Storm From the Shadows

Chapter Thirty-Five

Helen Zilwicki looked out the pinnace viewport as the sleek, variable geometry craft settled gracefully onto the Thimble Spaceport landing pad. She still thought Thimble was a pretty silly name for a planet's capital city, although she had to admit that it at least offered more originality than "Landing," which was undoubtedly the most common name for capital cities in the entire galaxy.

Well, maybe except for the ones that're named First Landing, anyway, she amended with a silent chuckle. And whatever the citizens of the Spindle System might have chosen to name their capital, she was actually a bit surprised by how glad she was to be back here again.

It didn't hurt that Commodore Terekhov's little task group had made a huge amount of progress during the voyage to Spindle from the Lynx Terminus. Its various ships weren't anywhere near as well drilled and trained as Hexapuma had been when they went to Monica, but it would have been grossly unfair to compare them to the level of proficiency Hexapuma's company had attained by that time. For a bunch of ships which had been more or less thrown together and sent off, mostly straight from their (highly abbreviated) builders' trials, less than three T-weeks before, they were actually damned good.

Sure they are, part of her brain thought mockingly. And you, of course, are such a seasoned old vacuum-sucker that your highly experienced judgment of just how good they are is undoubtedly infallible, isn't it?

Shut up, the rest of her brain commanded.

The pinnace touched down perfectly, and Helen stood, trying not to think about all the times Ragnhild Pavletic had piloted Captain Terekhov to one meeting or another. She gathered up Terekhov's briefcase and her own minicomp, then turned and led the way off the pinnace in obedience to the ironbound Manticoran tradition that required passengers to disembark in reverse order of seniority.

Vice Admiral Khumalo, Bernardus Van Dort, Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler, and a small, dark-haired commodore almost as sturdily built as Helen herself, were waiting as she followed Commodore Terekhov, Commodore Chatterjee, Captain Carlson, and Commander Pope into the office. All of them rose in greeting, and Helen felt a flare of amusement as she saw the small, female commodore gazing up at her counterpart's towering centimeters. She was considerably shorter than Helen, while Chatterjee was one of the very few people Helen had ever met who could actually make Duchess Harrington look petite, which probably explained his nickname of "Bear." Despite her amusement, though, she was far more aware of her deep surge of pleasure as she saw Van Dort again. The special minister without portfolio smiled with obvious pleasure of his own and nodded to her as she trailed along in all the monumentally more senior officers' wake.

"Aivars! Welcome back." Khumalo reached across his desk, shaking Terekhov's hand with obvious pleasure and genuine warmth. Which, Helen reflected, was a noticeable—and welcome—change from the then-rear admiral's stiff-legged wariness when Aivars Terekhov had first arrived in the Talbott Cluster.

"I believe you know all of us," Khumalo continued, waving at the welcoming committee, "except, perhaps, for Commodore Onasis." He indicated the smallish woman Helen had noted, and Onasis stepped forward to offer her own hand in turn.

"Commodore Onasis," Terekhov murmured in greeting, then nodded to his own officers. "Commodore Chatterjee, commanding DesRon 301," he said, introducing Chatterjee first. "And this is Captain Carlson, my flag captain in Quentin Saint-James, and Commander Pope, my chief of staff. And this, of course," he smiled very slightly, "is Ensign Zilwicki, my flag lieutenant."

More handshakes were exchanged, along with murmurs of greeting (although no one offered to shake her own lowly hand, Helen noticed with another flicker of amusement), and then all of them scattered, like uniformed birds accompanied by a single civilian-garbed crow, into the office's comfortable chairs. Helen waited until all those vastly senior officers had been seated, then found herself a perch to one side, pulled out her minicomp, and configured it to record mode.

"It really is good to see you back, Aivars," Khumalo said. "And to see more ships arriving with you."

"I'm glad you think so, Sir. And, frankly, I'm glad to be back, even though I could wish I'd had at least a day or so on Manticore, first. I'm sure I speak for Bear, as well," Terekhov said, nodding at Chatterjee. "On the other hand, I wouldn't want you to think we're fully up to snuff yet. For one thing, I still have to steal a few staff officers from you. And, for another, we've only really had the opportunity to start drilling as cohesive squadrons for the last two or three weeks. Our people are willing as hell, and I think they're individually about as good as it gets, but we're a long way from really shaking down the way we ought to have before we were ever deployed."

