to be slowed down somehow.

Tristram looked like a guppy tethered to a whale as she worked to decelerate Babbage 's wreckage, but there wouldn't have been any point using a larger, more powerful vessel. Tristram was could brake them at the current rate indefinitely, and they dared not apply any greater deceleration, for a lot of reasons. At this rate, it would take over fifteen T-days (and the next best thing to twelve light-hours) to actually stop them relative to the system primary, but it would also divert them well clear of any collisions with odds and ends of system real estate, which would be a very good thing from the SAR perspective.

Assuming anyone who maintained their internal systems as poorly as these people appeared to have had managed to survive to be rescued in the first place, of course.

Don't rush to conclusions , Abby, she reminded herself. This is strictly an emergency access way, and the lock's the only thing it leads to. Let's not decide all of their maintenance is as half-assed as it looks right here until we've actually seen it .

She told herself that rather firmly, and she knew she had a point. But she couldn't help reflecting on how any Manticoran or Grayson executive officer would react to something like this, even if it was "only" an emergency access way. In fact, especially if it was "only" an emergency access way. There was a reason things like that were provided when a ship was designed, after all, and when an emergency finally came along and bit your posterior, it was a little late to think about catching up on that overdue maintenance you'd really been meaning to get to sometime real soon now.

At least we're in, we're in one piece, and we're in solid com contact with the pinnace. Which means —

"All right, Matteo, let's go," she said.

"Yes, Ma'am," Lieutenant Gutierrez replied, then nodded to PO 1/c William MacFarlane, one of the noncoms to whom he'd issued another flechette gun. "Lead 'em out, Bill."

"Yes, Sir," MacFarlane acknowledged in turn, and started cautiously down the poorly lit passage.

Three more ratings with flechette guns followed him, with Gutierrez behind them. The lieutenant and Bosun Musgrave had spent the better part of half an hour deciding which naval personnel should be trusted with things that went bang. MacFarlane and the other flechette-armed ratings—there were three more bringing up the rear—were the ones with actual combat experience or who had most recently qualified with the weapons. Everyone else carried at least a sidearm as regulations required, but Gutierrez had been bloodthirstily explicit when he explained what would happen to anyone other than his designated flechette gunners who dared to switch any weapon from "safe" to "fire" without his specific instructions to do so. Given the profoundly stupid things Abigail had seen people do with firearms, she heartily approved of her armsman's attitude.

Now the rest of the party followed MacFarlane to the airtight door at the end of the airlock access way, and Selma Wilkie, one of Lieutenant Fonzarelli's engineering techs, examined the controls.

"Power's down, Ma'am," she reported to Abigail over the general net, then continued in a carefully expressionless voice. "According to the telltales, there's standard pressure on the other side, though."

Abigail heard someone snort contemptuously and shook her own head. They were inside the superdreadnought's outer armor but still well outside the big ship's core hull. Passages like this one were specifically designed and intended to be depressurized when the ship went to action stations as a means of limiting blast damage when the armor was breached. The fact that Charles Babbage hadn't bothered to do that said an enormous amount about the Solarian League Navy's readiness states. Or about Task Force 496's pre-battle appreciation of the threat levels it faced, at least.

"Well it's nice we'll have air, Selma," Abigail responded mildly. "On the other hand, who knows? They may actually have depressurized the next lateral. Besides, I understand Sollies don't like to take showers or wash their socks. So if it's all the same to you, I think we'll just keep our helmets sealed, anyway."

"Suits me just fine, Ma'am," Wilkie replied with a chuckle, and someone else laughed out loud. That laugh sounded just a bit nervous, perhaps, but Abigail wasn't going to fault anyone for that.

"Open it up," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am."

Wilkie engaged the manual unlocking system and gripped the old-fashioned wheel. It took her a second longer—and a lot more effort—than it ought to have to get it moving, and the squealing sound it made set Abigail's teeth on edge. Not just because of the fingernails on a blackboard effect, either. There was no excuse at all for not properly maintaining the manual override mechanism on an emergency escape hatch!

Once Wilkie managed to undog the pressure door, it swung smoothly open. Macfarlane stepped quickly through it, turning to his left, up-ship, and one of the other flechette gunners stepped through it to the right.

"Clear port," MacFarlane reported.

"Clear starboard," the other man said.

"Go," Gutierrez responded, and the rest of the boarding party flowed quickly through the opening under his critical eye. Fortunately, everyone remembered how he'd briefed them and no one fell over his or her feet in the process. In fact, although Abigail knew he'd never admit it, his "vacuum-sucker" spacers moved with commendable caution and speed.

She herself paused and bent to examine the emergency hatch more closely. The passageway to which it had granted access was also illuminated only by emergency lighting, but at least all of the lighting units seemed to be up this time. And as she examined the hatch, she found that the normal power-assisted unlocking system appeared to have been far better maintained than the manual system had. Of course, there was the minor problem that at the moment it didn't have power, wasn't there?