"There's been a lot of that going around lately," Shulamit Onasis observed with a tart smile.

"That's one way to put it," Khumalo agreed feelingly. "On the other hand, between you and Vice Admiral Gold Peak, we've already got a good twenty or thirty times as much combat power as we had in the Quadrant before Monica. I'm looking forward to still more, you understand, but adding eight more Saganami-Cs to the mix—not to mention Commodore Chatterjee's Rolands—is going to help me sleep a lot more soundly at night."

"All of us, I think," Onasis said, nodding firmly. Then she cocked her head at Frederick Carlson. "One thing I wanted to ask you, Captain Carlson. I thought there was already a Quentin Saint-James in the ship list?"

"There was," Carlson said. "In fact, she was one of the early Saganami-As. She was transferred to the Zanzibar Navy, though, as part of the program to try and rebuild their fleet after Tourville trashed it. SinceQuentin Saint-James is on the List of Honor, Zanzibar renamed her to release the name for my ship." He shook his head. "I'm flattered, of course, but it does give all of us a bit to live up to."

"Ah." Onasis nodded. "I thought I was remembering correctly. Still, with all the ships coming out of the yards, I don't suppose it's any wonder that some of the names are getting flipped around without warning."

"Everything's getting flipped around without warning, Shulamit." Khumalo's tone was considerably grimmer than it had been, Helen noticed. "Which probably means we should go ahead and get down to our own latest installment of what's-going-on-now, I suppose. Ambrose, would you care to take the floor and brief Commodore Terekhov and Commodore Chatterjee on all of our own recent fun and games?"

" . . . so that's about the sum of it, so far, at least," Ambrose Chandler finished up the better part of ninety minutes later.

"Thank you, Ambrose," Khumalo said, then looked at Terekhov. "As you can see, things are looking up over most of the Quadrant. In fact, when Minister Krietzmann gets back on-planet tonight, he and Loretta will be giving us a complete joint brief—not just for your benefit, Aivars; Baroness Medusa and Prime Minister Alquezar will be attending, too—on how well the local system-defense forces are integrating with the new LAC groups as we get them deployed forward. We're in pretty good shape on that front, according to our original schedule, but the LACs are still spreading out from the Lynx Terminus. It's going to be at least another month or so before we can get decent coverage around the northern periphery. And, frankly, our original deployment plans gave much lower priority to the areas around Pequod and New Tuscany because we figured the San Miguel and Rembrandt navies could handle security in the area. Now that the situation in Pequod is getting so . . . touchy, we really want to expedite the deployment of a LAC group to that system. Unfortunately, we're not going to have the transport platforms for that for at least two months, because the only CLACs available to us have already deposited their groups at their assigned destinations or are still in transit.

"Which still leaves us in a . . . less than ideal situation, shall we say?"

Khumalo's office was silent for several seconds after he finished speaking, and Helen glanced surreptitiously sideways at Terekhov's profile. His eyes were half-closed, his lips pursed in obvious thought, and she noticed the way both Khumalo and Van Dort were looking at him, both obviously waiting for him to surface with his own impression of Chandler's briefing. Van Dort's reaction didn't surprise her a bit, after the way he and Terekhov had worked together to stymie the entire Monica-based operation. Khumalo's still did, just a bit, although she was delighted to see it.

"I don't like the sound of this New Tuscany business at all, Sir," Terekhov said finally, eyes opening wide once again and focusing on Khumalo. "I didn't have the opportunity to actually visit New Tuscany inHexapuma, but everything I've ever heard, seen, or read about the New Tuscans only makes me even unhappier about these latest shenanigans of theirs."

"So you agree that they're up to something we're not going to like very much, Aivars?" Van Dort asked with a quizzical smile, and Terekhov snorted.

"I can see how that razor-sharp brain of yours helped impel you to the top of the local financial heap, Bernardus," he said dryly. "Nothing much gets past you, does it?"

"One tries to keep up," Van Dort admitted modestly, and more than one of those present chuckled. But then expressions sobered again, and Van Dort leaned slightly forward. "What do you think we should do about it?"

Helen's eyes flicked sideways to Khumalo, wondering how he would react to having a civilian ask the opinion of one of his subordinates directly. But Khumalo only tipped his head slightly to one side, obviously listening for Terekhov's response as closely as Van Dort was.

"Give me a break, Bernardus!" Terekhov protested. "I just heard about this for the first time. What makes you think I've had long enough to formulate any kind of an opinion about it?"

"I'm not asking for an opinion. I want that first impression of yours."

"Well, my first impression is that we need more than just a LAC squadron or two in the system. More platforms would be good, of course, but if New Tuscany really is working to some concerted plan, I doubt that that alone would cause them to back off. In fact, my most pressing thought right this minute is that we ought to put someone senior to Commander Denton into Pequod. And that someone senior, whoever he is, should be authorized to kick any New Tuscan in the ass if that's what it takes to get them backed off."

Both Khumalo and Shoupe looked very much as if they agreed with the commodore, Helen decided. Not that agreeing with him was the same thing as being happy about the notion.

"That's pretty much the way we've been looking at it ourselves," Khumalo said, as if deliberately confirming Helen's impression. "The problem is that we can't help wondering if that's exactly the reaction they're hoping to draw. Mind you, none of us can think of how that would help them, but that's the problem, isn't it? Since we don't know what the hell it is they're trying to accomplish, we can't know how what we do is going to fit into their plans and objectives. Frankly," the vice admiral admitted, "one reason I haven't tried harder to divert one of the CLAC deliveries to Pequod is that ignorance."

"No, we can't know how any move on our part is going to affect their plans," Terekhov agreed thoughtfully. Then he shrugged slightly. "On the other hand, I don't think we can afford to allow our current ignorance to paralyze us, either. I'm certainly not recommending that we send someone in to play bull in the china shop, because if what we're looking at really is a deliberately orchestrated set of manufactured provocations, the last thing we want to do is actually give them the mother of all provocations. But by the same token, I don't see how anyone here in the region could possibly have guessed how much firepower the Admiralty is ready to begin transferring in this direction. I'm willing to bet that all of New Tuscany's calculations are based on the sort of shoestring force structure they gave you before Monica, Sir. In that case, I think it could be a very good idea to let them know there are going to be more and more modern ships out here in the Quadrant—and not just LACs. Let them see the kind of trouble they're going to be buying themselves if they push too far."

"I think there's quite a bit to that, Admiral," Van Dort said soberly.

"Agreed." Khumalo nodded. "And, to be frank, it's a thought that's occurred to my people, as well as to Minister Krietzmann and Baroness Medusa. I just hate the sense that somebody's getting ready to hit me right across the top of the head with the other shoe instead of just dropping it on the floor!"

"After what those Manpower and Monican bastards tried to do?" Terekhov showed his teeth briefly. "Admiral, I'm right with you on that one!"

"Now why," Khumalo asked almost whimsically, "does that fail to fill me with bubbling optimism, Commodore Terekhov?"

"Excuse me, Ensign Zilwicki."

Helen paused as the extraordinarily attractive blonde touched her elbow in the hallway outside Vice Admiral Khumalo's dirt-side office.

"Yes?" she replied courteously, wondering who the other woman was and how she happened to know who Helen was.

Aside, of course, from the fact that I wear my name on the front of my tunic. D'oh.

"I'm Helga Boltitz," the blonde said in a sharp-edged accent which reminded Helen somehow of Victor Cachat's. "Minister Krietzmann's personal assistant," she added as she clearly recognized the blank expression in Helen's eyes.

"Oh. I mean, of course," Helen said. She glanced down the hall, but Commodore Terekhov and Commodore Chatterjee were still engaged in some sort of last-minute personal conversation with Captain Shoupe, and she returned her attention to Ms. Boltitz. "Is there something I can do for you, Ma'am?"

"Well, as I explained to Admiral Gold Peak's flag lieutenant not so very long ago, you can start by not calling me 'Ma'am,' " Boltitz said with an impish grin. "It makes me feel incredibly old and entirely too respectable!"

"I'll try to remember that, Ma— Ms. Boltitz." Helen smiled back at her.

"Good. And, for that matter, given the fact that I do for the Minister basically what you do for the Commodore, I think it might actually be simpler if I call you Helen and you call me Helga. How's that?"

"As long as I still get to call you 'Ms. Boltitz' in public . . . Helga."

"I suppose I can live with that under those circumstances . . . Ensign."

"Well, in that case, let me rephrase. Is there something I can do for you, Helga?"