A shadow fell over her, and when she looked up, she found that Musgrave had been looking over her shoulder.

"Ain't that a kicker, Ma'am?" the bosun muttered in tones of profound disgust. Over, she noticed, his dedicated link, not the general net.

"It does seem just a bit slipshod, Bosun," she acknowledged over the same link. "But not a lot more than leaving pressure in here."

"Someone needs his butt kicked up between his ears, begging your pardon, Ma'am," Musgrave concurred.

"Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. On the other hand, the SLN's a peacetime navy. Or it was , anyway. I imagine they put up with quite of bit of sloppiness."

"Peacetime or not, they should've had the brains to at least pump the air! And even allowing for that, this here's an example of piss-poor maintenance discipline," Musgrave growled, glowering at the neglected manual unlocking system. "'Less I'm mistaken, accidents've been known to happen in peacetime, too, Ma'am."

"That they have," Abigail agreed more grimly. "Even aboard Solarian ships-of-the-wall, I suppose."

She straightened and consulted the schematic which had been loaded into her electronic memo board. Theoretically, at least, she had the deck plans for the entire ship—or for the Scientist class as originally designed, at least—supplied specifically for SAR by Admiral O'Cleary. She hoped the schematics really were complete, without any surprises, intentional or unintentional, but she wasn't prepared to trust them fully. Still, they offered at least general guidance, and she'd marked them with the damage Tristram 's sensors had been able to map before she download them to the board.

"All right, Walt," she said to Midshipman Corbett, who carried an identical memo board. "This is where we split up. According to our damage map, this passage should extend another hundred meters forward before you hit a breach. It's got to be good for at least fifty meters, since that's the closest set of blast doors in that direction. You take your people and head forward."

She tapped her own memo board with a stylus, and a lift bank flashed amber on both boards simultaneously.

"Make sure your com link doesn't get compromised, and stop at this lift bank," she continued, indicating the flashing section of the schematic. "Meantime, I'll head aft to Lift Nineteen. Whether there's power to the lifts or not, we can use the shafts to move inboard."

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Corbett acknowledged. "Bosun?"

"I'm on it, Sir," Musgrave said with just a hint of reassuring gruffness, nodded to Abigail, and started down the passage in the indicated direction with his extraordinarily youthful superior officer in tow.

Abigail watched half of the boarding party moving off with them, then turned to grin at Gutierrez.

"Let's go, Matteo."

* * *

Major Markiewicz followed Captain Ingebrigtsen and Master Sergeant Palmarocchi out of the lift doors at the 00 Deck level. According to the schematic in his battle armor's memory, he was approximately sixty meters aft of Leeuwenhoek 's command deck, and one hundred meters forward of her flag bridge. The 00 Deck corresponded to the Royal Manticoran Navy's Axial-One, the central—and best protected—deck of a warship's core hull, and Leeuwenhoek 's was both broader and higher than the other decks stacked above and below it. The passage before Markiewicz was well lit, yet he felt uneasily aware of its vastness, as if he couldn't quite make out details.

Don't be stupid, Evgeny. You can see just fine. It's just that you shouldn't be seeing this much empty space aboard any warship .

He snorted mentally, then turned to the dark-haired SLN lieutenant who'd been waiting at the lift doors. Allowing for prolong, she was probably somewhere in her thirties, he estimated—old for her rank in the RMN. Then again, the Sollies hadn't had as many vacancies created for promotion over the last couple of decades as Manticore had.

The name "PABST, V." was stenciled on the breast of her skinsuit, and she wore no helmet. She was of slightly above average height, although she looked like a stripling standing in front of his looming battle armor.

"Major Markiewicz, Royal Manticoran Marines," he said crisply over his armor's external speakers.

"Lieutenant Pabst—Valencia Pabst," she responded. "I'm Admiral O'Cleary's flag lieutenant."

"Excuse me, Lieutenant," Ingebrigtsen put in a bit sharply, "but don't Solarian officers salute superior officers?"

Pabst looked at her for a moment, as if Ingebrigtsen had spoken in some foreign tongue. Then she shook herself visibly, flushed, came to a reasonably correct position of attention, and saluted Markiewicz.

"I beg your pardon, Major."

There was more than a little anger in her voice, but Markiewicz figured she was entitled to that.

"I realize this has all come as something of a shock, Lieutenant Pabst," he replied, charitably ascribing her lapse in military courtesy to the aforesaid shock as he returned her belated salute.

"Yes, Sir. It has," she agreed, still with that core of cold anger and resentment. "If you'll follow me, please?"

"Lead on, Lieutenant," Markiewicz replied.