"As a matter of fact, there is," Helga said with a rather more serious air. "The Minister will, of course, be present with the Prime Minister and the Governor General for the formal dinner before tonight's full-scale briefing. He's asked me to inform you that he's going to be bringing along a couple of guests—just for dinner, not for the briefing—who represent fairly important components of our local system-defense forces. One of them is from Montana, and he's requested what . . . well, what amounts to a photo op with Commodore Terekhov. My impression is that it has something to do with what Captain Terekhov—and your entire crew, of course—accomplished there. At any rate, Minister Krietzmann would greatly appreciate it if Commodore Terekhov could attend in mess dress uniform."

Helen managed to stifle a groan. It wasn't particularly easy. If there was one thing Aivars Terekhov hated, it was what he called the "fuss and feathers" side of his duties. Personally, Helen suspected it had something to do with all the years he'd spent in the Foreign Office's service, with their endless succession of formal dinners and political parties, before he returned to active naval duty.

On the other hand, she told herself rather hopefully, that same Foreign Office experience means he'll probably understand the importance of Krietzmann's request. After he gets done pitching a fit, that is.

"Is anyone else planning on attending in mess dress?" she asked after a moment. Helga quirked an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. "He's not going to be happy about climbing into his 'monkey suit,' Helga. But if I can tell him he's not going to be alone . . ."

She allowed her voice to trail off hopefully, and Helga chuckled.

"Well, I doubt we could get everyone all dressed up," she said. "If it will help, though, I can go and have a word with at least a few of the others—Admiral Khumalo, Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler, Captain Saunders—and suggest that the Minister would appreciate their attendance in mess dress, as well."

"Oh, good!" Helen made no particular effort to hide her relief. "If you can do that, I'll exaggerate a little myself and suggest that the Minister would appreciate it if Commodore Chatterjee and Captain Carlson came the same way. I mean, it wouldn't exactly be a lie. Minister Krietzmann would appreciate it, wouldn't he?"

"Oh, I'm sure he would," Helga agreed.

Getting Aivars Terekhov into full scale mess dress had been almost as hard as Helen had been afraid it would. He'd started to dig his heels in the instant she opened her mouth, pointing out that nobody had mentioned anything about stupid mess dress uniforms to him in the original invitation. She'd headed that one off by reminding him that although the request was a late change, it was also one which had been made at the Quadrant's Minister of War's personal request for important political reasons. He'd glowered at that one, then brightened and pointed out that he didn't have a commodore's mess dress uniform . . . at which point Chief Steward Agnelli had silently opened his closet and extracted the captain's mess dress which she had thoughtfully had re-tailored for his new rank during the voyage out from Manticore.

Balked on that front by his underlings' infernal efficiency, he'd tried arguing that Chatterjee probably didn't have the right uniform, and he wouldn't want to embarrass the other officer. Helen and Agnelli had simply looked at him patiently, rather the way Helen supposed a nanny looked at a rambunctious child. He'd looked back at them for a moment or two, then heaved a deep sigh, and surrendered.

It was really a pity it took so much work to get him into the uniform, Helen reflected, since it could have been purposely designed to suit him. His height, blond hair, blue eyes, and erect, square-shouldered posture carried off even the archaic sword to perfection, and she saw eyes turning toward him as he followed her out of the official Navy air car on the landing stage of the downtown Thimble mansion that was the temporary Government House while the Governor General's permanent, formal residence was being built. There were quite a few air cars already there, or in the act of lifting off again after disgorging their passengers, and she saw Vice Admiral Khumalo—also in mess dress—waiting for them.

The vice admiral couldn't carry off his resplendent uniform—and sword—the way Terekhov could. Few could, after all, Helen thought just a tad complacently. But from his posture, it was obvious that he was quite accustomed to putting up with it, and Captain Shoupe, standing at his shoulder, looked almost as resplendent as Khumalo did as he extended his hand to Terekhov with a chuckle.

"I had a side bet with Bernardus that Ms. Zilwicki wouldn't manage to get you into mess dress!" he said.

"Well," Terekhov half-growled, glaring humorously at Helen, "you almost won. Unfortunately, she used to be Bernardus' aide. That's probably why he had a more realistic appreciation of her ability to . . . convince me than you did, Sir."