"Top?" Ingebrigtsen said quietly to Palmarocchi.

"On it, Ma'am," the master sergeant replied, and dropped back beside Lieutenant Lindsay.

He spoke very quietly to the young man for a moment, and then Lindsay and his platoon's first squad arranged themselves unobtrusively at Ingebrigtsen and Markiewicz's heels. The second and third squads stayed put, keeping an eye on the lift banks while Master Sergeant Palmarocchi and Platoon Sergeant Wilkie kept an eye on them. Markiewicz really wished Palmarocchi was along to watch his back, but he supposed that between them a grass-green lieutenant, an experienced captain, and a weary old major who'd once upon a time been a battalion sergeant major ought to be able to manage a single squad of Marines.

* * *

The hike from the lift to Leeuwenhoek 's flag bridge seemed to take far longer than it ought to, and Markiewicz suspected he wasn't the only person who found the silent emptiness of the deck eerie. Pabst obviously didn't feel much like making small talk, for which he scarcely blamed her, but no one had much to say over the Marines' com net, either.

Good communications discipline , the major thought wryly. Maybe we should try boarding surrendered Solly superdreadnoughts more often as a training technique .

Lengthy as the walk seemed while they were making it, it ended abruptly at an open pressure door. Pabst glanced at Markiewicz, then stepped through the door.

He followed her, and found himself on the SD's flag deck.

Like the passageway outside it, Leeuwenhoek 's flag deck was considerably more spacious than a Manticoran flag deck would have been. That was interesting, Markiewicz thought, given the far larger number of people crammed aboard the Solarian ship. A Manticoran designer, with considerably more volume to play with, would have fitted the command stations into no more than two thirds of the volume Leeuwenhoek 's architect had assigned to them.

The various displays and consoles had a sleek, aesthetically pleasant grace to them. Their shapes and spacing seemed to flow into one another, almost as if they'd been designed to do just that, although, he thought as he glanced over them, they didn't seem to be arranged quite as well from the viewpoint of information flow. The ops officer on a Manticoran admiral's staff, for example, was placed so that he could see the astrogator's display by looking in one direction and the master tactical plot by looking in the other, all without moving out of his bridge chair. The way Leeuwenhoek 's command stations were arranged, however, the ops officer would have to stand up, take at least two steps, and crane his neck awkwardly to see the astro display. And one of the reasons he'd have to was that he had at least twice as many assistants as a Manticoran ops officer would have required, and he would have had to walk around one of them to see it.

Obviously, they figure the guy who does the shooting doesn't have to see where the guy who's steering is headed , he thought dryly. Not to mention the minor fact that they're way over-manned .

He noted those details out of the corner of one eye. Most of his attention was focused on identifying Admiral Keeley O'Cleary. In one way, it wasn't very difficult, since his armor's memory had been loaded with her picture. But what he hadn't counted on was the sheer number of stars stenciled on various people's skinsuits.

He was still registering the fact that the compartment seemed to be filled with an extraordinary number of flag officers when O'Cleary stepped forward. She looked at him, dark-eyes stony, and he saluted.

"Major Evgeny Markiewicz, Royal Manticoran Marines, Ma'am," he said.

"Admiral O'Cleary," she replied, acknowledging his salute with frigid correctness. "I trust you'll forgive me if I don't add 'Welcome aboard,' Major?"

Silence, Markiewicz decided, was golden, and he contented himself with a courteous little half-nod from behind his armor's visor.

"Vice Admiral Hansen Chamberlain, my chief of staff," O'Cleary continued, indicating a short, squared-off officer to her right. "My operations officer, Rear Admiral Tang Dzung-ming. My staff intelligence officer, Rear Admiral Lavinia Fairfax. And my staff communications officer, Captain Kalidasa Omprakash."

At last, someone who isn't an admiral! Markiewicz thought as he acknowledged each introduction in turn. Then he indicated his own officers.

"Captain Ingebrigtsen," he said, "Lieutenant Fariсas, Rear Admiral Oversteegen's flag lieutenant, and Lieutenant Lindsay."

All three of them saluted, and O'Cleary returned the courtesy. Then she looked back at Markiewicz.

"I suppose I should be handing you a sword or something, Major," she said tartly. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid the Solarian League Navy isn't very practiced at this sort of thing."

It could have come out with an edge of humor, but it didn't. Nor was there any humor in the cold smile which accompanied it.

"If I've discovered one thing over the last twenty years or so, Admiral," Markiewicz replied, meeting her eyes steadily, "it's that we don't get much of a chance to practice a lot of the more important things until it's too late."

O'Cleary's lips tightened, but then, visibly, she made herself stop and draw a deep breath.

"I imagine that's something we should all bear in mind," she said then. "In the meantime, however, how does your Admiral Gold Peak wish to handle this, Major?"