"He did say something about the Ensign's extraordinary persistence," Khumalo agreed with a smile. He glanced at Helen, but it was obvious even to her that at this particular moment, silence was the best policy.

"Well," Khumalo continued after a moment, "I suppose we should head on in. In some ways, you're the guest of honor tonight, Aivars, so they can't get this dog and pony show off the pad until you turn up."

"Wonderful." Terekhov sighed. Then he shook himself. "All right, I'm ready. I don't suppose it can be much worse than the Battle of Monica!"

The initial description of the evening as "an informal little supper with the Governor General and the Prime Minister" seemed to have been somewhat in error, Helen thought as she followed her commodore and Vice Admiral Khumalo down a broad hallway and into what was obviously the mansion's main ballroom. It was stupendous, and the tables which had been arranged in it filled it to capacity. There must have been at least three hundred chairs at those tables, probably more, and most of them were already filled.

Only someone who knew Aivars Terekhov well would have recognized the way his neck stiffened ever so slightly, the way his shoulders squared themselves that tiny bit further. He continued chatting with Vice Admiral Khumalo as the two of them headed for the head table, pausing occasionally for a brief aside with someone Terekhov had met on his original deployment to Talbott. From the vice admiral's expression, he wasn't surprised, Helen noticed, and began to wonder exactly what was going on.

As they finally approached the head table, she recognized three other commodores waiting for them. One of them—Commodore Lázló—she'd expected, as the senior officer of the Spindle Space Navy. The second startled her a bit, although she supposed that Commodore Lemuel Sackett, the uniformed commander of the Montana Space Navy, legitimately qualified as "a guest from Montana." How he'd happened to be there was something of a puzzlement, of course, but not as big a puzzle as the presence of Commodore Emil Karlberg, the senior officer of the Nuncio Space Force.

This time, Terekhov couldn't quite hide his surprise. Spindle was scarcely conveniently located for either of them—transit time between Spindle and their home systems was better measured in weeks than days; Montana, the closer of the two, lay eighty-three light-years from the Quadrant's capital system—but it would scarcely have been good manners to ask what they were doing here. Especially not when the two of them were so obviously delighted to see him.

And they damned well should be, Helen told herself. The commodore and the Kitty cleaned those Peep "pirates" out of Nuncio when nothing Karlberg had could even have found them, much less fought them! And it's obvious Sackett isn't going to forget the way the commodore and Mr. Van Dort convinced Westman to hang up his guns in Montana, either. Still, I wonder why nobody mentioned they were going to be here?

She was still wondering when a polite usher separated her from her astronomically superior officers and showed her to a much humbler table to one side. Helen was delighted to go with him and get her junior rank (and absurd youth) out of the spotlight of attention focusing on Terekhov and the others. The table to which he led her was close enough that she could keep an eye on him, in case he needed her, and the unobtrusive earbug in her left ear meant he could summon her anytime he wished to.

She was pleased to see Helga Boltitz seated at the same table, although Helga didn't seem quite as delighted by their location as Helen was. On the other hand, that might well owe something to her table companion. Well, Helen's, too, she supposed, since he was seated between the two of them. She didn't know who the dark-haired, brown-eyed man with the pencil mustache and the Rembrandt accent might be, but she recognized his bored, superior expression from too many of the political dinners she'd attended as Catherine Montaigne's adopted daughter. Some people, she thought dryly, didn't need cheering sections; they took their own with them wherever they went.

She was still reflecting on that point—and trying to decide if it would be cowardly of her to abandon Helga to the Rembrandter rather than trying to draw fire from the other woman—when a sharp, musical tone sang through the background rumble of side conversations. All heads turned toward it, and she saw Baroness Medusa standing in her place at the head of the master table still holding the table knife with which she had just struck a crystal pitcher.

The rumble of voices died almost instantly, and Medusa smiled.

"First," she said, "allow me to thank you all for coming. Some of you"—she glanced in Terekhov's direction—"were quite possibly under the impression that tonight's dinner would be a somewhat smaller and more humble affair. I apologize to anyone who received that mistaken impression. Actually, tonight represents a rare opportunity for all of us. As Her Majesty's personal representative here in the Quadrant, it is my privilege—as well as my pleasure—to welcome all of you on Her Majesty's behalf. We are fortunate tonight in having several of the Quadrant's senior naval officers present, and equally fortunate that they were able to take time away from the official conferences which brought them here to join us for dinner tonight. And, in addition, we are particularly fortunate to have with us tonight a man to whom the entire Quadrant owes a tremendous debt of gratitude. Ladies and Gentlemen, please join me in extending my heartfelt thanks to Commodore Aivars Terekhov!"

The stillness of the ballroom disappeared in a roar of applause. Vice Admiral Khumalo was probably the first person to come to his feet, applauding sharply, but if he was, it could only have been by half a heartbeat or so. Helen found herself standing, as well, clapping wildly, and it was all she could do to restrain a jubilant whistle as pandemonium erupted.

She hadn't realized until that moment how much she'd resented—on Terekhov's behalf, not her own—the way the rush to redeploy him had deprived him of the public recognition back home that he had so amply earned. Yet now that the moment was here, she realized how much more fitting it was for him to receive that recognition here, in the Cluster and from the people his moral courage had served so well.

The applause lasted quite some time, and Helen could see the heightened color in the commodore's face as the sound of all those clapping hands battered his ears. She didn't doubt that it embarrassed him, but she didn't really much care about that. He deserved it—deserved every decibel of it—and her smile felt as if it were going to break her face as she recognized how cunningly Khumalo and Medusa had arranged things so that he couldn't avoid it.

But the clapping died at last, people sat back down, and the Governor General waited for silence to fall once more. Then she cleared her throat.

"By now," she said, "I'm sure it's occurred to most of you that we got Commodore Terekhov here under what might be called false pretenses. Frankly, we were a little concerned that he might have bolted if he'd realized what we had in mind."

Laughter muttered across the room, and she smiled.

"I'm afraid, however," she continued then, "that we're not quite finished with the Commodore tonight."

She glanced at Terekhov, who looked back at her with an expression which could only have been described as wary.

"There is a phrase with which Queen's officers become altogether too familiar, ladies and gentlemen," she went on, her tone much more serious. "That phrase is 'the exigencies of the Service,' and what it means is that those men and women who have chosen to wear the Queen's uniform and to guard and protect all of us—you and me—frequently find their own lives being stepped upon by the demands of the service they have chosen to give. They do not simply risk life and limb for us, ladies and gentlemen. They also sacrifice the rest of their lives—sacrifice time as fathers and mothers, as wives and husbands. Commodore Terekhov was spared less than one T-week in Manticore before he was sent back to us. Less than one T-week, ladies and gentlemen, after all of the tremendous risks and dangers he and the men and women of HMS Hexapuma and the other ships of his squadron in Monica endured for all of us."

The huge ballroom was completely still, now. Completely hushed. Baroness Medusa's voice sounded clear and quiet against that backdrop of silence.

"There can be no true, adequate compensation for the sacrifices men and women in uniform make for the people they serve and protect. How does one set a price on the willingness to serve? How does one set a proper wage for the willingness to die to protect others? And how does one honor those who have honored their oaths, given the last true measure of devotion, in the service of their star nation and the belief in human dignity and human freedom?"

She paused in the silence, then shook her head.

"The truth is, that we cannot give them the compensation, the honor, they have so amply deserved of us. Yet whether what we can give them is what they deserve or not, we recognize our obligation to try. To try to show them, and everyone else, that we recognize the sacrifices they have made. That we understand how very much we owe them. And that they are to us pearls beyond price, men and women we cannot deserve yet must always thank God come to us anyway.

"Those were the men and women of HMS Hexapuma. Of HMS Warlock, HMS Vigilant, HMS Gallant, HMS Audacious, HMS Aegis, HMS Javelin, HMS Janissary, HMS Rondeau, HMS Aria, and HMS Volcano.

"We cannot individually honor those men and women. Too many of them are no longer here for us to honor, and most of those who survived are somewhere else this night, somewhere else in the Queen's uniform, serving her—and all of us—yet again as 'the exigencies of the Service' demand. But if we cannot individually honor each of them, we can honor all of them collectively in the person of the man who commanded them."

Aivars Terekhov looked straight before him, and it wasn't simple modesty. He was looking at something only he could see—the men and women of those ships. The faces no one would ever see again.

"Commodore Terekhov," Medusa said, turning to address him directly for the first time, "you were not aware that among the dispatches you carried when you returned to Spindle was a letter of instruction from Her Majesty to me. Please stand, Commodore."