"Ma'am, as soon as I have formally received your surrender, and that of Captain Lister, I will so notify Admiral Gold Peak's staff. At that time, I will place one of my squads on the command deck, one in Central Engineering, and another in each of your boat bays to provide traffic control and security. As soon as that's been accomplished, a naval boarding party will come come aboard Leeuwenhoek and complete the task of securing the vessel. I am to extend Admiral Gold Peak's compliments to you, and invite you to return aboard Rigel , Admiral Oversteegen's flagship with Lieutenant Fariсas. My understanding is that Admiral Gold Peak will be arriving aboard Rigel shortly herself."

"I see."

O'Cleary gazed at him for several moments, her face expressionless, then nodded.

"Very well, Major. It would seem that I, like the rest of this task force, find myself in Admiral Gold Peak's hands at the moment. I will, of course, comply with her wishes."

"Thank you, Admiral."

"Would you prefer to receive Captain Lister's surrender here, or on his command deck?"

"Since my orders are to secure the bridge, as well, Ma'am, I think it would probably be more convenient for the Captain if he simply waited there for me."

Markowitz kept his voice as politely, militarily impersonal as he could, and O'Cleary nodded again. There might actually have been a trace of awareness of his efforts not to step any more heavily on her toes—or Lister's—than he had to.

Of course, there might not have, too.

"Kalidasa, please be good enough to inform the Captain that Major Markiewicz will meet him on his bridge," she said, without looking over her shoulder at Captain Omprakash.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Well, I suppose that concludes the formalities—here, at least," she said, and gave Sebastiбn Fariсas a thin smile. "Should the other members of my staff accompany us, Lieutenant?"

"If you so desire, Ma'am," Fariсas said, "I feel certain Rear Admiral Oversteegen would be pleased to offer them the hospitality of his ship. The decision, however, is yours."

"In that case, I'd like Vice Admiral Chamberlain to accompany us."

"Of course, Ma'am."

"Iwasaki," Lindsay said over the platoon net, and Corporal Dunston Iwasaki and his section of three stepped forward, arranging themselves as an honor guard around O'Cleary, Chamberlain, and Fariсas.

Well, the kid got that right , Markiewicz decided after glancing at Ingebrigtsen. From the captain's expression, it was obvious she hadn't set that up ahead of time. And that she was as as pleased to see it as Markiewicz was.

O'Cleary cocked her head, smiling slightly, as if she were trying to decide whether it was an honor guard or a security detail to keep her for making some kind of break for it. Then she snorted quietly, a bit less bitterly, somehow, and nodded to Markiewicz.

"If I don't see you again, Major," she said, "allow me to thank you for your courtesy in a difficult situation."

"Thank you, Ma'am," he acknowledged, and he and his officers saluted her again. She and Chamberlain returned the salute, then followed Fariсas out of the compartment.

* * *

"We've got a pair survivors, Ma'am."

Abigail stopped in midstride, raising one hand to stop the rest of her party, as Midshipman Corbett's voice came over the com. There was something about his tone . . . .

"Are you all right, Walt?" she asked quietly over her private link.

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied over the same link. "It's just—" He paused, and she heard a distinct swallowing sound. "It's just . . . kind of bad in here."

Abigail looked down at her memo board and checked the icons representing Corbett and his party. Her own party had already encountered over seventy dead and only six survivors—all of whom had been in skinsuits and trapped in compartments they could not escape. They'd also counted twenty-three lifepod hatches which showed vacuum on the other side, which presumably meant whoever had been close enough to them had already escaped the ship. Her six survivors had been sent back to the pinnace, escorted by a single one of her spacers, and all of them had seemed too dazed by the scope of the disaster—and too grateful to be alive—to offer anything resembling resistance. Yet so far, Corbett hadn't located a single survivor and only a scattering of bodies.

But that, she realized as she punched up the scale on the board, had obviously just changed. He and his party were one passageway further in than her own, and he'd just entered the core hull. In fact, if the schematic was accurate, he was in one of the nodal damage control compartments.

Which , she thought coldly, is supposed to have upwards of forty people in it when the ship's at Action Stations. So if he's only got two survivors . . . .

"Do you need any more hands?" She kept her voice impersonal.

"No, Ma'am. Not yet, anyway." Corbett might have swallowed again, but his voice was a little stronger when he resumed speaking. "The Bosun and my sick berth attendant have them stabilized in life support stretchers. I'm detaching two of my people to take them back to the pinnace, then return here. Uh, if that's all right with you, I mean, Ma'am."

"Walt, it's your call," she told him. And, of course, you've got the Bosun there to make sure you don't step on your sword , she added silently.

"Thank you, Ma'am."

His voice was definitely stronger this time, and she smiled crookedly.

"You're welcome," she said. "Now, let's be about it."