Terekhov obeyed slowly.

"Come here, Commodore," she said quietly, and he walked across to her. As he did, Augustus Khumalo, Lemuel Sackett, and Emil Karlberg rose in turn and followed him. Sackett carried a small velvet case which had apparently been hidden under the table at his place. Karlberg carried a small cushion which had been similarly concealed.

The four of them came to a halt in front of Medusa, and Sackett presented the small case to her. She accepted it, but she also looked at Khumalo.

"Attention to orders!" the vice admiral's deep voice announced, and Helen felt herself coming to her feet in automatic response, accompanied by every other uniformed man and woman in that vast ballroom.

"Commodore Aivars Terekhov," Medusa said in a clear, carrying voice, "on the sixteenth day of February, 1921 Post Diaspora, units of the Royal Manticoran Navy under your command entered the Monica System, acting upon intelligence which you had developed consequent to your previous actions in the Split System and the Montana System. In the course of developing that intelligence, and of suppressing violent terrorist movements in both of those star systems, you had become aware of an additional, potentially disastrous threat to the citizens of those star systems then known as the Talbott Cluster and to the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Acting upon your own authority, you moved with the squadron under your command to Monica and there demanded the stand down of the ex-Solarian League Navy battlecruisers which had been delivered to the Union of Monica by parties hostile to the Star Kingdom who were determined to prevent the annexation of the star systems now known as the Talbott Quadrant by the Star Kingdom, for which the citizens of those star systems had freely and democratically petitioned.

"When the senior officer present of the Monican Navy refused to comply with your demand and opened fire upon your vessels, although surprised by the heavy volume, weight, range, and accuracy of that fire, and despite heavy damage and severe casualties, you and the units under your command successfully destroyed the military components of a massive industrial platform and nine of the battlecruisers in question, which were there moored. And, when subsequently attacked by three fully operational and modern battlecruisers, the six remaining units of your squadron engaged and destroyed all of their opponents.

"At the cost of sixty percent of the vessels and seventy-five percent of the personnel under your command, your squadron destroyed or neutralized all of the Solarian-built battlecruisers in the Monica System. Subsequently, although your surviving vessels were too severely damaged to withdraw from the system, you neutralized all remaining units of the Monican Navy, prevented the withdrawal or destruction of the two surviving Solarian battlecruisers, and maintained the status quo in the system for a full week, until relieved by friendly forces.

"It is now my duty, and my enormous honor, by the express direction of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of Manticore, acting as Her Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant and Her personal representative, to present to you the Parliamentary Medal of Valor."

Helen inhaled sharply as Sackett opened the case and Medusa extracted the golden cross and starburst on its blue and white ribbon. Terekhov was much taller than she was, and she rose on tiptoe as he bowed to her so that she could slip the ribbon around his neck and adjust its fall. She positioned the gleaming medal carefully, then looked up at him and—in a gesture Helen was certain hadn't been formally choreographed—touched him very gently on the cheek.

"Her Majesty awards this medal to you, Commodore," she said, "both because you have so deeply and personally merited it, but also as a means of recognizing every man and woman who served with you in Monica. She asks you to wear this medal for them, as much as for yourself."

Terekhov nodded without speaking. Frankly, Helen doubted that he could have spoken at that moment. But Medusa wasn't done with him yet, and she nodded to Karlberg who stooped and placed his cushion on the floor.

"And now, Commodore, there's one more small matter of business which Her Majesty has requested that I take care of for her. Kneel, please."

Terekhov's nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. Then he obeyed her, sinking to his knees on the cushion, and Augustus Khumalo drew his dress sword and extended it, hilt-first, to Baroness Medusa. She took it, looked at it for a moment, then looked down at the officer kneeling before her.

"By the authority vested in me as Her Majesty's Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant, and by Her express commission, acting for and in Her stead," her quiet voice carried with crystal clarity throughout the ballroom, "I bestow upon you the rank, title, prerogatives, and duties of Knight Companion of the Order of King Roger."

The gleaming steel touched his right shoulder, then his left, then went back to his right once more. She let it rest there for a moment, her eyes meeting his, then she smiled and stepped back, lowering the sword.

"Rise, Sir Aivars," she said softly in the hush before the cheers began, "and may your future actions as faithfully uphold the honor of the Queen as your past."